nucking futz. Grrrr…

Anyway: recent furor over on the slam list leaves me so bored that I think I’ve finally realized how distant I am from any care about “the future of slam”.

I just simply don’t care. I didn’t think I’d ever get there completely, but I think I’m there.

What I care about is poetry, and about more specifically about the art of “poetry, performed” as Guy would have it — and slam, and esp. NPS, is such a minuscule and increasingly self-referential and redundant part of the whole that I can’t waste my time on it.

Poetry is my religion. The search for myself in the pursuit of a poem through the twin disciplines of writing and performance/audience connection are the solitary and communal aspects of this religion.

To my eyes, slam and PSI/NPS are becoming increasingly focused on poetry in performance for its entertainment value, along with its corollary assumption that when it comes to entertainment, bigger is always better.

It’s not.

The fact that the 3×5 format allows 80 teams into the game is seen by so many as so important…I think it’s secondary.

What PSI/NPS SHOULD be focusing on is: how do you create a better experience for the audience?

It ain’t by increasing the number of poets, but by raising the bar. And anyone who’s watched the NPS over the last few years would be pardoned for thinking that the bar has not just not been raised, but has actually been lowered by the growth of a slam poet culture, where the slammers have grown up entirely within slam and only know poetry as it is practiced within slam.

At any rate…no more. Not for me.