6A the university daily kansan
news
monday, april 12, 2004
Traditional poetry revised
Slam poets create outspoken alternative to 'coffee-shop readings'
By Ron Knox
rknox@kansan.com
Kansan staff writer
In my version of heaven — Steve Fonseca screams this from the stage at The Jazzhaus — Robert Frost will be slit with Hallmark greeting cards and bathed in saltwater.
And he says this at, of all places a poetry reading.
Slit Robert Frost? Why so harsh?
The longer you listen, the clearer it becomes.
They scream profanity-laced tirades, poke fun at the audience, get heckled and like it. One poet, Lawrence resident Jacob Huff, swings from The Jazzhaus' amplifiers while cursing at the audience as a whole.
During The Jazzhaus' monthly poetry slam, performers do everything in their power to distance themselves from the traditional poetry that poets such as Frost embody.
And as the rants go on, it becomes clearer: these poets aren't just trying to distance themselves from traditional poetry — they, Huff said, can't stand it.
--poetry.
Cassandre Connolly, New York senior, performed at the Jazzhaus Poetry Slam. The Jazzhaus, 9261/2 Massachusetts St., holds poetry readings the first Wednesday of every month.
Jeff Brandsted/Kansan
"If this is a story about poetry, forget it," Fonseca said. "I'm not even interested."
Fonseca organizes the Slam at the Jazzhaus, which is held during the first Wednesday of every month, starts at about 10 p.m. and goes on, getting louder and louder, until the bar closes.
But he's not just the organizer — he's the emcee, the rrabler-rouser between acts who's meant, if nothing else, to be loud and expressive enough to get The Jazzhaus' crowd to stop talking amongst themselves and listen.
"This isn't a coffee shop reading. Any idiot can get a thesaurus and think they're a poet. This takes balls."
This is the main problem with what Fonseca calls "coffee-shop poetry" — that no one outside of academia really wants to listen to the dull tones and hushed phrases of typical
Steve Fonseca
Slam poet
"This isn't a coffee-shop reading." he said.
That's why this month, Fonseca dropped the word "poetry" from the Slam altogether.
Now, Fonseca's monthly show will feature more comics and hip-hop freestylists.
"Any idiot can get a thesaurus and think they're a poet," he says. "This takes balls."
fines, it tends to appeal to an older crowd," he said.
"Some days I want to [...] go back to writing/iambic pentameter/ and show the world/what an unskilled dancer/lam."
- Micky Cesar, pretty poems
Micky Cesar doesn't scream.
He ambles up to the stage, sets his sheets of typed poetry on the music stand, and reads them.
No shouting.
No flailing or hanging from The Lazzyhaus'amplifiers.
"I usually do better at coffee-shop readings," Cesar said. "You're not going to get anything flashy from me."
He just reads.
Cesar understands what the typical slam poetry reading should be: flashy, raw, packed with emotion.
"It's kind of like an action movie." he said.
Cesar reads his poems at coffee shops and smaller, more intimate venues, but he knows The Jazzhaus' slams provides him an audience that he wouldn't have otherwise.
That's why he's been reading there for two years.
"When you read in quiet confines, it tends to appeal to an older crowd," he said.
Megan McHenry, who has read and helped organize The Jazzhaus slams for more than two years, has one word to describe coffee house readings: Yawn.
"Being in coffee shops doesn't cut it for me at all," she said.
For people who didn't appreciate the poetry they read in school, slams are a place to express their versions of what poetry should be, in whatever manner they see fit, McHenry said.
眼
Debora Marsh has probably heard more slam poetry than anyone in the world.
She is vice president of Poetry Slam, the non-profit group charged with organizing slam poets and events around the world.
She has been coach of the Ann Arbor, Mich., poetry slam team since 1991 and has competed in different countries around the world.
She has watched the art grow since its inception more than 20 years ago as a way to get poetry out of stuff lecture halls and into bars, she said.
Although the gap between academic and slam poetry is narrowing, she said, she knows a problem still exists.
"There's still a lot of disdain out there," Marsh said. "Academia didn't understand slam poetry. They thought it was nothing more than rap music."
But at some point during slam poetry's evolution, things began to change.
Slam poets began publishing books.
And, Marsh said, academics tend to pay more attention when something is written down, instead of yelled from stages in
bars.
Now, many slam poets are in academia, she said. It's being taught in classes, and read in the same stuffy lecture halls that typically house traditional poetry readings.
After almost a decade of dissonance, the change has started to bridge the gap between the two genres.
"The lines are really very blurry now." Marsh said.
But in the office catacombs of Wesco Hall, it's taking longer for
the two genres to unite, said Joe Harrington, English professor and author of Poetry in the Public.
"It's happening to some extent, but it takes a while for the culture to find it's way here," he said.
Slam poetry is a popular movement, Harrington said, something that's important to America because it speaks to the people.
"That's part of the complaint against academic poetry, that it's
elitist." Harrington said. "Is it? Maybe."
But, Hartingon says, poetry is something so dear to poets and their audiences, anything different is often perceived as wrong or unnecessary.
"Poetry represents the highest form of culture for people," he said. "If someone is trying to define something so close to your heart you don't agree with, there will be this distaste."
-Edited by Cindy Yeo
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