Slam Poetry: A Change For American Culture

|Spend about 1 hour on this section. Think carefully about the poems before you write your answer. |

The poems “Introduction to Poetry”, “Poem”, “Poetry Should Ride the Bus”, “How Poetry comes to me”, “How I Discovered Poetry”, and “Making It in Poetry”. These poems express their author’s thoughts on poetry beautifully. Each author gives their own interpretation of what poetry is to them. However, each poem carries small differences and similarities. At the end, each poem has taught its readers a new meaning of poetry.

Oliver is a very personable and down to earth individual, which is rare to see in hip-hop artists. Oliver grew up in the college town of Columbia, Missouri. He had a very normal childhood, his parents were financially well-off musicians, he went to church on Sundays, and he spent most of his youth skateboarding and listening to punk rock and alternative music. Oliver hung with two groups in high school, “the nerds” and “the popular kids”. When he was with his “nerdier” group, they would do things such as play videogames and talk about comic books and fictional characters; when with his popular group things such as partying and going to concerts became the main activities. He describes himself as being in the middle of two worlds.

The Poetry of Tony Harrison Tony Harrison is almost certainly one of the most famous poets alive. Born in Leeds in 1937 he grew up in a working-class family. Harrison is a modern poet but chooses to use the traditional sonnet form as he considers the rigid structure and strict rhythm and rhyming rules which others find restricting, a challenge to him. He also sees it as a controlled technique of expressing his feelings. Francesco Petrach began using the sonnet at the beginning of Renaissance with his unusual rhyming pattern and stanzas of an octave and a sestet.

Every revolution has begun with a vision. The beat poetry rebellion’s just happened to be opioid-induced. Picture this: the 1950’s. With the threat of nuclear war on the horizon during the Cold War, the citizens of the United States began to detest their government. In 1952, homosexuality was officially classed as a mental disorder in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. In 1955, Allen Ginsberg first performed Howl, which would soon become the most widely controversial beat poem, including scenes of illegal drugs and illegal sex practices. What is considered obscene when the government demolishes entire cities without blinking an eye? What are the limits? The beat poetry revolution of the 1950-60s was influenced by the New Vision, which compromised the current cultural beliefs of sexuality, religion, and drug use.

Kevin Rudd states “We are so fortunate, as Australians, to have among us the oldest continuing cultures in human history. Cultures that link our nation with deepest antiquity. We have Aboriginal rock art in the Kimberley that is as ancient as the great Palaeolithic cave paintings at Altamira and Lascaux in Europe.”

Spoken word poetry, otherwise addressed as slam poetry when in competition form, is the play of words in an oral form. These settings consist of poems being recited in styles such as hip hop, jazz poetry or traditional poetry readings.

Allen Ginsberg’s poem “America” is a one-sided poem that should be viewed as an attempt to question America’s ethical and moral values during early 1950. He starts out by using sarcasm to show his disaffection with the political movements and figures of the time. Ginsberg confesses to behaviors to which do not comply with the social norms of the day. He was known to experiment with illegal drugs, “I smoke marijuana every chance I get” (Ginsberg). He engaged in sexual practices, drank in excess, and condemned America. He himself was part of the counterculture of the 1950s known as the Beats. He was considered a spiritually and sexually liberated ambassador for tolerance and enlightenment (PBS, 2015). “America” is filled with accusations about America; the author asks us to consider several rhetorical

Slam poetry is a competitive genre in which poets perform original material for an audience. Performers often utilize theatrical tactics such as expressive vocalization and body language to deliver their pieces. On the surface, it might appear that the poems that score well in competitions and resonate most with audiences have no apparent similarities; poems that differ wildly in both content and performance style can go over equally well or poorly with audiences and judges. This fact often results in the success of specific slam poems being attributed to mere luck or coincidence.

Many of Nadia’s responses to loss, destruction and change revolve around her career as a writer; the impact of loss causes her to give up writing poetry and forces her to reflect on her published work. She responded to the deaths of her father and the dancer’s childhood friend in the form of a story about their demise on her terms; she did not acknowledge the dancer’s and her father’s feelings towards her response. Nadia destroyed the prospects of her children to avoid the inevitable passing on of her trauma to her children. She attempted to prevent post memory in her future children because she could not control the passing of it to her children. She resisted change without her consent; she continued to act the same as in her days of youth

This poem contains three stanzas with seven lines per each, and the rhyme scheme is A, B, A, B, C, D, C. In this poem I attempted to mimic Maya in that I spoke of a topic that was deeply important to me, told a story, and expressed my opinions. I noticed that Maya’s writing as well as other Post Modern/Contemporary poets write about issues they deem important, or feelings, moreover, how to put feelings into words. “Slam Poetry” is often an extreme example of this, and has come into popularity in the Post Modern and Contemporary Era.

In the early 1980s, Slam Poetry caught flight in small coffee shops in Austin, Texas., New York City, New York., Chicago, Illinois., Seattle, Washington., and San Francisco, California during slots of open mic which invite an artist of any kind: poet, narrators, musicians, and comedians of all types to share their art (Power Poetry). Years later as Slam Poetry got more recognition and spread to more areas around the country. The first Poetry Slam was originated by a man named Marc Kelly Smith. Marc Kelly defines Slam Poetry as a performance incorporated with the poetry, but a less stiff form of poetry. Spoken word poetry which is more commonly known as Slam is a more fluid art than written poetry in the twenty-first century due to the

Modernist poets such as E.E. Cummings, Wallace Stevens, and T.S. Eliot changed the face of American poetry by destroying the notion that American culture is far inferior to European culture. These and other American poets accomplished the feat of defining an American poetic style in the Modern Era by means of a truly American idea. That idea is the melting pot. Just as American culture exists as a mixture of races, beliefs, and ideas, the new American style of poetry exists as a mixture of old English styles with a new concept of the international style. Modern poets experiment with language, theme, and convention to "cleanse language

Has poetry of the 21st century changed drastically? Well first off poetry in this age has become more musical than flowing piece of written art we read about today. If you take the time to break down the lyrics of a song and compare it to the poems in the 1500s we would see its more of the presentation that changed.

At its beginning, American poetry was extremely influenced by its European roots. This is evidenced by the fact that the first colonists were English, who also brought along their poetic styles and patterns. These European traits set the standard for the genesis of American poetry, which will later we further developed and adapted by Walt Whitman and Emily Dickinson, who are now considered to be the first great American poets.