MUSELETTER #33
5/28/2000
Greetings, everybody!
This week's Museletter has Ian Ferrier's notes from all across Canada (Montreal to Vancouver), a variety sampler of readings reported by Marj Hahne in Philadelphia, a fresh Midwestern update from Jason Pettus in Chicago, plus a new collection of notes from our readers.
With our roster of regional correspondents & the news items our readers send in, Museletter keeps in touch with poetry doings all over North America -- but we'd like to expand our coverage & cast this Net of poetry worldwide! So this is a special plea to our international readers: Please use our Reader Submission page to share news about the poets & poetry in your part of the globe with your fellow Museletter readers.
Margy Snyder & Bob Holman
Your About.com Poetry Guides
POETRY IS EVERYWHERE AT ABOUT.COM
About.com has a brand-new site devoted entirely to the Bard, William Shakespeare! Guide Amanda Mabillard has put together an organized set of resources on many aspects of Shakespeare's life, works, historical sources, films of the plays, Shakespearean actors, criticism, the authorship debate, etc. And the site has a great collection of e-texts, including all the plays:
Unfortunately, the shakespeare.about.com library doesn't include the texts of the Shakespearean sonnets (check our Sonnets library for links to these texts) -- but it does have an extensive collection of links that will be helpful to any of you who are studying them:- Shakespeare's Sonnets
Everything from general analysis to audio recordings by John Gielgud to Romanian translations & online illustrations of Shakespeare's sonnets.
MONTREAL/CANADA
Kerozen + YAWP
This last month saw a new player on the poetry stage here, a young, French language cultural centre called Kerozen teaming up with Jake Brown's YAWP for an evening of performance word and music at the Cabaret night club. This is a nice addition, as Kerozen publishes a mag, distributes CDs, and speaks to the 14-24 crowd a lot more than any of the other poetical culture stuff going.
Montreal's First Anarchist Book Fair
The best May event this year was Montreal's first Anarchist Book Fair, which instantly became the perfect place to find the crossover between the political and the poetical stage.
On hand were tables of work from AK Press, including one intriguing Dutch CD book containing a new version of a CD single. These CDs were half the diameter of a normal CD, maybe 2 inches across, contained maybe 8 minutes of audio and could be played in any CD player. I don't know if this format has ever been seen in North America, but if anyone does know who makes them and where, please write us at poets@wiredonwords.com. The format comes across like a CD version of what used to be 45rpm singles on vinyl.
Representing the poets were tables manned by Pages Noires/Rhythm Activism's Norman Nawrocki, Planète Rebelle and Wired on Words, while in from Ontario were the Marginal Distribution people, one of the few distributors of “underground and edge lit culture” in Canada. Also in attendance was Broken Pencil, a zine review whose founder, Hal Niedzviecki, just published an intriguing overview of Pop vs. Underground culture called We Want Some Too (Penguin Books).
But the best part of the anarchist fair was the crowd, which included political activists, the literary left, and most of the young street-squatting squeegee-punks the police keep chasing from one park to another in Montreal. For them and for the poets the book fair felt a lot like a new home, so hats off to the organizers, and I'll keep you informed as to when and where for next year.
Stefan Christoff's New Series
In the meantime a new series of poets and musicians launched this month, sponsored by an 18-year-old promoter named Stefan Christoff. This series takes edgy-electric folk, Berlin cabaret music and performance poetry, and mixes it all into some very good evenings of entertainment. The series got a big shock in mid-stream, as its venue, Artishow, closed down just as the show was getting on its feet. But this week they moved a few blocks down to the Jailhouse, and it looks like it should pick up really well. I just finished my first show there last night, working for the first time with an amazing saxophone player named Brian Highbloom. This man is one of the few sax players in town who loves the spoken word and is not afraid to use all the tech marvels available to stretch out the sound of his horn either. We'll try to get some of this work up on the Wired on Words site as soon as it's digitized.
Edgewise Cafe Videopoem Festival
Below is info on the Edgewise Lit people in Vancouver. Their videopoem festival started last year and is beginning to shape up as a good portal for taking work by performance poets and translating it into TV-speak. Although there has been exceptional work in getting poets on film and TV, the medium still doesn't translate poetry as well as we'd like, and this festival is a good forum for showcasing the best of how we might all change that. Deadline for submissions for this year's festival (in November) is July 31st.
Vancouver Videopoem Festival
The Edgewise ElectroLit Centre is looking for videopoem submissions for its 2nd annual videopoem festival, the only screening event of its kind in Canada. The Festival is to be held at Video In Studios, Vancouver, BC, Canada in November 2000. We are interested in any original, creative combination of poetry with material on videotape: cinepoems are also acceptable provided they are transferred onto videotape.
Guidelines:
- Videopoems to maximum of 20 minutes, submitted on VHS format -- please inform us of format of original.
- Include $15 submission fee ($12 US), cheque or money order payable to The Edgewise ElectroLit Centre.
- If you do not wish to donate your tape to our archive, please include envelope with sufficient postage to have your tape returned: Canadian postage or International Reply Coupons or $$.
- Obtain an official Videopoem Submission Application Form by contacting us at the address below, by phone, by email, or from our Web site.
- Provide brief bio, full name, and contact info in a cover letter.
- Mail a self-addressed stamped envelope (SASE) to:
The Edgewise ElectroLit Centre
Box 18 - 1895 Commercial Drive
Vancouver, BC V5N 4A6
If accepted into the Vancouver Videopoem Festival, all successful entrants will receive an honorarium, depending on receipt of funding. Co-produced with Video In Studios. For more information, please contact Carol L. Hamshaw, Administrator, at 604.904.9362, or via email at CL_Hamshaw@telus.net; or see our Web site.
People interested in the medium can find pioneer work by Kurt Heintz in Chicago. Kurt also does the e-poets network site, whose archives feature the best selection of Quicktime videopoems I've seen on the Net.
Coming Up in Montreal in June. . .
Coming up in Montreal in June is the launch of the new issue of Blood & Aphorisms, a Toronto litmag whose current feature is a special issue of new work by Montreal writers. After that comes the Montreal Jazz Festival, which will compete with a new off-jazz festival at Lion D'Or. The Lion d'Or site is sponsoring at least one night of jazz poetry in early July. Both of these events are at dates to be named later, but if you're interested, contact me by email (poets@wiredonwords.com) and I'll keep you informed.
Word: Toronto's Literary Calendar
Also for anyone visiting Toronto, Insomniac Press sponsors the Word literary calendar, whose online version lists all events in Toronto. Thanks to fine work by Shelagh Rowan-Legg, this calendar is also one of the few journals that reviews performance poetry and spoken word CDs and CD books.
Take care till next time. . .
PHILADELPHIA/SOUTH JERSEY/DELAWARE
Leonard Gontarek and The Mark Sarro GroupThis morning I heard the first chirps. . . excerpted from “An Interpretation of Winter” in Leonard Gontarek's second collection of poems entitled Van Morrison Can't Find His Feet, typifies the deadpan humor of Gontarek both on paper and in person -- humor that takes me by surprise and throws my head back in throaty laughter. On his book's back cover, Maureen Owen describes his poetry better than I ever could: “Leonard Gontarek reminds us of the bizarre and miraculous that goes on happening every ordinary minute, hushed and surreal, all around us.” On Saturday, April 22, in HMV Records' second-floor Crimson Moon Cafe (1510 Walnut Street, Philadelphia, PA, 215.875.5100), Gontarek performed his work in two sets, the second accompanied by the sitar, banjo, and bongos of The Mark Sarro Group. The first set he called “Cigarettes,” an apt title, I thought, because he chainsmoke-read his poems with no pauses for titles or pre-poem explanations, and dropped each page to the floor like a cigarette butt after he was done with it. I was also quite entertained by Gontarek's five-year-old son Max, who was busy collecting the tossed pages for his pop.
of sparrows unravel like tulips,
although, I admit, for a moment I thought
it was my refrigerator acting up
Free Aural Sex
On Wednesday, April 26, at Robin's Bookstore (108 S. 13th Street, Philadelphia, PA, 215.735.9600), a multicolored, multisexual, multitalented group of artists read for two hours of “Free Sex: An Evening of Spoken Word Performance by Queer Women of All Colors and Straight White Guys.” Local singer-songwriter Cassendre Xavier organized this titillating event because “sex sells” and more importantly, “to generate the concept of liberating sexuality from keeping differing communities segregated.” Local notables on the lineup, many of whom did read their sexually suggestive pieces, included Aaren Yeatts Perry, Alexandra Grilikhes, Leonard Gontarek, Debra D'Alessandro, Patrick Kelly, Toni Brown, Charles O'Hay, Tonya Hegamin, and Elliot Levin. Host Scott Johnston, centaur-in-a-teal-suit and self-described “diabolique,” nearly offended the unoffendable me with his signature brand of over-the-top, burlesque-ish banter between readers.
Crystal Williams' Poems Cut Deep
Crystal Williams' voice and manner ooze like warm compote, making one feel at home enough to reach for seconds, to consume again and again the tart fruit of her 28 years which intensifies the taste of her poetry. On Wednesday, May 17, Robin's Bookstore served to a good-sized audience a delicious helping of this Detroit native, Nuyorican Poets Cafe habitué and 1995 New York Slam Team member. Williams read from Kin, her first published volume of poetry, what Nikki Giovanni describes as “portraits [that] are emotionally evocative, incisive, funny, loving” -- poems about her parents, Flo Jo and acrylic nail tips, and a shortlived lover who feasted on a helping of Crystal before finishing his first plate (of another woman). Could we blame him? Williams closed the reading with her notable epic-song to herself entitled “In Search of Aunt Jemima.”
Upcoming Poetry Events at Robin's Bookstore
- Wednesday, June 14, 7:00 pm: Gerald Barrax will read from From a Person Sitting in Darkness: New & Selected Poems.
Verbal Arabesques at the Highwire
On a Saturday evening, May 6, a crowd of 25 or 30 came out in 90-degree heat to hear poetry at the Highwire Gallery (139 N. 2nd Street, Philadelphia, PA, 215.829.1255). Every other Saturday at 8:00 pm, Kyle Connor hosts the Highwire Reading Series, which features poets from Philadelphia and New York. A NYC resident, editorial writer for Poets and Writers Magazine, and a recent graduate of Iowa's MFA writing program, Kevin Larimer read selections, all untitled, from his in-progress manuscript aptly entitled No Names. Larimer's poems mirror his demeanor: unassuming, understated yet trustworthy. Temple University prof Rachel Blau DuPlessis was the Philadelphia poet of the pair. Dedicating her reading to recently deceased British poet Douglas Oliver, Blau DuPlessis delivered a series of 38 short poems written in a style she's been experimenting with, in which the first 19 poems are read in succession followed by their 19 responses.
XY XY Rhymes at the Painted Bride
On Sunday, May 7, as part of both the Living Word Poetry Series and MANaFEST, a celebration of male artists at the millennium, the Painted Bride Art Center (230 Vine Street, Philadelphia, PA, 215.925.9914) presented poets Miguel Algarìn and Aaren Yeatts Perry. Accompanying both performers was local trio The Naked Poets: Elliot Levin on sax and flute, Ed Watkins on percussion, and Bob Adamski on bass and guitar. Perry also played the Birembau, an African percussion instrument, and he and the boys really wowed the small crowd that hot Sunday afternoon, cool-jazzing-up Perry's poems about things that matter: music, heroes, love, and truth. Most striking about Perry's poetry is its intelligence, whether the poem is a social or political commentary, documentary, language experiment, or humorous conceit. Like his hero-poet, Etheridge Knight, Perry writes and speaks “with words that light the dark.” He and The Naked Poets finished their set with a hauntingly beautiful spoken-word tribute to recently deceased Philly poet Will Perkins. Perry's work is available on his CD entitled Mercury Calling (Melody Vision, 2000), and he is also author of the textbook Poetry across the Curriculum (Allyn and Bacon, 1997).
Perry's set alone was a complete show, so Miguel Algarìn's shorter set was like getting a corner-piece of cake with a red piped-icing flower. Co-founder of the Nuyorican Poets Café and associate professor of English at Rutgers University, Algarìn dedicated his reading to his mother, who died earlier this spring. Most impressive about his set was the way he and The Naked Poets improvised together. Algarìn had to give only a couple words of instruction, and the three musicians worked perfectly in sync to back up the poetry. On stage, Algarìn (accent on "i") with his wide smile and mirthful eyes, has the calming presence of a laughing Buddha. His most recent book of poetry is Love is Hard Work, Memorias de Loisaida.
Upcoming Poetry Events at the Painted Bride Art Center
- Friday, May 26, 8:00 pm: A Tribute to Sonia Sanchez, a free event organized by journalist James Spady and Larry Robin, will feature local writers and artists paying homage to poet, teacher, and activist Sonia Sanchez as she retires from her teaching position at Temple University. This evening of music, dance, words, poetry and drama will be an historic event, and attendees are invited to bring a poem or message for Sonia that will be collected in a book to be presented to her. A reception will close the program.
Robert Bly Doubles the Madness and Then Some
“Because the world is mad, the only way through it is to learn the arts and double the madness. Are you listening?” Robert Bly bids and beseeches us in one of his wise ghazals, an Islamic form that the sage-poet says he's been experimenting with lately. He read this particular ghazal at two free public events held during his week-long residency hosted by American Poetry Review (APR), which also included a day at Central High School and a workshop for ten local poets. The final stanza of Bly's ghazal is his resolution to “The Dangers of Our Childish Society,” the theme of the insightful lecture he delivered on Tuesday, May 9, at the Philadelphia Ethical Society. Bly identified three transmitters of what he calls “this disease in the United States preventing kids from becoming adults.” First, we have shifted in the last half-century from a “culture of difficulty” to a “culture of entertainment” that values celebrity over goodness. Enter Jerry Seinfeld, a modern-day minister who, like most sitcom characters, doesn't appear to engage in serious art, literature, or music. Likewise, we're losing what linguists term an “elaborate code” in favor of lazy colloquialisms used when speaking with or about anyone, from our buddy to our grandmother to Jesus Christ. And “we're exporting this childishness all over the world.” Bly cited a writer from the 1950s who foresaw our dismantling of the 4000-year-old “Islamic Hebraic Indo-European impulse-control system.” The relatedness and mutual dependence that held together neighborhoods and small towns has been replaced by the illusion of connection to millions of people via the idiot boxes in every room of our suburban-sprawled homes. (Predictably, an audience member advocated the advancement of email and the Internet for connecting folks around the globe.) Bly later instructed us: “Always make sure your children are in the room when you shoot the televison with a .22. They'll remember the smoke coming from it.”
Our drive to rid the culture of hierarchical distinctions during the 1960s and '70s precipitated what Bly calls “the disappearance or dismantling of the vertical line,” the second virus plaguing our childish society. Fathers, our familiar patriarchs, lost their authority, and those same unstoppable forces are moving toward our mothers, Bly said. Earlier in the lecture, he described children's impulse-control systems as the interiorization of their mothers' and fathers' “no's.” Who will parent our children if parental authority is being destroyed? Childish adults raising kids beget adultlike children who will later look to their spouses for parenting: Don't hold me accountable; just cherish me. We have lost the longing, the ability, to look upward or downward: upward toward angels, spirits, our elders, and downward toward the unborn generations who must live with our culture's shortsighted, self-serving decisions. The vertical line has been leveled by the horizontal-grave line of addictions and mental illness, a societal condition preserved by what Bly identifies as the third hurdle to bona fide adulthood: the possible overwhelming of the neocortex by our two lower brains. Recent brain work bears out the findings of research conducted in the 1940s that suggest that our reptile and mammal brains may be taking over the new brain, which had evolved to control the two lower brains. Violence on television activates the two lower brains, wired -- in simple terms -- for survival and sex, while the marketplace, largely via TV ads, encourages us to follow our impulses, to buy and charge instant gratification. Bly quoted Emily Dickinson to reinforce his message that genuine rapture comes when we leave the lower brains and navigate the vertical line: “Exultation is the going of the landheld soul to sea.” Bly's prognosis for the future is bleak: all forms of community will disappear, so the only thing the individual can do is “learn the arts and double the madness.”
Bly returned to the Ethical Society the following Friday, May 12, to read his soulful poetry. I have to admit that on the page, Bly's work had not previously engaged me, perhaps because its metaphors and references are too cerebral, too high up the vertical line for my still-actualizing self. In person, however, Bly and his well-earned loft of wisdom are inviting, accessible, homey. During Tuesday's lecture he wore only socks on his feet; during Friday's reading, sneakers. He regularly asked both audiences, “Should I continue?” “Can you hear me? Do you get what I'm saying?” His questions were neither rhetorical nor patronizing; they were earnest, respectful. He ensured that we understood his words by stopping mid-poem to explain certain phrasings, and by rereading each poem in its entirety, which greatly enhanced my appreciation for him and his work. He also solicited and graciously received our feedback on an unfinished poem. I left both events with the profound sense that Robert Bly is a true prophet, who selflessly wants people to take away from the time they spend with him something of personal, spiritual value.
MIDWEST
Upcoming Detroit Literary Events
Here are selected listings of upcoming events from the Detroit area, courtesy Liberty R.O. Daniels:
- Friday, May 26: 736 Java, Inc. will be the scene of the Poetically Speaking Open-Mic happenings hosted by Detroit Writer's Guild youth member Talitha Johnson. Teens from 14 to college age are expected to sport their brand of poetics from 7-9 pm. for a nominal fee of $2. Contact Talitha at teeboome@yahoo.com or (313) 931-0678.
- Saturday, May 27: Margo LaGattuta will facilitate a Creative Non-fiction Workshop at the Birmingham YMCA from 12-2 pm. Contact Margo at lagapvp@aol.com for more details.
- Tuesday, May 30: The Open Mic poetry series continues at the IO Café at 1529 Broadway Avenue at 9 pm.
Chicago News: The Green Mill & Café Gourmand
Well, the Green Mill is set to pick its last slam team member on June 18, the end result of a year-long tournament going on at the Uptown venue. Meanwhile, those who go this coming Sunday can expect to see this feature (cut and pasted from the press release and, no, I don't know what it means either): “Back after several years of traveling through The Medieval Forests of the Twentieth Century. . . It's The Romantic Swordsmen of Verse. . . Dirk Perfect and Guido Crescendo. . . Gentlemen Extraordinaire! w/ Flippo on the piano.” The Uptown Poetry Slam at the Green Mill is on Sundays at the corner of Lawrence and Broadway, starting at 7 pm. Cover is $5, and the sign-up list fills quickly!
Café Gourmand in the south Loop is still chugging along. Friday, June 2 sees the feature of Caribbean poet Shara McCallum, author of The Water Between Us, in a very special performance coinciding with the annual Printers Row Book Fair. It's at 7 pm CPT (Chicago Poets Time, according to host Nina Corwin), at 728 S Dearborn. Nina reminds us to “also check us out at the Poetry Tent on Sunday, June 4” at the Printers Row fair.
Printers Row Book Fair
Speaking of special events, once again the Printers Row Book Fair is coincidentally falling on the same exact weekend as the American Booksellers Association's annual national convention, BookExpo 2000. Back in Chicago after a one-year hiatus in Los Angeles, BookExpo brings in the nation's almost-entire underground literary community to one drunken, insane weekend. The last time I crashed the BookExpo, I ended up finding myself drunk with Penn & Teller at a punk rock club on the West side. (Don't ask.) The year before that, I ended up in the basement of the Flat Iron building in Wicker Park, flirting with Ben Is Dead creator Darby Romeo and making a complete ass of myself. (Again, you don't want to know.) This year promises to be just as interesting and random, in that our poetry buddy Shappy and the Chicago alt.lit store Quimby's are throwing a massive party for virtually every small press in attendance at this year's Expo. I will make sure to give our loyal Museletter audience the ugly truth next week.
--Jason Pettus
www.geocities.com/jpettus.geo
READER-SUBMITTED POETRY NEWS BRIEFS
From Steve Sanders:
Hi! I'm the faculty advisor of the first literary magazine released by Levelland High School of Levelland, TX: Sub Rosa. It is a collection of poems and short stories (mainly poems) by the students of L.H.S. It was edited, designed and assembled by those same students after school hours (about 160 total hours). This mag is going to be released every semester. If anyone would like a copy (they're free), just send a request to my email address and I'll give you instructions on how to obtain one.
From Elaine Rexdale:
Rexdale Publishing Company of Hackensack, NJ is sponsoring The New Millennium Poetry Book Competition. Deadline for submission of complete poetry manuscripts from 48-120 pages is November 30, 2000. The winner will receive $500 cash, publication of his/her poetry book, 50 copies of same book, and presentation of book on the publisher's Web site. Details of this competition may be found at the Web site (above), or write P.O. Box 563 Hackensack, NJ 07602 or email RexdalePublishCo@cs.com.
From Thomas:
Winter Park, Florida Events
Poet's Roundtable, 7 pm, every other Tuesday at Borders Books & Music, 600 N. Orlando Avenue, Winter Park, FL 32789, (407) 647-3300
