cials announced the capture of numerous U.S.
fighter pilots. In early March, 1991, over twenty
American prisoners of war (POWs) were released by
Iraqi military officials, but unfortunately Speicher
was not one of them.
In January, 2001, the secretary of the Navy
changed Speicher’s status from killed in action to
missing in action (MIA). This was the first time in
U.S. history that Pentagon officials changed a KIA to
an MIA. Intelligence officials further believe that
Speicher may have ejected from his plane and para-
chuted to safety. Speicher’s status was changed again
to “missing/captured” in early October 11, 2002, ex-
actly one day after the U.S. Congress authorized mil-
itary action against Iraq after the terrorist attacks of
September 11, 2001.
Impact Since 2002, numerous investigative bodies
have attempted to determine what happened to
Speicher but have yet to develop solid evidence of
what actually took place. United States military of-
ficials state that they have exhausted all potential
leads. During his absence, the military has pro-
moted Speicher from lieutenant commander to
commander. Today, Speicher is still unaccounted
for and remains on the missing/captured list al-
though no real evidence exists that he was captured.
Speicher was thirty-three years old at the time of his
disappearance and left behind a wife and two chil-
dren.
Further Reading
Ritter, Scott. “Missing in Iraq.”Harper’s308 (June,
2004): 75-77.
Yarsinske, Amy Waters.No One Left Behind: The Lt.
Comdr. Michael Scott Speicher Stor y. New York:
Dutton, 2002.
Paul M. Klenowski
See also Cheney, Dick; CNN coverage of the Gulf
War; Gulf War; Powell, Colin; Schwarzkopf, Norman.
Spoken word movement
Definition Literary and performance movement
Created from a mix of 1960’s and 1970’s experimental jazz
vocalization, coffeehouse poetr y readings, slam poetr y
events, theater actors, and hip-hop emcees, the spoken word
movement synthesized into a nationwide revolution that
transformed the way in which poetr y is presented and
shared. During the 1990’s, this art form began to permeate
film, advertisements, music, and culture worldwide.
Spoken word poetry, which is poetry that uses ele-
ments of performance when recited, can be traced
back to humankind’s earliest ancestors on the con-
tinent of Africa. It has transformed into versions
that include formal rhymed verse in Turkey and the
lyrical poetry of primitive northern European no-
madic tribes. In the 1990’s, it combined democratic
aspects of American culture to create a new move-
ment that was rooted in providing poetic access to
all ethnicities and classes. In Chicago, Marc Smith
created the first poetry slam competitions. In New
York, Miguel Algarín founded the Nuyorican Poets
Café, which featured spoken word greats like San-
dra Maria Esteves, Pedro Pietri, Saul Williams, and
Tracie Morris. In San Francisco, Gary Mex Glazner
organized the first national poetry slam competi-
tion, along with Marc Smith, in 1990. At the time,
Smith did not know how much his humble idea
would grow.
This poetry reading format, unlike exclusive aca-
demic readings, allows audience participation in the
form of judging. The “open mic” structure also al-
lows anyone with a poem to share his or her work.
More important, these readings were created by a
multicultural, working-class pool of poets who wel-
comed anyone to participate. Typical readings in-
clude works by people of various ethnicities, and ac-
tivist topics include struggles in academia, poverty,
male-female relationships, police brutality, racism,
sexism, homophobia, commercialism, and existen-
tialism, among others. To add to the diversity, some
spoken word organizers invite actors, hip-hop em-
cees, singers, and dancers to perform at events.
While the slam fueled the spoken word move-
ment’s growth, many artists, such as Pietri, refused to
take part in it and simply used the new creativity to
inform noncompetitive spoken word readings. Bob
Holman, on the other hand, added fuel to the fire
and created the slam explosion that resulted in the
Nuyorican Poets Café becoming one of the strongest
forces on the slam scene in the early years of the de-
cade. Morris, Willie Perdomo, and Reg E. Gaines
were the exemplar poets at the Nuyorican and
caused other industries to take notice.
Poetic Glamour and Commerce Highly publicized
awards and anthologies in New York City created ex-798 Spoken word movement The Nineties in America