Sibling rivalries: literary poetry versus spoken word: why does the divide exist and what does it mean?

Today's black poets find themselves in an interesting (though not necessarily unique) place in the history of contemporary American letters. They are at the heart of what many critics have termed a "new renaissance" in African American literature. Black poets are in vogue--from graduate degree programs in creative writing to the Broadway stage, from the pages of The New Yorker to CDs and TVs. Still, not everyone, especially black poets them; on aesthetic approaches.

Again, this is nothing new. Some critics used to call the work of Langston Hughes "lowbrow" and "folksy." The term "Angry Black Poet" was created to define the Black Arts Movement poets set their verses apart as anything but art. Many of these critics are and were African American.

However, who back in 1947 would have envisioned experiencing a Jamaican-Chinese, lesbian wordsmith fire spitting love songs from a Broadway stage, joined by a multicultural crew of word slingers in a United Nations summit of syllables? But that's certainly one way to describe Russell Simmons's 20112 Tony Award-winning Def Poetry Jam on Broadway. (See page 22, POETIC LICENSE, by Stacyann Chin.) What open-minded professor in 1965 would have envisioned an African American Poet Laureate of the United States of America like Rita Dove, who served from 1993 to 1995?

So some things have changed. Today's poets are heirs to the whole of the African American literary tradition, which includes both Phillis Wheatley and Chuck D, (who counts Gil Scott-Heron and the Last Poets among his influences). What hasn't changed is the debate regarding who possesses the artistic high ground: literary, poets or spoken-word/performance poets. Or why the distinction exists at all.

On a personal note, I have often been called a "performance poet," though I loathe the term. I spent much of my early career working with musicians and presenting traditional and contemporary poetry as theater for school-aged children. (KRS-One coined this "edutainment.") I also spent much of my early life studying the works of Gwendolyn Brooks, Lucille Clifton, Langston Hughes and the poets of the Black Arts Movement. The term "performance poet," however, has never appeared on my biography, I believe poetry must work as well on the page as it does the stage. Now I have earned an MFA and produced three published books of poetry, but I was sill tagged a performance poet tag at a recent reading. So who is responsible for that label? Is there a way out from under it, particularly given that it's a title I've never claimed?

Dr. Melba Joyce Boyd, poet, professor and author of Wrestling With the Muse: Dudley Randall and Broadside Press (Columbia University Press, February 2004), understands the conundrum. "The irony is that poets are supposed to be people that defy boundaries with language; however, once any poet, whether academic or otherwise, aspires toe popularity or when a poet reaches recognition, critics classify and analyze them in an attempt to dissect creativity. It's their job. But me, I write what I want to write, in my variegated voices, for whoever wants to listen to me, aloud or in print."

History tells us how the publishing industry shifted in response to the independent punishing success of Nikki Giovanni, Haki R. Madhubuti, Amiri Baraka, Sonia Sanchez and others during the Black Arts Movement period. Kalamuya Salaam, noted Black Arts Movement poet/scholar and author of the "The Magic of Juju: An Appreciation of the Black Arts Movement (Third World Press), suggests a double standard is employed when weighing literary work from the period.

"It is not unusual for critics to attempt to dismiss a complete body of work because of a personal flaw or failure on the part of a particular artist or on the basis of the content of a few specific poems, but this is not sound criticism ... If the Fascism of Ezra Pound or the anti-Semitism of T.S. Eliot have not kept them from the pantheon of great poets, wily should 'Black Power; 'anti-white,' or 'violent rhetoric' be cause to universally dismiss Black Arts Movement poets in general and Giovanni, Madhubuti, Baraka and Sanchez, specifically," Salaam writes. "... the importance and innovation of Black Arts Movement music-based literary forms are the key element of Black Arts which has been ignored and sometimes even denied, as though poetry could only be 'literary' in the Eurocentric sense of literary tradition."

The phrase "music-based literary form" helps define what today is called spoken word/performance poetry. If Nikki Giovanni or white Beat poet Allen Ginsberg were young poets right now, would the academy or the publishing industry embrace their work?

"Neither Dante, or Chaucer, or Shakespeare, or Walt Whitman was considered 'literature' by the critics of his day," says DJ Renegade, a poet and educator in Washington, D.C. "And there are many contemporary spoken-word artists who also publish, like Patricia Smith, Jeffrey McDaniel and Regie Gibson. It wasn't that long ago when Ginsberg was a total outlaw. Now he's taught in all the universities.

"The best work lasts, no mailer who writes it, or what it's called. And if you go back and read some literary criticism from, say, eighty years ago, it will be very evident that most critics don't have a clue. This has always been true and always will be. It took over a hundred years before Shakespeare's plays were considered 'literature; and if they missed Shakespeare, they can miss anybody."

Many spoken-word artists believe their power is in the immediacy of their message. Many literary poets tout aesthetic resonance. Why does this chasm exist, and do the poets themselves perpetuate this divide? Is it healthy for poetry?

How has the commercial success of Def Poetry Jam on Broadway and its sister television series on HBO affected today's black poetry? BIBR queried a number of poets across the country and from various sides of the issue. Their collective conversation speaks volumes.

Naomi Long Madgett, poet and founder of Lotus Press, Detroit:

If by "spoken word" you mean performance poetry, there is often a chasm between that and academic poetry, or I prefer to call it "literary poetry:' They are really two different genres, and I would not judge one to be any better than the other; they're just different. Performance poetry is entertainment that does not require much thought to be appreciated or much time for subtle meanings. Spoken poetry was the earliest literature before most people could read and before the invention of the printing press. It is extremely popular in a way that literary, poetry will probably never be. Much depends on its delivery, and seldom does it stand on its own on the printed page.

Andrea Grant, Copious magazine, Vancouver, Canada:

Spoken word brings poetry to life and makes it more accessible to people in our modern times. It's a continuation of the oral traditions and storytelling of our ancestors. However, the written and the oral are two halves of a whole. It's just easier these days to convince someone to listen to a CD than to read a poem, because reading poetry has a scholastic stigma of being boring.

Harryette Mullen, poet and professor at the University of California at Los Angeles:

Who is an academic poet? An officer, staff worker or member of the Academy of American Poets, the Poetry Society of America or a similar literary organization? A poet whose work has been awarded a prize or is in some way recognized by such an organization? A poet who has attended college? A poet who has attended an Ivy League college? A poet with a degree in creative writing or literature? A poet who has participated in a workshop sponsored by an educational institution? A poet who teaches or has taught college-level creative writing or literature courses? A poet whose creative and/or critical writing is published by a university press or in university-sponsored periodicals? A poet whose work is studied in college courses or is the subject of reviews, articles and books by critics and scholars in academic journals? A poet whose work requires a dictionary to read it? A poet who thinks "spoken-word" poetry is boring?

Stephanie Pruitt, Spoken Vizions magazine Poet of the Year, Nashville, Tennessee:

Often stage poetry gives rise to immediate reactions that pull people in and garner an interest in poetry from those who never "got" it before. Page poetry offers the permanence and space for deeper reflection and work.

In terms of cultural importance, I am concerned with the "anything goes" attitude in performance poetry. We lack the quality controls and internal definitions of the art form needed to sustain growth and integrity. I am saddened by the number of "poets" who do not read or recognize the work of our predecessors. On the other end of the spectrum is literary-quality print poetry that seems to suffer from a social disconnect. General society does not embrace the work of our wordsmiths. Unlike during the Harlem Renaissance and the Black Arts Movement, page poetry has become a dwindling niche market reserved for academics and the avant-garde.

James Richardson, poet and instructor at Morehouse College:

I guess I would consider academic poetry as poetry that consciously caters to an audience that reads poetry published in academic presses, perhaps poetry that is often written by "degreed" artists. I guess in neoclassical terms, academic poetry is "cultivated;' its poets are both consciously trained and conscious of their training to craft this thing called beauty, truth, light, art.

Spoken word, even like written literatures whose origins are oral, relies on compelling narrative and rhythm to establish some type of "simpatico" with the audience. Aural emphases are probably more important; indeed, Amiri Baraka's question/challenge, one of the Black Arts Movement's defining criterion, perhaps holds a particular sway for our modern-day Djelis: "How you sound?"

In spoken-word poetry, what a poet sounds like helps the audience to understand how s/he crafts what s/he means. I guess spoken-word poetry signifies on Pope's dictum that "the sound must be an echo to the sense" with "the sound oftentimes provides the sense."

Dr. Melba Joyce Boyd, poet and professor, Detroit:

Academic poetry develops within the environs of the university. It is, more often than not, verse that is crafted to conform to the prevailing styles and traditions espoused in the academy. There are exceptions, usually in urban universities, where students are not writing in isolation. For the most pan, academic poetry serves conventional expectations of poetry, and it aspires for literary prizes and recognition. It rarely appeals or reaches a mass audience.

Tonja Withers, a lover of the art form, St. Louis, Missouri:

"Spoken-word artists" invite you into their world through their poetry, whether it's joyful, comical or painful, and as an audience member, you can feel their strength or vulnerability, depending on how the artists express their poems. If a page poet goes on stage and reads a poem, (depending on how the poet reads the poem) as an audience member, sometimes it feels like I'm in a classroom and the teacher is reading from a textbook!

T'ai Freedom Ford, slam poet, New York City:

Well, it's kind of like differentiating between hip-hop and rap. Supposedly, one is more genuine, authentic or original. Purists believe that poetry is about the craft. Beyond that, poetry looks beautiful on the page: the metaphors blaze, similes smile--it is a composition in verse. Spoken word is, I guess, the bastard child of poetry and centuries of griot tradition, fusing creative wordplay with shiny performance. Purists believe that the emphasis is placed on the "spoken" rather than the "word:' What 1, and many of the "slam" poets on the scene, try to do is merge content with craft and presentation.

DJ Renegade:

There is no difference. 1 love to perform the poems of older published poets ant they always go over very well, even with crowds that consist of people who don't read much poetry. There used to be a guy who traveled around the country singing the poems of Emily Dickinson to "The Yellow Rose of Texas." He was received well every time I saw him perform. Even obscure poems can do well if they rhyme or have a consistent rhythm and liberally employ sound devices (like alliteration) well. An example of this is T.S. Eliot's "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock." It performs very well.

Jonathan Brown, performance poet, Charleston, South Carolina:

There is a distinction between page poetry and stage poetry cultures. The main one is how you get paid. Spoken word artists travel more, gig more, self-publish, create CDs and take any gig they can get, even if it means sleeping in their car. Page poets hustle in their own right. Page poets enter contests, get rejection letters, don't self-publish, and their money flow does not directly depend on their personality.

Dr. Melba Joyce Boyd:

Spoken word is designed more for oral presentation than the printed page. It services a mass audience and intersects with aspects of theatre, both in vocabulary and delivery. I suppose this relates to presentation. It sometimes appears that there is a "voice" that permeates spoken word. In some ways, it is reminiscent of Beat poetry and Black Arts poetry, when poets all read in the same register, and the uniqueness of voice was sometimes sacrificed to benefit popularity. This also includes themes. When poetry works for me, regardless of its alleged classification, it should involve an interesting vocabulary and a theme that touches on the feelings and concerns of humanity.

DJ Renegade:

Poetry was fairly popular before the rise of the New Criticism, although the advent of television as a medium of popular entertainment hurt a great deal by "dumbing" down things. Two aspects of modernism, free verse and obscurantism, particularly helped to make poetry less popular. Most people like poems that have meter and rhyme. It gives them something to hang on to even before they understand the words. And helps them to remember the words until they do understand the content. You see this with rap songs all the time. When I would hear my students reciting rap lyrics, I used to ask them what the words actually meant. They often didn't know, as they hadn't actually thought about them.

Harryette Mullen:

Who is a spoken-word poet? A poet whose goal is to be a stand-up comedian, actor, entertainer or recording artist? A poet who is illiterate? A poet who never attended school? A poet whose work is composed to be heard rather than read? A poet who composes spontaneous oral poetry without ever producing a written text? A poet who performs in competitive "slam" events? A poet who reads or recites written poetry to an audience anywhere other than a college campus, library or other educational institution? A poet who has a difficult time getting a book contract? A poet whose work is unrecognized or unappreciated by academic readers and institutions? A poet whose work is more likely to be performed five or recorded electronically than published in a printed book or periodical? A poet who knows how to deliver a poem and connect with an audience? A poet whose performance requires familiarity with contemporary vernacular language? A poet who thinks "academic poetry" is boring?

Naomi Long Madgett:

Most aspiring poets are not using poetic license; they just don't know anything about poetry and often about writing in general. Many would not be able to pass a course in Composition 101, but since a lot of poetry is short, they think that anything written off the top of their heads is easy to write. They don't realize that it's harder to write a good poem than it is a good novel, I can tell by reading the first few lines that they don't read poetry, haven't attended workshops, haven't educated themselves about the differences between poetry and prose and in general don't know anything about poetry as the highest form of literary art. If they read poetry on a regular basis, they would learn something simply through osmosis.

Dr. Melba Joyce Boyd:

The teaching of poetry in public schools, or the lack thereof, has made poetry appear vague and inaccessible. Therefore, the emergence of spoken word, which has a king tradition in the black community as toasts or raps or folk poetry during slavery. It has a lot to do with the advance of the visual culture, as in video, cable TV and a movement away from reading. It is more a reality of a nonliterary society, and therefore academic definitions of poetry have arisen out of its particular, but limited, context.

Wally B., spoken-word poet from Tampa, Florida:

As a spoken-word artist, I think what Russell Simmons has done with Def Poetry Jam is fantastic! He has created more of a demand for spoken word and proved that it can be incorporated in almost any setting or situation. Now I may not have performed on Def Poetry Jam (yet), but the show has benefited me in the fact that it generates interest in my craft. I know that the feelings on this topic vary, but the undisputed fact is that most spoken-word artists have or will benefit.

Stephanie Pruitt:

We need to remember that HBO is a business and the show is engineered to be profitable and appeal to the widest spectrum of people possible. With that in mind, we know that there will be corporate politics and decisions made outside the realm of artistic quality. Def Poetry Jam is not a one-hundred percent accurate depiction of the performance poetry world, but it does nut have to be. It has catapulted careers and brought us above ground. I am thankful for that. As poets, we have an opportunity to capitalize on its success and push our genre in the direction we choose.

Kenneth Grant, spoken-word poet, Chesapeake, Virginia:

These mediums [HBO & Broadway] have become so commercialized that they would rather focus on art as a means instead of art as an end: they support art for the money, rather than for the sake of art.

Jonathan Brown:

Def Poetry Jam has brought our art to the masses. Some will say that Russell Simmons is pimping the art form. These people just aren't willing to sell themselves. In our world, being on HBO translates into success, but with success comes responsibility and self-sacrifice.

Demetrice Anntia Worley, poet, Peoria, Illinois:

In March 2003, I saw Def Poetry Jam on Broadway in a packed house. Two things struck me about the audience. One, the demographics-young black and white people (aged twelve to late twenties); and two, the exuberance the audience expressed as they repeated many of the poems word for word. I have seen several plays on Broadway by August Wilson and several off Broadway plays by Ntozake Shange and Regina Taylor; however, none of the audiences at those performances reflected the demographics of the audience at Def Poetry Jam. Also, none of those audiences' responses to the performance matched the joy expressed by the Def Poetry Jam audience.

James Richardson:

At the risk of going out there on a limb, I'd have to say that the hypercommodifying forces of a capitalism that equates unbridled consumption and the need to be entertained with success in every forum--be it academic, athletic, romantic, spiritual, etc.--have duped academia into snuffing out poetry's innate Pentecostal fires. They represent it as some rarefied thing, roped off and gawked at by those who've been socialized to believe that few (if any) can pierce this icy diamond called "true art." or poetry.

Dr. Melba Joyce Boyd:

Why does literary poetry need to compete? Literary poetry tends to have a longer life. Its subjects are not necessarily contemporary, and it does not aspire to be fashionable. These poets are crafting an art that aspires to transcend the ages. At the same time, excellent spoken word can also accomplish this, if it does not sacrifice artistic integrity.

DJ Renegade:

I think many mainstream critics and scholars would be horrified if poetry were to become more popular. It would lose much of its cachet with them, and they would have to find some other reason why they are superior to the "great unwashed."

Harryette Mullen:

Is it elitist to hope that audiences can comprehend and appreciate complexity? Is it democratic to fear that audiences cannot comprehend or appreciate complexity?

Assistance for this article was provided by: Shayla Hawkins, a Detroit native and graduate of the Cave Canem Workshop/Retreat for African-American Poets; Karma Mayer Johnson, a poet, performing artist, freelance writer and educator in New York; and Samantha Thornhill, an MFA candidate in poetry at the University of Virginia.

Quraysh Ali Lansana is director of the Gwendolyn Brooks Center for Black Literature and Creative Writing and assistant professor of English and Creative Writing at Chicago State University. He is the author of two poetry collections, a chapbook, a children's book, a PBS award-winning poetry video, and also the editor of four anthologies, including African American Literature Reader and coeditor of Role Call: A Generational Anthology of Social and Political Black Literature and Art. His most recent work, They Shall Run: Harriet Tubman Poems, is forthcoming from Third World Press in April 2004. In celebration of National Poetry Month, Lansana examines the debate that stems from traditional, written poetry versus poetry slamming. Our cover story, "Sibling Rivalries: Literary, Poetry Versus Spoken Word," opens on page 14.