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…
Nothing representing Latinos
Tonight is Acentos and the cluttered attic that is my brain has been toying with an idea that Rich Villar mentioned last month, a couple of weeks after their show with Louis Reyes Rivera.
When I heard they had a disappointing turnout for it – including my stupid hungover ass among the missing! – I was extremely surprised. Not even the scenesters made the short hike to the Bronx for what was, by all accounts, an amazing experience. At the following Acentos, Rich and I talked about it and some interesting ideas he was considering.
In a seemingly unrelated moment, while preparing for the Oneonta show last week, I was putting together a list of poetry resources for the audience and was dismayed to realize that I had nothing representing Latinos! Spent a while on Google looking for an equivalent to the Asian American Writer’s Workshop or Cave Canem and came up empty.
Nada!
All of this got me thinking about the significant gap that exists between the generation of poets that founded the Nuyorican Poets Café back in the ’70s and my own generation of relatively unpolished but well-intentioned newcomers, echoing the concerns Rich had raised a few weeks earlier.
Running makes me feel good
The good thing about exercising is that once you get over the initial hump of reluctance and pain, it actually becomes a lot of fun. I've always been pretty lucky that, no matter how badly I get out of shape, I usually bounce back pretty quickly once I get serious. In just a month of the gym, I'm already starting to see, and feel, a difference. That said, I didn't make it to the gym at all last week and was a little bummed about it as I was getting into a groove. Today, I used some of the Cybex…
Remember the Open Room?
Been sent some interesting names for the show so far, with early favorites Performance Anxiety, Breaking Form and Word of Mouth. Send more.
Haven’t heard back from Jackie Sheeler yet about the length of tomorrow’s feature so I’m getting a little antsy about my set. There’s a big difference between 20, 30 and 45-minute sets. I don’t like 20-minute sets as I never feel like I get in a good rhythm and always have to leave out a couple of my favorite poems. 30-minutes is solid, enough time to present a range of work without feeling rushed. 45-minutes can be daunting as you have to really nail your flow to keep the audience engaged but it’s also a fun challenge. The longer the set, the better feel for a poet’s style and range you get. Three-poem slam wonders generally flounder past 20 minutes as the bombast gets old and the lack of depth becomes more and more apparent.
I’ve been reading through a lot of my old stuff recently and was surprised by how long it’s been since I’ve read some of them out loud. Read Celluloid Childhood at Acentos on Tuesday and, despite the obvious rust, remembered that it was one of my favorite pieces at one point. The combination of pushing for the new in slam with allowing my own output to take a back seat for so many years has left me in the weird position of having to reconnect with almost all of my work as if it were brand new. Hopefully tomorrow is at least a 30-minute set so I can do a nice mix of the old and new. Well, newish! 😉
What’s in a name?
It's raining again here in NYC. Serious, thunder and lightning, shake the building kind of rain. Got my ass soaked heading up to the Bowery earlier. Everything but my crotch and my hair got wet! Two hours later and I'm still not completely dry. Anyway, I have a favor to ask all you random people that read this thing. I'm working on a new show idea, a monthly format with poets & musicians plus a lot of audience interaction. Think a combination of Pardon the Interruption, Politically Incorrect, Who's Line Is It Anyway and Arsenio Hall. Something like that. It…
“Did u really kill biggie smalls?”
Now THIS is weird. For me, at least, who's more used to technical emails ("how do I get booked at...," "how do I get published...," etc.) than personal ones. Today, I got two separate emails asking about my poem, Confessions of a Serial Killer. It's an old poem that I wrote back in 1997 and have probably read publicly less than 10 times, and only once in the past four years, at Acentos a couple of weeks ago. Both emails asked why I wrote it, the first actually asking (jokingly, I hope), "did u really kill biggie smalls?" My answer…
The Freshmen
I love this song, although, reading the lyrics, I realized I had no clue what the hell it's about! Abortion, maybe? Definitely a suicide in there. THE VERVE PIPE The Freshmen When I was young I knew everything She a punk who rarely ever took advice Now I'm guilt stricken, sobbing with my head on the floor Stop a baby's breath and a shoe full of rice I can't be held responsible 'Cause she was touching her face I won't be held responsible She fell in love in the first place For the life of me I cannot remember What…