If you have ever spent time in Boston, especially near the waterfront, you may recall a slightly time worn red building over on Atlantic Avenue. It was always a landmark of mine when I headed into town when I was much younger, especially on trips to the Quincy Market/North End back when it wasn’t as gussied up as it is today.

The James Hook Lobster Company has burned down in a seven alarm fire overnight.

This makes me feel old, for some reason.

Here’s a link to the story:

http://www.boston.com/news/local/breaking_news/2008/05/fire_destroys_l.html

Confession: I’m not much of a fan of the city of Boston. Growing up in the Worcester area gave many of us an automatic chip on our shoulders toward Boston; too often decisions taken in the state capital have hurt the rest of the state (well, more so when I was a kid). A good example was that Worcester, the second largest city in NE until Providence took the title a few years ago, had no direct exit off the Mass Turnpike until 290 was finished some twenty years later and even then it wasn’t all that convenient; that “oversight” was a result of some back room resentments and deals in the Hub back when the Turnpike was first designed.

I always have preferred NYC and when I say to someone “I’m going to the city,” I mean “I’m going to NY.”

(Cambridge ain’t Boston, by the way. Rest easy, Cantab and Lizard colleagues.)

But the James Hook & Co. building? I dunno. It always seemed stubborn, resistant to the waves of change as Boston grew up and around it, a throwback to something that was hard to describe.

I’ll miss it, even if they rebuild it somehow. It’ll never be the same.

and now I just have to get some dates for work set. Could be quite a few, and all of them local.

Keep those parts crossed…

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ocvictor and I were talking about this last week. Thought I’d open it up for some chat.

What do you make of the spate of programs on TV right now that are about, for want of a better word, macho men and occupations? I’m thinking of “The Deadliest Catch,” “Axemen,” the new one about oil workers, that one that’s starting out soon about tow truck drivers in Chicago, etc.? To a lesser extent, it would include things like “Dirty Jobs,” “Man vs. Wild” and “Survivorman.”

It’s not that women don’t appear in these programs, but they certainly focus on occupations that seem to be primarily filled by men, and which have a certain level of physical danger involved.

I’m curious: do you think there’s something in the Zeitgeist that’s pushing this stuff to the fore? Why is there is this sudden demand for these shows?

Any thoughts?

OK, here’s the whirlwind version of the last couple of days:

— Gotpoetry Tuesday was quiet. Seven readers in the open, small but attentive audience. Faro couldn’t make it because of last minute band obligations — by the way, he and Capri got engaged (!) — so poetry and music night was a bit different than it is usually, but a fun night. If you weren’t there, you missed me singing and playing. Take heart that this was not a bad thing. You missing it, that is.

Next week, it’s theme/new poem night. Your theme is “I don’t know…” which should make for some interesting work, since poets usually know everything. 😉

— If everything falls into place today, I may have a BUNCH of new, locally based consulting work over the next few months. Today will be crazy getting things lined up (Lea, I got your message; no chance to record today but tomorrow may be good — will let you know later) but I’m keeping my fingers crossed; please help by crossing something of your own.

— It seems that I’m going to be visiting some parts of the US I don’t usually get to in August. Doing a bunch of one day workshops all over the country on each of the Mondays in August. Most of these are a fly-in Sunday/fly out Monday night lighting round, but I may try to drop into readings here and there if anything is going on.

Dates (and this is all the info I’ve got right now):
August 4: Scottsdale
August 11: Westchester County
August 18: Austin
August 25: Atlanta

As I said, these are likely drive by visits with little time for socializing, but I’m open to readings, maybe even features if I can swing them; no telling yet. More as I know more.

— Speaking of gigs: Duende (and hey, me solo if that’s more in line with your place) are still open to local gigs/short drives if you’ve got anything coming up. Anyone?

I’m outie; off to be a consultant for a bit. Back later.

Well, it’s about time this one made it: my old reliable signature poem, “Mission Statement,” has been recorded for an upcoming project (more on that as I know more) and I figured I’d toss a version of it up on the Myspace page.

It’s a tad rough — the recording’s fine but I glitched a couple of lines which, to be honest, is part of the point of this project. (Again, more on that as I know more.) Still, for those of you who know the poem, it’s there for your enjoyment and I hope others who don’t know the poem find it enjoyable.

http://www.myspace.com/poetrybytonybrown

(You can check out my previous post for the beginning of this discussion: http://radioactiveart.livejournal.com/721940.html )

More on the phenomenon of “performance as obstacle to the poem.”

What I’m seeing — and I’ve seen enough examples by now to feel like I’m onto something with this — is that there is a certain category of performer in slam that I’m going to call, for want of a better term, “The Embodiment of the Voice Of God.” (Bad name, and no offense meant to Nick Fox, but I digress.)

The Voice Of God requires two things:

— passionate conviction that the poem being delivered is important to the audience in some way as personal testimony, humorous insight, or social comment;
— an attempt to bedazzle or enchant the listeners with arresting images and/or brilliant wordplay.

Now, there’s nothing wrong with either of those things. God knows I’ve written poems I perform this way, although I write far fewer of them as I get older and I don’t think they ever made up the bulk of my repertoire of work. (Chime in if you disagree; I’m open to that.) I don’t think it’s really about yelling or not yelling; it’s about the delivery of the poem being so emphatic, so aggressively sure of itself, that it leaves little room for rumination on the actual messages and/or processes of the poem.

The problem I have with the Voice Of God is pretty simple: I see it as applicable and effective in far fewer cases than where it is currently used.

My insight on this came from reading a bunch of poems in a bunch of chapbooks — poems I’d seen in performance. When I went back and looked at the poems in question, I was struck by how often there was a disconnect between the emotional content of the poem and the way I’d seen it delivered. Often, commas and other punctuation made sense in the text of the poem but were discarded or only handled perfunctorily in the performance of the poem. So many times I saw that a poem I’d seen done as a loud, aggressive, quick-off-the- tongue piece of work was in truth something that had a far greater range of emotional dynamics to it than you’d identify if you only heard the poem, and that the written version of the poem was far better than the performance would suggest.

It’s a paradox to me — the idea that people would be willing to detract from their poem by not seeing how a more nuanced reading of it might be more appropriate.

I then realized something that I think is important: the truth is, many of these poems would be better rendered in three and a half or four minutes than in the three minute window that seems to be the default for a lot of slammers whether or not they use those poems in slams. That slavish devotion to time compression seems to increase the signal to noise ratio in such a way that nuances are cast aside. If you can’t slow down, if you can’t decrease your cadences and rhythms to match the written poem, if you can’t take the time to whisper now and again because you can’t afford to take yourself over the time limit (even if you’re not slamming), AND the nuances are there to be seen on the page, you’re crippling the maximum impact of the poem.

Again, there’s far more to say on this and it needs to be refined, but that’s enough for now. I’ll come back to it again in the next few days…

Thoughts?

that I need to research more, but I’m starting to feel like the largest problem with the poetry in slams these days is less about the writing (which I know I’ve bitched about for years) and more about the performance.

Basically, I’ve been reading and re-reading a bunch of chapbooks from the last few years and finding the writing is better than I remembered, but when I compare the nuances and dynamics of the poems to the way they’re usually delivered, I find a huge gap in the translation of the printed word to the stage.

This also seems to be a mostly male-centered thing, although I’ve found a few examples by women.

I’m also finding my perception that the well-regarded female poets in the slam world are generally (to me) light years ahead of the well-regarded male poets in terms of both writing and performance is still justified, with very few exceptions. And I’m trying to objectify my own subjective view that for some reason, the male poets get greater acclaim for lesser work. But that’s still uncertain.

Thoughts welcome.

IMPORTANT ETA: Let me be clear on this: I think the problem is not in a lack of performance skills; in fact, I think the real problem is that there is way too much emphasis on PERFORMING the poems in a particular way and far less than is needed on taking the time to translate the poem on the page into a performance that matches its dynamics.