Monday, February 21, 2011

Dream of the 90's lives on.

Oh the 90's...spoken word by guys in goatees wearing docs and flannel shirts performing in packed coffee houses. And thankfully, this exists today in Portlandia. Only now its called poetry slam, a mix of ladies and gents wearing vintage clothing, skinny jeans, and converses, and last night it was dominated by lovely, loquacious lesbians.

I went to the poetry slam last night at Backspace in old town. Evan (a female) Pritchard and Libby Howard (spellings?) were the clear winners to me, two amazing women.  Listening to them made me feel as if I was knocked unconscious and breathless, and awoke to a sharp clarity.  Love, Hate, dying parents, addiction...there are no taboos on the subjects of their poetry, and the artists do not hold back.

I greatly admire these artists, I am amazed at the courage they have to figuratively strip naked and expose their most vulnerable selves.  Their cadence is like a literal war, just unabashedly shooting away until exhaustion, victory, or death.  I ordered a glass of wine at the beginning, and 2 hours later noticed I had been too mesmerized by their performance to even take a drink.  Not even a drop of wine with the glass in my hand? Now that is a new measure of captivation for me.

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