Where were we? We are at the Cafe, the Poets Cafe, the Nuyorican Poets Cafe, home for the tradition that has no home but your ear. The home of the art that has been homeless ever since Plato kicked the poets out of the Republic.
-- Bob Holman
Who are they? They are four poets from the poetry place, the pulsing cafe on New York's Lower East Side, the place that for two years has been sending out the word. The word about the Spoken Word Movement, the resurgence of poetry as an aural art form.
The performance poets -- Tracie Morris, Ed Morales, Samantha Coerbell and Willie Permodo (aka Word Perfect) -- will perform at 8 tonight at the University of Maryland Baltimore County and preside at 8 tomorrow night over an open "slam," a mock competitive reading, at the Baltimore Museum of Art.
Area poets are invited to participate in the latter. Earlier this week, Jaki Terry was thinking about it.
The Baltimore writer, 39, won the poetry slam presented last March by the Nuyorican Poets in the touring group's first appearance at the BMA.
"Last year was really exciting, but in the beginning I really didn't want to go. . . . And somebody else put my name in [to read]," she explains. "Just in case, I did bring my stuff. I'm a poet and I always bring my poems."
Ms. Terry, who grew up in Cherry Hill, presented a semi-autobiographical work, "In Retrospect," about two lovers who would be better off apart.
"I delivered it deadpan basically, and the audience just hooted," she recalls, describing the favorable reaction from a crowd of several hundred in the Meyerhoff Auditorium of the BMA.
Her win brought no prize other than recognition. But that recognition caused her to be invited to read at the Lollapalooza traveling rock show -- in Charlestown, W. a., and in Miami.
She had not expected to win.
"I was up against some smokin' sister poets," she recalls. In that wonderful, rhythmically racial last phrase -- "smokin' sister poets" -- lies a clue to the energy of the Nuyorican Poets experience.
"We are in fact a nation of poets. But the word 'poetry' has had such a patina of dust on it that it seems an alien form, rather than something in which anybody can participate," writes Bob Holman, founder and artistic director of Poets Cafe Live! in the book, "Aloud: Voices from the Nuyorican Poets Cafe" (Henry Holt; $14.95).
He says visits by the wandering word troupe sometimes help motivate and legitimize local poetry communities, crossing ethnic, class and other boundaries. In Minneapolis, a visit last year created a continuing city poetry forum called S.A.S.E.
The original Nuyorican Cafe was named for the word coined to describe New York natives of Puerto Rican descent. But the complexion of the performers now spans a broader spectrum.
"We're not at all dominated by Latinos anymore," says Mr. Morales. A writer for the Village Voice, who calls himself "kind of an ethnic specialist" reporter, Mr. Morales notes that only four of the 16 or 18 poets who alternately travel on the Nuyorican tour are of Puerto Rican descent.
"Actually, the cafe is of the more genuinely multi-cultural places in New York City," he says of the metaphorical wellspring of Nuyorican Poets, at 236 E. Third St. in Manhattan.
Baltimore may not need a stimulus to stir a successful poetry scene, but the Nuyoricans offer a welcome addition, says the editor of a local poetry magazine
"I think that when people see a group of poets touring the country, and being paid for their work, that has to be a good effect," says Bean, a local poet and editor of the monthly %J Punchtown Fishwrap.
Baltimore is still riding the crest of "the latest resurgence" of interest in poetry, he says. Bean has helped produce poetry readings at local cafes and other venues for several years.
He says that unlike some poetry slams, the Nuyorican Poets strike the right balance of seriousness and fun in staging an art form that, by its inherent subjectivity, would seem to make competition a meaningless concept.
Would you pit Monet against Miro? Degas against da Vinci?
"They let everybody know it's important to have fun, and they make sure that everybody gets applause, which I think is important," says Bean, who competed last year but isn't this year.
4 Ms. Terry says the competition element can help.
"What it requires of you is that you have to bring your full self. . . . But I don't take it to the degree that if I don't win I won't ever write poetry again. It just puts you on notice your audience expects something from you," she says.
"It's a mock competition. . . . It's really about interaction, with the audience and with the poets. A sort of celebration," says Jessica Baker, the Nuyorican Poets manager. The judges, usually five of them, are selected from the audience and may or may not have any qualifications, she says.
"In New York, Bob Holman's usual practice is to ask if everybody speaks English, and in New York it's a good bet not everyone does. So he usually picks someone who doesn't, and tells 'em to judge the visual presentation," she says.
At the BMA tomorrow, participation will be limited to 20 local writers, as wll as the four Nuyorican Cafe poets who will read between the competitors. If more than 20 sign up, a lottery will decide who reads.
The group stepped away from the United States for the first time last year, touring the United Kingdom. It's due to visit Denmark in March.
PROGRESSIONS '95
Who: The Nuyorican Poets
When: 8 tonight
Where: University of Maryland Baltimore County, Fine Arts Recital Hall
Tickets: $8 general; $5 students and seniors
Call: (410) 455-2476
OFF THE WALLS
What: Nuyorican Poets Cafe Live!
When: 8 p.m. tomorrow (poet sign-up at 7 p.m.)
Where: Baltimore Museum of Art, Art Museum Drive
Tickets: $10 general; $8 for museum members, seniors and students
Call: (410) 396-6314