Attending a poetry reading is like going to a Latin church
service; attending a slam, like going to a service that's
been painfully rendered into the vernacular. The ritual
stands for its own defiant persistence. Which is not the
same as transcendence: we've given up hoping for the
same thrill we might find in dancing, say, or a really
good movie. But it is not nothing that some of us still
feel pious toward a dead culture. And in fact its deadness
becomes ever more relevant, as the tricks of the moment
begin to pall on us. For dead things never get any deader,
& that, in a world of violently gyrating meaninglessness,
can be something to hold on to.