Cool-- I'm so pleased with the many ideas and experiences coming into this thread.
Ann, while something in me will continue to defend slams, I gotta admit I've never had the kind of fun at a slam that you describe. Events overtook my plans to attend my local slam this past week. But your "loan/lone shark" anecdote reminded me of the best surprise I ever got at the slam here in Louisville. Unfortunately, I can't tell it in comparable color and detail. But one regular slammer, I'll call him "Action," was what many have described elsewhere as a wanted poster for a slam-poet: loud, gesticulating, themes of the marginalized and the tone and force of the protest song. Formally, I've never heard him do anything less predictable or more interesting than couplet rhymes. Physically very animated; dramatically speaking, very presentational. And his whole bit, especially his themes, did what one critic compared to "not conveying any real challenging ideas, or persuade the audience of a new perspective, rather ringing bells the audience was already primed to salivate at anyway."
But two months ago, in his first-round slot at the slam, Action delivered a jeremiad against what he and everyone else in the room either did or expected: beat one's own drum, plead one's own case, as a surrogate catharsis for everyone's predictable social/economic/sexual frustrations. He indicted himself and all others on a charge of Lack of Imagination, in the first degree. One line I captured, "Can you tell no stories besides your own?"
Now that's a question I routinely ask of slammers and page-poets alike.
D
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