The Center Cannot Hold:
Slam, Academia & the Battle for America's Bourgeoisie
SAY YOU WANT A REVOLUTION?
It's a cliche to divide poetry into two camps, but the division exists, albeit on rather superficial terms and with a great deal of fluidity between the two worlds. On one side is the Academy of American Poets, the universities, major publishers, university presses, the offices of the Poet Laureate, the Poetry Society of America and other national organizations. On the other side you have the National Poetry Slam, the coffee house poets, street poets, rappers and everyone who exists outside the “respectable” structures of the poetry establishment. (For simplicity's sake, let's refer to these groups by the names of their pre-eminent organizations, the Slam and the Academy.) In the day-to-day course of life, these distinctions mean little or nothing. Pulitzer Prize winner Henry Taylor has competed at the National Poetry Slam Finals. Four time slam champion Patricia Smith has been published in The Paris Review.
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it's a cliche. . . |
An informal survey of about thirty poets of diverse backgrounds -- some slammers, some college professors, a few associated with neither slam nor the academy -- produced a curious, if not particularly surprising, response. When asked “is there classism in American poetry today?” most leapt immediately into the hackneyed old “academic vs. performance” debate (also known as “academic vs. slam, street or coffeehouse,” depending on your vantage point).
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. . . to divide poetry into two camps. . . |
“I believe,” wrote Worcester, MA poet Tony Brown, “much of the perennial ‘raw vs. cooked, slam vs. academic’ crap is directly traceable to classism. The voices of those who have traditionally had little access to the acceptable avenues for cultural expression, and who have thus turned to alternate forms of expression, have traditionally included many of the voices that have been locked out of other aspects of the society.” Certainly, the shake-ups on the Academy’s Board of Chancellors -- resignations over the absence of minorities, accusations of racism, etc. -- would lend credence to this idea. But others point to cracks in that viewpoint: A graduate of the UCI MFA in Poetry program points out that “In my MFA class of four, for example, none of us came from upper class backgrounds, and I think three of us would have described ourselves as from the lower middle class.”
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. . . but the division exists |
Indeed, one would be hard-pressed to look at a substantive MFA program in the United States and not see a diversity of racial and economic backgrounds. Perhaps, then, one needs to ponder whether organizations of poets function differently from individuals. Individually, conservative persons aren’t drawn to poetry on any sort of professional level. Oh, it happens -- but with such infrequency that the anomaly is glaringly obvious, whether in a university or a slam. It’s doubtful that very many poets -- most of whom define themselves as “artists” or “teachers,” two famously liberal groups -- will be casting votes this November for George W. Bush.
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“artists” or “teachers”. . . |
But institutions move differently. The Academy, with its primarily Middle-American audience, is a prime example. It serves to promote the interests of a relatively few poets. It showcases its stars -- drawn near-exclusively from a closed university circuit -- in similarly linked journals and programs. Its sponsorship of “National Poetry Month” centers on, go figure, promotion of books through co-sponsors such as Borders Books, who primarily sell work sanctioned by the closed world of universities and bottom-line-conscious major corporations. (Mind you, ordering “non-mainstream” poetry books through Borders or Borders.com is easy, but a distinction needs to be made between what they will carry and what they keep on their shelves.)
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. . . two famously liberal groups |
Classist? Not overtly, but the inevitable drive towards profit inevitably results in a Middle-America-friendly product. To be fair, most university poets could care less about bottom lines -- as long as their grants hold up -- but the universities and publishers that support them do care, coaxing the poets in nudges and gentle pushes towards work that doesn’t challenge the American Middle, but rather reinforces it. Whatever its performance poetry critics think, the predominant voice of academic poetry is not overtly complex. It is prosaic, simplistic and, most importantly, safe. Perhaps that explains why difficult mavericks within the university system are subject to nearly the same marginalization suffered by slammers & street poets. Charles Bernstein leaps to mind. One friend recently joked to me that, if you were to compile a profile of the average poet contributor to the establishment-friendly New Yorker, they’d all own houses in the country that have been in their family for generations. And they’d spend a good deal of time pondering them.
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corporate bookstores are curious places |
But corporate bookstores are curious places, and Borders in particular has a knack for noticing trends before the major publishers do: I have yet to visit a Borders in the last few weeks that didn’t have at least one copy on hand of Poetry Slam: The Competitive Art of Performance Poetry or The Outlaw Bible of American Poetry. I’m uncertain of the ultimate monetary success of either book at the moment, but I’m reasonably sure they’ve sold at least modestly well. Which is irrelevant, of course. Their presence alone is an indication that, despite the perceived lack of importance such critics as Bloom place on non-university sponsored poetry, a market for it exists. As Coast Weekly in Monterey, CA, pointed out: “At the national [Slam] finals in Chicago last year, the audience numbered about 2,000. By contrast, maybe 70 people showed up to hear celebrated national poet Galway Kinnell when he gave a reading in Carmel last year.”
Read on: I Use the Enemy. . . .
