In college a friend of mine was dating a guy who did Slam poetry. I had never heard of it but imagined a bunch of people in black, wearing burets, and sipping impossibly tiny cups of coffee I imagined them snapping their fingers at the end of someone getting on stage and performing something no more than burping and saying, ever so quietly, "spiderwebs," or something equally as innocuous.
After attending my first poetry slam I was hooked. Yes, there were some beatnic hippies there, but there was also some amazing poems. It's amazing what people can do with words or paper and equally impressive what they can do in presenting them.
Sometimes people claim to hate poetry. I don't think anyone "hates poetry." I think someone somewhere at some time in their life has ruined it for them.
Poet Taylor Mali's poem "I Could Be A Poet," performed in this video from something called Page Meets Stage back in 2005, pokes fun at some of the reasons why poetry often gets snubbed by the masses as an enjoyable pass-time.
I love his delivery as it stereotypes the ways performers often over-affect themselves instead of letting the words do the talking. I also enjoy the line that goes, "I can think of incongruous images like a Marxist with a trust fund, a Porsche pulling a U-Haul" in order to "be a poet."
Thankfully, that's not all it takes. Mr. Mali and his work is proof of that!
Sergio del Limónar
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