Smells Like Sweat - Must Be the Finals

(The Poetry Channel is an e-zine about the national poetry scene, written by my friend Juliette Torrez. We attended the 1997 National Poetry Slam together, got drunk and bitched about it together, and she asked me to write up my bitches into an article for her. Wow, did I piss some people off.)

So, a couple of disclaimers to begin with.

First, let's acknowledge the fact that there were a lot of things that the staff of the 8th Annual National Poetry Slam (NPS) did right. They did manage to get the entire event run from start to finish, which is no small feat, especially considering the extra controversies and frustration factors of this particular year.

Second, let's acknowledge the fact that this was the first NPS I have ever attended, and my opinions are influenced thusly. If you believe some of my criticisms to be unfair to Connecticut because they happen routinely every year... you are probably right.

Third, let's acknowledge the fact that I am not writing this merely to make people feel bad or to get upset. Even though I know that feelings WILL get hurt with this article, the purpose is merely to point out the things that went wrong, so that future committees will be able to avoid these mistakes.

Lastly, let's acknowledge the fact that not all of these criticisms are exactly mine. There are a lot of people across the country I spoke with who had many criticisms, and I have tried to incorporate as many as I heard into this article. The problem is that most of these people are working with poetry as their primary source of creative work, and must remain diplomatic in public. As primarily a writer of novels, it was determined that I have the least to lose by pissing off the staff of this year's NPS. And don't get me wrong, they're GONNA be pissed off when they read this article. But like I said, there is very little they could do to hinder my creative career, and so these communal complaints have all been put under my name, even though I didn't necessarily first come up with all of the complaints.

Okay, that being said...

There are really not many things that need to be done to please the type of people who mostly attended this year's NPS -- that is, young, artistic, poor, liberal poets, people desperately trying to make a living off their writing and who sacrificed much to get across the country to begin with. For me personally, it's fairly simple -- give me a good place to perform, give me a quiet, enthusiastic crowd, give me a chance to sell my books, and get me drunk afterwards. If you do these things, then any other problems that arise will probably not matter very much to me, and I will walk away from the entire week thinking that it was successful and that I had a good time.

Unfortunately, none of things seemed to matter a whole lot to the committee running this year's slam. Since these are my main criticisms, allow me a chance to elaborate.

VENUES. This was easily the singlemost highly-hated, widespread criticism of this year's NPS. Let's look at the venues for the majority of the tournament:

A bagel store, which according to stories, didn't bother to wait for poets to stop performing before running the frothing and grinding machines;

The basement of a banquet hall, a large concrete box with flourescent lights and all the charms of the VFW hall where my cousin had her wedding reception last year;

A sportsbar, which would be bad enough, but also equipped with an amp system that barely got the sound to the back of the room;

A yuppie bar, which would be bad enough, but also run with an agreement that the bar could allow non-slam audience members to come in and hang out on the other side of the room, where the collective group thought it their duty to shout their conversations over the din of the competing poets;

...well, you see my point.

And the finals? Hmm. Well, the finals were held in a gymnasium. That's right, a gymnasium, with the high arched ceilings, the smell of sweat socks, the cavernous size and all those other things you would assume would actually be detriments to hearing poetry. And it was.

I've been trying to figure out a way to best describe what the effect of these venues were on me, when another anonymous slammer did it for me beautifully. "When you're at something like a national slam," she said, "you like to think that the things around you would inspire you. When you're in a finals and you're performing for 1500 people, you like to think that it will be in a theatre, with a professional sound system, and that the experience is so unlike everything you have ever done that it will push you to give the best performance of your entire life. Instead, we all had to perform at places where we were so occupied with overcoming the obstacles, we never got a chance to even enjoy the performance. I don't even know now what it was like to perform for 1500 people, because I was so worried with getting over the echo effect in the room."

The common and obvious defense for this accusation would be, "Well, maybe Middletown just didn't have any better venues than these. Maybe there are only so many bars in the town, and they had to be creative. Maybe there IS no theatre venue in town that holds 1500 people."

Fair enough. In all likelihood, in fact, it's true. But I ask this question, and yes, I pointedly ask it at the people who ran the tournament -- if you knew beforehand that your city was so lacking in resources... then why did you ever make a bid to host the tournament in the first place?

SELLING BOOKS AND RETAIL. After seeing the makeup of the people running this year's slam, I figured out why there's a good chance that they never realized the following, simple fact:

MANY OF THE POETS WERE ACTUALLY FUNDING THEIR TRIP BY SELLING THEIR BOOKS.

When you are middle-aged, have a good job, are settled into a nice home and a family and all those other things my parents have, it's easy to forget that most of us are POOR, dirt poor, and that we depend on the selling of chapbooks, cassettes, CDs, and full novels not only to help our careers but also simply so we can eat by the time Saturday rolls around.

Thus, apparently, is why the committee took it upon themselves to remove each and every mention in every program bio of anything for sale (rumor has it that it was because it was felt that it would "cheapen" the festival). Thus, apparently, is why it never occurred to the committee to set up a table of chapbooks at any of the actual bouts, save the finals. Thus, apparently, is why no mention was even made by M.Cs at the bouts that books were being sold downtown. Thus, apparently, is why no table was set up even at the hotel where all the poets were staying.

Like I said, when you are writing poetry to have fun and kill time, I can understand why these mistakes would be made. For God's sake, please please let's not make this mistake again.

POET ENTERTAINMENT. Maybe it's just me. Maybe I simply enjoy liquor too much. But why is it that, even though the staff knew that liquor stopped being sold exactly when most of us were in the middle of competing (8 pm), no one thought to make some sort of provisions for that? You wouldn't even necessarily have to give liquor away for free every night (although this is a rumor about what's going to happen in Austin next year). So many more poets would've been perfectly happy if the Connecticut staff had gotten kegs for the hospitality room and charged people per cup. Or bought a bunch of bottles and charged a buck per.

And the final party. Jeez. I'm not exactly sure why the committee chose a place that sold no liquor at all. I'm not exactly sure why part of the $9,000 us poets collectively paid to even BE in the NPS was not used to purchase liquor. What gets me the most angry is why, when the Austin team VOLUNTEERED to collect donations, go buy the kegs themselves, and actually BRING them over to the party, there wasn't a single member of the Connecticut staff who volunteered to take the kegs back the next day, while all of us were trying to catch flights. To me, this is an inexcusable offense, and the one I will carry in my mind the longest.

Speaking of that $9,000...

WORKSHOPS. Usually, as standard practice has it, when one goes to a convention of any sort and pays $300 to attend, one is usually allowed an "all-access" pass to all events being held. One does not usually have to pay an extra fee to attend seminars, discussion groups, and workshops. There have been some serious questions raised about what exactly our group $9,000 went for to actually help the poets themselves. It certainly wasn't the prize money. It certainly wasn't to pay the workshop people. The only "benefit" I personally saw was a cutesy stupid little canvas totebag which, like 90% of the participants, I threw away.

AND LET'S TALK ABOUT THAT HOTEL. I have a minor squabble with the fact that the hotel was so far away from the action to begin with. But this might not have been something they could help (although the question begs to be asked again of why the committee thought Middletown could even support a NPS when the nearest hotel was ten miles away). The more important question to ask, however, is why there was no effort made from the staff to help poets GET downtown.

There are several easy options that could have solved this problem -- the committee could've out-and-out rented a shuttle service. If this had cost too much money, the committee could've EASILY set up their own "volunteer" shuttle service -- four people working a two-hour shift apiece, driving from the hotel to the info center and back every half-hour on the half-hour would have completely covered the entire day. Instead, those of us with group rental cars had to loiter in the hotel lobby for two hours or more until somebody wandered by who could give us a ride.

THREE WORDS -- MAPS, MAPS, MAPS. I can't attest to the rest of the country, but the Chicago team was never sent a map of how to get to Middletown, or where the registration office was once we got there. Even when we DID get settled in and picked up our program, the hotel route was conveniently left off the map of events and we got lost our first four times trying to drive the trip. A simple word of the wise to future committees -- NO ONE KNOWS WHERE ANYTHING IS. Hold their hand until they get the hang of it.

THE INFORMATION SUPERAGE. I guess it also didn't occur to the staff that a large amount of people -- easily over half of all the competitors -- had e-mail accounts, websites, zines they were trying to publish, and other accrouchments of the electronic age. Some of us NEEDED to get on our e-mail -- some of us were trying to publish a live report from the NPS itself, hint-hint -- while others of us simply wanted to tell our friends back home how we were doing and didn't have the money for a twenty-minute long distance telephone call. And the thing is, we wouldnt've minded paying a nominal fee for it, much like a place like Kinko's works.

A personal note to the Austin team -- next year, I would like to see a sincere effort to have a computer center put together for the participants of the NPS. Have computers with AOL and telnet access. Have printers for people with laptops to plug into. Have Netscape so people can update their own unofficial NPS sites each day. CHARGE us. We don't care. I'd be happy to pay a dime a print, four bucks an hour to use the computer. Just have SOMETHING.

Finally, I'd like to put in a personal gripe that you might not agree with...

THE JUST PLAIN RUDENESS OF THE CONNECTICUT STAFF. I really feel silly giving this next piece of advice, but obviously it is a lesson that has not been learned yet by the people of Middletown, Connecticut:

WHEN YOU ACT LIKE AN ASSHOLE TO SOMEONE, YOU DON'T EXACTLY SCORE POINTS WITH THEM.

Yes, I know you were stressed out. Yes, I know you had a million things to do. Yes, I know a lot of silly questions were asked. But hey, I'm from the midwest, and we out here are taught a very important lesson from childhood on -- THERE IS NO EXCUSE FOR IMPOLITENESS. If you are busy and can't be interrupted, it takes no more effort to say "I'm sorry, I'm swamped right now" than it does to say "Can't you see I'm fucking busy here?" In fact, the first sentence actually has LESS syllables and can get you back to work more quickly.

There are things I heard about but shouldn't comment on because I didn't see them, like this supposed nasty letter sent to Los Angeles. There are things I saw but shouldn't comment on because of extenuating circumstances, like the petty outburst given by the organizer of the event during the heated Saturday meeting. I can, and will, however, relate at least one story of personal rudeness given to me specifically.

I went into the info center one day to see if their computers there had e-mail access. When I asked the guy in charge (I don't know his name, but he had longish white hair and looked like Spaulding Gray), he whipped around and yelled,

"Look, I don't have fucking time to deal with you. I've got a bunch of shit to do."

To which I said,

"Okay. But you don't have to be rude about it."

To which he replied,

"Look, I'm just telling you, I got shit to do, okay?"

To which I got really mad and yelled,

"Don't give me any of your fucking shit! I'm a competitor, all right?"

To which he stood up and said,

"Well, now you're GONNA get some fucking shit!"

To which I simply flipped him off and walked out the door, yelling "Fuck you!" on the way out.

Stories like this can be found throughout the week. I also found it very interesting that, even though I won second place for the entire tournament, not one member of the Connecticut staff ever bothered to come up and say a simple "congratulations," even though all of the people I directly competed against found it simple enough to do. Once again -- THERE IS NO EXCUSE FOR IMPOLITENESS. When are you people going to realize this?

So, that's it. I realize that many of you might disagree with some or all of the things I said. I don't really care. I know you might want to write a rebuttal. Great. Talk to Juliette, but don't write to me about it, because I don't really care. I know that very valid points can be made for extenuating circumstances or behind-the-scenes goings-on that I knew nothing about it. Frankly, I DON'T CARE. I'm not a behinds-the-scene person, or at least in regards to the NPS. I was firmly in-front-of-the-scenes. I paid almost $500 to get to the NPS, $500 I DIDN'T have and has put me three weeks behind in rent. All I wanted was to have a good time, perform my work for quiet, enthusiastic people, and get really drunk. The staff of this year's NPS did everything possible to make none of those things happen, and I just felt like telling you so.

Copyright 1997, Jason Pettus. All rights reserved.