I recently hosted a slam at the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis, part of a wonderful conference on “Art and Commitment.” Guillermo Gomez Pena and I performed together, with the dance visionary David White attempting to moderate -– let it be noted there was very little in the way of moderation in the performances, but White was brilliant at taming the word wrestlers with theoretic conundra. Want to try on some reverse anthropology? Head for New World Border (City Lights) or El Exterminator (Editorial Oceano), two of Pena el Loco’s! the Mexterminator’s! genius droppings.
Back to that slam, which was co-hosted by great spoken word artist e.g. bailey. Won by Maria Damon’s student Wanda Jones, with a fierce, multi-personaed performance from a shy-seeming poet. Maria herself did not read from the new E.n.t.r.a.n.c.e.d, which is another collaboration with Xexoxial Editions futurist mIEKAL aND -– c 2 read, “rubber eyes.” Mark Nowak read at the slam, too, from his terrific new Coffee House book, Shut Up Shut Down, a working class poem with a language poetry frame -– moving, bold, fateful. Following Nowak was the native sound and perf poet Cochise, recently migrated to Minneapolis –- check out his new CD The Kemosabe Therapy.
Thomas Sayers Ellis happened to be visiting, on the road for his new and extraordinary The Maverick Room (Graywolf). Ellis is a mesmerizing reader, and generously took the mike as the last poet in the slam. There’s just no describing Ellis –- he jazzes june, the pain thin as a paper cut, evanescent, ever-present, dirty, intellectual. What if James Baldwin did Miles, say? Well, forget that. Since his days with Dark Room Collective, Ellis has always been a poet to watch. Now he’s a poet to read, to listen to, to study. Among many others, the book’s last two poems, “Groovallegiance” and “All Their Stanzas Look Alike,” are harrowing, brilliant, and utterly owned by orality even as the text represents and poetry is served. BOOK OF THE YEAR, right here.
So, ya wanna know what a perf-poem might look like if it, say, came up and bitcha? You talking: the emily xyz songbook: poems for 2 voices by emily xyz (Rattapallax), which is a CD with a book attached. Yes, Ms. Emily’s first (and billed also as her “only,” as if she might forsake print, which, of course she has and does), is a pure score, demanding that you unhinge your jaw and your Other’s jaw and you two go at it. Need pointers? The CD is impeccable even if Em’s Other, Myers Bartlett, loses to multitracking. Bravura poetry in a bravura production, with speed-veined hard’n’tight drum’n’bass electronica by Virgil Moorefield. This is the BOOK (CD) OF THE YEAR!
