Hipsters are a befuddling part of culture that have produced some of the weirdest artistic and cultural offerings our society has ever seen.
Teas with names a sentence long, vinyl record sales that are as high as they were when vinyl was the only way to listen to music other than the radio, weird flavors of coffee, oddly decorated bars, they've given us many strange things to either revulse, like, or marvel at.
Probably the most pretentious of these things has to be slam poetry.
I don't mind the idea of slam poetry in general. I like words and word structure, and I think any good poet deserves to have their words broadcasted to the public, be it written or oral.
However, number one, the genre hardly has any good poets, and number two, slam poetry as a performance art is highly overrated. It's obvious these slam poets can't sing or rap, so they just say their words in an "artistic" or "rhythmic" fashion that is neither artistic nor rhythmic.
Overall, I find slam poetry to be a silly and pretentious genre.
So it really speaks to the testament of this artist just how great I find his work to be.
When it comes to slam poetry, the biggest problem with it comes to the actual poems themselves, which follow an obnoxious pattern of saying more than they mean. So how do you stand out in a genre full of poems of meaningless nothings spoken and shouted in a stupidly stilted style?
This might sound ironically just as pretentious, but, by making poems that actually mean something.
As a writer, Levi the Poet's greatest strength is his ability to tap into the high emotions that are brought from love and pain. He's in tune with what makes us feel the way we feel about these things. The highs of finding love and heartbreak of losing it. The mental instability of losing control over ourselves. The hopelessness of a love shattered or a purity tarnished. Levi has tapped into all of these feelings, and then some.
Levi can make you feel sadness and joy with words that seem to hit home harder than you would expect them to hit. You find yourself either relating or sympathizing with what's being said. And from that comes the beautiful complexity of these emotions.
Basically, he actually succeeds where every other slam poet has failed.
Levi's delivery in many ways is both similar and different to other slam poets.
Yes he speaks his poems, and yes he says them in a funky manner, but sometimes he sings, gets others to sing, and sometimes he just straight up yells.
His singing, depending on what he wants it to sound like, either sounds good or strained, depending on the mood he's going for.
His yelling is either hit or miss. It'll either encapsulate the mood of the words perfectly, or straight up freak you out. Sometimes if I'm listening to Levi as background music and he starts yelling, it'll totally startle me. It's one of those things where either you love it or you hate it, and I personally only really like it when it's done with a least some restraint.
Another positive that goes into Levi's delivery is his voice. It has an interestingly desperate quality to it, almost like the narrator from A Christmas Story only more intense. Listening to him speak (when he's not yelling or singing) is quite the experience.
When it comes to the content of his poems, Levi's most daring quality is how he never holds anything back.
When he details the nature of his afflictions, he leaves nothing out. And I don't mean he talks about something like self harm in radical detail (ie: I feel the cold blade cutting into my skin, the blood rushing red, etc.) He doesn't do that. Instead, he specifically focuses his intensity on the nature of what is hurting him emotionally.
He talks about how he feels, both euphemistically and bluntly, however just as poetic either way. Many of his poems detail dealing with suicidal thoughts, addiction to pornography, and feelings of lost love and personal regret.
I honestly don't know if Levi himself personally struggles with these things, but he is incredibly good at detailing just how the pain systematically affects him. He truly sounds like someone who has been through all of those things and more.
Another really great aspect of his lyrical content is his faith.
Levi the Poet is a Christian, and, unlike just about any other Christian artist I've ever seen, he has an incredible ability of fitting it in seamlessly with his identity. He has several poems discussing theology and they are spot on. He is able to detail the nature of his own sinful failures being a man and what that sin becomes on the cross. In many poems he praises God and for what can probably be the first and only time in Christian music history, he seems sincere. He's not corny and he doesn't force his religiousity, if you will, into all his poems. He doesn't lord his faith over his work, he lets be an important functioning part.He writes with a goal in mind and if that goal is to speak of God's greatness then he accomplishes it, not needing it to be in everything he does.
So I'm sure one question you have is: just how musical is he? The answer is, surprisingly, very.
Many of his poems have musical accompaniment that does a stellar job in matching to the mood of the words. Some of his poems have little to no music at all. It's really a mixed bag when it comes to how much musical content is in a given poem, but when it's there, it's used effectively.
So yeah, slam poetry is a pretentious and silly genre, but out of all of the pretension and talentlessness Levi the Poet stands out as an artist who can actually paint the beautiful or tragic pictures that his contemporaries have failed to do. You may have to keep an open mind when listening to him, but trust me, it's worth it. Levi the Poet is, quite truly, an artist.
BONUS CONTENT: Welcome to the part of the show where I suggest what you should and shouldn't listen to for this artist if you're interested in checking him out. All of his work is on Spotify, iTunes, and Bandcamp if you want to give it a listen.
BEST WORK: Correspondence, A Fiction (2014)- This is hands down Levi's best work. The entire album is, quite literally, a correspondence between two young lovers that switches point of view between them and a third party or two. On their own, the individual tracks are great poems on their own, but the overarching story presented is masterfully done and interwoven perfectly from track to track. It may take a few listens to understand, but it's definitely worth the effort because Levi crafts a beautiful story of star-crossed lovers coming to terms with their raising, who their parents were, and who they are. It's also his most musical work, with wonderful musical accompaniment on every single track.
"Dear Pianist" from Seasons (2012)- In this poem Levi is speaking to a pianist he has feelings for but has completely given up on. He details the nature of his desire for her and how it can never be because of reasons not entirely made clear. However, the reasons are not needed because Levi crafts a desperately beautiful farewell/recompense that will leave you with major feels.
"Resentment" from Seasons (2012)- This poem is about, well, resentment, but also to a greater extent Levi's evolution as a person and a poet. He details what he wanted to be when he grew up when he was a boy, his first poem, and what he has become, sort of letting the conclusions of that transformation be up to the listener. It's quite the reflective piece that marvels in the nature of getting older and coming to terms with your feelings.
"Dancing with the Goblins" from Werewolves (2010)- This one's a bit yelly, but if you can get past that, you'll find Levi detailing with hellish sadness his own struggles with his character. It's a sympathetic and an empathetic poem that can make you feel incredibly emotional.
"Pretty in Pornography" from Werewolves (2010)- This one is......whoa. It's pretty heavy stuff, as the title implies, but hearing Levi detail with exquisite emotion his pornographic struggles is one of the most emotionally intense things you'll ever hear. It's from the point of view of one who feels nothing but shame and hopelessness for his addiction, and it's one of the most heartbreaking poems Levi's ever written.
"When I Go to Meet God" from Werewolves (2010)- This is Levi detailing his faith, specifically his reflection on going to Heaven and meeting God. Levi talks about many things dealing with his relationship with the Lord including his gratitude for God taking his sin away, which he expresses through praise, sampling many different hymns throughout the work. There are also several great theological musings in this poem.
"The Beginning.The Separation." (2013)- In essence, this is Paradise Lost, Levi edition. In this single, Levi gives a poetic description of the creation of the world and the fall of man, drawing many conclusions from it that are worth hearing about the nature of man and sin.
WEAKEST WORK: "Herman Melville" from Seasons (2012)- This is incredibly yelly, possibly Levi's yelliest track. It's quite terrifying and it's kind of hard to listen to. I would only suggest listening to it if you happen to have a particular fondness for that style.
"Van Morrison Will Always Remind of You" from Seasons (2012)- This one is pretty yelly, and on top of that it's a bit unfocused. I'm not really sure how Van Morrison fits into the picture here. Still some good lines in it though.
"Big Big Bang" from Werewolves (2010)- At first this is just a bunch of sound affects akin to TV static, and then an incredibly yelly monologue from Levi, and then it's over. It's an odd and confusing way to start an album.
