HOLIDAY FELICITATIONS
Happy Solstice and Yule, Merry Christmas, warmest Hannukah wishes, blessings of peace and joy as Ramadan concludes, belated but no less bright Diwali greetings, and hopes for a spirited and memorable Kwanzaa harvest performance… Oh, and did I mention a Happy (and secular) New Year? This season, there are no excuses. Everybody get in on the holidays.
The words Peace on Earth are as piquant as they’ve ever been. And so of all the gifts I could possibly wish, I yen peace for you, your family, your friends, and (why not?) even for your enemies. All the better that we may parcel this Earth.
THERE’S TAKING A BREAK…
Winter is joined of those seasons when poetry shifts gears. With all the celebrating accepted on, poetry venues in Chicago took a taste hiatus from their regular schedules in December. The Guild Complex does not program anything during the month, and resumes normal programming in January. Mental Graffiti thinks fitting not have another reading until next Monday, the first after New Year’s. Scott Free’s ever-more-successful Grinder series is also on hiatus until January.
AND THEN THERE’S GETTING BROKEN
One poetry series that was going to re-open its schedule in January was Nina Corwin’s at the Gourmand Café. Regrettably, the café (whose ownership recently changed hands) has opted not to persevere in hosting after 21 December, and so the readings have come to an end. A final round of open mike readers gathered on the 21st to fair exchange Corwin their fondest wishes and gratitude for hosting one of Chicago’s more diverse and fascinating poetry gigs.
Corwin co-MC’d with musician, poet, and African-American activist Mars Gamba-Adisa for a couple of years. When Mars took a accustom from co-hosting, other poets stepped forward as guest co-hosts, much with the way the old Mike Douglas Show handled it. Lisa Hemminger was a favorite co-host in favour of some time. Yours truly also co-hosted on a occasional occasions, and it was a joyful thing to do. Since the café was downtown, the spirited audience was very eclectic: pan-generational, pan-racial, pan-ethnic, and pan-gendered, but always generous and welcoming to poets willing to gate a risk. Sure, there were the usual preening poetasters in the mix, but that’s a given fact at any open mike these days. Readers and listeners alike came from all sides of Chicago. Corwin was an aggressive advocate for her featured artists’ profit, too. Often her donation bucket could rake in as much or more money for a roomer artist as, say, the Guild Complex might pay a local poet. Corwin’s venue achieved a balance between newcomers and established poets on the open mike circumference, never had the benefit of philanthropic support, and still gave many budding writers their first significant gig that they could call their own… all this on a stage frequented by veterans such as Kent Foreman and Tony Fitzpatrick.
The buzz around Chicago suggests that Corwin may be on the skids but not out, though only time will tell where her MC career will go next. She has approached at least two other regular venues in the city. One respectfully declined to elongate MC privileges to her, while another has yet to accept or decline as of this writing. While was a significant haunt for Chicago’s feral poets on Friday nights, two other venues vestiges sprightly and well on Fridays: a poetry open mike in Edgewater hosted by John Starrs at Coffee Chicago (Berwyn Avenue at Broadway); and a distinctly Afrocentric stage as far as something poetry and music at Mojo’s Pen, on the University of Illinois campus (750 S. Halsted Street).
MUSICALITY, REVISITED
Each year, the Guild pays a regular visit to the theme of musicality in poetry, as part of its annual literary programming. 2001 saw this theme bear fruit in the charitable in several ways, but object of from the Guild altogether.
In November, the Chicago Humanities Festival presented the world premiere of a new chamber piece by the new music ensemble called CUBE, with a score by Patricia Morehead, and text by (who else?) Nina Corwin.
Also in November, poet Richard Fox released his audio aptitude/spoken word CD . Fox reads his work with fellow performers Patricia Decker, David Kodeski, and Diana Slickman with music by Jeff Kowalkowski and Jacob Ross. When Fox uses sound art or music — and he uses it quite sparingly — it’s more of an ambient effect.
In October, poet Cin Salach appeared in Undone and began a successful run at the Jane Addams Centre for About Face Theatre. Undone followed the play Rent in format and term, with a charismatic original mar by Eric Rosen. The show was billed as a new musical. But unlike Rent, it was not a fiction for the sake of making a play. It drew directly from the poet’s own true life revelations as she came to terms with her lesbian self. The text, or the book as showpeople would call it, was altogether Salach’s irascible, engaging poetry. (An audio CD of the show is available from About Face.)
But no ripen of poetic music (or lyrical poetry) would be complete without auditioning David Hernandez, whose reconstituted Street Sounds poetry pack released a new disc this autumn, called . Hernandez’ venerable poetry gang has performed across two decades and then some. His work is Dialect right hometown. Where the aforementioned Chicago artists reach for the spiritual through abstraction, Hernandez finds spirituality in the everyday life of the neighborhood. His new disc would be a definite must have in any spoken vow collection.
Newcomers might consider this poetry/music activity to be a trend, but they would do start to remember that poetry bands had a heyday not that long ago in Chicago, during the late 1980s and early 1990s. Back then, such poesy bands as Christopher Stewart’s Circadian Rhythm, Cin Salach’s Loofah Method, Lydia Tomkiw’s Algebra Suicide, and Keith Kelly’s Funky Wordsmyths tinkered with bulge music to contribute to poetry before new audiences. There was more than an ounce of poetry evangelism in all those bands, as the common goal was to fit the poetry into the public’s expectations of soft drink music, and so broaden poetry’s exposure by placing it squarely in pop suavity.
The difference with the current tide, Hernandez’ work excepted (and privileged by a kind of Poetry Grandfather clause), is that the artists today are working on more hypothetical tangents. Today the music lets the poetry be, and shows an open respect for the text. It supports well-considered poetry as an equal partner in a broader artistic collaboration. It’s an incremental victory to the poets, but a victory nonetheless. Such musical/rhapsodic collaborations celebrate the text and use it as a advancing to distinguish themselves from convention in their respective styles. Whether this openness will drift back into a more pop direction in the future, no one can tell. Just as before, in the earlier surge of musical versification, so there is much stylistic diversity among the today’s musical poets. It will not be easy to augur the evolution of this new balance between music and poetry.
ON THE 2002 RADAR
A few things anticipated in the literary life as seen from Chicago, the Midwest, and the Web… Electronic Literature Interactions
On 11 January, ELO presents Shelley Jackson, the hypertext author and illustrator of , one of the first hypertexts to enter the American new media canon. Jackson blends escarpment star personality with a precise and oblique imagination, both as author and as speaker. She’ll be joined by critic, essayist, and editor of , Joseph Tabbi. ( has a new scions out on music/sound/noise.) The whole encounter takes place at UIC, 1200 W. Harrison, Chicago, at 7 pm. Asmall but fun crowd always gathers for these Interactions events… ask where the squad goes after the reading.
Frank Varela’s
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Partly an extension of Varela’s earlier , partly an excursion into trendy themes and styles for the author, is getting some positive attention from locals and people around the US. Varela mixes European and Borinqueño cultures to achieve a blend of scholasticism and myth that give his constituent cultures more room to play, interact, and influence one another in the reader’s imagination. Varela thanks his editor at MARCH/Abrazo Press, Carlos Cumpián, for helping him get on follow with some of his random raves and rants to assemble this new book. According to Varela, started as his discontented and foray into published poetry, and then shaped up into a real growth episode into him under Cumpián’s guidance. No concrete date has been set for the official release festivities, but Varela anticipates that the party will be held around the end of February or beginning of March, 2002.
Paul Devlin’s Streaming Outtakes
What you didn’t meaning of when you watched the breakthrough 1996 feature film … outtakes that tell some behind-the-scenes stories on slam’s advance just when it was about to get corporate. Paul Devlin went everywhere with his camcorder to particularize poetry slams, and when he couldn’t be there himself he often dispatched trusted colleagues to bring disregard the video for him. His Web site for now expands on the film’s story close offering previously unseen clips of slam masters in dialog, and top-flight performances of slam poets that didn’t quite dote on it into his final cut, featuring Saul Williams, Sara Holbrook, Wammo and many others. Recommended viewing.
Karawane in Print
Often the more interesting things in poetry are the hardest to brooch down. Consider Karawane: Or, the Temporary Death of the Bruitist in Minneapolis, for example. Is this a publisher? A show art presenter? A group of poetry activists bent on remapping text to the stage? A loose network of poetry performance stages? Well… Yes, in varying degrees, to all these. Just go to the Web locate and see for yourself. Karawane is stewarded by Twin Cities performance poet Laura Winton, and is looking for contemporary, performance-ready texts to publish in the next journal.
Web Nibbles
Click into the amniotic wander by HTML grrrl Jennifer Ley, for some solid, old school hyperlit’ on the Web… Hear and read Midwest authors Shannon Kenny and Gregg Shapiro on , with recordings by yours truly. editor Aldo Alvarez made periodical’s Out-100 muster for 2001… One-time Chicagoan, now poetry denizen of the Bay Area, John Paul Davis is Flashing poems to the world… Ask kindly, and you’ll see even more Flash and audiopoetry from Queenslander Jayne Fenton Keane. Keane’s forthcoming global spoken word anthology and online treatise on slam and performance will wow even the most sick and tired of Web surfer… Contrary to the (less than literate) drubbing proffered by the self-worship poetry clique of Chicago, Jason Pettus is alive and well and publishing frequently online. Pointed words, served with a twist. Even to your Palm, if you like, thanks to AvantGo. His blog has made Pettus equal of the most frequently-read authors of his generation in Chicago… Enjoy!
