Quote (Menace)
as i said not great poetry or great music but still they do it proper grammatically speaking
bullshit. i am not referring to written well grammatically. the idea that all poets toy with today is writing in the language of your subject. if you are writing in the voice of a gang member, it doesn't matter if you are a Columbia graduate, you are expected to use some street language. notice what Patricia Smith did. i guarantee she's a college graduate, but she uses the language a white supremacist would use. that is what makes this beautiful. when you use poor grammar but you do it incidentally, it is poorly written. it doesn't matter how much formal education you have. the only advantage college graduates could have (but thanks to wikipedia really don't anymore) is formal technique. because of wiki however, everyone has access to formal technique. sure, i was introduced to things like meter through college, but i didn't learn about them through school, i learned about it on the net. and even before the net, the library has plenty of books and you can just walk in and sit there and read. artists today, especially slam poets, don't give a shit, they just want to express. that is cool, but it doesn't come out well done. it is possible to have meticulous attention to detail without being formally educated. that is no excuse.
