In true Poetry Slam style, the Spoken Word Revolution Redux CD and book set starts out by putting a Poet Laureate head to head with a Slam Champion. Ted Kooser (former USA Poet Laureate) vs Anis Mojgani (twice National Poetry Slam Individual Champion); Andrew Motion (current UK Poet Laureate) vs Sonya Renee (former National Poetry Slam Individual Champion).

I’m not a fan of Motion’s poetry, but even if I were, his polite reading of “Anne Frank Huis” would still be totally blown out of the water by Renee’s electrifying, music backed performance of “Thick”. The comparison is of course, unfair; Motion writes for the page, Renee is a performer. However, any literary poet who is presenting their poetry in front of an audience could learn lessons from performance poets. Lessons about how to bring poetry alive and to engage an audience.

Questions, asked by Ted Kooser in his introduction to the book, about whether performance poetry will endure as literature, are, I think, irrelevant. Each performance is unique and will live on in the mind of the audience who may well memorize the words (as proven by the audience participation in the recording of David Lerner’s “Mein Kampf“*).

Dare I ask the question: is literary poetry in fact the sign of a failure in poetics? That it needs to be written down because no one can remember it otherwise? The first poets performed their work, they didn’t write it down. Performance poetry today continues this tradition. Kevin Coval in his article “Towards a Hip Hop Poetica” describes hip hop poets as ‘modern griots, indigenous keepers and tellers of his/her/stories.’ Hip Hop poetry revels in rhyme and rhythm, as demonstrated here by poet Invincible, in this excerpt from “Detroit Winter”:

    The city streets are bitter sweet
    I pound pavement
    While I’m kicking litter at my feet
    Under the snow, the ground’s blanket
    These heavy hitter beats.

Dana Gioia in his article “The New Oral Poetry” notes that “the nearly universal critical bias against rhyme and meter as recently as ten years ago, especially in University writing programmes, indicates how distant the poets in a print culture have become from the orality of verse.”

Some literary poets can seem to be afraid of emotion and humour and often appear to be engaging with a select gathering of fellow literary poets, rather than reaching out to a wider audience. Performance poets however, are rarely afraid of emotion, whether raw anger in Mayda del Valle’s poem about Puerto Rican Spanish speakers, “Tongue Tactics”, or more controlled as in Patricia Smith’s rambling poem of love for her father “When the Burning Begins”:

    ……. I’m telling you it’s the first thing
    I ever cooked, that my daddy was laughing
    and breathing and no bullet in his head.

Nor are performance poets afraid to connect with the audience’s points of reference, as in this line from “Lebron James”, by Nate Marshall one of the many young poets featured in this book:

    I’ll be the first spoken word brotha with a shoe
    deal.

Performance poetry also is unafraid to engage with politics, which can seem confrontational, but it is hard not to at least see where Nikki Giovanni is coming from in her angry poem “All Eyez on U”:

    if those who lived by the sword died by the sword there would be no
    white men on earth.

There are some performance poets who I find too confrontational, just as there are some literary poets who bore me; at the same time there are literary poets who stun me with their distillations of powerful emotion and there are performance poets who move me with their subtlety. Both sides can learn from each other. This book is a perfect starting point for literary minded poets (or anyone else) to start learning from performance poets.

~Juliet.

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* The link is to a Lerner reading of his work, not from the CD.

The Spoken Word Revolution Redux, edited by Mark Eleveld, is available from Source Books and Powell’s Books.

Eleveld, Mark, ed. (2007.) Spoken Word Revolution Redux. Naperville: Sourcebooks Mediafusion.

(A version of this review first appeared on Crafty Green Poet.)

It’s the time of year when the earth blooms with warmth and color, baby robins crack through eggshells to naively take on the world, and Hollywood moms proudly strut about to reveal their winter-night-born love-bumps. And the American greeting card industry is counting on us all to send our mothers a card.

I resisted making this week’s prompt about mothers, because it seems like too conventional of a choice. But I did a little research on the American version of the holiday at wikipedia, and it turns out that when social activist Julia Ward Howe suggested the celebration, it was intended to be a day when mothers came together to speak out against war, which I think adds a little (pacifistic) spunk to the day.

Let’s face it: love them, hate them, fear them, miss them – or all of the above – the bond we have with our mother is one of the most primal and life-forming we will encounter. It might be natural that the relationship would show up in some of our poetic work, and this week I think it would be a great focus. (Here are some examples of poems about mothers.)

Maybe your relationship with your mother does not deserve a reverential ode — a vengeful or mournful piece would work just as well. Maybe you can find inspiration in Mother Nature, Mother Theresa, or the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo. Think through the people and events in your life that have mothered you. You could write about your experience as a mother, or your aspirations to become one.

Ideas for collaboration:

• Choose a photo or some words describing your mother and exchange them with another poet. Write about each others’ mothers.
• In the spirit of Julia Ward Howe’s vision, get together with other poets and write protest poems on a cause you are all moved by. Protest Poems is a great online resource by one of our RWP members.
• Ask your mother or a mother figure in your life to write something with you.

Whatever slant you take, remember this: Eat your veggies. Clean your plate. If you don’t have anything nice to say, don’t say anything at all.

Oh, and come back Monday after midnight and find the get your poem on post. Leave a comment for us, with a link to your poem of the week.

~Blythe.

The current poll is difficult to answer honestly. It forces us to balance our feelings about ourselves with the expectations that we will be gracious, humble and, far worse, politically correct. It requires us not only to be aware of our talent and work ethic but also to be comfortable sharing that assessment (even anonymously) with the rest of the world.

These dynamics exist in the poetry universe outside this poll, and I also suspect they have a great impact on our ability to write and as well as our ability to identify and polish our best work. Do poets and other writers/artists recognize the quality of their work with any degree of accuracy? As with fishermen (did you know some inflate the size of their catches?) and the “weight” blanks on health forms (did you know some people lie about the size of their backsides?), we sometimes have motivation to embellish or diminish our stories and our beliefs about ourselves.

Is it even possible for the creator to see the work in the same way others see it? Does it matter? Shouldn’t people write and paint and “poem” if they want to regardless of their level of talent or skill? Although Read Write Poem die-hards will fight buzzing swarms of killer poetry snobs to encourage people to write no matter what; not all of the world so freely supports the “amateur,” the “average,” the “hobbyist.” And not all the world embraces the legitimacy of the blog as a true poetry community worth the time of the “published poets” and “academics” among us. In other words, there’s a lot of chatter inside our heads, swirling around outside our heads that make it challenging to know for sure which poll answer is true for us.

However, if I am to finish my job and snake around this poll in a way that makes you want to give me money join me in the dance, I must assume the poll responses are as genuine and unadulterated as possible. (But it will be fun to hear what you think of the aforementioned influencing factors, as well.)

At press time, only four percent of RWP-ers stand on the rooftops and proclaim (barbaric yawps, anyone?) that they have an exceptional gift and work very hard. I’m proud of these poets whoever they are. I’d like to think that as I become more prolific and skillful with the craft of poetry I’d feel bold enough to celebrate my “exceptional gift.” If you chose this response right away, perhaps you could share how you came to that place (which from the outside looking in appears to be a beautiful garden where confidence and courage grow in abundant red blossoms). If you didn’t choose this response, do you wonder, like me, if it’s the sign of an evolved writer (something to reach for in time) or if it’s a state of mind anyone can acquire at any stage in their writing life?

Six percent identified themselves as naturals for whom it all comes easy. To some degree, anyone who’s been inspired on a regular basis probably admits that some of the inspiration came naturally. Perhaps others say the desire to write and even a small amount of the talent comes naturally. However, I know fewer people who’d use the word “easy.” Skeptics may argue that people who claim poetry comes easy may not be “serious” poets (whatever that means). So, naturals, we want to hear from you! Tell us how you approach the work or how it approaches you. If you’re so inclined, you may also e-mail some Zen wisdom directly to me. I’m. Desperate. For. Some. Relief. … But anyway, moving on …

A bunch of respondents (10 percent) claim to have no talent and no idea why they do this poetry thing anyway. I’ve heard people say this in moments of exasperation. Self-flagellation can be instinctual at the cellular level when things get hard. I’m curious: are these poets reporting their status on a bad day, a period of writers block, a catatonic state following NaPoWriMo? Or do they really struggle with this belief at their cores?

Two poll choices allow responders to identify mainly as hard workers: those who have more talent than average and those who have no more talent than anyone else. Each of these received 13 percent of the vote, and each represents a similar philosophy. They say, “I work really hard at this even though I represent something close to ‘average.’ Even though I’m not much different than anyone else, I put in the time to make something of my interest in writing poetry.” Maybe it’s my small-town working-class upbringing, but I like to believe that the work itself can be enough to make progress as a poet, to get “good” (saving, again, for another time, the argument about what that means and who decides). If you chose one of these two replies to the poll, is this how you feel?

The final response - “I write poetry no matter how I feel about my talent or work ethic” - earned more than half of the votes. Even our extremely scientific methods here at Read Write Poem (ha ha) have been unable to determine if it’s a popular answer because it’s a catch-all phrase or because it captures a mantra RWP-ers may be telling themselves: “Write no matter what. Write on good days and bad days. Write whether you feel like it or not. Write even if you don’t feel like you’re a poet.” The response is an affirmation and it’s very healthy. Let us know why you felt most comfortable with this response. Is it because it’s spot-on true for you? Is it because it fits you so well, none of the others came close? Is it because you want it to be true and you’re aiming for it?

I love all of our poll responders equally, of course, like any good mother, but I have special affection for the half of the group that chose the “I write no matter what” answer. It probably means you’re serious about your poetry, and I like that. But like any good mother, I’m also a bit suspicious of some of you because I can remember what it’s like to be standing in front of that poll facing difficult choices. I have been there. And I did the wrong thing. There, I said it. I confess I chose the “I write no matter what” response because it was safe. And because I was afraid to claim the response that resonated with me: “I have more talent than average, and I work very hard.” It seemed pompous instead of confident, and I balked. But truthfully, I don’t know if I could do this every day if I didn’t think I had a little bit of talent.

The bottom line, of course, is that writing poetry and saying we’re poets is gutsy, no matter where we fall on the spectrum.

Now it’s your turn! Jump up on the stage for the “poll dance.” Use the comments section to talk about your own response to the poll and your suspicions about the talents and work ethics of the poetry world at large.

~Carolee.

***

Here’s how the poll dance works: We post a poll and let it ride for a week and a half, and then I’ll talk a little bit about the topic and the results. The poll will stand for a few days after that to allow additional participation. The rotation gives each poll two weeks in the white-hot spotlight.

From now until midnight one week from today, comments on this post will be open, so you can leave a permalink to your blog post for this week’s contribution.

Be sure to check back through the week and see what others have written in response to science fiction poetry, or any other idea: Read Write Poem!

* * *

Please take a few moments to read the the about page, the code of conduct and our copyrights page. If you have any questions about the project after reading through those pages, e-mail us at info (at) readwritepoem (dot) org.

Please note: If your comment does not appear, send an e-mail to info (at) readwritepoem (dot) org and we will fish it out of the spam filter. (Put but one link in your comment. The spam filter thinks more than one is fishy-business and will send you to the tank.)

Please also note: We encourage participants to link to the Read Write Poem site every week they participate and to tag or categorize their posts as “Read Write Poem.” Doing so each week helps new people find the project and increases the site’s visibility and rankings — and that in turn that means more people will see the work of project participants.

* * *

We always love hearing from you!

Rae Armantrout starts out Next Life with a “Tease,” which hints at structure, idea and form, but barely fleshes it out.

The poem juxtaposes images of a cop imagining a serial killer, a tree that is also a skeleton, a black sedan and a knit red cap, asking readers to draw the parallels between these seemingly disconnected things. In Armantrout’s universe (as well as ours), they are connected because they exist, if fleetingly, in the here and now. This opening poem serves as a preview of Armantrout’s larger project. In Next Life, Rae Armantrout uses spare, specific language to explore the big ideas: the nature of identity and all existence.

For me, Armantrout’s language style was challenging to dissect. While she uses very few words, she manipulates these words through placement, line breaks and context to reveal their complexities. For instance, in the poem “Tease” her second section reads: “Bare tree/is to human skeleton//as the holy spirit/likens objects//briefly//to make the world up/of provisional pairs.” By placing tree, skeleton and holy spirit together, between expanses of white space, she reveals their connections. They are structure and spirit, living and dead, holy and common.

As in “Tease,” it seems like much of Armantrout’s language is concerned with the act of definition, or distinguishing a singularity out of the multitudes. It is an interesting task in these times to define individuality, since we seem to be inundated with details and masses of things. In the poem “Two, Three,” the poet wonders how many details must be shared in order to create a specific instance. As she ponders, she lists people’s details, as if she’s watching a crowd pass by. A few poems later, she defines the existence of a pet cat as more than a thing, despite the cat’s lack of self awareness. In this poem, the language is still spare, but she extends her attention on the image.

Throughout the book, she uncovers the nature of identity through a sustained attention to images. In some poems, like “Short Story” and “Clear,” she presents fleeting moments shared between people that define identities. Through observed interactions, like a woman chatting on airplane or an elderly woman guided by two younger women, she reveals the frailty and vulnerabilities in lives. In one of my favorite poems, “A Distance,” Armantrout cycles through various identities, inhabiting and discarding them as she tries to find the right one. In fact, they are all her, “a woman/ age 56.” The poem is intriguing because she again finds commonalities between children and adults, the frail and the brave. Identity becomes a communal and public experience.

Even later in the book, her attention turns to the larger question of existence. In “Visits,” she begins with doubting Thomas, thrusting his hand into open wounds. Then, she switches to a wholly modern context, someone who collects Statue of Liberty figurines, showcased on the local news. After these two unrelated scenes she writes, “It is from this wound/that humans first emerged.” Did humans emerge out of the wound of doubting, the wound of needing to prove existence through experience, or the wound of surrounding ourselves with the detritus of our culture? It seems that Armantrout defines existence in spite of culture, not because of it. Ultimately, existence is hard to define, because we have surrounded ourselves with mediated experience. We collect figurines of Lady Liberty, rather than visiting the real statue itself.

Next Life is a challenge to read. Many of her poems are collages of imagery and it is the reader’s responsibility to discern the larger picture. At times I struggled with making connections between sections or stanzas of poems, and between poems in the collection. As with a lot of poetry, it took several readings and a close attention to the poet’s linguistic choices for me to understand her ideas. But once I began to pay attention, I started to look at the world slightly differently, as if everything could be connected.

~Jessica.

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Armantrout, Rae (2007). Next Life. Middletown: Wesleyan University Press.

Rae Armantrout’s website.

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Want to join Jessica’s Poetry Book Club? Find it at 9 to 5 Poet.

We’ve made a NaPoWriMo celebration button that you are most welcome to add to your blog. (Although I’d rather toast your success or commiserate a less-than-planned outcome!).

Button Sample and Code

<a href="http://readwritepoem.org/category/napowrimo/" /><img src=" http://readwritepoem.org/wp-content/uploads/2008/04/celebrate_napowrimo_08_rwp.jpg" height="60" width="150" /></a>

I’m always impressed by the potential of Science Fiction to look at everyday life from an entirely different point of view. Issues and topics considered within an alien setting can help the reader to see things from a fresh perspective. Most people think of science fiction in the form of novels or films but science fiction poetry is becoming increasingly popular.

J D Nelson, a poet who I have published on Bolts of Silk often writes poetry with an element of science fiction. You can read examples here and here.

Patricia at Roswila’s Dream and Poetry Realm specialises in scifaiku (haiku type poems on SF themes) - you can read these here.

You can find out more about Science Fiction Poetry in all forms at the Science Fiction Poetry Association website or read more about Scifaiku at SciFaiku.com.

So your challenge this week is to write a science fiction poem in any form you want! You can choose to use the poem to explore an issue or to create a vision of a different world.

Idea for collaboration: Swap SF scenarios with another poet and write poems inspired by each other’s scenarios.

Then come back next Monday after midnight (CST) to share your poetry! Look forward to seeing you all then.

~Juliet.

get your poem on #24 will be open and accepting links to you poems based on this prompt - or any other inspiration - next Sunday after midnight

Well, you’re near the end of April, of National Poetry Month, of NaPoWriMo!

Sigh…in relief, remorse, resolution…

Some of you have practiced writing daily and some have posted a poem daily. Some have made up your own rules and kept them or broken them. Some (like me) found you couldn’t stay with daily writing early on.

Some have even asked for a NaPoWriMoMoMo…well, tell you what: Read Write Poem is really All Poetry All the Time. So I guess the virtual answer to that is “Of course!” The practical answer is “Come visit anytime!” and make writing and reading poetry a part of a daily, weekly, monthly, or occasional routine. As it suits you.

And, as I noted in the “participant list” post, here are a couple of questions. I’ll leave comments open for about 3 weeks (any longer than that and the spam machines do their work):

…will you be stopping by to visit Read Write Poem for ideas, information or prompts post-NaPoWriMo? (There is an end to April, dear poets!)…What would help next year…Is there a next year for your NaPoWriMo project?

Well done, all. No matter what you did, you practiced poetry.

In two weeks Carolee will be back to regularly scheduled Poll Dances! So check out the latest poll - after you have sighed with relief at the end of April.

~Deb.

PS: January will be starting a post-NoPoWriMo meme at her site, Poet Mom, once the NapPoWriMo delirium is over. (May 1st. Go take a look. )

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Here’s a recap of our NaPoWriMo resources:

During April – National Poetry Month - Read Write Poem will be supporting NaPoWriMo with a few extra ideas.

Here’s the participant list.

The kick-off conversation is here. Feel free to leave a comment about anything NaPoWriMo-related. (How are you doing?!) And here’s a mid-month check-up (Really, how are you doing?

A chain-poem gives you the chance to add a line and count it as one of your poems! Find the one in process here.

January talks about National Poetry Month and asks, “what are you doing?”

The word randomizer is at the bottom of this sidebar. Hit your “refresh” button until you find a word that sparks you. (Wish we could serve you a cuppa, too.)

Want the RWP NaPoWriMo button? Find it here.

And here’s a celebration of your NaPoWriMo success button. Help yourself.

From now until midnight one week from today, comments on this post will be open, so you can leave a permalink to your blog post for this week’s contribution, be it in jargon or any other language.

Check back through the week and see what others have written in response to this prompt or inspirations from other sources: Read Write Poem!

***

Please take a few moments to read the the about page, the code of conduct and our copyrights page. If you have any questions about the project after reading through those pages, e-mail us at info (at) readwritepoem (dot) org.

Please note: If your comment does not appear, send an e-mail to info (at) readwritepoem (dot) org and we will fish it out of the spam filter. (Put but one link in your comment. The spam filter thinks more than one is fishy-business and will send you to the tank.)

Please also note: We encourage participants to link to the Read Write Poem site every week they participate and to tag or categorize their posts as “Read Write Poem.” Doing so helps new people find the project and increases the site’s visibility and rankings — and that in turn that means more people will see the work of project participants.

Sonnet LIV.
“O! how much more doth beauty beauteous seem”

O! HOW much more doth beauty beauteous seem
By that sweet ornament which truth doth give!
The rose looks fair, but fairer we it deem
For that sweet odour which doth in it live.
The canker-blooms have full as deep a dye
As the perfumed tincture of the roses,
Hang on such thorns, and play as wantonly
When summer’s breath their masked buds discloses:
But, for their virtue only is their show,
They live unwoo’d, and unrespected fade;
Die to themselves. Sweet roses do not so;
Of their sweet deaths are sweetest odours made:
And so of you, beauteous and lovely youth,
When that shall vade, by verse distils your truth.

~William Shakespeare

This is the sonnet I memorized for my ninth-grade literature class in high school. I understood back then that the poem advised me not to count on mere outward appearances, but returning to the verses as a mature woman, I appreciate even more the message of the rose’s lingering perfume after beauty fades.

The Shakespearean sonnet consists of fourteen lines of iambic pentameter verse, with the following rhyme scheme: abab/cdcd/efef/gg. In other words, there are three quatrains, and a final couplet. Each line has ten syllables, with the stress placed on every other syllable.

In addition to the outward form, within a traditional sonnet the ideas flow in a pattern prescribed by the rhyme. The first three quatrains develop the idea, while the couplet seals the poem with a conclusion.

Shakespeare, like many writers, probably learned about composing a sonnet in school. Before his time, most sonnets were of the Italian variety, known as the Petrarchan sonnet.

Like the original thinker he was, Shakespeare changed the rules to write what suited him and the particular music of the English language (English has fewer rhymes than Romance languages, making the Italian sonnet more restrictive for Anglophones).

After the Bard, other poets took license with the sonnet, John Milton and Edmund Spenser being the most well-known seventeenth-century poets to make their mark on this famous form.

Although Shakespeare would not be able to recognize today’s sonnets, I think he would approve of the path modern poets have taken with the form. Just as he broke with his Italian predecessors, today’s poets are arranging the fourteen lines in ways to suit our current speech patterns. A fine example is “American Sonnet (10)” by Wanda Coleman.

Coleman varies the line lengths and uses internal rhyme rather than end rhymes. The form of the sonnet is recognizable in the flow of ideas and images, and in the final two lines that seal the poem.

A fun writing exercise for me has been my exploration of bout-rimé sonnets. This is a writing game, started in France as a joke in the seventeenth century, and popularized in England during the Victorian era.

The game is a collaboration between poets. One poet chooses the end words for the sonnet, and everyone writes a sonnet using those words. I’m including two sets of end words for you, a rhyming set and a non-rhyming set for those who eschew rhyme.

The caveat is to use each word in the same order, as an end word, and to only write fourteen lines. Those are the rules of the game!

Rhyming end words: visible, stage, scribble, old age, touching, fingers, fetching, tigers, buzzkill, joy ride, downhill, high tide, harpoon, high noon.

Non-rhyming end words (from Read Write Poem’s random word prompt!): seize, prairie, fade, cartilage, globule, pardon, dollop, collapse, carte blanche, wheeze, ululate, value, tea, -zing!

Two Victorian-era writers of bout-rimé sonnets are Christina Rosetti and Dante Gabriel Rosetti, members of the Pre-Raphaelite movement.

Michelle Johnson introduced me to the bout-rimé sonnet. If you’d like to read some of the poems we wrote with her end-line words, check out her post at Poefusion.

Another interesting tidbit about bouts-rimés is a chapbook written by Stephen Cushman. Fashioned Pleasures (Parallel Press) is a collection of bout-rimé sonnets based on the rhyme scheme of Shakespeare’s sonnet number 20. To read about Cushman’s interesting inspiration for the collection, read the article by Kristin Knipschild at the University of Wisconson website.

~Christine.