GRAND FINALE - Verbs on Asphalt

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and this has been a year of changes, Felice Belle is the new face of slam on Friday Night. Celena Glenn has taken Dot’s spot in the Wednesday Night Slam Open and is placing her stamp on the evening.The slammers are the new faces out of the nowhereof that is the point origin of all Nuyo poets, slammers and all. This year’s Grand Slam Finale is the first one in a few years that will not bring me butterflies or whirli-gig.Those things are now the property of Felice Belle and I hope she does better with them than I. I have had a wonderful ride at the helm, and some nine months after jumping off I look forward to actually feeling as thought I jumped off somewhere ago. I might actually be an unstressed member of the congregation. It’s been exhilaration after epiphany in the unfolding of new word play and experiment in baring souls and history. Pilgrim poets and sojourns from a page to the largest stage in the universe. Then we forget about this slam... I have had questions posed concerning the history of slam from all over and even some insistence that it might be of some importance. There is in fact a history and there is, concomitant with that, sources for those who really need to know. It might be enough to say that the idea WE HAVE MADE IT THROUGH ANOTHER YEAR Photo: Michael Meyer
OF NUYORICAN SLAMMING was to prevent a fist fight between two poets.The crowd has yet to stop braying for the blood of sentients, and so an event is born.Yeah, slam is an event. As the crowd goes, maybe so the slam. The Poetry Slam is a package of memories for those poets and audience who found out that the winning and losing are as private as the that moment of delivery, the communion of artist and surrender, remembering finally the poems own insistence and the inevitable letdown of even great scores.The magic is that we share something not so easily definable, greater than the outward trappings of slam. Damn the bloodlust, once we get past the moment, we realize what we are sharing.These are personal moments seeking the contact wherever it is possible, this is the play of the magical. Slam is an event, it requires a modicum of production value, phone calls and hoping, and finally those willing to play. Be of the play. So Felice’s job is explained, there is a slam to present, gather up your poets and light Kevin O’Neill’s beacon; “quit your political streakin’ get up on the stage and do some speakin’....come on down to the Nuyorican”. And here we are, it’s just another slam, it’s the Grand Slam Finale, and we gotta get a team together to go to Providence and slam against 55 other teams...shark bait, one might say.The Friday night Nuyo slams, whoever the slam master, are the stuff of legends and lore.True seekers have spent five dollars all these years for a full helping of humanity in all it’s variations, all it’s inventions. It isn’t always fun. There have been missteps along the way. Like a New York subway ride, it ain’t over till it’s over and that is not about when you get off the train. Sometimes the ride was not what we visited when we slipped token into turnstile.Turned love into a cheesy rhyme that harkens back to a clumsy moment. The judges just don’t get it sometimes. That is the least of the worries.What about the poet? What is their discovery? Do not check your ego at the door, it is as necessary as the last edit. Check your heart at the door, make certain that it is not hurtling down that dark subway tunnel long after you stepped off the train. Beat with the rhythm of the diastolic and systolic thump and rest...and when you have found it, wrap your ego gently in the heart’s chambers till the trip home beckons. There have been accidents aplenty. We have all had to learn to play again. One sits in the relative safety of audience whose attention span is relative to the blood poured on stages of revealing, sometimes it works out and we secure the grail, other times it is a failing of heart or will. For those who choose the calling, the outside chance is one of ripping of old skin—-slam exalts and debases. Let audience know this as well. Sometimes the details get swept up in a glossolalia of rhyme and tics, and in the last minute the sharing is obvious.We are with you we have bent our collective will towards the triumph and fall. Slam is an event to take along and unwrap slowly. Unlike the movies, you have been there. If the apocrypha of the fist fight bears any such value, if the slam birthing is one to be taken at face (or any) value, then what of the fights that happened afterwards. For all disagreements, there are expectations unfulfilled or over- filled. What of this book that tells you we have been here and we have done this or that and that Felice is calling all aboard for another edition and all the water under the bridge is just that, under the bridge.We will do this again next year I am hopeful that we will have learned enough again how not to do this of how not to make more of this than any other Friday night for all there is to be offered. There are a whole bunch of slams going on after this. Check all over the country, all over the world.When you are all done, don;t forget to light the beacon. Thanx for coming out y’all. Don’t forget to talk with a poet or two if you have been touched or riled, even by something you heard.• – keith roach, Nuyorican Slammaster
Page 1 and 2: GRAND SLAM <strong
Page 3: Photo: Syreeta McFadden SLAMbook Ma
Page 7 and 8: Grand Slam Finalist Celena Glenn Sl
Page 9 and 10: Photo: Clare Ultimo Slam Championsh
Page 11 and 12: keith hosting the ‘99 Grand Slam
Page 13 and 14: Syreeta McFadden Syreeta McFadden S
Page 15 and 16: Michael Meyer MEETFELICEBELLEnuyori
Page 17 and 18: REFLECTIONSONTRIBES-aGATHERING BY S
Page 19 and 20: THEY’RE NOT MY HEROES They’re n
Page 21 and 22: THIS AD SPACE GRACIOUSLY DONATED TO
Page 23 and 24: A Gathering of the Tribes celebrate

GRAND FINALE - Verbs on Asphalt

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