larrywinfield.com: The Spiel
...the spiel of the poet...
I didn't grow up wanting to be a writer. I was an Art major in high school when the poetry bug bit me, but I didn't continue writing for almost a decade after. In college I studied Art, Speech/Theatre and was a jazz DJ on the campus radio station for a time. In 1981 I was an illustrator for a local Chicago literary magazine called "Nit & Wit". In 1982 I started keeping a journal, and published my first set of chapbooks between 1987 & 1990. In June of 1990 I started hitting the poetry venues, and things have gone from there....
OK, here's my personal creed:
Poets are among the last group of creative artists who are expected to accept poverty and struggle as matters of course (even if they've been formally certified by the LitCrit Elite). Regardless of the 'spoken word' hype of the past few years, the poetry scene (the WHOLE poetry scene) is still too small in the general scheme of things for even the 'elite' to make a living at it. Even so, some of us don't want to spend 20 years playing footsie with the 'academy' just to be a poet; struggling for tenure, publishing or perishing. Neither do we want to be trapped in the passing parade of culturally shallow mass-entertainment just to be a poet - forced to become a clownish (or humorless and self-important) caricature to get any attention, always thrown away when the parade moves on. Those can't be the only paradigms for how to survive and create as a poet in this post -millennial era.
Poets are certainly among the last group of artists who carry the full weight and privilege of freedom of speech with them, so I also believe that poets should live up to their dangerous reputations by sometimes reading a poem that's totally inappropriate to the audience - not just to be shocking, but to make a point, and to remember those who've dared to speak out...
The performance poetry audience (and that includes us poets) wants good words and voices, and a good poet, on a bare stage with only a voice and a gut can put on a damn good show. They (I hope) also want poems that aren't dense, dilletantish and convoluted, requiring an Arts degree to interpret (I'm also asking for that audience to think that a good poem is worth a damn, is worth as much as a song, and should be paid for).
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