irony observed

X is executive director of the Nuyorican Poets Café.

hearing loss

Having attended too many slams, he was now deaf to the more nuanced forms of poetry.

decibel level

No deep truth has ever been shouted.

—Juan Ramon Jiménez, The Complete Perfectionist: The Poetics of Work, translated and edited by Christopher Maurer (Doubleday, 1997), p. 150.

lower the volume

For the most part, good poets are humble not hortatory.

page and stage

The perfect combination of page poet and stage poet.


[National Poetry Slam this week in St. Paul.]

welcoming community

The heckler at the poetry reading was invited to come back next week to enter the slam.

orator extraordinaire

Slam poet, be a superhero whose power is oratory.

shouting

The slam poet apparently thought shouting was a poetic technique.