I’m working on a couple of projects right now, and am interested in your opinions.
1. Slam as a place to move performance poetry forward in terms of artistic merit seems broken right now. If you were in charge, what would you do to change that?
2. Anyone know anything about the psychological phenomenon known as a “fugue state”? Anecdotes, etc.? I know the definition.
Thanks in advance.
Dark Matter 
January 4th, 2004 at 9:53 pm
Re: #2
no problem – more on the other type later on – having trouble pinning down the words to describe… will try to have something fro you tonihght or tomorrow.
the Monster sounds totally cool! can’t wait to hear/read some of it!
…in other notes, thankyou for the spark – still working on the NPJs, & you know how it is – when in doubt, create new character? this topic gave me the means to bring the next troublemaker into the City. hope that’s ok…
January 4th, 2004 at 9:18 pm
Re: #2
Thanks for this, Sou…
I’m working on a monster about a society-wide fugue state.
January 4th, 2004 at 4:52 am
Re: #2
i have a friend in OH who would fall into the losing-time kind of thing – really disconcerting to be around, scary. she showed up at my apartment one afternoon, wide-eyed & frenzied, ranting about something that made very little sense, tore my livingroom apart – furniture upended, stuff torn down, very very big, then stormed out after an hour or so & took off (on foot) towards downtown. she was very obviously *not in there*. i follwed her for a while until the inevitable crash… a lot of tears, but mainly a lot of confusion – she had no idea how she wound up on that end of campus, & when we got back to her apartment, freaked out b/c she thought someone had broken into her place (it was in the same shape mine was – apparently the frenzy had started long before she got to my apartment). she had lost about four hours that afternoon.
this wasn’t the only incident. on a number of occasions there would be pay phone calls & i would go pick her up, only after promising not to tell her parents or roommate. one morning (as in four in the), i picked her up in Toledo. she had no idea how she got there. she had her purse (unusual), but it was empty.
(more on the dreamy in-the-zone sort – of the personal nature – to follow.)
January 3rd, 2004 at 7:24 am
if i was in charge…
1. Slam as a place to move performance poetry forward in terms of artistic merit seems broken right now. If you were in charge, what would you do to change that?
…the use of qualified judges hand-in-hand with the neophyte judges. people like jim nave, patricia smith, regie gibson or bob holman on one side of the spectrum and folks like li-young lee, marie howe, rita dove and billy collins on the other side.
this would force poets to look at their work in 3-d versus the current will it or won’t work mentality that they have now. (i include myself among the guilty in regard to that last statement, btw)
also, for higher profile slams
-anonymous judging. the scores are written down and passed to a pair of score keepers.
one announces the scores while the second tallies and makes the final announcement. if the throngs want to boo the scores- let em.
the judges remain safe and can throw whatever score they feel like without trying to avoid the boos of the crowds for giving their favorite poet a MERE 9.1 (note- i have also seen some judges start to give ridiculously LOW scores in reaction to the disapproval of the slam audience.) the effect on the slammer- not being able to cater to any judge(s) and try to work over some to get an artificially inflated score.
the judging, in its present form, favors the slammer who can reach the lowest common denominator first and while many times that leads to a poet that can connect with the broadest range of the human experience in the most accessible language very often it only rewards the orator who can say the most mundane in the easiest words possible.
dos centavos,
o.b.
http://www.geminipoet.blogspot.com/
January 2nd, 2004 at 8:17 pm
Re: #2
Either, or both. Wide open topic…collecting notes for a Monster.
January 2nd, 2004 at 5:09 pm
#2
are you talking about the losing time kind of fugue, or the manic, dreamy, removed from Now kind of fugue?
January 2nd, 2004 at 2:25 pm
Re: #1 Revisited
Love the idea of a form slam!
And, havng heard some slam poems MANY more times than I’ve found worthwhile, fully understand the impulse to say “all-new, every time,” but disagree. Too many of the performance poems I love have grown and changed in multiple performances–the editing that happens after memorization–for me not to think that’ll be counter-productive. Also, that tends to create throwaway poetry, as opposed to more careful stuff that holds up to many listenings.
And, too, a lot of us have kids and jobs and so on. The activity already leans toward youth; this requirement would further push away, say, a mid-30s single mom with a job who just isn’t going to write three new pieces every time she comes out to slam. I like the way they do it at Urbana, where the norm is that you do a new piece every time you slam, but then all bets are off.
January 2nd, 2004 at 1:57 pm
#1 Revisited
I’d also insist that every piece you do in every slam which moves you towards being on a team be original — a brand new piece, every time. This would result in what, eight to ten new pieces of poetry that have to kick ass and that no audience has heard before. World premiere poetry, every time.
Your <http://www.gotpoetry.com/article524>Zero point Zero column for today flashes in neon another point, the need to grow as an artist. If you get applause, there’s validation — but there’s also a desire to do more of the same.
A lot of slam poetry is non-transferrable. I like poet X’s pieces, but I don’t feel them move in me, I’m not inclined to quote them because they don’t speak to my experience. They words are so completely his or her experience that I do not feel them reverberate in me.
Any time I’m asked to judge from here on in, any poet who uses “I”, “me”, “mine” or “my” in the first line of their slam poem is getting a 5 or less, regardless of other merits (Someone needs to be the East German judge, anyway).
Slam seems to get a lot of “I want to fuck you” poetry, “I want to break up with you” poetry, “I want to change the world for you” poetry, “I’m really angry for no good reason” poetry, and “This is my political manifesto (thinly) disguised as poetry” poetry. All of those are valid categories. Maybe they’re the only categories. I do wish more of them were universal, though — that they were recitable and capable of speaking to my needs permanently, rather than a particular audience on a night when, as on many other Sundays, we have a slam.
I’ll try to answer the fugue state question later today.
January 2nd, 2004 at 1:27 pm
re #1…
promotion of more specialty slams. tag team format, all new shit, covers only, musical instruments and/or props, etc. Almost anything to break it up and disrupt the status quo can take people back to a mindset of “what would be cool to do?” rather than “what wins at this venue?”
ps, drifted off listening to Hem, and it’s beautiful.