Sixteen poets took part in one of the oldest grudge matches around, Boston versus New York, last week. ~Photo by Max W. Lauf

By Max W. Lauf

Sixteen poets took part in one of the oldest grudge matches around, Boston versus New York, last week.

The evening opened with music from The Whiskey Boys and Ruby Rose Fox, and a comedic monologue from Aimee Rose Ranger. Following the introduction of the judges (among whom were included Regie Gibson, Meg Taintor, and Richard Cambridge), Kevin Spak and Megan Thoma, both from Boston, were sacrificed to them as warm-up poets.

Each competing poet from Boston was pitted against another, directly consecutive competitor from New York. The subject matter was diverse, with subject matter ranging from violence against gays to racial identity to dream therapy to eggs. The host for the evening was an increasingly tipsy Dawn Gabriel, whose mild inebriation kept the mood playful between performances.

New York took three rounds out of five to win on Friday, but the numbers reveal the victory to be only by a margin of 0.9 points. The highest possible score a performer can receive is 10.0, determined individually by five judges and then averaged.

~Photo by Max W. Lauf

Judge Regie Gibson took flak from the audience for his often low point assignments, but according to slammaster Simone Beaubien the atmosphere was one more casual than is seen in the National Poetry Slam, the grandest of such showdowns.

In a town that has seen rioting, vehicular arson, and in one extreme case a fatal shooting when their baseball team is victorious, surprisingly the worst manifestation of the Boston-New York tension consisted entirely of one man in the front row, who loudly voiced his support for all of the Boston poets during their introductions, while cheering on only one from New York.

The baseball analogy is fitting: Beaubien said slam is “more of a sport than an art,” but that the competitive atmosphere is primarily an impetus for the performances. To this effect, she quotes poet Allan Wolf: “The points are not the point, the point is poetry.”