The words echo for a moment and then slowly sink in. Cohen is anything but still.
Spoken word is the underground performance of written poetry.
I've written a lot of poetry for the page and know it has to be self-contained, that you have to be able to look at the sentence and get all the different levels. But when you're in slam you can rely on the performance to pull people in. It's closer to theater than it is to poetry because you're creating a event. Written poetry is finite, finished, etched in stone. This is kids speaking for themselves in a way that everyone has to listen.