Confessional/Tragedy Poem Musings

[skonen_blades]

Curae leves loquuntur ingentes stupent - Slight griefs talk, great ones are speechless. (minor losses can be talked away, profound ones strike us dumb) (Latin)

This is the major problem with confessional/tragedy poetry. Or, I should say, my major problem with writing poetry that explores the larger tragedies in my life. I’m down with listening to other people talk about their wounds.

I’m uncomfortable with speaking about the personally horrific mostly because I can’t find the words. I cannot find a poem to express how I feel about things like my dad’s passing, the problems that members of my family face every day or my own childhood land mines.

The playwright David Hare went to a concentration camp as a tourist a few years ago and was hit hardest by the unbroken ranks of documentation, the hundreds of thousands of photographs and files on each prisoner, that filled up one entire wing of the camp's main headquarters. The organization needed to perpetrate, willfully, this level of murder was awe-inspiring and chilling.

But for him, the parts of the tour that hit the falsest notes, ironically, were the art pieces at the end of the tour. He was struck by the feebleness of of their efforts to encapsulate something indefinable. The results were hollow and garish. “What is a painting of a starving man?” he asks. “What is a sculpture of a dying child?”

Annelyse Gelman down at the Berkeley Youth Slam two weeks ago mentioned that the real tragedies in her life were the ones she couldn’t speak about. The poem was a burn on facebook RIP messages mostly but I get the feeling that even if she could find a way to creep around the edges of definition for those personal tragedies, she herself would never in a million years bring them onto a stage and definitely wouldn't bring them onto a stage for points.

This is my viewpoint as well. I don’t say it as a damnation of people who exorcise their demons at poetry slams. I realize that they are up there saying what others in the audience wish they could say. Their poems are valuable because it lets people in the audience know that they’re not alone. I get that. I’m not critical of those poems.

I might be critical of, if anything, how often they appear on slam stages because it robs those poems of their power. After my sixth or seventh “I suffered abuse” poem, the words no longer hit me as hard as they should have. It’s not something I want to grow jaded to but I can feel it happening.

When I’m on stage, I feel a compulsion to entertain. I want to distract the audience from their own pains, not highlight them. I want to take them away from this horrible reality, not hold up a mirror. I feel like that's our job up there. But that’s just me. I realize that this isn't a new debate and there are many schools of thought on the matter.

What do you think?




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Comments

Sally's two cents

[(Anonymous)]

Great topic.
Personally my most common reaction as an audience member is to feel uncomfortable. I oftentimes feel trapped too, and etiquette dictates it would be rude to get up and leave. That being said, some truly great slam artists I've heard have managed to deal with sensitive issues in a way that doesn't feel like an artist airing their baggage on stage as a type of therapy. The Reverend Mike Magee and Shane Koyzane have both dealt with personal issues on stage but I think the difference is that when they do use personal sources it's for a larger overall purpose.

[donnaidh-sidhe.livejournal.com]

As for myself, I don't have much of an issue of people talking about their demons. I've had it happen often enough that yes, I have gotten used to it, but only insofar as it stops embarrassing me and so I can actually listen with fewer things getting between me and understanding.

I haven't been to any poetry slams at all, and I don't want to go alone, so I can't speak for what trends there. However, it's hard for me to remain 100% openminded when people air their tragedies for art's sake -- in whatever medium -- and don't do what I perceive as a good job in doing so. For the most part I feel pity/compassion, but every now and then, a little part of me goes, "You whored out your soul and it wasn't even that good?" And I think that's the reaction I get that makes me a little bit angry, both at them and myself.

Sorry if this isn't what you're comfortable hearing. Sometimes it's hard to walk the line between honest and cruel.

[skonen-blades.livejournal.com]

Yeah, me too. I'm not talking about conversations or LJ entries or whatever. I'm talking about competitive poetry specifically.

Yeah, there's that aspect as well. Like, 'you just bared your soul on stage and it was badly written. That just makes it ten times worse.'

I don't know if you're directing those last two sentences at me or the fictional artist that's doing pathos badly. In any case, we agree on this.

[donnaidh-sidhe.livejournal.com]

No, not you specifically. It's just that I know you do the slam poetry and so by talking about this stuff, I'm talking about a group you more or less identify with.

[skonen-blades.livejournal.com]

Right, right, I see. No, no offense taken. I find that poetry slams cover a lot of bases.

But it's like comedy, y'know? To get an audience right away, there are a couple of 'easy mark' jokes. Like a fart joke or some swear words or a jab at the opposite sex or whatever. As someone who's done comedy, I see these jokes as cheap and amateurish. Almost cheating. Lowest-common-denominator gags.

With slam poetry, you've only got three minutes to really hook an audience. One very effective way to do this is through the personal reveal of tragedy. Instantly, people are paying attention to you and on your side. People score the bravery it took the poet to open up about that, wiping tears from their eyes, all that. Another way is political outrage. George Bush is really dumb! Gay marriage is okay! And like that. Preach to the choir and get them riled up.

I see these as the comedy equivalent of easy marks. I empathize because the tools are there and they work. And I like the comedians and slam poets start with an easy mark and then take that cliche to the next level and make it something more.

Re: Sally's two cents

[skonen-blades.livejournal.com]

Yeah, the best artists I've seen start off with something that's personal and then go big with it as the central thrust of their poem.

[kindelingboy.livejournal.com]

I think a really good poe, can make someone laugh and cry in the same evening. Doing that kind of thing in a competition does seem like it would cheapen those experiences that the writing is based on, but it is exactly those kinds of experiences that make for fantastic art, and isn't that what it is about? Providing the best art you can?

It may cheapen the experience, and may be a cheap tactic, but being able to draw out real emotions from people is what I love about good writing, and it seems it is often well served by drawing on deep-rooted, personal tragedies and triumphs. If a writer does it well, it's like they've drawn a hand into me, grasped something that I didn't think anyone else knew about, and pulled it out into the light. Now suddenly I'm just like everyone else again, I know that other people have gone through all this before, and now I don't have to think about it, because I have the words to describe it now.

I can't imagine being able to produce that kind of thing without drawing on some kind of personal experience.

So I say confess, it can make for good art.

[skonen-blades.livejournal.com]

Cheers, Michael. That's good to read. I can totally dig it. It *is* about providing the best art you can with the voice at your disposal, whatever shape that takes. That's good to remember. Thank you.

[icecreamemperor.livejournal.com]

I think you should write a good poem and the audience really doesn't have anything to do with it. What you can and cannot write about, or bring yourself to write about, is part of who you are, and so part of the good poems you are able to write. I think it is dangerous to think of certain things as fundamentally off limits or unspeakable -- to think that way personally, I mean, to think I myself cannot say this, it is impossible, as though it were a permanent or irrefutable part of your expression.

Maybe you cannot figure out how to say it now, maybe you just don't want to say it, but if you want to find a way then that is the best reason to try and write a poem. It is supposed to be a challenge, you are supposed to be challenging yourself to say something important and to say it in an interesting way. If I am no longer affected by poems on certain topics it is because people are not writing those poems in interesting or challenging ways -- and the topic itself has lost some of its power. But the topic itself cannot carry a poem, it has to be how it is written about.

[skonen-blades.livejournal.com]

Those are extremely good points. Thanks for weighing in on the matter. It's really good to hear you say that.

Excellent topic

[monkeypudding.livejournal.com]

And it's something that I wrestle with myself.

It's an odd thing sometimes. And occasionally I feel awkward and dirty about using a so called "personal tragedy" piece in a competition. It can seem manipulative.

I think the artist needs to examine why they are performing it and if they are ok with their motivations then fine.

For the most part I've that I can think of I've pulled out an abuse poem a couple of times hoping that it would push me or my team over the top in a competition. But I was fine with that. One becaue I felt it was well written and provided a different take on the topic. Top approach it in a way that isn't obvious.

And secondly at the very least I have always hoped that at least one person in the audience might need to hear that piece as much as I felt I needed to perform it.

More and more I prefer to those confessional sorts of poems in non slam settings or in a feature performance where you can wrap it within an entire world view of your set.

I really enjoyed the poem you read the other night about your dad. And upon reading it here and finding out it was about your dad made it resonate with me even more.

I believe absurdity and surrealism are the perfect approaches to these topics because the experience of tragedy, in my opinion, is entirely surreal. At least for me and so the non sense makes the perfect sense when digging in the dirt of such things.

I definitely believe that topics such as rape and sexual abuse and all other sorts of horrors should be presented and explored on stage and in art. We would become even crazier than we are if we didn't let it out. And I also think it is important for an artist to explore their motivations and points of view while creating it.

In the context of a poetry slam I dislike it when something feels like it has been written specifically to garner points by utilizing a heavy subject matter.

I enjoy poems that have been written as an expression of someone's experience (whether written well or not) and they just happen to be sharing it at a poetry slam. I would like to think I can tell the difference.

I also enjoy poems about suicidal clowns.

Re: Excellent topic

[skonen-blades.livejournal.com]

Great response, RC. I feel pretty similarly about the whole thing. I remember when Jeremy got up there and did an amazing, quick poem about his brother, it really tore my heart out. I love it when people get up there and say these important, important, personal things. It's a forum to say these things to people in the audience that may have thought that they were alone. I agree with what you said. On the suicidal clown tip, though, who doesn't like a little suicidal clown action?

[jeff2001.livejournal.com]

I think this one gets it absolutely right:

http://thediagram.com/2_2/kerr.html

Poems written after the death of her twin brother.

Emotional porno is impressive to the young, just as a diaper dump is to a toddling Picasso. As we get older we learn how to bring our art to bear on those things that have happened to us. It is not something conducive to public works, however...it is meant to be enacted in the heart alone.

[skonen-blades.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I get what you're saying. It's not so much what you're expressing as it is how you're expressing it. That's an amazing poem. The first time I read it, I didn't get that it was about her twin. I thought it was about her husband. Great piece.