By Falling James
FROM: L.A. Weekly

“It is the distillation of articulate animals calling to each other across a great gulf.”

—Lawrence Ferlinghetti, “Poetry as Insurgent Art”

Spoken word is more popular than ever these days, with a seemingly endless array of live performances that pop up in a wide variety of formats and settings in the Los Angeles area. But what used to be a mainly underground pursuit — in which obsessive wordsmiths parsed and divined the arcane properties, hidden meanings and cryptic allusions buried in each loaded syllable of oblique poetry before a small crowd of like-minded true believers — has long since turned into a fairly mainstream spectator sport.

Continue reading “L.A. Is Lit: The Best Spoken-Word, Readings and Poetry in Town”