poetry reading – Page 2

Eye Contact

Looking at the audience while doing a poetry reading, I saw some of the people have closed their eyes. Were they listening or were they sleeping? It was hard to tell.

I like to make eye-contact when I read. It’s like having a dialogue, you know the audience is listening. But when their eyes are closed I am uncertain. Should I project my voice to wake them up, or should I speak gently so as not to disturb them?

Teaching a piano lesson after a tiring exercise class, I listened to my student’s playing with my eyes closed. When the music stopped, I was so fatigued that my eyes would not open. “It’s nice,” I managed to mumble something to cover my track, but my mind was blank.

“Thank you. That’s it.” I said after my reading. People clapped. Now their eyes were all opened.

Reading with THE GAME

On Super Bowl Sunday, the game, the game, the game was everywhere. During our drive up to Cotati, I held Dore’s small plastic radio in my hands so he could listen to the game. The big TV screen in Cotati’s Redwood Cafe was playing the game (without the sound) when we walked in. There was no escape, even when we were there for a poetry reading.

The Giants scored first. Then the Patriots made a comeback. But the poets were busy untangling cables and setting up mikes. The audience trickled in half-filling the cafe. There were more than a few people who didn’t care about the game.

And when the poets came on stage someone turned off the screen. No wonder the owner of the cafe stayed home today. Super Bowl was forgotten and nobody bothered to check the score after the reading.

It was a super evening to have my son Lawrence and his friend Cameron accompany my reading with their music. It was super to hear Jack and Adelle Foley, and to read with Jack. One of the teams in the game would walk away depressed. There was no such feelings among us.

Photo by Wen Hsu.

Joycean Night

Two events were happening simultaneously on opposite sides of town, both celebrating the birthday of James Joyce. I had to choose between going to Jack Hirschman’s Readers Cafe at Fort Mason, or join a group plow-through of Finnegans Wake at a friend’s home. I went to Fort Mason, where Hirschman featured Jack and Adelle Foley paying tribute to “Germ’s Choice”.

Joyce’s river in Finnegans Wake morphed into two magma lavas. They flowed side by side in discordant tempos and when they pinged, syllables bounced off in all directions, stinging the listeners, confusing their ears, jamming their computation demanding total surrender to the voices, words, chorus (of two, if you are counting bodies). Then all of a sudden, when their multi-rhythms began to take over the room, they stopped.

The lavas mutated back into the river, Bussoftlhee, mememormee! Till thousendsthee. Lps. The keys to. Given! A way a lone a last a loved along the

Photo by Rhy Tranter.

Reading At the Li Po Lounge

Li Po conjures up poetry and wine. What is more appropriate than having a reading at the Li Po Lounge in Chinatown? Last night the moon is thin like a sickle, not the bright moon that Li reached and literally died for. But it will fatten up some what between now and next Tuesday, when verses will be spoken there along with flowing liquor.

I have never set foot in the Li Po Lounge, although I have worked in Chinatown for nearly 30 years. Sometimes a peek through their half-opened door I sensed an isolated world of (mostly) old men drinking into oblivion. Now, poetry will bring a fuller experience in the dimly lit den and Chinatown itself, where culture is the lion dance or a fortune cookie.

If the Chinese children learn poetry at all they learn in the classroom. But I think Li Po is not there. He would not be pleased to see such orderliness, but turn the corner to Grant Ave where the double red door awaits.

Photo from fecalface.com

We Played Music

I felt the cold tonight. In a heatless storage unit turned music studio in Fremont my son Lawrence, his friend Cameron Brochier and I rehearsed for our February gig in Cotati.

Organizer Geri DiGiorno sounded a bit nervous on the phone when she found out my poetry reading would be accompanied by members of a rock band. I assured her that the music would be more jazzy and bluesy.

But it was the distortion that added a special flavor to the poems. Cameron was pleased that I asked for it and smiled broadly whenever I gave him a thumb-up on his riff.

When I pulled out my Native American drum Lawrence was unsure. “Eh, we’ve never played with native instruments before.”

“No worries,” I told him. “When one ends the other begins.”

We scored the poems, each contributing ideas and moods. The cold was forgotten until we finished. Then, it was bitter.

“Dinner?” I suggested.

“No, we have to do our own rehearsal now.”

I left the guys in their freezer and drove home.

No Contest?

I can’t recall how many times I’ve heard Dore say, “It was the best game ever!” Clearly, the 49’ers had won the game this afternoon. Cars were honking and people were celebrating in the street as I rode home in the bus.

“They going to the Super Bowl now?” I asked Dore.

“Not yet. One more before the final game.”

Super Bowl Sunday is Feb 5. I have a poetry reading in Cotati that day. Someone predicted that my audience will be all women, if I’ll have an audience at all.

You know what I’m thinking but it’s bad form for me to say it. I just wish there are more (a lot more) people who prefer poetry reading than football.

Seven

I believe seven is a magical number, that things change or enter a new dimension after seven years. Tonight the Winter Poem Exchange Party arrived on the mark. Looking back, it was amazing how it started as a whim, and how it has grown into a poetic tradition.

Last night an email from someone unknown: I’m a visiting poet from the UK and would like to come to your party. She came, told us that she is visiting the States and goes to three poetry events a day.

New friends, poems, music, stories. Two readings happened in tandem upstairs and down every hour. In between we feasted on scrumptious food.

“I wish this is what we do for a living,” said Steve Mackin.

It was a wish made today, the beginning of a new “seven”. Let’s see what happens when we arrive at the next mark.

Graceful Departure

Jehanah painting — Painting by Chris Trian

Even though photos of Jehanah Wedgwood are still hanging on the wall at the Sacred Grounds Cafe, I felt that she had truly departed. Memories live in those who have known her, her poetry, and the resemblance on her children’s faces. It has been a year since her death. The poetry reading series has assumed a different personality—light, humorous, at times rowdy—that of our host, Dan Brady’s.

Her presence used to fill the room, even long after she was gone. Like air, it dissipated without our knowing each time the cafe door opened and closed. I realized Sacred Grounds has regenerated. A whole new me ready to go again.* The old Druidess has let it to be so. We must remember to celebrate the new.

*Old Druidess by Jehanah Wedgwood.

The Deliverer

The version on youtube of TS Eliot reading his own work, The Love Song Of J Alfred Prufrock, is painfully uninteresting. There are a few other interpretations by various people. Only one, a young, high-pitched voice, has the kind of edginess I imagine J Alfred to be; but the verses are chopped up by an infantile video interpretation.

It doesn’t take much to turn a great dramatic monologue into a bore, but it does take intention and integrity of the deliverer to bring out the essence of a poem. Last night at the Sacred Grounds we had such a treat, when the featured poet Greg Pond received a standing ovation (a rarity) after his reading.

Besides his own poems, Greg chose to present the work of his friends. He clearly worked on each poem to bring out the drama and music. Greg personified the romance of Steve Mackin, the satire of Garrett Murphy, the mysticism of Jehanah Wedgwood, and the angst of Don Brennan. He read our poems better than we have read them. We were all giddy, after discovering a “side” of our poems that we had never imagined. We swore to improve ourselves as we chattered non-stop like school children, walking out into the night.

Rainy Night in October

Our first, and it seemed all too early, especially when most of the summer had been cool. I walked into Bird and Beckett Books to a gathering before my reading with Bill Mercer and Peter Sherburn-Zimmer. There were old friends who were part of the “movable feast”, new faces who were introduced, and friends from other connections also appeared. Then Richard Beban, a wonderful Californian poet friend who has turned Parisian, stepped up and held me in his arms. Time and space collapsed in a most unexpected and exhilarating way and the night turned magical.

Richard comes back to the Bay Area for a friend who is in his last stage of life. At the reading we remembered Mel Clay, actor, playwright and poet, who passed away unexpectedly at the end of September; and Susie Birkeland, who had been “resurrected” by her friends reading her poetry at the Antwerp International Poetry Festival. I looked out to the audience as I read, grateful that once again we were together in body. At the open mike, poems ranged from an elegy to the Hardly Strictly Bluegrass to the execution of Troy Davis. The rain had stopped when we made our way out of the bookstore. I forgot to pick up my umbrella.