Hannah Hecht's Blog

Last month, I went to the MAC event where we hosted a couple of slam poets. I absolutely loved it. It was very apparent that as the poets were performing (because it was a lot more than just reciting) their pieces, the audience was completely engrossed in the performance. Their poems were emotionally moving in a way that I rarely find poetry to be moving. I think that a lot of their effectiveness has to do with their medium. In Capstone, we talk a little bit about how different mediums of writing go in and out of style. Back in the era that we’re studying, the pathway to becoming a successful writer was through short fiction published in popular magazines. Nowadays, the demand for short fiction is much lower than the demand for novels. In the same way, the college student audience probably wouldn’t have responded to someone standing up and reading Walt Whitman-style poetry as well as we responded to the slam poetry. Part of the poets’ success, I think, came from knowing their audience and being able to talk about issues that we care about in a way that was exciting and interesting.