Ashley Feist

Annotated Bibliography
My topic is a mix of percussion and poetry. Percussion is a category of musical instruments
which are more than just drums. There are non-pitched instruments like the snare drum, bass
drum, tambourine, gongs, claves, wood blocks, triangles, and cymbals. There are also pitched
instruments like a marimba, vibraphone, bells, timpani, and xylophone. Poetry is a form
of writing that has aesthetic and rhythmic qualities of language, like, symbolism, alliteration, and
meter, to portray meanings (Poetry). Spoken word poetry is poetry that is said out loud. People
usually are on stage with a microphone in front of an audience. There is a wide variety of topics
people write about, but the goal is to infuse the poets words with the listeners ability to
include himself or herself in the poem, thus breaking down the barriers between audience and
performer (Glazner, 2000).
I want to combine these two elements into one by playing percussion instruments while also
speaking my poetry. I have researched different ideas on how to perform these together. For
example, some start with the music and then write the words. Some start with the poetry and then
incorporate drums in between or with the words. Its been fun to experiment with all the ideas I
have found in my research.

Source one- Musical Performance A Philosophical Study by Stan Godlovitch
Currency- 3
Relevance- 4
Authority- 3
Accuracy- 5
Purpose- 4
Godlovitch, Stanley. Musical Performance: A Philosophical Study. London: Routledge, 1998.
Print.
Ashley Feist

Godlovitch breaks down the musical performance for you and shows you ways to
approach getting on the stage. He tells you how a performance is an event with a sequence of
sounds and how certain things can make the performance better.
For purpose I gave it a four because I think the book has a lot of opinions in it, but there
are definitely great facts as well. His audience would be philosophers, sound critics, and music
performers.
I gave this book a three in currency because it was written in 1998 which isnt very
current, but music performance has been happening for hundreds and I think the art has been
perfected enough that it doesnt change very often.
In the back of the book there are several pages of footnotes and sources he used
throughout the book. It is very well organized and it is also very helpful that he includes an
index.
I put a four for relevance because my topic is also about poetry and this books doesnt
say anything about poetry, but it is very detailed about performance. This book will help me
because Godlovitch goes so far into the importance of a live performance in this society where
most music is heard on a technological device.
In authority, I put three because Godlovitch is a philosophy teacher at the University of
Calgary, but that doesnt him make him an expert at music. I gave the book a five in accuracy
because other people have cited this book and its published and in our library.














Ashley Feist

Work Cited
Glazner, G. M. (2000). Poetry Slam: The competitive art of performance poetry. San Francisco:
Manic D Press.
"Poetry." Wikipedia. Wikimedia Foundation, 20 Feb. 2014. Web. 21 Feb. 2014.
























Ashley Feist

Source two- The Spoken Word Revolution
Currency- 4
Relevance- 4
Authority- 5
Accuracy- 5
Purpose- 5
Smith, Marc Kelly., and Mark Eleveld. The Spoken Word Revolution: Slam, Hip-hop & the
Poetry of a New Generation. Naperville, IL: Source MediaFusion, 2003. Print.
This book is filled with poems and essays about performance poetry. One of the authors,
Marc Smith, is the founder of the slam poetry movement and so there are many explanations and
examples to understand how to perform poetry in this way.
The purpose of this book is to introduce spoken word to the world and to show poets how
to perform their poems. There is even a CD so you can listen to the poems while you read them. I
gave it a five in purpose because this is exactly the kind of poetry I want to know how to do.
This book was published in 2003 and I gave it a four on currency because most of poets
in the book are all still performing their poetry, but there is definitely more recent research, and
examples that I could find.
The CD that came with the book is very helpful because hearing the poems out loud lets
you understand how to write poems this way. In the back there is information about both of the
authors and each poet that contributed to the book.
This book will be very useful to me because the poets in this book are doing exactly what
I want to be doing with my poetry. The weakness is that the book doesnt mention much about
collaborating poetry with music.
In authority I rated it five because one author founded the slam poetry movement and the
other is a freelance writer. I gave this book a five in accuracy because this is a published book
and both authors know the topic of poetry very well.

Source Three- Ragan Fox
Currency- 4
Authority- 5
Accuracy- 4
Relevance- 4
Purpose- 3
Ashley Feist

Fox, Ragan. Ragan Fox Is A Gay Slam Poet: An Autobiographical Exploration Of Performance
Poetrys Performative Implications. Text & Performance Quarterly 30.4: 420-429.
Communication & Mass Media Complete, 2010. Web. 18 April 2014.
Fox writes about his personal experience going into poetry performance contests. He is
known as the gay poet and he talks about how this affects him and his audience. We walk with
him in his shoes as he tells us how nervous he is and how he reacts to certain situations. We
arrive at the performance with him, we know what he looks like and how he feels, and we know
what he is seeing. Its accurate because its a true event, but it also includes his opinions.
Foxs purpose for writing this article was to show how people automatically judge him or
assume certain things because he is gay. He shows his point of view and guesses on others point
of view. He can only tell his side of the story so it is sort of bias, but I like it because its truth
and its the way he feels. He tells us his side of performance poetry.
I put a four in currency because the topic of slam poetry is changing a lot through the
generations and even though 2010 was four years ago the article is still pretty recent. The topic
of gay rights has also changed in my generation because people are more open to the idea and
Ragan Fox talks about that.
His footnotes are very specific definitions of gay and slam poetry. Also, he uses other
sources that I have found while researching this topic.
This article was very relevant to my research topic because it is about going in front of an
audience and performing your poetry. He talked about what was going on in his head as he
arrived at the University and what happened to him throughout the day before he performed. He
talked about how he was labeled as gay before he got on stage and how it affected him. This
article will help me mentally prepare for the performance.
Ragan Fox is a famous Spoken Word poet, who came in third place in the 2005 National
Poetry Slam competition. Hes performed hundreds of times and so that makes him more than
qualified to talk about poetry performance. He does not perform with any instruments, but since
he is so good at poetry he still gets a 5 in the authority category.

Source Four- Peeping Tom by Dan Senn
Currency- 3
Relevance- 5
Authority- 4
Accuracy- 5
Purpose- 5
Senn, Dan. Peeping Tom. Dan Senn. Sonic Art Editions, 1988. Web. 18 April 2014.
Ashley Feist

First of all Dan Senn is a professional percussionist who also composes his own music.
His official website helps a lot, but this piece of music titled, Peeping Tom, is the piece I chose
to do more research on. This is because he is a percussionist who decided to also include words
in his compositions; this is what I am doing. So, by studying Senn and his works with words I
will see ways in which people have been successfully published. This piece includes a snare
drum along with lyrics to say while playing the piece.
Senns audience members are mostly percussionist or musicians in general. His purpose
is to show how he plays snare drum with the accompaniment of his own voice. He might not be
telling me how to perform the piece, but he gives an example of how one can compose a piece
like this.
He published this piece of music in 1988 so it isnt exactly a new idea, but people are still
performing this piece so it hasnt died. This is, by far, the best cite I have come across in my
research because Senn is writing music that is very close to my ideas on how to combine
percussion and poetry.
For special features he has are, a YouTube video of someone performing the piece, a link
to someone who analyzed the piece of music, and when you open up the score to read the music
there is also audio of him playing it. All of these things are extremely useful to me because you
can see the music on paper, see the music performed, and hear the music.
This source is definitely useful in my research because Dan Senn is a successful
percussionist and also presents the ideas of words within the music as well. The only weakness is
that it was written a while ago and he might not be much of a poet, but from what I have read he
is doing fine with the voice/language aspect of his music. It blends and fits in the music well.

Source Five- Slam This: Understand Language Choice and Delivery in Argument Using
Slam Poetry
Currency- 4
Relevance- 4
Authority- 5
Accuracy- 5
Purpose- 3
Carmack, Heather J. "Slam This: Understanding Language Choice and Delivery in Argument
Using Slam Poetry." Communication Teacher. 23.1 (2009): 19-22. Print.
This article was written by a public speaking teacher. She talks about how slam poetry, which
is spoken word poetry, can be used in a group project in the classroom. She has a very detailed
explanation of what this kind of poetry is and how to use it.
Ashley Feist

The purpose of this article is for teachers to use this activity in the classroom. It shows
students how to use spoken language effectively in an argument by finding spoken word poems,
reading them, and then presenting them. Students learn how and why emphasizing certain words
or using repetition can help your audience pay more attention to what you are saying.
The article was made in 2009 so its not extremely old, but it isnt very new either. This
wasnt the best source I have found in my research because it wasnt on exactly what I wanted to
learn about, but the sources she cited in the article helped me a lot.
The best thing about this article was that Carmack used so many great sources to write it. It
was from her list of sources that I found some of the best information in my research.
This article helped me in my research because it explained how to perform poetry out loud,
but on the other hand, it was also teachers in a classroom and not a stage performer. The best
thing this article did was cite good sources that I used in my own research.