Serial Poets Kill 4,000 at Bookfair Dinner

Poetry

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Poetry

Dateline: 10/27/98

Frankfurt, October 8, 1998. Wearing matching filmy black floor-length skirts and carrying outsize black and red journals, four poets took the stage at the Frankfurt Buchmesse (Bookfair) Festhalle last night at the Fair’s intimate 50th Anniversary dinner party. Four thousand people were in attendance. The Bookfair itself, the world’s largest, attracts a half million people each October.

four voices
of the poets
setting up
a compass

As the poets -- Dana Bryant, Regie Cabico, Bob Holman, and Edwin Torres -- opened their books, the house lights at the Festhalle quickly dimmed and the social conversation stilled. The sole source of

illumination came from the giant books, the texts themselves revealing the faces of the poets: Cabico, from the Philippines, hair piled atop; Bryant, a striking African American woman towering over the others; Holman, in blacktie and trademark leather porkpie hat; and Torres, rail-thin, goateed, with a billowing gold sari over his shoulder.

“Por qué cantáis la rosa, [!] oh Poetas! [!] Hacedla florecer en el poema!” began Torres, solemnly -- “Oh Poets, why sing of roses! Let them flower in your poems!” These words by the great Chilean Modernist, Vincente Huidobro, are the first line

the polyglot
audience
sailing
between
languages

of “SemiCento,” a poem of fifty lines, each written by a different poet, which was commissioned for the Buchmesse’s fiftieth anniversary. Written and directed by Bob Holman, the poem is in twenty-eight different languages, a visually stunning text. (Thanks to Jackson West, you can see the text at Washington Square Arts.) In the actual performance, the poem was first read very starkly, with the four voices of the poets setting up a compass, and the polyglot audience sailing between languages they knew and didn’t. The Americans showed a spirited facility as they spoke the words of Sappho, Basho, Rilke, Ginsberg, and Kenyan riddles, all in the original tongues.

echoes, wisps,
incantations
of the
original
languages

As the poem ended, the books were slowly closed and theatrical lights came up. But before the applause could catch, Holman snapped the cordless mic from its stand and confronted the crowd with a rousing version of his rap poem, “Rock’n’Roll

Mythology.” Next, with a ritual bow, Edwin Torres took the stage with his sound poem “i.e. Seducer,” exploring interstitial phonemes in English, Spanish, and Beyonsense. Holman then broke into a be-bop bass line, and Dana Bryant stepped forward and talked a poetry of love and pain, sweetening the crowd and then slapping a broken heart into place. It was Regie Cabico’s turn then, and the crowd was inundated with a disco track as he twirled, caroused and vamped a paean to gay night life.

Somehow, in the utter chaos of the performers discoing poetry, Zeus and Hera appeared from the wings, brandishing music stands and scripts. Holman drew a baton and pitch pipe and directed, in expressive choral director-style, his performance play, “The Creation of the Frankfurt Buchmesse.” A brief synopsis:

Part One: Poetry is invented. The muse sings. No one listens.
Part Two: Writing is invented. Gunter Grass gets a job autographing his own books.
Part Three: The Invention of Money. Writing is money (we just wrote that). Business of booking “pure” thought. Don’t forget the Asian Serial Rights!
Part Four: The Invention of the Buchmesse. Buy my library. Publish the thought.

The poets then kicked over the music stands, picked up their megatomes, and again the lights crossed into the books. This time, Holman read the “SemiCento” in English, with echoes, wisps, incantations of the original

vining and
twinning,
creating a bed
of all languages

languages vining and twinning, creating a bed of all languages, a place for the dreams of the world. At the conclusion of the poem, Neruda’s line “Libro, cuando te cierro abro la vida” (“When I close the book, I open life”) was repeated, and as the books closed, the audience was momentarily blinded by a full bank of spotlights behind the poets, who were silhouetted, and then disappeared, leaving an audience stunned, that only slowly awoke to its own thunderous applause, standing ovation.

--Bob Holman

Recently dubbed a member of the “Poetry Pantheon” by the NY Times Magazine and featured in a Henry Louis Gates profile in The New Yorker, Bob Holman’s most recent book, his fifth, is The Collect Call of the Wild (Henry Holt). His first CD, In With the Out Crowd, is on the Mouth Almighty/Mercury label, which he founded in 1997. He produced a 5-part series for PBS, The United States of Poetry, which has been broadcast round the globe.

Edwin Torres is a bilingual poet/artist/provacateur, rooted in the languages of both sight and sound. He’s toured around the world performing and giving workshops all over the alphabet. His books include I Hear Things People Haven’t Really Said and SandHomméNomadNo. His debut CD, Holy Kid, was released by Kill Rock Stars.

Dana Bryant grew up in Brooklyn, New York. She made her poetry debut in 1991; in 1995, she released her first book of poems, Song of the Siren (Boulevard Books/Putnam Berkeley) and the following year her debut solo album, Wishing From the Top on Warner Bros. Records. She has performed in Europe and Japan with artists such as Speech (of Arrested Development), Zap Mama, PM Dawn and Ronnie Jordan.

Regie Cabico is coeditor of Poetry Nation: A North American Anthology of Fusion Poetry (Vehicule Press, Montreal). His solo show, “the poet welcomes his male muse a cabaret poem in 1 act,” will be presented at The Public Theater in New York City. He is a member of the Poetry Slam Team, Mouth Almighty, which won First Place at the 1997 National Slam.