Alix Olson, the radical, feminist, lesbian, pro-choice, anti-war, New York spoken word artist performed this Tuesday at Scripps’ Balch auditorium. More than this assortment of labels however, it was Olson’s impassioned delivery, and her deeply personal and yet deeply political lyrics that stirred a standing room only crowd of both women and men to a standing ovation at the end of the night. Moving with assurance from raucous comedy to high intensity political and social criticism to contemplative self-reflection, she kept up the pace throughout the performance by blurring the lines between poetry, song, stand-up comedy and verbal essay.

Her spoken word pieces came at intervals through a continuous, informal and conversational narrative. "I’ll teach my daughter to bang on anything that makes a beat, she’ll shake-a-boom, she’ll quake a room, she’ll paint her cheeks warrior-style…" began her first poem, Daughter. Olson’s relatively small frame seemed larger as she confidently stomped, stepped, and shook her fist, in a very physical performance that all but quaked the incongruously chapel-like architecture of the performance hall. Her youthful and personable style seemed to connect quickly and easily with her audience. "It’s one of the best audiences, the best groups of people I’ve seen," Olson said at the reception following the show.

The political content of her show was decidedly left-leaning, as she decried growing corporate power, recent anti-abortion legislation, the conservative drift of the Democratic party, discrimination against gays and lesbians, materialism and indifference to unequal wealth distribution in American culture, in a hardly inclusive list. What was remarkable about the political nature of her show, in fact, may be the extraordinarily broad scope of her vision, which provided a marked contrast to the often qualified and cautiously moderate tone of modern liberal rhetoric. It is hard to imagine for example, Gloria Steinem or Barbara Boxer taking on the powers-that-be that Olson unhesitatingly and gleefully lampoons. This political side of the performance rode sometimes comfortably alongside, sometimes at odds with the personal story of her work. Her self-confessed influences included independent filmmaker Michael Moore, but her most intriguing moments on-stage were more reflective of the engaging sincerity of singer-songwriter Ani DiFranco, or the frank sexuality of The Vagina Monologues.

Olson has played a wide range of large venues with her spoken word act, including Harlem’s Apollo Theatre, the National Organization of Women’s 1999 National Conference and Amsterdam’s 1998 Gay Games. She was a member of the 1998 Nuyorican National Championship Poetry Slam Team and the 1999 OutWrite National Poetry Slam Champion. She mused this Tuesday, however, on some of her smaller, out of the way venues, including a number of private Catholic schools sometimes ambivalent about her content. At one such school, she told the audience, the school posted warnings for the benefit of the community along with advertisement of her performance, "Alix Olson discusses controversial issues that will offend you."

There were no outcries from offended students at the show, although some male members of the audience seemed a bit uncomfortable during one of her pieces which involved frequent and enthusiastic expressions for female anatomy, particularly, "cunt." One poem irreverently blended sexual and patriotic language, beginning, "My cunt-try is of thee, sweet land of liberty…" Nate Tate ’05 admitted some discomfort, while praising the show, "It was totally cool. I enjoyed the fact that she made me feel awkward. She pointed out a lot of stuff that I took for granted."

Perhaps less affected by this sense of awkwardness at an art deriving from a woman’s personal experience, the most positive reactions came from the women in the audience. Mary Farnsworth ’03 praised the broad ideologically of the performance, "She is a great role-model because she is such an outspoken feminist, but also because she doesn’t limit her critique. She talked about captalism, race, gender… everything. That’s what makes it so powerful." Although at times very personal, Olson’s poems addressed shared experiences, and many students identified strongly with her work. "She put into words a lot of things I’ve been feeling. She articulates a lot of problems with the world," Julia Crouch ’04, said at the reception.

She ended with a poem called, "America’s on Sale!," perhaps the one piece most focused on social criticism. The last words of her set were, "..where the almighty dollars sparkle and shine, this Star Bucks Land that’s yours and mine. But America’s selling fast shoppers. BUY IT ALL WHILE YOU CAN! Cause America’s been downsized, citizens. And you’re al fired."

After the performance Scripps students gave the artist a bouquet of flowers, thanked her for coming out, and invited everyone to meet her at a reception at the Motley. About thirty people went straight to the reception and many purchased CD’s of Olson’s work to be autographed. Reflecting on her work after the signing, Olson said, "I think that live performance is a rare medium these days, with MTV a lot of us have forgotten what its like. I think that telling your own story is really important. My aim is never to convert people to my way of thinking but to share it, to remind myself that I’m alive and I have a brain. I’ve read so much poetry that I think in rhyme and rhythm." She ended with some advice for the Claremont students, "The college communities of the country have a lot of work to do in this anti-war, justice movement. I think that this college, like mine, has a lot of privilege and that we need to use that to makes things better." Olson will be on tour through most of December. Her next show is at the Creating Change Conference on November 9 in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.