14 posts tagged “poetry”
My poem Prodigal Son is being featured on IndieFeed as "Part 4 of a 9 part series, celebrating the release of Words in Your Face: A Guided Tour Through 20 years of the New York City Poetry Slam by Cristin O'Keefe Aptowicz!"
It's the live version from the nycSLAMS CD (2000), but it includes some great (and extremely flattering!) commentary from the host, Mongo, and Cristin, and is worth a listen even if you fast-forward past the poem itself.
NOTE: Mongo's reference to "Prodigal Son II" is actually the revised version of the previously untitled "Yankeee" poem I wrote back in October after A-Rod opted out of his contract.
Two very good friends of mine have recently had books published, one non-fiction and one fiction, and I highly recommend that you pick them up. You can get both of them on Amazon (use the links below) or at most decent bookstores.
Words in Your Face: A Guided Tour Through Twenty Years of the New York City Poetry Slam
by Cristin O'Keefe Aptowicz
I actually appear prominently in Words In Your Face (Chapter 18), at the center of one of the two key controversies that led to the expansion of the poetry slam beyond the confines of the Nuyorican Poets Café, and Cristin did a great job of editing our rambling interview into something coherent and, if I say so myself, entertaining and enlightening. The whole book is a great read, as Eileen Tabios pointed out: "It's about poetry slam -- but has all the elements of a great story; writes itself really....with the vagaries of ego, passion, literature, vendettas, rivalries, and love love love for poetry really uplifting what may have been individual petty incidents into necessary threads to a glorious fabric...you get the yarn drift. Highly recommended, as they say."
Bonus: Check out my interview with Cristin about the book over at Spindle
Almost Home
by Jessica Blank
Almost Home is Jessica's debut novel, but you might remember her name from the critically acclaimed Off-Broadway play The Exonerated. Telling the overlapping stories of seven teenage runaways in Hollywood, her prose is brisk and riveting, getting into each character's head to varying degrees while spicing their haunting narratives with precise bits of dialogue, never sainting or damning any of them for their actions, or inactions. Don't let the "Young Adult" label or the misleading cover fool you, either; this isn't High School Musical or an After School Special. What it is is highly recommended.
The November 3rd Club Reading
Saturday, November 3rd
The Bowery Poetry Club
308 Bowery, New York, NY 10012
6 to 8 p.m.; Admission: $7
______
I'm still getting comfortable with reading my own work on stage again -- that whole "like riding a bike" thing is crap! -- and the lineup for this reading isn't exactly a no-pressure, lightweight kind of gig, but I know almost all of them and it should be a pretty friendly room, so I'm looking forward to it. If you're in the NYC area, come on through! Drinks next door at Slainte will likely follow.
Lynne and I used to argue all the time about craft vs. passion when it came to acknowledging the potential of a new writer, she preferring the former while I preferred the latter. The ideal, obviously, is to have both, but with newer writers especially, you usually get more of one or the other. Ironically, Lynne and I became close early on despite my having a hell of a lot more passion than craft, so she's not really quite as hardline about the debate as she seems. :-P
This year's National Poetry Slam got me thinking again about the differences between craft and passion, as well as metaphor and realism, and how one's preferences largely dictate which poems they might like or not like, no matter how objectively "good" or "bad" they might be. I got into a long discussion yesterday with someone (not Lynne) about one poem in particular, the "Wizard of Oz" piece from one of the Charlotte slammers -- anyone know his name? -- Charlotte's Carlos Robson that seems to have generated the most disdain in some quarters, at least partly because it was the poem that effectively nailed the Finals for them, even though Queen Sheba did what she could in the final round to keep louderARTS and Killeen in striking distance with a typically trite piece that I tuned out within the first 30 seconds.
(Yeah, I'm hating, but not because they won.)
The "Wizard of Oz" piece was about his uncle, a Vietnam vet who returned with a case of PTSD that manifested itself via references to the Wizard of Oz (in the poem, at least; I'm not sure it wasn't a bit of fiction in the first person, which, in retrospect, wouldn't change my opinion as much as it might have in the past), and wrapped up with a call to "bring our troops home". It was an emotionally manipulative piece of anti-war propaganda that felt a bit more sincere than usual and probably affected me more as a result of several coincidental circumstances than its own merits, not the least of which being that two of our entourage were first-timers at NPS, one currently serving and recently returned from a tour in Iraq, the other my ex-girlfriend from my own Army days (ETA: who a few years later married a soldier and knows the ups and down of military life). As a former enlistee, I have my own conflicted feelings about the military and recruiting policies and the War in Iraq(TM), but I'm not the least bit conflicted about thinking every single one of our soldiers who has died over there did so under false pretenses and that Bush, Cheney, et al, should be impeached and tried for manslaughter, at the least.
So, yeah, mission accomplished: the piece choked me up and I understood the high score it got, even as I realized that at that moment it meant louderARTS would once again lose to an undeniably inferior team.
Was it an example of a perfectly crafted poem with the same emotional resonance of Rachel's "Mother's Day" poem? Hell no, and of course not! Not many are, and like I said the other day, that's okay because that's not really what slam is about. Rachel is an exception to the rule of slam. But credit where due, the guy from Charlotte Carlos moved the crowd with his piece and he did so without the usual shucking and jiving most veteran slammers have come to expect from -- and sadly, many of them still bring to -- Nationals. ("Paging 90% of group pieces. Please report to the Xerox machine!") He did his thing with passion and I will take a passionate poet over a crafty one every day of the week because you can teach craft.
And therein lies the reason why I no longer get upset about the long-time slammers who compete year after year. The good ones, I mean; the ones I've always thought should have moved on to bigger and better by now. Because, really, there isn't a "bigger and better" for most of them. Generally speaking, publishing a book isn't a bigger deal than making the NPS Finals, not anymore at least, because on that night alone you're reaching more people than will ever pick up the average book of poetry. Being on that stage not only puts you in a better position to publish a book, if that's your thing, it ensures a built-in NATIONAL audience will know who the hell you are when it is published, to little or no acclaim, marketing support or sales.
It is for that reason that I've come to appreciate the Rogers and Rachels and several others -- even the Taylors, though his hyper-competitive ass is now retired -- going back year after year, because it ensures there's some quality writing and seasoned performing (please, please, please slammasters, teach your poets to stop screaming into the f**king mic!) presented to the audience in the midst of, let's be honest, a whole lot of amateurish second drafts that any decent editor (or slammaster or coach) would rip apart and help put back together. If every slammaster/coach put half the effort into encouraging their teams' writing skills as they do their performances, Nationals would improve by leaps and bounds.
Ever since 1999, when we (a little bit louder, aka louderARTS, aka Bar 13) made the Finals in our first year and lost on a time penalty, we've always been recognized for the focus we put on the writing and we've always been strong competitors despite strategic decisions that always put our respect for the audience and the moment above potential scores that might result in us officially being declared the winner on a Saturday night in August. (I say officially because I'll be damned if anyone says we didn't win every year we made the Finals, no matter what the scores said. The victory comes from seizing the opportunity, not the final score.) The number of people who tell us how much they respect that, year after year, is both flattering and annoying, the latter because all these years later, there's still so much fluff out there. So many ridiculous group pieces that don't say anything; that don't aspire to anything more than being fleeting entertainment. So many individual poets who sell themselves short, opting for easy street, saving their real poems for after-hours cyphers and, maybe, slipping one or two into a feature set. Slammasters who get caught up in the competition and forget how unimportant it ultimately is.
And now I'm rambling and what was supposed to be a quick post about the Wizard of Oz poem has become something else entirely that I'm not even sure how to conclude. Fucking poetry slam! I thought I'd quit you!
On a loosely related note, regarding metaphor and realism, there were more than a few highly acclaimed poems at Nationals that were so unnecessarily overwritten, with metaphor on top of metaphor on top of metaphor on top of metaphor, that their appeal was somewhat muted for me. While I can appreciate the craft and passion behind them, they were so amorphous, often lacking any grounding in reality beyond their title or preface, that they never fully took life in my heart or brain. (I'm a Leo, so courage isn't an issue!) You don't need catchy hooklines or pop culture references to make a poem work, but you do need a resting place or two for the brain to fully process what you're communicating; an occasional pause that allows the heart to skip a beat. It's another case of the need for an actual editor as opposed to just another cheerleader.
And...I'm spent. If you read this far, you're a better person than I am! But thanks. Please feel free to share your thoughts here or over on LiveJournal.
There's so much to say about this past weekend in Austin, but I'm totally unable to process it into words that would be fully accessible to anyone who wasn't there...though that won't stop me from trying.
The National Poetry Slam Experience is so multi-layered, a dizzying mix of emotional, psychological and physical stimuli, that you truly have to be there to fully understand its appeal. Even though I wasn't competing, you can't help but get caught up in the competition at some level, and it was a wild ride from the emotional highs of louderARTS' Thursday and Friday night bouts to the [brief] emotional low of Finals night, when Charlotte's second round poem pretty much nailed their eventual victory and opened the door to the requisite second-guessing of strategy and emotionally charged critique and debate.
Finals night itself was a mixed bag of individual and group performances with the underlying poetry veering wildly from dreadful to pedestrian to good-but-overwritten to entertaining spectacle to heartbreaking perfection. The latter, and I say so both with and without any bias at all, was Rachel's performance in the first round which nearly brought me to tears and made me terribly proud to have her as the metaphorical stepmama to my all-growed-up-and-renamed baby, louderARTS. I was a little worried that I'd feel a bit disconnected to the team this year since I only knew Roger and Rachel, but the other three guys -- Oveous Maximus, Jon Sands and John "Survivor" Blake -- made me remember why slam is still vital and necessary and why it's so important to keep pumping new blood into the local and national scenes. I got to know each one of them a little bit, via their poetry, brief conversations and watching them interact with the larger community, and I look forward to hearing more from them and getting to know them better in the future. Sands, in particular, struck me as the most like me back in my earlier days, an odd mix of innocence and savvy and a 180-degree game face, so it'll be especially interesting to watch him develop.
The commentary and debates that followed the Finals tended to fall into two camps -- "a lot of the writing sucked" and "it was a good show for the audience" -- and as much as I agree with the former, as long as the Nationals is structured and run the way it is, the latter is ultimately what's most important. Everything else is purely late-night philosophical debate fodder, and until someone develops that long-talked-about next step, a National event where the competitors have met some common, qualitative criteria -- as opposed to being random audience favorites of some random judges in a random bar/café -- it will remain that way.
And you know what? That's okay. "Be the change you want to see" has been my personal philosophy when it comes to slam for years now, including that point when I simply walked away. Lead by example; don't worry about how good or bad the other poets are, focus on what you're bringing to the mix and don't compromise it any step of the way. If it's still not working for you, it's you not the slam, so just walk away and find another avenue for your work.
From my perspective, Mike, Phil, Sonya, et al put on a hell of an event, from the competition to the day events to the official after-party -- hot and sweaty as it was -- and I am so glad that I made it out there and got to experience it all again. I had a blast and am feeling recharged and excited. (Well, I'll feel recharged once I catch up on sleep!) Beyond the main competition, the Nerd Slam was a hoot, even though I didn't get to quiz anybody on comics since other specialities dominated the event; my Nerd Legends Showcase set showed me I have a long way to go towards getting comfortable onstage again, but also reinforced my desire to get back to that point; the myriad conversations, sincere hugs and "glad to see you back" comments were all fuel on the fire, and while I don't know that I'll be slamming with a goal of making a team this season, I do plan to push myself back into competing here and there because you just can't duplicate that particular rush any other way.
Perhaps most significantly was "getting the band back together", a much needed reunion that I suspect I'll look back on several times as the moment I truly got back on the horse and was ready to ride again.
Bad enough it's the day before I head out for Austin and work is the least interesting thing I can think of doing right now, but it took me over 3 hours -- 2 trains, some walking and McDonald's for breakfast -- to get here thanks to the flooding in lower Manhattan, so my whole day has been thrown completely out of whack.
The worst part is I'm missing a gym day for the first time and after Monday night's assault on my liver I could really use the exercise and a little time in the steam room. I think I'll [finally] take my bike out for a ride in the morning after India gets on the bus and before we head downtown for her graduation ceremony* to make up for it, but it won't really be the same. Except for the steam room feeling, perhaps. It's nasty humid out there.
Since this trip is partly for the National Poetry Slam and partly to hang out with my friend Eric, there's only a handful of Slam-related events I definitely plan to check out in Austin:
Thursday, 8/9 @ 9pm
Ego's (louderARTS vs....)Friday, 8/10 @ 12:45pm
Antone's (Nerd Slam)Friday, 8/10 @ 2:30pm
Hideout Theatre (Revenge of the Nerd Legends Showcase)Saturday, 8/12 @ 11pm
501 Studio (Finals Night Party!)
At $25 each, I doubt seriously that I'll check out the Individual Finals (if they're any good, I'll see the finalists at 13 eventually) and the Team Finals will depend on who makes it, so Friday and Saturday nights are potentially wide open for other things and there's a few other things I definitely want to do while I'm there, including eating at the Boiling Pot, visiting Austin Books & Comics, and getting a tattoo, most likely at Black Cat Tattoo. For the latter, I haven't decided whether to get something new and if so, where, or to freshen up the tribal arm band I got in Mexico on our honeymoon. If new, I'm thinking a stylized tribal lion, possibly on my right forearm, but that would mean no more rolling up my sleeves on work appointments. If refreshed, all I know is I want it bigger, but the style I most like won't work with what I already have. I'd love to get something like George Clooney's tattoo in From Dusk to Dawn but that's a bit much, I think.
Decisions, decisions...
* India's graduation was misprinted on the first calendar we got from her school a month or two ago and we thought it was next week on August 16th, my birthday, when I booked the trip to Austin. I ended up rescheduling my flights to leave tomorrow afternoon instead of tonight so I wouldn't miss it but then I'm headed straight for the airport afterwards which is kind of sucky.
It's somewhat ironic that on the same night I read a new poem entitled "On the 89th Day, I Quit", I end up drinking way more than usual. The show ended rather early last night but a few of us ended up sticking around instead of going to Reservoir and Maureen's hand got a little bit heavier with each drink.
Ugh.
I'm too old for this shit!
The poem came from an interesting writing exercise Marty sent me yesterday, as I wanted to continue my streak of reading something new every time I go to 13 -- up to six times now -- but none of the ideas currently rattling around in my head were quite ready to blossom.
stanza 1: reject something.
stanza 2: invoke a god.
3: retract the rejection.
4: include a line from a song you haven't heard in years.*
5: talk about a time you were kissed or cursed.
6: write a curse.
7: apologize for the rejection.
8: retract the apology.
9: write a blessing for the rejected.
It's almost like a Mad Lib, and it was interesting the way the poem unfolded as I went stanza by stanza without any planned direction or ending, like a one-person exquisite corpse. I generally don't like writing exercises because they're often too vague, but Marty and Oscar have both come up with some really interesting ones, and the last time around Oscar's Oulipo exercise indirectly resulted in "Bittersweet Reunion" which is the poem that was just published in The November 3rd Club.
So, to recap: writing = good; drinking = bad. Separating the two eventually before my liver falls out = priceless.
* 10 points if you can name the song.
I'm terrible at submitting work for publication, so the fact that I've ever had anything published has always amazed me. It's been a long time since I've submitted anything anywhere but in this recent wave of writing I've been doing, I've kept it in the back of my mind as a goal.
The November 3rd Club is a unique online literary journal for a few reasons -- not the least of which is their overt political bias; a more intelligent Air America perhaps? -- but from a personal perspective, I remember the moment (vaguely) from which it sprang, as a group of left-leaning writers fed up by the state of politics leading up to Dubya's re-election sought to find ways to more effectively inject their political beliefs into the national consciousness via their own writings. Editor-in-Chief Victor Infante and his editors have featured a great mix of interesting work over the past few years, and I participated in one of their "Conversations" a couple of years back, a panel discussion on the politics of V for Vendetta, from which I cobbled together a review of the graphic novel and movie which still stands as my favorite review I've ever written.
Their latest issue includes my poem "Bittersweet Reunion", the first poem I wrote earlier this year after getting back on the horse, and while I've already spotted a couple of edits I want to make -- a poem is rarely ever finished, IMO, but you have to cut the cord at some point and let it live its own life -- I'm excited to be included in such a solid mix of work. I've only gotten through the poetry section so far, but specific standouts I highly recommend are Michael Cirelli's "Congo" and Jackson Wheeler's "Acts of Terror". Save Patricia Smith's "What to Tweak" for last because it's as good as you'd expect it to be and will dominate your mindshare for a couple of hours afterwards.
After reading Tony Brown's latest Zero Point Zero column, "Kicking an Addiction", a couple of things jumped out at me about my own writing that I've always known but kept buried in one of the more remote closets in my brain.
Much like the speaker in Buddy Wakefield's poem "Convenience Stores," I'm addicted to novelty. If I can't be unique, can't take a unique tack on a subject, I don't see it as worth tackling.
For me, that idea of "novelty" always manifested itself in my tendency to write from my own perspective, distilling my own experiences into literal narratives or thinly veiled allegories. In the old "fiction in the first person" debate, I used to come down on the side of "absolute truth" -- if you say "I" then it should be true -- as opposed to "relative truth", despite the fact that some of my own poetry arguably falls somewhere in between.
One of the main reasons I've never been interested in pursuing journalism full-time is that the idea of writing about things I have no personal interest in bores me to tears. The couple of handfuls of articles I've written for publication, paid or not, were either about poetry slam or comics.
Sometime in late 2000, I think, my writing started to become increasingly sporadic, partly because I was more and more focused on running a little bit louder, but partly because I was running out of things I wanted to say. Or, more honestly, things I was willing to say publicly. The problem with the "absolute truth" approach is that it requires complete honesty and that means potentially hurting people's feelings and/or exposing ugly truths or, the option I often chose, simply not writing about certain things.
I've always admired those whom I've perceived as being completely honest in their poetry, willing to expose raw emotion and unveil unflattering truths about themselves, like Bassey, Rachel, Peter of the Earth and Jason Carney. As my own poetry steadily moved towards a more personal narrative style, the deeper I dug into my own memories and experiences, the more I tapped into my feelings about different things, the more I started to avoid writing certain poems because I realized I wasn't interested in being that honest.
The day Batman went from being a metaphor to the subject of a straightforward poem about why he fights crime I realized I had backed myself into a corner from which there were only two escape routes. I chose the "easier" one, and simply stopped writing poetry, convincing myself that I'd said all that I wanted to say in the form and was ready to move on -- ironically, I ended up writing about comics for a couple of years to keep the creative juices flowing.
"Honesty is the best policy" may be cliché, but it's absolutely true when referring to one's self.
Tony's column triggered something in my brain, opening another of the many doors that I've been unlocking over the past couple of months, and as I commented over there, my recently renewed focus on poetry includes casting my net wider and writing about other people's experiences. "I" am still going to be in many of the poems I write, but it's becoming more of a fictional relative "I", freed from the constraints of literal "absolute truth" and indulging in the wide open spaces of metaphorical "relative truths".
Seeing as old habits die hard, and I've found myself wandering into bars to do some free writing whenever I get a chance, instead of keeping my head down and in my notebook, I'm now actively taking in my surroundings and turning them into character sketches, or short scenes, or even entire poems, as I did last week with Old New York Love Story, practically a "found poem" as the meat of it was written in the very moment it was happening, me writing as fast as I could to transcribe it as closely as possible. (Mariah @ the Dive Bar was written in and inspired by that same bar, so it's probably time to find a new one.)
On a semi-related note, in my quest to find an open mic where I could read without the "safety net" of familiarity 13 offers, I checked out Rev. Jen's Anti-Slam on Wednesday night and realized why I started a little bit louder in the first place. The less said about that night, the better -- though the venue, Mo Pitkin's House of Satisfaction serves an amazing Cuban Reuben that I will definitely return for and highly recommend! -- but it was a nice reminder about the importance of making a space as comfortable and welcoming as possible, while serving as an object lesson that you simply can't be all things to all people, and you shouldn't try to be. Kudos to Jen for her 11 year run, and wow, can you believe a little bit louder/louderARTS will celebrate its 10th anniversary next Spring?!?
Performing your poetry onstage isn't like riding a bike at all, unless you're talking about the part where your foot keeps slipping off the pedal and it bloodies your shin. I used to hate that!
When I decided last week to hit the Nuyorican for last night's slam, I figured it'd be a fun, low-pressure show where I'd be able to comfortably continue my slow return to writing and performing. When a wave of nausea and jangling nerves hit me around 5:15pm, I was tempted to change my mind and go have a drink instead. Nevertheless, I stuck to my plan, walking all the way there from work with the thought that it would be give me time to clear my head, but it only gave my mind more time to race and my nerves more time to jangle. I ended up stopping in at the Peculier Pub for a pint of Magic Hat #9 to steady myself, and arrived at the Café at 6:30pm on the dot, only to be reminded that "money slams" bring poets out of the woodwork and it wasn't going to be a low-pressure affair at all!
Way more familiar faces in the house than I expected, including Jamaal St. John and his wife, neither of whom I'd seen in years; a few people I didn't know who recognized me from 13; Miguel Algarin who didn't recognize me at all and I didn't bother to remind him, simply saying it was great to see him there at the Café, which it was. Lynne was supposed to be there to slam, but couldn't make it, and Cory came out to support, which was cool as it helped to have a friendly, non-competing face there to ground me. (She and Luis have been incredibly encouraging over the past few months, without even realizing they've been doing so, kind of filling the roles Bassey and Peter used to play back in the day.)
26 poets, one round, 3:30 time limit, 3 judges, one of whom was someone I'd crossed swords with back in the day over issues surrounding the nycSLAMS CD and unauthorized video. I went from being extremely nervous during the first 5 or 6 poets; to being mildly annoyed by the sameness of much of the poetry (both in the context of the slam itself and the larger context of the scene over the past 10 years); to getting a flash of competitiveness where I was seriously considering tweaking my old "Why I Slam..." poem and calling some people out by name for shucking and jiving; to really just wanting it to be over by the time my name was finally drawn to read. I ended up doing a low-key, on-page reading of "Behind the Music" and got what I'm pretty sure was the lowest score of the slam, a 25.9, which was fine and not entirely unexpected as the judges were favoring the loud and quippy and I was more like tepid and subtle, relatively speaking.
I'm glad I went, though, because there were definitely some standout poems that were worth hearing, some younger voices with a lot of potential, and, in all honesty, just being at the Nuyorican again without any drama hanging over the moment made for a refreshing, low-key homecoming. It was also good for me to read on a mic outside of 13, where I feel comfortable enough to do whatever so it's not really a challenge to read there and at this stage, I need to keep challenging myself until writing becomes a more natural thing again.
I'm definitely not ready for slamming outside of 13 yet, though. The competitive aspect pushes all the wrong buttons for me right now and I don't want to be tempted into shifting my writing in that direction. Been there, done that, have the trophy.
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