[here is a relatively new poem (i.e. in drafts for a few years) forthcoming in an NJ anthology. wrote this when i lived in CO.
most of the line-spacing has disappeared here, but you can get the rough idea anyway here....]
Nostalgia for Newark
off the plane it hits you stark as the plains:
you’ve landed in the new-
ark of one of every kind of human on earth
even at 5 a.m. after flying across the West
the Afro-Carrib, Afro-Am, Latina/Latino, Indian, Asian
Black-Jewish-Italian Token Mutt
now i have to sober up
harsh coffee under the influence of
great lakes of lights of east coast cities
torching horizon to horizon
in predawn-dusk
touch down i skid out of a dream
the 6 a.m. terminal’s hordes
clog the rail link station
a post-industrial-battleship-gray hole
with a London-in-the-blitz feel
of brown grays, light grays and the darkened
yellow warning strip that grips your soles
with vulcanized
crisscross dots rubbed past faded
dazed still from 0.5 hrs sleep on the shuttle to DEN
3+ hours midair
(2+ hours awaiting the train to PHL)
the 777-sized diner in Newark International
lavish smells eggs sausage grease coffee urns treats
and what have I learned from five years in the West
aside from what cowboys are
is that I have missed the eastern seaboard
in entirety
even its crossing x-shaped I-bars under great compressor tubes
its scuffed aluminum doors
its brushed metal graffitoed waiting rooms
its narrow escalators/descalators of grime
its strings of jets hovering above the NJT taking turns to land
its landing jets racing cars along the NJT
its congregated seagulls on corrugated steel
rooftops slanted refracting early morning sun
its ocean-heavy winds
this deciduous forest down the line to Metro Park
I must be an acrobat to talk like this and act like that
bracing gales of—
back in the world so briefly
far from high deserts of TARGET microdunes
WALMART tumbleweeds CONAGRA-pesticidal air
the treeless brown of grasslands and cows
if the word for world was forest once
I am back in the wold
so many shades of bark, brush and dark umber
branches scritch their words into sky
these prolific red/orange ochre leaves of autumn
papery-as-dust confetti-ing siding rails
the iced over lakes black glass block buildings
the sudden Raritan River running by Rutgers, New Brunswick
its bright orange brick faces aglow in sun
its white clock tower amid tall trees
i’m halfway home—
Sunday, January 11, 2009
Monday, December 29, 2008
a re-post from 2005: my first acquaintance with Li-Young Lee
[Written on 03/13/2005 about 03/01-02/2005 in Greeley, Colorado]
Li-Young Lee visited UNC eleven or twelve days ago, i.e. 03/01/05, and I was very lucky to be the guy who got to pick him up at the airport and drive him around and introduce him to the audience. He was a lot more casual and friendly and down to earth than I expected. In fact, I liked him right away. I don't know why I thought he might be anything else, maybe just because of his fame and how other famous poets are sometimes. It took me a little while to find him at baggage claim though I got there early and went looking for him whenever trainloads of passengers flowed up and out of the escalators from the underground rail. He was in a long coat and had on sneakers and just one small bag. He was easy to recognize; we spotted each other, and after I introduced myself he called home to say he had a ride.
(I had wanted to borrow a cell phone so that he could call me from baggage claim, which is how I picked up Sharon Olds the previous year, but this year no one in the dept. had one they could spare.)
Of course, I had heard him read in Chicago at AWP last year (when he shared a reading with, among others, Mark Strand), and I was happy to help him get to the Greeley Guest House. As we started off, he didn't really talk about himself at all. That was kind of a nice surprise. Instead, he was very curious about me. He asked a lot of questions. When he learned I was a poet, he said, "You're a rare bird," meaning, an Asian-American in poetry. He asked me how my parents felt about it. "They thought it was a catastrophe," I said. I mentioned how even just a few years ago my mother had tried to get me to go to law school depite fifteen years in teaching. "My mom wanted me to get a real job."
We had to take an airport shuttle to the parking lot to my car. During the long drive from Denver International Airport, we talked about a lot of things. His parents hadn't been thrilled with his career either, it turned out.
"Wow," I was impressed by how unimpressed Asian parents can be about artistic achievements.
We also talked about poetry recordings and some things that are happening with poetry audio and studio work. He was working with some studio, and he was surprised to learn how expensive it could be. Another thing we talked about was Sharon Olds. He had seen her the previous week at a party, and we talked about her a little. I explained how she had been my advisor and what a great teacher she had been for me. It turned out that we both had experience with meditation, and he had even helped to start a school for it. We also talked about art; it turned out that he had a strong interest in visual arts also. And his brother Li-Lin Lee had work in the Art Institute of Chicago. I said how I thought that was the greatest museum I had ever visited, and I've seen some pretty great ones.
I mentioned how many of my students really loved his work, and he was interested in knowing about them and how much experience they had had with poetry. He was curious about teaching and what it was like at UNC. I said the students were really nice and intelligent, but there was very little diversity.
Anyway, near the end of the long drive I stopped so he could grab some coffee (he drank twelve cups a day, he said), and I gave him my latest book and said I hoped he'd like it, and in a little while he was at the Guest House. Later that afternoon, I picked him up to take him to dinner and the reading in the evening.
Li-Young was curious about who was coming to dinner. I wasn't sure about who might be coming, so I was surprised to see the provost of the university and his wife, the Dean David Caldwell, and the other poets on the faculty, Lisa Zimmerman, and my friend Bob King. Li-Young was glad, I think, to be able to talk to the provost and his wife in Chinese, and he seemed pretty happy with the steaks at Potato Brumbaughs. I asked him towards the end if he needed a little time to relax by himself before the reading, and he said he really didn't. But when we got there with just a little time remaining he thought that maybe it would have been better after all if he had had a few minutes to himself.
A lot of my friends and students were there, and that made me feel good. Many of them had come 60 miles or so from Boulder, and it was wonderful to see them there. The crowd was very big but not as huge as people had anticipated, so there were many empty seats in the great hall. I did the intro very briefly, just saying welcome and thanks to the provost and the generous sponsor Mr. Rosenberry, a quick plug for the UNC litmag, and then the brief intro for Li-Young. I was nervous in a way that made me uncomfortable and unhappy (actually), and this is a new phenomenon for me.
As soon as the reading started, I was really intrigued by the style and substance of the delivery of the poetry. He really had the audience completely with him right away, and he really took some interesting chances out there, saying new poems and rough drafts, and even sharing things that had originated in improvisational settings. It was great to be lifted into the realm of poetry for a while, especially when it was coming from someone who was able to understand some things about me that may not be obvious to a lot of other people.
After the reading, he was signing books and talking a little to many, many of the people in the very long line. Meanwhile, some of my female students were telling me how they were so infatuated with Li-Young and how gorgeous he was etc. They were asking me how old he was as though they were considering running away with him etc. I thought this was kind of amusing. Then Li-Young was doing an interview with a student from the UNC newspaper, and finally I got to take him back to the Guest House.
He seemed a little tired, so I went there the quickest way. We talked a little along the way. Somehow it came up that when we both started writing, there were no Asian-American poets in the Norton Anthology, so it was a kind of a transformative moment for me when I realized I could write about things that had to do with my real inner life as an Asian American. Li-Young said it was like we were pioneers in this new literature.
The next morning, I got to take him to my morning class, and he was very relaxed. He had been thinking of a poem while going to sleep, and he had been working on this new poem early in the day. "That's exciting," I said. He smiled at that.
Some things he said that morning were really very profound. He talked about the poem being made of words but crafted out of silence just as architects work with material but what they shape is empty space. He talked about the poetry being embedded in silence, the silence being embedded in the psyche, the psyche being embedded in the person, and the person in the world, and the world in the cosmos. One of my students who was too shy to say her question aloud wrote on a little piece of paper: "What do you get from poetry?" Li-Young said it was a buzz, it was like drugs, it was exciting, it made him feel alive etc. That was a great answer. He was so totally at ease with everything; it was a real pleasure to watch him interact with people.
Then I returned him to the Guest House. It was sad to be leaving him there and returning to the regular grind, so to speak. He asked me if he would see me later before he flew back to Chicago. Sadly, I was not able to come back. He was so enlightening and so kind. He said that he loved my poems, and that I should let him know when I'm passing through Chicago. He knew the best place for won ton.
Li-Young Lee visited UNC eleven or twelve days ago, i.e. 03/01/05, and I was very lucky to be the guy who got to pick him up at the airport and drive him around and introduce him to the audience. He was a lot more casual and friendly and down to earth than I expected. In fact, I liked him right away. I don't know why I thought he might be anything else, maybe just because of his fame and how other famous poets are sometimes. It took me a little while to find him at baggage claim though I got there early and went looking for him whenever trainloads of passengers flowed up and out of the escalators from the underground rail. He was in a long coat and had on sneakers and just one small bag. He was easy to recognize; we spotted each other, and after I introduced myself he called home to say he had a ride.
(I had wanted to borrow a cell phone so that he could call me from baggage claim, which is how I picked up Sharon Olds the previous year, but this year no one in the dept. had one they could spare.)
Of course, I had heard him read in Chicago at AWP last year (when he shared a reading with, among others, Mark Strand), and I was happy to help him get to the Greeley Guest House. As we started off, he didn't really talk about himself at all. That was kind of a nice surprise. Instead, he was very curious about me. He asked a lot of questions. When he learned I was a poet, he said, "You're a rare bird," meaning, an Asian-American in poetry. He asked me how my parents felt about it. "They thought it was a catastrophe," I said. I mentioned how even just a few years ago my mother had tried to get me to go to law school depite fifteen years in teaching. "My mom wanted me to get a real job."
We had to take an airport shuttle to the parking lot to my car. During the long drive from Denver International Airport, we talked about a lot of things. His parents hadn't been thrilled with his career either, it turned out.
"Wow," I was impressed by how unimpressed Asian parents can be about artistic achievements.
We also talked about poetry recordings and some things that are happening with poetry audio and studio work. He was working with some studio, and he was surprised to learn how expensive it could be. Another thing we talked about was Sharon Olds. He had seen her the previous week at a party, and we talked about her a little. I explained how she had been my advisor and what a great teacher she had been for me. It turned out that we both had experience with meditation, and he had even helped to start a school for it. We also talked about art; it turned out that he had a strong interest in visual arts also. And his brother Li-Lin Lee had work in the Art Institute of Chicago. I said how I thought that was the greatest museum I had ever visited, and I've seen some pretty great ones.
I mentioned how many of my students really loved his work, and he was interested in knowing about them and how much experience they had had with poetry. He was curious about teaching and what it was like at UNC. I said the students were really nice and intelligent, but there was very little diversity.
Anyway, near the end of the long drive I stopped so he could grab some coffee (he drank twelve cups a day, he said), and I gave him my latest book and said I hoped he'd like it, and in a little while he was at the Guest House. Later that afternoon, I picked him up to take him to dinner and the reading in the evening.
Li-Young was curious about who was coming to dinner. I wasn't sure about who might be coming, so I was surprised to see the provost of the university and his wife, the Dean David Caldwell, and the other poets on the faculty, Lisa Zimmerman, and my friend Bob King. Li-Young was glad, I think, to be able to talk to the provost and his wife in Chinese, and he seemed pretty happy with the steaks at Potato Brumbaughs. I asked him towards the end if he needed a little time to relax by himself before the reading, and he said he really didn't. But when we got there with just a little time remaining he thought that maybe it would have been better after all if he had had a few minutes to himself.
A lot of my friends and students were there, and that made me feel good. Many of them had come 60 miles or so from Boulder, and it was wonderful to see them there. The crowd was very big but not as huge as people had anticipated, so there were many empty seats in the great hall. I did the intro very briefly, just saying welcome and thanks to the provost and the generous sponsor Mr. Rosenberry, a quick plug for the UNC litmag, and then the brief intro for Li-Young. I was nervous in a way that made me uncomfortable and unhappy (actually), and this is a new phenomenon for me.
As soon as the reading started, I was really intrigued by the style and substance of the delivery of the poetry. He really had the audience completely with him right away, and he really took some interesting chances out there, saying new poems and rough drafts, and even sharing things that had originated in improvisational settings. It was great to be lifted into the realm of poetry for a while, especially when it was coming from someone who was able to understand some things about me that may not be obvious to a lot of other people.
After the reading, he was signing books and talking a little to many, many of the people in the very long line. Meanwhile, some of my female students were telling me how they were so infatuated with Li-Young and how gorgeous he was etc. They were asking me how old he was as though they were considering running away with him etc. I thought this was kind of amusing. Then Li-Young was doing an interview with a student from the UNC newspaper, and finally I got to take him back to the Guest House.
He seemed a little tired, so I went there the quickest way. We talked a little along the way. Somehow it came up that when we both started writing, there were no Asian-American poets in the Norton Anthology, so it was a kind of a transformative moment for me when I realized I could write about things that had to do with my real inner life as an Asian American. Li-Young said it was like we were pioneers in this new literature.
The next morning, I got to take him to my morning class, and he was very relaxed. He had been thinking of a poem while going to sleep, and he had been working on this new poem early in the day. "That's exciting," I said. He smiled at that.
Some things he said that morning were really very profound. He talked about the poem being made of words but crafted out of silence just as architects work with material but what they shape is empty space. He talked about the poetry being embedded in silence, the silence being embedded in the psyche, the psyche being embedded in the person, and the person in the world, and the world in the cosmos. One of my students who was too shy to say her question aloud wrote on a little piece of paper: "What do you get from poetry?" Li-Young said it was a buzz, it was like drugs, it was exciting, it made him feel alive etc. That was a great answer. He was so totally at ease with everything; it was a real pleasure to watch him interact with people.
Then I returned him to the Guest House. It was sad to be leaving him there and returning to the regular grind, so to speak. He asked me if he would see me later before he flew back to Chicago. Sadly, I was not able to come back. He was so enlightening and so kind. He said that he loved my poems, and that I should let him know when I'm passing through Chicago. He knew the best place for won ton.
Sunday, December 28, 2008
excerpts of Li-Young Lee interview online
I was working at Muhlenberg last spring 2008 teaching a bunch of literature classes and ran into an old colleague who, it turned out, had interviewed Li-Young Lee on the WMUH radio station.
He asked if I was interested. I was very interested and listened to the interview. It was very enlightening, I thought.He talked about working with at-risk youth in Chicago, ensouling the world, writing as a yogic path, the ecstatic nature of the real self, art as a religion, Taoism, and much else.
You can find it at http://mmminc.org/
Or go straight to:
http://www.mmminc.org/mmm_online/index_2009.htm
The Interview with Li-Young Lee by Alec Marsh, which is forthcoming in entirety in MMM Vol. IX.
He asked if I was interested. I was very interested and listened to the interview. It was very enlightening, I thought.He talked about working with at-risk youth in Chicago, ensouling the world, writing as a yogic path, the ecstatic nature of the real self, art as a religion, Taoism, and much else.
You can find it at http://mmminc.org/
Or go straight to:
http://www.mmminc.org/mmm_online/index_2009.htm
The Interview with Li-Young Lee by Alec Marsh, which is forthcoming in entirety in MMM Vol. IX.
Tuesday, December 23, 2008
what’s always real, part 1
what’s always real
12/24/2008
1.
this is where the circle starts
inescapably in us
The U.S. Airforce bombers
overfly Taiwan’s neutral shores
in March 1944
—no threat’s there—
The drone of giant locusts
wide as the sky but invisible
over Tainan, the city of scholars.
Then whistling screams
higher, louder,
then bombs splashed
solid houses into waves
like circles in water,
but water on fire.
The city blazed into black spires,
shockwaves pounded the air
shaking even the narrow mountain road
where the little girl my mother was
watched over her father’s shoulder
as he ran with terrorized crowds
hoping the bombers would pass
but listening through the engine roars
for the very first blast—
it rained black fire,
broke her eardrums
as they fell together in the ditch
where he shielded all of her,
not hearing but feeling
what exploded near his bones.
Even dust caught fire—
trees were half-painted red and black
with blood, parts of people—
the sooty shells stank
of burning metal.
The quietest sounds were the screams:
“Are we dead!? Are we dead!? Are we dead!?”
Shouting, she couldn’t believe this was Life....
But her father knew, covered her eyes,
and shouted, “We’re alive!”
12/24/2008
1.
this is where the circle starts
inescapably in us
The U.S. Airforce bombers
overfly Taiwan’s neutral shores
in March 1944
—no threat’s there—
The drone of giant locusts
wide as the sky but invisible
over Tainan, the city of scholars.
Then whistling screams
higher, louder,
then bombs splashed
solid houses into waves
like circles in water,
but water on fire.
The city blazed into black spires,
shockwaves pounded the air
shaking even the narrow mountain road
where the little girl my mother was
watched over her father’s shoulder
as he ran with terrorized crowds
hoping the bombers would pass
but listening through the engine roars
for the very first blast—
it rained black fire,
broke her eardrums
as they fell together in the ditch
where he shielded all of her,
not hearing but feeling
what exploded near his bones.
Even dust caught fire—
trees were half-painted red and black
with blood, parts of people—
the sooty shells stank
of burning metal.
The quietest sounds were the screams:
“Are we dead!? Are we dead!? Are we dead!?”
Shouting, she couldn’t believe this was Life....
But her father knew, covered her eyes,
and shouted, “We’re alive!”
Sunday, December 14, 2008
Where did all the tragedy goers go?
How rare is tragedy is American pop culture? Why has tragedy disappeared almost entirely from the American drama? Why is American film mostly afraid of tragedy?
There are great exceptions, of course, but here are the top 10 grossing films of 2008, so far:
530,258,989 The Dark Knight (2008)
318,298,180 Iron Man (2008)
317,011,114 Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (2008)
227,946,274 Hancock (2008)
223,641,119 WALL·E (2008)
215,395,021 Kung Fu Panda (2008)
159,066,369 Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa (2008)
154,529,187 Horton Hears a Who! (2008)
152,637,269 Sex and the City (2008)
143,704,210 Mamma Mia! (2008)
Where did all the tragedy goers go to?
A small percentage of people still see tragedy regularly by attending the opera, where dead heroines and heroes are the norm. I could be wrong, but I think classical ballet also features a lot of dead heroines and heroes (Giselle, Petrushka). Even so, these audiences would be a small percentage of the total cultural audience.
It’s stranger than you think that tragedy is missing most of the time. A lot of the most important and even lucrative films and film sagas have been tragedies: The Godfather, The Deer Hunter, the entire Star Wars series (Darth Vader, the chosen one, dies after serving the evil emperor for most of his life and almost kills his whole family in the process). If you scan Time’s top hundred films of all time, I think you’ll see more tragedy is represented there than is usually the case. http://www.time.com/time/2005/100movies/the_complete_list.html
This is, I think, even more true if you look at the 100 greatest films list from http://filmsite.org/
http://www.filmsite.org/momentsindx.html#100greats
Of course, since I am a poet and writer, I want the answer to be that the people who craved tragedy and all the great things it does for humanity to have found it in great books of fiction and poetry and other genres. But is that happening? If you look at the 100 Best novels as selected by The Modern Library, it may be true. At least it looks more serious than the films, perhaps. (I’ve only read and seen a small percentage of both lists).
http://www.randomhouse.com/modernlibrary/100bestnovels.html
But tragedy as a genre came from poetry. So it would seem natural to look for the greatest poetry books and consider what they look like. I just looked for them with Google, and there is NO LIST of greatest poetry books that I could find except for a blog by Janaka Stucky, and it is for 2008, and you can find it at
http://notellpoetry.blogspot.com/2008/11/best-poetry-books-of-2008-janaka-stucky.html
Thanks, Janaka Stucky!
Well, the absence of a list of 100 greatest poetry books is a glaring indictment of the lousiness of the American educational system I have to say; it proves the folly of teaching greatest poems in anthologies! (But I’ve said before that the one-stop shopping method of teaching poetry is destroying poetry as a genre, killing diversity, enriching multinational corpocrats blah blah etc.)
Speaking, to fully disclose everything, not as a reader but as an editor/publisher of a small press, I have to look back at what I have published since 2006. Patrick Lawler’s Feeding the Fear of the Earth, Anne-Marie Cusac’s Silkie, and Susan Settlemyre Williams’ Ashes in Midair. I think there are tragic elements and actual tragedy in these books. Speaking as an author of a few books, I think there are some tragic elements in my work. Tragedy is, after all, ultimately uplifting and affirmative. It is about whatever wisdom we have been able to gain through life; it is about the things that make life have meaning.
There are great exceptions, of course, but here are the top 10 grossing films of 2008, so far:
530,258,989 The Dark Knight (2008)
318,298,180 Iron Man (2008)
317,011,114 Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (2008)
227,946,274 Hancock (2008)
223,641,119 WALL·E (2008)
215,395,021 Kung Fu Panda (2008)
159,066,369 Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa (2008)
154,529,187 Horton Hears a Who! (2008)
152,637,269 Sex and the City (2008)
143,704,210 Mamma Mia! (2008)
Where did all the tragedy goers go to?
A small percentage of people still see tragedy regularly by attending the opera, where dead heroines and heroes are the norm. I could be wrong, but I think classical ballet also features a lot of dead heroines and heroes (Giselle, Petrushka). Even so, these audiences would be a small percentage of the total cultural audience.
It’s stranger than you think that tragedy is missing most of the time. A lot of the most important and even lucrative films and film sagas have been tragedies: The Godfather, The Deer Hunter, the entire Star Wars series (Darth Vader, the chosen one, dies after serving the evil emperor for most of his life and almost kills his whole family in the process). If you scan Time’s top hundred films of all time, I think you’ll see more tragedy is represented there than is usually the case. http://www.time.com/time/2005/100movies/the_complete_list.html
This is, I think, even more true if you look at the 100 greatest films list from http://filmsite.org/
http://www.filmsite.org/momentsindx.html#100greats
Of course, since I am a poet and writer, I want the answer to be that the people who craved tragedy and all the great things it does for humanity to have found it in great books of fiction and poetry and other genres. But is that happening? If you look at the 100 Best novels as selected by The Modern Library, it may be true. At least it looks more serious than the films, perhaps. (I’ve only read and seen a small percentage of both lists).
http://www.randomhouse.com/modernlibrary/100bestnovels.html
But tragedy as a genre came from poetry. So it would seem natural to look for the greatest poetry books and consider what they look like. I just looked for them with Google, and there is NO LIST of greatest poetry books that I could find except for a blog by Janaka Stucky, and it is for 2008, and you can find it at
http://notellpoetry.blogspot.com/2008/11/best-poetry-books-of-2008-janaka-stucky.html
Thanks, Janaka Stucky!
Well, the absence of a list of 100 greatest poetry books is a glaring indictment of the lousiness of the American educational system I have to say; it proves the folly of teaching greatest poems in anthologies! (But I’ve said before that the one-stop shopping method of teaching poetry is destroying poetry as a genre, killing diversity, enriching multinational corpocrats blah blah etc.)
Speaking, to fully disclose everything, not as a reader but as an editor/publisher of a small press, I have to look back at what I have published since 2006. Patrick Lawler’s Feeding the Fear of the Earth, Anne-Marie Cusac’s Silkie, and Susan Settlemyre Williams’ Ashes in Midair. I think there are tragic elements and actual tragedy in these books. Speaking as an author of a few books, I think there are some tragic elements in my work. Tragedy is, after all, ultimately uplifting and affirmative. It is about whatever wisdom we have been able to gain through life; it is about the things that make life have meaning.
Sunday, November 16, 2008
When you feel free, it’s contagious
Today I gave a reading at Robin's Bookstore with the poets Brian Brodeur and CAConrad, and it was a really enjoyable event. And it was even better that it was pretty well attended. I think the audience came out for the other guys, mostly. One of my students from West Chester University came too, and she brought a friend. A long-ago past student and present friend did the intros.
As usual, I said a little about Many Mountains Moving and presented the latest issue and the MMM Press books to the audience and mentioned teacher discounts and review copies etc.
Not long ago, I heard Sakyong Mipham Rinpoche over a world-wide webcast talk saying that we all needed to embody the changes in the world that we would like to see.
I think about the most sane people that I have known in my life, and I know that this must be true. Sakyong Mipham has written about how even a small amount of sanity makes a big difference in the world.
I was a little under the weather, fighting a cold since I woke today. So I knew it might be tough to keep the energy up. But Brian’s and Conrad’s readings were very solid, entertaining, and inspiring. Brian's work was very beautiful and insightful. He had a deadpan sense of humor and irony about himself that was nice. Conrad’s reading was very funny, raw, angry and edgy. A lot of very deep, raucous and cathartic laughter came from the audience.
(Conrad’s humor reminded me of something sort of like an early Lenny Bruce but without the undertones of optimism. I still think of Lenny Bruce as one of the true and great comedians who could have moments with a power like poetry but with jokes that made you laugh so hard it hurt.)
So Conrad actually helped me pick myself up.
It was very surprising and wonderful to see an old acquaintance in the audience as well as to see many new faces out there. It was also great to see a few old and new friends out there, including a few who actually helped me to revise a poem that has just been an albatross around my neck for years.
I knew things would be okay when the audience started laughing right away during the first, lighter piece that I read, "The Poet's Mother's Deathbed Conversion." I read five more things, most of them pretty short and upbeat or elevating: "Sex Ed Blues," "peace valley elementary school during the vietnam war," "fluke exposure to another eastern meditation tradition in 8th Grade," "Kindling Hope, Incidentally, in South Philly," and "The Path." I could feel that connection subtle, electric, elastic dance with the audience throughout most of the experience. After it was over, many of the people remarked to me how it was a great reading and so on. I’d actually had a longer line-up of work in mind but switched to a shorter list as the reality of my struggle with a cold reared its head.
I have read with a lot of great readers, and I know that this is a good thing to do for many reasons. The best reason is that it forces you to bring your game up to par. If you read with people who are mediocre with the audience, then it’s easy to get lazy and go for the easy hit.
There is an even better reason to perform with people who are great; it is sort of an exercise in staying on center and in focus instead of feeling jealous and insecure or whatever else people can do to stop enjoying the experience. You have to—in a way—forget your ego and your sense of competition. Then you can feel free to just put out there whatever you have. Then the work can speak for itself, and then the audience can enjoy whatever it is without having to feel any pressure.
When you feel free, it’s contagious.
As usual, I said a little about Many Mountains Moving and presented the latest issue and the MMM Press books to the audience and mentioned teacher discounts and review copies etc.
Not long ago, I heard Sakyong Mipham Rinpoche over a world-wide webcast talk saying that we all needed to embody the changes in the world that we would like to see.
I think about the most sane people that I have known in my life, and I know that this must be true. Sakyong Mipham has written about how even a small amount of sanity makes a big difference in the world.
I was a little under the weather, fighting a cold since I woke today. So I knew it might be tough to keep the energy up. But Brian’s and Conrad’s readings were very solid, entertaining, and inspiring. Brian's work was very beautiful and insightful. He had a deadpan sense of humor and irony about himself that was nice. Conrad’s reading was very funny, raw, angry and edgy. A lot of very deep, raucous and cathartic laughter came from the audience.
(Conrad’s humor reminded me of something sort of like an early Lenny Bruce but without the undertones of optimism. I still think of Lenny Bruce as one of the true and great comedians who could have moments with a power like poetry but with jokes that made you laugh so hard it hurt.)
So Conrad actually helped me pick myself up.
It was very surprising and wonderful to see an old acquaintance in the audience as well as to see many new faces out there. It was also great to see a few old and new friends out there, including a few who actually helped me to revise a poem that has just been an albatross around my neck for years.
I knew things would be okay when the audience started laughing right away during the first, lighter piece that I read, "The Poet's Mother's Deathbed Conversion." I read five more things, most of them pretty short and upbeat or elevating: "Sex Ed Blues," "peace valley elementary school during the vietnam war," "fluke exposure to another eastern meditation tradition in 8th Grade," "Kindling Hope, Incidentally, in South Philly," and "The Path." I could feel that connection subtle, electric, elastic dance with the audience throughout most of the experience. After it was over, many of the people remarked to me how it was a great reading and so on. I’d actually had a longer line-up of work in mind but switched to a shorter list as the reality of my struggle with a cold reared its head.
I have read with a lot of great readers, and I know that this is a good thing to do for many reasons. The best reason is that it forces you to bring your game up to par. If you read with people who are mediocre with the audience, then it’s easy to get lazy and go for the easy hit.
There is an even better reason to perform with people who are great; it is sort of an exercise in staying on center and in focus instead of feeling jealous and insecure or whatever else people can do to stop enjoying the experience. You have to—in a way—forget your ego and your sense of competition. Then you can feel free to just put out there whatever you have. Then the work can speak for itself, and then the audience can enjoy whatever it is without having to feel any pressure.
When you feel free, it’s contagious.
Tuesday, October 21, 2008
If the work is going to be a gift to anyone else, first it has to be a gift to the creative self
I had two very different readings recently, and both of them went well in the way that counts the most. But I let the low attendance make me feel bad after the second reading. I struggled with it a lot.
It was easy to feel good about the September 24th event in NYC because around twenty people came, which is not bad for a poetry reading at the Asian American Writers’ Workshop (AAWW). It was also a group reading, and I was the anchor man following Renato Rosaldo, Pedro Ponce, Purvi Shah and Thaddeus Rutkowski.
I also planned the day so that I had time to visit the Shambhala Center of NYC before the event. So I felt very upbeat when I saw old friends and met new friends at AAWW. It was a very warm and interested crowd of writers and poets and other editors and program creators. Some very positive things came out of this. Everyone who read at this event did a great job. No one read too long. Everyone had strong and compelling work with great feeling and craft. I put a new audience-participation poem out there and got the crowd to have some fun with it, and the other things went over very well. So I was feeling very “on,” and I could feel that mysterious electrical connection to the audience. Later I heard from a friend there that some student in the crowd thought my audience-participation poem was the highlight of the night.
I don’t know if I have written much about this ever before. The energy in the audience is like a living being that you can feel and tune in to. Performers of all kinds know about this. The way it works for me is that it helps me work more closely with the feeling in the work, i.e. I can feel the work connecting with the people, and this makes it easier to discover deeper lows and highs inside the words. It helps me stay in the emotion.
It actually feels like a dialogue with a mostly silent partner, but the partner is really there, and the partner REALLY matters. Every sound that comes out of the audience can matter. Physically, it does make sometimes an electrical kind of feeling start to buzz in the air—that’s when you have everyone’s complete rapt attention and understanding. That’s where you want to stay—inside that electrical current.
You have to be open to your audience and willing to completely believe in their ability to understand—they will totally get it. They will feel it. You just need to have the goods to deliver.
You lose that link when you stop listening to them, when you become self-indulgent or afraid or arrogant.
When things are great, the electrical resonating is even like chills or tingling in your body. You are like a thousand watt bulb illuminating a great space. But it isn’t because of you the person; it’s because of what you have to give to the audience. That thing inside is beyond or beneath (or perhaps above) personality. People usually associate this kind of experience with great music concerts they have seen, but I have seen and felt this at many poetry readings by other poets. Sometimes I can get there, too.
In sharp contrast, the reading on Monday, 10/13/08, at Poets & Prophets in Philly, was in a beautiful theatrical space on the third floor of the Plays & Players Theater. I had to rush to get there on time. But I was early, and the emcee was on time. But at the start of the event there were only two people there, and they were very nice. But I think they felt embarrassed on my behalf.
Having been in this kind of spot before, I knew it was best to stick to my script and read what I had planned in advance. I read some very difficult things full of feeling. I gave the best reading I could, and they really got it. That same sort of resonating connection happened. They applauded sincerely for almost every thing I read. A third guy came. He also seemed really into it. Then it was over. Everyone was gracious about it.
Later that night, though, I made what I now think of as an error. I let it bring me down that only three people came to what was basically another great reading. Why? Because I know that most people think events like this are humiliating and sad. But the event was a success for everyone who was there, and they were other writers, activists, veterans—intelligent and interesting people. They were deeply touched by the work. They wanted to ask about it. The host was sincere in his repeated thanks. So why did I feel bad?
I have made this mistake before—letting the numbers dominate the story. But I have had plenty of great readings for big crowds, and the essence of the work is the same. The connection is the same. I actually read more and better for the three people than I did for the twenty or so in NYC. (It’s easier to read better when you have thirty minutes to work with versus fifteen.) And I did get paid, and I did fulfill my contract completely and wholeheartedly.
I thought of the first jazz musicians in Philly who had to play in dives and brothels where few aficionados would go. They knew this. They knew they were invisible and that if they would ever be “discovered” by the greater culture, it might be after they were dead or no longer great or whatever. They had to keep doing it though. They loved doing it so much.
I know I will have some great readings and events in the near future, some with big crowds and some with almost no one. And you cannot tell which events will turn out with great crowds and which will turn up mostly empty. This spring, I will be reading in an actual castle, and another time in something like a revamped warehouse, and another time in a great literary house in NYC etc.
The only things in my control are how I commit to the work and how I feel about it afterwards. About the first part of that work, I can say I am happy with these two past readings. What I would like to do in the future is to try to remember that there is another side of the performer-audience equation, the author.
The audience is one thing that gives great energy to me, but when the audience is gone, the work itself and the thing that it came from, that inner voice, that author is a support with its own energy. The creator, the author, the inner voice—whatever you want to call it—is more consistent and whole than the audience, which will always come and go.
If the work is going to be a gift to anyone else, first it has to be a gift to the creative self. If you feel like the gift is real for you, then it really doesn’t matter if there are three people or fifty people out there.
Or to put this another way, when Keith Richard was asked what his favorite music was, I think he said, “The Rolling F%^#%^* Stones!”
It was easy to feel good about the September 24th event in NYC because around twenty people came, which is not bad for a poetry reading at the Asian American Writers’ Workshop (AAWW). It was also a group reading, and I was the anchor man following Renato Rosaldo, Pedro Ponce, Purvi Shah and Thaddeus Rutkowski.
I also planned the day so that I had time to visit the Shambhala Center of NYC before the event. So I felt very upbeat when I saw old friends and met new friends at AAWW. It was a very warm and interested crowd of writers and poets and other editors and program creators. Some very positive things came out of this. Everyone who read at this event did a great job. No one read too long. Everyone had strong and compelling work with great feeling and craft. I put a new audience-participation poem out there and got the crowd to have some fun with it, and the other things went over very well. So I was feeling very “on,” and I could feel that mysterious electrical connection to the audience. Later I heard from a friend there that some student in the crowd thought my audience-participation poem was the highlight of the night.
I don’t know if I have written much about this ever before. The energy in the audience is like a living being that you can feel and tune in to. Performers of all kinds know about this. The way it works for me is that it helps me work more closely with the feeling in the work, i.e. I can feel the work connecting with the people, and this makes it easier to discover deeper lows and highs inside the words. It helps me stay in the emotion.
It actually feels like a dialogue with a mostly silent partner, but the partner is really there, and the partner REALLY matters. Every sound that comes out of the audience can matter. Physically, it does make sometimes an electrical kind of feeling start to buzz in the air—that’s when you have everyone’s complete rapt attention and understanding. That’s where you want to stay—inside that electrical current.
You have to be open to your audience and willing to completely believe in their ability to understand—they will totally get it. They will feel it. You just need to have the goods to deliver.
You lose that link when you stop listening to them, when you become self-indulgent or afraid or arrogant.
When things are great, the electrical resonating is even like chills or tingling in your body. You are like a thousand watt bulb illuminating a great space. But it isn’t because of you the person; it’s because of what you have to give to the audience. That thing inside is beyond or beneath (or perhaps above) personality. People usually associate this kind of experience with great music concerts they have seen, but I have seen and felt this at many poetry readings by other poets. Sometimes I can get there, too.
In sharp contrast, the reading on Monday, 10/13/08, at Poets & Prophets in Philly, was in a beautiful theatrical space on the third floor of the Plays & Players Theater. I had to rush to get there on time. But I was early, and the emcee was on time. But at the start of the event there were only two people there, and they were very nice. But I think they felt embarrassed on my behalf.
Having been in this kind of spot before, I knew it was best to stick to my script and read what I had planned in advance. I read some very difficult things full of feeling. I gave the best reading I could, and they really got it. That same sort of resonating connection happened. They applauded sincerely for almost every thing I read. A third guy came. He also seemed really into it. Then it was over. Everyone was gracious about it.
Later that night, though, I made what I now think of as an error. I let it bring me down that only three people came to what was basically another great reading. Why? Because I know that most people think events like this are humiliating and sad. But the event was a success for everyone who was there, and they were other writers, activists, veterans—intelligent and interesting people. They were deeply touched by the work. They wanted to ask about it. The host was sincere in his repeated thanks. So why did I feel bad?
I have made this mistake before—letting the numbers dominate the story. But I have had plenty of great readings for big crowds, and the essence of the work is the same. The connection is the same. I actually read more and better for the three people than I did for the twenty or so in NYC. (It’s easier to read better when you have thirty minutes to work with versus fifteen.) And I did get paid, and I did fulfill my contract completely and wholeheartedly.
I thought of the first jazz musicians in Philly who had to play in dives and brothels where few aficionados would go. They knew this. They knew they were invisible and that if they would ever be “discovered” by the greater culture, it might be after they were dead or no longer great or whatever. They had to keep doing it though. They loved doing it so much.
I know I will have some great readings and events in the near future, some with big crowds and some with almost no one. And you cannot tell which events will turn out with great crowds and which will turn up mostly empty. This spring, I will be reading in an actual castle, and another time in something like a revamped warehouse, and another time in a great literary house in NYC etc.
The only things in my control are how I commit to the work and how I feel about it afterwards. About the first part of that work, I can say I am happy with these two past readings. What I would like to do in the future is to try to remember that there is another side of the performer-audience equation, the author.
The audience is one thing that gives great energy to me, but when the audience is gone, the work itself and the thing that it came from, that inner voice, that author is a support with its own energy. The creator, the author, the inner voice—whatever you want to call it—is more consistent and whole than the audience, which will always come and go.
If the work is going to be a gift to anyone else, first it has to be a gift to the creative self. If you feel like the gift is real for you, then it really doesn’t matter if there are three people or fifty people out there.
Or to put this another way, when Keith Richard was asked what his favorite music was, I think he said, “The Rolling F%^#%^* Stones!”
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