Poetry for the stage, not the page

By Jeffrey Bruner, The Des Moines Register

If Old School poetry is a lazy summer afternoon under an oak tree with a bottle of wine and a copy of Whitman's "Leaves of Grass," then consider the New School "Def Poetry Jam" as an in-your-face, high-passion, high-energy evening with a boatload of Jager Bombs.

Put it this way: Emily Dickinson never pondered Krispy Kreme doughnuts and E.E. Cummings never dreamed of reciting a poem called "Negro Auction Network."

"Def Poetry Jam," created by hip-hop mogul Russell Simmons, comes to the Civic Center of Greater Des Moines on Tuesday night for one show.

Simmons brought the show to HBO for four seasons and then took a version to Broadway, where it won a Tony Award last year for Best Special Theatrical Event. In the show, each poet gets a turn on stage to recite his work on a wide range of subjects - some with force and passion, others introspectively and some with humor. Unlike poetry slams, the event is not a competition.

In an interview with the Baltimore Sun, Simmons said he's found that most people can relate to poetry in a spoken-word format.

"You ask high school students if they write poetry, and 80 percent of them will say, 'Yeah.' They're listening to rappers like Rakeim and Jay-Z, and they're expressing themselves in their own words," Simmons told the Sun. "The poets in the show are free thinkers, not like the rest of us who watch TV and become sheep."

Six members of the original Broadway show, plus three new members, will perform Tuesday night, including Suheir Hammad.

"Every night we get to read these poems that are very close to us personally and they resonate with people," said Hammad, calling from a Holiday Inn in Florida.

Hammad, a Palestinian-American woman who grew up in Brooklyn, definitely falls into the free-thinker category. Some of her work is political, but much, she stresses, is not.

Yet a poem about her parents can humanize them in a way to many audiences because, as she notes, "I'm going to be the first Arab woman they've heard speak for themselves."

The Broadway show may not have been a big financial success but it was lavished with critical praise and drew droves of first-time theater-goers.

"We brought in audiences who did not grow up thinking the Broadway stage was somewhere they could end up," Hammad said.

Like all touring shows, the "Def Poetry Jam" puts its performers through a pretty grueling pace - 51 cities between Oct. 10 and the end of January. They'll perform in Akron, Ohio, on Friday, Toronto on Sunday, and then Des Moines, Minneapolis, Green Bay, Chicago and Detroit in a span of six days. Next year the group heads to the Auckland Festival in New Zealand and then on to Australia to perform in five cities there.

Hammad, however, knows that for poets this traveling tour is a rare opportunity no matter how grueling.

"There aren't many poets who get to travel this year," she notes.

Or ever for that matter.