Thankfully none of my slam visits (so far) have been marred by excessive screaming. As I’ve preached in the past to many slammers, young and old, volume is an element of performance that should be used judiciously and with restraint.

Screaming is not the equivalent of passion. Many audiences stop hearing and believing the words when the poet is screaming at levels inappropriate to the text. Why judges don’t chastise the screamers with minus tens and twenties is beyond me. Maybe they’re afraid that the screaming poets might follow them home and scream outside their windows all night.

Staged teardrops are another performance question mark. I’m not referring to those transcendent theatrical moments when actors or performers become so deeply committed to their roles or poems that they unwilling transport themselves back to a vulnerable space and time and present to their audiences an authentic dramatic experience and shared catharsis.

No the tears I’m questioning are the conjured up crocodile tears calculated to gain sympathy from judges and audiences with a maudlin mediocre text. How many convulses sobs are needed to score a perfect 10? Is the breakdown timed precisely to fall within the three minute limit? Are coaches and captains managing these emotional strategies to gain ultimate victory? Be sure to cry a little, you’ll gain an extra point or two.

When I teach performance I challenge students to become vulnerable by exploring and exposing remembrances and emotions they may have kept buried for years, decades, even a lifetime. Sometimes they are moved to tears when they do so. Tears they fight back trying to regain composure. Such emotional and psychological exploration has its basis in the Stanislavski and Mesmer methods, technique that leads to more authentic portrayals of a character or text.

I’ve been told that at some slam competitions large numbers of participants are sobbing out their words. That seems odd to me. In twenty-five years of hosting the show at the Green Mill I can think of no more than a couple dozen occasions (hardly ever more than one in a night) when poets have broke down into tears.

One night a woman well past her forties made all of us cry with a tale of her recently deceased son. Her mascara ran dark down her puffed cheeks. Her chest heaved. The next week her mascara ran again as she read a poem about her dying husband. On week three her uncle died, and after that I dubbed her the Grand Dame of Doom.

Turns out none of these personal tragedies were true. It wasn’t her son who died; it was a friend of a friend’s son. Her husband wasn’t on his deathbed, a neighbor’s was. And the uncle was a distant one she hadn’t seen since childhood.

Fakers in all categories of tragically confessional verbiage (often passed off as poetry) insult and diminish the tragedies of those who have truly suffered great misery and sorrow. I think that when we sense a con job we should muster up the courage to question it. And if there’s a bandwagon of sobbing slammers on stage dominating a night, I think maybe … maybe it might be a bandwagon filled with bullshit.

As some folks know, I’ve been taking time off from most slam things. (I’m even taking Sundays off now and then.) For the next couple weeks I’ll be hiding out in upstate Michigan and I hope to pay a visit to Terry Wooten’s Stone Circle reading near Traverse Bay. Terry has keeping the oral tradition (storytelling and poetry) alive for decades. I can’t wait to sit around the Stone Circle fire and listen.

This Sunday, while I’m gone, the Speak’Easy Ensemble will take complete command of the Green Mill show. Knowing them it will be anything goes fly by the seat of their pantaloons night, but a good anything goes.

Other news is that Chicago Slam Works, the new non-profit umbrella for all things slam in Chicago, is in full gear. Bold new adventures ahead.

Okay, I’m off to breakfast (isn’t that what bogs and twitters are for — telling strangers and friends when you’re eating breakfast) and then up to Michigan.

bye bye

A shout out to all those Brave New Voices (and a bunch of old voices too) at Chicago’s Art Institute Ballroom yesterday. What a fantastic gathering of hope! It was an honor to be there with you. Please forgive me if I don’t hit you back with a personal reply on Facebook, My Space, and all those other e-things I know little about. My son and his friends pick up the slack for me when I let them pile up. Old man Marc likes it face to face, hug to hug, word to ear and back like it was yesterday. Good luck to you all throughout the week — be good to each other.

Chicago Slam Works, Chi-town’s newly formed non-project made its presence known at the Printers Row Book Fair managing the Poetry Stage. Now it’s launching its second project: “Fuel Your Inner Poet” a series workshop sessions presented at the Hemingway Museum in Oak Park, Illinois.

 There will be eight sessions taught by various (TBA) poet/instructors from around Chicago. I’ll be leading the performance exercises — a live version of Take the Mic. The grand finale will be a performance by workshop participants on the front porch of the Hemingway House in Oak Park.

For more details or to register, visit www.chicagoslamworks.com.

*CPDU credits available for teachers.

As many of you know I am a strong advocate of Carl Sandburg’s poetry. Over the years I’ve added many of his poems to my performance repertoire and have also enlisted musicians Michael Kent Smith, Steven Hashimoto, Carter Luke, Al Ehrich, and Scott Hirstenstein to help me create a musical adaptation of Sandburg’s work entitled “Sandburg to Smith” which debuted at his historical birthplace in Galesburg, Illinois a few years go.

At that debut I met Paul Bonesteel, a man passionately dedicated to refocusing public attention to the People’s Poet. He’s a filmmaker who is creating one hell of a documentary about the old Swede. If you’re a Sandburg fan you’ll want to visit these sites:

http://bonesteelfilms.com/carl.html

http://bonesteelfilms.blogspot.com/

Getting a lot of ink these days. It’s wild. Sometimes the shortest interviews produce the best results. Lauren Viera’s article in Tribune today is a gem. (check it out at http://www.chicagotribune.com/features/lifestyle/chi-0604-poetry-slamjun04,0,7524276.story ) Laura the bartender’s perspective takes center stage. And what does she mean when she says, “He’s really good at handling a crowd and defusing the situation. When things got a little out of hand, those were my favorite times.” She means Marc losing control and yelling at people in the crowd who are too absorbed in themselves and their loud-ass conversation (and their cocktails) to realize that someone’s one stage baring a battered soul via performance poetry.

Of course, there are also those times when Marc starts screaming at innocent bystanders and makes an ass of himself. Those moments are especially fun to witness.

Another front page funny picture of Marc at the Green Mill and another quote of Amiri Baraka calling the slam a “carnival … commercial showiness, emphasizing the most backward elements” of poetry. Is he speaking of Slam or Jam? Or are his opinions just old guy wham?

Here’s a link to the article if you want to check it out:

http://bit.ly/ysAuH

Be sure to listen to the audio/slide show. It’ll give you a deeper sense of what goes on at the Green Mill every Sunday night.

Next week I’m traveling to a stellar event, the 17th Annual Southern Fried Poetry Slam festival, the longest running regional slam in the world. It was started by famous slam elder ALLEN WOLF (“the points are not the point — the point is poetry”) after returning from one of my first stabs at a regional slam — a marathon competition I help organize and host in South Bend, Indiana. Allen knew there had to be a better way stage a regional slam and did.

The tradition carries on and has arrives in The Bull City — Durham, North Carolina, June 4 -6, 2009. Be there or be square.

Visit www.southernfried2009.org

Jon Stewart asked “who cares” whether it’s a Poetry Jam or a Poetry Slam?

Answer: Only thousands of nobodies who have dedicated their lives to an outsider art movement that’s under threat of being hijacked by self-serving individuals and commercial entities bent on distorting the spirit of what began (and struggles to survive) as a full-spectrum community of everyday word lovers who have managed against all odds to bring poetry (and the performance of it) back into public amour.

I agree with you John, Jams are not Slams, especially if Jams are about posturing at the White House and getting face time on TV. That’s why this old man turned down his invitation to swill with the D.C. poetry politicos.

I guess when the infamous C. J. Laity tried to brand me as a poetry “insider” he might of been right, despite my refusal to stoop to poetry “establishment” status.

Many years after helping start the “Poetry Tent” at Printers Row Book Fair I’ve been invited back. (Actually, I was invited last year but had a prior commitment — performing at a festival in France.)

Last time I performed at the Printers Row Book Fair I was insulted by a grumpy “establishment poet” from the Poetry Center. He commanded me off the stage so that “real poetry” could be heard. From him, of course. I left the stage (without punching the old guy in the nose– thank god) and so did the audience. The poem I was reciting when he called for “real poetry” was e. e. cummings’s “My Father Moved though Dooms of Love”. Hmmm, the Poetry Center must have some pretty high standards.

I don’t expect any incidents this year, but you never know. Our new Chicago non-profit, Chicago Slam Works, formed to bring Chicago the respect and focus it deserves as the mecca of modern day performance poetry will be helping run the show. Don’t know what my forty minutes will entail (maybe pulling some virgin virgins on the stage to take a stab at real poetry) but I’ll try to keep it entertaining.

Join me at the 25th annual Chicago Tribune Printers Lit Fest, which takes place on Saturday, June 6 and Sunday, June 7, 2009. The Lit Fest is a free, two-day literary extravaganza featuring more than 200 authors, 100 literary programs, and 160 booksellers.

Saturday, 6/6/2009, 3:15 p.m.

Program: Marc Kelly Smith promoting his new books

Take the Mic and Stage a Slam

Location: Arts & Poetry Stage

Saturday, 6/6/2009, 5 p.m.

Program: The Chicago Poetry Foundation presents the Chicago Poetry Audio Tour Premiere

Marc reading a couple of Sandburg poems in this marathon of Chicago poems

Location: Arts & Poetry Stage

For more information, head to the Chicago Tribune’s Printers Row Lit Fest page.