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An arm with a tattoo: "I was made for the library, not the classroom."

Nothing representing Latinos

Tonight is Acentos and the cluttered attic that is my brain has been toying with an idea that Rich Villar mentioned last month, a couple of weeks after their show with Louis Reyes Rivera.

When I heard they had a disappointing turnout for it – including my stupid hungover ass among the missing! – I was extremely surprised. Not even the scenesters made the short hike to the Bronx for what was, by all accounts, an amazing experience. At the following Acentos, Rich and I talked about it and some interesting ideas he was considering.

In a seemingly unrelated moment, while preparing for the Oneonta show last week, I was putting together a list of poetry resources for the audience and was dismayed to realize that I had nothing representing Latinos! Spent a while on Google looking for an equivalent to the Asian American Writer’s Workshop or Cave Canem and came up empty.

Nada!

All of this got me thinking about the significant gap that exists between the generation of poets that founded the Nuyorican Poets Café back in the ’70s and my own generation of relatively unpolished but well-intentioned newcomers, echoing the concerns Rich had raised a few weeks earlier.

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An arm with a tattoo: "I was made for the library, not the classroom."

The National Poetry Slam is Dead

Crazy busy at work and home this week but, along with managing my GSL fantasy football draft, I've been surfing around for the scoop on Nationals. (LA won by the way; Nuyorican came in second and San Jose's Mike McGee won the indies.) Between Blogger and LiveJournal, I suspect the poetry_slam list will be rather light with the good stuff, but that's probably a good thing as people are being much more honest in their journals. Seems the biggest topic is Marc Smith's hosting of the Finals which is being roundly lambasted as an embarrasment to the community. Surprise! What…

Continue ReadingThe National Poetry Slam is Dead
An arm with a tattoo: "I was made for the library, not the classroom."

Remember the Open Room?

Been sent some interesting names for the show so far, with early favorites Performance Anxiety, Breaking Form and Word of Mouth. Send more.

Haven’t heard back from Jackie Sheeler yet about the length of tomorrow’s feature so I’m getting a little antsy about my set. There’s a big difference between 20, 30 and 45-minute sets. I don’t like 20-minute sets as I never feel like I get in a good rhythm and always have to leave out a couple of my favorite poems. 30-minutes is solid, enough time to present a range of work without feeling rushed. 45-minutes can be daunting as you have to really nail your flow to keep the audience engaged but it’s also a fun challenge. The longer the set, the better feel for a poet’s style and range you get. Three-poem slam wonders generally flounder past 20 minutes as the bombast gets old and the lack of depth becomes more and more apparent.

I’ve been reading through a lot of my old stuff recently and was surprised by how long it’s been since I’ve read some of them out loud. Read Celluloid Childhood at Acentos on Tuesday and, despite the obvious rust, remembered that it was one of my favorite pieces at one point. The combination of pushing for the new in slam with allowing my own output to take a back seat for so many years has left me in the weird position of having to reconnect with almost all of my work as if it were brand new. Hopefully tomorrow is at least a 30-minute set so I can do a nice mix of the old and new. Well, newish! 😉

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An arm with a tattoo: "I was made for the library, not the classroom."

What ever happened to Surge Frost?

I met with Cristin last week for the interview for her upcoming book on slam and, after nearly three hours, we'd only gotten up to the 1999 Nationals! Hadn't thought in-depth about the early days in ages but sitting with Cristin, one thing led to another, one story uncovering another uncovering yet another, and I was both surprised at how much I remembered and, even moreso, at how integral a part of my life the whole scene had become in such a short time. The first two years in particular were some heady times, from my first slam in July…

Continue ReadingWhat ever happened to Surge Frost?
An arm with a tattoo: "I was made for the library, not the classroom."

It takes a clean break to heal right

Could it be that Spring is finally here for real? It’s beautiful outside.

Grabbed lunch from the little Caribbean trailer out front – jerk chicken, rice and peas and plantains with a mint iced tea – and sat over in Battery Park to eat. The tourists are out in full force and there was a loud rock band playing somewhere in the park. The breeze from the River was pleasant and my lunch was delicious. After eating, I read over my Anything Goes piece for tonight’s bout with Shappy. Ended up changing my approach and went for the whisper over the shout.

I don’t think a lot of people fully realize what I’m planning. Salomé was caught off-guard by the immediacy of it and took it a lot harder than I have. It’s kind of bittersweet for me but, at the same time, my sense of sadness is greatly overshadowed by my sense of hope, both for myself and for Monday nights. I’m hoping the newer people assert themselves and step up and take advantage of the opportunity. Unlike last time, there’s not going to be any transitional meetings attempting to smooth out differences. Quoting myself: “It takes a clean break to heal right.” In regards to the slam, I’ve got faith in Oscar, as long as he doesn’t burn himself out working on two-and-a-half series. I think there’s a few others that will find their niche in my absence as well. Of course, there will be others that will probably find themselves further removed from things. That’s the unfortunate side of things but the reality is, with me there or not, that’s going to happen.

I’m looking forward to getting out to other places again, hearing different voices and connecting to new scenes. Definitely be able to do every Acentos now, check out some of the other reads in the Bronx and catch some of the offbeat stuff at the Bowery here and there. This will be the first time since December 1997 that “host” isn’t attached to my name!

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An arm with a tattoo: "I was made for the library, not the classroom."

But I’m not the least bit excited

Ditched the morning sessions of the conference yesterday and wandered the streets for a couple of hours, getting some air and clearing my head. Finally checked out the Pokemon Store in Rockefeller Center. Good thing I never went in there when I was actively collecting the cards! Had lunch with Salomé at Bread from Beirut and then struggled to stay awake through the afternoon sessions.

The slam ended just before midnight on Monday and I didn’t get home til nearly 3am. I’m still feeling it today, both the exhaustion and the mixed emotions from how things turned out. It was an interesting night to say the least. Shappy got eliminated in the first round on a time penalty despite having the advantage of going last in the first round. My prediction for the second round was on point as Claudia fell victim to score depression midway through, delivering yet another awful variation on “the slam is bad” poem. Third round saw Shawn take a dive, dedicating yet another lame anti-slam poem “to the person who said in their online journal that I’d come up short this round” (that’d be me!) and going way overtime with it. Remaining six were, in order from low-to-high, Dawn, Omar, Lynne, Marty, T’ai, Roger and that’s how things stayed at the end with Roger, T’ai, Marty & Lynne making the team.

And that’s where the mixed emotions come in. They all performed wonderfully, as you’d expect from a bunch of seasoned veterans, but I’m not the least bit excited about them being on the team. Excluding T’ai, who I AM excited about and feel a little sorry for, I’ve got no interest in seeing Roger, Marty and Lynne at Nationals yet again. This is Roger’s fifth year competing, Marty’s fourth and Lynne’s third. Roger’s won the Individual Championship and coached a team to the Championship. Lynne won a team championship. Marty’s toured the country three times over. I fail to understand their need to continue competing in the slam especially in light of my very public stance that the slam should be about encouraging and developing NEW voices.

Honestly, it’s just selfish.

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Guy LeCharles Gonzalez Slam Poetry

The Revolution Will Be

NOTE: This article was originally published in POETRY IN AMERICA, Poets & Writers Magazine Special Issue, April 1999, and republished in The Spoken Word Revolution, Redux (Sourcebooks MediaFusion, 2007). It was posted to my old GeoCities site in 1999 and was recovered from the Wayback Machine on 10/29/21. Links to Amazon were replaced, everything else is as originally published. the Academics have much to fear and they will not die without a dirty fight. -Charles Bukowski Faced with the surging popularity of spoken-word and the poetry slam, The Academy of American Poets, long known for its gala reading series, was forced…

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