Documenting the Poetic

We disdain competition and its ally war And are fighting for our lives And the spinning of poetry's cocoon of action. We refuse to meld the contradictions but Will always walk the razor For your love. The best poet Always loses. — Bob Holman, Slam Poet

The invocation is spoken and the night is alive. Ahhh... bohemian rhapsody, New York style. A lanky cat crawls under the stage, the microphone screeches. The name of the game is Slam Poetry. Thirty poets. Three minutes each. Have you ever seen the shape of sound? Good luck — you will be scored, and there is a prize. Welcome to the Nuyorican Poets Café. A thief, a junkie I've been committed every known sin Jews and Gentiles... Bums and Men of style... run away child police shooting wild... mother's futile wails... pushers making sales... dope wheelers and cocaine dealers... smoking pot streets are hot and feed off those who bleed to death... — Pauly Arroyo, Slam Poet

When I first decided to shoot my documentary on the underground movement of slam poetry in New York City, I was faced with a problem analogous to the blank page for the writer. When you write stories you begin at "It was a dark and stormy night . . ." or "Once upon a time . . ." but in a documentary, where do you start filming? A panorama of the city? The silver wisp of smoke escaping a poet's cigarette? How do you mold that gray mass of clay called "reality" into a meaningful and beautiful thing?

Fortunately, in film all you need to begin with is the ability to see. To be able to look at a specific area in space, frame it with your hands and say "That's the shot I want," like cutting out a cookie from that big clump of dough called reality. Who can forget the simplicity of the infamous "plastic bag scene" in "American Beauty"? As the writer Alan Ball said, "You can observe a lot by watching." And so I watched.

I watched every Wednesday night, as a wave of people of different races, cultures, religions and languages came to step up to the lonely microphone at the Nuyorican and open themselves to strangers. One by one they spilt out their poetry — mothers, lovers, students, skinheads, businessmen, army sergeants, loud mouths, loners — a true bunch of "backdoor poets" sweeping all gradations of personality. Some had social messages, some spoke as beatnik prophets, others simply confessed broken dreams, lost lovers, faded lives, the sanctuary of hope. Regardless of the message, all of them spoke out of a need to dig deep and find a common denominator to be shared between the poets and the audience. To excavate the lost voices swallowed up in the amorphous mass of the City. I nail my palms with my pen to my desk and confess of all my committed sins I give my Words to you but can you hear me? — Celena Glenn, Slam Poet

But while the poets' messages were profound, it was their delivery that shook. Slam poetry it's called and appropriately so. They heaved their souls out into that room. I had heard poetry before, but I had never seen it until then. And there I was filming, a rigid figure of academia, paralyzed by the color of bohemian rhapsodies. One particular night, a 13-year-old won the competition. He clutched his 10-dollar prize and performed his encore. I had never been so humbled in my life.

Poetry and the experience of bohemian life in the village — a stark contrast from the ivy-covered spires of Princeton. Neglected pasts, trampled lives, bohemian fairy tales — overlooked stories from forgotten people, and yet their stories were hidden gems . . . they must be told before they are lost. The thing we overlook the most is the beauty of the local, the everyday.

There is a spoken word movement spreading across the country. In what many are deeming the voice of our generation, poets in cafes are speaking in 20th-century versions of speakeasies. Though it's underground, music studios from the likes of Capitol Records to Sony have already started pursuing the talent. The spoken word is on fire.

And what better way of capturing this surging movement than with the emerging art form of our generation? Film — an art form that is only 100 years old, one that is growing and maturing along with us. And if words "strain, crack . . . slip, slide, perish and decay with imprecision," as T. S. Eliot said, then perhaps film can fill literature's void in expressing the ineffable — to be able to create things that remind us of what is beautiful, what is true, with a fusion of music, dance, poetry and photography.

I found that yearning especially in the urbanity of New York. People are tired, weary of monochromatic lives, cars, traffic lights, gray rain, hazy sun. We go to work; we come home. We are dry and deflated and then we watch a film that vibrates. It breathes life into us. We all have a common denominator. We are human. What art has been granted a dream more poetical and more real at the same time?

Perhaps these are the quixotic dreams of naive youth. True to the idealist that I am, I've flung around weighty words like "art" and "generation" and "movement" and made an abundance of pretty, sweeping statements. Perhaps this is all the blind ambition of a college student wrapped in a period of her life where immortality is the riding spirit. I don't know. All I know is that as youth we have got to speak, to see, to create. We don't have a choice. Youth and idealism are terrible things to waste. And perhaps film is our tool. Fill us and we will deliver. Jane Han '02 is an English major from Ontario, Canada. She can be reached at janehan@princeton.edu.