I heard more spoken word poetry in four days than I am ever likely to hear again in such a condensed period of time. Spoken word is exhausting and invigorating at the same time, and almost two weeks after the event it’s hard to form my thoughts into a coherent column.
In sports jargon, I guess you could say that Harvard’s preliminary bouts at College Unions Poetry Slam Invitational were intense—two of the teams we went up against in first rounds went on to finals. We challenged the audience with our poetry, we fought hard and practiced a lot, and after hearing a lot of emotional poems, the first-place title went to the well-deserving University of Texas-Austin. But in the end, CUPSI is so much more than a report of scores. I learned again and again how silly it is to slap numbers onto art.
So I’d like to share a poem with you. I wrote it as a way to collect my own thoughts about competitive poetry and human interaction over the four days our team spent in Boulder, Colo. It’s messy and meandering, but so are people. It’s tough to write poetry for performance—as soon as it’s out there, the goal of the poem becomes convincing listeners of your intent and your poetic skill rather than working through an idea in stanzas. So you can read this one to yourself. And no need score me on it.
Apology
I wrote a poem on the palm of my hand
But it washed off in the shower.
I think it had something to do with the recklessness I collected
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