NPS Day 4

You'll notice I missed day 3. Sorry about that. I remember an awesome Head to Head Haiku event that went down to the wire between RC Weslowski and Patrick Shaugnessy, with Patrick S. coming out on top.

Day 4 events in which I took part:

Masquerade Open Mic: Consisting of nothing but persona poems (except for a couple of people who were confused by exactly what that means), this was one of the best readings I've been to at NPS. I put up "There will be no reinvention of the wheel" to some generally good responses (including one funny one - at one of the points where I "break down," someone in the audience actually yelled out, in a helpful voice, keep it together. As if I actually feel emotion during that piece.). Mckendy did his mermaid poem, a brief piece that was a smart move near the end of the lineup. Tim didn't get to go, which sucked.

Nerd Slam: Generally a good time. Some questions/nerds took way too long, but all in all it was a good time. Well-hosted, good nerd poems once the competitive rounds were over, fun prizes. Once again, Tim did not get to go, which sucked. I wanted to hear "Fraggle Uprising."

Our bout against Denver - Mercury, Dallas - Poetry Grind, and Team Orlando:

We sent up Tim in the first round to do "Prepared Batman." I think it was a smart choice, with Denver kicking things off with a very serious poem and Dallas shifting the energy to lighthearted with a love poem. One of the judges agreed, rewarding Tim with a high score, but the reaction from the others was less than stellar. I think Tim got robbed a bit, but he did a great rendition of the piece. SFOD at the end of round 1: 4th place.

In the second round, we went serious ourselves, but a different kind of serious from what everybody else was doing. Looking to change the energy, we put up Mckendy with "Dracula to Mina Harker." It's a slow burn of a piece, almost crawling, but very sexy. Other poets turned to us and indicated hairs going up on the backs of their arms once Mckendy finished, but again, the judges weren't having it. They wanted political messages, and at the end of round two we were still bringing up the rear.

Third round, we leveraged the recent Prop 8 judgment, putting up Krista Mosca with "Trans," going for both intellectual and emotional energy. Krista got not only our highest score so far, putting the bout back within reach, but a number of hugs on her way back to the table. Vulnerability paid off, though we were still in fourth place.

We had the last slot in the fourth round, always a good place to be for something energetic, so Mark sent me up with "ADD TV." The team tells me I knocked the place dead, which is nice to hear, and more pertinent to the scoring portion of this entry, I got the high score of the bout, enough to put us into third place.

We didn't make semis, but we impressed the hell out of the poets we went up against. I have no complaints, and plenty of happies.

Perhaps more thoughts tomorrow. I'm off to the comedy open mic, the Legends showcase, and, later on, to support one or more NorthBEAST teams in semis (there are three this year). Group piece finals tonight, and of course Underground Indies looms on the horizon - Krista is representing us in them this year.

NPS Day 2

First things first. We won our first bout, and we were not up against slouch teams. Austin Neo Soul, Columbus Writers Block, and Pittsburgh Steel City Slam. I repeat: for the first time since it's been competing at the National Poetry Slam, Slam Free or Die took first place in a bout.

We decided to go big right off the bat. We were up second in the first round, following Writers Block. "Language (language)," our sign language team piece, made its national debut and rocked pretty hard. It wasn't the top scoring piece of the night, but it A) put us into first place by the end of the first round and B) caused a bunch of other poets to come up to Beau, Mckendy, and me after the bout and talk about how cool it was. I'm extremely proud.

Having established that we could put up intellectual poems, Mark changed things up for the second round and sent Krista up with "Scarecrow," a harrowing poem about a woman in an abusive relationship who (and here's the twist that makes it different than the many, many abusive relationship pieces you'll see in slam) is actually proud of the "attention" she receives. The audience got shivers, and Krista was actually tearing up by time she left the stage - that's how much she put into it. Quantitative result: we were still in first after the second round.

The general tone of the bout had been serious, and the third round proved no different. Beau took his turn and literally brought some members of the audience to tears with a choked-up rendition of "Kylie." When I say literally, I mean literally. There was even a poet who caught up with us later at the Encyclopedia Show, half an hour later, and told us that he'd been crying by the end of Beau's piece. Once again, we had maintained our lead as well.

Mckendy finished us off with his basketball/absent fathers poem. My apologies all around - I can't remember the title. He was alternately in awe and snarling, and the combination kept us in the lead by something like .3 points. I believe that .6 separated first from third at the end of the night, with Neo Soul in second and Writers Block in third. Mckendy built masterfully on the poem that preceded him, a racial call to arms, adding nuance and emotional levels to what the judges could see.

So there you go. I'm not quoting from people's poems, because my mind went kablooey as soon as we realized we'd won. It's a general description of our own efforts, but it's what I can do. For the first time in its NPS history, Slam Free or Die has taken a 1 spot. Wish us luck for Thursday night.

NPS Day 1

I can't complain about my drive. I left Martin on Sunday morning and, after some construction and a wrong turn, ended at my in-laws' in Waterloo, IA Sunday evening. I helped my father-in-law load a truck with a bunch of stuff (furniture, memory boxes, etc) he's bringing down to Kate while I'm at the National Poetry Slam. After spending the night, I finished off the 3-4 hour trip to St. Paul and waited for the rest of the team to arrive. The reason I can't complain is that I got to sleep. Everybody else drove the 26 hours from New Hampshire straight through.

Registration and orientation went smoothly. I met up with the Art Amok folks. Their fearless leader, Karen G, stuck with Slam Free or Die during most of the 24/7 fundraiser, so it was nice to meet her in person. There was first-night partying to be had, but Tim and I retired to the hotel room I'd booked away from the action. We've got two hotel rooms - one at the host hotel, intended to be at the center of everything, and one a couple miles away, intended to be the rest room. I'll be manning it (and sleeping soundly) while we're here.

Tonight is our first bout. It's a doozy. Columbus Writer's Block, Austin Neo Soul and Pittsburgh Steel City Slam. We're going into it with a lot of different possibilities for pieces, but everybody is ready to do any poem at any moment.

Afterwards/afterhours is the Encyclopedia Show, which nobody wants to miss. It'll be a late night, but should be a very good one.

Further reports tomorrow morning.

$

It's fundraising time for Manchester. Most of the team will be driving from New Hampshire to St. Paul, MN. I'll be driving from Tennessee. Then we have a hotel room or rooms to pay for. Oh, and food. We like to eat. Not huge amounts, mind you, but enough that are voices are louder than our stomachs when we're on stage.

For those of you in Manchester/Portsmouth/etc. there will be activities and fundraisers and features and so forth. In fact, we're plotting a 7-day 24-hour reading. That is, every person on the team, including the coach and assistant coach, will read for 24 hours. Back to back. Seven days of poetry, with only 15 minute breaks every once in a while for bathrooms and food. I'll let you know more about that as plans come together.

In the meantime, we've got a PayPal account set up. If you'd be willing to donate something, even a dollar, that's one less dollar that comes out of our pockets while we're at Nationals. I'm devoted to my art and, for the duration of the competition, to the sport aspect of it, but I don't want to go hungry, I don't want to sleep in my car (with several other people), and I don't want to nervously watch my tank get emptier and emptier as I cross the great expanse of the rural Midwest, hoping that there's a gas station coming up soon and that my card will be accepted there. So, please, take a look. Toss us an amount you think worthwhile.

In fact, just to tempt you further, I'll re-post the link to Arts & Crafts, my free album of poems, essays, and conversations in both audio and video formats: http://www.jeffstumpo.com/stage.html. If you like the kind of stuff you hear from me; if you want spoken word that plays with the boundaries of what spoken word can and should do, donate. If you don't like what you hear - hey, we've got a team with diverse voices. There's a good chance you'd be supporting somebody whose poetry you like. You want a sestina about Ol' Dirty Bastard from the Wu-Tang Clan? We've got it. You want a poem from a woman to the person who used to be her girlfriend, then was her boyfriend, and is now just a friend? We've got it. You want towering toasts to the everyday folks who could, if nobody was looking, be gods? We've got it. You want a poem about what would happen if the author had a talking hamster? We've got it. You want a piece in sign language, written for three people? We're working on it ;-)

Take a look. Take a listen. Take a chance (on me... yeah, now that song is stuck in your head). Help send us to NPS.

http://sites.google.com/site/slamfreeordie2010/

Manchester all the way

I slammed in the Providence finals the other night. It was a lot of fun. I ran with three experimental/original pieces, and the judges absolutely did not approve. After putting out the untitled piece where I walk out into the audience and make a metaphorical poem of myself, "Wooden Boys and Deadlier Toys," and "There will be no reinvention of the wheel," I came in last. I remain a poet's poet, however, in that I sparked a great deal of interest among the other performers as far as new possibilities for what we can do in a slam. A big congrats goes to Trevor Liam Byrne-Smith, Phil Kaye, Jamila Woods, and Kai Huang.

This leaves me solidly on Manchester's team, and I'm quite happy about it. I think I've got a good feel for what we can do as a team, and it's time to begin plotting team pieces. I have one in mind, but I need to consult with another poet (not on the team) about the vocabulary. I don't want to delve into the overdone sing-speak-sing method of presenting a poem, but I'm very curious about our rhythmic and musical possibilities as a group. Finally, we may take some of our existing poems and rework them (extensively in some cases) into group pieces. Nationals should be prepared for a Manchester that, at times, comes straight out of left field with things not quite seen before. No revolutions, but definite evolutions. It doesn't hurt that we've got a variety of voices on the team - some funny, some serious, some intricate, some straightforward. This will be an interesting Nats.

No News Has Meant Good News

Two months. Quite a stretch. I can't honestly say I haven't been blogging during that time, as I've kept up with writing Geeking with the Wife for Team Covenant. However, my electronic poetry hat has been on the shelf.

Things you should know as I get back into this:

1. Kate got hired as an assistant professor at the University of Tennessee - Martin. This is very big news, and I'm incredibly proud of her. I'm picking up 2-3 classes as an adjunct and quite look forward to them. We're moving in early/mid July, with a house picked out and to be closed on in mid June. We're going to have a big yard again, which the dogs will love. We're both going to be teaching, which we will love.

2. The creative portion of my dissertation appears to have been satisfactory to all members of my committee. I'm now working, more slowly than I'd like but nonetheless deliberately, on the scholarly portion. The current realizations/fears - I'm writing about an aspect of several poets that I've never seen discussed. I can't find literature on it in their work, specifically. There's the first-level fear of the researcher, which is to wonder if I've just missed something, a conference paper, a dissertation, an interview. The second-level fear is that my committee will have a fit if I have extended tracts of my dissertation that are just me, a little bit of theoretical backing, and a whole lot of original analysis. Tradition has been stressed to this point, hence the worry.

3. I've thrown my hat into the slam ring once again, and most likely for the last time (due to the logistics - Martin is three hours from any major city). I've made the team from Manchester, NH, and I'm in the finals to qualify for the Providence, RI team on June 3. The semifinal bout in Providence was particularly skin-of-my-teeth. If you think you'd be interested in hearing about it, let me know. I can make it the topic of a post.

Political Haiku

Left. Right. We never

let the other side finish.

Can't we all just get

Megan Thoma and the Current Big Debate

If you're interested in a varied and ongoing conversation about the validity of criticism in a populist venue (read: poetry slams), white privilege, and victimization, start off here and here, then go friend Sonya Renee Taylor on Facebook and read her response to the second post here, then read Megan's third post here, then read Megan's response to everything here.

High points: A number of thoughtful considerations of how race is interwoven, even subconsciously, with our conceptions of what constitutes effective art. A number of thoughtful considerations of the place of victimization as a tool to either increase awareness and thereby try to end it or propagate it for shock value.

Low points: A wish for no more poems about race/rape/lesbians. A suggestion that physical violence is an appropriate response to a strong critique.

Surfing the Web

Anybody else think this is a horrible mixed metaphor?

Brandeis gig

I just got the call to play a gig at Brandeis University. On March 9th I'll lead a workshop from 8-9pm, watch the open mic, give my featured performance, and then host the slam, which will consist of the Brandeis team vs 1-3 visiting teams. I haven't played a college/university gig in a while - this should be a blast!

Two more "Geeking with the Wife" columns

Episode 4: Bulls and Bears

Episode 5: The Name Game

I promise that I'm working on my dissertation and various individual poems, but this is the most fun I'm having while writing in the past month. Sigh?

Geeking with the Wife, Episode 3: Go Big or Go Home

Another Week, Another Geek(ing with the Wife)

Now with more pictures!

Episode 3: Go Big or Go Home

Chuck Norris is wrong (as usual)

I like using Chuck Norris in my Introduction to Composition classes. He has a regular op-ed column that appears at creators.com. I like using him for two reasons. One, when presented with an open field of seven or eight potential writers, students almost invariably choose Norris. Two, his tactics are fairly transparent (for analysis) and poorly-thought-out, allowing us to examine what not to do on paper #3.

The most recent issue I take is with the column my students selected today: "Is Justin Bieber in Danger?" In it, Norris half-joking says that the danger to 15-year-old Bieber is not Norris himself (Bieber Photoshopped the two of them together) but the federal government's increased spending and debt. Alert to my liberal friends - I agree with Norris that spending/debt is out of control. The trillions of the federal government owes will bite us big time, and sooner rather than later. That being said, Norris uses the silly and tired argument that the Founding Fathers disapproved of all debt. He quotes Thomas Jefferson:

who counseled to "put off buying anything until we have the money to pay for it." Jefferson also admonished, "The conclusion then, is, that neither the representatives of a nation, nor the whole nation itself assembled, can validly engage debts beyond what they may pay in their own time."

while ignoring one of John Adams's earliest assignments - to acquire debt by taking out a loan from the Netherlands. It is in the degree, not the existence, that our current government (and past governments) fail(s). I'm serious, Jefferson, the man behind the Louisiana Purchase (the original one, not the crap scandal-of-the-week one), famously spoke out of both sides of his mouth. And when it came time for action, which speaks loudest, he took on debt if he was convinced that it was for the betterment of the nation.

Again, I'm not saying Norris is wrong in that the fed is making a massive mistake. But in painting these black and white terms and attempting to rally history on his side, he just makes himself look foolish.

Spam

Hey, folks. I know some of you out there are reading, but the only comments I'm getting are spam. Are you just reading quietly? Have I become boring? I'll be getting back to more poetry-related posts soon if that helps.

[insert uncertain emoticon here]

Real Estate

Another week, another Geeking with the Wife. This also lets the cat out of the bag: we're buying a house in Martin, TN. I've left this information of out my blog posts because I didn't want the possibility of it messing with my own job search, but Kate landed a tenure-track position at the University of Tennessee at Martin. She was actually offered three jobs, and after long discussions about what would be best for her career, what offered me an opportunity to teach as well, and what looked like a good place to start a family, we decided on Martin. In less happy news, I believe that I've gotten all the rejections I'm going to get from this go-round of job applications. We'll see how adjunct work pans out in Tennessee.

Geeking with the Wife

I'm guest-blogging at Team Covenant. Basically, Kate and I play a game of Monsterpocalypse each week, talk about our weeks, pop culture, academics, whatever, and I do a writeup. The first episode just went live and is called The Couch. Check it out. It's a marriage of boardgames and, well, marriage.

Playlist: Folkwagon

Simon & Garfunkel - A Poem on the Underground Wall

Amy MacDonald - Poison Prince

Mumford & Sons - Little Lion Man

Megan Spellman - In this corner...

Ani DiFranco - Cradle And All

Del Vezeau - Blackhash

Jeana Leslie & Siobhan Miller - Lochaber to Argyll

Dan Tyminski, Harley Allen, & Pat Enright - I am a Man of Constant Sorrow

New Camera, Part 2 (The Good Part)

1. I'm really out of practice with a good camera. It's not exactly like riding a bicycle (although I haven't ridden a bicycle in some time now, so maybe I would suck at that as well).

2. That being said, here are some of the promised photos I've taken so far. There are also a bunch of attempted shots of Stubby and Apple as I figure out just how high the shutter speed and ISO need to be to catch a running dog (I'm getting better at tracking already). They're not ready for prime time yet, however...

New Camera, Part 1 (The Bad Part)

My old Canon Rebel 2000 inexplicably died at some point in the past year. I hadn't taken it out much, mostly because buying and printing film, especially given my proclivity for shooting a lot of film at a time, was just going to be too expensive. When I finally did go to start it up with a new set of batteries, it didn't turn on. When I took it in to a camera store for repair, it was going to cost me as much to fix it as to replace it with a new version of the same camera. With some money I'd received during the holidays (and in advance for my birthday), I decided to upgrade to a decent DSLR (Digital Single Lens Reflex). After a lot of research, I determined that the Canon XSi was the camera for me.

This is not a cheap camera. It is not a professional camera, no 5D or whatnot. But it would do what I wanted - give me a reasonable amount of control of my photographing process, let me use my old lenses (an f/1.8 50mm and an f/4.5-5.6 55-200mm), and have enough of a megapixel count to let me blow up the photos to a nice size (we hang some of my better work around the house).

The camera was not inexpensive, so I looked around for the best deal. Here's where the problem starts. I found the camera for $475, body only, at US1Photo. After ordering it, I received a phone call from Ken to upsell. That means that he tried to get me, quite rudely, to purchase additional accessories over the phone. When I kept saying that I didn't want anything else, he went so far as to raise his voice to me and accusingly say, "That's a great deal" (it wasn't). I wanted an extra battery anyway, so when he further lowered the price on one, I finally agreed to include it. He also offered to speed up the shipping on the camera for free. The experience was obnoxious, but I didn't anticipate anything particularly wrong.

When I received the camera, I didn't have a line-item receipt. Instead, the entire purchase, tax included, had been grouped under a heading of "Executive Package." Shady dealings #2.

When I turned on the camera to do the initial format of my new memory card, it wouldn't work. The camera turned on just fine, but it wouldn't interact with the memory card. OK, I thought, perhaps the card is bad. Tried a new card. Same problem. Tried both cards in another digital camera. Both worked.

Knowing that some cameras will come off the line with problems, I called Canon Tech Help to see if they could offer any. Troy ran me through a number of potential fixes, none of which worked. He took the serial number so that I could send the camera in for repair. He then told me his computer has crashed, and he would be back in a moment after restarting.

He came back to tell me his computer had not, in fact, crashed. Rather, my serial number was already in the system under another name, and he had to see if he was allowed to tell me this. I was infuriated. I'd been sold a used camera, one that likely had been returned for the very problem I was experiencing.

When I called US1Photo to ask how to get my camera replaced with one that worked, I got the runaround for several minutes as Kevin tried to insist that whatever had gone wrong was my fault. Maybe I bent the pins in the camera by forcing the memory card in, he said. I was having none of it, and told him that I wanted them to replace the camera. He told me to call back on Monday (this was a Friday), and we'd work it out. When I called back, he again tried to get me to send the camera in to Canon, implying that I'd done something wrong. When I confronted him with the information that Canon already had the camera registered, he told me, "We sometimes register the camera for the customer." When I told him it was under someone else's name, it was the first time in two days that he hadn't tried to cut me off mid-sentence. He finally acquiesced, gave me a code to put on the box when I sent it back, and hung up abruptly.

I ended up getting a replacement camera. It works just fine. I've taken a few pictures with it that I'll post tomorrow. I'm calling Canon shortly to make sure this one hasn't been registered with them yet. So the story ends on a somewhat happy note. Given my experience, however, I highly recommend that you do NOT use US1Photo for your camera needs.

Pardon the long post. I've been pissed.

30

I turned 30 today. Still figuring out how I feel about that. Haven't accomplished nearly what I'd planned. Ah well, poets are allowed late-game moves. For that matter, most of the best moves are only granted to late-game poets, more's the pity.

English ABD, Chemistry PhD

JeFF, reading aloud from F.T. Marinetti's "Geometric and and Mechanical Splendor and the Numerical Sensibility": We are hastening the grotesque funeral of passéist Beauty (romantic, symbolist, and decadent) whose essential elements were memory, nostalgia, the fog of legend produced by remoteness in time, the exotic fascination produced by remoteness in space, the picturesque, the imprecise, rusticity, wild solitude, multicolored disorder, twilight shadows, corrosion, weariness, the soiled traces of the years, the crumbling of ruins, mold, the taste of decay, pessimism, phthisis, suicide, the blandishments of pain, the aesthetics of failure, the adoration of death.

A new beauty is born today from the chaos of the new contradictory sensibilities that we Futurists will substitute for the former beauty, and that I call Geometric and Mechanical Splendor.

Its essential elements are: hygienic forgetfulness, hope, desire, controlled- force, speed, light, will power, order, discipline, method; a feeling for the great city; the aggressive optimism that results from the cult of muscles and sport; the imagination without strings, ubiquity, laconism...

Kate, in a meek voice: Acid plus base yields salt plus water?

---

Also: xkcd

Google-Fu

So I Googled myself tonight. It's a new year, figured I should try it, see what's out there of me. On page 24 of the returned results (most of which are repeats on different feeds of poems I've had on Indiefeed, but a decent number are poems in online journals), I find this teaser:

It´s jeff stumpo, who blogs here. And he´s a cutie! too bad he´s straight! ;-) but he does wonder if he could identify as a "queering poet." that´s a start. ...

I really want to know who wrote that about me. The actual link provided is effectively dead - it leads to a concert venue site that doesn't contain anything real so far as I can tell. I'm just curious. So if anybody out there has better search engine skills than I do, come to my rescue!