Part I

I used to listen to the poets slam at Chicago House off Sixth Street. One night, I decided to give it a try. I climbed up onto the little wooden stage, took microphone in hand, and recited another of my favorite poems, "In The End."

That poem covers the entire arc of how love is lost in a few well crafted lines. The polite smattering of applause I received afterwards told me no one got it.

Fighting all those butterflies had been a wasted effort, so I went back to watching and listening for the next few weeks. Finally, I thought I understood. In a single morning, "Full Meter" jumped out of my head fully assembled onto the page.

I got back up on stage, shared this poem with the audience, received a thunderous round of applause, walked off the stage and never slammed again.

Why? And hey, what is the real meaning of "Full Meter" anyway? I will cover that in Part II.

Part II

What I learned:

A successful poetry slam is more visceral. More about emotionally potent images than meaningful concepts. In other words, it's not so much the words as the wordplay.

What the poem was really about:

I made "Full Meter" uber visceral to appeal to my audience. It worked.

but...

I was a young writer determined to produce ages enduring versus immediately marketable works. I had already decided performance oriented poetry did not appeal to me but didn't want to go away feeling like a loser, so I wrote "Full Meter" to satiate my aspirations while meeting my goal.

Read it again from that POV. You may begin to see the poem as a bit of razzberry kiss I blew for my audience on the way out the door.

https://www.thecreativenow.com/post/full-meter