Indiefeed Performance Poetry's 500th Show

I'm meeting Mongo for dinner this evening, so it seems especially appropriate that I pass on his press release in this blog. I've mentioned various items from his podcast, Indiefeed Performance Poetry, but really, you should subscribe to it. First the press release, then a handful of performances I really think you should check out.

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The IndieFeed Performance Poetry Channel Celebrates 500 Shows
Releases Original Recording of “Howl” by Allen Ginsberg



(South Royalton, VT)

The IndieFeed Performance Poetry Podcast, a member of the IndieFeed Podcast Network (http://indiefeed.com), is proud to announce its milestone 500th Episode. To mark the occasion, a special anniversary podcast will begin airing on Friday, January 30th 2009, showcasing the earliest full recording of “Howl (for Carl Solomon)” by Allen Ginsberg.

IndieFeed worked closely with the estate of the late poet in order to bring this historic recording to its podcast audience. As founder and host Wess “Mongo” Jolley says during the show, “What is really critical to understand about Ginsberg is how his work signaled a cultural shift, a moment in time when suddenly poetry in performance became something totally new, and would never be the same again. I contend that without Ginsberg, and specifically without Howl, the poetry slam would be unrecognizable. In fact, we would probably never have had anything even remotely resembling today’s modern performance poetry movement. This poet, and indeed this poem, is that important.”

The IndieFeed Poetry Performance Podcast series was founded in 2006 to celebrate the diverse artists of the spoken word community. The independently produced show is consistently one of the top three poetry podcasts on iTunes, drawing 100,000 downloads every month, and over two million downloads overall.

Since its founding, the podcast has exposed its audience to works by over 200 diverse poets, including poetry slam powerhouses such as Patricia Smith, Beau Sia, Taylor Mali, and Cristin O’Keefe Aptowicz; cowboy poets such as Linda Hasselstrom, John Dofflemyer and Paul Zarzyski; contemporary greats such as Mark Doty and Kim Addonizio; and even historical recordings of legendary icons such Sylvia Plath, Gregory Corso and Jack Kerouac.

The series typically releases three new tracks every week featuring one poem per show, followed by commentary and resources to learn more about the poet. All the works featured on the show are written and performed by the poets themselves, and are available for download free of charge at the IndieFeed site (http://performancepoetry.indiefeed.com) and on iTunes.

The 500th episode, showcasing Ginsberg reading his legendary epic poem, "Howl," has special meaning for host Mongo, who also founded “Ginzy.com,” an extensive Ginsberg website, in 1995. The site, which was the first comprehensive directory of Ginsberg information on the web, became a major resource for news organizations at Ginsberg’s death in 1997. The “Clearinghouse for all things Ginsberg” continued for several more years, until search engines such as Google made the site obsolete, and Mongo closed it in 2002. It was his relationship with the Ginsberg Estate that allowed him to use Ginsberg’s recording of his poem “America” in 2006, to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the original 1956 recording. Mongo is thrilled to be able broadcast another Ginsberg work, from that same amazing evening of poetry over a half century ago, to celebrate the show’s 500th episode.

“IndieFeed provides a unique opportunity for poetry lovers to look both backwards, to the greats like Allen Ginsberg, as well as forward, to the amazing young talent that continues to step onto stages for the first time, every day,” Mongo says. “We look forward to producing our next 500 shows, and continuing to bring great poetry to our audience.”

Beginning at 3:00 am on Friday, January 30, the 500th show can be downloaded directly at:

http://traffic.libsyn.com/poetry/indiefeed_allenginsberg_howlforcarlsolomon.mp3

New listeners are invited to explore to the complete archive of shows as well as subscribe to all new releases, at the main IndieFeed Performance Poetry website:

http://performancepoetry.indiefeed.com

Or by finding the podcast in the listings at the iTunes music store.

If you have any questions, or need any additional information, please feel free to reach out to Mongo directly at mongo[at]indiefeed.com

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And here are some of my favorite episodes (not all!):
Big Poppa E - Seven Haiku
Roger Bonair-Agard - How Do We Spell Freedom?
Jamie DeWolf - Grim Fairy Tale
Shira Erlichman - Daddy's Parking Lot Sermon
Andrea Gibson - For Eli
Marty McConnell - Open Letter to the Straight Comedian Who Called Gay Domestic Violence A "Fair Fucking Fight"
Taylor Mali - Like Lilly Like Wilson
Mighty Mike McGee - Like
Glenn Phillips - Ma'am, Please Put Those Jeans Down
Lynn Procope - Butterfly Nut House
Beau Sia - Money
Patricia Smith - What to Tweak
Susan B. Anthony Somers-Willet - What the Doctors Forget to Tell You About Morphine
Jeanann Verlee - Unsolicited advice to adolescent girls with crooked teeth and pink hair
Buddy Wakefield - Pretend

Arrangement

In my last post, I griped a bit about trimming a selection of poems. I realized later that everything was in the abstract, and therefore less than useful. I'd like to think that something I say here is useful/usable and not just complaining.

I'll put this exercise up and respond to it myself in the comments later today or tomorrow. Here's the deal: I'm placing four of my poems below. I'd like to think a bit about what's the best order for them, were they all to appear together in a collection (it may be a valid answer to say that they ought not to appear anywhere near each other). I've chosen ones that I think hang together somehow, though they're not intended to be perfect matches. In fact, depending on the overall scheme, one might always be a sore thumb. Here's the names of the poems and a few things that come to mind for me when trying to arrange them-

"A Brief Treatise on Synaesthesia" - first published in nth position. disparate threads never really brought together, even at end. funny/absurd (as opposed to laugh out loud funny). personal. prosy.

"Esteban Peicovich and the Theory of Relativity" - published in Fence. disparate threads brought together through repetition of terms. sociopolitical - range of contemporary. funny/absurd. prosy. semi-complex.

"Hiroshima Mindstream" - first published in chapbook Riff Raff. political - war- WWII. visceral. ekphrasis (though people might not bother looking up the original works). simple to follow. serious.

"Such was the dawn of Freedom" - first published in The Texas Observer. political - war - Iraq. prosy. persona. tight thread revisited through repetition of terms. simple to follow. serious.

When I respond, and what I think would be the useful conversation if others respond, would be to arrange these poems in various ways and talk about how the arrangement itself affects reading. That is to say, putting one poem in front of another might set up a new level of understanding, or provide a transition between two very different elements, or even how two poems next to each other are just so jarring as to break up the reading even of only four poems.

Here's the full texts:

A Brief Treatise on Synaesthesia
For Mark Yakich

Actually, it's nothing to do with synaesthesia,
but I don't know the name for my condition.
That's the real problem, isn't it? I mean I
sometimes mistake a leaf for a running dog
or taste blood when someone scrapes
a pot with a metal spoon. But this
is more serious. I can't tell my tragedy
from my comedy. It all began with Hamlet,
which, as we all know, is hilarious. No.
It began with Mr. Rogers' Neighborhood,
which, as we all know, is mournful.
Your latest book, The Importance of Peeling
Potatoes in Ukraine (which the unfamiliar
will think I have invented, but it is quite
beautiful)(that didn't actually confirm
its reality, did it?), is blurbed as a work that can
"re-envision solemnity in terms other than
lamentation, protest, and memorial." I want
that ability. No. I want to know when
I'm using that ability. People sometimes laugh
at my guy-with-AIDS poem. I made a woman
cry with the one about the girl who turns
into a fish. There are apparently several voices
that come naturally to me, but I can't tell them
apart. They don't come as voices, you see,
but as vibrations in my jaw, near to the ear,
as though I'd been struck. Whether my wife shakes
from laughter or anger, orgasm or sadness,
I'm never certain. What chance do I have with words?
I wrote these ones because I am unable
to be there in person to hit you. Would you
give yourself a papercut for me? This page will do
just fine. Depending on your thoughts in response,
I have a selection of sharp and blunt objects
at my disposal. As always, I wish you all
the best, JeFF


Esteban Peicovich and the Theory of Relativity

In a College Station hotel room, the Argentine
Esteban Peicovich and I are clumsily juggling
balls of light labeled “book deal,” “interview,”
“when to return to the Academic Building”
when suddenly, the room is a moving train car
and I am outside, watching the ball of light
streak out of control. If Esteban Peicovich
turns on a flashlight, could we see all the way
to the end of this conversation?

Meanwhile, in a shack on an unnamed island,
Travis with no last name translates Castro's
slurred invectives for national security. Rhetoric
escalates like a train...or a Roadrunner cartoon:
The US puts up a sign that says, “No More Castro!”
Castro puts up a sign that say, “Castro can't read!”
Bush holds up a book about a goat. If Esteban
Peicovich stands in front of a clock, would the gap
between the Americas disappear?

Meanwhile, at Revolution Cafe in downtown Bryan,
a woman strums a guitar, but the railroad crossing
won't stop dinging, dinging, dinging, at dissonance
with her voice. Several miles down the track,
students are praying in front of the Academic Building,
but the clock tower won't stop its digital ringing,
ringing, ringing, at dissonance with their faith. If
Esteban Peicovich leaves Argentina at the speed of light,
at what point do they all meet?

Meanwhile, in New York City, someone is playing
a conspiracy theorist's documentary about 9/11.
It contains numerous documents, but no reliable facts.
The applause is loud as church bells...or a building
collapsing. Esteban Peicovich tosses them a ball of light
which asks, “If conspiracies can hold weight, or the gravity
of a situation prevent the truth from ever appearing,
could we train ourselves to stand on black holes,
and not be ripped apart?


Hiroshima Mindstream

One side of the canvas is lying

No line recovers so smoothly

So quickly

After this multicolored devastation

Babble of Hiroshimatic Japanese
An instant overflown
From 31,000 feet the impact site is small as a marble, or the bomb is small as a marble, or the marble flattens and expands to cover the ground in glass, a Borgesian map of its own destruction
Cobblestones become Venice
Pompeii streets fused with soles

This is not the roundness of a marble
No karma, no chakra
This is the door burst as the eyes of a woman looking at Little Boy
The floor fallen away as the jaw of a boy radiated, all teeth and roof of mouth and too soon this roof too will rot
Encapsulation shifts impossible as
skin bubbles and organs no longer hold
their place
Not sciomancy but anthropomancy

This is the memory betrayed

Memory recognizing itself in broken mirrors, recognizing the mirrors are not really broken

Perhaps this is not a lie

Perhaps I need it to be a lie


Notes: The phrase “Cobblestones become Venice” is from Carol Mavor’s March 31, 2006 presentation “’Summer Was Inside the Marble’: Marguerite Duras’s and Alain Resnais’s Hiroshima Mon Amour,” during which images from the film juxtaposed themselves with a postcard in front of me picturing Keith Linton’s mixed media piece Mindstream. Sciomancy is divination with the shades, or shadows, of the dead. Anthropomancy is divination via the entrails of sacrificial human victims.


Such was the dawn of Freedom

We gathered outside the city to bury
dates in the sand and would come back
in the evening to eat them warm. We
gathered secretly to study, to debate
the differences between Sunni, Shiite,
Christian, Jew, America, South America,
America, Europe, America, World.
We gathered near the remains of Babylon,
not ruins but memories still clinging
to the earth. We gathered in the homes
of friends who had lost a father or a brother,
taken in the night, some unaware,
some knowing too well this story
has been repeated in all times and places:

A headline on February 2, 1893 “ANOTHER
NEGRO BURNED;” the purges of Warsaw,
Krakow, Dachau, Paris; Cortes and Montezuma
slaying sun after sun; India under Britain;
China under Japan; Mothers are still marching
in the Plaza; and we still walk unseen.

The History of the World is kept
in an old room on unlit desks,
in piles of paper higher than any man
can see. At the very bottom of each
lies the truth about this or that
tragedy: a list of names, relationships,
some memories, a difference,
and a handful of dates.

Er, hello?

So I just published quite a long entry. Had images and everything, and I really don't want to recreate it. It immediately came up in my feed reader (Google Reader), but it's not showing up on the blog. Anybody else subscribe to A Piecemeal Poet(ry) get the feed but can't see the post here?

EDIT: Got it. The post was being published, for whatever reason, with a date in last November. Thus, it existed, but was immediately archived. It's back in the proper place/time now.

Read on and, ah, beware the wormhole.

To Understand, To Sum Up, To Leave Out

EDIT: Sorry if you got this multiple times through a feed reader. The first time out, the post was being marked November 2008. I don't know why.

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This post begins with the job market. I'm on it this year. The requirements are slightly different for each available position in terms of what ought to be sent when, but each university to which I'm applying sooner or later (hopefully) will want a writing sample. That means 10-15 pages of poems.

For a moment, let me clarify something for those of you who aren't writers. No condescension, just making this clear: Narrowing down one's poems into a book-length collection is hard. You have more poems than can fit into a volume. You'd think that eliminating some would be easy - after all, there are poems you know aren't as good as others. But sometimes those lesser poems provide the perfect transition between two better poems. Now you're making a book that isn't just a collection of individual poems, but something that develops organically in the reader's mind. That's infinitely better than good poem -> good poem -> good poem. Chapbooks are shorter and, in a sense, easier. They're usually tightly-wound about a theme, or progress chronologically, or have some other guiding factor. They're also generally longer than ten pages.

To pick and choose ten pages of poems is to pretend that I'm not working towards some whole, a future collected works that isn't just a "greatest hits" volume but a cohesive (if slippery) worldview.

Add to this the variety of poetic styles I practice. I'm not saying I'm great in all or any of these, but I write postmodern and modern poetry. I produce visual and performance poetry. I have lyric and narrative and political and romantic verse. I'm supposed to pick 10 pages out of this to sum myself up for the committee?

I've made it into the second round of the selection process at a particular university (which will remain unnamed at this point in time), and the head of the selection committee let me send El Oceano y La Serpiente / The Ocean and The Serpent as my writing sample. This was a huge relief.

For the places yet to ask (or that I have yet to apply to) I'm debating whether or not to include, say, a DVD with "ADD TV" on it. Does a three-minute performance piece equal one page? Two pages? Three pages?

Sigh.

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In related news, Ron Mohring over at Seven Kitchens has begun talking with me about cover images for The Icarus Sketches. I'll keep you updated when the top choice for artist gets back to us (if she gets back to us).

In the meantime, I'll take a page from Gary Sullivan and the many people who joined in last year.

Book covers I particularly like:


Alaskaphrenia by Christine Hume
Christine is a former professor of mine (and a damn good one). I also quite like her work and own three of her collections - Musca Domestica, Alaskaphrenia, and Lullaby. Of the three, I think I still read her debut most often, but the design on Alaskaphrenia is top notch.


Rise Up by Matthew Rohrer
Reviewed (and also given props for its cover) at coldfront magazine.


Studying Poetry by Barry Spurr
An unconventional choice, but the covers of most how-to writing books, textbooks, suck. There's an honesty to the spiralling handwritten text that's sorely lacking in the neat, self-helpy appearance to most of these things.


Awe by Dorothea Lasky
Seconding Clayton Banes on this one. I linked to Banes' blog above.

Bloodstains on a Battlefield by Roger Bonair-Agard
This is a standard slam poet's chapbook - run off at Kinko's or somesuch with almost no thought to design. But Bonair-Agard used crayons to draw unique sketches on every single cover. You can't beat that.

All the names thus far have been poets, not the folks who designed their books. To switch gears briefly:

Just about everything by Jeff Clark. He's good enough that some people have started to worry about him being too good. Sometimes they'll replace the word "good" with "slick" or "commercial" to cover the fact that they're worried about him being good. But really, just about everything from this guy is solid.

Anything Unicorn Press from the early 70s. For an example, check my previous post about Rexroth. Al Brilliant and his coworkers made some beautiful books. I recommend actually getting your hands on one, because their beauty is most often due to restraint and good proportions.

Ah what the heck - my first foray (and my second chapbook, under the auspices and tutelage of the aforementioned Al Brilliant). The image is by Antonio Pratsa:

Bouncing through Blogland, or, Yes, No, Yes

I regularly read C. Dale Young's blog, which in its last entry linked to Reb Livingston's blog, which was commented on and linked to in Andrew Shield's blog.

First off, a big yes to Livingston's post about Elizabeth Alexander's poem. It was an intentionally small part of a very big day, and the day wasn't about poetry. Poetry was a supporting cast member. Poetry will not be up for best supporting actor/actress. Move on.

Second off, a big no to Shields' comment that

contemporary poets don't stand a chance when reading their work before or after politicians or preachers. But I also noticed that both Obama and Lowery are not shy of being *orators*, while EA (like just about any contemporary poet who might have accepted the gig) completely avoids anything "oratorical" in her presentation.

It's not contemporary poets who don't stand a chance when reading before or after politicians or preachers. It's poets who actively avoid reading before the public and even look down their nose a bit at such an activity. I won't even say academic poets, which is where some of my colleagues (academic and bar-bound) would draw the line. I've heard poets in the academy who can read/recite quite well: Nikki Giovanni, Stan Sanvel Rubin, Philip Levine, Sylvia Plath (holy shit does her reading of "Fever 103°" put a chill up the spine), Gary Snyder, Christine Hume. I'm not saying you have to like these poets or their work (Levine, for example, is a one-hit wonder, and Giovanni writes absolute drivel). But they can all read and not just keep an audience's attention - they draw the audience increasingly to themselves as they read. This of course leaves out contemporary poets known in large part due to their excellent performances/readings: Patricia Smith (who has straddled the page/stage divide like no other), Tracie Morris, Taylor Mali, etc. Again, maybe you, dear reader, don't like these particular poets, but they are contemporary, and they rivet listeners.

Third, and on the other hand, I really like the conversation taking place here on Shields' blog about the possibility of conversation among poets of differing aesthetics. The use of musicians as a metaphor is likely a good one, and I'm going to keep track of the various posters as they refine that metaphor into (hopefully) increasingly useful distinctions. Also, he brings in Borges in a smart way, and that always makes me happy.

Fact > Fiction

Kate's grandparents are farmers, and we asked them if a pig would really eat a corpse. If you've watched Deadwood, you know why we asked.

Joe's friend Paul once accidentally put his tractor through a pig pen. The jostling dislodged him, and he fell into the mud. He was pinned below one of the tires with a cut on his leg, sustained during the fall. The pigs took notice of the bleeding, upon which they began to eat him alive.

He got away, but was crippled for the rest of his life.

And now you can't sleep either.

iPod shuffle game/survey

This game has been floating around for a while, apparently. I didn't join in when sixteen or thirty different friends all jumped on it in Facebook. But since I turned 29 yesterday, I feel the need to do something absolutely silly. Here's the deal:

Put your iPod on shuffle and press next song for each question. Put the song that pops up on the question.

That's it. I am now prepared to be embarrassed.

Shuffle iPod Survey

How am I feeling today? All in my Head (Marie Brown)
How do my friends see me? Pedestal (Portishead)
What is my best friend's theme song? Che cosa accade, signori miei? (from Il barbiere di Siviglia)
What is the story of my life? Track 19 (a blank track off Buddy Wakefield's album Run on Anything)
What is the best thing about me? Title Track (from Death Cab For Cutie's We Have the Facts and We're Voting Yes)
What is today going to be like? A Martyr For My Love For You (The White Stripes)
What is in store for this week? One Last Vow (DeVotchKa)
What song describes my mom? Instinct Blues (The White Stripes)
What song describes my dad? Tomorrow (Death Cab For Cutie)
To describe my grandparents? How To Save A Life (The Fray)
How is my life going? Paradise (Vanessa Carlton)
What song will they play at my funeral? I Got Gone (Buddy Wakefield)
How does the world see me? We Looked Like Giants (Death Cab For Cutie)
Will I have a happy life? No Sunlight (Death Cab For Cutie)
What do my friends really think of me? Vienna (The Fray)
How can I make myself happy? Roads (Portishead)
What should I do with my life? Demon Seed (Nine Inch Nails)
What is some good advice for me? Evolution Revolution Love (Remix) (Tricky)
How will I be remembered? Reptile (Nine Inch Nails)
What is my signature dancing song? A Cure For Destiny (Stephen Sargent)
What is my current theme song? What Sarah Said (Death Cab For Cutie)
What does everyone else think my current theme song is? A Thousand Miles (Vanessa Carlton)

LIFE STORY:
Opening Credits: Evening At Lafitte's (Squirrel Nut Zippers)
Waking Up: Track 22 (another blank track off the Buddy Wakefield album)
First Day At School: How It Ends (DeVotchKa)
Falling In Love: People Ain't No Good (Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds)
Fight Song: If Yo' Shit Was Togetha' (Joaquin Zihuatanejo)
Breaking Up: Track 21 (yet another blank off Wakefield)
Prom: Just for Now (Imogen Heap)
Life's OK: Sour Times (Portishead)
Mental Breakdown: Thursday (Morphine)
Driving: Prelude to a Kiss (Duke Ellington)
Flashback: On The Alamo (Duke Ellington)
Getting Back Together: Suddenly I See (KT Tunstall)
Wedding: Come All You Weary (Thrice)
Birth of Child: Winter (Tori Amos)
Final Battle: In the Highways (off the O Brother, Where Art Thou soundtrack)
Death Scene: Ma bravi! Ma benone! (Il barbieri di Siviglia)
Funeral Song: Black Hair (Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds)
End Credits: Amputations (Death Cab For Cutie)


Huh. Some of those are actually pretty funny.

Politics, Punching

I'm fond of the Gawker family of sites, in particular Kotaku, io9, Lifehacker, and Gizmodo. I've mentioned Kotaku, which concentrates on video games, in previous posts. This time I'm turning to io9, the science fiction/fantasy blog for my favorite quote of the last week or so.

From Moff, one of the regular writers, in response to the question "Would you boycott an author's work because of that author's politics?":

Would I boycott—i.e., not purchase new copies of—an author's work because of their politics? Maybe—I think it's totally reasonable to do that with companies; there's no reason I should help Orson Scott Card fund Proposition 8 or the like.

But would I refuse to read an author—like, not buy used copies of their books—over politics? No. Not a good strategy for promoting thoughtful debate.

The kicker, though, comes a few items down when Moff adds this humdinger:

The problem we have to overcome is that the people with the worst views are frequently so much better at punching.

The first part is a wonderfully practical response to the question at hand, which is a good one. I mean, I was concerned about Michael Crichton's politics and apparent gynophobia before the State of Fear debacle, but it hadn't really clicked with me that I was possibly contributing money to causes I don't agree with by buying new Crichton books. Are the sociopolitical leanings (and even contributions) of authors something we as readers should check out beforehand? Is that somehow invading the privacy of these authors (since some, like L. Ron Hubbard, tell you loudly and clearly what they think, but others don't)?

As for the second quote from Moff, anybody here ever get in a real fight, as in physical combat, over a difference of opinions regarding literature?

"A Brief Treatise on Synaesthesia"

I normally don't want to announce every publication I get on the blog, but if there's one that particularly amuses me or makes me proud, I will put it up here. Such is the case with my poem just published at nth position. It really was an email to Mark Yakich, sent upon finishing his hilarious (and textured) book The Importance of Peeling Potatoes in Ukraine. Check both out.

Shakespeare's 99th

My favorite Shakespeare sonnet is #99. Not coincidentally, this is the one most derided by critics. Why, you ask? Because it's rough, even clunky. Because it has fifteen lines (some scholars have noted that other fifteen line sonnets exist, but this is the only one of Shakespeare's 154 to stray from the standard fourteen lines). Because the imagery is so very plain compared to most of the other sonnets.

But if you're trying to read through the sonnets in one go, or even over the course of two or three days, Sonnet 99 is a breath of fresh air. It's not perfectly crafted, every possibility thought out four steps ahead. It is, no matter its faults, different, and that is absolutely necessary. I only wish it came earlier in the sequence.

This isn't so much in praise of imperfection as it is of difference in texture. I would praise imperfection, but that could unfortunately lead to some of the art I saw last Friday in downtown Portsmouth. There were three galleries we visited with wonderful art. But in one of them, even the mistakes appeared calculated. Which meant that in pieces of art that were utterly controlled, even the errors were controlled, which meant there was no tonal shift, just the appearance of one.

One reason I love open mics is because of the shift in texture over the course of the evening. Wednesday night at the Cantab was wonderful. The open mic didn't have quite the variety one sees at a good Mic Check, but I also grant that even Mic Check doesn't always have that variety. That's the nature of an open mic. But there was an old man, perhaps with Parkinson's, acting out the first scene of his one act play (I'm not sure any of us could make sense of it). There were first-timers talking about love and hate and the usual, and sometimes managing to spark their language from what could be burned-out materials. There were regulars who did free verse, sonnets, LangPo, and more. There were poets responding, through poetry, to other poets' works. And at no point during the open mic did everybody sound like everybody else. Sure, there was overlap, but we got about 2 1/2 hours of widely varying material.

Then came Shira Erlichman, who doesn't sound quite like anybody else. At some point I should do a blog post just on her work. Seriously. She's got a successful style and rightfully so, but she understands, as a feature, how to vary her poems such that the texture shifts. Serious to funny, lyric to narrative, abstract metaphors to concrete details. She never gets so entrenched in her own "voice" that it becomes background noise.

Unfortunately, that's what happened for much of the slam. I'm not saying this as sour grapes (I got my ass handed to me - but I generally do in slams). Rather, the poets who competed and made it to successive rounds sounded like slight variations on themselves in those successive rounds. The guy who won absolutely should have won, though the woman he knocked out in the second round was pretty good. But even he found a voice/style that made the judges like him, and he kept doing that thing. I realize that's part of the game of slam, to find a winning strategy. But as someone who still holds out hope that there is artistic value in the very process of slamming, I want to see more people take risks in the slam itself. Once you've won the audience's favor, see what you can do with it. Risk that favor such that you give the audience something they were not expecting.

On a similar note, that is, texture, I've been reading Corinna A-Maying the Apocalypse by Darcie Dennigan lately. It's the latest winner in the Poets Out Loud series. My friend Karin Gottshall is a previous winner. I find that I can read Karin's book Crocus in one day, not because the language is easier (though it is), but because the book is more textured. The words never become so consistent that they fade to page. This isn't to knock Corinna - I am blown away by various poems so far and immediately purchased the book upon reading a few in the bookstore. But it's not the kind of book I can read more than two or three poems at a time. Am I just expecting the wrong thing from it? Is it wrong to want a sore thumb, a scratched coin, an error in the middle of the book?

Genre-Benders

A fun game for academics/teachers everywhere: Design-a-class.

My friend Crystal bought me House of Leaves as a present. It got me thinking about how fun a special topics course on genre would be. Here are some of my thoughts on required reading so far:

Horror
Genre: H.P. Lovecraft. "The Rats in the Walls."
Bender: Mark Z. Danielewski. House of Leaves.

Fairy Tale
Genre: Charles Perrault. "Little Red Riding Hood."
Bender: Angela Carter. "The Company of Wolves."

Western Film
Genre: High Noon.
Bender: first four episodes of Deadwood.

Romance/Chivalric
Genre: Chretien de Troyes. Erec and Enide.
Bender: Marie de France. "Guigemar."

Romance/Harlequinish
?

Detective
Genre: anything Sherlock Holmes
Bender: Jorge Luis Borges. "Death and the Compass."

You're all astute readers, so you'll notice that I'm setting up some of these categories to put as much space between the representative of the genre and the bender as possible. I expect that one of the assignments would be to determine a spectrum on which these works were placed and fill in some other works that help establish said spectrum. For example, it's not like there aren't Westerns that exist in the space between High Noon and Deadwood (especially ones involving Clint Eastwood).

Any suggestions? Fun or serious?

Any slammers reading?

Are any of you readers on the East Coast and interested in poetry slams? I'm headed to Boston to slam at the Cantab on January 7. I'm very excited, as that venue contains some of the smartest spoken word performers I've seen. Let me know if you'll be there, too.

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Not a bad article over at GotPoetry.com, but the followup questions and discussion prove quite interesting.

The ideas related to persona pieces are especially interesting to me, as are the ideas about four minute poems. One of the usual rules at a slam is to deduct .5 for every ten seconds the poem goes over the time limit. At Javashock, I'd reduce the time penalty to .1, which did sometimes encourage longer pieces. But generally not good longer pieces.

On a more personal note related to time, I need to clock the new draft of "Wooden Boys and Deadlier Toys" and my fairy tale "The Magician and the Mouse."

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From the days when I edited Wikipedia (used to have my Intro to Creative Writing Students create/edit articles on underrepresented poets), an argument in favor of slam as a postmodern activity:

1) Postmodern art, by and large, is highly self-referential. The poet who slams, in putting a face and body and voice to the verse, makes evident the process of production. Moreover, in a slam, the audience understands that part of the conceit is to convince that audience that one's poetry is better. The rules themselves become a foregrounded part of the artistic production (as opposed to the rules of art that are necessary, but left unspoken, in more classical forms). Yes, I am aware that if this were the only criterion, "postmodern" could be applied to any poem that calls itself "poem" or "sonnet" or whatnot. Thus the need for more evidence.

2) The traditional slam, and by traditional I mean a one-night event that is NOT recorded and re-viewed, exists in a realm of indeterminacy. Whereas the written or recorded poem may be studied, interpreted at length, dissected, etc (these all being hallmarks of Modernism and prior periods), the slam itself exists only in the moment. Once it is over, the performance is but a series of memories and thereby completely subjective, not objective. Yes, a poet can perform the same words on multiple nights, but as the performance itself is integral to the work, each performance becomes a unique, not derivative, experience.

3) An agreement with [another editor whose username is/was] DanteDanti that work produced by a postmodern culture is, whether progressive or reactionary, necessarily postmodern.