Last night, as I do each year on the first Sunday in January, I paid homage to one of my favorite poets, Carl Sandburg. I was only able to recite and perform a couple of his poems because we had a special visit from two slam greats Matt Cook and Rob “Ratpack Slim” Sturma. Last year, however, the Rootabaga Band and I devoted a whole set to Sandburg’s work. Here’s what a lovely fan had to say about it:
I WAS THERE
January 7, 2008
Smith has done it again devoted almost an entire evening to himself under the guise of celebrating the anniversary of Carl Sandburg’s birth. Hah! It was all about Smith as it is most of the time with most slam poets. Look at me! Listen to me! I know what’s wrong with the world and I know what you should be doing about it. The slam icons don’t do anything but talk. You don’t find them freedom fighting in Nicaragua. You don’t even find them voting.
One very fine poet was jeered off the stage for daring to talk about the stars instead of screaming about rape or verbally avenging her ancestors who were supposedly brutalized two hundred years ago. Don’t speak about something sensitive at a slam, oh no, if you’re not shouting obscenities or flailing the obvious you’re boring and reactionary.
God help the poet who can actually write but has no aptitude for performing. Sometimes she’s tolerated but most times she’s sneered at and then booed off the stage.
And by who? Ultra-cool psuedo-writers dressed up in the fashion of their favorite pop idols. They haven’t the time to maybe learn something from the other writers reading on the stage, a stage that’s supposedly the most democratic forum of poetic expression in the world.
What bull! Slams, all of them (and I’ve been to many) are self-indulgent mass blatherings of the obvious. And this Sunday exposed Smith and his self-focused Sandburg show as the lead ego of the whole movement he says he created.
Signed,
I was there
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See like my poetry is about life….
i have a sexy one about “I didn’t go to Wood Stock”
and another spooky one that is about Life and death and set in a cemetery….
and a couple of short ones like about oatmeal and winter…and another one called a woman in Love…
I got a fistful of poetry.l..and i was a visual artist so my poetry is visual…but it is about life and death and love and living…but not like Black PAIN POETRY…jUST THE KIND A WOMAN HAS….