I've been following with interest the discussion that followed from
Deborah's post and I am still balked at her initial question of how do you
'quantify quality' in 'spoken word'. I have visions of point-scoring, as in
ski-jumping, high board diving. Or ice-skating. While, too, if I assume that
'spoken word artists' and 'performance poets' are, for the purposes of*poetry
*, the same thing, what comes to mind is that in the best the poetry is only
part of the act, it is really 'acts' we are talking about, so I don't see
how the act can be evaluated or 'quantified' for 'quality' ('7.5? No, 6.0')
without accepting that poetry is a part but not all of the material.
My own experience has been that the best spoken word artists have really
been comic acts that use poetry as a hinge. As such, the most useful way to
see them is in comparison with other acts, with poetry or not. If, though,
one insists that they be 'judged' or, better word, 'rated' by their poetry,
then surely the claim is that they are 'poetry', not 'spoken word', and must
be treated as such, so that comparisons are invited with other 'poems'.
It isn't, of course, that there is anywhere an agreed standard on this
invidious, noise-screening necessity, though there tends to be a (simmering)
consensus (kind of) about poets who have had the good manners to be dead for
a while, partly because the factions and alliances they fought among have
also gone (permanently) underground.
Where I do get difficulty is when I find performance poetry or spoken word
being simultaneously presented as a) something that cannot be judged by the
standards of 'page poetry' while being b) somehow superior to the aforesaid
and c) worthy of being given the cultural role of the latter now considered
predeceased and living dead.
best
Dave
On 21 October 2011 00:02, POETRYETC automatic digest system <
[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> There are 15 messages totaling 1202 lines in this issue.
>
> Topics of the day:
>
> 1. Landscape: Towards Mitcham Junction from the south (5)
> 2. Spoken Word (7)
> 3. Periglis from the sea wall round The Meadow, low tide (3)
>
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
>
>
--
David Joseph Bircumshaw
"The surest sign that intelligent life exists elsewhere in the universe is
that none of it has tried to contact us."
- Calvin & Hobbes
Website and A Chide's Alphabet
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