Slam Poetry as a Perfect Doorway
Guiding through the path between the lines
Students often have difficulty in understanding the concept of reading between the lines. Interestingly enough, they do often understand subtext when applied in every day life. Two simple words such as "I know" change meaning in how they are uttered. It can be sarcastic, enthusiastic, dubious, emphatic ("I know"), and empathetic. However, as soon as they need to apply this to literary texts, they shut themselves off by a disinterested "I don't know".
Poetry has the challenge to convey subtext without inconspicuous intonation, melody, or an emotional tone. It needs to work with words and cadence, hidden in the stresses of those words. This requires effort and a willingness to understand. Often, though, words are uttered, songs skip language. They rely on well-known chords, catchy melodies, and BPM to grab the attention. Not so with poetry.
To segue students from the well-trodden paths of hit songs towards the realm of written verse, we can use slam poetry as it touches both worlds. Slam poetry heavily leans on rhythm and sounds while mixing poetical devices and deeper meaning. Slam poetry is meant to be performed. It uses the familiarity of song with the sophistication of poetry. It is the perfect guide toward subtext.
Maia Mayor's "Perfect" lends itself well to help students understand the subtext of a poem. The poem is about a mother criticising her daughter for being lazy. Why can't her child be like herself? The mother works hard and sacrifices her life so her daughter may thrive. And what does her daughter do? Smoke weed, biting nails, complain about the food, not drinking enough milk, writing poetry which offers nothing. But her mother loves her child, she wants her to succeed, to get a degree, to be perfect just like herself. It is a situation many teenagers in some shape or form recognise. It is puberty. It is doing what you want, rebelling against authority and that authority needing to reconcile with letting go. Before reading on, I advise you to listen to Mayor's recital of her own poem first.
What should strike the listener (or reader) immediately is the number of questions. The mother does not wait until she gets answered. She does not want a response from her daughter. She wants compliance, so her child will be perfect. The questions keep banging throughout the poem. It is the drum of the day for Maia. Topics get mingled. Biting nails shifts into eating sweets, eating well continues into getting enough calcium. It all adds to the daily humdrum; the endless train of complaints.
The banging is enforced by the many repetitions in the poem. In jargon they are called anaphora, epiphora, anadiplosis, or diacope. But unless you want your students to become literary critics, I would advice you not to scare them away. It will all be Greek to them. What does matter is why the repetition is there.
Like the repetition of the questions, the repeated phrases and words add to the daily banging of criticism.
You disappoint me, Maia.
You never appreciate what I do for you.
You never try to be a winner
And you never eat your dinner.
You never eat the dinner I consistently provide for you
And:
Be tall
Be perfect
Be perfect like me
The combination of alliteration, assonance and rhyme is, next to rhythm, the hallmark of slam poetry. Words become musical instruments, an orchestra where sounds are repeated, answered, and connected. Take for example these lines:
Do I need to force feed you discipline 'till you finally concede?
I cook and I clean and I don't stop 'till the soles of my feet bleed.
'Force', 'feed' and 'finally' alliterate, just like 'cook' and 'clean'. At the same time there is assonance in 'feed' and 'clean', and also with 'concede' and 'feet'. "Concede', by the way, rhymes with 'bleed' at the end of the next line, but also rhymes with the previous 'need' and 'feed' and it half rhymes with 'feet'. And, again, mind the repetition of words and structures of 'I need', 'I cook', 'I clean' and the word ' 'till'. These two lines not only have meaning, they rely heavily on sound, with the /iː/ having the largest contribution. Words become instruments, played by the poet.
Another example:
Stop committing yourself to songs and stories and spoken slam bullshit
in a world where degrees and PhD's impede the need for poetry.
Again the /iː/ sounds draws attention 'degree', 'PhD's', 'impede', 'need', and 'poetry', whilst in the previous line the /s/- sound glues words (and thereby ideas): 'yourself', 'songs', 'stories', 'spoken', 'slam', and 'bullshit'. Is everything bullshit, including her daughter? 'impede' and 'need' rhyme while the 'and' structure adds repetition. This is both a song and a poem as words are both text and instruments.
So what is the subtext? What is between the lines? Does Maia like these comments? Probably not. They are presented as noise, void of meaning. She never speaks in the poem. It is her mother that does the talking. We get glimpses of the life of Maia, but always through the lens of her mother (interestingly, the poet is also called Maia and it is recited by her). The focus is on the daughter, the questions and comments are aimed at her. But what if we focus on the mother? Is Maia's mother a bad person?
You get a sense of desperation from the mother. She doesn't understand her daughter. She loves her, but does not know how, as is shown in the final (repetitive) lines:
I'm just trying to help you.
I'm just trying to love you.
I'm just trying to love you.
You have to let me love you
On first glance you might say Maia is the victim here. She is the one verbally hammered by questions and critique. But can we vie for the mother being a victim too? I think we can. Because first of all, where is the father? He is never mentioned nor hinted at. Chances are the mother is alone, having to make ends meet, sacrificing many personal ambitions: "as I constantly remind you of the life I set aside for you / That meal doesn't pay for itself". She gets up early: "I get up at 5 in the morning every day / I start my day the same way worried that I'll collapse." Life has not been kind to her. Maia's mother did not or could not succeed, so her daughter must. The world is an evil place and you should not lazy around. You should be prepared.
But the mother still claims, continually, to be perfect. But is she? The final lines (as also shown above) show doubt, uncertainty. How can you not be certain while claiming to be perfect? Maybe she wants to told that she is perfect, for all the work, all the sacrifices, she has made in her life. And maybe, she just want to be loved. For if Maia lets her mother love her, she can be perfect like her mother. And if she is like her mother, she will love her mother the way her mother wishes to love her. It seems both mother and daughter are victims here (though not without responsibility).
That is subtext.
I discuss this poem in class at the end of a poetry series in which we start with the alliteration of the Anglo-Saxons in Beowulf, we continue with the rhyme of the French Normans in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. Then we visit the more sophisticated sonnets of the Renaissance, to then take a leap towards Modernism (we discuss the Romantics and Victorian in a different year), where we see words used in more experimental ways. We end with contemporary slam poetry, bringing everything together.
A good follow up would be Amanda Gorman's “The Hill We Climb” which works in many similar ways but adds history and nationalism. This one might be more difficult because it requires more knowledge about both distant and recent American history.
Another, but more enigmatic, slam poem about poverty in America is Aiya Meilani's untitled poem starting with "Societal Sculptures". In this poem Aiya Meilani discusses the poor, gun violence, poor working conditions, a disregard for nature, and the destructiveness of consumerism.
Slam poetry can help students understand the workings of poetry. It can be a doorway into the world of Keats, Dickinson, and Shakespeare. Poetry is the play on words in which meaning is created both within as between the lines, experimenting with sounds and meaning. It is finding beauty in and through language for "Beauty is truth, truth beauty that is all ye know on earth, and all ye need to know."