Mayda Del Valle sends her soul into her poetry, as she rants, "The color of my skin still sets me as an alien in the country of my birth / I can't check myself into a box / You tried to force me into the melting box." As she speaks, the rhythm of her words quickens, her voice, rich and expressive, takes on more of a singsong quality. "My Columbian ancestors had more ... than your Microsoft, your corporations," she continues, rocking forward and back, striking the air with the sides of her bent hands and arms, articulating her vivid frustration with false dreams of America. The crowd goes wild at the poet's words and her powerful performance.

Mayda is one of nine featured poets in Russell Simmons' Def Poetry Jam, which opens this weekend at the Longacre Theatre. The performance, inspired by Simmons' HBO show "Def Comedy Jam," presents the hip-hop culture of spoken word poetry to mainstream Broadway crowds. Yet the show manages to maintain an intimate feel. The audience is drawn in from the start, as deejay Tendaji Lathan controls the beat. "Y'all know the words," cries Lathan, "Lemme hear ya make some noise!" While there is an expectation that the audience is already familiar with the language of rap and hip-hop, the show caters to people with all levels of exposure to the genre. The nine poets are Beau Sia, Black Ice, Staceyann Chin, Steve Colman, Mayda Del Valle, Georgia Me, Suheir Hammad, Lemon, and Poetri. Each enters onto the stage, which is set with abstract frames of various colors. The simple set removes the performance from physical specifications of time and space and increases the focus on the actual words.

While traditional poetry focuses on words alone, the pieces in Def Poetry Jam are clearly written to be performed. The performers are conscious of their art form: they are proud to be poets. In one piece, "Metaphors," performed by Colman and Poetri, flowery poetic language is mocked, for "sometimes it's better to say what you mean." Spoken word poetry provides a perfect medium for such direct expression, as it focuses on raw emotion--rage, love, poverty, and prejudice--and uses slang and vulgar vocabulary to emphasize the sense of the real. Yet this poetry is also a celebration, both liberating and visionary.

As the evening progresses, poets perform mostly in solo, although occasionally with others. While performance style and tone differs from performer to performer, common themes emerge. Many poets focus on identity in America, articulating conflict that emerges from race relations, sexual orientation, multi-ethnicity, and body image. Beau Sia responds with humor in "The Asians are Coming, The Asians are Coming" as he asserts, "you're not shuttin' me up until the egg roll is considered an American food." Georgia Me addresses female body image in "Full Figure Potential, a Fat Girl's Blues," and concludes that "God said love who you are," despite what society says.

The performers rail against social inequalities such as poverty, prejudice, police brutality, and poor educational systems. Jamaican-born Staceyann Chin, a compelling performer and powerful writer, addresses homophobia. She laments the social alienation of "two women's bodies wrapped around each other like pretzels that came out different than the rest." Her piece describes violence towards these woman, and she rails, "I don't wanna pass as semi-white, or almost straight, or semi-normal!" She demands that justice be upheld, "we need to let them know that after these [wounds] have healed, we will still be here."

Many share love poetry, which is sometimes triumphant, but often longing, striving for love despite burden or domestic violence. Hammad combines a call for social justice with a poem about love as she softly describes the pleasures of lying in her lovers arms, juxtaposed with the realization of global violence, inequality, and human suffering. She addresses her lover, "Hold me just a little longer 'cuz we gotta get up soon, come on now baby, we got work to do."

Money is also a major theme, yet the performance as a whole presents a conflicted message. Some poets long for money, idealizing it. Yet this reverence is mixed with bitter irony, as one poet describes the struggle to get by as "stealing for a piece of this American Pie." Performers rant against the unequal capitalistic system, voicing strong skepticism of the government, and rail against industry. One poet exclaims, "Fuck the record deal, God gives me what I'm worth!" Yet one cannot help but wonder at the mainstreaming of hip hop culture in Def Poetry Jam, and how such marketing and commercialization of culture obeys the profit-driven laws of the very system that spoken-word culture criticizes.

While the show may not present clear explanations of such ironies, much of this is due to the very nature of spoken-word poetry as a newly recongnized art form. The form is exciting, highly personal and emotional, deeply moving and expressive, and Def Poetry Jamis overall highly successful. The final poem, performed by the entire cast contains the line, "I write America a letter, I'm not leaving, but things need to get better." All poets begin to speak simultaneously, going off on their own individual rants. The lights fade on this powerful image of organized chaos, a visual and linguistic babble of overlapping words, rhythms, and emotions.