I don’t know about you, but going to poetry reading is work for me. It’s the good kind of work—observe and steal. The style, I mean, not word for word. It may be the surprise twist at the very end of a poem. It may be the use of a repeated rhythm. It may be the concept of a slice of pizza topped with “tiny little white men” *. It may be an imagery of a bucket of herb blood. Whatever it may be, when I see a gem I snatch it and put it in my memory bank.
Luke Warm Water came to Sacred Grounds last night and he was the rich guy I hung onto. Out of his mouth tumbled all kinds of goodies. It was better than Christmas. When I got home I had to cook down his humor, metaphors, language, moves, even the beer he sipped during the reading. And the end result was I wrote a poem of my own without a trace of LWW.
* from Luke’s poem “Are You Hungry For Pizza?”
I do the same with music, but it is hard with many voices at the same time.
Liked those poems. Curious about the one you wrote after cooking down his pizza with the tiny little white men topping.