Last night's show at Bar 13 was an excellent one. It was the format for celebrating woman writers in which we feature women and make men read a poem by a woman if they want to read one of their own on the open mic. Our features were Loren Kleinman and Lenelle Moise.
I'm so glad to have been there last night (probably our biggest turn-out so far for the women's format). i love Loren's work and i don't get to see and hear nearly enough of Lenelle Moise; whose understanding and analysis of the politic that drives her work is so thorough that it comes through in the very craft of her poems and seems to validate her point of view in her work. This is to say that Lenelle does her work. Her poems are not political sloganeering in any way but always an examination of how her response to her world in her own life moves her toward or away from being a better human being. How much else can you ask of a human being or an artist than that?
Loren brought us form last night: villanelle, ghazal; you name it. As the last time that i heard her, the work came from a place in the gut that you wish all poems would come from, but many often don't. The craft was tight and even if the attention span of our audience drifted a bit because her performance style is somewhat more academic, those of us who took the time to pay attention came away with an understanding that her writing, her instinct were both fearless and delightful, and in the future this woman's work is going to only get larger and larger and more powerful; and we would have been able to say, we were there (or we read about her in Roger's blog) back in 2004.
Today the plumber is fixing something in the building so we have no water. i'm about to go get my toothbrush and towel and head round the corner to my ex-roomate's place so i can shower and look presentable and smell human.
yesterday i started reading again Laure Ann Boselaar's 'Hour between Dog and Wolf'. That book rocks... hard! read it! I also have to finish some commissioned work for VIA today and set up a bunch of frequent-flyer accounts and send out more info on my show...
oh - by the way. i'm having trouble getting the geocities program to work to update the schedules part of my website so let me say it here. Please come see MASQUERADE (poems of calypso and home) on September 11th at the Bowery Poetry Club at 7:30PM for the low low price of $10. Saheli is opening for me (Abena Elana and Dara) and they can SING!! I'll repeat this on my blog about ixteen more times till the show comes up...
one love - defend brooklyn!
I'm so glad to have been there last night (probably our biggest turn-out so far for the women's format). i love Loren's work and i don't get to see and hear nearly enough of Lenelle Moise; whose understanding and analysis of the politic that drives her work is so thorough that it comes through in the very craft of her poems and seems to validate her point of view in her work. This is to say that Lenelle does her work. Her poems are not political sloganeering in any way but always an examination of how her response to her world in her own life moves her toward or away from being a better human being. How much else can you ask of a human being or an artist than that?
Loren brought us form last night: villanelle, ghazal; you name it. As the last time that i heard her, the work came from a place in the gut that you wish all poems would come from, but many often don't. The craft was tight and even if the attention span of our audience drifted a bit because her performance style is somewhat more academic, those of us who took the time to pay attention came away with an understanding that her writing, her instinct were both fearless and delightful, and in the future this woman's work is going to only get larger and larger and more powerful; and we would have been able to say, we were there (or we read about her in Roger's blog) back in 2004.
Today the plumber is fixing something in the building so we have no water. i'm about to go get my toothbrush and towel and head round the corner to my ex-roomate's place so i can shower and look presentable and smell human.
yesterday i started reading again Laure Ann Boselaar's 'Hour between Dog and Wolf'. That book rocks... hard! read it! I also have to finish some commissioned work for VIA today and set up a bunch of frequent-flyer accounts and send out more info on my show...
oh - by the way. i'm having trouble getting the geocities program to work to update the schedules part of my website so let me say it here. Please come see MASQUERADE (poems of calypso and home) on September 11th at the Bowery Poetry Club at 7:30PM for the low low price of $10. Saheli is opening for me (Abena Elana and Dara) and they can SING!! I'll repeat this on my blog about ixteen more times till the show comes up...
one love - defend brooklyn!
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