Hypotheses

1. The current slam scene is rife with unoriginal work.

2. Much unoriginal work is nonetheless based in authentic feeling.

3. Much of this authentic feeling leads to impassioned delivery — passion represented by rapid speech, highly articulated emphasis, and a reduction in representation of nuance as the poet attempts to exhort or convince the audience of the authenticity of his/her feelings.

4. Slam poems are primarily linear in construction, with one thought leading directly to the next with a minimum of breaks, silence, and associative leaps used in the construction and delivery of the poem.

5. Even when a poem has been constructed with attention to the above, the current preference (by both audiences and poets) for the impassioned delivery renders the performance of the poem less effective than it could be with a more nuanced reading.

6. Audiences seem as comfortable with the above as the poets do.

7. Exceptions to all of the above exist, but the existence of exceptions does not negate the larger trend.

8. Part of the reason for the prevalence of the delivery style described above may be that so many poets learn the work of their peers through the medium of video and audio recordings, which fuse and freeze the performance of the poems so that study of the texts is discarded, thus reducing the possibility that they will lend their own voice and interpretation to the work.

9. Because of the increasing dominance of this performance/writing style, and because of the predominance of the slam venue as the sole home/breeding ground for performance poets in all but the largest metropolitan areas, performance poetry that doesn’t fit the mold is being marginalized and its visibility is being reduced.

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Hypotheses require debate and testing. That’s all these are — statements, drawn from my own recent observations and research, that I need to think about more. I invite debate, discussion, and argument.