Varied, visceral poetry jam doesn't fall on 'def' ears

By Rohan Preston - Minneapolis Star Tribune
 
"I challenge you to find something that you are willing to die for -- then live for it."

With those words, the hip-hop poet known as Black Ice (Philadelphia-born Lamar Manson) urged members of a feverish Historic State Theatre crowd Wednesday to find their purpose.

His call came in the midst of a spirited touring version of Def Poetry Jam, the hip-hop inflected spoken-word jamboree that won a Tony Award last year. But the essence of his words predates even Socrates. Black Ice's challenge resonated not just through the audience but also in the works of the new band of spoken-word artists who returned to Minneapolis for an encore engagement of the jam.

The show offered exhortatory and introspective poems, comedic and cunning poems, poems that demanded to be heard. Earnest and urgent, they bore a hope from what would seem a most unlikely demographic: young urban poets, many talking about their hardships with jail and police.

The passion and brashness of the show, produced by Russell Simmons and directed by Stan Lathan, were exciting to witness in the wake of the national fault lines revealed by our recent elections. These performers seem to say that time marches in only one direction.

With her huge afro, poet Staceyann Chin moved like a worker in a wine press, her bare feet serving as release valves for her corked, carbonated words.

She wondered about her future. "Will I still be a lesbian?" she said. Chin was humorous and clever, painting "Saint Nick as holiday transvestite."

Laughter was evoked also by Shihan, a pretty New York-to-Los Angeles writer who did love poems, and Poetri, the portly scribe born Devin Smith in Michigan who made light of his Buddha belly by sharing works about a weakness for French fries and glazed donuts.

The poets performed solo, in duets and in other combos, offering works that were both smooth and coarse, sacred and scatological. Like hip-hop, they represented a demographic surge of energy, from Puerto Ricans Lemon Andersen and Flaco Navaja to Palestinian-American Suheir Hammad.

Ishle Yi Park, the wispy pixie who is poet laureate of the New York borough of Queens, offered some of the most mesmerizing and sobering moments of the evening. In "Cheju do Dreams," a poem about her childhood on an island off the coast of South Korea and in New York, she said, "When I try to speak my home language, my tongue flops in my mouth like a dying fish."

Park held the audience in thrall, and tears, as she shared a poem about the Korean shopkeepers whose stores were burned during the 1992 Rodney King riots in Los Angeles. You could hear her "why?" drop like that pin in the Sprint commercial.