In watching the new Russell Simmons project, Brave New Voices, I find myself torn in so many respects.
For me, I come from a world where you study and hone a craft, diligently growing through hard work and practice. In my world, one strives to be able to put something on a page that is at once evocative, emotive, empathetic, and viable for generations to come. We respect the sanctity of the line and seek an economy of language that moves words and meanings in new directions.
For me, poetry must live on the page, for anything else is theatre and can only exist in the performance, which is not poetry simply because someone on stage gives rhythm to a rhyme that has no form.
I remember one kid in particular saying that this art of Spoken Word is the best expressive art form in the history of the world, as though Picasso and Matisse mean nothing, as though Chopin and Paganini mean nothing, as though Joshua Redman and Miles Davis mean nothing, as though Keats, Langston Hughes, and Yusef Komunyakaa mean nothing.
I don’t mean to belittle this young man’s opinion. On the contrary, I only think that it’s time someone challenged his assumptions, channeled his passion, expanded his horizons.
He should understand the history of artistic expression, in many different media. He should learn of the struggle that artists like Basquiat tried to overcome and to which he ultimately succumed to form his artistic voice. It’s important to know what others have done to allow him the freedom to express himself in a way he chooses, choosing that form deliberately from the experience of many things.
I think I’m ultimately going to like this show, but I’m going to have moments of dread. I’m going to cringe at times, knowing that these kids are reading from a mélange of words that, on the page, mean nothing to anyone else and appear to be unformed bits of prose when others try to read what’s there.
I agree with Komunyakaa that we can respect the theatre of the performance while understanding that the poem, to be a poem, has to live on the page regardless of the form it might take, so I leave you with his words, Blue Light Lounge Sutra for the Performance Poets at Harold Park Hotel.
Peace & poetry,
jf
