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TRACIE MORRIS: The traditions at the cafe merged, the media merge. And I think if anything, the cafe represents not being confined to a medium, but to use whatever tools you have to fully explore what the words say the best way possible.

So what we're trying to do is be expansive in people's perception of poetry and how words work and how they can function and be a part of the vibrancy of life and not be confined, even though at the cafe, we very much emphasize that the word should work on the page, and they should have strong form, even if you break the rules knowing what they are, strong work as a piece of literature and as a performance.

We don't feel we have to compromise between the two. And in fact, we encourage the development of both aspects of performance poetry.

LYNNE WARFEL-HOLT: How is a poem improved by performing it?

BOB HOLMAN: There's no improvement. It's the same poem. A poem exists in a book, but does it exist until you read it? A poem exists in the air when somebody reads it to you. A poem can exist on the radio. A poem can exist on the television.

It's a different approach to-- it's a different way of letting that poem live. I think the problem in this country has been that poetry has been confined to this jail sentence instead of the open-ended kind of sentence that a poem really wants to be. And by using the spoken word, by allowing entertainment and art to find an intersection in poetry, you're allowing that great, generous, enveloping impulse of the poem to be there.

TRACIE MORRIS: It should magnify the idea. I mean, some of us approach the poem as a performance in a very different way than we approach it as a piece of literature. But when you read it, you should get something really wonderful out of it. Sometimes that wonderful thing is very different from the wonderful thing that you get when you see someone perform it live.

LYNNE WARFEL-HOLT: When you read it, right. Give us an example now so listeners can get a grip on this, too. I'm throwing you a curve here, but when you take a poem, say, and you look at it on a page, give us an idea of what it might sound like and then give us a performance. Let's hear what it's like. I don't know who's going to go first or together or--

TRACIE MORRIS: Well, there's a piece that I wrote called The Spot. And it's about-- basically, it's sort of about Malcolm X, but it's also sort of about how we use cultural figures and we commercialize them.

But when I perform it, because I'm addressing it primarily to people who wear X caps and don't necessarily-- aren't committed to the ideas that he represented. So I do it in a hip hop style with a sampling and with a backtrack sort of thing to explore that idea in the piece. So it would go--

Cross your heart and crisscross your heart

And make you jump, jump

Cross your heart and crisscross your heart

Cross your heart and hope to die

Should be why, should be why

You wear the gear

The year to make the concept fly

Not just the high pad

Don't believe it

Not just a high pad

To comply with other guys

And compliment Michael's 360

But that would take a bit more time, yo

Than stopping by the five-and-dime flow

To check the color, match the size

With your new shoes and your new, new name wise

So bet you check out the display

The Korean store around the way

Even got leather and even

Even got leather and even

Even got leather in every shade

Oh, yeah, the Pickens, fat

Black one with the black, black one

With the black black one with the red XXX

Goes best with your new high tops

Something like that.

LYNNE WARFEL-HOLT: Gosh, that's great. There's a lot of stuff in there, though. That's one of those things you'd hear it a million times, and you'd hear something different coming out of the tongue.

TRACIE MORRIS: Yeah, because I do it different every single time before I rap it.

LYNNE WARFEL-HOLT: It's like I was catching things here and there, but it's like--

TRACIE MORRIS: Well, see that then, when you look at something like that on the page, you'll see the density of the piece. But you'll get to see more of the puns, more of the wordplay and the juxtaposition of the words, which you could not get in a performance. But when you read it on the page, you can hear me say, black to back to black, back to black to back backwards. So that's an example.

LYNNE WARFEL-HOLT: Well, you've been described in your reviews as being sweet, sexy, and sarcastic. She's making a face. But I mean, you have been. So that's one style, and I think sort of-- I think the hip hop brings that out, too. Bob, what's your style? Can you do a little something for us so we can--

BOB HOLMAN: Sure. I've been also very influenced by hip hop and not to say that all the poets who are here are involved in rap or hip hop. Dana Bryant has a much more bluesy kind of lyrical narrative style and Edwin Torres is one of the original New York futurists, the kind of sounds poet who creates words out of disparate sounds right before your ears.

But here's a little piece called Rock and Roll Mythology, talking about how we, of a certain generation, might look to our history as what happened not so long ago.

I got a rock and roll mythology

I got a total apocalypse pathology

I got the most opposed hysterical of poetry

And if it ain't coming at you,

It's breezed on by

I got the heavy duty political intent

I got the worm farm, free form, diamond noodle content

I got breezy ways and bop and raise

And when the word explodes

The mother lode is where I'm at

And it's light here

But you cannot see

It doesn't matter anyway

Since you cannot breathe

You see the words mean

They're putting on the squeeze

They could strangle you

Hey, what's that mean?

LYNNE WARFEL-HOLT: [LAUGHS] What does that one mean to you? What is it? What--

BOB HOLMAN: The plasticity of language, the impossibility of communication doesn't mean that we all ought to shut up and go to our little corners. As a matter of fact, it's really thrilling here in the dying years of this millennium to discover that the individual voice, the voice of the poet, is starting to be heard again.

And it's thrilling to be traveling across the country and finding the ways that the voice is being heard in these grassroots movements called the slam, where anybody who wants to can stand up and read their poems and partake in the Olympics of poetry or the mock Olympics of poetry.

I was out in Elko, Nevada, a couple of years ago for the cowboy poets gathering, where 8,000 people got together to hear the cowboy poets go at it. And there's a lot of different cultures who are finally able to be heard--

LYNNE WARFEL-HOLT: Coming around.

BOB HOLMAN: --not through an expert who tells you about it, but from the poets who live these lives.

LYNNE WARFEL-HOLT: Now, you did mention poetry slam, and you're in the Twin Cities now getting ready for the big poetry slam on Saturday. Now, briefly, how does a slam work? What is it? And got some tips for contestants who might be coming to it?

TRACIE MORRIS: Yes, don't take it seriously.

[LAUGHTER]

And listen to great poets like Mike Tyler and Paul Beatty, who are also part of our gathering. They're supposed to be fun, and they're supposed to help people get the message, help people feel that poetry is something relevant and exciting, that it's a viable medium for them, and that it can be fun and engaging, and also not to see the work that goes on to make it look effortless.

In terms of-- hence, I guess you could say, like I said, don't take it seriously because--

LYNNE WARFEL-HOLT: Bring your own stuff. Should you--

TRACIE MORRIS: Bring your own stuff. It's a mock competition. It's an excuse for people to read poetry. Just do your best and have a good time, and--

LYNNE WARFEL-HOLT: What was the deal, the lowest score-- the worst poet wins or something? What was it? I sort of--

BOB HOLMAN: Well, that's a slogan that we've got, just to point to the absurdity of attempting to take a poor little thing of beauty called a poem and treating it like a double dutch date to an SAT exam. The best poet always loses means that you, the listener, the person who's decided who the best poet is, not the whimsically selected audience member who might be sitting next to you.

TRACIE MORRIS: With a pen. [LAUGHS]

BOB HOLMAN: Exactly. But the thing about a poetry slam is that it's always entertaining that you're going to hear a lot of different kinds of poems that you poets out there better hightail it over for this slam and bring with you the stuff that you think is going to work. And then once we get the collective oomph going, you'll find words can take you out into orbit.

LYNNE WARFEL-HOLT: Well, as I'm talking to you, too, I'm getting, in my mind, something that comes back from the East Coast. This sounds like a really hip, sort of downtown New York thing to do. Would you have the New Yorkian cafe or the group appealing to what we used to call, I guess, the yuppies, the establishment, the white business people?

Could you have-- could you have a New Yorkian cafe branch in the Mall of America? Would it work or wouldn't it? And if not, why wouldn't it?

TRACIE MORRIS: Well, we don't know. We don't have any doubts about--

BOB HOLMAN: We're going to the mall in half an hour, Lynne.

TRACIE MORRIS: We don't worry about the slam working. It's whether or not the mall will continue to exist after we're finished.

LYNNE WARFEL-HOLT: I see. You talk about real life and poetry. You're probably the only poets I've ever heard of who are making a living out of poetry. I mean, are you making a living running workshops and traveling and doing the slams and running the cafe?

TRACIE MORRIS: Well, making a living is a relative term, I guess. We are dedicated to the arts.

BOB HOLMAN: It's starting to happen right now. There are poets on MTV, and there are poets who are signing recording contracts. It's a risky business, but I think it's more risk than it is business at this point.

LYNNE WARFEL-HOLT: It's great for you guys who are used to performing and getting up there, but you might have some people who are more reticent. I mean, how do you get people to write a poem, much less to go up and actually do something in front of people? How do you-- how do you entice people to be creative?

TRACIE MORRIS: Well, there's the overt way and then there's the covert way. The covert way is just to read, and people in a very non-pressured situation write. And we've had that situation happen with adults and high school students that we just read stuff.

And just by being open and presenting a diversity of voices, people just write stuff out. And sometimes they presented it immediately after our performances. And sometimes it's been-- they've written us letters and stuff. And the covert way is just like, pick a subject and write, or I know you've got something in that book, so come on up and read it.

But the thing is to encourage a nurturing environment, which is why we discourage the real competitive aspect of it, even though it's a vehicle to make it fun and interesting and really encourage people to come up and write and share.

LYNNE WARFEL-HOLT: Great. Well, I think we do want to hear one more before we let you go today or two.

TRACIE MORRIS: Oh, cool. All right, well, I'll go to the sweet, sexy and sarcastic side.

BOB HOLMAN: Yo, all right, Tracie.

TRACIE MORRIS: So it's short. This is so funny hearing yourself describe it. This is about my neighborhood.

Deep sleeping men with sepia skin

That glistens in the moonlight

The attitude seen in Bed-Stuy and Harlem

That they try to capture in liquor ads, right?

Messengers with locs and Lycra biker gear

Senegalese vendors out all times of the year

Thick brothers who dance close on records of any speed

Summertime brothers with muscles that strain against short sleeves

Black folks and earthtone clothes or dayglo

The holy configuration of unbraided cornrow

Sunday salmon cakes and grits before a B ball

Michael Jordan mid-air splits, mid-air splits

Dudes who can cook and who give a good massage

The strong and silent type that are cool because they know they lodge

The ones that wear kente cloth

You can see when they enter the room

The kind of thing that makes me go, mm.

LYNNE WARFEL-HOLT: That's why I think I need a drink of water.

[LAUGHTER]

TRACIE MORRIS: Go, Bob.

LYNNE WARFEL-HOLT: Bob, can you top this?

BOB HOLMAN: No. No, I can't.

TRACIE MORRIS: No, it's not a competition.

BOB HOLMAN: That's not a-- but I-- let's see. Just a couple of shorties, I think, would be appropriate.

In order to save the relationship

We will never see each other again

I need to-- so do I have anything else that I can think of?

TRACIE MORRIS: I think that was one of mine, actually.

BOB HOLMAN: Yeah, let's see.

My shirt

I love to put it on

My arms get long that way

TRACIE MORRIS: [LAUGHS]

LYNNE WARFEL-HOLT: Bob--

TRACIE MORRIS: Dress for success, Bob. Dress for success.

LYNNE WARFEL-HOLT: Thank you to Bob Holman and Tracy Morris. And I hope you have a lot of fun at the slam.

TRACIE MORRIS: Thank you very much.

BOB HOLMAN: Thank you.

LYNNE WARFEL-HOLT: Thanks.

TRACIE MORRIS: Great, Lynne.