First drafts of poetry, as well as commentary on poems, poets and poetry-related randomonia.
Ack! I was really disappointed in my reading last night. Came off really flat, zero energy. Got thrown a little by the need to pick my last piece ahead of time for the light cues. I usually like to flow with what comes before me, finalizing what I'll read based on what's already come. Between that, wanting to read something relatively new, and squeezing it all into 7 minutes, I felt like some stereotypical academic that's never read out loud before. :-( The show itself was cool, a diverse lineup with poets, dancers, theatre excerpts and a singer. Got to…
Last night was a lot of fun. A bit too much, maybe, as my hungover ass stayed home today! Shappy beat me 3-2 in the head-to-head. I won the Star Wars round (!) and the imitation round, he took the other three. Every round was split 3-2 except for the imitation where I won all 5 judges over! Quacky was probably the most fun I've ever had on stage. I need to write funny stuff! The Anything Goes round went really well (despite losing to Shappy's musical lambasting of the Matrix Reloaded) as Sabrina's edits made the piece flow nicely.…
ser·en·dip·i·ty the faculty or phenomenon of finding valuable or agreeable things not sought for. Omar is a bad man. Bad. Appealing to the geek in me, he dropped the idea of a fan fiction-type project in my head - writing our own versions of comic books online - and it's like the time I was introduced to Pokemon! We hit St. Mark's Comics Friday night to refresh my memory as I haven't actively bought comics since the late 80's and I realized my taste in comics was pretty similar to my taste in other things: the underdogs, the unrespected, the…
Last week we went to check out an apartment in a friend's building but there were only studios available, or at least so they said. Disappointed, we headed over to pick up the kids and on the way, saw a for rent sign in the window of a building on the Grand Councourse, half a block from the train station. Barely in the mood, we called for the hell of it and somebody answered. Five minutes later, we were on the fourth floor, checking out a corner 2BR with lots of closets, hardwood floors and a kitchen straight out of…
Monday, Monday... Have some stuff from the weekend to write about but I'll hold off as whoever's reading this today is likely only here for one thing: my take on tonight's Finals. First, how's it going to work? It's a tricky balance of testing the poets' stamina while ensuring an entertaining show for the audience. Five rounds of poetry for a total of 36 poems! That's rough! To make the team, you need a total of six strong poems, five for tonight plus the one from semi-finals that cannot be repeated. This is mainly to avoid the one-to-three-poem wonders that…
So last night was the rather inauspicious relaunch of louderJAM. Light turnout, low energy and some of the most random MFs on the open mic. WTF?!?! The Impossible Home excerpt was interesting if a little sloppy in its adaptation to a different space. Reminded me somewhat of the erotica reading a few years back at Spy, though not as polished. Curious what the whole production looked like. All in all, it bodes well for future collaborative projects. (Side note: Why is Sabrina so ridiculously talented? Beyond the poetry, she sings, dances and speaks Spanish like it was her native tongue!…
Many say it isn't. I say, it depends. One of the arguments against it that I hear the most is that it's unfair to pit a freestyle against a poem that's been crafted over time, edited and revised, etc. If you picked up some slam bias from the "unfair," you nailed the issue. Freestyle is impressive to an audience, generally scores high and, therefore, e=mc2 and freestyle is not poetry! There's also the question of how much of the freestyle is actually improvised, with the inference that the prefacing of a piece that may incorporate pre-existing work as a freestyle…
