I’ve become incredibly opinionated in these middle years, and I’m less afraid than ever about letting that be known.

I suspect it’s going to lose me some more friends, as it already has.

I’m torn: I’ve always been good at diplomacy, but it seems less useful to me these days. I don’t want to be known entirely as a grouch or a curmudgeon, but I also know that that role has value in a community.

The older I get, the more I think of myself as being on some “heyoka” path — the cursed and necessary being whose skewed vision is crucial to the understanding of the un-skewed vision; the exception that proves (in its original sense of “tests”) the rule.

Hubris? Maybe. Maybe; perhaps probably. I find myself less and less interested in how I am seen and thought of. I can only do what I do.

at Gotpoetry was pretty good. A small crowd, due no doubt to the holiday, but a nice set by Brett Rutherford that included some of his Cthulu mythos work and other spooky stories (the one about the haunted sex toys was particularly nice).

I did have to speak to the crowd after an incident in which a poet loudly insulted a couple of patrons from the stage for being “rude” because they were ordering a little too loudly for his taste, and it threw off his concentration.

Arrogance.

What I told the audience — and him of course — was my point of view on these things: first, that too many poets have been tortured and killed around the world for us to be pissing and moaning as much as we do when something discomforts us in our pursuits. Fucking trivialities. Grow up.

Second — and maybe I was too harsh speaking as a host but I don’t care that much, frankly — I said that we are not owed attention, but we must earn it — and if you aren’t getting it, perhaps it’s because your poetry isn’t earning it for you. (I mean that, too; the audience’s duty to be polite has to be balanced by our effort to communicate with them.)

Rough and likely unnecessary. I did qualify it by making a point that I wasn’t saying it directly to him or about him, but about all of us. I doubt it made that much difference to him one way or another. I’m not even sure he was listening at that point. He almost nver listens to anyone else anyway, which is the greatest irony of all, even if a completely predictable one .

as it’s pretty much the only part of the country where I don’t have some family.

I was born in NJ, raised here, my mom’s from here, my dad is from a New Mexico reservation by way of a Georgia residential school. Got relatives here, the Deep South, the Midwest, and the Southwest.

They should have hit the “ant/aunt” divide too.

Also: the meme doesn’t correct for “foreign accents.” Where would an English-speaking immigrant from Central America fall on this scale, for instance?

In my previous post, I asked people to identify their peers in their chosen art form. (If you haven’t answered that, I’d love it if you would do so…)

I think it’s interesting that the vast majority of people identified their peers as people they knew, from their local scenes. I might have set that off with my own listing.

I should say that I also think of my peers (as I define that) as people like Thomas Lux, Tony Hoagland, Thomas Transtromer, maybe Adrienne Rich — again, I’m not trying to say I write as well as they do, but that in the sense of the territory they work in and the care which they seemingly bring to that work, we’re on the same page.

Now, I want to know who your role models are. To what do you aspire? Not in the sense of “I want to write like (insert name here),” but in the sense of trying to achieve the same goals and level of art that those people reach.

For me, that’s a relatively easy question. I want to hit the same heights as Rilke, Shakespeare, Neruda, Dickinson, Whitman — the dealing with the universal questions of human life and spirituality that excite me beyond belief.

These questions, by the way, are an attempt to look at the scope of artistic vision; who do we admire, emulate, relate to?

I am, eventually, going somewhere with this.

TIA.

Who are your peers as an artist? By peers, I mean those who you see as covering their territories with the same love, attention, and intensity with which you cover your own. Living or dead, people you know or do not…those who work at the same level of intensity toward the quality and impact of the work that you do.

For instance…If I had to identify those I thought of as my peers, I’d be thinking of Sou and Bill Macmillan, Lea Deschesnes and Victor Infante, the gang from louderArts among many others. I think of those people (and many more here on LJ and elsewhere) as my peers in poetry.

Who are yours? If you can guide us to their work if you think we might benefit, go for it — link or post here.

I’m really curious, based on a discussion I’m having with a friend right now. Please answer if you can…love to know.

I’m back. I’m at QCC tonight with Faro. Jack McCarthy Sunday night at the Hut was terrific.

I saw Triple H (pro wrestler) waiting at the next gate at O’Hare, thus completing my B-List celebrity sightings for the trip.

Tomorrow night at Gotpoetry we’ve got Brett Rutherford doing a set of Halloween poetry, followed by several of us likely taking a trip over to the Living Room for Sasquatch and the Sickabillies, where we shall rock. You are invited to join us for an evening of punkabilly merrymaking.

Over and out.

Once again, I am sitting in O’Hare, waiting for my new flight home.

And once again, it’s already delayed, although this time it’s only behind by 15 minutes. Right now, that is.

At least I finally found a HotSpot to blog from.

Only Two hours to go! I’m going to get food…back later. Keep your fingers crossed for me, k?

drizzle. cigarette.
letters gone dark
on a hotel sign.
sports bar closing
across the street.

i’ve got no wings, i’ve got
no prayer that will give me
flight. i’ve got an untucked shirt
and no socks. too wired
to sleep, too tired
for anything else. all i want
is to go home, get out
of rosemont.

i know this late i look like hell here,
not that i’m any prize
when i’m home, but
when i’m home i’m not
alone

and for me, 2 AM in rosemont,
whatever else it is about,
is all about being
alone.

First, a clarification on the last post.

The first two lines of it were pretty explicit (I thought) in making the point that I was NOT necessarily interested in getting more comments on my poems — that the feelings of fear and concern about getting fewer comments were ego-driven. Comments are welcome, of course, but I’m not going to lose my mind over this.

The overall point of the post is that I’m far more interested these days in writing STRICTLY for me — operative word “strictly” — not thinking of it necessarily as any sort of communication, but more a form of seeing how far I can take what I do. It’s a time for me to write STRICTLY for myself.

For every poem you see here, there are three or four more that I don’t post. I tend to post stuff here because I want to try it out, see what people say, as part of the writing process. I find I need that less right now.

Thanks for your comments, all of you. I feel like I came off as a whiner, and that was not my intent.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

now then:

Right now, I’m wired although I’m exhausted. I’ve spent my day in meetings, running a training session, and (most of all) hanging out at O’Hare Airport waiting to get home. Weather around the Midwest has produced a clusterfuck; the end result being that I’m sitting here in a hotel in Rosemont waiting for the next flight home, which will be at 4:20 tomorrow afternoon. (Yes, 4:20. I’ll leave it to all of you to have fun with that.)

My flight was delayed several times before being cancelled at around 7:45. Along with a lot of other people, I found myself sitting at the gate watching other people sitting at their gates.

As I sat, I saw a group of men approaching the gate across from me. All three were dragging rolling suitcases. Two were tall, young black men in fairly conservative sweatsuits.

The third was a short black guy wearing:

— a black tracksuit with gold trim
— a leather NASCAR jacket (Mark Martin, number 6, with the logo of his old sponsor — Viagra — on the back)
— honkin’ big rings on every finger
— one gold chain
— white sunglasses
— a yellow do-rag and a bigass gold crown

And yes, a big white clock around his neck.

My first thought was, “who’s this joker trying to look like Flavor Flav?” And then I heard him talk…

Yup, it was Flav. He was catching a flight to Evansville Indiana to visit a cousin (the two guys with him were also cousins).

His flight was also delayed, so for the next several hours I got to watch the man work the crowd.

He’s obviously in love with his celebrity, but I have to say he seemed genuinely nice and friendly. As people realized who he was and that he was the real thing, kids and adults of all ages — and TONS of women — lined up to have their pictures taken with him. He signed autographs left and right and generally talked willingly and at length to any one who approached him.

I have to say that I was really impressed that he was schlepping his own luggage, and his cousins were also really cool; I ended up talking a bit about the weather and the flight delays with one of them.

At one point, I was hunting for a plug for my laptop and Flav was next to me on the phone talking to someone named “Delicious.” I heard him saying, “…baby, you know I’ll be down for you for the rest of my life, no matter what shit happens, you my girl no matter what.” I think she’s the woman he chose on the show, yes? I’ve only seen it once or twice.

I have a rule about not bugging celebrities in airports, so I didn’t speak to him myself, although I did wave hi and smile as I left the place where he was talking on the phone and got a smile and nod in return. In retrospect, I should have said something to him about how much I loved Public Enemy, but I’m not sure how it would have gone over, so it’s probably for the best.

They eventually moved his flight to another gate, and the gate attendant broke the news by saying over the intercom, “All those travelling with Flavor Flav to Evansville, your flight will now be leaving from…”

And off everyone went, with Flav and his cousins in the middle of the throng, yakking it up with everyone.

The one bit I did contribute to the fun: people kept asking him what time it was (of course). One of them said it near me and I couldn’t help it — I said, “He wears the clock so YOU know what time it is…” I don’t think he got it.

Based on what I heard in the crowd, most everyone knew him from the show, and I don’t think many folks knew anything about PE.

Kinda sad.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I need to sleep, but i’m still pretty wired, even after a shower. All I want is to get home.

I get upset sometimes when no one comments on a poem I’ve posted. It’s happened with more regularity lately.

I realize that’s my ego talking. Damn ego!

But I also have begun to realize that I’m finally starting not to care if people like a given poem. I’m starting to think that I’m writing these poems strictly for me, and if people don’t want to go along, that’s not the end of things.

I’m not even all that interested anymore if they’re “good” poems or not. After completing “Jim’s Fall” I’ve kind of moved to a point where I’m experimenting for me, looking for the next thing, looking at ways to change what I do.

I’m certainly not giving two shits about whether they “slam well;” I gave that up years ago, although there are times when it still raises its head for me. I do think of the performance aspects, of course; that will not go away ever, I think.

But I’m tired of easy poems. I’m tired of writing for the broadest possible audience. I want those who read and appreciate my work to be intelligent and thoughtful and willing to dig a bit. I’m tired of feeling a need to be populist.

If the work I’m doing now doesn’t work the way it used to, maybe it’s getting to where I need it to be.

I’m hearing from the grapevine that Francis “Woody” Woodbridge has passed.

For those of you from out of town who have been to the Hut, you may recall Woody as the blind man with the voice of God who read so frequently in our open mikes.

Woody was a true survivor of the Sixties and a heck of a character. I know stories about him from his youth that would frighten and amaze you, some of which can’t be told even now.

This hurts.

Heading to Chicago to do some training and make a little money. Back Thursday night. Will update more later…