It’s felt like an unusually long week and I’m tired as hell. Might have something to do with letting myself get dragged back onto the poetry_slam listserve yet again! Grrrrr…
Went to Urbana last night for Cristin’s surprise tribute and send-off to Australia for her six-week trip. Hadn’t been there in a while and it turned out to be a lot of fun. I lost count of how many of us read but we took over the open mic and each chose a poem of Cristin’s to share – except for Orion who did his usual whacked-out Orion thing. I read Mother, my all-time favorite of Cristin’s. Cristin was alternately blushing, laughing her ass off and hanging her head in shame as we covered everything from Hard Bargain to Funny Poetry Isn’t Poetry? George McKibbens is a trip and Regie Cabico…well, Regie is Regie!
I was conflicted earlier in the day when I found out there was a Neruda tribute happening at the same time in midtown at the CUNY-Graduate Center for only $5! I kept flip-flopping on whether I’d ditch Urbana (especially since I had no interest in the features or the slam) to catch it. I stuck with Cristin in the end and was glad I did as I had a good time and bumped into Ed (who had the same Neruda conflict) and Eric. Eric and I bailed when the open mic ended and wandered over to the dive bar on 7th Street where I’d hung out with Phil West a couple of weeks ago. We killed off two pitchers of Magic Hat #9, plus a couple of mugs, and talked shit like we hadn’t in a long time. It was particularly refreshing that the majority of our conversation had nothing to do with poetry or the scene in general.
Earlier this week, on Tuesday, Acentos had one of their best shows yet, both in terms of turnout (yay, Sarah Lawrence!) and content. Jorge Monterosa was quite impressive, delivering 16 tight, well-crafted poems – 15 of them on page – that had the audience in sheer rapture. The kid was good, plain and simple. After the show, the Acentos Cabal got together to talk and make some plans that I think are going to make this next year extremely exciting. I feel like I did back in the early days of a little bit louder, when it was all about developing and community and sincerity and making a difference. I like that feeling.
Going to catch Taylor’s Teacher, Teacher performance tomorrow which will make this one of the fulllest weeks of poetry I’ve had in a long time. Throw in my trip to Oneonta from last week and I’m beat!
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