Saturday, June 28, 2014

Front Porch Series Vander Reading




The sort of profundity brought about when poetry is utilized for, not inside it, or at it, to it, a sheer, though, vehicle, transparent, ease ( an easy thing is what? ), uncomplicated, finite, pointed, then done. Grief, Loss, Parenthood, Disability, Acute Oppression, Violence, all of which, when mentioned, buoyed in a poetry, don't linger, don't place with, unless they are enacted, compressed into or expand from.

That Berryman quote.




Healing and Optimism. Ok. But the splintering of means, the turning outward and away from what occurs in the writing itself, a unit is made of the written thing, corners are pre-known, the end is the thing that happens and that's that. A poetry that stems from not-poetry, yes, a poetry that does things, yes. 

Larry Eigner. Though it's present, is not a sole definition, is moved from, by.

In the case of the most recent Front Porch reading, Vanderbilt, poetry as vehicle intrinsic to healing. Poetry therapist Jennie Linthorst to a full filled room, clear-eyed, her from her first and second book, "my voice shine," "let it speak," "umpteenth," "beams with freedom," "swim towards his longings," "I am..." Really, just very nice, got to me right when I got into the room, showed me her face.






Monday, June 16, 2014

Recents, Caldwell / Lyrical Brew Nashpo








Hot minutes have passed, without pushing into new work much, without an eye on poetries in Nashville, and have dwindled, from oppressions of job from labor that way from season from screens from having so few collisions I am dependent on collisions.



Less tangible, among and the flattening of things is always easy on us. Like Nashville is missing its corners or something.










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But did go to Lyrical Brew poetry evening at the end of May, with Lisa Dordal, Kendra DeColo, Deborah Bernhardt. They read to a good Nashville-sized audience, occupied the whole downstairs coffee section of Barnes N Nobles.

Maya Angelou had just died, the women were on a stage, they each, Deborah Bernhardt in an even, contemplative though lively volume and pace, concerns with language in language, with thought in thought out loud, a processual, koanesque, working towards in the work itself, “my latest emergency,” “direction of our faces,” “what I though to be done thinking,” “let not one put asunder any content,” an authority in somewhat less than authoritative presence ( she did mention recent run-in with a plant she could not chemically deal with which resulted in epidermic rash mess ), and only her second ( ? ) time to Nashville from Knoxville.

Recent Spicer listenings had stayed and rose at Deborah Bernhardts sections ( Morphemics, and Graphemics ), also Leslie Scalapino’s Forest In The Euphrates, and Can't Is Night.


Kendra DeColo began as I believe people were likely to think she would by addressing/invoking/owning/sending a "pussy", and off and running. Bring attention to gender, sexuality, the sexy things by having them present, personified, forming a system of articulation around a thing that perhaps is not articulate ( most bodily things aren't ) but nonetheless prominent, inner dialogues as listener regarding misogyny, empowerment, saying the thing into being, exorcizing the thing out of being, the sonic quality not forceful but easy to let, charged with anatomical renderings, a truly bodied poetics ( this addressed in the after events of the reading, the q and a, the body and its otherness, the somatic, the reclaiming, the ubiquitous claim by all of it), with charm, with really nice covers, banister. All my information in unformed, curse of the transplant, but I think in the same way Jeff The Brotherhood is a Nashville music, Kendra Decolo is a Nashville Poetry, “bearable husks wincing,” “dividing bayous,” the thing with a bodied poetics as hers is its accessbility, its openness to everyone, visible parameters upset by eloquent observations, one’s intimate functions immersed among one’s intimate reformations, a poetry of context where the writing relates always to its carnal origins ( whose origin is not carnal ), I do find it distancing to play devil’s advocate though and not straight advocate. A visceral that entrenches.



Lisa Dordal I was not as familiar, she began with statement of sexual orientation and started the reading with a moment in history. Orbit that breathes, a rhythmic physiology that brought up Lew Welch’s Chicago Poem, a laboring over in pushing terms, Ginsbergian long to that rising syllabically goes, the most narrative of the three that found its structure in propulsion ahead, a deceptive monotony that places attention everywhere to everything, each line told with blame or reward or revelation, renew, push, reveal, renew.


Something reminded of all three, breathy, visceral, obscene, profound, descriptive, pedagogical, urgent, ordered, politicized - Rob Halpern's Music for Porn : First PortionPortionPortion





Nextest readings-

6/26 - Vanderbilt, Scarritt Bennett, Poet's Corner - Jennie Linthorst
Plus Lyrical Brew, date ( ? ) usually last week of the month, Barnes & Noble, Vanderbilt




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ALSO ALSO ALSO Caldwell calls it quits after god knows how many years of debauchery, come see it off.