ON THE WINDOW AT THE ENTRANCE to the Bowery there is a quote from Chilean poet, Pablo Neruda:
Mi corazon, es tarde y sin orillas,
el dia, como un pobre mantel puesto a secar,
oscila rodeado de seres y extension,
de cada ser viviente hay algo en la atmosfera.
There was indeed something in the air as six poets lined up to compete in the semi-final slam at the Bowery Poetry Club in lower Manhattan. With its tall brick walls and high ceiling, the club packed in a crowd that grew as the night went on. The winning poet was set to compete in the finals in May and earn a spot on the national slam team to represent one of the three New York teams. Five random audience members were chosen and given placards to score the poems and determine who would advance.
After a brief open mic session, the evening began with a lively montage of lines and remarks delivered by host, Shappy, over a theatrical musical background. “The host is not what he seems,” whispered Shappy menacingly, prompting the crowd to whistles and laughter. Finally, after his lengthy intro, he asked the audience if he could begin a poem, to which one person in the front row whispered, “Man, I thought that was the poem.”
Patricia Smith, four-time national slam champion, took the stage as the feature of the night. In he r introduction, organizer Taylor Mali called her the “grandmother” of slam poetry, but I may amend that to “godmother” as her work orbits beyond the sphere of neat kin ties. She operates more like a loose and wily madrina whose fierce words and passionate voice continue to disrupt the logic of family and assumptions.
“Here, I always feel comfortable reading what’s on my mind,” said Smith as she began. The audience sat in anticipation to hear what exactly was on her mind. After a few lines it was evident: power and destruction in unflinching clarity. Her poems came largely from her new work, which focuses on the devastation of Hurricane Katrina and the aftermath on the communities left in its wake. Repeatedly, Smith used “she” and “her” to refer to the storm.
How dare the waters belittle her thirst / treat her as just another small disturbance / try to feed her from the bottom of its hand / eventually she will require praise / unbridled winds to define her body / a crime behind her teeth / every woman begins as weather
Throughout the reading, her intimate personification of the hurricane was matched with a sharp critique of political neglect, even weaving in the text of an email exchange with then-FEMA head, Michael Brown. And madrina Patricia, like a disturbingly lucid relative, flung the walls off the sides of the house, and the roof too. At one point, her voice dropped into a groove of tight syncopation and continued until people began to snap and yell from the back of the room.
Each of the six poets that followed in the competition brought their own flavor and cunning to the mic.
Darian (whose second round poem would garner high points, propelling him to claim the title for the night) began with a fitting tribute to the act of writing itself: “Write because you have to / write till truth smacks you in the face / and puts facts into place.”
Soulful Jones, opened his piece with a smooth acapella voice, singing, “Got the soul of a panther / we got the heart of a lion / got the eye of a tiger / We got that soul of a panther.”
Kased followed with a piece that looked back to childhood, ranging across the stage as he spoke, before settling to a last line question: “We did it for you, mama / we did it proper / mama loved us / but what about papa?”
Chad Anderson broke up the evening in theme and etiquette when he leapt off the stage and paced between the packed aisles of the audience, shouting without a mic as he walked. At one point, he paused skillfully in mid-sentence to chide an audience member whose cell phone had gone off.
“I’m not new to this / I’m true to this / my velvet spirit has been in the sun a long time,” began the next poet, Spirit, as she struck a sweet balance of sensitivity and strength. “We dance to sound currents that curve our lower backs to shape fists,” she recited.
The last poet of the competition, Rainmaker, ground his eyes closed and kept them shut as he faced the mic and unleashed a torrent of lines:
I dreamed of traveling once / to where poetry will finally be put to rest / so I could pay my respects / but knew that would never be possible
When and how poetry comes to rest, or refuses to rest, or rests in refusing, ran throughout the night. Although the slam aspect of the reading played its role by bringing excitement from the audience and sharpened wit from the poets (and the club did an excellent job with spinning stadium lights and perfectly-cued music cuts to increase the tension) it’s fitting that a few of the more memorable lines of the evening came from a poet who took the stage, not as a competitor, but simply as a poet who was there to recite between rounds as the judges tallied the score. Nicole Homer read from a page she held in her hand:
See my lungs are small
but I’m going to fill them with huge words
like ALL like US like FUTURE like WE
see I refuse to be just one more voice
lost in the cacophony of right and wrong
so please don’t think of this as just one more poem
this is the introduction to our song
As I left the club, I caught the last phrase of the Neruda poem on the glass of the window:
conquered no doubt by twilight
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Latin Beat Magazine