Three Minutes or Less

I used to be involved in the Poetry Slam – otherwise known as competitive poetry reading. Assembled in bars and coffeehouses across America (and in outer space, from where they likely originated), poetry slammers write original work, read (or recite) it in 3 minutes or less, then get scored Olympic Style by a panel of judges selected at random from the audience. At the end of the night, the slammer with the highest score wins bragging rights and sometimes a gift card for coffee or Danish or beer.

It’s supposed to be fun, but I somehow found a way to not have fun doing it, to become a megalomaniacal, holier-than-thou-ical amateur diva obsessed with winning. I got caught up in the points (even though the official tagline of National Poetry Slam, Inc. is “The point is not the points, the point is the poetry!”) and I forgot to chill out and have fun.

Now I write long letters, which take hours to compose, and re-cultivate penpals among the willing of my dear friends scattered across the galaxy. I also read Natalie Goldberg, and I try to follow her guidelines for writing memoir. Most of Goldberg’s writing prompts tell you to “Take 10 minutes… go.” On some of them, however, she only gives you three – which of course is what got me thinking about the Slam. Like my letters, I would take hours and days to write my slam poems. Then more hours to edit them down to fit into the three-minute limit.

Goldberg turns that on its head, giving you only three minutes to write about the best song of your life, or what you can’t live without, or Tupperware. What can you say about anything in three minutes or less? What new thing can you write with only that much time to write it? It’s a pure, tidy task, a great exercise in finding le mot juste.

 

Plus, it forces you to leave your crazy inner diva out of it.