To John Basinger, a Middletown-based poet, storyteller and singer, slam poetry means “the face looks outward instead of inward.” Poetry has traditionally been an inwardly directed art, he says, ...

Stephen Sondheim was right -- you gotta have a gimmick. But gimmicks get a bad rap. Commonly derided as a frivolous add-on, a good gimmick actually aspires to the highest condition of literature: It's ...