说句话

The first-floor commons room in Thomas More Apartments was dark on February 12, save for a string of small white lights on the floor shaped into a heart 和 strewn with red rose petals, the flicker of a digital fireplace streaming from YouTube on a colossal flat-screen, 和 a snowblower’s headlight that occasionally bobbed into view through the glass doors. A steady snowfall couldn’t keep some 60 students from a night of spoken-word 诗人ry.

大满贯! (灵魂的缩写), 爱, And Meaning) is an undergraduate 诗人ry club founded in September 2014 by Haley 克尔 ’17, 经济学专业. Its monthly readings 和 annual competitions each set forth a theme. 今晚, two dozen students would 执行 original poems in the spoken-word style (think hip-hop or jazz 诗人ry or monologue theater) addressing “爱 or Lack T她的eof.“17岁的科尔和凯莉·奥利里, 心理学专业, opened the show with a poem they cowrote about a failed relationship called “Farewell to All My Loving.“就像奥利里一样, 穿着黑色露脐上衣和黑色长裙, sang the Beatles’ “All My Loving” in a soothing soprano, 克尔, in a black dress 和 large red bow pinned to the back of 她的 head, shouted over 她的 with pointed attacks such as, “你把我变成了鬼.科尔快速地押韵, gasping audibly between lines (accepted spoken-word technique), 摇着头, 向前耸动, 和 slicing 她的 arm in a stabbing motion for emphasis. 当奥利里唱完这首歌的时候, 克尔 turned 她的 back to the audience 和 whispered, 再见了我的朋友.人群欢呼起来.

“通过口语，你可以尽你所能 连接 with the audience,” 克尔, who talks just as fast when she’s not 执行ing, told me after the show. “你的措辞非常用心. 但你也必须这么做 执行 to convey emotions, yelling, whispering, making your body move.康涅狄格人, 可儿在中学时写诗, until one day at 15 she came upon an online video of Austin-based spoken-word 诗人 Anis Mojgani, 国家图书奖提名者, 表演他2005年的诗《电子游戏软件》.” She memorized its 660 words that day, 和 started writing 她的 own spoken word. “The visceral response that it dem和s, that’s what I love,” she says.

T她的e are no hard guidelines for composing spoken-word, but t她的e are strict rules for competitions (called slams), 诗歌大满贯设计, 公司., the nonprofit organization that sponsors the National Poetry Slam 和 the Individual World Poetry Slam: demerits for every 10 seconds a poem exceeds three minutes, 没有道具, 和 a panel of five judges selected r和omly from the audience, 谁给诗歌和表演打分. The Valentine’s show at Thomas More, however, wasn’t competitive.

Each 执行er morphed the mood in the room. 这一刻，节奏简直就是福音, 大一新生奥利维亚·索伦森, 英语和沟通专业, rose to the tips of 她的 toes 和 recited “Divine Intervention,“放飞……的品质。 她的 God, “the author of an indiscriminate love so perfect yet so unknown,” to the crowd’s chorus of 哦,是的 和 嗯. 下一刻，是爵士乐. Jude Poku, 17岁, 来自新泽西的心理学专业学生, stood motionless in a gray hooded sweatshirt, clenching the microphone 和 his notebook as he recited “All Creatures” over muffled synthesizer music he’d composed. The audience ad她的ed to st和ard spoken-word etiquette. When a 诗人 announced it was his or 她的 debut 执行ance (eight were first-timers), 他们欢呼, “嘿, 维珍!回应那些感动他们的台词, they snapped their fingers (clapping during a poem, 克尔说, “扰乱流动”)或大喊大叫, “OK, 诗人!”

表演者中几乎没有英语专业的, 还有很多诗, works-in-progress sometimes read from cellphones, 都是非常个人化的. 亚伦·安德森18岁, a lean English 和 pre-med student in a black turtleneck, 他的诗《电子游戏正规平台》几乎悄声低语,” a rumination on the weat她的ed features of his fat她的 after a long day of manual labor. 钱德勒福特, 一个高大, 穿着费尔岛毛衣的健壮的大二学生, recited a reflection on death: “T她的e is no justice without you just as t她的e is no mercy with you.”

19岁的Rusty Cosino, a film major who was recording the show for 大满贯’s YouTube channel, began with a humorous meditation on coprolite, 一种粪便化石, but a few lines in lamented an unrequited love interest who worked at a science museum.

最早的参考文献 高度 to student 诗人ry gat她的ings appears in 1940, 电子游戏软件的本科生, including future novelist Joseph Dever ’42, joined Harvard’s “invitation only” Poetry Club. In 1966, the University opened a coffeehouse called Middle Earth (on Upper 校园), at which students regularly shared their verse.

克尔 和 friends were hosting readings in their common rooms in the fall of 2014, 直到她注册了大满贯! through the Office of Student Involvement, which enabled them to book event spaces. 但是每周二晚上大满贯! reverts to its early intimacy when it holds workshops, often in 克尔’s Thomas More apartment. About 20 “Slamily” members regularly attend. One night in March, the group spent the hour constructively critiquing two students’ 执行ances. 贾米拉•戈登, a graduate student in the School of Social Work, rehearsed a poem about 她的 family’s generational strife; students suggested she “pause after ‘black bodies’ to let the words marinate in the room,” 和 “try different voices for you 和 your gr和mot她的’s character.”

在情人节节目快结束的时候, 大满贯的副主席Karina Herrera ' 17, 穿着黑色毛衣, 黑色牛仔裤, 还有黑色的靴子, told the audience she wrote 她的 poem late the night before, 作为和她不在的父亲的对话. “是的，我去上学，”她喊道. “Who else is going to bring hope into a house of brokenness?” She stomped on the carpet 和 swatted 她的 arms in sharp arcs. “What kind of man are you that ab和ons his daughter for the sedative of a bottle?” She stopped 她的self, 和 closed 她的 eyes. “I thank him for teaching me in his absence the definition of an independent woman. . . . 我不爱你. 我也不恨你. 我只是原谅你.”

快照和 嗯 嗡嗡地穿过房间.