from Zephyr.unr.edu
March 14, 2002
by Juliana Crespo
She whispered and gasped for air as she spit out angry words. Her body convulsed with jerky movements and she seemed on the verge of a nervous breakdown.
But Alix Olson wasn't going to have a breakdown -- she was reciting poetry at the University of Nevada, Reno.
Olson, a slam poet, travels throughout the United States and awakens people from hazy daydreams to the thought-provoking words of feminist and lesbian wisdom.
Poetry slam is a competitive art among poets. Writing and performance is emphasized and poets are encouraged to focus on how they use voice and gesture to express what they have to say.
Commercialism and materialism in the United States
She challenged the audience by brashly confronting issues of homosexuality, racism, commercialism and feminism in the United States.
"Attention sports-utility, plastic-surgery suburbanites, viagra-popping, Gucci-shopping urbanities," Olson yelled as she launched into "America's on Sale."
Her words transfixed students on March 6 as she cradled the microphone in her hands like a baby and purred softly about women and love. She smoothly and angrily moved to biting words about injustice.
"Attention George-Clooney loonies, promise-keeper sheep, stockbroker sleep-walkers, big investment talkers, Ricki-Lake watchers! Attention Wal-Mart congregation, attention nation. America's on sale. We've unstocked the welfare pantry to restock the Wall Street gentry. It's economically elementary because values don't pay. Yes, American dreams are on permanent layaway."
Olson's poetry was a call for a new revolution in the United States where American dreams are not on permanent layaway.
Her words, rhyming and chugging like a steam engine, bounced off the walls of the Alumni Lounge in the Jot Travis Student Union.
"Danger! She-men working above," she spit out sarcastically as she recited the "Vagina Poem."
"And beyond you, yes, we are deconstruction workers. We are exposing unfounded bedrocks that bed us with one sex, that we us to one gender. We are overturning those stones. We are throwing them back. We are making revolution a gender evolution. We are evoking strategy, we are evoking shame and we are calling it -- we are calling it refusal to be named."
Criminals and cunts
The audience giggled but truth was no longer hiding behind Olson -- a pretty, all-American face wearing tight, red pants.
Olson roughly seized the moment and brought everyone in the room with her to a place where fairy tales don't exist.
"They sit me down in a big, green police chair with a big green light cornering my soul," she said as neared the end of "Criminals."
"They say, 'you tell us who's the bogeyman, ma'am. You point out the criminal.' So, I finger the composites stacked in my hand. I flash my big bright model-citizen smile. I say 'I'm sorry sir but the criminal ain't in this pile."
Referring to herself openly as a dyke with a smile, she wielded words as weapons against negative female stereotypes about beauty.
"There'd be torture chamber exhibits, with tall skinny heels, inviting little girls to 'try this and see how this feels!" she rasped as she spit out "Cunt Country."
"Cunted creatures wore these to work or to anywhere formal. This pain was called...'sexy.' This process was called 'normal.' "
Olson jokes, then gets serious
She smiled at the audience, told stories and made jokes to lighten the mood between her intense slam poetry outbursts.
"Recently I noticed "Women for Bush" stickers," she said as she began laughing. "I was like, yeah, 'me too, me too.' "
Audience members clamped their hand over their mouths as they understood the joke.
"And so my friend was like, 'I don't think that's what they mean, Ali,' " she said as the audience continued to laugh. "I guess I'm just too optimistic. And then I looked at the people inside the car and I was like 'hmmm, probably not.'"
Allison said she saw fifty American flags in a single field while driving through a long rural highway outside of Minneapolis.
She asked the person who was driving with her why the field had fifty American flags on it. The driver replied that the fifty American flags were replacing flags from different countries which had flown there before the Sept. 11 attacks.
"Well, that bothered me," Olson breathlessly said.
She mentioned Aristotle and his belief that in an ideal city, people would only love each other, not having the capacity to love outside their city.
"That's not true," she said. "We have the capacity to love so many people."
Putting up fifty American flags limits American's notions of the rest of the world, she said.
Nevada students on Olson
Flipside events chairperson Melissa Markee brought Alix Olson to Nevada after seeing her perform at a national conference.
"There were some people who were a little scared," Markee said. "It's definitely a part of the program to challenge students and make them think."
Nevada sophomore Josh Hartzog said that Olson was personally offensive to his beliefs.
However, he said he realized he has to reexamine his beliefs and look at it from another perspective.
"She didn't sugarcoat anything," he said. "She came out with what she had to say and she made no apologies about it."
Olson tours colleges, high schools and clubs around the United States. Nationally known as a force behind slam poetry, she has performed at national events, such as the National Organization for Women national conferences and the National Lesbian Summit.
Harlem Apollo Theater and the NYC Gay and Lesbian Center host her as a featured performer and she has also been interviewed by CNN, Fox News Online and other local and national media stations.