Poetry has gone through many changes since the days when pop culture meant reciting The Iliad or The Odyssey. With the development of the written word, poetry evolved into a highly literary art that became more widely published and dissected in academic circles, becoming ever more rarefied, until, in the internet age, it has found a new path as a means of expression in young people called spoken word. And as poetry continues to change and mutate in the future, partly due to blossoming technology and media packaging, what will it become? Will it retain some of its qualities of yesteryear? Or will it become a new animal?

In honor of National Poetry Month, City Paper gathered a representative sample of local poets to talk about the state of poetry. Bradley Paul, a professor at Towson University and Maryland Institute College of Art, and Kathleen Hellen, creative writing professor at Coppin State College and poetry editor for the Baltimore Review, represented the more traditional academic pursuit of poetics. Femi Lawal (aka the dri Fish) and his partner in rhyme David Ross (aka Native Son) represented the new jacks on the hip-hop-infused spoken-word scene. Linda Joy Burke, writer-in-residence at the Howard County Center for African-American Culture, was a performance poet before the dri Fish and Native Son were even born. Meanwhile, Christophe Casamassima, editor of Ambit: Journal of Poetry and Poetics and proprietor of Furniture_Press, found a way to reject almost any orthodoxy offered.

City Paper: How do you keep poetry alive in the days when people no longer gather around a parlor in their homes to read and you have to compete with video games, television, and the web?

 

Bradley Paul: Even though I think we like to talk about the golden age when everybody used to sit around and read poetry, I don’t think it ever really existed. It’s always been something that’s fairly marginalized one way or the other—particularly before the development of the novel, poems were more common.

I think the reason that poetry continues to live, despite not having any money behind it and being widely ignored in America for the most part, is that, unlike most kinds of electronic communication, there’s nothing passive about it at all. A movie can be going in the background, or television can be going in the background, but a poem requires your energy to make it happen, otherwise it just doesn’t happen. It requires a more stringent attention than I think people are looking for.

Kathleen Hellen: That’s very interesting that you said “marginalized,” because I think in the past it was more marginalized than it is now. It has left the academic world, and it has really moved into the street. So I think that it’s more available to all of us as a product of consumption than it ever has been in the past.

BP: Well, as far as the percentage of entertainment out there, it’s still a small [part]. If you go to any Barnes and Noble, even the one with the best poetry section, it’s one wall.

Linda Joy Burke: You’re talking about usage of poetry, though. And poetry, as Kathleen said, is being used in broadcast media, in commercials. So, I tend to agree with what [Kathleen’s] saying about it being less marginalized. But I also understand what [Bradley’s saying] about going to the bookstore. If you want to find a decent collection of poetry, where do you find that?

I think it’s like anything else—if it doesn’t matter to you, then you don’t realize that it’s there.

KH: I think poetry will always be competitive with other forums, like video games and television, because I think it’s the last place you can tell the truth. I think all the other media has been co-opted to a very large extent. I mean, even novels—people write novels so they can make a blockbuster movie. But poetry, because it pays nothing, or very little, has still managed because of that to remain pristine and relatively pure, I think. And if you’re looking for the truth, that’s where to find it.

Femi Lawal: It’s funny that you say that. I guess the arena that we’re in is a very entertainment[-oriented] arena. Where I am today, when I think about poetry, I feel like it’s turned into an art where people feel like they have to say exactly what is right, so that everybody will agree with them: If I say this, the general population will be in [agreement] with me, therefore I will shine, I will move my CDs, I will move my books. So, therefore, you stop writing for yourself and you start writing to appease the crowd.

CP: The Def Poetry Jam tour was just here this past fall, and if you talk about poetry that is pleasing the masses, I wonder if the organizers think: OK, we have to have our militant guy, and we have to balance him with this beautiful woman who only speaks about love. It’s almost like . . .

David Ross: They look for the packaging.

CP: Right, exactly.

DR: What I think it comes down to is that they still haven’t found lucrative ways to market it. Poetry’s always been here, but every so often it becomes very popular, as it is right now. But they still don’t know what to do with it. They don’t know how to package it. There are poets signed to record labels right now that are just sitting, because [the labels] don’t really know how to put them out there yet. If they can find a way to get them on a Sprite commercial . . .

KH: The very fact that poetry resists that kind of commercialization says something very powerful about poetry—that it has managed to maintain its own integrity despite this onslaught of commercialization.

LJB: There’s a certain formula that appeals to popular culture in every medium. If the formula works, and that’s the direction that you want to go in, then that’s what’s happening. But the other side of it is, What happens with form and with poetic setting?

BP: And with the author’s original intention. I mean, one specific example I think that I half laughed at, half threw up about (laughter) . . . there was a commercial a few years ago—I don’t know what company it was for, it was for an investment house. And it had different people in the streets of New York walking by, and they’re saying lines from the Robert Frost poem “A Road Less Traveled.” The thing is that poem, even though it’s an incredibly popular poem, is actually, as with most of Robert Frost’s stuff, it’s really pessimistic. When he says he took the road less traveled and that made all of the difference, the idea is that because he took the road less traveled, he’s broke. They dropped certain pessimistic lines out of the poem, ’cause you don’t want to have a pessimistic poem for an investment house. And so you look at this and you think: Well, what would Robert Frost think looking at this?

CP: What about the Baltimore audience—both those who buy published work, and those who patronize spoken-word events?

DR: I think Baltimore is still an industrial city. It’s trying to make that shift gradually, but I don’t think there’s a base for art here. I mean, there are artists here, and I think we sharpen ourselves against each other. I think that’s probably why many of the best artists come out of Baltimore, because we don’t have an audience. When we go to venues there are more artists than there are patrons.

KH: Well, this is the irony about being a poet and trying to get “out there,” is that poetry by nature is a very isolated, lonely occupation—in the writing of it and in the creating of it. So to make that leap from my computer to a stage or to a podium is difficult. And then we live in times where every moment of the day is seized by some other needy concern. I think every night of the week there’s something in Baltimore you could go to if you really wanted to. I have to choose very carefully because I don’t have all that time.

It’s the same thing with my purchases, too. I don’t have a ton of money. Poets by nature and definition are poor, usually

BP: I really don’t know much about the spoken-word scene, but as far as traditional or academic poetry, the poetry-going audience in Baltimore is low—is lame, frankly. I don’t want to compare one city to the other, or have this inferiority that Baltimore has, but you have a reading in D.C., New York, Philly, any of the East Coast cities, and you get a bigger turn out, and people who are more into it.

Christophe Casamassima: They have the university crowd, that’s why.

FL: That’s funny because I just came back from New York on Tuesday, and it’s not always the college crowd.

CC: But New York’s so big.

FL: That’s true, but for instance, we’ve thrown shows and been a part of shows [in New York] that are a weekly event. And two months later it will be a whole new crowd, but the old crowd is not there anymore. It’s like they had their feel for whatever it is—the consciousness, the “poeticness,” whatever. They had their feel for the moment, and that’s enough for this year. (general laughter)

When we hear someone say that they really enjoyed the show and they’ve become regulars, it’s because they find something there that connects to them. Somebody who just actually gave us a ride up there told us that seeing poetry is like seeing somebody being free when they perform their work. In a world where he goes to work and he comes home, goes to work, comes home, he doesn’t feel free. So he goes to a venue and sees it, it feels really good to see that.

LJB: If you’re looking at it in terms of how many numbers, I always say if there are four people and those four people come every time and they love the experience and they learn something new about themselves and poetry, then that’s what we’re here for. But if we go to a venue and there are seven people in the audience, or 12, and we set up 50 chairs . . . (laughter) If I, as an artist, am worried about the fact 43 of the chairs aren’t filled and my energy is devoted to those empty chairs, then why should I be there? That’s not what the work is about.

FL: You said something earlier about the fact that being a poet is about being broke and doing art. I think that as long as we keep on saying, “I’m a starving artist,” then we sit down and we end up just making it—just struggling through life. I’ve been doing this full time for maybe about four years. And one of the things that really prompted me is that, I went to see a dance recital in D.C., probably like 10 years ago. And these were guys that basically break dance for a living. And they’ve been doing it since the ’80s, and touring the world. So I’m thinking to myself, These guys just break dance, and they just travel the world. People play volleyball, people play video games, Tony Hawk rides a skateboard and he makes millions. So it’s like, Why can’t you get that kind of money doing what you love, too?

DR: I think we as poets perpetuate that. You know how you speak something into existence? We’ve been doing it so long.

CC: I want to make a note. Well, two things—everybody here is very pessimistic about writing and being a poet.

KH: I’m not.

LJB: I’m not.

CC: But I mean the loneliness and all this and that.

KH: But that’s good, too.

CC: It’s good, but it shouldn’t be private—it should be public. You can’t just say, “I’m a poet, I hide at my computer and then go out and read.” I started writing because I wanted to publish. And I got involved with a lot of people who were not public and who were very private about it.

What I do with these little magazines is I go around Baltimore and throw them on buses and leave them on benches, so that people can [say], “What is this?” It’s poetry in the middle of the street, you know? But the thing to do is to not be so pessimistic. Not pessimistic as in “I hate myself” or “I hate the fact I’m doing it.” It’s the pessimism in that you can’t change anything, you can’t change your attitude about it.

Does anybody do any type of self-publishing?

FL: I self-publish.

CC: So you sell this material?

FL: We sell it, right.

CC: I try to give away as much stuff as
possible.

FL: We’ve given away quite a lot. We do a lot of stuff in schools, we’ve given a lot of stuff to the youth. But when we do stuff at venues with adults, they buy CDs for 15, 20 dollars a pop.

CP: What’s the difference between poetry and spoken word? Is spoken word still poetry? Is spoken word becoming more about activism or about packaging, which we’ve talked about a bit already. Are today’s spoken-word artists trying to get a deal or become a “rock star”?

FL: Yeah, I want to be on MTV Cribs.
(laughter)

DR: Like I was saying earlier, people are still looking for ways to market it. And I think that poets feel like they have to add two or three or four more elements to it for it people to accept it or embrace it, to catch them on to people who usually wouldn’t even think of it. And I think that’s what it for us. That’s why poets do CDs or why poets add music to what they’re doing, because initially I think it would be hard to grab folks who have a preconceived notion about poetry. Like [when] we go to schools, students [are] like, “I hated poetry before y’all came.”

Something Femi always says is that 90 percent is [people] watching you. They listen to you later. It’s all about entertainment these days. And fast entertainment at that.

FL: [David and I] have this conversation every 45 days, about poetry and spoken word. And it’s funny, because I actually have poems I don’t perform because I feel like they’re “poems,” and then there’s spoken word. But then that turns into, Is poetry hip-hop?

I did Shakespeare in theater in high school [and] I couldn’t tell you what I was reading. I just memorized it, you know, and I knew how to [act] it onstage. I didn’t come into doing poetry through poetry. I actually enjoyed the lyricism of hip-hop, but I loved writing and I realized the whole idea behind hip-hop these days had nothing to do with lyrics anymore, it has to do with music—if it [weren’t] for music videos, you wouldn’t need a person in hip-hop.

CP: So then is spoken word fusion between poetry and hip-hop?

FL: Actually we call it a blend between poetry, theater, and hip-hop, what we do onstage.

CP: At this table, Bradley and Kathleen are the more academic poets. And we know that spoken word has gotten a lot of attention in mainstream society. Is that taking away from academic poetry?

BP: The most basic definition I would give is that poetry is a linguistic and metaphorical expression of experience—other than that, I wouldn’t refine it anymore. And that covers a wide range of stuff.

As far as feeling threatened or ignored or left out because of the popularity of spoken word or anything like that, um, no, not really. Though I think poetry does always have a sort of marginal presence in popular culture, I think it was Kathleen who was saying earlier that academic printed poetry is being read at a wider and wider audience. I mean, the number of MFA programs in poetry is literally in the hundreds now, and in 1985 there were like 12. The number of first-book contests, the number of poetry periodicals and stuff like that have absolutely grown. And I feel really awkward about saying anything good about big corporate chains, but frankly, the presence of Barnes and Noble and Borders, even though a lot of people see them as evil (laughter), suddenly that means that in Topeka, Kansas, you’ve got a big bookstore. It’s brought a lot of books to everywhere that’s not in the big city.

CP: And then there’s Amazon.com.

BP: Exactly. You can be in the middle of South America and order a book, and FedEx will get it to you in one day.

Frankly, when you’re talking about feelings of competition or whatever, I haven’t had any conversations [with any academics who said] that spoken word is crowding it out. I think it’s the sort of thing where it’s another kind of poetry, and it’s making poetry popular, so it’s just more publicity. Among academics the real hot controversy is, like, lyrical narrative poetry vs. what’s been called post-avant-garde poetry or the descendants of language poetry.

CC: It’s not “post-avant-garde poetry.” There’s always an avant-garde.

CP: But isn’t there a perception that traditional poetry or academic poetry is more highbrow than spoken word?

KH: I think it’s what [Femi] said [at one point]—it’s a gut feeling. I don’t do this poem because it doesn’t work on the stage. And I think that’s the reality of what we do. If you look at a poem, it’s either a poem for the page or it’s a poem for the stage.

DR: That’s really the main difference. Spoken word is really about the performance. It’s about what they’re seeing, what they’re hearing, the wordplay, your delivery, as opposed to reading a piece and enjoying it yourself. I think another difference is that the language in spoken word many times is more plain, like it’s not as cryptic.

FL: It’s all about your ability to get across what you have on paper in a way that you can connect [with the audience] in some kind of way. And that’s the only reason I say sometimes I separate some poems that I write in a fashion that, pretty much, only if you read it enough times you can unveil what it is I was trying to say, or unveil something for yourself.

KH: And on the other hand, there’s still a very strong formalist group for poetry going on right now. It’s like a smorgasbord out there. You’ve got your language poets, you’ve got your formalists. People are still writing sonnets, villanelles, they’re doing all of the formal types of poetry, and yet this (gesturing to the spoken-word poets) is going on at the same time. So I think you have more choices—[which] probably is why the audiences are smaller, because people are trying to specialize, as we have in everything else.

DR: Whatever it is, it will always be there. But there are times when it’s like an iceberg. It’s going to be that 10 percent [visible].

KH: But you will still have your faithful. Which goes back to that question that—I think that’s it. There’s so much to choose from, but we are almost always talking to ourselves.

CP: In my observation, most people who frequent slams or spoken-word nights or regular poetry readings seem to be younger. When I say younger, I mean like 40 and younger. Is poetry now an art form that is only for the young?

KH: No, because if you go to JHU, you’ll see all of the old farts there.

LJB: Right, exactly. Goucher

CP: So it just depends on where you go?

KH: And it depends on who’s reading.

LJB: Yeah, because there are two generations. I was doing performance poetry before spoken word came out. I remember back in the ’80s you either created a venue or went in search for a venue, and I’d wind up being the only poet at Cacao Lane in Ellicott City, which is a folk music venue, or the 8 x 10 [in Federal Hill]. And then, the young people came in.

But I just want to go back to the question: Is poetry revitalizing? What you’re talking about is do human beings—are they revitalizing? What you have is a cultural shift from the malaise of the ’80s into, you know, all kinds of crap was coming down in the ’90s. And the young people kind of got woke up and said, “No, we can’t deal with what’s going on and we have to have a say.” So if you go to spoken-word venues and you see more young people, it’s [because] the young people finally came into a culture where they were the seen-not-heard.

This is the culture that was able to have freedom of speech in a way that my generation hadn’t. I mean, I came up in the ’60s and ’70s. We were in the love, peace, no-care-in-the-world kind of thing. And this generation is the rage-against-the-machine generation. It’s a whole different time. And there’s a reason why there are more young people at slams and spoken word, because they can relate. And there’s a reason why the elders are going to the more traditional academic kind of readings, because they can relate to the visions that they are seeing.

FL: (speaking to Burke) I feel like within the last, say, 20 years, the issues that we’ve been facing are not as direct as, say, your age. When you were about my age, it was like, “You can’t do certain things,” and it was flat-out in your face—you can’t. Now, it’s like we feel like we’re struggling in a different way. It’s the same machine, it’s just working differently now, and everybody’s still struggling.

BP: I don’t mean to oversimplify or generalize, but I had a friend who was starting a poetry slam at a place in Mount Vernon a couple of years ago, and their readings started at 10:30 at night. I’m 33, and I went to it, and [it made me think of] a joke some comic told: “You know you’re getting old when you go to a club and you’re looking for a chair.” (laughter) A lot of poetry slams start at like 10:30 at night. And frankly, 10:30, if you’re past 35, you’re probably like, “Hey, I’m going to bed in a half-hour.”

DR: It’s like, for every generation it’s brand new. So when you [saw] us come on the scene you were like, “Yo, I remember that.” But to us, we’re like, “We want to do this, we want to do that. And this has never been done before”—and it really has.

FL: Time and time again.

DR: Time and time again.

LJB: Buy you know, I want to say something about “there’s nothing new and never been done before,” because that’s like one of the most defeating things that a poet can say. It kind of scares you off from finding what’s new, creating what’s
new . . .

There’s a web site called [BornMagazine. org] that’s an integrated arts web site, and it is the most amazing thing that I’ve ever seen. What they’ve managed to do is to use artists, to use visual artists, to take words, pages, and make them do things. To make poetry . . . to take it to the next level of the interactive experience. I think we had lost our sense of creativity as a culture, and Michael Meade, who is a storyteller and mythologist, says that we’re needing to come back to that part of us that is pure imagination. And Born is one of those places that is experimental.

CP: How has technology Changed the poetry business for you, and what changes in technology will affect poetry in the future?

LJB: I think that what it does is it gives the artist another way to look at what they’re doing.

FL: You’re accessible to all over the world, at the drop of the finger.

DR: We’ve been selling CDs all over Canada. And we don’t have a publishing company, but people from the U.K., they [e-mail], “What’s this, what’s that? And I want to get it.” I think that helps us a lot, having those types of technologies to help you make your work more accessible. It gives you potential to have a wider audience.

KH: Technology is widening the interest group. Basically, we were just small pockets of poets working within neighborhoods, communities. And now we’re poets talking in this large global community, and technology has done wonders for that. What it has done to the quality of writing, though, I don’t know.

BP: I think just in terms of the amount of stuff that’s out there, it maybe makes it harder to find stuff that you like, you know? I don’t think it like prevents people from writing good poems, there’s just a lot more stuff to wade through.

CC: If you look at writing poetry as a political act, then the fact that these people are doing it, no matter how bad it is, that they’re doing something constructive and consciously, and they’re becoming part of the sphere . . .

KH: Oh, good Lord, no. It’s like Gary Snyder says: “Like in the infant world, some can sing, and some can’t.”

CC: You know what I have to say about Gary Snyder? Fuck Gary Snyder.

DR: But for some reason, it’s not simple like that for poetry. Generally, we can pick out a good comedian and a bad comedian. Or someone who can sing or someone who can’t sing. But when people hear poetry or read poetry, they’re like, “I don’t know.” Like, are you supposed to be using punctuation or not? Are you supposed to do this? Well how is your line breakage supposed to look?

CC: What do you think for you?

DR: To me I just do what I do. But there are a lot of poems that I’ve hated that I’ve heard.

CC: I mean, fuck other poems. You don’t have to read them.

FL: And that’s what makes art, art. Art turns into . . . it’s all an opinion. Art is simply an opinion.

CP: Linda Joy, do you believe that the poet’s persona is part of what makes the poet?

LJB: I used to. And I don’t anymore.

CP: Really? What changed?

LJB: Age and wisdom. I think that it really contributes, certainly. There are poets, like a poet named, you know, Adrienne Rich, whose persona is not the sparkling persona, but I love her work on paper. And I’ve been reading her for years. Poets that I like that are really human beings, like Lucille Clifton, she’s just like your aunt, Ethelbert Miller is like your brother. There is a kind of quality that I’m drawn to that I think people are drawn to. I think it’s about the work, and the persona is . . . the audience is going to make you who they want you to be anyhow.

KH: Well, this goes back to the Robert Frost thing [Paul] said. Because Robert Frost, who was our U.S. poet laureate, the first, it seems to me the persona that he had to project in order to be poet laureate was this happy old grandfather image. And you’re right, he’s so dark. And the same thing happened with Billy Collins. [After] 9-11, when he was named poet laureate, I was disappointed, because to me his poetry reads somewhat superficially, and at that moment we needed a poet with a great voice to speak to the issues, and he wasn’t there. So why did Billy Collins go up and all of the people who actually could address that issue fade into the wilderness?

DR: Even with Maya Angelou—her presence is like, you know, but . . .

KH: But Lucille Clifton’s better. (laughter)

DR: Exactly. I didn’t want to say it out loud.

FL: But like David said earlier, it turns into who’s backing you, and how long are you willing to dedicate the same percent of grind. Sometimes we find ourselves working really hard, say, for a year. Some people, whether they’re talented or not, they keep up that same level of grind.

DR: Like we met some guys selling CDs wrapped in toilet tissue . . .

FL: For $5.

DR: And people [were] buying them. But you have to go that hard. We put together our publishing and try to make it look nice, and if people ask for it, you know, we’ll sell it. But there are people out there who really don’t care what their packaging looks like. They’re telling you, “Yeah, you want this, even if it’s wrapped in toilet paper.”

KH: But look at Walt Whitman. He self-published, he put out all of his little pamphlets. He did what you’re calling “the grind.” And thank God he did, because if he didn’t do it, we would never have one of the greatest poems in American literature.

DR: But so many of the geniuses don’t. You lose your encouragement after a while.

BP: I think about what you were saying about why Billy Collins is such an incredibly popular poet, and my theory on it is because he’s very NPR-friendly. He’s the kind of poet that he’s in that range of writing that’s going to appeal to a wide variety of poetry [fans]. But the thing is, really great art, whether it’s poetry or painting or whatever, isn’t going to actually usually have a wide appeal, even among like serious artists. It’s usually going to be like a certain number of people feel really strongly about it, positively, and [others are] going to feel strongly against it. The thing that appeals to like middle level to a wide variety of people is not going to be that good. By definition it’s going to be mediocre.

I mean, if you want to really know how to make money selling books of poetry, it is to figure out the kind of poem Oprah Winfrey likes to read and have her put it on Oprah’s book club, and you’ll sell millions of books. I don’t think it’s going to be a particularly good kind of poem, but you’ll absolutely sell millions of books.

CP: Which kind of brings me to our next question. What is the clearest way to financial success as a poet?

All: (laughing) Get another job.

LJB: Get several other jobs, sell used cars . . .

CC: Sell crack . . .

BP: In a way, it’s a question that begets a lot of jokes, because I don’t know a single person who got into poetry thinking about making money.

CC: It’s a lifestyle, it’s not a career.

LJB: There are poets who have garnered significant endowments and fellowships, going back to Adrienne Rich, who won a $500,000 fellowship—what was that? Ten years ago or so? And she’s what, near 80 now? But every once in a while, I’ll read that through the Academy of American Poets has voted certain people to get specific endowments. And, you know, they are pennies in the scheme of things, in the corporate world, but I guess that’s my light at the end of the tunnel—that when I’m 65 I will have written the great first book of poetry that somebody will throw money at me for.

BP: I mean, you look at one of the biggest poetry prizes, which is that Wallace whatever.

LJB: Lila Wallace-[Reader’s Digest Awards].

BP: And it’s however much it is—like $100,000 or something like that—that’s a ton of money for a poet to make. An absolute ton of money. And it’s a starting salary for a lawyer. And if you’re a first-time screenwriter, you usually sell for above that.

What, to us, is like a phenomenal amount of success, in other professions that require a great deal of expertise, it’s sometimes like beginning level. If you get a job as a full-time professor making 40 grand a year, that’s good for a poet. That’s great for a poet.

CP: It’s amazing that being a poet, a teacher, a policeman—those are the jobs that we assign low salaries to.

KH: But here’s the other take. If you’re in it for the money, I would say, you’re not doing it for the love of the craft.

DR: But see, I have to disagree with that. I think being a poet can be just as much of a career as being a carpenter. You are who you are. And if you’re a carpenter, nobody says, “Oh, you love cutting wood, so why do you want to get paid for it?” I’m a poet—not even a poet, I’m a writer. And that’s what I do. Everybody can’t write. When we allow ourselves, and then in turn allow other people, to accept, yes, this can be a career, like this is who you are, you know?

KH: Well, but, OK, as soon as you bring money into it, then poetry ceases to be the last place you can tell the truth. In a way I’m kind of glad that poets don’t get paid huge amounts of money. Look at all of the new artists that come out in the music industry. They’re really brand new. They’re wonderful. Then they get brought into the system. And then what happens to that talent when they’re brought into the system? “How can I market my next piece? Oh, I’ve got to come out with an album in another hour or so.” Or else, you know. And then what happens to you? What happens to the art?

DR: I mean, we’re all being pimped, no matter what you do in this life. Someone’s paying you.

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