Lamar Howell's Weblog

What is slam poetry?

It’s extemporaneous, communicative, conversational, meaningful. It’s in style, popular, universal. It strikes to the soul, cuts to the chase, peels to the emotions.

But, like so much of the gansta rapp, they seem to have a sugar-caffeine-5hour energy addiction to anything “-ation.” I hear so many aspiring squeaking poets and pants-clutching rappers showing their bravado and mastery of a profuse English noun form, with words like speciaLIEzation, senSAYtion, communiCAYshun, and other ATIONS.

It’s ironic that when Latino immigrants come to America, they jokingly create new English words by adding ‘-ation’ to the ending. One example is when you tell them to copy something, they call it “copyation.” Or they will use a Spanish word and add the ending, such as “borradation,” meaning “an erasing.” “Mr., I am doing a borradation.”

They know that “-ation” is a common ending in the English language, and so do slam poets and gansta rappers. But none of them seem to realize everyone else is using this suffix. Really, it is an cop-outation and evidence of lackation of creativation. OMGation! STOP.IT.

Am I jealous of slam poets? Only the successful ones. But I wish they would end that ending, fix that suffix, and shun the ation. Redefine slamnation poetry.