P.E.N.S. (Poetic Energy Needed in Society)
Houston has had a long and storied music history, particularly in the hip hop scene in the early and mid 1990s. Anyone familiar with it would not at all be surprised to discover that scene had grown and mutated over the decades to produce a thriving slam poetry incubator developing the identity and voices of the next generation of artists. They would probably be surprised to discover that didn’t happen; that it was changes in the Houston stand-up comedy scene that led to the city developing as a slam poetry mecca. The people involved (including P.E.N.S director Limbrick) in the scene are as surprised by that as anyone but that hasn’t stopped them from diving into the new art form with both feet.
P.E.N.S. – Poetic Energy Needed in Society – is only partly interested in the history of the art and culture scene it is documenting. It’s there because it must be, particularly when it turns its lens on the earliest members of the current poetry moment, but that’s a side effect of its real focus. The Houston slam poetry scene is not just a stage for self-expression, its proponents say, but first and foremost a plinth for its members to stand before the world and state that they exist and have worth. In many cases it is the entanglement with poetry that the young poets don’t just state this for the first time publicly but actually realize it for themselves.
It’s stirring and engrossing as an idea and sometimes as an experience, but it’s also frequently let down by the nature of the film it is in. Filmed over time, and over a pandemic, with different levels of access to its subjects and even equipment available, P.E.N.S. doesn’t embrace the amateur aesthetic that it belongs to but can’t escape from it. It’s a reality that exists not just within the individual interviews and moments but within the construction of the film itself as different interviews are placed side-by-side with one another without any real feel for the juxtaposition or development of the story as a whole. It frequently comes across as a random collection of interviews, each a microcosm of the world the film seeks to expose but with no real connection beyond that. There is an attempt to bring it together at the end as Limbick holds off on his biggest interview, with Se7en the ‘founder’ of the movement, to create both a thesis and a wrap up for everything that has come before. But that can’t hide how random much of the other material has felt.
If the complete package is not a complete package, that doesn’t take away from its internal pieces at all. Within each individual’s story – from a football player who gets hurt and loses his sport to suddenly discover poetry to an older housewife looking for more out of her time and her life – is a universe of possibility and promise. Whenever any sole poet is talking P.E.N.S. magnetic, its flaws melting away. The stories themselves vary tremendously in content, from individual biography to in depth discussion of specific poems and what they mean, but all of them ultimately are descriptions of the poet’s connection with the idea of poetry itself. It’s a style that sometimes works hand in hand with the extended pieces of poetry performance everyone is given, and sometimes works completely against. There’s no real understanding in whether a sequence needs this or not and adds to the patchwork feeling of the film as a whole.
Both greater than and less than the sum of its parts, P.E.N.S. ultimately succeeds when we stop looking at it as a film and focus solely on its subjects. As a film with a cogent through line leading to an easily understandable destination it is intermittently successful. As a focus on a growing artistic movement and what it is doing for the self-realization of its members it is an unmissable proof of the power of art and its necessity as part of everyday life.