Metrophobia: the fear of poetry (its true. its a real phobia, i looked it up...)
I have never been a fan of poetry, it has never moved me to tears, held my interest, and when trying to analyze a difficult poem, I just give up & end up realizing that I have no idea what they are trying to tell me and I feel as if I have lost a few I.Q. points in the process, rather than improving my mind. Now, I might have to reconsider my stance. When we were introduced to Taylor Mali performing slam poetry, I was inspired by his “what teachers make” video and laughed just a little too hard at the “the the impotence of proofreading” performance. I returned home, and have replayed them an embarrassingly large number of times and am still completely amused and moved by his performance.
Because of this, I decided to do some research since this is the first type of poetry that peaked my interest. I was dying to know how and who started it. I was thinking it would be someone like an Eminem with a bad boy personality, but rather it was a man named Marc Smith in 1984 that performed in a Chicago club and is a little less rough around the edges. Now there are National Poetry Slam competitions, started in 1990 where hundreds of poets compete to win the title of being the number one poet. Slam poetry has reached all corners of the earth from Russia, to Ukraine, to Latvia, and Switzerland.
There are endless possibilities with slam poetry and each poet performs and writes differently. Some poets focus on their vocal delivery, depending on rhythm while others go for a more narrative format that does not rhyme or have a beat. Some performing poets change their voices, intonation, or will even speak monotone throughout the whole recitation, while others tap dance, beatbox or add their own choreographed dance to their poems. YouTube here I come.
I completely agree. I have never been able to truly appreciate poetry, and when I realized that was what the focus of class would be for last week, I was not excited to say the least. However I found the class very interesting. The slam poetry by Mali was very well done and inspired me to find other poets just like him on the internet. Before the class I thought of poetry as standard haikus and sonnets. Slam poetry is completely different, and has given me a new appreciation for it. I think the use of slam poetry will become extremely useful in classrooms and life in general as society continues to progress. Many people I know do not have an appreciate for poetry, but might feel differently if they were exposed to pieces that are out of the ordinary.
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