I was shown this talk last year and it was one of my first experiences with spoken word. I had forgotten how much I enjoyed it until just now when I re-watched it.
"If I should have a daughter, instead of "Mom," she's gonna call me "Point B," because that way she knows that no matter what happens, at least she can always find her way to me. And I'm going to paint solar systems on the backs of her hands so she has to learn the entire universe before she can say, "Oh, I know that like the back of my hand." And she's going to learn that this life will hit you hard in the face, wait for you to get back up just so it can kick you in the stomach. But getting the wind knocked out of you is the only way to remind your lungs how much they like the taste of air. There is hurt, here, that cannot be fixed by Band-Aids or poetry. So the first time she realizes that Wonder Woman isn't coming, I'll make sure she knows she doesn't have to wear the cape all by herself because no matter how wide you stretch your fingers, your hands will always be too small to catch all the pain you want to heal. Believe me, I've tried. "And, baby," I'll tell her, don't keep your nose up in the air like that. I know that trick; I've done it a million times. You're just smelling for smoke so you can follow the trail back to a burning house, so you can find the boy who lost everything in the fire to see if you can save him. Or else find the boy who lit the fire in the first place, to see if you can change him." But I know she will anyway, so instead I'll always keep an extra supply of chocolate and rain boots nearby, because there is no heartbreak that chocolate can't fix. Okay, there's a few heartbreaks that chocolate can't fix. But that's what the rain boots are for, because rain will wash away everything, if you let it. I want her to look at the world through the underside of a glass-bottom boat, to look through a microscope at the galaxies that exist on the pinpoint of a human mind, because that's the way my mom taught me. That there'll be days like this. ♫ There'll be days like this, my momma said. ♫ When you open your hands to catch and wind up with only blisters and bruises; when you step out of the phone booth and try to fly and the very people you want to save are the ones standing on your cape; when your boots will fill with rain, and you'll be up to your knees in disappointment. And those are the very days you have all the more reason to say thank you. Because there's nothing more beautiful than the way the ocean refuses to stop kissing the shoreline, no matter how many times it's sent away. You will put the wind in winsome, lose some. You will put the star in starting over, and over. And no matter how many land mines erupt in a minute, be sure your mind lands on the beauty of this funny place called life. And yes, on a scale from one to over-trusting, I am pretty damn naive.But I want her to know that this world is made out of sugar. It can crumble so easily, but don't be afraid to stick your tongue out and taste it. "Baby," I'll tell her, "remember, your momma is a worrier,and your poppa is a warrior, and you are the girl with small hands and big eyes who never stops asking for more." Remember that good things come in threes and so do bad things. And always apologize when you've done something wrong, but don't you ever apologize for the way your eyes refuse to stop shining. Your voice is small, but don't ever stop singing. And when they finally hand you heartache, when they slip war and hatred under your door and offer you handouts on street-corners of cynicism and defeat, you tell them that they really ought to meet your mother."
So what really sticks out about this is the flow of it. Although it is a poem, there is no rhyme scheme or real pattern. Instead, it flows freely like thought, and has the same sort of eloquence only found in one's mind. The references to previous parts also remind me of a train of thought as it tries to string together a cohesive monologue but keeps getting sidetracked by other metaphors and stipulations it wants to throw in. This is only further supported by the casually inserted song phrase that sings like a song stuck in your head, pushing its way to the front whether you want it to or not.
The carefully inserted pauses that are just long enough to break up a thought really help bring flow to the piece as well. Although it may not have a catchy rhyme scheme to keep us bouncing through the poem, the breaking of syllables and repeated sounds mimic parallel movement.
But more insightful than just what is gleaned from her performance is her talk afterward. The best part is hearing her advice and seeing how it affected her work, not actively, but subconsciously; it's just her voice coming through.
The carefully inserted pauses that are just long enough to break up a thought really help bring flow to the piece as well. Although it may not have a catchy rhyme scheme to keep us bouncing through the poem, the breaking of syllables and repeated sounds mimic parallel movement.
But more insightful than just what is gleaned from her performance is her talk afterward. The best part is hearing her advice and seeing how it affected her work, not actively, but subconsciously; it's just her voice coming through.
"But there are plenty of things I have trouble understanding.So I write poems to figure things out. Sometimes the only way I know how to work through something is by writing a poem. And sometimes I get to the end of the poem and look back and go, 'Oh, that's what this is all about,' and sometimes I get to the end of the poem and haven't solved anything, but at least I have a new poem out of it."
"Spoken word poetry is the art of performance poetry. I tell people it involves creating poetry that doesn't just want to sit on paper, that something about it demands it be heard out loud or witnessed in person."
"And step three began when I realized that I didn't have to write poems that were indignant, if that's not what I was. There were things that were specific to me, and the more that I focused on those things, the weirder my poetry got, but the more that it felt like mine."
"And we saw over and over the way that spoken word poetry cracks open locks. But it turns out sometimes, poetry can be really scary. Turns out sometimes, you have to trick teenagers into writing poetry. So I came up with lists. Everyone can write lists. And the first list that I assign is '10 Things I Know to be True.' And here's what happens, and here's what you would discover too if we all started sharing our lists out loud. At a certain point, you would realize that someone has the exact same thing, or one thing very similar, to something on your list. And then someone else has something the complete opposite of yours. Third, someone has something you've never even heard of before. And fourth, someone has something you thought you knew everything about, but they're introducing a new angle of looking at it. And I tell people that this is where great stories start from -- these four intersections of what you're passionate about and what others might be invested in."
Kay's final poem is amazing, not necessarily because of its inspirational qualities or perfect prose, but because of her delivery of it. Her gentle voice works so well with he smooth motions she makes. Perhaps that is what gives life to spoken word. The motions she makes remind me so much of ASL poetry, not because of the specific signs or anything but just the fact that a gentle smooth motion with a perfect shape conveys so much more than just a word, or just a sign, ever could. That's why most ASL poets rely more on classifiers than signs; there's so much more freedom and expression involved in classifiers that Kay somewhat resembles in her hand and body movements.