Craft and consequences. (poetic license).

Quiet as it's kept, poetry is more popular than at any other time in our country's history--and more influential. Spoken word can be heard touting the "wicked" power of the Lexus 400 and the dietary wickedness of the Big Mac.

This year, poet Ras Baraka (backed by Russell Simmons and Kevin Powell, among others) made a serious run for a Newark City Council seat. Poetry's influence can also be seen in Simmons "Def Poetry Jam," which was one of the highest-rated debut shows to ever air on HBO. During The Los Angeles Times Festival of Books, Simmons remarked, "Wherever I talk to students, from grade school to college, when I ask the question, `Who writes poetry?' A room full of hands shoot up. There's a legitimate nationwide poetry movement, where young people are offering biting commentary on everything from politics to social conditions," he continued. "Def Poetry Jam is my attempt to influence hip-hop artists, who currently, for young people, are the most influential people on the planet. If the poets can influence the rappers--watch out."

Much of the excitement and concomitant influence of modern poetry can be traced to those urban bards who can recite a poem with enough flair to hold the attention of the average lay person--who used to mock poets, or slap them around in junior high. These griots have snatched poetry by the throat from its ivory tower and sat it down on the corner of Crenshaw and King. A beautiful thang.

The problem is that all the snatching has concentrated too much of the effort on the result as opposed to the process. It's a long fall from the tower to the curb--and there has been some damage.

Visit any poetry slam and it becomes readily apparent that literary merit is a distant second (maybe even third) to communication skills. The spoken word artist who has excellent performing skills can literally bring a crowd to its feet. But if you were to read that same poem in a book, in the absence of gesticulation and fierce black charisma, it would likely seem flat, repetitive, and in need of some serious editing.

Now, there are some spoken word artists whose work can stand up in the audience and on the page. Artists like Talaam Acey, Tracie Morris, Jerry Quickley, and Jeff McDaniel for example. Unfortunately, they are the exceptions rather than the rule.

Some would say that black cultural expression is inherently oral and we shouldn't be overly concerned about the written forms. My response is that even a cursory look at Egyptian culture lets you know that black people have valued writing for public consumption for thousands of years.

In the present context, it's impossible not to recognize the problematic nature of creating work for performance that suffers in the absence of the performer. White Americans run the publishing industry, which is the vehicle that most writers employ to access long-term literary careers. An enduring career is made all the more possible if critics embrace the writer's work. Critics not only accord respect, but help to create buzz that can lead directly to book sales for a writer.

If a spoken-word artist wants to be mass distributed and signs with a publisher, she is going to have to deal with critics who, along with basic narrative thrust, are trained to look for poetic craft in each individual line: use of metaphor and simile; assonance and alliteration. Surely, a poem can "work" on the page without the effective use of these fundamental literary tools. But with them, a good poem can make the transition to greatness.

The result of this state of affairs is that black poets will have a much more difficult time competing for the type of awards that bring respect to black literature. A good analogy can be found in the modern black fiction market. So many poorly constructed works are being rushed out of mainstream publishing houses that, when taken collectively, it seems like black folk can't write their way out of a bean-pie box. And we know this isn't true, but there's such an overwhelming amount of condemning evidence between the bright colored covers of so many bad black novels that its tough to put up a compelling defense. So this is a call to black poets to look to Egypt and keep the soul oral and make our modern hieroglyphs work for us for thousands of years to come.

Michael Datcher is an Los Angeles-based poet, playwright, and author of Raising Fences. His latest play SILENCE was commissioned by the Getty Museum.