You're Not a Real Poet...Are You?

There is a local poetry night that I absolutely love going to. It's inspiring to be around so many artistic and creative minds all at once. Sometimes, I even feel inspired to read some of my own work. A few weeks ago, after I had read a few new pieces, a young lady came up to me and said, "I really like your style. You're not a real performer. You're a poet." Her words struck me in the oddest way as I tried to determine if it was a disguised insult or a genuine compliment. I opted for the latter and smiled.

But, it got me thinking...what does it mean to be a "performance poet?" And what would our poetry greats think of all this? What would Langston Hughes think of the slam culture? What would Shakespeare or Robert Frost or E. E. Cummings think of the spoken word movement? These folks were poets in the most honorable and pure form. Yes, they sometimes read their work aloud, but their words stood alone on the page, unembellished by stage or intonation (except maybe Shakespeare and his plays). They focused on sentence structure and punctuation. They released anthologies and poetry books instead of performance cds, because they let the reader take from their words what they wanted.

This is not to bash performance poets. In fact, I love seeing people totally light the stage on fire with their words. I envy them for their skill and courage. But, for those of us who "only speak because the written word has all but gone out of style," it's an honor to be counted in the group of writers who wrote words that were fit to read - not just fit to speak.

Long story short, this inspired a poem about poetry...

Enjoy:-)

A Difference in Style
BY Susan Baba

I am not a spoken word artist
I am a poet
My words do not sit on display like plastic fruit
They are meant to be ingested
To roll around in your mouth until you’ve sucked all of the juice from them
To make you feel something in your stomach
Sometimes unsettling
But something
To shake through you
To rumble through you
until they're done

My words come to you naked
Peering from behind the ripped out pages
and scribbled out lines of my poetry notebook
With nothing to clothe them at all

I am not a spoken word artist
I am a poet
I am of the tribe of soothsayers
A dying line of women who can read a single book more than once
whose bookshelves and libraries are filled with
underlines
and highlighter marks
and smiley faces
beside words that have moved them
The weird chick who dares to laugh
or tear up
as she turns the pages of a well worn book
Only to watch the words she once fell in love with
unfold before her again

I am not a spoken word artist
I only speak because the written word has all but gone out of style
because you can only hear me if my words sound like hip-hop
or have a rhythm that makes you want to tap your feet
You can only feel me when the drama of my delivery
catches you by surprise
and snatches the chair right from under you
But I am not a spoken word artist
I stand before you
with nothing to guard my words but this small page