This isn’t music, but I love good slam poetry. Besides, great slam poetry borrows a lot from old rap, which descended from free-style jazz, so it’s basically music by association.
This is one of my favorite poems and I think it sums up modern romance nicely in my experience. The first half is basically stand up comedy and I love that Rives doesn’t take the medium so seriously.
Rives performed at a writing camp I went to when I was 15 (yeah, I’m a nerd, I know) and I remember thinking that this new kind of poetry was just the coolest thing. He single-handedly turned me onto poetry, when before all I associated poetry with was dead old white guys who wrote sonnets. *
* Nothing against you Mr. Shakespeare, it’s just that sonnets just didn’t quite set my angsty teenage girl soul on fire.
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