Poets Speak Loud!, March 26

Back on my home turf to one of the most "spirited" open mics in the area, perhaps because our host, Mary Panza, is usually spirited herself. With our featured poet, Leslie Michelle, herself, waiting in the wings, Mary began the open mic.

Leslie Gerber (proof that that first name is not gender-specific) read a poem by Tara McCarthy "The Considerate Boyfriend," then his own about "Meeting the Famous in Manhattan." Being the season that it is, I just had to read my favorite Spring-time poem, by e.e. cummings "In Just Spring --" then a new piece inspired by the 100th birthday of the Oreo cookie, "Ode to the Oreo." Jay Wenk read his meditation on history, the grim "On the 100th Anniversary of the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire, March 25, 2011." Cheryl A. Rice read from her chapbook, Coast to Coast, the poem "You Let Me" (a kiss in the parking lot of the old Lark Tavern), then a recent poem on the death of her partner Michael's father, "Irises." Ed Rinaldi has been writing a poem a day for 2012 & read a couple, "Waiting for My Bones to Dry" & "A Child Never Asks to be Born," & you can read them at his Blog.

Leslie Michelle is a regular at UGT & at the Nitty Gritty Slam, often serving as a judge. Tonight we got to hear her stretch out a bit from the usual 1 or 2 poems we usually hear from her. She began with a poem written after her mother's illness, when she was out on her own, "Woman," then what she said was one of her favorite poems (from a time when she was homeless), "Why Can't You?" ("… live with it"), & a poem for her ex-husband, "When Blue is Love Jonesing." A poem written for a UGT Power of Praise event described a spiritual journey, pondering the nature (& the name) of the deity. She ended with a relationship poem titled "Foolish" in which the guy takes & takes but the woman gets her life back. We like happy endings.

Speaking of relationship poems, Carolee Sherwood began with one that both described a relationship as a runaway train, & was about writing the poem, "Don't Try This at Home We Are Trained Professionals on a Closed Course," then "How the Body Decomposes, a Love Poem." The youngest poet here tonight was Lexi with a love poem in rhyme, but filled with cuts & pain. Shannon Shoemaker's new piece also had cutting, & "the hollow shadow of a ghost." Kevin Peterson's poem "Clancy's" was a sketch of a woman in a dive bar in Saratoga; "Train Ride" was about his grandparents, in 2 parts, one for each set. Avery's first piece was in pop/rap rhymes, "Your Words Ripped Through Me Like Tumbling Bullets through Ripped Flesh" (another relationship poem, oh well), then the long, fussy shopping list for which he took much heat later on, "Someday Something Better" (maybe, if he's not too fussy we all agreed). Elizabeth Gordon (Elizag on the Slam stage) followed Avery's example with another list poem, this like a bureaucratic form with many checkboxes to answer the question "can we be lovers?"

Much to talk about tonight in the aftermath!

Poets Speak Loud! every last Monday of the month at McGeary's on Clinton Square in Albany, NY, 8PM -- but come early, the food is great, the service attractively attentive. Read about it on www.AlbanyPoets.com.

Split This Rock -- The People

Thurgood Marshall Center

One of the joys of this Split This Rock Festival that is beyond the price of admission is meeting, & re-meeting, & then talking with other participants, presenters or audience -- we are all poets here. I’ve been to all 3 of these Festivals & my circle of friends has grown & grown. Even if it is 2 years since I’ve seen them, when I meet a friend from a past Split This Rock Festival it is with great joy & warmth, a hug, a kiss, & a big smile. That's what I'm here for, as much for the conversation, the words.

This year there was yet another Albany poet hanging out at Split This Rock, Carolee Sherwood. Our tastes in panels & workshops were decidedly different so we didn't share much, but we enjoyed the readings in the evenings together, had lunch a couple of times at Busboys & Poets, & an occasional drink in the evening.  I hope she enjoyed it even half as much as I did.

Sarah Browning, Executive Director

Another poet with a looser connection to Albany was Yael Flusberg, a DC resident & member of the Board of Directors who combines writing & yoga in her work & has many (woman) friends in the Capital District through the IWWG.  I had attended Yael’s workshop on yoga & poetry at the first Split This Rock. Susan Brennan was back this year; she had read poetry in her younger days in Albany at the QE2, still has family in the area & read in Poets in the Park in 2008. Another Poets in the Park reader (in 2009) who I ran into & had dinner with, & with Carolee, was Lori Desrosier, the editor & publisher of Naugatuck River Review. And there was Kazim Ali who as an undergraduate student at the University at Albany (then called SUNY Albany) read in Don Levy’s poetry series at the Albany Art Gallery on Jefferson St.

Jill Brazel doing her job.

Sharing images with my favorite ripped-knees photographer, my Canon-comrade from Chicago, Jill Brazel, has been a tradition for these Festivals -- we take pictures of each other year after year (is there a clinical psychological term for that?).

Of course there are the fabulous & beautiful folks who worked/work so hard to bring this Festival together each year, & who I am so glad to see every-other year: Sarah Browning, Melissa Tuckey, Alicia Gregory, Bob LaVallee, Jaime Lee Jarvis, & others from the Board & Planning Committee (Thanks for another great Festival).

Rachel McKibbens, Melissa Tuckey, Susan Brennan

& the folks I have met here for the first time & who knows when (if ever) I will see again, George from Madison, WI & Sonja de Vries, who I shared dinner with here back in 2010, from Kentucky (& who brought her sister his year), & countless others whom I flirted with at the bar at Busboys & Poets, or met at a workshop or reading or just hanging out waiting for someone to sign a book.  I'll see you in 2014.

Then there were the famous poets where we share a connection: Sam Hamill with my friend Charlie Rossiter in Chicago, Patricia Smith whom I interviewed in Albany, NY at Poets in the Park, Douglas Kearney who was snowed out from a reading in Albany, Georgia Popoff who was an early supporter of 3 Guys from Albany, & the countless others we really want to sit down with over beer or coffee & just talk & talk.

Words come from people & what we do is connect to people & so the words connect & the people connect & that's why we do this. Right?

Check it out at www.splitthisrock.org.

Split This Rock, March 24, Evening Reading

Back in the auditorium of the Carlos Rosario International School for another fine reading. Before the reading I was chatting with Sarah Browning & having her sign my copy of her book, Whiskey in the Garden of Eden, when Sonia Sanchez came over to ask Sarah to sign her Split This Rock program. We talked briefly, I praised her Shamanistic performance here the night before, & she asked me to sign her program too. Unfortunately my program was in my bag a number of rows back so while Sonia Sanchez now has my autograph, I, sadly, do not have hers.

The MC for the reading was the effusive Reggie Cabico, who introduced the night's recording of June Jordan reading "Dear Somebody," like having her in the room, as perhaps indeed she was, especially in the hearts & work of all the poets has touched.

DC Youth Slam Team poet Asha Garder gave a charged performance of her piece on domestic violence, "Daddy Dearest." The young poets are out there.

Rachel McKibbens, who came up through the Slam poetry scene (as well evidenced in her work), read work from her book Pink Elephant (Cypher Books, 2009). Most of her poems were tales of violence, such as the 2 poems from what she called her "escape trilogy" from bad domestic situations at different stages in her life, finally making it on the 3rd try. Amidst the violence, her images were often humorous in a Surrealist way, as in "Tom Boy" about bringing a mermaid home, or the title poem of her book, "Pink Elephant" (her brother's costume one Halloween that became an image of comfort for her). She mentioned that today was her son's 10th birthday & read "Central Park Mother's Day," & a poem about his birth, "Finally the Author Gets Personal."

The power of Alice Walker's words come through quietly, even when she was half-hidden by her laptop that she was reading from. She deftly & seamlessly wove commentary, more often political, but personal too, together with the poems, from her work in progress The World Will Follow Joy, beginning with the funny, adoring "What Makes the Dalai Lama Lovable?" Then to a different type of musing, "If I Was President…" the first person she would call, to the "troublemakers." Similarly, her poem "The Joyful News of Your Arrest" is addressed to Prof. Cornel West. "The Foolishness of Captivity" is a letter of advice to a ruler on how to escape from what she called "the Devil's hands." "Despair is the Ground Bounced Back From" was dedicated to parents, others, who have felt the death of children. She ended with 2 more political pieces, a poem of praise "Occupying Mumia's Cell," & the political manifesto with a list of heroes, "Democratic Womanist." & somewhere from Alice's musings I picked up this quote, "Every revolution needs fresh poems…" A quiet voice of truth can be very powerful.

Split This Rock, Afternoon Reading, March 24

This reading at the Carlos Rosario International School, up 11th Street from U Street, included 4 poets from the Beloit Poetry Journal special edition for Split This Rock, José Padua, Khaled Mattawa, Minnie Bruce Pratt & Marilyn Nelson. The MC was Split This Rock Acting Assistant Director Bob LaValllee. The June Jordan clip they played tonight was her reading her bitterly ironic poem about chopping down the cherry tree, turning American mythology inside out.

This afternoon's Youth Poet from the DC Youth Slam Team was Alexis "Wordplay" Franklin with an in-your-face, hit-you-over-the-head slam piece "For Fatherless Colored Girls who have Considered Suicide…"

José Padua's poems were unsettling narratives relieved with humor enough to take the edge off (or put it on in another way). He began with "P. Funk Reshapes the Redneck Landscape of the Town I Live In," then on to a poem about talking to his wife's doctor as Nick Cave. The recent poem "An End of the World Cult of My Own" was followed by "7 & 7" about George Allen, both the politician & a boyhood schoolmate of the same name who beat his brother, an intricate meditation on anger & powerlessness. He ended with "Pizzacto Five" on learning English & his mother learning Japanese, cultural clashes & surviving in America's racism.

I had seen Khaled Mattawa earlier in the week at a panel here, now had a good chance to hear a bigger chunk of his poetry. He began with a poem of remembrances, "Summertime Cavatinas." Then on to poems from his latest book, Tocqueville (New Issues), "On the Difficulty of Documentation" (not as dry as the title sounds, images of woman carrying water), "Ecclesiastes" with the contrasting repetition of "the trick…" & "the rule…" & concluding with a reading of the complete "After 42 Years."

Minnie Bruce Pratt read a variety of poems from both her new book Inside the Money Machine & from the Beloit Poetry Journal 2012 Split This Rock Chapbook, including talking about drones ("The New Commuter War"), police brutality ("Breakfast Again"), fracking ("Burning Water"), as well as the more intimate parts of life in "Waking to Work" & "The Difference between Inside and Outside." And work, again, in "Making Another Phone Call," "A Temporary Job," & "Turning the Switch Off."

Marilyn Nelson ended the afternoon reading with one piece in the form "rondeau redoublé" (she likes working in forms), "Millie Christine" about conjoined slave twins --  a metaphor for the one/divided states, & on the freak-show of exploitation & racism. A good use of a form to carry the story along.


Afterwards I wandered off in the rain with poets Carolee Sherwood & Lori Desrosier (lucky me) to a cute little neighborhood cafe we found at 11th & Lamont, 11 Room, for dinner & the inevitable, ongoing, poet-conversation, combining high intellectual analysis, literary criticism & gossip.  It was exquisite.

Split This Rock, March 24 -- Panel

Perhaps one of the most moving, or at least emotionally complex, panels I attended was "White Poets Writing About Race: An Invitation to Conversation" held at the DC Center for LGBT on U St. The place was packed & folks kept trying to get in.

Ailish Hopper, Jake Adam York, Martha Collins, Susan Tichy, Tess  Taylor

The panel was chaired by Martha Collins, whose books White Papers (Pittsburgh, 2012) & Blue Front (Graywolf, 2006) explored the issues of race from a white woman's perspective. Also on the panel were Ailish Hopper, Tess Taylor, Susan Tichy & Jake Adam York. Martha said that the topic would be explored from not "why," but "how" with a more roundtable approach rather than long presentations from the panelists. So there was a lively, wide-ranging discussion that sometimes veered off more into group therapy.  Apparently this same panel had been presented at the recent AWP conference in Chicago.

Susan Tichy described "the personal as an instrument," that there is no "right way" to talk about family, race, etc., & there is no right way to be silent about it either. Another point made in the discussion was that we, as writers, can't beat ourselves up when writing about any of these sensitive issues, that we can't get it perfect. I also particularly liked Jake's reading of his poem "City of Grace" about Jackson, Mississippi.

Interestingly enough I bought Sarah Browning's book of poems Whiskey in the Garden of Eden (The Word Works, 2007, 2011) while at the Festival. She has a number of fine poems in this collection on race issues from a white woman's perspective that could serve as models for other poets who want to write from their own history & want to confront the world around them today.

Split this Rock!, March 23

The first workshop of Friday for me was titled “Writing the Disaster,” held in the Langston Room of Busboys & Poet. It was moderated, & recorded for subsequent radio play by Marc Steiner of WEAA 88.3FM, Baltimore. The participants were Patricia Smith, whose 2008 book of poems Blood Dazzler was about the human & environmental aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, & Mark Nowak, whose book Coal Mountain Elementary (Coffee House Press, 2009) confronts the Sago & Sunjiawan mining disasters.

M. Nowak, M. Steiner, P. Smith

The back & forth discussion, with trenchant questions from the audience to expand the topic, soon centered on the contrasting methods of the 2 poets. Mark talked about gathering the actual stories of workers about the closing of Ford plants in the US & South Africa (see my earlier Blog) giving the workers a place to tell their own tales. Patricia, on the other hand, had no personal connection to New Orleans, but used, as she said, what she had learned as a poet to get close to the Katrina story, the poems as conversation. Ultimately it seemed that both are needed: the real stories from the workers themselves, & the practicing poet's skills to channel or transform these stories, to reach audiences that otherwise would not hear them.

Both poets stressed that it was important not to be boxed in by the type of writing, to lose the "attachment to genre" (as Mark put it, explaining that he does "labor history with line-breaks"), & as Patricia said, "we're all story tellers."

Patricia also shared some poems in her quietly intense performance style, one in the voice of an undertaker whose clients are increasingly young men killed by bullets, another, "Still Life with Toothpick."


The afternoon workshop I attended was titled "Poet's Forum: How Political Engagement Affects the Writing Process" & was held in a conference room in the Thurgood Marshall Center on 12th Street, NW. One might call it the Beloit Poetry Journal panel, as it gathered 3 poets, Douglas Kearney, Khaled Mattawa & Minnie Bruce Pratt from the BPJ's 2012 Split This Rock Chapbook & was co-chaired by editors John Rosenwald & Lee Sharkey. The poets were asked to describe their "leap from political engagement/insight to the poem on the page."

D. Kearney, K. Mattawa, M. B. Pratt, J. Rosenwald, L. Sharkey

Each poet read briefly & commented on their poems, beginning with Minnie Bruce Pratt reading "Turning the Switch Off" (from the Chapbook), & another about caring for her ill partner, "What Do I Do Next?"

Khaled Mattawa read an excerpt from his poem in the Chapbook, "After 42 Years" on the capture & death of Moammar Gadhafi. He described literature "as a space for contrariness & a space for conscience," also, poets as ones "capturing the echoes."

Douglas Kearney's poem in the Chapbook is in 5 parts, each dealing with separate aspects of the way "black babies" are perceived, focused on the recall of Costco's "Lil Monkey" doll. He read the sections titled "We don't operate in that kind of thinking," the dramatic section, "We have a really diverse, family operated company …" with it's "performative typography" (see my previous Blog on his reading) contemplating the question of Evil, & the first section, again bringing up the spirit of Trayvon Martin.

There's something implicitly counter to the recent AWP Conference (Academic Writers Project) here at the more plebeian Split This Rock, although the comparison sometimes became explicit, as it did at the first panel I attended when Philip Metres & Jennifer Karmin described an un-official human mic at the last day of the AWP Conference in Chicago. However, every once in a while I did hear what I would call an "AWP question," asking about such (non) things as "authenticity versus innovation," etc., though these moments were rare. If Split This Rock is anything it is diverse.

Following the afternoon sessions (most of) we headed over to the Supreme Court building behind the Capitol for Split This Rock's customary confrontation of the seat of power. At the first Split This Rock we demonstrated at the White House, the last time we were at the Capitol, now we were at the 3rd Chamber of government, the Judiciary. Our message was directly counter to the 2010 Supreme Court decision in the Citizens United case: we proclaimed "Money is not speech! Poetry is speech." And we gathered to create a Cento, a group poem composed of random lines of poetry of no more than 12 words recited person (real people, not corporations) by person. I spoke Walt Whitman's grand line from the end of "Song of Myself," "I sound my barbaric yawp over the roofs of the world." You could hear the hammer ring against the pillars of power.

Split this Rock!, March 22 -- Evening Reading

Executive Director of Split This Rock, Sarah Browning served as our MC for the first evening reading, held at the Carlos Rosario International School, a brisk walk up 11th Street from U. Street. The 2012 Split This Rock Festival is dedicated to the memory of poet, activist, teacher June Jordan. Sarah invoked June’s memory & that of Trayvon Martin, Sean Bell, Amadou Diallo, & the long list of other murdered black men & women throughout history, then played a recording of June reading one of her poems in the voice of Valentine Jones.

Each of these readings included a performance by a young poet from the DC Youth Slam Team. Tonight, Lauryn “Poetic Hyst” Nesbitt gave a stunning recitation of her piece beginning, “It’s taken me weeks to write a first line…” about disrespect of students in school. Watch out for these young poets, they are coming up fast.

The last few days I had been reading the poems of Kim Roberts in both the current issue of the Beloit Poetry Journal (a chapbook anthology of Split This Rock poets) & in her most recent collection Animal Magnetism (Pearl Editions, 2011), & tonight she read from both. She began with 4 of the medical museum poems from Animal Magnetism, “Blood Letting,” “The Apothecary Doll,” another about the skeletons of a giant & a dwarf at the Mutter Museum in Philadelphia, & “IUDs”. She finished with a poem from the Beloit Poetry Journal, “The International Fruit of Welcome” (pineapple, if you must know), & a new poem, a childhood memoir, “A Boy Named Schmudge.”

Douglas Kearney began by flopping himself onstage to demonstrate how James Byrd Jr. was dragged (face down, by his feet) behind a pick-up truck, then read his poem “Big Thicket Pastoral.” Two of his poems referenced modern musicians, the intense, repetitive “No Homo” from a phrase of Lil Wayne, while a poem on domestic violence, “Live Evil,” referenced Miles Davis. In between he performed “The Black Automaton #3” (from The Black Automaton, Fence Books, 2009, 2011) described as a work song. He ended with a dramatic (actually, they were all dramatic) piece on the Middle Passage in which he used, among other borrowings, lines from T.S. Eliot’s “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock.” Kearney presents his poems with shouting, whispering, stuttering repetitions, his voice rising & falling as needed, true performance poetry not constrained by a single style of performance as often seen on stage. His performance also helped me to understand his often puzzling layouts on the page. I had been puzzling over his poem in the Beloit Poetry Journal until I realized they should be “read” as musical scores, or scripts for performance.

Finally, how do I even begin to write about Sonia Sanchez reading? I didn’t audio or video record the reading (though the folks at Split This Rock did) & sometimes I was so enthralled I forgot to take notes. But there she was, “the conscience of poetry” as Sarah Browning described her, the Poet Laureate of Philadelphia, a giant hiding behind the lectern. She began expressing thanks for being “in this place called Washington DC” & with a commentary & a poem -- as throughout the edges were frequently blurred into one continuous stream of performance -- (“man is an alien in this world…”) reading for Trayvon Martin (as others have, & will, throughout the Festival) & another 17 year-old boy dead. “A Poem for Sterling Brown” was written after reading in The New York Times about a 3000 year-old mummy. A poem dedicated to the folks at Split This Rock on the themes of death, loss & words, wove in singing lines & scat-singing, lingo & sound words, like a voodoo ceremony in a Baptist Church. Then on to “Peace Poem for Maxine Green,” & a poem for her father & her brother, interrupting, or glossing, the stanzas with commentary. Her concluding performance started off recounting some of her conversations with June Jordan, as she came from behind the lectern, microphone in her hand, more scat & voodoo words, chanting, crouching, touching the stage, like a Shaman, ending with “JuneJuneJuneJune… JorJorJor… Done!”

Sonia Sanchez made the hammer ring tonight at Split This Rock.