Hip Hop Away

It’s also utterly unserious. It grants no new insights into its listener’s life and times. Beauty does not become more striking while it’s being recited. Neither does one’s sense of the sacred, or even one’s sense of language. Indeed, low ambition is what dooms this popular movement, whose democratizing efforts one might otherwise welcome.

According to the anthology “The Spoken Word Revolution: Slam, Hip Hop, and the Poetry of a New Generation,” this movement seeks to reclaim the oral tradition. But with roots going only as far as 1950s beatnik poetry at best–and, really, back only as far as the experimental theater of the 1980s, say from Eric Bogosian to Laurie Anderson–it is hard to see how slam poetry might establish an aesthetic distinct from already familiar elements of the popular culture, like rap music, to which it often pays homage. One also finds paeans to the likes of Jimi Hendrix, but not to, say, the oral tradition of Elizabethan theater, when verse (with rhyme and many other formal elements these slammers despise) did enjoy public prominence. The airwaves these poets would like to occupy are already pretty much controlled by pop music, but rather than recognize a natural enemy when they see one, they bow before it.

Those easily offended by the laughable and leftish clichés of amateurish art hype will be much put off by “The Spoken Word Revolution” and its accompanying CD, starting with the word “revolution” in its title and the phrase “new generation” in its subtitle. Cant flows freely through the book, with one regular of the hip-hop poetry scene touting his own crowd for its “diversity,” which apparently means mostly black, drenched in musical references, and uninterested in anything but first-person free verse. Another essayist goes on at length, again in defense of what he surely believes is diversity of some kind, arguing there is no one right way to write a poem.

“THE SPOKEN WORD REVOLUTION” is sadly rife with such phony defiance as well as unnecessary tributes to whomever happened to be in the bar when the poems were performed. Whereas most books would treat the social life behind a school of poetry as a subject of less interest than the poetry itself, this book does just the opposite. My own estimate sets around one to five the ratio of the words of actual poetry to the words of mood-setting essays in the book.

The book’s cast of characters is sometimes its greatest source of interest. Why, one wonders, for instance, did poet laureate Billy Collins pen the book’s introduction, giving the imprimatur of high office to the low histrionics of, among others, disgraced newspaper columnist Patricia Smith? Smith appears here both as a contributor and an important character of the slam poetry scene. Telling the reader “Why Slam Causes Pain and Is a Good Thing,” contributor Bob Holman muses, Because Patricia Smith has more truth in her / little finger than entire Boston Globe front / page. Which is a cute sentiment, only it straddles a cliché and is demonstrably false.

Smith for her part uses slam poetry to imagine her own suicide, after which journalists around the world celebrate and Frustrated headline writers abandon all attempts at objectivity, write: / Disgraced Ousted Sinful Ex-columnist Just Doesn’t Get It. Smith, of course, lost her job for quoting made-up people in her columns. Her inner-demon poetry, however, only strengthens the case that, indeed, she still doesn’t get it.

But slam poetry is nothing if not open-minded about the literary possibilities within a rant. One of the better contributions to the volume, “How to Write a Political Poem” by Taylor Mali, satirizes the overheated protests typical of the milieu: Mix current events with platitudes of / empowerment. / Wrap it up in rhyme or rhyme it up rap until it / sounds true. This may appear unexceptional on the page, but as an audio track on the disc, it makes for hilarious listening.

THERE ARE A HANDFUL of other moments on the disc that stand out, among them a recording of Todd Alcott, doing a short one-man stage piece called “Television,” included to honor slam’s theatrical roots. Alcott goes off like a storm warning as he gives voice to the boob-tube’s unceasing demands on our free time. Several poems that seem limp on the page come to life on the disc, reminding one of an actor improving on some miserable script. Which is all to the good for the actor, but hardly something to celebrate if what you care about most is writing.

Little of the work begs for rereading, stuck as it is in the amateur, look-at-me phase of the writer’s development. One wonders what compelled Sherman Alexie to write a long poem about Dachau if it only forced him to confront his native heritage, which he appears to exploit often in his work: If I were Jewish, how would I mourn the dead? / I am Spokane, I wake. The “I am Spokane” formulation appears nine more times before Alexie closes his poem with another repeating line, I have nothing new to say about death.

YET THE PAGES offer up the occasional gem, as when self-proclaimed DJ Renegade does a dozens-like riff on his lover’s absence. The telephone / has put on a bathrobe, / complaining that my constant staring / makes it feel naked. More in the spirit (and style) of these part-time poets is the awkward self-consciousness of George David Miller, when he writes With Big Mac breath / Tide scented clothes / And a Wal-Mart fanny pack / We can still raise our arms / To the heavens and scream / “I have lived, I have lived”– / Carving epic lives / From ordinary moments.

While the poetry leaves much to be desired, the editing job was even worse under Mark Eleveld, who once handled press relations for slam promoter Marc Smith. There is so much hype here, the combined package is little more than a press kit with overwrought graphics, an unbreakable textbook-sized hardcover, and pictures on every page. One wishes these hosts simply cared more about the poetry.

David Skinner is an assistant managing editor at The Weekly Standard.