The Evolution of Poetry

    “We’re not in Kansas anymore,” I thought to myself, stepping out of my friend’s truck and onto the streets of San Francisco.  After a lengthy plane ride I found myself simultaneously exhausted and ready for adventure.  I looked around to see swarms of people of all kinds:  Business men with their matching suits and leather briefcases, fashionable women in their Prada jeans with Gucci stilettos, new bohemians in their headscarves and broom skirts.  It was a veritable smorgasbord of people.  I must have been smiling electric, because my friend Chris, who I stayed with out there, grinned and said “just wait for the poetry.”  I had told him that I was coming to San Fran to research the Beats and check out the San Francisco poetry scene, so he had arranged for me to read at a poetry slam in Oakland the next night.  I spent the rest of that evening trying to write the perfect poem.  Now, I must admit that much of my poetry is in the vein of Ginsberg and Ferlinghetti with their whimsical language and laid-back flow.  I was pretty sure that, this being San Francisco, home of the Beats, I would fit right in.  The morning of the poetry reading Chris asked me to read for him what I had written for that night.  I read for him the poem that I had written upon my first impression of San Francisco:

I want it all
Diamond words dripped from dagger smile
White teeth ready to bite into this
Rainbow world
Anxious eyes soaking in the sanctity
Feet pounding ceremoniously
Through all too familiar foreign streets.
These fashionistas with fantasy faces
Walk on cloud nine
Testing testing
One two thee
This is not a test, this has got to be…
I don’t believe we’re in Kansas anymore.

After I finished reading a smile broke out on Chris’s face.  He then suggested that I not read at the slam, after-all.  Understandably offended, I asked why and in response he put on a c.d.  “This,” he said, “is what you’ll be hearing tonight.”  I listened as a cool bass rhythm began to pump out of the speakers.  Then the poetry.  Only, it wasn’t the poetry I thought I’d hear; it was more like rap.  “Spoken word,” he called it.  Well, I was determined to read that night, so I came up with something that I though would fit in with that scene:

I’ve been stuck in the mental constipation
Of this starred and spangled nation
Had to create my own creation
Vacate to my own vacation
Need escape to some good vibrations
Found some californication

And time stopped

But this place just keeps on going
Outward storms may be a-blowing
And the times they are a-changing
Lives keep on rearranging
Life’s a book, you can’t just skim it
you can’t just float, you’ve got to swim it
If there’s a heaven then I’m in it
Here they walk swagger holy
Live life fast, taking it slowly
And when they talk it’s angel mojo
Words weighed down like heavy soul flow
Here we go and go and go and

Gone

I felt like this poem would be more suitable to the audience, so I went with it, and I’m glad I did.  It was well received by everyone and, following my “debut” I was asked to record some of my poetry in a recording studio down the street. I happily did (and will also happily send the recording Mars Hill’s way when I get a copy). 

Though the poetry scene in San Francisco is not what it once was, it is still thriving.  It definitely has the voice of a new generation, but I suppose that is what is appropriate.  The Beats were the voices of their generation, and would probably be disheartened if they found that nothing had changed since their hey-day.  Things are faster now, and a bit harder, but people are still howling for what they believe.  The art of word is not lost, only evolving.