Over the past few years there has been a growing interest in something called Spoken Word, which some people equate with Poetry. While every generation needs to define what Poetry, Literature, and even Art is for themselves, I feel strange when I hear the term used. I think of the term "Spoken Word" and immediately think to myself, "Isn't that what the rest of us call 'talking'?"

At face value Spoken Word appears to be a form of theater, akin to monologue, with its own self-referential context. Usually it appears to be confessional, or autobiographical, or testimonial. Spoken Word artists will refer to themselves as Poets, Storytellers, or whatever seems to fit the bill. Yet, while it is arguable that the cultural ancestry of Poetry and in fact all Literature around the world has its roots in an oral tradition, Poetry as I have understood it for the past three decades seems to demand more of the Poet than merely speaking.

I have always felt that Poetry is necessarily and by definition a conversation held with someone who is not there. While most forms of Art assume some level of participation between the Artist and the Other, Poetry seems to diffuse or even to frustrate this participation, if not avoiding it entirely. We are all familiar with the stereotypes of the Poet--the ones dying in poverty of consumptive diseases, the spinsters, drunks, and loners, who pridefully enjoy obscurity as proof of their aesthetic elevation, or conversely hide their poems for fear of something acutely shameful being exposed to the world. We remember standing up in class and being asked to recite a poem in a dead language and being laughed at. We remember squirming in our seats during support groups listening to a poem about somebody's sad life that differs from a journal entry only in that we get to watch the poor soul shriveling before us, goaded into their display by well-intentioned authorities who claim that sharing helps us heal. People with any self respect tend to avoid calling themselves Poets for these very reasons.

Rather than seeing Poetry as a medium for social or psychic purgation, it's my conceit that Poetry finds its deeper roots in Prayer, such as the Psalms, or the ecstatic spontaneous prayer-poems of the great Mevlana Jelaladeen Rumi. Poetry primarily resembles Prayer in that it is attended by no overt empirical evidence that anybody's listening, or that anybody cares, and it's not supposed to matter, because it's so deeply personal that in the end an alchemical process is entered into in which the deepest Self is transformed. Christ is reputed to have verbally flayed people who pray in public in order to socially congratulate themselves, and adjured his followers to pray alone in the dark. Poetry differs from storytelling or talking in that it has its own life on the page, and when read aloud is given dimension like Music, which is its much closer relative. The reason we strip away the harmony and break apart the rhythms is because we're not trying to soothe any savage breasts. The Poem is the sound of the breath, of the Poet's essential being. If we read or listen to the Poem and experience recognition, a resonance with something inside ourselves, it is the experience of breathing together, or as they say in Latin, to conspire.