Urban Fest Highlights Diversity by Steve Dollar

As one of the moving forces behind the HBO run of "Russell Simmons Presents Def Poetry," producer Deborah Pointer is keenly aware of the convergences of hip-hop, spoken-word performance (a latter-day variant of the good old monologue) and the feisty verbal arena of the poetry slam - which helped make a cultural landmark of the Nuyorican Poetry Cafe in the 1990s.

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