Fast Approach to a Turning Point
Dateline: 10/5/99It happens every year -- fall weather washes away summer. Back to work, school, what have you. Last chance for change afore winter is y’cumin in. Here at Ab.c Poetry we’re changing -- we’ll be bringing you news direct from poetry hotspots around the world as our 9 correspondents file Museletters each week in turn.
Big news in Slam land is that Gary Glazner will be editing the first-ever Slam anthology, to come out this spring from the ever-happening Manic D Press. On other fronts:
- MIDWEST
Jason Pettus
- SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA
Victor Infante
- VIRGINIA/DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA
Shann Palmer
- PACIFIC NORTHWEST
Bob Redmond
- NEW MEXICO/SOUTHWEST
Gary Glazner
- MONTREAL/CANADA
Ian Ferrier
- LOS ANGELES
Larry Jaffe
- CONNECTICUT/NEW ENGLAND
Faith Vicinanza
- TEXAS
Stazja McFadyen
- Bill Moyers brings us Fooling with Words, another Dodge Festival on PBS, and thanks to an incredible through-line of Kurt Lamkin and his talking kora and a single 2-hour framework we taste great variety and excellent poems. Hats off to Jim Haba, activist philosopher of Dodge.
- Carl Hancock Rux brings Rux Revue out on Sony with Beastie Boys and Beck producers on board. Best produced po album of all time, and with Carl’s provocative baritone crooning the sweat right off the street, words dance.
- Saul Williams’ record on American due out any day; his new book/CD S/He on MTV Books is the story of love’s dissolution. The CD could’ve been better thought through: there’s no listing for the tracks, nor any rationale I could figure for the selection, although it’s clear the whole book could’ve been recorded. . . as on Willie Perdomo’s classico When a Nickel Costs a Dime (Norton), which suffers from a different defect: the CD reading sounds rushed, uninspired. Both Saul and Willie are great reads, but they do it better live. Would someone want to comment on this? It’s great to have Willie back on the scene: he wrote the intro for 13 Poems from the Bar 13 poets, including National Slam Champ Roger Bonair-Agard.
- The Beats are in the air, their move into Lit History sad joy. Check out the love poem of a film, The Source, with great pop beat references, some unbelievable Neal Cassady footage, and weep as Allen Ginsberg as tour guide reminds you of the difference a Bard makes. The Ginsberg and Friends auction at Sotheby’s is another dent. (Allen’s leather coat, is it worth more than the 10G’s Johnny Depp paid for Kerouac’s famous brown raincoat? asks Ed Sanders in his NY Times article on the eBayization of culture.) So too the Jack Micheline book, sixty-seven poems for downtrodden saints, available from the Micheline Foundation run by Jack’s son, Vince Silvaer. And a stellar version of the best Beat play ever, McClure’s The Beard, is playing at Theatre LaMama in New York. Ferlinghetti and Sanders will open the season at the Poetry Project at St. Mark’s Church on Tuesday, October 5.
- There are poets in Tina Brown’s new Talk magazine. First issue has “The House Guest from Hell,” none other than Laura Riding, one of the least appreciated poets of the century, in a gossip-laden piece that drove Charles Bernstein bonkers. In the current issue: the gory photos of Mayakovsky’s suicide, finally liberated from the Official Communist Archives.
- MP3.Lit is probably the best site for your download poetry activities. Gary Hustwit from micropress Incommunicado Press also is running New York’s hottest reading series at Tonic; the Incommunicado independent press store at 107 Norfolk is open daily 5-midnight.
- Emily XYZ raised the $5,000 necessary to ransom her new album, Electric Magistrate from Mercury Records, and she did it at a benefit yet! Great moments: John S. Hall’s outrageously scurrilous poem attacking Rudolph Giuliani, Max Blagg’s anticynical instant classic poem about New York, moving him up with Whitman and O’Hara, Edwin Torres using the mike like a lip (check his new chapbook, Fractured Humorous from Subpress). John Giorno, Glenn Branca, Virgil Moorefield -- 'twas an evening to remember, especially for Emily’s own performances in a gorgeous ballgown with her Other Voice, the sensational Meyers Bartless.
- Also news: Sekou Sundiata’s new CD to be released by his former student, Ani DiFranco, on Righteous Babe. Yes. . . Sapphire’s new book of poems should hit any moment.
- Jessica Care Moore’s Moore Black Press will be releasing a new book by the poet Che sometime soon, and keeps Saul Williams' first The Seventh Octave in print, as well as her own The Words Don’t Fit in My Mouth.
- On the indy CD front: Carnivocal from Red Deer Press in Canada is the best contemporary sound poetry collection I’ve heard. From techno to funky mouf, this compilation pays homage to Hugo Ball while staking out a tongue sky ride that’ll slap sense into you. Verbomotorhead rules. Out of Chicago is an amazing sampler connecting home-taped poets who can’t shut up with behemoths like Henry Rollins and Jello Biafra. Choice cut: Mike Ladd’s “10 Steps to Bliss.” This’d be What’s the Word, Vol. 1: provocative new new.
- All in all I gotta say the mimeo revolution is back with a vengeance, energized by Mike Golden’s The Buddhist Third Class Junkmail Oracle: the art and poetry of d.a. levy (Seven Stories Press). This is required reading!!
--Bob Holman
