Since I began this project in January 2008 with the cafe society of Open Mic Night in mind, I'd like to try and make full circle by addressing certain members of that diverse group before I close the project, for now.
Poets who "slam" or write for performance are gaining in popularity, and it's easy to see why. Fast, competitive (in slams) and full of streetwise energy, the slammers and "performance" poets (more than just slam poetry without the competition) cook their creations with rapid-fire rhyme and pulse-pounding rhythms, then season with a dash of irony and a pinch of salt-of-the earth wisdom.
Their Milton and Shakespeare are Jack Kerouac and Charles Bukowski. Far-fetched? Maybe. But, like Milton, Kerouac wrote an epic poem -- Mexico City Blues. And like the Shakespeare of the sonnets, Bukowski wrote a sequence in memory of his lost love, Liz, many of them in The Roominghouse Madrigals.
Poets who "slam" or write for performance are gaining in popularity, and it's easy to see why. Fast, competitive (in slams) and full of streetwise energy, the slammers and "performance" poets (more than just slam poetry without the competition) cook their creations with rapid-fire rhyme and pulse-pounding rhythms, then season with a dash of irony and a pinch of salt-of-the earth wisdom.
Their Milton and Shakespeare are Jack Kerouac and Charles Bukowski. Far-fetched? Maybe. But, like Milton, Kerouac wrote an epic poem -- Mexico City Blues. And like the Shakespeare of the sonnets, Bukowski wrote a sequence in memory of his lost love, Liz, many of them in The Roominghouse Madrigals.
Whether Kerouac and Bukowski are anyone else's guiding lights is another question. But, based on my exposure to slam and performance poetry, these men's best-known work created the ground performance artists stand on and formed the very air slammers breathe.
Like the slammers and performance poets of today, Bukowski and Kerouac were strong individualists who seemed to thrive on being misunderstood outsiders. But, unlike some slammers and performance artists I've heard, they stayed in control of their works' imagery (when it could be controlled), and their diction was rock solid, when solidity was needed.
In short, they were good writers. The misunderstanding surrounding both of them is that they were labeled "beat" poets. Instead, they were both surrealists. While I believe this is the key unlocking the riches hiding inside their edgy verses, I'll leave that task to the literary critics. What's important for slammers and performance poets alike is that Kerouac and Bukowski were writers in the American "hard-boiled" tradition, poets of the New World surreal and visionaries of the post-war era who gave testimony with unparalleled tragi-comic candor.
That candor, I believe, included their personal faults. Still, they communicated, and they "kept it real" -- even when life around them got very, very unreal. And I think they stayed true to themselves and to their experiences, however ugly or misshapen those experiences, or however faulty their lives, ultimately became.
In the Home of the Brave and the Land of the Free, they were. You can do the same. Just don't expect it to come easy. And remember, there is always a price to be paid, whatever course you choose.
I'll be seeing you. Look for me in the cafe during Open Mic. I'll be the middle-aged paunch at the back table, sitting by himself and listening.
In short, they were good writers. The misunderstanding surrounding both of them is that they were labeled "beat" poets. Instead, they were both surrealists. While I believe this is the key unlocking the riches hiding inside their edgy verses, I'll leave that task to the literary critics. What's important for slammers and performance poets alike is that Kerouac and Bukowski were writers in the American "hard-boiled" tradition, poets of the New World surreal and visionaries of the post-war era who gave testimony with unparalleled tragi-comic candor.
That candor, I believe, included their personal faults. Still, they communicated, and they "kept it real" -- even when life around them got very, very unreal. And I think they stayed true to themselves and to their experiences, however ugly or misshapen those experiences, or however faulty their lives, ultimately became.
In the Home of the Brave and the Land of the Free, they were. You can do the same. Just don't expect it to come easy. And remember, there is always a price to be paid, whatever course you choose.
I'll be seeing you. Look for me in the cafe during Open Mic. I'll be the middle-aged paunch at the back table, sitting by himself and listening.
Make me smile.
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