Will I always wonder?

Competed at Slam Free or Die last night. It was the last qualifier for the semis, which in turn lead to the finals, which in turn determine the team that Manchester will send to the National Poetry Slam in August. I like the poets here, so I was actually quite interested in making the team. Not so interested that I didn't be my contrary self - I have a couple of poems that would have worked the judges a little more directly, but that's not my game. I'm not cut out for slam because I still want to stretch all the boundaries instead of playing them to my advantage.

In any event, I went first. For those of you not familiar with slams, pole position is not a good thing to have. As the audience and judges warm up over the course of the evening, scores tend to rise - an effect called score creep. When we're only slamming for two rounds, and only five of eight poets will go on to the second round, you don't want to be the guy/gal who doesn't benefit from score creep. However, I ran with "ADD TV" because the sacrifice poet was fairly ADD in her own performance - I'm still not sure how much of it was actually planned - and was in fourth place at the end of the round.

In the second round, I performed "Sign of the Turtle" and, due to another poet going over time, pulled into overall third place. Only the top two would advance to the semis. But hark, my ears detect a clamour! The second place poet can't attend the semis, so I get to advance! Oh frabjous day! Oh wait. You're telling me that instead of a month from now, when the next slam would normally take place, the semis are on April 17? When I'll be in Texas at the Poetry at Round Top Festival? OK, fourth place poet, back-patting time!

Will I always wonder what might have been? Would I have given in and performed crowd-pleasers in the semis, and perhaps even at the finals, attempting to get on this team? Unlikely. I really like the Manchester poets and would love to work with them. But I'll just have to arrange that on the side. In the meantime, you get an entire draft of something I've been tweaking - found it in an old journal and am making changes to it for potential performance.

NaPoWriMo Bonus Post #3

a freewrite to David Bowie's "Hallo Spaceboy (PSB Remix)" from the Best of Bowie album:

government pyramid masonic sonic explosion starfield improvewaves flucutate zeus with eyelids drooping lightning in a nebula nubular lar lar lar lar flock above daydreams as in trutledoves shells unflolding moondust trickles down economic relapse of the internior monologue say adios say hasta luego and lie burning burning tra la rome tra la travail avail hail hale hearty nevermind here we go again picking up speed spicking up leeds up reeds up feeeling feeds feeling ash buries pompeii and in the mirror of bronze convex vex aggravating feelings again feedings again the sluggoth my dear boy the sluggoth dreaming again below the sea the sea of stars the stars of the stars of the fish the fingers the legs the arms my god it's growing the arms wriggling like octopi the gnarling universe too large and grinding gaxes ashes axes yggdrasil flipside hello hello hello do you tell you willliam you lancelot and fell lancelot and golden lancelot and the knight green swinging like a galaxy [and the music player just crashed]

Go, Iowa!

Now that it's not just on the coasts, perhaps the legality of gay marriage will move beyond straw-man arguments comparing it to incest, bestiality, and polygamy. Probably not, but if things continue to go well in Iowa, it could just happen.

There's a peculiar Midwest version of "progressive" vis-a-vis homosexuality. It basically goes like this: "We ain't too fond of what them folks is doin', but so long as they're doin' it in their own house, who cares? I don't want nobody comin' into my house and tellin' me what I can do. Besides, I got to know a couple of those fellas, and they ain't like the ones always up on FOX News." It's not exactly welcoming the gay community with open arms, but this attitude is more prevalent than you might think. It often only pops out when the speaker isn't around too many other people. In fact, it goes hand in hand with that idea - so long as you're not too loud about whatever it is you're doing, it'll slide. You don't make change in Iowa by making waves. You make it by getting to know one person at a time, conversing, even arguing, but actually getting to know an individual. That's one reason change takes so long in the Midwest.

This is in many ways a disappointing reality for my gay friends and for myself. It would be great if things moved at a faster pace. On the other hand, things do change there.

Every once in a while I'm asked (seriously or rhetorically) why gay rights even show up on my radar. I'm straight. I've been married for nearly six years. Not my fight, etc. I have a number of gay/lesbian/bi friends, which is personally reason enough. I want them to be happy, and if marriage (and more specifically the rights accorded by marriage) increase their happiness, then I want them to be able to get married. The personal reason isn't quite enough, though, for an extended defense. So here's the most basic level by which I justify gay marriage: I don't like hypocrisy.

If the reason for marriage is the production of children, then childless couples should no longer be considered married. If the reason for marriage is love, then anyone who loves regardless of age or sex should be able to get married. If the reason for marriage is legal rights, then we should treat marriage as a business partnership consisting of any number of consenting adults. I'm only half-facetious about all this. The serious part - marriage as we treat it in the US (and many other countries) is equal parts religion, social standing, and business transaction. We get married because we are brought up in communities that teach marriage as an ideal representation of love (love being the highest gift of the divine). We get married because we are brought in communities consisting of couples. We get married because it affords us legal and economic opportunities. These three categories are not mutually exclusive, and that's part of the problem.

There are two paths that I see as the least hypocritical approaches to marriage. I know that one of these will never, ever work out. The other one simply allows two consenting adults, regardless of race, sex, or gender, to be married.

If you've reached this point wondering what all this has to do with poetry, since I ostensibly put this blog out there as a (piecemeal) poetics - politics can be poetic (see notes on hypocrisy), and poems can be political (anything from Yeats to the Beats). Gender concerns crop up in my poems for a number of reason. But again, the big one is that I don't like hypocrisy in my poetry, either. I was one of the few spoken word poets to never issue a poetic call for revolution while at Revolution Cafe. It's not my style, and I don't think a real revolution is the way to go. So I'm not going to insert that kind of languge into my poems merely because the audience will agree with it. I'm going to pick at holes, point out bits of history, and slowly develop a relationship. Then I'm in your house, and you're perhaps in mine. Then we can really talk.

NaPoWriMo Bonus Post #2

The closing lines of a spoken-word piece I began today:

There is no rim, so
He bounces the ball, throws it, and chases.
Bounces the ball, throws it, and chases.
The ball. The boy. The ghetto. The world.
Until one or another goes flat.

5 + 2 Performances =

Oscar Bermeo blogged the best list of influential works that I've yet seen. He went beyond the typical confines of the meme that made its rounds a while back, choosing not only influential poetry books, but nonfiction, recorded performances, and live performances. I won't try to one-up him here, but I would like to present 7 performances, live or recorded, that resulted in the version of me that gets up on the stage.

These first five occurred while I was an undergraduate. They set the stage (har har) for the style I developed in earnest later on at Revolution Cafe.

1. John Firefly. Open mic at the Underground at Illinois Wesleyan University. Various poems. John was/is a local homeless poet in Bloomington, IL. He was also the first person I saw really invest himself in a performance, really give life to the words on the page. I have a few poems of his that he mailed to me, including the one that got him banned from campus (let's just say he really, really insulted the then-head of the English Department). But it was that first open mic at which he cut loose that made me go, "Hmmm. Sound." What I most got from John was a sense that he was channeling words, even if reading them off the page, and using himself as an amplifier. It was a far cry from the staid readings I'd encountered before.

2. John O'Leary. Walking around IWU campus. Various poems of his own, plus passages from Milton and Shakespeare. Whereas John Firefly opened up the possibility of sound to me, John O'Leary brought home the concepts of memory and tradition. He wrote these fractured sonnets, as he called them, and revised them in his head. They worked on the page. They also worked out loud. Not only did he know his own work, however, but you could walk up to O'Leary, say "Paradise Lost, Book IV," and John would begin reciting it from memory. It was impressive, not gimmicky at all. I still haven't memorized as much work as I now know I ought to. You can listen to an interview with John on Cross Cultural Poetics #60.

3. John Firefly. Barnes & Noble Bloomington, IL. I invited both of the Johns to read at the Barnes & Noble at which I worked part-time during my undergraduate years. They arm wrestled to see who would go first, which drew a crowd. One poet, homeless, and another, looking homeless, about to burst blood vessels in the Starbucks. Firefly ended up going first, and proceeded to lead off with a poem about watching himself in the mirror as he had sex. Little old lady gets up and leaves. Followed by another. Followed by another. We had more complaints that night than any other in the history of the store. Lesson learned: words have power. Not always that lovey-dovey, power-to-move-you-positively power. But people will react even to poems.

4. Taylor Mali. Poems from the Like-Free Zone. "The the Impotence of Proofreading" and "What Teachers Make." Playful and smart, in the way that a young George Carlin was. Combine this with his attention to teaching stories (by which I mean both stories about teaching and stories that teach), and this wannabe-teacher was hooked on phonics. Or at least the presentation of potentially arcane material in such a way that the audience accepts and even appreciates it.

5. muMs da Schemer. Def Jam Poets at IWU. Everything he did (just kidding about the last of those three links - there was no classical music at the performance in question). muMs was a revelation. His theatrical style, use of persona, and the smartest sound poetry I'd heard to that point all made this guy my #1 influence when I started developing seriously as a performance poet. I don't give him enough credit on Arts & Crafts, and for that I'm genuinely sorry. He did one piece, whose title I can't recall, that ended with him miming an eagle, screeching, and slowly the screeching became beeping and the eagle an EKG meter flatlining. It was amazing, and "ADD TV"'s ending owes a lot to the ending of that piece. Actually, all of the four or five pieces I do that specifically explore opening and/or closing poems owe a lot to that piece.

These last two are performances that struck me not only for their incredible quality, but for the inspiration they gave me to create two of my most well-received poems.

6. Flying Words. Slope. "Language" (to see/hear it, check for the judges in the Slope issue). The first American Sign Language poem I'd ever seen that wasn't an interpretation of written/spoken words, but actually devised from the start to work with both spoken and signed language. Peter Cook and Kenny Lerner stand one in front of the other (Cook, the deaf member, in front) and co-sign a poem, while Lerner speaks from the back (his head is covered). Everything about this poem was intentional, from the way Lerner's and Cook's hands formed the sign for language (because you need two people to have communication), to the banter with the audience (at one point, three hands are engaged in playfully signing "poetry" over and over - while this is going on, Cook uses his free hand to point at someone in the audience and ask whether that person wants to get a drink later). It was kinesthetic, or better yet, kinaesthetic. "Sign of the Turtle" owes its specifics to Genelle and KellyLynn, but the manner in which I deliver it comes from Flying Words. I have a three-person ASL piece I want to perform some time that was inspired by "Language" as well. Some day...

7. Shira Erlichman. Famecast.com season 2. "Daddy's Parking Lot Sermon." I'll keep this one short, simply because I bring this poem up so often. The first time I saw it, I was checking out my competition in Famecast.com's Spoken Word contest (incidentally, I came in 10th out of 80 poets, but learned to seriously dislike Famecast's model - I recommend never, ever competing at that site). I immediately reacted to not just the delivery, but the poetry, calling fellow graduate students to come watch. I remember Roger Reeves pursing his lips and going, "Ohhh she's a real poet." This poem inspired "There will be no reinvention of the wheel." The bad male figure is the obvious link, but here's the real connection, the epiphany that I had that made Shira's poem more than just a good-creepy persona piece. You ready for this? Listen to the poem again, and realize that the "daddy" is using the exactly same kind of langauge as the son. Perhaps even more poetic language. There will be no reinvention of the wheel, indeed.

If you can find any of these people, live or in recordings, you owe it to yourself to listen.

NaPoWriMo Bonus Post #1

So here's my pledge, which I will assuredly break: That I will write a blog post each day in April on some variable topic. Furthermore, I shall make a bonus post containing the kernel of some creative endeavor - lines from a poem, a concept for an extended series, a nice title, the first sentence of a story (which, since this is National Poetry Month, we'll pretend is the first sentence in a narrative poem).

Incidentally, I have serious issues with National Poetry Month as a concept, similar to the objections to Black History Month and so forth. I can, however, have fun with this, and so I shall.

Today's bonus: The two sentences to a story:

From the age of four through the age of ten, Jonathan William Bradford was convinced that his middle name was actually Fucking, an appelation not completely undeserved. Little Jonathan Fucking Bradford had certain habits and inclinations that rendered past nomenclatures (e.g. "The Menace") insufficient.

In which I geek out...

If I say that I use Linux, I believe that I've reduced my targeted readership (meaning poets who don't use either Windows or Mac) to, um, about 1. You don't meet many Linux users at all, even when it comes to the dead-simple Linux Mint, which is my poison of choice. You meet even fewer poets/writers who want to deal with managing their operating system. They love Apple products, which "just work," leaving them to concentrate on the writing itself. I like to tinker, both with my poetry and my computer. I like having some clue about the plumbing and wiring in my house, even if I have to call an expert to fix major problems. I like to do some gardening, even if I buy most of my produce at the store (though we did sign up for a local CSA beginning this summer). One of these days, with proper ventilation, I hope to make some of my own furniture. This is not to say I'm a programmer of any sort. Rather, if you're the sort who has one thing you tinker with excessively (poetry) and are interested in controlling a few more aspects of your computer (for free), Linux Mint might be the way to go.

What follows are four screenshots with various features. Not so much a review as a view.


Wide-open view just to establish a few things. My old monitor crapped out on me. Got a new one, 20" Asus, for $120 and free shipping from NewEgg. The screen real estate is pleasant. On the lefthand side is a chat client called Pidgin. I have it set up so that I can chat to people signed into either GMail or Facebook - each chat will appear in its own window, but you can have one tabbed window if you want. That's Firefox for my web browser - the default in Linux Mint. Both of these programs come loaded right away. That's a good thing. A very cool addition that I don't recommend to new users is in the upper right. You see the clock and date? OK, that's normal. You can sync your calendar so that by clicking on the clock, a drop down month appears with the day's events. Unfortunately, you can't get a list view. I like the list, and have been talking with a great guy in Austria named Florian Dorn. His gnome-agenda program/applet gives me that list, which you see in the screenshot. It isn't actually all that tough to install, but let yourself become a bit familiar with your desktop before trying to install it. I'll happily help out if you're interested.


This screenshot will look vaguely familiar if you've been reading lately. I really like this desktop wallpaper. Incidentally, if anybody wants to know where to get any of the themes I'm showing off here (be it wallpaper, cursor image, or window borders), just ask in the comments. Two new geekeries here. One is Mail Notification. When I get a new message in GMail, even if I don't have Firefox open, a note pops up in the corner of the screen with basic information - sender, subject line, time. If I mouse over the icon, that large list appears of my 10 latest unread emails. In the upper left, my music player, Exaile, embeds the cover art for the album I'm listening to on the desktop. By embed, I mean I could put an icon or a window or whatever over it. Exaile does not come with Linux Mint by default. If you decide to take the plunge, though, it'll take all of five minutes (or less) to install.


This is what the Ubuntu wallpaper should have been. Final Exaile note - every time a song changes, I get a semitransparent popup with the song info. This info also appears if I mouse over the Exaile icon in the taskbar in the upper right.


Since I've written about composition a lot, here's my new composition setup. Yes, Pidgin is still open. Yes, Firefox is still open. But I keep everything off the desktop except my dissertation. I'm using a program called the GIMP (GNU Image Manipulation Program), which is horribly named, a little more awkward to use than Photoshop, but totally free. Linux Mint comes with this installed. Reason #1 to use GIMP: it's free. Reason #2: There are legal issues surrounding dissertations. If you create one using, ahem, borrowed software, you get in trouble. I'm doing my dissertation in absentia, away from campus, away from free access to Photoshop, Illustrator, etc. I'm not going to fork over $600 for the program(s) that will best let me write this thing. That was one of the major reasons for starting the switch to Linux about a year ago - preparation for a time when I might need it.

I've gotten used to most things in Linux. There are two major bothers, at least with this distribution*. One, Adobe Flash is often wonky. I wanted to look at John Gallaher's Guidebook today, but it won't load properly. YouTube is fine, though sometimes I get a big gray rectangle with sound instead of whatever video should load. IGN.com is fine today as well. But John's e-chapbook? I've got nothing. Two, my iPod Touch. This is squarely on Apple's shoulders, actually. I can sync Kate's iPod Nano using any number of programs in Linux. There are two music players I highly recommend, and a good four or five others that would serve you just fine. But the encryption on the iPhone and iPod Touch is different, and I can't sync unless I boot back into Windows to use iTunes. There are ways around this, but they're very, very ugly. Besides that, I'm pretty happy with the switch.

Your thoughts? Too geeky? As if being a poet wasn't pigeonholed enough?

*Linux comes in a number of "flavors" referred to as distributions. One of the most popular is Ubuntu. Linux Mint is based on Ubuntu, but has certain codices (read: what allows you to play an mp3 or DVD) already installed. Ubuntu lets you get the codices, but doesn't come with them pre-installed for practical and ideological reasons. There are many other (valid) distributions. Visit DistroWatch.com and poke around for a while if you want to see the variety. I'm not saying Linux Mint is the hands-down best of these. I am saying that for someone who likes to tinker but A) wants to / has to concentrate on something else and B) is OS-pagan but not precisely computer-literate, this is the way to go.

EDIT: On April 2, fixed Florian's nationality from German to Austrian. Sorry about that, Florian!