is simply to be so fucking good at being your own bad self that they will have no choice but to listen to you.
This is also known as the “the path less traveled.”
(hey, it’s the best I can do right now, people; the headachy/body achy stuff continues)
Woke up this morning feeling like utter crap.
Went back to bed. Woke up again still feeling like utter crap.
It’s utterly crappy.
Tuesday: GotPoetry Live was miniscule Tuesday. Three readers, no real audience. We pulled up a table and read poems round robin. Fun, but not the beginning of a trend, I hope. See you next Tuesday?
Tonight: Went into the Cantab with ocvictor to see pinata‘s excellent set. I read the tribute poem “For Shannon” in the open. Went over well; made a couple of edits on the fly which are reflected in the text here on my blog, although not the one that’s on the shannonswishes community.
We also started brainstorming some matches for the Heavyweight Words (my name for the prospective Poetry Boxing competitions I’m thinking about) series. Think I’ve got the first one set; just need to find a date, judges, and a place, and ask the first two “combatants” to participate. Really, it’s almost all done. 😉
Tomorrow night (well, tonight actually) I’m planning on attending the Ship where anselm23 is featuring. Busy week for poetry.
Got the news today that another online distribution site will be featuring Duende work in their streaming content — more news as I get it.
no sky is crystalline
no eyes are limpid pools
no tender glances liquefy the very ice of the alpen peaks
the world is not a human description
the sky’s molecules move independently of one another
the eyes glisten at their centers but end quickly beyond their surfaces
the snow on the mountain will melt in its own time
and love will not conquer all
as anyone can tell you
who has loved and then stopped loving
when they came to mountains that held them back
never trust a poet to tell the truth
because they lie to save their imaginations
from the inability of what is real
to bend itself to their words
if the sky ever decides to crystallize
it will fall with great sharp speed upon us
and the poets will be shredded along with everyone else
if the eyes of your beloved ever become deep water
step away from the edge
before a poem can push you in
and if the mountains ever let their burdens slide all at once
toward the places where we stand fantasizing about them
it will not be love that carries the avalanche downward
but a serene indifference to the nature of our unwillingness
to allow things to be as they are
miraculous
in and of themselves
without any need
of our embellishment
When the news came that the young poet had passed
I was noodling through a bad rendition
of some classic rock song on my guitar,
imagining that I was still capable of making it
in a world I never attempted to conquer until
I was too old for a realistic chance.
I was fourteen when I first pulled the pen off a page
in a lined notebook, looked down at what was there, and said:
This. This is who I am. I knew I was the tool
of words. I knew the road would be long, the pain
of walking it would be too strong to bear at times,
but I knew then there was no path beside that one for me.
These days I wonder, sometimes, what would have happened
if I had had a guitar at that time. If I’d had
the time and the passion to blunt my fingers down
to bone and callus and make myself into the image
of my idols. If I had given up the path of the word.
The guitar is superfluous to my story, of course.
All I mean to say is this: there are paths
before us all, and every one is as much the remnant
of a path not taken as it is a calling. When I learned
of the young poet’s passage, I saw the path she took
as clearly as I can see mine now: the initiating voice,
the urge to say something only I could say at the time,
the long nights writing past the stones that cracked my soles,
the luminous moments when the pen stopped
and the face of the poet I dreamed I could be was dimly visible,
a pale moon in the depth of a mirror.
We take what we are given. We walk, we run, we move through the world.
We create our selves where we find our selves. The guitar
holds my sense of regret at what could have could have been, but
as I see her now, somewhere more certain, in a place where she can say
with no doubt in her voice: This, this is who I am,
my urge to put these clumsy hands on these strings
seems as pointless as a death in summer,
on a bright day,
when the world stops
to mourn and agree:
This.
This is who she was,
and we are the better
for her certainty.
I never met Shannon Leigh, and have only seen her work on YouTube…but I admire what she must have been to excite such passions and love in you all. I wish her well on her current journey, and love and comfort to all of you who are touched by her passing.
1.
Perform behind a screen.
2.
Perform blindfolded.
3.
Claim that all your poems are written by the ghost of a dead milkman. Hand out milk to the audience.
4.
Claim that all your poems were written by someone in the audience, give them your feature money, and make them sign your books.
5.
Claim that you can’t do the feature because all the vowels in your poems were stolen by someone before the reading. Lead an angry mob into the street screaming, “WHT D W WNT? VWLS!! WHN D W WNT THM? NW!!!” After a few minutes, go back in and do the feature, thanking the audience for their support and assistance in getting the vowels back.
6.
Apologize to the audience for writing a particular poem, but don’t tell them which one it is.
7.
Create a fictional poet, write their poems, produce a limited-run chapbook of their work, and run a memorial reading for them after their death, with various artists standing up to reminisce about the deceased poet and read from their chapbook. (Actually, I once tried to do this but I couldn’t get anyone to go along with me back then — it was early in the 80’s; think I tried it again once later, but had the same problem.)
8.
Spend six months writing a set of poems to be performed once and never again; print one set of copies and delete the poems afterward; shred the poems onstage after reading them so no copies exist of them anywhere except in the minds of the audience. (I’ve done this. Highly recommended. In fact, I might do it again sometime soon, years after swearing that I wouldn’t ever repeat the trick…)
9.
Record your feature ahead of time. Play it onstage. Heckle yourself from the audience.
10.
I’m not sure where or when, but I’m going to stage a Poetry Boxing match in Worcester.
Eight rounds, two poets. Four rounds poets’ choice, four rounds with some sort of restrictions — rhymed, improv, themed, timed, etc. Not sure yet about the actual restrictions.
Three judges, chosen ahead of time for some combination of poetic/performance experience. Ten points to be divided between the participants per judge per round. Scores not announced until the end of the bout. Cash prize or something for the winner.
One shot deal to start; if it works, I’ll do more. No league, no rankings — I choose the participants.
Let’s stir shit up.
1. The current slam scene is rife with unoriginal work.
2. Much unoriginal work is nonetheless based in authentic feeling.
3. Much of this authentic feeling leads to impassioned delivery — passion represented by rapid speech, highly articulated emphasis, and a reduction in representation of nuance as the poet attempts to exhort or convince the audience of the authenticity of his/her feelings.
4. Slam poems are primarily linear in construction, with one thought leading directly to the next with a minimum of breaks, silence, and associative leaps used in the construction and delivery of the poem.
5. Even when a poem has been constructed with attention to the above, the current preference (by both audiences and poets) for the impassioned delivery renders the performance of the poem less effective than it could be with a more nuanced reading.
6. Audiences seem as comfortable with the above as the poets do.
7. Exceptions to all of the above exist, but the existence of exceptions does not negate the larger trend.
8. Part of the reason for the prevalence of the delivery style described above may be that so many poets learn the work of their peers through the medium of video and audio recordings, which fuse and freeze the performance of the poems so that study of the texts is discarded, thus reducing the possibility that they will lend their own voice and interpretation to the work.
9. Because of the increasing dominance of this performance/writing style, and because of the predominance of the slam venue as the sole home/breeding ground for performance poets in all but the largest metropolitan areas, performance poetry that doesn’t fit the mold is being marginalized and its visibility is being reduced.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Hypotheses require debate and testing. That’s all these are — statements, drawn from my own recent observations and research, that I need to think about more. I invite debate, discussion, and argument.
Fun time tonight at the Manchester NH slam, where truthbealiar did a fine feature and the crowd is enthusiastic and a lot of fun.
Saw a young poet named Lily who at 15 is MINDBLOWINGLY good by any standards you can name. Keep an eye out for this one. Reminds me of the impact I felt seeing people like Corinna Bain and Alixa Garcia for the first time when they were in their early teens, although her style is completely different and so “un-slammy” that it was striking. Old-soul intelligent with a maturity and an eye for the way that little sensory details can speak universal truths. Really, really amazing work.
Hearing her made me think of too many people who have huge reputations in slam, who started out strong and unique but who have succumbed to the Beast, who bring a certain sameness of style that is all the rage and gets acclaimed for its Specialness but which is anything but, at least to me. If this girl ever starts slamming, I’ll be praying for her to maintain her own voice in spite of the pressure cooker that is the Slam.
No, I’m not sharing the list.
The pond by the side of the road
is clouded in a green-brown mist
and if I had not been stuck in traffic
at this early hour
I would never have seen that color
that may be the result of the sunlight
pouring through the green leaves behind it,
or perhaps it is caused by the oak pollen
so thick in the air that it has changed
more than my breathing, but no matter the cause
it is something I would not likely have seen
if I had gone whizzing by intent
on my eventual destination, or if I had noticed it
I might have missed its hue
and if it showed up again in my thoughts at all
I might have decided that it was mist colored,
the default silver-gray that shows up in every poem,
and it might have become a metaphor for something else
instead of standing on its own as some anomaly,
or perhaps there is no anomaly here and all morning fog
in late spring carries a shade worth noting, a shade
only visible when the viewer is halted in his progress
toward important places long enough to see it, long enough
to be content in the viewing and the knowledge
that everything that is known and believed has a loophole
in it somewhere that is large enough to drive through.
He buys a ring from my table
with that familiar look in his eye; still,
I’m surprised that he says it out loud.
“Most modern wealth
is built upon historical theft,”
he tells me. “I’m sorry about that.”
I suppose I should want to seize him
and kiss his skinny hands
for all they’ve done for me,
but it’s too late.
He’s already on his Blackberry
and my gratitude, while it might be welcome,
would be an inconvenience to him.
Maybe next time? I really should say
something to one of them.
Do what you want with George Carlin, but leave me alone!
(RIP, George. You stuck around a hell of a lot longer than any of us had any right to expect. Thanks for everything.)
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This popped up earlier than I expected here…I’m working on a piece about the banality of crime and illegal behavior, and thought this was worth noting as a potential addition to the piece. No real relevance on its own…I use Twitter exclusively to make notes for future poems.
Dark Matter 