Reading Reflection

I’ve finished reading a selection of slam poems, and I feel like I’m really beginning to understand the style. All of these poems are filled with emotion, no matter the subjects. These subjects range from the deliciousness of cheese, to the pay of a school teacher. So, there really is no limit for what you can talk about, as long as you mean what you’re saying. When the poets speak, their voices change tone, and tempo throughout the reading. The audience reacts to specific lines by letting out hoots and yells when the poet says something that they feel. This also seems to be another meaning of slam poetry, to get the audience to react. Slam poetry is written for competitions, if you don’t have the audience on your side you probably won’t win.

The syntax and diction for slam poetry is conversational for the most part. In fact, I think without the speaker’s voice involved it could almost be read as prose. When it is written out though, line breaks have sometimes been added, which help to add the effect of how the speaker says it. Other times it was just written out in a large paragraph. In videos the emotion comes out more clearly. You can hear the poet’s voice get louder, or faster, or slower, or more comical sounding or more dark sounding…the list goes on. A lot of times the voice speeds up into a crescendo until finally reaching that big line, which also gets the audiences biggest reaction. Though these poets are competing, most care more about getting their poetry out than actually winning the competition.