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According to the PBS television series The United States of Poetry, a "strand of new poetry began at Chicago's Green Mill Tavern in 1986 when Marc Smith found a home for the Poetry Slam." Since then, performance poetry has spread throughout the United States. Now, the father of the poetry slam presents the most comprehensive book on spoken-word poetry performances.

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• Paperback: 370 pages
• Publisher: Alpha (August 3, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1592572464
• ISBN-13: 978-1592572465
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 7.3 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds

"Eagle or Sun?" is a collection of prose poems by the great Mexican poet Octavio Paz. Several of the short pieces represent a sort of hybrid form between the poem and the essay; others seem to represent a melding of the poem and the short story. Although Paz can be obscure, and even somewhat indulgent, at times, "Eagle or Sun?" is marked by flashes of brilliance which make it an important piece of 20th century literature.

Some of the book's highlights included section X of "The Poet's Works," a nightmarish vision of language gone awry; "The Blue Bouquet," which is undoubtedly one of the greatest horror stories ever written in any language; and "My Life with the Wave," a surreal fantasy story that is rich in irony. "Eagle or Sun?" may not be easy reading, but it is a rewarding and memorable work from one of Mexico's most important writers.

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• Paperback: 121 pages
• Publisher: New Directions Publishing Corporation; Cover Stained edition (November 1, 1976)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0811206238
• ISBN-13: 978-0811206235
• Product Dimensions: 7.9 x 5.2 x 0.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 4.3 ounces

The epigraph for Howl is from Walt Whitman: "Unscrew the locks from the doors!/Unscrew the doors themselves from their jambs!" Announcing his intentions with this ringing motto, Allen Ginsberg published a volume of poetry which broke so many social taboos that copies were impounded as obscene, and the publisher, poet Lawrence Ferlinghetti, was arrested. The court case that followed found for Ginsberg and his publisher, and the publicity made both the poet and the book famous. Ginsberg went on from this beginning to become a cultural icon of sixties radicalism. This works seminal place in the culture is indicated in Czeslaw Milosz's poetic tribute to Ginsberg: "Your blasphemous howl still resounds in a neon desert where the human tribe wanders, sentenced to unreality".

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Paperback: 57 pages

Publisher: City Lights Publishers (January 1, 2001)

Language: English

ISBN-10: 0872860175

ISBN-13: 978-0872860179

Product Dimensions: 6.2 x 4.8 x 0.2 inches

Shipping Weight: 1.6 ounces

Social and/or political poetry often fails because it loses touch with humanity; it gets distracted by issues and forgets about the impact of things on people. Giovanni never loses sight of the people in her work. In poems built with broken lines and paragraphs of prose, she spars with the ills that confront us, but every struggle has a human face. Ask Roger Woody, of the Woody Pipe and Excavating Company, who is destroying the wonderful woodland adjacent to Giovanni's home and readying it for a new housing development. When a young basketball star is harassed for his youth and style ("Iverson"), she assumes the role of compassionate but stern sister. She is no less forthcoming with her opinions of the President and his woes. At times you wonder what makes these soapbox oratories poems. You will not find many familiar rhetorical devices here, but you will want to dance to the music, the rhythms and language, the sound and exacting energy of these poems which is more than enough.

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• Hardcover: 100 pages
• Publisher: William Morrow; 1 edition (April 21, 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0688156983
• ISBN-13: 978-0688156985
• Product Dimensions: 8.6 x 5.6 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8.5 ounces

Widely known for her novels, How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents and In the Time of the Butterflies, Latina author Alvarez claims her authority as a poet with this collection. Tracing a lyrical journey through the landscape of immigrant life, these direct, reflective and often sensuous poems are grouped into five sections which, like the points of a star, indicate a circle. Alvarez begins with "Bilingual Sestina," a meditation on leaving her native Dominican Republic for an alien land and strange language. She ends with the title poem "The Other Side/El Otro Lado," a long, multipart narrative recounting her return to her homeland as a woman transformed?translated?by the years she has lived in America from native to guest. The speaker may claim "There is nothing left to cry for,/ nothing left but the story/ of our family's grand adventure/ from one language to another," but this poetry resonates precisely because that story embodies larger questions about self-identity. A meticulous examination of self-evolution, Alvarez's assured collection reveals that change can take us across borders so slowly that only on reaching the other side can we see the distances we've come.

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For groups large and small, from single events to recurring programs, Stage a Poetry Slam explains the easy way to make your slams a success.

Stage a Poetry Slam is a comprehensive guide for both budding and seasoned Slammasters — people in charge of organizing and promoting poetry slams and spoken word events. Marc Kelly Smith, grand founder of the Slam movement and host of the original Uptown Poetry Slam, the one that started them all, takes you back stage to reveal the techniques and strategies he's crafted over his 20 years plus of developing world-class Slam shows.

Stage a Poetry Slam is packed with practical, world-tested advice on how to craft a compelling spoken word poetry event and promote in such a way to pack the seats and leave a line out to the streets.

You'll also find a brief history of slam, the rules and regulations that govern official slam competitions, and a list of PSI (Poetry Slam, Inc.) Certified Slams, so you always have a place to visit to pick up ideas and talk shop with other Slammasters!

Product Details

• Paperback: 275 pages
• Publisher: Sourcebooks MediaFusion; Pap/Aud edition (May 5, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1402218982
• ISBN-13: 978-1402218989
• Product Dimensions: 8 x 6.1 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12.6 ounces

If daring and argument forge identity, Stanford professor Rampersad (Life of Langston Hughes) has succeeded in "allowing black poets to create with their own words a portrait of the African-American people." Neither consonant nor cautious, the diversity of the anthology's subject matter is trumped only by its poetic range: Amiri Baraka's and Sonia Sanchez's experimentation vibrate against the classic lyrics of Langston Hughes and Gwendolyn Brooks, mixing visions and trading trials. The anthology, arranged by theme rather than author or time period, simultaneously grounds and sets the reader adrift in a terrain stretching from the American South to Africa, from the contemporary back to slavery. And yet, as Eugene B. Redmond counsels in "Highflown: Love," these poems speak of "A power that cannot be seen / Heard / Or flattened to fit the pages of a book" and ask questions that define a people: Joseph Seamon Cotter asks, in a poem by the same title, "Is It Because I Am Black?" only to be answered pages later by Fenton Johnson in "Tired," "It is better to die than to grow up and find that you are colored." And yet, it is this discovery that elicits other poems' celebrations. The power of this anthology is its capacity for holding out both visions to its readers.

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Winner Cannes Film Festival 1998 Camera d'Or and the Sundance Film Festival 1998 Grand Jury Prize

Directed by award-winning documentary filmmaker Marc Levin, Slam is a gritty, inspiring portrait of urban poverty and the redemptive power of art. Set in a war-zone housing project known as Dodge City and in the infamous Washington, D.C., city jail, Slam tells the story of Ray Joshua, a talented young poet and rapper who is busted on petty drug charges and sucked into the black hole of the criminal justice system. In jail, Ray meets Lauren, a volunteer teaching a writing class for the prisoners. She encourages Ray to use his gift to give voice to the anguish of a generation of young men who have been thrown away. And this book is more than just a screenplay. It also contains the poetry featured in the film, as well as behind-the-scenes filmmakers' and actors' diaries telling the story of the making of Slam in a two-week guerilla shoot inside the walls of the D.C. jail and on the killing streets of the Anacostia housing projects in southeast Washington, D.C.

"Slam . . . seizes hold of your imagination. It's the kind of movie that makes you believe in movies."-Owen Gleiberman, Entertainment Weekly

Product Details Paperback: 279 pages Publisher: Grove Press; 1st edition (October 1, 1998) Language: English ISBN-10: 0802135757 ISBN-13: 978-0802135759 Product Dimensions: 9 x 6 x 0.8 inches Shipping Weight: 13.9 ounces

A timely and timeless book that is over-due to be read, "The Univer-Soul Language" is a collection of poetry, authored by five tremendously talented voices meant to be heard throughout the universe, bound by the Voice knowing of our true equality as human beings and the lesser conditions that we can still find ourselves in.

Poets, Sharia Kharif, Heather Smith, Cedric Mixon, Jacole Kitchen and Monica Hill, each speak in their own unhaltingly clear and powerful voices, creating an honest blend of poetry that harmonizes well together.

The five sections, belonging to each individual author of "The Univer-Soul Language", combine for a total of 70 poems that are philosophical and intelligent, down-to-earth, courageous and "real", penetrating one's soul at first reading, yet somehow get even better with each subsequently savored reading.