NEWS FLASH: Mark Your Calendars! louder than words Bowery Poetry Club Saturday, March 27 & Saturday, April 3 8pm SHARP! It's Politically Incorrect meets David Letterman. Def Poetry with an editor. Slam poetry with a brain. It's a little bit smarter, a little bit quicker, a little bit louder...than words. The dates are tentative, pending tomorrow's meeting with Bob but it looks it should be a go. It's an intimidating time slot, prime time Saturday night, and only two weeks to promote the first show so I'm really going to have to bust my ass to pull it all together.…

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Sent my BRIO submission in today, two days before the deadline. Thank you, Express Mail! It's the first time I've submitted for something like this - other than a single poem entered in a Literal Latte contest way back in 1999; I just don't have the self-discipline - and it was a real challenge to decide what to submit. 10 pages aren't very many poems when most of mine average 3 pages each. (Slam influence, anyone?) The fact that I knew I was definitely submitting Mozer, Bethea and I - a five-pager! - severely limited my other options as I…

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Dear wannabe Warren Buffets: If you're considering buying MSO stock thinking you're going to make a bundle when it swings back up, here's what I wrote to someone else that thinks the same thing. It's definitely a gamble but unless you're playing with tens of thousands of dollars, I don't think it's going to be such a big winner that it's worth throwing good money after. The potential gain on a small investment* isn't worth the potential loss. The brand is undeniably damaged and even if they pull off a Philip Morris/Altria, there's not a huge upside as Martha Stewart…

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It’s the ego talking

So I’m trying to finish this new piece [have I mentioned Acentos is tonight?] that came out of nowhere a little over a week ago and I go to open it up in Word a few minutes ago and I notice another file cryptically named “post,” last modified on 5/14/2003. Curious, I open it and find this:

My father thought holding my head under the water was the best way to teach me to hold my breath and, ultimately, to swim. To this day, I cannot swim.

This is obviously something we will never agree on, though.

Competing against you or any other “veteran” in a slam doesn’t make anyone better unless you’re suggesting that the points actually mean something and who “wins” is representative of something other than the subjective opinions of five random people. I know if Shawn or Claudia had made the team, no one would be saying they were better writers than those they beat, they’d be complaining that the judges I picked sucked.

What makes people better writers is encouragement and honest critique and the opportunity to have their voices heard and an encouraging environment to develop those voices.

I didn’t become a better writer during my year at the Nuyorican because I slammed against writers that were “better” than me, I got better because of the supportive community that existed there, encouraging me to get better, telling when something I wrote was crap. It was also a community that constantly wrote and performed new work because the “veterans” were no longer competing, they had stepped up to the next level and became mentors.

The experience of Nationals, in particular, isn’t about developing to the point where you can take out Billy Collins in a head-to-head competition. Nationals is nothing more than a step, an EARLY step, in a poet’s development process. At least it SHOULD be.

Instead, it seems to have become this ego-driven, cutthroat

It ends there, followed by the thread of emails I was responding to, all part of the internal debate about the slam that ultimately led to my officially stepping down from the louderARTS Project six days later. If I remember correctly, I’m pretty sure I knew I was done with them as I was writing that email.

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Cattell's 16 Factor Test Results Warmth |||||||||||||||||||||||| 74% Intellect |||||||||||||||||||||||||||| 82% Emotional Stability ||||||||||||||||||||| 62% Aggressiveness |||||||||||||||||||||||| 74% Liveliness ||||||||||||||||||||| 70% Dutifulness ||||||||||||||| 42% Social Assertiveness ||||||||||||||||||||| 70% Artistic Interests |||||||||||||||||||||||||||| 82% Paranoia ||||||||||||||||||||| 62% Abstractness |||||||||||||||||||||||||||| 90% Introversion ||||||||||||||| 46% Anxiety |||||||||||| 38% Openmindedness ||||||||||||||||||||| 70% Independence ||||||||||||||||||||| 70% Perfectionism ||||||||||||||| 50% Tension ||||||||| 26% Take Free 16pf based Personality Test. Interesting. And pretty close in several areas. Though with a Paranoia of 62%, you'd think Anxiety and Tension would be higher than 38% and 26%, respectively. Unless...they really are out to get me and I've simply come to…

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Pumpkin Seeds: 3/8/2004

1. I just noticed my redesign pretty much killed the "angry pumkpin" tag. Other than in the title bar, it doesn't even appear anywhere. Hmmm... 2. Watched Deep Blue Sea Saturday night while working on the web site. Twice, actually, as TNT showed it back-to-back. Silly movie but it's got the Best Death Scene Ever when Samuel Jackson gets eaten by a shark in the middle of a rousing speech. 3. Bought tickets for the March 21st show of the circus at the Garden. I haven't been to the circus in years. We almost went this weekend out in Jersey…

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