Issue #8, October 1993
Slamming isn't my favorite kind of poetry reading; it privileges the long poem (because of its one poem limit) and leaves us hungry for greater intimacy with the poet. But I'll cop to slamming even, when someone like John Brady appears ready to criticize the whole venture — readings, poetry, popular art — from a theoretical position of dissatisfaction that fails to show any evidence of ever having attended (or participated in) one of these activities himself. This is not to say I believe Brady has never been to a reading or written a poem, but that his argument arrives from a purely polemical plane that dismisses popular art because it isn't more popular, because we aren't all participating in its production. Before engaging some of his more specious arguments, and getting into the real worth of readings, I'd like to say, in true slam fashion, 'Piss off, John.'
