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.
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 of “SemiCento,” a poem of fifty lines, each written by a different poet, which was commissioned for the Buchmesse’s 50th anniversary. Written and directed by Bob Holman, the poem is in 28 different languages, a visually stunning text. 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.
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.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 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.
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.
~Bob Holman
