“This is my disillusionment. Not the absence of hope; the absence of illusion.”
I’m always grateful for the signal-boosts that I get from Button, but I am especially grateful for this one. This is a poem that I’ve been working on for years, through multiple drafts, through my own growth and shifting consciousness. I’m not sure that it would ever win a slam or get published in a big journal, but I know it’s one of the most important things that I’ve written, for myself.
It’s also part of a series of poems really digging into the idea of what activism is– not just what it is on an intellectual level, but what it looks like, and how we can all use the power we have to do right by each other. That series also includes Quicksand, Thoughts and Prayers, and some new pieces that aren’t online yet.
I wanted to use this post not only to share the poem, but to consolidate some of the posts that I’ve been making lately sharing resources and strategies for people who are interested in getting involved in activist work. Because now is the time. I hope you can find something useful in these:
For People Who Want to “Do” Something But Don’t Know What to Do This is a piece I wrote sharing some of the basics of how everyday people can use the power that we have to make a difference. It also features a big list of cool Twin Cities-area activist organizations. It’s built around the phrase: “Just because you don’t have the power to run out the front door and magically ‘fix’ everything, it doesn’t mean that you don’t have power.”
My TEDx Talk: Five Things Art Taught Me About Activism Despite the title, this is not just for artists. This is a talk about how the questions that artists ask often mirror the questions that emerging/aspiring activists ask. The steps that artists take from idea, to concept, to art often mirror the steps that activists take from value, to principle, to action. If you’re looking to dive in, but don’t know where to start, this is for you.
Beyond the Benefit: Ten Ways Artists Can Help Build and Support Movements While the previous three links are for everyone, this one is focused on artists– especially musicians, MCs, and other performers. Because one powerful thing we can do is take spaces that are not activist spaces, and *make* them activist spaces. Burst the bubbles.
This one isn’t mine, but I wanted to share this moving, important piece from Kelly Hayes called Saturday Afternoon Thoughts on the Apocalypse. A relevant quote: Václav Havel once said that “Hope is not the conviction that something will turn out well, but the certainty that something is worth doing no matter how it turns out.” I live in that certainty every day. Because while these death-making systems exist both outside and inside of us, so do our dreams, so long as we are fighting for them. And my dreams are worth fighting for. I bet yours are too.
I do not believe the wicked always win. I believe our despair is a lie we are telling ourselves. In many other periods of history, people, ordinary citizens, routinely set aside hours, days, time in their lives for doing the work of politics, some of which is glam and revolutionary and some of which is dull and electoral and tedious and not especially pure – and the world changed because of the work they did. That’s what we’re starting now. It requires setting aside the time to do it, and then doing it. Not any single one of us has to or possibly can save the world, but together in some sort of concert, in even not-especially-coordinated concert, with all of us working where we see work to be done, the world will change. And we have to do it by showing up places, our bodies in places, turn off the fucking computers, leave the Web and the Net – and show up, our bodies at meetings and demos and rallies and leafletting corners.
Because this is a moment in history that needs us to begin, each of us every day at her or his own pace, slowly and surely rediscovering how to be politically active, how to organize our disparate energies into effective group action – and I choose to believe we will do what is required. Act. Organize. Assemble. Oppose. Resist. Find a place a cause a group a friend and start, today, now now now, continue continue continue. (source)
Feel free to add more in the comments! Here’s the full text of the poem:
Call me Hmong before you call me American/ because Hmong is the closest word I know to home…
The first line of this poem is “Eight responses to the phrase ‘go back to where you came from,’” and Yang uses that setup to craft a narrative that is both deeply political and deeply personal. Specifically, there’s a moment in the poem where the phrase/question is turned back to its speaker: “Do you ever wonder where you come from?” That structure—starting with a kind of defensive humor and naturally transitioning into proud defiance, using the language itself as a fulcrum—gives this poem a powerful arc.
A lot of aspiring/emerging poets struggle with structure. This may be because of the stereotype of poetry as this kind of magical, pure, stream-of-consciousness expression. And sure, that can be powerful. But if you watch enough *good* spoken word, you’ll see how much intentionality goes into structure– not “structure” in the same way that sonnets or haikus have specific rules/formats, but more like an organizing impulse. That may be as simple as giving a poem an introduction, middle, climax, and resolution (with intentional transitions between ideas), or something more complex and challenging that plays with formula and subverts audience expectations.
When talking about this broader idea of structure with students, we often ask questions like: Is there a reason the poem starts where it starts? Could it start somewhere else? Is there a reason the poem ends where it ends? Does it “earn” that ending based on what came before? How does the poem “move” from one stanza/idea/section to the next? What would the effect of rearranging some of those ideas be? When you say the poem out loud, does it “feel” right in terms of its flow and timing?
If you know Kevin Yang’s work, you may also know how good he is at structuring poems. He’s also, for me, one of the best at taking on explicitly political issues and putting a human face on them. This is a poem about big issues like xenophobia, the refugee experience, and finding home, but it’s also a poem about small, specific moments– the conversation with the elder, the wisdom of the mother, the hummingbird. As poets, we earn the “big stuff” via the care we put into writing the “little stuff,” and Yang does that so well.
Be sure to check out Kevin’s other poems online! He’s one of my favorite poets, and has a ton of work that is especially useful for teachers/educators looking for poems to use in the classroom.
***EDIT: This poem/post is from 2017 (and includes some specific references to that time), but the video below is the higher-quality version that Button Poetry shared in 2020)
The Japanese American Citizen’s League asked me to write a piece for the 2017 Day of Remembrance (the day in 1942 that Executive Order 9066 was signed, requiring internment of all Americans of Japanese ancestry), connecting it to current issues regarding xenophobia and anti-immigrant hate.
Check out this story for a bit more background; there are a ton of other resources online as well. As the poem talks about, this is the kind of story I feel like a lot of people know about in a general sense, but that few internalize and really grapple with. And we need to be thinking about it, especially right now. Full text below.
1. Asked what the infant city was like, those first residents might have, with some justice, summed it up with one word — dust. -Journalist Taro Katayama, writing about Utah’s Topaz internment camp.
The Japanese side of my family settled in Hawaii. And of course, during the war, they couldn’t intern all of the Japanese there; that’d be a third of the population. But still, decades later, I grew up hearing about the camps. For every story about one of my great uncles fighting for the US against the Japanese Empire, another story: about a different empire, an empire of dust.
There was a kind of distance, of course: hearing the echo, of the echo, of someone weeping. It was subtle, like, for every Packer game, to make room for snacks, I’d have to move those three huge coffee table books: one about Hawaii, one about Ireland (for some reason), and one about Manzanar. This is where the “less” of my more-or-less whiteness lives. Not so much a waving flag as a map hidden in the sole of my shoe.
I learned very early that ghosts are not just the disembodied spirits of the dead. They can be, but they are also more, in the same way that water is more than just rain, that history is more than just the history we are taught. Ghosts appear, like dust, everywhere, from nothing, they multiply. They swim in the ink of newspaper headlines, smile in the background of photographs seized by government censors, burst by the thousands from a grandmother’s single tear. They create patterns in the dust; we breathe them in, when we breathe in the dust. And I learned very early, that ghosts don’t just haunt houses. They haunt history. And that knowing your history determines: whether you learn to live with your ghosts, or are devoured by them.
2. Tennessee legislator Glen Casada calls for the National Guard to “round up” all Syrian refugees, despite constitutional protections. He says: you have to ask yourself, which is greater: life or due process?
As if that were the choice. As if our history, if we listen to it, does not curse and condemn those who offer these kinds of choices– life or your freedom, life or your culture, life or your property, life or your language, life or your child’s life. Just do the math. How much can you carry, as you leave your home, unsure of your return? What do you leave, what can you not live without? Do you plan to return? Do you hope? What year is this? Is the distance disappearing? And suddenly it isn’t math anymore.
Question #27: “Are you willing to serve in the armed forces of the United States on combat duty, wherever ordered?”
Question #28: “Will you swear unqualified allegiance to the United States of America and faithfully defend the United States from any or all attack by foreign or domestic forces, and forswear any form of allegiance or obedience to the Japanese emperor, or other foreign government, power or organization?”
Is answering yes an admission that you, at one point, would not have answered yes? Will you be loyal to that which is not loyal to you? When uprooted, will you still reach for the sun? Will you grow here, in this dust? Will your children? How will you protect your children?
You have to ask yourself, which is greater: one grain of dust, or all those ghosts? You have to ask yourself: which is greater: that weight on the conscience of a nation, or all those ghosts? I learned very early, that you have to ask yourself: which is greater: your commitment to order, or your commitment to justice?
3. Before he died, Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia gave a talk at the University of Hawaii Law School about the Korematsu decision, the legal rationale for the internment of 120,000 innocent people of Japanese descent, most of whom were US citizens, born here, half of them children. He invoked a Latin phrase: Inter arma enim silent leges: “in times of war, the law falls silent.”
And evolution is slow, slower than the sun crawling across the desert sky, slower than the fading of memory. The only real difference between who we are now and who we were in 1942 is our history, and what we choose to learn from it. I learned very early that it is always a time of war. That they will always find a scapegoat. If not our people, someone’s people.
There are still people living, who witnessed lynchings. There are still people living, who survived the Holocaust. And of those Japanese Americans still living, who lost time to the camps, to the dust, we must hear them. And those who are not still living: we must hear them too.
Fred Korematsu said: “… No one should ever be locked away simply because they share the same race, ethnicity, or religion as a spy or terrorist. If that principle was not learned from the internment of Japanese Americans, then these are very dangerous times for our democracy.”
Mary Hirata said: …we have to make sure it’s never done again. It’s so easy, and the more I read about it, the more I know that this was already planned way before the war… it’s a terrible thing to happen. Of course, I don’t think they’ll ever do it again, they couldn’t. I think. But that’s what we thought, too.”
Yuri Kochiyama said: “Remember that consciousness is power. Tomorrow’s world is yours to build.”
These words, these stories, are my family’s only heirloom. And we must listen. Through the dust storm of history, through the wailing all those ghosts. We must hear these voices.
…But they must hear us too.
Because when the law falls silent, we must not be.
UPDATE (2022): CHECK OUT THIS LINK FOR A “CLASSROOM-FRIENDLY” VERSION OF THIS POEM (WITH HIGH-QUALITY VIDEO/AUDIO), PLUS REFLECTIONS ON ITS TEN-YEAR ANNIVERSARY, PLUS MORE RESOURCES!
(edit: ten million now)
On Friday, Button Poetry posted their footage of my poem “Ten Responses to the Phrase ‘Man Up’ on Facebook video, and it reached a million views in just two days (the original version on YouTube is almost up to a million as well, but was posted three years ago; there’s also this version, with the full text as well, on my own page, which I think is the highest quality audio/video).
Obviously, numbers don’t mean everything. But it is cool to see a poem with a message like this resonate with so many people. I doubt that a million views means a million people watched, but one number that does matter to me is those 25k shares. I figured I’d use this opportunity to both say thank you for all of the shares and reposts, but also to share a couple of thoughts on the poem itself: 1. The poem is in my book. If you like it, you will very likely enjoy the whole book, which is full of poems, song lyrics, and essays about these issues and many others. The blurb is below, and here’s a link to how you can order one (through Button Poetry).
One part mixtape, one part disorientation guide, and one part career retrospective, this book brings together spoken word poems, song lyrics, and essays from the past decade of Guante’s work. From the exploration of toxic masculinity in “Ten Responses to the Phrase ‘Man Up’,” to the throwback humanist hip hop of “Matches,” to a one-act play on the racial and cultural politics of Eminem, “A Love Song, A Death Rattle, A Battle Cry” is a practitioners eye-view of the intersections of hip hop, poetry, and social justice.
2. Bring me to your school or conference. My work actually involves traveling to colleges, universities, conferences, and other places to use spoken word as an entry point into deeper conversations about identity, power, and resistance. Check out my booking info here and get in touch. 3. On a craft/writing level, I’ve always thought of this one as an okay poem with a really strong “hook,” which is the term I use to refer to its conceptual framework, the thing that makes it different from all of the other poems about masculinity/gender stuff out there. If you’re an aspiring spoken word artist (or really any kind of writer), I think hooks are really important to understand, whether you choose to lean on them or not. I talk more about them through this video series.
4. Finally, a quick note on the content. I haven’t been able to sift through all of the comments, but I can pretty much imagine some of them. Just want to make a handful of things very clear:
The poem is about how so many of the assumptions associated with masculinity are based in fear, shame, and insecurity; it’s also about how so many assumptions about competence and power are based in masculinity. And yes, this is reflected in so-called “little things” like language and everyday pop culture that we don’t often think critically about (not sure if people even remember the specific Miller Lite commercials that this poem is directly responding to). The poem is very much about the relationship between those “little things” and the larger realities of sexism and gender-based violence.
The issue is not that telling people to “take responsibility and be strong” (which, yeah, I know is what “man up” means) is always a bad thing (though it can be, depending on what that person actually needs); the issue is that framing responsibility and strength as solely masculine qualities reinforces a whole lot of poisonous essentialist garbage about gender that ends up hurting people.
Because this always comes up in conversations about language: remember that “hey let’s maybe think more critically about the language we use” is not the same as “hey you should go to jail for saying the ‘wrong’ thing.” Empathy is not censorship. The poem is about language, but it’s also about something deeper than that.
The poem is not saying that men have it worse than women (or gender-nonconforming people), or that we have it just as bad. Sexism hurts everyone, but it hurts everyone in very different ways, and a critical understanding of how sexism/patriarchy works is a necessary first step in disrupting and dismantling it.
I know that sometimes MRA-type people kind of like the poem, which is weird. I mean, yeah, I can imagine how it might resonate with people who want to talk about the unfair and messed up expectations that society places on men. But this is still very much a feminist poem. Because it isn’t women, or feminism, that places those expectations on men– it’s patriarchy. So people bring up men’s high suicide rates, or how so many men “don’t feel like they fit in” in our society any more– I hear you. I just don’t share your analysis. Feminism isn’t the enemy– it’s an invaluable lens, a tool for actually fixing some of those problems (as opposed to just going on the internet and harassing women/complaining about feminism, which is the MRA approach). For more on this topic, check this out.
Finally, just a note that if you like this poem, check this one out too. Plus, you can find all of my work here. PLUS, I made a list of 100+ spoken word poems by other people, including a dozen or so on gender and masculinity. This is an ongoing conversation, featuring many voices, and I’m thankful for the opportunity to be part of it.
***Update: This piece is now just about a decade old! But it’s still pretty good, I think, and should be useful for people looking for a quick introduction. For something more recent (and more robust), check out Joshua Bennett’s “Spoken Word: A Cultural History,” which came out in 2023. Also, if you’re interested in this stuff in general, be sure to check out my new Spoken Word and Slam Poetry Resource Hub).***
That’s me opening for Saul Williams at Icehouse in Minneapolis; photo credit: Elliot Malcolm
A very common piece of advice in spoken word workshops or critique circles is “just do the poem.” So many of us, especially when we’re just starting out, instinctually want to frame, contextualize, or introduce the poem. This manifests as any number of statements like “this is just something I wrote when…” or “this isn’t really done; I’m not sure if it has a title yet, but…” or even “this is terrible but I’m going to share it anyway,” etc.
That advice—to dive in, with no disclaimers or introductions—is partly about acknowledging the dramatic effect of a poem that starts from silence, from breath. It is also partly about calming the performer down, allowing their work to simply exist, as it is, with no apologies. Especially in poetry slam spaces—you only have three minutes, so there isn’t really time for “artist statements.”
That being said, I love contextualizing poems. The more that I’ve moved away from slams and toward performing hour-long sets, the more I’ve grown to appreciate the power that can come from framing notes, artist statements, and organic dialogue with the audience. We all listen and learn in different ways, and these fourth wall-breaking moments can sometimes be as meaningful as the poems themselves.
In that spirit, I wrote this as an introduction to my book so that it could both contextualize my poems and offer an introduction to the form—and culture—of spoken word for anyone who may not already be part of that community.
Of course, this list is not about capturing all of spoken word and slam poetry culture in one piece of writing; part of the beauty of our community is that we don’t all agree on everything, and the work that we do is fluid, dynamic, and impacted by context, identities, and intertwining thought-currents. I do not expect every spoken word artist or listener out there to agree with everything I write here. And that’s cool. What follows is more so an illumination of a few pet peeves and misconceptions that I run across all the time. Though I’m no voice-of-God authority on this subject, I am a practitioner; my hope is that this piece can add additional clarity, depth, and nuance to the ongoing conversation.
1. Words Mean Things: A Point About Terminology
This is a can of worms, so I’m not going to to attempt to provide the ultimate, catch-all definition of spoken word here. I will, however, share the framework that I use when it comes to terms:
“Spoken Word” is an umbrella term. It refers to poetry that is written to be read aloud; it may contain elements of theater, stand-up comedy, storytelling, rhetoric, jazz, hip hop, or other forms. We could go deeper with this, in terms of the difference between “recitation” and “performance,” or the difference between creating work that is meant to be performed vs. work that is about the page first and then happens to be performed (and how each approach impacts the writing itself), but I think this is a good starting point. You could also potentially use the term “performance poetry.”
“Slam Poetry” is often used interchangeably with “spoken word,” but I would argue that it means something more specific: slam poetry is spoken word performed at a poetry slam, which is a specific kind of performance/event (more on that later). While there may be certain tropes or approaches that are more common in slam poetry than in other kinds of spoken word, the real difference is not about form—it’s about context.
“Beat Poetry” refers to the poetry of the Beat Generation, whose work is now 50+ years old. Please do not call a 20-year-old spoken word artist a “beat poet” unless that’s some kind of explicit shtick they’re running with. The stereotypical imagery of berets and bongo drums is simply not what spoken word is today.
“Spoken Slam Hip Hop Beat Jams” is not a real thing. Additionally, I was once called a “slap poet,” though that was probably a typo. Probably.
Basically, there’s a lot of word salad out there when people try to talk about spoken word. Again, digging into the precise definition of every term is beyond the scope of this essay, but I hope these notes are at least a starting point.
2. Spoken Word is Poetry, Whether You Like It or Not
Of course, we don’t all have to be on the same page regarding our enjoyment of or appreciation for spoken word. But to say that “it isn’t poetry” (as many do, with gusto) is closed-minded and, frankly, ahistorical. After all, the history in which poetry was primarily about the page is shorter than the history in which poetry was primarily oral (see next point).
Furthermore, I can’t help but notice the racist and classist undertones in the bizarrely narrow definition of poetry that so many hold on to so desperately; I am interested in asking why that narrow definition (the one that says that poetry must rhyme, or be metered, or be published, or follow established rules) persists in the minds of so many. Where does that definition come from? Who benefits from it?
Now, this does not mean that I believe that all spoken word is beautiful and perfect and amazing. For every spoken word piece that I love, I can think of another (or five) that I don’t. The argument here isn’t that we shouldn’t have standards; it’s that we should think critically about the history of those standards, and who has had access to the spaces in which they were created.
Finally, it is also helpful to note that the “page/stage” divide is an artificial one. Lots of great spoken word artists are published poets, award-winners, and professors. Lots of page poets are very good at performing their work. As different as spoken word and written poetry can be in many regards, there’s still an enormous overlap.
3. Spoken Word is Old, and New, but Mostly Old
Even though spoken word is very often characterized as a new, underground artistic phenomenon, or as a novel, radical reconceptualization of the relationship between poetry and its audience, it’s important to note that spoken word has been around for as long as language has. It is one of the oldest artistic practices that we have. The griot, the storyteller, the person responsible for orally passing down information from generation to generation: every culture on earth has some kind of analogue to this.
We can trace the current spoken word boom back through Hip Hop, the Nuyoricans, the Black Arts Movement, the Beat Generation, the Harlem Renaissance, deeper and deeper into history, and we’ll get to the griot.
And sure—when most people today talk about “spoken word,” they’re referring to the 30 year-old manifestation of the practice driven by poetry slams, Def Poetry Jam, and viral videos. But it is important to know that this art has deeper roots, and that those of us who do this are taking part—knowingly or not—in a much older cultural practice.
4. Spoken Word is Bigger (and Better) than Its Stereotype
I understand that for a lot of people, slam poetry is a punchline. The stereotype of the grim, ultra-earnest college kid shouting clichés about how “the man” is corrupt, in a forced rhythm, while a dozen people in a coffee shop snap their fingers, is deeply embedded in pop culture (exhibit A).
But I’ve been performing in poetry slams, traveling around the country for spoken word shows, and watching poetry online for a decade now, and one thing that always strikes me is how authentically diverse the community is. After all, a fundamental pillar of the culture is the idea that everyone has a story, and every story matters. People approach spoken word from all walks of life, from all identities, and from a myriad of approaches to the form. I would say that the culture is largely driven by young people, and young people of color especially, but it is by no means dominated by a singular voice.
The attitude that “spoken word all sounds the same” is similar to the attitude that “all jazz is just random notes and gesticulating,” or “all Hip Hop is just shouting about guns,” or “all photography is just high-contrast black-and-white portraits of elderly people.” While there are common tropes and shared delivery tactics (which is true in any form), those elements exist within a framework that allows for endless variations and stylistic impulses. This leads into the next point:
5. Spoken Word is Democratic, and Yes, That Means that Some of It is Bad
Another fundamental pillar of spoken word culture is the idea that poetry is for everyone. Anyone can be a poet. Anyone can serve as a judge at a slam. Anyone can sit in the audience and decide what they like or don’t like. It isn’t about what MFA program you got into, or how many poems you’ve gotten published, or who co-signs you; it’s about how we build community with one another through the telling of our stories and the sharing of our words.
What this means in practice is that no matter who you are, or how much experience or training you have, you can sign up at an open mic or poetry slam and share something. So of course, if you’re an audience member at some random open mic, you are not guaranteed two hours of brilliant writing. A lot of spoken word is pretty bad. But the larger point here is that most art is pretty bad—we just might not ever experience the “bad” indie rock, visual art, dance, etc. The spoken word community, however, is intentionally set up in such a way where the great and not-so-great exist in the same spaces. And though I’ve sat through many a not-so-great slam, I would still argue that this is a very positive thing.
The spoken word community includes icons like Andrea Gibson and Saul Williams, right alongside some 15-year-old kid performing at their very first open mic. It includes Marc Bamuthi Joseph’s boundary-pushing spoken word theater work, right alongside a part-time bartender who competes in poetry slams for a little extra money. It includes the best writers I know—Patricia Smith, Bao Phi, Suheir Hammad, etc.—and countless people who are just starting out, or still growing, or trying to figure out what they have to say. It’s about process and product. It’s about the function of art beyond the art itself. This is immeasurably valuable, and part of why spoken word represents something deeper than just another hobby or literary/artistic movement.
6. Spoken Word is Bigger than Poetry Slams
A poetry slam is a poetry reading staged as an Olympic-style competition. Five judges are picked randomly from the crowd, poets perform, and the judges give those poets scores based on content, form, delivery, originality, or whatever they want. It’s silly, and most of the people who participate know that it’s not really about the points; it’s about getting the audience engaged. Still, slams are popular all over the US (and beyond), and have become the focal point for spoken word’s resurgence.
Although the competitive element turns a lot of people off, I like poetry slams. I like the symbolism of them: write for the people. Write something that connects. Have fun. I like that the judges are random weirdos and not creative writing professors or literary critics. Everything in points #4 and #5 comes alive at the poetry slam. Slams aren’t perfect, and there are important conversations to be had about the intersections of competition, art, identity, and trauma, but I still believe that they are valuable.
That being said, it is important to note here that spoken word happens in other spaces too, and that a lot of the value of slam is that it is one outlet among many. For those of us who grew up in the slam world, it can be too easy to forget that slam is just one way to participate, and that participating solely through slam can be unhealthy (and/or just boring). You can find spoken word at open mics, themed readings, political rallies, classrooms, social justice education programs, churches, punk shows, prisons, and many other spaces too.
7. Spoken Word and Hip Hop Are Not the Same
I’ve heard people talk about how spoken word is just another element of Hip Hop. I’ve also heard people talk about how Hip Hop grew out of the work of early spoken word pioneers like the Last Poets and Gil Scott-Heron. I would say that there is truth in both statements, but also that both statements make it easy to oversimplify the relationship. I think that Hip Hop and spoken word—as both art forms and cultures—have been in dialogue with one another for the past few decades, but also that neither one is wholly indebted to the other. They overlap—in terms of audience, artists, roots, styles, and approaches—but they are also distinct cultures and communities.
This comes up in conversations about form. Students ask me all the time: “what’s the difference between rapping and spoken word?” There’s a deeper conversation we can have there, but in short, I think of rapping as a specific kind of poetry; and like any poetic form (haiku, sonnet, etc.), it has rules. Rapping rhymes. It is performed at a set tempo and rhythm. It is performed over music. Spoken word, on the other hand, can rhyme, but doesn’t have to. It can be performed to a set tempo and rhythm, but doesn’t have to be. It can be performed over music, but it doesn’t have to be. There are fewer formal guidelines with spoken word and slam poetry. But in terms of substance—you can rap about anything, and you can write a poem about anything.
Of course, both spoken word and Hip Hop are so often about speaking truth to power, and lifting up the voices and narratives that are so often silenced in our society. Both are about the implicitly political act of a human being standing on a stage and saying something to a hundred other human beings (especially when you, and/or that audience, hold identities that are misrepresented in the broader culture). Like I said, there is overlap. But where the casual observer might just see “urban” youth saying stuff into a mic (and yes, “urban” is in scare-quotes for a reason) and assume that the two forms are exactly the same, I would encourage us all to have a more nuanced view of their similarities, differences, and histories, in order to pay the proper respect to both.
8. Spoken Word Does Not Have to Be Political, But There Might Be a Reason for Why So Much of It Is
Again, there are no rules with spoken word, beyond the fact that poetry slams have three-minute time limits. This applies to form, but also to substance. A poet can write and perform about any topic they want. Of course, the stereotype is that all spoken word is ranting about the revolution; and to be sure, poetry slams generally do feature a lot more poems about identity, power, oppression, struggle, and politics than poems about trees or “pure” lyrical experiments.
Part of the reason for this, I would argue, is that as much as spoken word is poetry, it is also something more. It’s a public forum for people to get together and have the conversations that we so often don’t get to have in our everyday lives. It’s a platform to say something that means something to you in front of a hundred strangers. And when so many spoken word practitioners are young people, and/or people holding oppressed identities, and/or people with voices that have just generally not been valued (or even noticed) in society, it shouldn’t surprise anyone that so much spoken word is political. It should be. It needs to be.
9. Spoken Word is Not a Fad; It’s Growing
Every few months, someone publishes another “Is Poetry Dead?” essay. I understand why—it’s click-bait, and there are certainly valid arguments to be made on both sides of the debate regarding aesthetic populism, outreach to new audiences, the accessibility of MFA programs and other weighty topics. The problem, however, is how the question is framed: poetry is dead because fewer people buy poetry books or read poetry journals, or poetry is dead because it’s stylistically stagnant, or poetry is dead because it doesn’t have a presence in the upper echelons of American media or culture.
Left out of these equations, due to either simple ignorance or a willful distaste for the form (and its practitioners), is spoken word. Even the inevitable response essays and counterpoints that talk about how poetry is still vibrant and important almost always ignore spoken word. And spoken word is very much where poetry is thriving right now.
At the time of this writing, Button Poetry (the biggest distributor of spoken word videos online) has a YouTube channel with more than a half million subscribers and well over a hundred million views. And they’re just one channel. Even using myself as an example: my work has nearly two million YouTube views, and I make my living as a touring poet traveling around the country. When I do that traveling, I notice spoken word clubs sprouting up at just about every college and high school that I visit, as well as poetry slams in cities across the country generating big, energetic crowds.
Which is all to say: this movement is popular and still growing. Especially when thinking about Button and its impact on thousands of people around the world: spoken word is making people (especially young people) excited about poetry. Its viral boom is sparking a new generation of writers, poets, performers, and storytellers—all of whom may start with poetry slams, but then branch into theater, publishing, music, or other arenas. We’re still in the middle of that ripple effect.
10. You Can Do This Too, If You Want; Spoken Word is About Community
One of the running themes here is that spoken word is about us, more than it’s about me, or you, or whatever poet has the most YouTube views. It is a participatory culture. While I make a living as a spoken word poet (along with a growing handful of others), it is important to understand that you don’t have to go “all in” to do this. Most spoken word poets have day jobs. Most never go viral. Most don’t win every poetry slam that they enter. And this should be celebrated. I’m not sure that we need more professional poets; I think we need more cab drivers, teachers, nurses, organizers, and service workers who write poetry.
I can imagine someone reading this and saying “easier said than done.” And sure, performing in front of people isn’t always easy. To support anyone who might be interested, I’ve tried to collect a few resources here, including a video series of tips, tools, and tactics for aspiring spoken word poets, a list of all of the open mics and poetry slams in my community, a list of favorite poems by other artists, and more. It might be a matter of finding the space first—a local open mic, an online community, even just an informal writing circle of three or four friends. From there, it’s about diving in, having fun, and figuring out what you want to contribute. Let’s build.
UPDATE (2022): CHECK OUT THIS LINK FOR A “CLASSROOM-FRIENDLY” VERSION OF THIS POEM (WITH HIGH-QUALITY VIDEO/AUDIO), PLUS REFLECTIONS ON ITS TEN-YEAR ANNIVERSARY, PLUS MORE RESOURCES!
First, here is brand new footage of what has become my most popular poem, “Ten Responses to the Phrase ‘Man Up.'” The Button Poetry version already has 850k views (!), and there’s another version with 100k+ too, but this performance is just better, I think. If you know me, you probably already know this poem, but it’s always nice to have a more definitive version available online. Find the full text here.
Second, I just completed a huge update to my “Beginner’s Guide to Spoken Word and Slam Poetry”page. There, I’ve collected over a hundred poems that I would recommend to others; a few personal favorites mixed in with some that I think just do a good job capturing the power of spoken word as both a form of artistic expression and a potential teaching tool. Check it out, and feel free to get in touch with any suggestions.
(update: there’s a more recent video of this poem here, via Button Poetry. That newer video reflects the most recent draft of this piece, although the performance here is better. Pick your poison, I guess)
Thanks to Patrick Pegg, I finally have a really good video version of a poem that I’ve been performing for years now– “Handshakes.” This was shot in front of a sold-out audience at our second annual “Page.Stage.Engage” show at the U of MN’s Whole Music Club. We got a ton of footage from that show– of me, Tish Jones, and various Be Heard MN youth poets, and it’ll all be posted over the next few months.
I’ll include the full text at the bottom of this post (something I’m going to be better about in 2016– working on adding the text to all of my videos). It’s not the deepest or most poetically challenging thing I’ve ever written, but it stays in my arsenal because it’s an approachable entry point to some deeper discussions about identity, and because on a poetic level, it does the “talk about something big by talking about something small” thing that some of my favorite poetry does.
In other poetry news, I hope everyone knows about the 2016 Be Heard MN Youth Poetry Slam Series! It really is kind of the coolest thing that happens all year in the Twin Cities, and if you haven’t ever witnessed it, this year will be a great time to check it out. Prelims start in January. If you’re 13-19 years old, you can actually sign up. But if you’re not, I really want people to consider just showing up as audience members. These are some of the most incredible writers and performance artists in the state, youth or otherwise, and deserve your support.
Finally, here’s a brand new poem I wrote after the Tamir Rice grand jury decision. I don’t often post my poetry as text, but it seemed more appropriate than video for this one. Everyone needs to know about this case, and I’d also point people toward a local connection: the MN Neighborhoods Organizing for Change anti-grand jury petition here. The ins-and-outs of the legal system aren’t always the most attractive thing to talk about or organize around, but they are absolutely how racism continues to live and breathe in our communities, and knowing about them (and organizing to change them) is vital. This particular poem adds a media literacy lens, critiquing how police violence is so often presented by police and media as “isolated incidents” as opposed to trends and cultures, and the impact that this has on public opinion.
As always, feel free to share any or all of this with your networks. Much more is on the way! Here’s the full text of “Handshakes.” (teleporting in from 2025: I’ve updated the text below to reflect the most recent draft of this piece; just a few very minor changes).
Handshakes (FULL TEXT):
The weirdest thing about having your hand crushed is that the pair of eyes across from yours never stops smiling. As knuckles are compressed, as the skin is all but torn off the top of your hand, he always has this grin on his face. Even as the vein bulges from his neck he smiles, until you grudgingly mumble, “that’s quite a handshake,” and he releases you.
As a young man, I was taught that one’s masculinity is tied directly to one’s handshake, that when meeting another man for the first time, no sin was more unforgivable than placing a fish in his hand, the dead husk of a greeting. Your grip must be firm, like the way you hold your briefcase as you walk to work, or the way you hold the handle while standing up on the bus.
Some men, however, prefer a grip like a battle-axe mid swing, like ripping the head off an antelope by tugging on the antlers. Some men treat every handshake like a gladiator’s death-match, a test of strength, a test of will.
And when I meet these men, as I often do, their tectonic plate handshakes never fail to illuminate my myriad inadequacies. Frozen there with purple fingertips, I am reminded that I cannot stand the taste of beer, that cars confuse and frighten me, that I always skip leg day at the gym, that when faced with a barbecue and a pair of tongs, I will overcook the meat every time. These men attempt to squeeze the testosterone from my body.
Maybe I’m just insecure. But studying his smirk more closely, I think maybe that would make two of us. Because as he wrings the color from my fingers I find myself wanting to ask him:
Do you ever feel trapped? In the mornings, when you’re watching TV and happily downing that protein shake made from raw eggs, liquefied steak, whiskey and beard oil, do you ever crush the glass between your fingers? Do you ever get tired of the voice in your head, you know, the one that sounds like Dennis Leary, telling you to constantly reaffirm that you’re a “real man” by catcalling women, eating enormous hamburgers, getting into physical altercations over trivial nonsense, and squeezing everything really, really hard?
I find myself wanting to ask him: Do you hold your wife’s arm like this when you’re angry with her?
Is there a teddy bear, somewhere in your history, being ripped away from a pair of hands that just aren’t strong enough? Do you remember the first time your father wouldn’t let you hold his hand when crossing the street? Do you remember the way he looked at you? Do you remember being handed your first-born son and not knowing how to hold him? Do you remember squeezing his shoulders like this the first time he disappointed you? Do you remember what it was you were trying to hold on to?
And I know: there is so much space between us, as men, that sometimes we feel compelled to cram as much contact as we physically can into every touch. I know. We’ve become so comfortable with crushing, so hypnotized by our own strength, we forget: how incredible it can feel to let go.
UPDATE: Thanks again to Button Poetry for capturing this and broadcasting it out to so many people. Thanks also to George Takei (and many others) for sharing. The poem is in my book, which is available here.
The poem itself is maybe one of the more straightforward things that I’ve written; I wanted something that could work as a teaching tool, a resource, an additional frame for anyone doing work around this issue. In that spirit, I’d like to share a couple of links for further reading:
Here’s an in-depth primer on consent from Planned Parenthood.
Full text of the poem: CONSENT AT 10,000 FEET
You ever have sex in a haunted house? Like you know, you sneak in together, and you’re both laughing, and you got it all planned out because you both worked there last year and know the layout of the building, and then like a werewolf jumps out and it’s like aaahhh but then you find that one spare room and it’s like… aahhh… you know, it’s different, it’s outside the box, but there’s nothing wrong with it.
You ever go to your roommate’s fringe festival show and end up hooking up with one of the supporting cast members, but they’re like, a method actor in the middle of a series of performances so they never break character? And, it’s cool but their character is this, like alternate universe steampunk Mercutio and their blunderbuss keeps getting in the way and you both laugh about it, and it’s like, memorable, something beyond the norm, but there’s nothing wrong with it.
You ever have sex inside an enormous bowl of fettucine alfredo that is suspended by chains between two sequoia trees because you’re dating this super avant garde performance artist and wanted to draw attention to their new vanity publishing press but they only got like a hundred Twitter followers? Yeah, it’s squishy, and definitely an experience that is not easily replicated, but there is nothing wrong with it.
There is nothing wrong with any of these scenarios, because in all of them, both partners are 100%, flamboyantly beyond any shadow of a doubt, down with what’s happening; and the communication of that, verbal and nonverbal, is clear and constant. This is consent. And wrong… would be the absence of that. In any context. For any reason.
It would be silence. It would be “I don’t know if this is what I want right now.” Because maybe that’s not a no, but it’s definitely not a yes. It would be just about everyone agreeing that rape is bad, but only when it’s called rape; how the amount of men who will admit to getting someone drunk, or otherwise manipulating, coercing, or forcing them into a sexual act is so much larger than the amount of men will admit to raping someone.
How wrong is it, to continue to talk about sexual assault like it’s always that stranger lurking in the bushes, or always that cartoon caricature of a predatory fratboy and never… the boyfriend. Or the girlfriend. Or the best friend. Or the “ally.” Or that really sweet guy from class.
This is for that really sweet guy from class, who might be asking: what about the grey areas? I’m not a rapist. What if we’re just both really drunk? What if she sends mixed messages? What if I’m trying to do the right thing but I read those signals wrong?
Have you ever had sex while skydiving? Like where you talk about consent the same way you talk about wearing a parachute—no grey areas, no assumptions like “I’m pretty sure I’m wearing a parachute.” No questions like “I asked her to check my parachute and she didn’t say anything, but it was okay last time so I’m sure it’s good this time too.”
Have you ever had sex in a burning building, when smoke and cinder wrapped itself around your neck, but coming was more important to you than going? Have you ever had sex on a liferaft in the middle of the ocean, surrounded by sharks. I’m not saying the water can’t be cloudy. I’m just saying: we are under no obligation to swim through it. Have you ever not had sex? Just watched a movie, maybe made out, maybe made plans to get up again later, and then maybe days or weeks later, when you’re both there, and both ready, and both smiling, and both completely alive in your own bodies, and both listening to each other, fully, and maybe it isn’t love, maybe it’s just sex, and that’s perfectly okay, but love is so much bigger than “let’s spend our lives together” it is also “let’s spend this moment together” as two (or more) people, present, electric, the opposite of grey—the embodiment of human—hands, eyes, lips, everything.
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