Give Me Poems and Give Me Death: On the End of Slam(?)

doi:10.1017/9781108699518.013

11 - Give Me Poems and Give Me Death: On the End of Slam(?)

Published online by Cambridge University Press: 25 February 2021

Javon Johnson and

Anthony Blacksher

Edited by

Timothy Yu

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Timothy Yu: Affiliation:
University of Wisconsin

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Summary

This chapter traces the movement of slam and spoken-word poetry from a subjugated and lesser art form to an established and valid one in the early twenty-first century, while suggesting that these institutionalizing forces and desires can be caught up in anti-Blackness. The emergence of HBO’s Russell Simmons presents Def Poetry Jam in 2002 offered a highly produced and stylized televisual marker of contemporary spoken word and slam success, centering the young Black poetic voice in way that popularized a particular defiant Black aesthetic and had the general cultural consciousness assuming that slam was indeed a Black thing. The emergence of a new “quiet style” in locations such as the Minneapolis/St. Paul literary scene and the multimedia company Button Poetry can be seen, in contrast, as advancing the ideal of the disembodied performer who, through the rejection of theatrics, focuses on the “real” art of poetry.

Keywords

poetry slam spoken word contemporary race black African American

Type: Chapter
Information: The Cambridge Companion to Twenty-First-Century American Poetry , pp. 169 - 179

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108699518.013 [Opens in a new window]

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Print publication year: 2021

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References

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