Every Creative movement– whether Literature, Music, Philosophy, or Poetry– must dismantle & de-bunk, bad-mouth, throw rocks at, piss on the cars of, and eliminate the previous generation. Let the upcoming Poets, the symbolic grandchildren to Slam & AP (oh, I haven't forgotten ye) be reflective & nostalgic, it is our duty– our, as Freud called it, Primal Horde instinct, to challenge the leader.
2.
AP might not be completely equitable to Slam as The Blob– their absorption-rate isn't as quick, I feel. I would describe AP's approach to new Poets as handsome zombies– They're Barbara's brother in The Night of the Living Dead– Johnnie, the fresh dead, the one who looks good while dragging his sister out of a house as an evening meal.
AP is more dubious than Slam in a couple ways–
One, AP is primarily produced by college students or dullard professors (profs- not all, mind you- being the more prolific, of course, in established publishing).
Two, the inner mechanics, rhyme, meter, line-breaks, internal rhyme, alliteration, (all the skills Slam Poets, for the most part, miss) AP has in vats.
Three, the exploitation of technical skill to camouflage weak talent. This is the temptation of the Billy Collinses & the Robert Pinskies– Men who write extraordinarily well, but lack the core-Spirit.
It is for AP, along with Slam, that McQueen & Jane warn the citizens, "Shit, if we can have a Blob sucking us up, zombies are just around the corner." Steve & Jane are advocating action, attack, though they also realize the status-quo won't be the same afterwards.
"We're in this together, Steve," says Jane. It takes courage and annoyance to accept a change, an alteration, then to develop a new system of thought. That's The Blob: It's about Awakening.
Slam was a good choice against those tired of AP; just as being a Democrat was once preferred over Republican. But, like modern American politics, Slam & AP represent equally sloppy, yet divergently rotten, goals. The Next Movement is outside the spectrum; it could be pulling Morlock 3rd-shift at a Dairy-Mart.
The days of having to own a record player, so you can fully appreciate the 33 and a third Slam record you got w/ your newest Slam Anthology are over; The days of reading technically-perfect, iambically-precise Pinsky-ish poems about pretty hats are through.
We're the mid-wives- drunk, tired, forgotten, singing Karaoke at a Japanese restaurant that doesn't want our business, when we should be at the Next Birth.