When non-slammers go wild

This blog will not be original. The issue of Slam in the poetry world has be diagnosed to the depths of Hades well before I even knew what it was. An event occurred last night at a slam here in Columbus in which a respected poet in the community had themselves a Christian Bale type meltdown about how slam was devaluing poetry (right after they pulled themselves out of said slam mind you).

I was not there. I cannot comment to any extent of the person's behavior beyond the blogs, notes and posted items that have appeared since last night, so I won't. But outside of the obvious inclination that you 'just can't do that' and the fact that I've seen this person perform with similar behavior before, I'll say this: Many of us have wanted to do this before.

How many times have you been in a slam, you hear a poem you don't like at all, but then the scores go up and there's high 9s across the board? The first thought that comes to mind is: Fuck, its gonna be like this all night? And some nights it goes that way, so no one is misunderstanding the train of thought that leads to some one exploding at a poetry slam. However, I think the best element of slam is the community aspect of it (hey, didn't Smith create slam to give it back to the people anyway), so if you're up there lambasting peoples work, then you're going against the intent. Also, there's something to be said for seperating a person from their art/talent. You probably think of a ton of poets where you're like, 'great person, ok work' or vice versa. The same way I can say that Ty Cobb and Pete Rose were amazing baseball players, but huge assholes as people. So its cool to think a poem isn't up to snuff, but the second you proclaim to everybody else how bad the poem was, you're dealing with the individual at that point, not the poet.