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Month 3

A mic. A stage. A pen. A page.

–Nate Marshall, slam poet

Ode to the Poets of Louder Than a Bomb

In poetry, winter represents death. Deft words are played out: icicle, bleak, forlorn, blueblack, lonely, dark. I searched for poems that exalt winter, speak of renewal, Christmas, fireplaces, but they are hard to find.

There is a group of poets, though, who warm the days by virtue of their voice. They are the participants of Young Chicago Authors' Louder Than a Bomb, an annual teen poetry slam that takes place in February – the loudest of blueblack months.

LTAB started in Chicago in 1985, and quickly spread its mad hot hip-hop poetry to NY, SF and other politically charged cities.

I learned about slam poetry in high school. I used to stay up late watching HBO’s Def Poetry Jam hosted by Russel Simmons. Young women, minorities, and white boys would spout their experience on gender roles and drug-addicted parents. I imagined myself on stage too, rhyming red-faced and angry on similar topics.

In Louder Than a Bomb, students compete in groups and individually. The game works in three rounds: preliminary, semi-finals, and finals. This year there are 40 high school teams of four to six students competing to make it to the finals at Vic Theatre on March 6.

“You guys are so lucky to have this forum,” I said to two Northside High School students on the 53 bus home. “You can speak out about things you care about. At my high school, we didn’t have anything like this."

But I doubt if my high school did have a poetry slam, I would have been a participant. I would have watched from the sidelines, admonishing yet reveling in the voices of students who could be so brave.

Speaking of brave, the team that wins will go on to Brave New Voices, the international slam poetry competition in Los Angeles. In LTAB prelims and semifinals students are judged by audience members, and at finals and Brave New Voices by celebrity poets and poetry supporters. But it's no matter, as they say, “The points are not the point, the poetry is the point.”

Slam poetry is written to be spoken. It is meant to be lived out through movement, and anger where compelled. In competition, a performance is based as much on the words as it is on the enthusiasm and style of the competitor. It is the greatest display of student expression and voice in the world. Whether they hit on gun violence or being Jewish in Chicago, they are the kinds of things I want to scream off rooftops, be it 85 degrees or zero.

A kid named Adam Gottlieb who won the something like the 2008 LTAB Inspiration Award said, “Writing a poem does not change the world. Learning about people, and understanding people, and really feeling inspired by the people who are very different from you, I would like to say that’s changing the world. And if not, it’s definitely coming much, much closer.”

I would like to say that students from Louder Than a Bomb, 10 points or one, are speaking out and up, and that is the best thing we can do in these lonely, dark months.

The old year may die, and a new one be born

That is bleaker and colder;

But it cannot dismay us; we dare it—we scorn,

For love makes us bolder.

-Ella Wheeler Wilcox, from “Bleak Weather”

Now watch this!:

Thar She Blows

The days move like a train, faster than you can count its load.

Almost every day, I get lost on my way to work. I finally had my routine down from the northern suburb where I first moved, and then I went ahead and moved again. Now I have to learn a new route, from a new part of the city. New towns have become the old Dodge.

My friend Rachel says that this is how most people spend winters in Chicago: In a daze, teetering between slightly and overwhelmingly depressed. I don’t doubt this. It’s hard to get out from under my electric blanket in the morning. I struggle to go to the store, to walk to the train, to walk the short block from the bus stop to my schools. I’m kind of eh.

It’s not just the snow. A Returned Peace Corps Volunteer/math teacher at one of the schools where I volunteer says this is her forth year back and she finally feels on track. “It took a year to calm down, the following year I understood more, the next year I went back to school, and know it feels like I know what I’m doing again.”

Four years is a long time. I’ll be 29 then. Hopefully by then I will have at least figured out what which direction to go. Eh.

Forecast for night of January 6, 2010:

Snow. Snow accumulation of 4 to 6 inches. Highs in the mid 20s. Light and variable winds in the morning becoming north 10 to 15 mph in the afternoon. Chance of precipitation 100 percent.

I wish we had more time for each other in this country.