Greatness/Smallness in Perspective

Poets are (rightfully) up in, well, not so much arms as gesturing angrily from their arm chairs over the NYT article by David Orr. I'll not rehash the whole thing here. You can Google the hell out of Orr and Greatness, or jump over to Poeta y Diwata or Nothing to Say & Saying It, where I've been at least tangentially involved in some discussions.

But just to keep it all in perspective, it could have been worse. I mean, Orr could have called Super Mario Kart the most influential video game of all time like Guiness did recently. You want a group of people who will get even more rabid about crap rankings and claims than poets, just say something idiotic like that and teh interwebz will just about explode from gamer froth. Mine included.

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If I'm lucky, you laughed a little bit at that one. Here's something that's not funny at all. I'm angry at whatever jackasses followed this woman and harassed her. I'm angry at Microsoft for not pursuing said jackasses. I'm angry at people on message boards saying, "Oh, XBOX Live is no place to put your sexual habits."

I'm happy with the (greater number of) people defending her. I'm happy with the posts noting that to point out one's sexual orientation is not to detail one's sexual habits. I'm happy with straights and gays writing to Microsoft or at least writing about this to give it greater attention and discussion.

Go to Hell?

All right, I thought that a fighting game a la Street Fighter based on Fight Club was the worst possible video game adaptation. Then I saw this. God-of-War-style Beat 'em up based on Dante's Inferno: next sign of the impending apocalypse? What's with the mace/scythe thing? And is that Beatrice being kidnapped by some kind of demon? Where's Virgil? Did somebody confuse Minos with Minotaur to create the big boss monster? The game itself looks cool, to be honest, but why oh why did they have to make the title Dante's Inferno? It doesn't work like that!

Space and Light (part 1)

Something was off with AWP this year. I've been trying to put my finger on it, and it's not panels (there are always good and bad in terms of content, and I went to both), it's not the bookfair (didn't have to eat larvae lollipops for journal subscriptions, but played games, met editors, and made contacts), it's not the location (walking the ten or so blocks from Union Station was actually invigorating each morning). It was in fact the physical confines of the rooms.

The bookfair in New York took place, at least in part, in rooms above the lobby. Two of the bookfair rooms even had extra high ceilings. No matter how many people were bustling about, no matter how "conferency" the tables appeared, there was a hint of natural lighting and enough space above my head to feel open. The Chicago bookfair was in the basement. OK, it's not precisely the basement, but it's belowground, such that you have to go down stairs or an elevator and then go down stairs again - which produces an opposite effect to going up several stairs/elevators to reach the NYC tables. The lighting was adequate but totally florescent. It was largely subliminal, but it wasn't as comfortable being in the bookfair rooms this year.

The rooms in which panels took place were comparable to NYC's. Some rooms were better than others. But none of them were really designed to take advantage of multimedia (this is the same as last year, when an electronic literature panel found that its room had not been granted internet access). Once again the Afterhours Slam was provided with a podium, not a mic on a stand. Once again some rooms were oriented so that there was a pillar blocking line of site to the podium if you sat in the back-center of the room. Low lighting in the morning may be kind, but also lends itself to making us even sleepier at those 9am sessions.

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The Green Mill is a good space. You can understand a lot of the Green Mill's style, or any other regular venue's style, by examining from where people perform. The stage is raised, so a poet looks down on the audience. This doesn't necessarily equate to developing a "better-than-thou" approach, but it does lend itself to authority. It's harder to get up there, where you literally have to get up there, and then do self-effacing work. It's also difficult to be dramatic in terms of moving around. The stage isn't very large, and if the three-piece jazz band sets up behind you, you've got almost no room to move. Getting out into the audience is difficult, as one poet discovered by bending over, slamming his hand down on a table for emphasis, and knocking over someone's drink. The audience is not invisible (the spots aren't too bright), but individuals beyond the tables closest to the stage are hard to see. An anonymous mass develops the closer one gets to the bar, which not surprisingly is where most of the heckling begins. Again, this isn't a critique (meaning negative appraisal) of the Green Mill so much as it is a critique (examination of hows and whys) of the connection between the room and the type of poetry that is most at home there.

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Performing at IWU was difficult. I could say it's because the students have become more respectful since I graduated, trained to not react at poetry readings. But it had more to do with the Turfler Room. The lights cannot be trained on the reader/speaker. You've either got lots of light on everyone in the room or a little light on everyone in the room. The mic was set up far from a group of tables, making it look like the furniture was attending a junior high school dance. I went off-mic almost the entire time, standing as close as I could to the tables (moving among them at times) without sitting in someone's lap. The room has several entrances - the door to enter the room for the event was behind where I was supposed to use the mic, which would have been awkward had any latecomers interrupted a poem - and the other entrances were massive doors that led to the dining hall (even though they were closed, they dominate their space and pull attention to themselves). Even if you wanted to be raucous in that place, the room itself tries to get you to settle down.

The Green Mill Rocks My Socks

Tonight was pretty great. Patricia Smith is, as per her reputation, incredible. "The Blood Sonnets" are a perfect example of why the page/stage divide is not a wall but a malleable and thin structure. Her last two poems, persona pieces dealing with Little Richard and John Coltrane, emphasized what performance can do that a page cannot. Jeffrey McDaniel also drove home a really good reading of poems from The Endarkenment. Christian Drake was his usual bombastic and bassic self, and I enjoyed the two pieces he performed.

I only got to do one piece, "ADD TV," and more than a few jokers tried booing me off stage within the first thirty seconds. Most of the crowd figured out the game and was amused once I started changing channels, but some contingent just didn't get it. It was amusing in a way, to see Patricia Smith laughing heartily during the PBS censored portion, and to hear from somewhere in the crowd "Where's your words?" I know, there's a Green Mill style, and I haven't done a poem in the Green Mill style at that venue since a poem I did on the open mic a number of years ago. Still, I think my piece divided the crowd like no other tonight - some folks got snapped slightly more or less than me (snapping is a sign of disapproval at the Uptown Poetry Slam), with most of the snapping coming from the same area of the bar, but I'm pretty sure that I really skewed audience reaction.

Was nice to briefly meet Kevin Higgins from Ireland, who is a friend of Todd Swift over at nth position.

AWP Day 3

Summary: Bad panels, good arts.

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The first bad panel was not the panel's fault. It was extremely relaxing, in fact, with quiet and contemplative (but not taxing) poetry being read. Problem is, a 9:00am session on the third day of AWP is very much sleepy time for those of us staying up late. Combine these two elements, and our heads drooped onto each other's shoulders from time to time. Dear Willis Barnstone - sorry! Not your fault! Enjoyed the translations immensely!

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Insert time for writing/snoozing here.

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Second panel was a sham. I overstate the case, but if you're going to bill the event as bad poetry by good poets, don't allow two panelists in a row to get up and say, "Well, there really was nothing bad by this poet, so let me talk about an early work and a later work." The whole point of the panel was to be gossipy and shocky and other words that end with -y (I've been watching too much Buffy lately). We demand satisfaction.

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The Art Institute was wonderful. We ended up going in circles a few times, which was a bit weird. The third time we'd seen the same statue, we finally consulted a map. That being said, it's a good thing to swing by the same piece multiple times, viewing it in a new temporal context each time. Modern Wing was closed due to construction, but we spent a couple of hours taking in everything else at a relaxed pace. February is free for general admission. Go.

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I'll upload photos of the snow sculptures on Michigan Ave later.

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Nobody on the panel about Chicago Poetry Slams showed, so an impromptu open mic was held. Fun times for all.

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The Afterhours Slam didn't go how I was told it would, which was (for economic reasons - i.e. a chance to sell chapbooks) disappointing. On the other hand, I got to see both Megan Thoma and Logen read during the open mic. That was wonderful (both had people come up to them afterwards, yay!). Instead of featuring, I slammed off against a young man named Riler who won the poetry slam on Thursday night. He won, and he was quite good. I'd like to hear/see his work again. I used my semi-improv piece "Christmas List" as my last poem, incorporating things that a bunch of the other poets had said during the open mic. I think one of the poets was really touched - he looked a little teary when he came up afterwards to thank me for incorporating his words.

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More sketches from boring panels:

AWP Day 2

Started the day with two great panels. Slam / Academia had some good thoughts from the panel (I was particular struck by several phrasings from Jasmine Cuffee that connected biracialism to the slam/academia divide and a potential marriage of the two to produce, as she put it, a beautiful baby). A woman in the audience named Treasure offered up a very smart comment regarding racial assumptions and presences as they play out in this debate. Several audience members offered uninformed/non-useful thoughts afterwards, but it was still a great session all in all.

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The Reconstruction Room performers were awesome. Awesome. If you live in Chicago and can go see a show, do so. Just do it.

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Bookfair shmoozing was productive. I picked up my copy of Sentence, saw people at various magazines to which I've submitted work and whether published or not have some kind of email relationship (hi again Rhett over at Cave Wall), and saw Logen get a few requests for work. Much yay.

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No sketches today. Though Logen and I did have a two-page conversation consisting largely of puns during the one boring panel of the day. I will not share it here. Think of the children.

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Larry Heinemann tells great stories. He obviously writes great stories, what with the National Book Award and all. But I love a good storyteller. A&M, I'm glad you're hiring him for a more permanent position!

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I'm tired. Grammar is failing me. I have to be energetic to feature at the Afterhours Slam tomorrow night. Plus: visits to the Art Institute, at which Herr Doktor Professor Heinemann, Mick White, Logen, and I will pose provocatively in front of famous works of art and have our pictures taken.

AWP Day 1 / Out of Sequence 2

The New England Review reading was great. The fiction writers in particular gave life to their selections, and the audience laughed. A lot. This is important.

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Some panels, which will go unnamed, were not so good. This is a sketch of a bad panelist about to neuter the poetry s/he claims to love:



This is a sketch of a series of panelists so in love with themselves that their egoheadballoons begin floating up through the empty room.



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Got to meet C. Dale Young and John Gallaher in person. Yay nonvirtuality!

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Received an email from one of the high school students I performed for yesterday. He was too shy to raise his hand when I asked if there were any budding writers in the audience. He notes in his email that he's been trying to look at things differently, like looking at a tree stump and instead of thinking "a tree was there" thinking "a homeless man's stage." This kid gets it. I haven't responded yet, but I'm very excited.

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Talked with my veryvery good friend Logen, who expressed disappointment on how fame works. Specifically, how the production of one good volume of poetry can get a poet "in" with a press, which then gives that poet seeming cart blanche for publication. Yes, we were oversimplifying a bit, but there's something about the sequence of publications that is disturbing. The work doesn't always improve. It often gets worse.

I added some comments about my performances at the high school yesterday and how changing the order of poems affects the reception of later ones. If I performed "Ma'am please put those jeans down" by Glenn Phillips (since I have it memorized, and it's rightly a crowd-pleaser) or "ADD TV," the kids would go crazy for anything else I did after that, even if I screwed up. Maybe the masses aren't quite so fickle as we think? To a/our fault?

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Incredible Hulk Quandary Haiku

rippling suddenly
with verdant musculature
what would you do first?

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I'm officially coining the term "nah-vant garde." So there.

AWP Update

Looks like I'm the featured poet at the Afterhours Slam on Saturday. See you there!

February Performances

If you'd like to see me live, check the schedule in the sidebar (to the right of this entry). I've got a few performances - featured act and otherwise - coming up around AWP in Chicago. If you run a venue (slam, university, open mic, high school, whatever) and are looking for a last-minute act, drop me a line, and we can talk.

$400

Yeah, I should have been witty with the last post title and called it "I'll take titties for $400" or something like that.

The link will take you to Hulu and SNL Celebrity Jeopardy that contains the phrase in question.

Titles / Behind

I'm really behind in sending work out. As in, I checked my submission list (keep a document on hand with the name of the journal, the titles of the poems, and the date on which I sent the submission), and I haven't submitted anything since October. Moving and working on the diss will do that.

I also realize my last few posts have been lengthy. To change that up a little, here's a long (but quick to read) list of the poems I'll be sending out soon. I like looking at titles (in bookstore, in tables of contents, whatever), so there may be one or two of you out there who are actually interested in this as an end in and of itself.

Advice to Our More Sensitive Viewers
Alexamenos Fidelis
American Jormungandr
Amtrak Observations
Appendix D
a riveder la stella
A Rose
as if the world came in and a part of you taken out
AWP Poem #12
BEWARE of DOG
Blasphemy by Numbers
Breaking the surface
Changeover
Chuko Liang burning Tsao Tsao's ships
Cotton Mather, otherwise a bastard
Dearest Editors (
double negative
Dragging in the gods
El Caminante
El Campanero
El Enemigo
El quinto
e-rrhythmia
Evident the Tongue
First Generation
go go go go go go go go go
Good Windows
Grammar Lesson
Hearth
Heaven is full of opposable thumbs
Her mother was, to put it bluntly
High School Sestina
Hummingbirds don't bother with the fucking Ka Mate
[I danced shamanistic Lazarus]
If you are foolish enough to follow me
I go out intending
Impressions Greater
I seem to have the plague
It is not joy in this
Janus
Las viejas del oceano
LIVE, GIRLS
Logic Bomb
Mashup #46: Shakespeare vs Bede
Mashup #74: Anne Rice vs Gertrude Stein
Mashups #212-217: H.P. Lovecraft vs Basho
Mobius Strip
Mirrors Killed the Barber
No more the Gryphon, or
Of the thousand things wrong with you
Picnic at the Battlefield
Poem based on a Series of Imagined Etymologies
Poem for the Hot Dog Vendor I Met Yesterday
Poem Reasserting my Masculinity
refusing to better, they are dead
Respect
Spectactile World
Spoken Through
Sunrise con duende, con dientes
Sweet Lion Hobo
Thalassophobia
That becomes a wound
The ceramicist speaks
The Nuns Go Slumming
The Rebar Silhouette of Don Quixote
When the Greatest Triangle Player in Louisiana
WWII on A&E
Zeno's Lost Paradox

Out of Sequence

Kate and I went to a local bar called the Press Room on Saturday to listen to a 14 piece band play music from the Depression. As in "Brother Can You Spare A Dime" and "One Meatball." It was great. We then watched Springsteen rock the Superbowl halftime show (on TV).

Every kid who wants to grow up to be a musician/singer/rockstar needs to watch Springsteen live and listen to a good jazz band interpret old songs. This weekend was an exercise in letting the music/performance flow through you - you might not get every note right, but good gods you're having such a great time up there that it's no longer about ego, even as your body is the instrument through which people are entertained/moved.

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I will go back and comment on the ordering of those four poems from a couple posts back. Promise.

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Anybody else out there have songs that just kill other songs for you? If I put my whole collection on shuffle and end up listening to, for instance, The Cranberries' "Zombie," I just can't listen to anything light and poppy afterwards for a good long while. That particular song is just so intense and dark and "real" that most other contemporary music feels like some kind of betrayal to listen to.

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No. No you're not.

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At poetry slams, there's an effect whereby one poet can draft another's energy, but it only lasts so long. For example, the first poet up does a funny poem. The second does a funny poem as well, one that is just about as good or better than the previous, and the audience reaction is better than if the second poem were a one-off. This drafting effect can go three, four poems at the most before there is almost invariably a downturn in energy and the poem-topic/style has to shift or suffer the increasing wrath of the audience.

I realize now that I designed certain poems like "ADD TV" to be draft-breakers. It's so unlike most of what I'd see on stage that it would break the slam's momentum. It's not an easy poem to follow insofar as the next poet can't go "Ah, I've got something funnier than that poem's funny parts" or "I've got something that refers to pop culture in more ways than that poem." At the same time, it's not "Zombie." Nobody is left feeling as though they would be wrong in trying to top it somehow.

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Mike Guinn has a poem that begins "There will be no more funny poems tonight" and goes on to describe some of the horrible things he witnessed as a social worker. It often works. All other poets are afraid/respectful enough of what he says to not try to be funny on that same stage.

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When Springsteen took the stage at halftime, did the physical presence of a stage matter as far as his owning the space? I mean, if he had just rocked out on the grass, would we have reacted as strongly to him? I mean, not because that's an inappropriate place to play rock and roll, but because it would have appeared to be on loan to him? Or did he channel energy such that he could have taken over any space in which he played?

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