Having said that, I really hate what spoken word has become. The term is used with increasing abandon to sell out poetry to the highest bidder. It has become a world of back-slapping sycophants jockeying for what little money is out there on the college circuit. Of particular concern to me is the phenomenon of the spoken word pimp: the unscrupulous agent or manager who will gather a troupe of spoken word mavens and sell them as a package to colleges, often pocketing a big chunk of the fees. The talent, more often than not, is none the wiser. Maddeningly, some of them are kids, fresh from the world of teen slams.

Far too many of these young and emerging writers swallow the spoken word line wholesale, choosing not to push their visual art or publish their written art, relying on the antiquated standbys of poetry "for page" and poetry "for stage." Far too many choose not to read other poets, claiming to defend some ridiculous notion of purity in their art. And far too many entities on the college circuit or in the media lazily accept these definitions, paying thousands of dollars to perpetuate bad theater passed off as "performance poetry" or "spoken word." And don't get me started on how some critics tend to view it all as an offshoot of hip-hop, deriding otherwise promising young poets of color as mere "spoken word artists," rendering their work mute. Spoken word, once promising, is now a running joke, a cartoon show that the characters don't even know they're on.

Here is the end result. By selling themselves short as "spoken word artists," many otherwise emerging poets sacrifice any chance they have to improve in their work and move into something that pushes the forms. And for what? At the Grammys this year, there was a tie for Best Spoken Word Album between Ossie Davis and Ruby Dee, and Jimmy Carter. Obviously, none of these people are "spoken word artists ." Not even the recording industry is buying this nonsense. At the end of his or her shelf life as performers, the average spoken word poet is left with no real writing skill or experience, no real performance skill or experience, and no resume except for slam wins and tour stops. I submit that this American Capitalistic model of touring minstrelsy is no way to promote poetry to our youth, and to whatever extent that we as educators have the power to stop it, we absolutely should.

You're involved with louderARTS Project and Acentos in New York. Tell us about these, their goals, their audiences. What would you say are these projects' contribution to the local and national poetry scene?