Poetry and the nueva vista

Gustavo (the argentinian percussionist) called me and wanted me to perform poetry with him tonight. I prepared a couple of poems, but all are in english because I´m not ready to be writing quality poetry in spanish yet :). I had breakfast with my host brother this morning, and there was an awkward silence at first. He´s a very intimidating person, it is very clear to me that he is opinionated and stubborn in his ideas. But I decided that I needed to talk to him, since we were sitting at the same table. So I told him about how I was going to read some poetry at the teteria tonight. Surprisingly, he was just incredibly delighted at the fact that I write poetry. (roughly translated): ¨It´s just that kids nowadays, it´s like they´ve lost the ability to fill themselves with creativity, and so it leaves this empty space that they try to fill by doing drugs and drinking and acting all crazy.¨ He seemed really down about the youth and the future (which is pretty common). He told me about how in seville, all the kids got together to have a party, and so many people showed up and that it was sad that they were getting together to drink and not do something productive. But then I told him about what I´ve been doing at my college, how we have protest parties that fuse the two together and how I´ve been realizing that young people really aren´t so bad, they´re just lazy. I told him about how we raised 1000 dollars at one party and how we donated it to local charities and how we would go to parties and concerts and register people to vote there. I told him that its not that my generation is apathetic it´s just that we are lazy. But if we are given an opportunity to do something that will make a difference and at the same time is quick, easy, and/or fun, we´ll do it. He told me that He hoped I could start a trend in the US with the youth, and that the trend would come to Europe.

Then I went to the teteria and read my poetry while Gustavo played the drums. Afterwards, a spanish couple approached me and said that even though they only understood some words, they really enjoyed hearing the sound of the poetry and that they felt really emotionally moved by the whole experience. They had never heard of slam before, and when I tried to explain that it was really popular form of poetry in the US, they were surprised that it was considered poetry at all. The woman said that she really thought it was just beautiful and put her in a trance state. It was really nice to hear that poetry can transcend langauge.