After I read about the 21st annual National Poetry Slam under way in St. Paul, I checked out the website for the event (which ends Saturday) and found this amazing video clip. I loved poetry as a moony high school girl and spent hours copying my favorite poems and song lyrics and famous quotes into a looseleaf notebook I bought at the Dime Store. I came across the notebook the other day and got a glimpse of myself at 17 again.
After college, I stopped reading poetry for many years, but have taken it up again. With any luck, this is all there will be to my mid-life crisis. And lest the word "poetry" should conjure in your head a recital of: "I think that I shall never see a poem as lovely as a tree" — please check out the performance below, "Taylor Mali on What Teachers Make." A poetry slam is part poetry, part performance art, and this one is 100 percent provacative and entertaining.
Not to define an abstract, but that appears more like a prose inspirational speech or stand-up comedy than it does poetry. Moving and pointed, sure, but where’s the aestheticism and evocation? What, just because he wrote it out on paper before he delivered it, it qualifies as poetry?
Also, is there a “Related Video” that shows what the lawyer responded?