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Bob Holman, 1998 Team Manhattan slammaster (slamspeak for local venue organizer), has been criticized and is hated in some circles for cheapening the slam and appealing to pure spectacle, as well as exploiting gray areas (loopholes in rules). He helped found Mouth Almighty, the first and only record label devoted to spoken word artists, along with producing The United States of Poetry for PBS and master-minding last year's Manhattan slam team, named Team Mouth Almighty, who won the championship. His promotion of poetry's commercial viability through corporate sponsorship and merchandising has been a further source of controversy, with arguments in his favor that this is merely an extension of the slam's mission: to popularize poetry. Sometimes, his emphasis on glitz and celebrity runs up against Marc Smith's blue collar character and emphasis on an honor system in respecting rules.
But where does riffing cross the line between competitive edge, on the one hand, and violation of a poet's integrity, on the other? Where does community give way to competition, that which both brings people together and potentially divides them? Are rules to be taken advantage of, or respected as law? Should the slam have a singular vision of poetic integrity, or revel in creative diffusion? When does poetry lose its literary value and become pure performance? And does corporate sponsorship belong in the poetry slam universe?
These are questions that stem from the slam and fuel its fire, questions that will never be answered definitively. But each and every individual's answers constitute a leap of faith in the slam that keeps them coming back and contributing their diversity to the national community.
Community within community
hrough light sprinkles of rain and ominous lightening, I travel after the Ruta Maya bout with friends to Resistencía Bookstore, a haven of progressive literary events proverbially situated "east of the freeway" as in the poetry collection of the same name by raulrsalinas. At 64, Salinas is one of few remaining elder statesmen of Chicano poetry. He has traveled extensively to create networks of solidarity between African-American, pan-Latino, and Native-American activists.
Part of his unofficial training in political and literary struggles comes from Puerto Rican independentistas he met while imprisoned in the U.S. federal prison system. Given the early passing of such poets as Jose Antonio Burciaga, Ricardo Sanchez, and San Antonio's own Jose Montalvo, the reading for tonight will be an historic draw for Latinos from Austin and San Antonio. Miguel Algarin, one of the founders of the legendary Nuyorican Poets Cafe, will headline a reading with the New York City slam team. All in "occupied Mexico," as Algarin calls it.
Straight out of Manhattan's Lower East Side, the Nuyorican Poets Cafe began in 1974 in Algarin's apartment, where poets of the Puerto Rican diaspora gave voice to a new urban identity captured by the term "Nuyorican" taken up by now-legendary poets Miguel Pinero and Lucky Cienfuegos. The Cafe sat closed for most of the '80s but was jump-started in 1989 after the death of Pinero, one of its co-founders. In partnership with Algarin, Holman instituted the Cafe's weekly slam and brought new life to the venue. Ed Morales, a Village Voice writer who has worked with Holman, charts how the cafe became popular to the point of super trendiness under Holman's direction, and how it was criticized for losing the Puerto Rican community base that was once the founding principle of its existence.
"Algarin willingly allowed Holman to turn the cafe into a circus on Friday nights when he ran the slam," says Morales. Algarin's taxing battle with HIV and the demands of his professorship at Rutgers eventually took his attention away from the cafe, where Holman was left to take credit for its newfound notoriety This was when relations between Holman and Algarin became strained; Holman's style began to supplant recognition of Algarin, which made for a contentious relationship. Finally, a mutual schism over Holman's leave of absence to work on other projects got him booted in 1996 from the cafe's board of directors. Morales admits that Holman helped make the cafe a success in the '90s, and that its original aesthetic has subsequently evolved into the hip-hop ethos drawing the city's young black poets.
But tonight, at Resistencía, Algarin seems charged by the energy he shares with the next generation of Nuyorican poets on the 1998 team. With his left arm in a cast—reportedly from a street scuffle where he interceded on behalf of a woman being harassed—Algarin takes the stage with a jazz combo of saxophone and coronet to interpret poems by Salinas. "Street corner dude makes jaaazzzzz Latino sounds," Algarin intones with a horn-trilled accent, as he simulates the cadence of congas, one-upping Salinas's Beat-jazz sensibilities with Afro-Latin rhythms and sensual playfulness.
"I dare Raul to come up and read these poems better," he says, in a joking spirit of competition that forebodes the slam semi-finals coming up tomorrow. Raul doesn't take up the challenge, but instead shares a few poems before urging people to buy Algarin's books and talk to him while he's still around, before they "catch the bus" with poets who have retired from the struggle.
An open mic reading begins, led by New York City slammaster Keith Roach, who introduces the Nuyorican team and a host of other slam poets who share in the evening's festivity. A Nuyorican expatriate now on Team Los Angeles, Gerrie B. Quickley, arrives and hugs Keith Roach. Poets from Montreal, Toronto, and Austin read until almost one in the morning despite intermittent drizzle, sharing the calm of this community within the greater slam community. It's the calm before the storm.
Cold comfort community
start Friday with breakfast at El Sol y la Luna next to the Austin Motel, where poets are dragging themselves out of bed for a feast of events in addition to the semi-finals bouts. Team Boston's Gary Hicks, a Christian Marxist who has a distinctive salt-and-pepper beard, joins in the bouts today that will weed four finalists from the 18 teams who have made the cut. "I'm in a state of existential shock," says Hicks between coffee refills. Today's events include a head-to-head haiku slam, gay/lesbian readings, and a "Chocolate City" showcase of African-American poets, among many other open mics and mini-slams. And then there's the yearly softball game, where poets prove they're not true athletes.
But I head off to Book People bookstore to hear a reading with Patricia Smith, emcee from the bout last night. I walk into Book People just as the reading has started, and I notice that Smith is reciting her "Note of Apology" that was printed in the Boston Globe following her resignation as a metro columnist in June. Aside from being widely recognized at the national slam as a pillar of this community and a slam poet par excellence, she has also become known nationwide as the Pulitzer Prize finalist who admitted to fabricating characters and quotes in four columns. In the note—her farewell column—the 43-year-old journalist suggests that the ambition to achieve motivated her decision to "slam home a salient point" from time to time with fabrication. "Finally, I'd like to apologize to the memory of my father, Otis Douglas Smith," she reads, continuing with slight defiance, "and that's his real name—you can check it."
Enthusiastic cheers issue from the crowd in obvious compensation for the sense of loss Smith expresses. She mentions the support she has received from the poetry community: "in the end, that was really the only community that mattered." Continuing to read poems laying bare what's been on her mind in the wake of the Globe incident, she admits to thoughts and fears of the worst sort in moments of heartbreaking vulnerability: "My penance is that I will keep living to see myself keep dying. I can see the headline: disgraced, ousted, sinful ex-columnist just doesn't get it. I hide the gun on a bookshelf behind one painfully alphabetized row of poetry volumes."
Smith takes some time to switch papers, shaken somewhat. "Perhaps you don't understand. I am the face of American journalism slapping journalism's American face…I have been nationally declared a liar, which means that this must be a lie and that me telling you that this must be a lie must be a lie also." Light, sympathetic laughter urges Smith to keep reading with strength, but tears form at the corners of her eyes, as her pained voice reads on: "These are words that I can still use: fluent, funky, anemone, android, penis, shogun, sonnet, chisel, shield…These are words that I can still use: petal, candle, murmur, apple, tongue, refrain."
Now choking back tears, she forces the words to come out in a litany, a catalogue of language she reclaims as her own: "scat, lullaby, hands, adultery, vibrate, history" She struggles to keep the string of words coming, and then in thick staccato: "Man did not give me this gift—man cannot take it away" repeating this refrain to the point of gut-wrenching emphasis, throwing her script to the ground, and finally breaking Out in tears that are met with open sobs from the audience. The reading ends with a standing ovation and extended cheers.
Team Santa Cruz members Kelly McNally and Meliza Bafiales openly break down and cry with Smith. Afterwards, they say she's a scapegoat in a profession where journalists misquote and make far worse mistakes all the time. Says Banales, "She admitted she was wrong, and it takes a very human person to admit mistakes. It's also easy to demonize people for mistakes because they're in a public position." From their reactions to her reading, I wonder if they're personal friends, but McNally points out that they just met her: "She's very open and giving, and she's given us a lot of encouragement since we're one of only two all-female teams, and we're going into the semis."
After the event, I head to Mojo's cafe for a caffeine refill and to see what's happening next. I end up recounting Smith's reading to a few poets and an east coast slammaster. The slammaster voices a different opinion on Smith's appearance at this year's slam: "She's milking poets for sympathy, because poets are dumb-asses. They don't read the newspapers. I mean, what she did wasn't a mistake—it was blatant, calculated fabrication." Pointing out that there's no need to fabricate material for a metro column, he also clues me in to claims from the Boston Globes' editor that 20 more columns by Smith appear to have been fabricated. What's clear is that Smith's career turn has become something of a rallying point in the slam community.
Jivin' with the pre-bout jitters
fter the caffeine jolt, I wander over to Fringeware, a bookstore next to Mojo's, and run into Bob Holman chewing the fat with an old friend of mine, Reggie Gibson. The 1996 film Love Jones was based loosely on Chicago's black poetry scene and featured poems by Gibson, whose rhythmystical lyricism was a main source of inspiration for director Theodore Witcher. Reggie has a bout this evening as part of Team Bellwood (a Chicago satellite) and in the individual semifinals, so we talk about his strategy until a semifinals update is posted in the windows of Fringeware.
Back at Mojo's, an impromptu reading has started as poets from the Chocolate City showcase spill out of the cafe. Reggie Gibson, Cleveland's Da Boogie Man (who is sitting out this year's competition), Kent Foreman from Team Bellwood, and others are sharing a circle of poetry like family reunited, and the call-and-response style of some poets creates an evangelistic revival atmosphere. Which reminds me: poets just can't get enough of poetry. This goes on for a few hours, through the mugginess and threatening storm clouds, until Gibson announces, "Oh shit! It's time for semis!"
Smash-mouth poetry comin' at ya!
he math error now pits Albuquerque against Manhattan against Bellwood, a bout that should prove to make poetic sparks fly with the talent lined up, and so I'm at Blondies, a skate store, where Albuquerque's Kenn Rodriguez is flexing for the match. He doesn't seem visibly worried about the rematch with Manhattan, who beat Albuquerque last year. "If you want to win the slam, you got to beat the nation," he says matter-of-factly. He mentions the corporate taint to the Manhattan team, since they were sponsored by Mouth Almighty Records while other teams had to hold fundraisers to scrape up money for nationals.
"We're a pretty poor team, so if anybody should hate them, it's us," says Rodriguez, "because we're from one of the poorest states in the nation. But you can't go at it that way. Last year, we were built up with hate, because a lot of people wanted us to beat them, but it didn't help us at all—in fact, it hurt us." He sums up by saying that Albuquerque will feel good about the bout if they perform well with integrity.
Team Bellwood's Chuck Perkins, on the other hand, is in a state of agitation. "I'm an ex-football player." he grumbles with playful, mock menace, and he looks the part with his shaved head and Fridge-Man frame." There's terminology we use as ball players, like smashmouth football. So I'm out to let that transpire to poetry. I want, like, smashmouth poetry—I take no prisoners. I don't play, and that's why I dropped out of grammar school: I didn't like recess." He busts up laughing and breaks from his act, still talking about how a poet can step up to the mic with venom and leave the stage sizzling. He's here for the pure sport of it—that, and the wine, women, song, and such that the national slam entails.
But it's time for Perkins to show us the money. The teams draw for order, and the emcee skips through the spiel repeated prior to every bout: "A perfect score of 10 would be an earth-shattering text performed perfectly, and a zero would be the worst poem you could possibly imagine performed by someone who should not quit his or her day job."
Manhattan's Beau Sia takes the mic first and works himself into a frenzy with a piece he read at the 1996 finals: "When I get the money, I'm gonna have iced monkey brain in Madagascar with Uma Thurman and Spock, and me and Tarantino are gonna buy the bones of Bruce Lee and put them in a movie called THE BONES OF BRUCE LEE ARE ALIVE...and I'm gonna be the Asian male hustler on The Real World [on] Mars, and I'm gonna do sold-out haiku poetry jams in Vegas! when I get the money, I'm gonna own MTV and sure, money can't buy you love, but love can't buy you shit!" Manhattan partisans whoop it up, urging him into more and more of a rabid recitation.
Different sides of the room ring with applause when the teams rotate and poets step up, while coaches mark time with stop watches and hold up color-coded cards to let the emcees know who's on next. Albuquerque takes the stage with a group poem: "From where I'm sitting, I haven't seen any poem that can make me feel safe at night...I haven't seen any poem that could feed, bathe, or clothe a homeless man." Syncopated voices switch off between the four team members lined up: "I haven't seen any poem that could stop police dogs from ripping chunks of flesh off a ten-year-old boy." Neck veins and pressured eyes bulge, as they comment on their situation as poets, with dangerously close judgment of their own craft: "when are we going to stop talking assertively and start acting assertively?...when are we going to stop posturing behind staticky microphones and finally start getting our pristine hands dirty?...I've never seen any poem that could stop oppression...but I am ready and waiting with an open heart and open mind."
Manhattan comes back with a team piece pairing Amanda Nazano and Beau Sia. In the performance, Nazano tries to convince Sia that he's gay, while Sia adamantly professes his heterosexual love for her—until she asks, with the microphone demonstratively used for emphasis, "would you love me if I had a dick?...If I was a man, and I had a dick, you'd touch my dick?" Sia follows through the logic and breaks down, with Amanda congratulating him on his admission.
The round stops, as the emcee announces a protest lodged by Albuquerque: possible violation of the prop rule. Someone from the audience utters, "sometimes a microphone is just a microphone." The emcee adds that Nazano's performance slot was mostly taken up by Sia, which makes for another protest.
While the protests are being discussed, Bellwood's Dan Fern takes the mic with a touching, meditative piece inspired by his work as a sixth-grade teacher, speaking to the precariousness of young minds and energy: "a room full of boys is a box full of mouse traps with a ping-pong ball set on each spring aching for release...girls circle, gathering, dancing new molecules, negotiating solar system—they are a tag team of young Venuses, I am a weakening sun." After his reading, a friend of Team Bellwood whispers to me that he should have read "The Bald Guy" a crowd-pleasing take on Fern's hairlessness. The judges score the piece, which hovers around 8.7. Fern walks out of Blondies with heavy emotion on his face, recognizing that Bellwood won't come back from this blow.
The emcee gives a protest update, mentioning that Sia's participation in the duet is legal if Nazano is the primary author of the poem. On the prop protest, he reads from rulebook: "Generally, poets are allowed to use their given environment and the accoutrements it offers—microphones, mic stands, the stage itself." Interestingly, he doesn't read the part stating that the rule's intent is to keep the focus on the words rather than objects."
The bout continues with round four and another group poem from Manhattan. "This is the great first line which sets the tone of the poem, grabs your attention," they announce while tag-teaming on lines in self-referential commentary, "And this next funny line doesn't let you down—no, no, it's funnier than that first line!...You see, the gist of the poem is we're writing a generalized poem because, because who can be specific about a topic like 'blah blah blah'?" They seem to respond to Albuquerque's impassioned plea for politics: "when suddenly the poem got political," they exclaim, while droning "POLITICS POLITICS POLITICS" repeatedly, adding "Knock-knock, who's there? Emotional manipulation, snappy one-liners...leaving no button unpushed—family: I hate my father, I love my mother, I miss my sister!" With playful mocking of other poems, they close: "This is the end line that makes you cream your pants...throw your panties on stage, and: fuck me after the show!" Howls, jeers, and semaphore of hand-gesturing incredulity burst from the crowd, but the scores are in: Manhattan with 110.3, Albuquerque with 109.3, and Bellwood with 106.8.
An exodus of poets meets a crowd waiting for the next semis bout, and as I make my way outside I notice Marc Smith surrounded by a gaggle of poets evaluating the prior match. "It's not about the writing anymore," says Smith, "it's about how many different ways can you say ‘suck my dick.’" I walk away with Dan Fern and Reggie Gibson, who console each other. Fern is visibly upset, but enthusiastic: "We did what we did with integrity" Gibson answers, "I was so glad you dropped that piece! You nailed that motherfucker!" Fern agrees. "I wouldn't have been able to forgive myself if I had read 'The Bald Guy'." Fern is talking about nailing points versus staying true to the word. This is the double-edged sword of combining poetry with performance, iambs with slams, writing with shucking & jiving. A fan comes up and says, "your writing blew away anything around you—you guys should have won," and the Bellwood boys seem consoled.
It ain't over 'til it's over
'm at the Electric Lounge, the home of Austin's local slam, for the individual competition semi-finals. The place is packed, and few chairs are available to the mostly standing audience. Organizers have brought up an interlude of mariachis for "local flavor," and I have to excuse their ignorance to the truly Tejano sounds of conjunto music because the mariachis are doing a cookin' version of "Jailhouse Rock." Chuck Perkins grabs my tape recorder so he can mock-interview some ladies, and so I head out to the parking lot where poets are mulling over the semi-finals wreckage.
I marvel at the variety of backgrounds, persuasions, identities, political viewpoints, and professions from around these states represented, as folks sit on concrete abutments and talk shop. Congratulating Keith Roach on New York's triumph in their last bout, Albuquerque's Danny Solis also seems to comment on Team Manhattan when he says, "I'm so tired of this soulless pop culture bullshit Real World MTV crap." A few minutes later, Bob Holman walks by Keith Roach, and they shake hands like old buddies. As I walk back into the lounge, Tarin Towers rushes the door, citing a "security problem."
I squeeze my way back just in time to see scorekeepers tabulating maniacally as people from the crowd jump to correct math errors. Reggie Gibson takes the stage next, as he dedicates the following poem to "James Marshal" Hendrix: "Burn it down, burn it down, burn it all the way down, Jimi, make us burn in the flame that became your sound, Jimi, grabbing ol' Legba by his neck forcing him to show you respect, hoochie man coochie man, strangle him coochie hoodoo man, wrangle him voodoo child...and the purple haaaaze ran through your brain and drained into the veins of trippers, daytrippers turned acid angels by the gift of little wings from you...and the musing brews of your sadomasochistic blues would ooze through pores and LSD doors...one more time before it's your last time, brother...TO DIE YOUNG, TO DIE HIGH, TO DIE STONED, TO DIE FREEEEEEEE." He repeats this last refrain and wails into an air-jammed guitar simulation, as the crowd jumps from their seats to affirm Gibson's ultimate number-one standing going into finals.
On another front, Russell Gonzaga shows up with worry written all over his face. It turns out that his match with the Mission District and Cleveland turned into a score-settling blowout, after an attempt at a formal protest against the Mission District failed. Deciding to read a poem titled "Goodbye Kiss to the So-Called Western Civilization" especially for that round, Gonzaga started off by saying "fuck the points—this is personal: so-called 'Mission District team,' your deceit has broken my heart." and ended the poem with "I will make you wish you were never born." The poem went way over time, which destroyed San Francisco's chances to win—though Gonzaga had learned that numerically the two teams had little chance of making it into finals anyway—and some of his own teammates cried as he read the poem, which was perceived by Mission District female teammates as a real threat of rape and physical harm.
The Mission District's Eitan Kadosh argues that the poem itself was a violation, commenting that "During the course of his meandering piece, describing how much he ‘hated the Mission Team’—he explained, in explicit detail, how he would come into our homes and tie us to our beds, while carrying out assorted acts of violence." Others, including Kelly McNally of Santa Cruz, suggest that Gonzaga didn't mean his poem as a real threat. "What I witnessed that night was not a 'threat to rape and cause physical harm'," says McNally. "What I saw was the performance of a horrifyingly well-written poem that was designed to elicit a response of emotional pain, which it did entirely too well, using graphic images of metaphoric violence."
Regardless, Gonzaga has gotten himself barred from walking into the Electric Lounge tonight, and he says that Mission District teammates have called the police. While we talk, Tarin Towers walks out, and Gonzaga tries to call her over to explain himself, but she turns around and walks back into the lounge with a hurried pace. Mission District teammates will later stay up all night worried for their safety at the slightest sounds down the hallway of their hotel.
Slammin' Super-8 style
, on the other hand, will stay up all night in a search for even more poetry. Chuck Perkins insists on checking out the Super-8 Motel, where Team New York City is reportedly chilling poolside. We head out with Da Boogie Man and Cleveland slammaster David Snodgrass, a 29-year-old industrial machinery worker with stringy hair sprouting from underneath an oily baseball cap. It's about 1:30am, and Boogie repeatedly gets calls and answers pages from Ohio on his cellular phone. "What's up?" he answers.
"I'm at the national poetry slam, dog, like I told you!"
When we arrive at the Super-8, some folks have already dipped into the pool, but they gather to start a round-robin reading. Poets riff off of each other reciting treatises from memory, and Team Montreal's Debbie Young says, "Damn! We're some poetry fiends here!" Just when I'm about to nod off in a parking lot oil puddle, another poem starts up. The reading goes on until about 5:30am.
