Over the past week, the SLAM team has decided to step up its game in a more literal way. They know they can pump up a crowd with their beats, but now they are trying something new: they are becoming a Beat Generation. Team Captain, Elizabethan Sonnet ’14, wanted to test if words do truly speak louder than actions. So last week, she made an executive decision to trade in the team’s stomping shoes for some really fierce stationery paper. After a whole week of hard training, the new and improved SLAM team has written a little over one poem. However, they believe this poem may really get the Andover crowd pumped up in time for Andover/Exeter this weekend. After realizing that SLAM poetry is not for everyone, Sonnet and other SLAM team leaders had to cut a few members off the squad because they lacked the sensitivity and voice inflection required to write and recite poetry. Fortunately, the SLAM team has allowed Features to showcase a sample of their most recent poem, which they performed at the Girls Varsity Basketball game against Exeter: “Roses may be red, but violets are blue, and so is our boy Gunga, too. So, when you shoot the ball, listen to the crowd’s “wooooh.” We are ballin’, we believe in Big Blue.” After the recitation of their poem, the entire crowd was stunned into silence as they let the underlying significance of each word soak in. After this moment of reflection, both the PA crowd and the GV Basketball team snapped and nodded as the SLAM team took a bow. Not only does SLAM have the Andover community’s support, but the Athletic Office is also in full support of the new SLAM team. They are currently working on changing SLAM’s varsity jacket symbols to better represent the team. Instead of their current symbol “A,” the Athletic Office has drawn up a feathery quill for the new design. The English department, however, is not impressed with SLAM’s emoting hand motions and rapid-fire word recitation. A group of English teachers got together and created a short poem in response to SLAM’s new work: “Roses are red. Gunga is blue. Poems should flow like Shakespeare wanted them to.” Although the English teachers hope that SLAM will start incorporating some more imagery, alliteration and caesuras into their poems, everyone else is in full support of their new, trendy style.
