I guess that title could apply to Hip Hop these days too but
this is about something I just learned about: Slam Poetry.
I was on Twitter yesterday morning, and some math teacher tweeted
out that a student made a Slam Poem about the women in STEM and then got
accepted into Engineering. The teacher
was proud too. Teachers. The teacher's pinned tweet said something like
she puts the Fun in Functions. This is
one of the many reasons why I don't talk to teachers.
Anyways, Slam Poetry.
I wanted to find out more about it since I like making humorous,
adult-themed rhymes myself, but the more I found out about Slam Poetry, there
didn't seem to be too much slamming going on, if you know what I mean.
I ran a search on Google and the first site I ended up going
to ended up being a Blog called "I Slam Poems and So Can You: A Beginners
Guide"
(http://outloudhsv.com/blog/2016/1/25/i-slam-poems-and-so-can-you-a-beginners-guide). I figured it be a good place to start until I
saw the first picture of, I'm guessing, the poster of the Blog entry. More meaningless artsy-fartsy fluff. These artsy types have to, one day, admit to
themselves that they don't really have any talent aside from being able to
binge-watch Netflix.
What I got out of that post was that a slam is a
competition, so it's a poetry competition.
According to the post, Poetry slam was invented in 1984 by construction
worker Marc Smith as a bar game. Maybe,
if construction worker is code for gay dancer. Remember this because depending
on where else you read about poetry slams, its origins are completely
different.
The basic rules and scoring guidelines are as follows: 1.
Poets must perform their own original work – no covers. If a poet breaks this
rule, they will be disqualified. That's
why you won't see Amy Schumer at any of these things; 2. No props, musical
instruments or costumes. If a poet breaks this rule by using talent, they will
be disqualified; 3. Poems are to be
timed beginning the moment the poet first speaks. Poems are to last no more
than three minutes. For every ten seconds a poet goes over three minutes, .5
will be deducted from their score. If
the poet hits 4 minutes, the timer is to notify the host and the poet will be cut
off.
What kept going through my mind was the Beavis and Butthead
Buttniks episode where they go to a coffeehouse (Beavis becomes Cornholio) and
there's the one guy on stage who kept
saying, "And then my friends, you die".
I watched the embedded YouTube clip on that page and man, is
it ever painful. It doesn't help that
the guy who recorded it keeps saying Wow and Nice anytime the two girls say the
same thing at once. But why even keep
score at these things? Everyone's a
winner and there's free ice cream at the end of it.
Apparently, slam poems can be funny too. LOL. I
was having more fun reading the blog entry replacing the word slam with the
word shit. At the end of that post it
said, "there are endless YouTube videos you can use for inspiration. Just
start looking!"
Unfortunately, I did.
I found a charming video called "Who the fuck do you think you are" by de1ayna. She
probably wonders why people avoid her.
Mind you, this came up in the search results (see pic). Good one, Google. I went to YouTube and searched for Slam
Poems. Inspired wasn't exactly the word
I'd use to describe my mood since I was wasting many minutes watching
20-somethings complaining about non-important issues, like how Brandon didn't
ask Britney to the Semi Formal because he's, like, toxic or whatever. Maia Mayor (first on the YouTube search
results) won't be going on too many dates in the near future. The next one in the list had the same
delivery but her hair was white/blue.
After that, there was a teenager dramatically going on about slavery
he's never had to go through. I don't
even want to go near the Special Poetry Slam Intro since I have a bit of
class. Then there was another babbling broad talking about dress codes and pay gaps, etc. I'm sure the patriarchy was mentioned but I
shut it off by then. Harry Baker wasn't
any better but his at least rhymed and he was better than all of the other
SJW/NPCs I watched. I stopped there. I haven't seen that much poop on a stage since GG Allin.
And then I realized Slam Poetry was exactly what I expected
it to be. Kind like when Disney bought
Star Wars, you knew the movies were going to be awful but you had to sit
through a couple just so you could do a 'I was right, I knew this would
happen'. Slam Poetry is terrible. It's self-important, spoiled Millennials
reciting their Facebook posts in front of people. After a while, it did inspire me: never to do
anything this awful and lazy myself.
They couldn't even take the time to make it rhyme. See? I
just made a rhyme and did it without trying.
That's almost two in a row.
There's no flow or any kind of elegance to it.
It's just complaining. At least I
won't have to hear anything about getting women into Slam Poetry since it looks
like they dominate that field already.
If you noticed on the screenshot, the first result was from
digitalpoet.net and I was just getting to that.
I don't think I've ever been to a website where the owner of
the site was so self-absorbed and self-impressed over nothing. The only skill he has is talking about himself. He even refers to himself as a
Spoken Word Artist. The thing is, he's
not even being self deprecating or funny.
He's completely serious about himself and believes he's edgy. And that's sad. I went there because he (Digital Poet;
formally Friction) had a What is Slam Poetry page. His definition wasn't any better: "The
term slam poetry is used to describe the poetry performed at poetry
slams". Thanks for that.
"Slams are a perpetual mystery, they are the ace up the
sleeve of a man with no shirt."
It's so clever it doesn't make any sense. I just read earlier that slams are
competitions so it's not a mystery anymore and I like my just-made-up 'they are
the ace in the hole of the vaginaless woman' better.
"When you do end up at a slam, it's fortuitous - there
will always be a piece that grabs you by the collar and pulls you closer,
breathes hot words in your face that resonate and kick up feelings. It's no
accident..."
Great, it's all on purpose.
I love when opinionated strangers get in my face and bleat out social
justice messages. It shows they really
care.
In case you didn't get your fill of conceited flatulence,
just a couple more: "As a participant, the story is quite different. For 3
minutes, any image maintained on a regular basis must depart from my physical
self as a mutually exclusive carbon copy of my soul takes center
stage." I'm starting to see that
even sentences don't have meaning when you're a Spoken Word Artist such as
Digital Poet. "I self-proclaim
myself as some level of craftsman with a dignified authority." I forget, what's that clincial term when
someone has an IQ under 80?
So wear your stupidity on your sleeve, get a mental illness
haircut, yell your problems and opinions at people, use random words in a
sentence and hope it makes sense and even you can be the next Slam Poet
Champion of the Universe. But you'll
have to run it by Digital Poet first to see if he's OK with it.
What sums it up better than ever I could is this:
https://qnuw.blog/2016/02/27/slam-poetry-sucks-and-all-these-self-entitled-poets-should-throw-themselves-off-of-bridges/
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