Walt Whitman Once Wrote

"To have great poets," "there must be great audiences."  If "great" implies "large," he was wrong.  

We live in an age of poetry in which there is hardly any audience for it.  If it wasn't for the bold and courageous move by Russell Simmons to introduce Spoken Word Poetry on the wildly successful HBO series "Def Poetry Jam" one can only wonder where the demand would even be for anything poetry related today.  Few have risen to fame from this art form such as actor and rapper Mos Def.  Personally, I would not be writing and performing Spoken Word this very day if it wasn't for the "Def Poets" series that brought it back into the national limelight.  Even with the national attention it brought, as a whole, people are unaware that poetry at this level even exists.  It's hard to imagine the ability to intertwine and weave words on top of subject matter that crosses over race and gender the way an artist does today.  The lack of demand or size of any given crowd is mainly because in order to understand it, it must be experienced.  I had been writing for over a decade and still held the same opinions of poetry as most still do today.  Although I wrote it, I didn't read it, didn't want to hear anyone recite it but then I found out I had yet to experience it.  Now I am giving that experience back as I have often heard on several occasions after a performance: "I've heard poetry before, but never like that."  Spoken Word still remains underground, as great things do, but when a truly gifted artist steps to the mic they can shut the conversations and noise in a room off like a flip of a switch.  I have witnessed this first hand both while sitting in the audience and while standing before them spitting out my verse.  It's hard not to recognize that there isn't a sound in the room but your voice and it's at that moment you begin to realize you are transcending poetry and everyone's preconceived notion of it.  While it often takes little talent and simple lyrics for rappers and musicians to be played every hour on radio stations around the world, a good majority of them couldn't begin to dream to write with the aptitude that the top poets of this generation are writing at.  For now, most will continue to perform in small coffee houses and clubs making people take notice that the poets of today's generation are breathing life into the pieces they create right before your eyes.  And as long as artists, such as myself, carry a passion far greater than fame or wealth then there will always be poetry.