Q: What do you wear when your evening starts with a Poetic Principles reading at the Virginia Museum and ends with a show at the Canal Club?
A: Something that makes the guard at the museum say to you, "You look mighty nice for a poetry reading," when what he really means is, "That's not how folks usually dress to come here, miss."
And actually it wasn't a poetry reading because Christine Schutt is no longer writing poetry; her latest book is "All Souls," a novel set in an all-girls' school.
As she read selections from it, though, her poetic roots became obvious. Her cadences were completely poetic.
Every sentence came across as a phrase in a poem; it was lovely. Reading about a group of feckless girls, she referenced their "wayward society swagger;" it's practically a poem title itself.
Tonight was the last of this year's Poetic Principles, a series that will restart in October.
Then I headed east to meet a friend at Sette Pizza before the music portion of the evening.
I began with a half Sette Chopped Salad (lettuce, tomato, Gorgonzola and bacon with a balsamic vinaigrette) because I was starving and couldn't wait for my friend any longer.
When he did arrive, we decided (SPOILER ALERT: Pizza purists, stop reading now) on the Florentine (white sauce, baby spinach, and goat cheese) and, with all the nerve in the world, we had them put bacon on it.
The bartender grinned at me and said, "Bacon is gooood," which supports my argument that bacon makes everything better.
The pizza was delicious, gooey with the two cheeses and amply sprinkled with the tiniest bacon bits.
When we got to the Canal Club, The Dig was midway through their set; I'd seen this NYC group before and was sorry to have missed all of their set.
Next up was Port O'Brien and I can see why people like M. Ward are calling them their favorite new band.
Their combination of folk and indie rock, drawing as much from the 60s as from 80s bands like the Replacements, is pure ear candy.
In talking to the audience, they asked if Richmond had lots of good things to do.
Someone shouted out GWAR and the lead singer said, "Really? GWAR is from here? That just made my day!"
Toward the end of their set, a box of sound was distributed to the audience, including pots, pans and spoons for us to make noise with.
They closed by saying, "Goodnight Richmond, home of GWAR!"
And then it was something completely different, the headliner, Portugal the Man.
Whereas Port O'Brien pulled from 60s and 80s pop, PtM is much more experimental and psychedelic.
There were even elements of prog rock; at one point, my friend said that the sound reminded him of early Yes and Genesis, extremely complex.
To complement such complexity, lead singer John Gourley even adopted a sideways stance throughout the show, facing stage left and his backup singer rather than the audience.
The crowd wasn't huge; it was St. Patrick's Day after all and plenty of people had green beer to drink, but the people who were there were clearly fans, singing along to almost every song and cheering the band raucously.
An audience of true fans is always the best kind anyway for their contagious enthusiasm.
Let's just say we all left completely satisfied, even the friend I ran into who cut out a bit early (she knows who she is).
Most importantly, the designated duds did a seamless job of taking me from the literary to prog rock.
Not that anyone was looking.
Showing posts with label VMFA Poetic Principles. Show all posts
Showing posts with label VMFA Poetic Principles. Show all posts
Thursday, March 18, 2010
Wednesday, January 20, 2010
Literary Loses to Lousy Lungs
I was supposed to be at the Poetic Principles reading at the Virginia Museum tonight. A literary-loving friend was going with me so that we could be read to by writer Randall Kenan, followed by dinner out. I've had my ticket since October and I was eager to hear this man whose fiction focuses on what it means to be black and gay in the U.S. South.
Instead, I was lying in a hospital bed, taking breathing treatments and steroids yet again. Only three days from the one-year anniversary of my 2009 diagnosis of pneumonia and I was back to coughing and wheezing. Only this time, instead of soldiering on, I went to the Emergency Room at MVC where I was told that I did not have pneumonia (whew!), but that my lungs "sounded like crap." Yes, those were the doctor's actual words. WTF?
Returning from my chest X-ray, I smiled at the man in the bed on the other side of my curtain. After my next coughing fit, he asked through the drape if I was okay, which led to a fascinating, but blind conversation. As it turned out he was a "Sir," born in Wales to a British father and Australian mother and since his grandfather had been knighted in 1935, that carried over to him and his oldest son. The things you learn through a hospital drape!
After a couple of breathing treatments, I was reluctantly moved to the CDU (Clinical Decision Unit), aka the Observation Room. I was determined not to be admitted and only agreed to four to six hours there. After my third breathing treatment, I was exhausted and requested food STAT. What I got was penne in a red meat sauce with a side of the kind of gray green beans the color of Army drab uniforms. I'm no fan of tomato sauce, but I ate all the pasta dish, although the beans remained untouched. Luckily the meal had a hefty junk food component (individually sized packages of Oreos, Cheese Nibs, Lorna Doon short breads and Ritz Peanut Butter crackers with a Schweppe's Ginger Ale to wash all those preservatives down) to flesh out the meal.
When I had arrived eight hours earlier, my lung capacity was at a pathetic 140 (optimum is 450) and rose to 220 when I got to CDU, but I wasn't allowed to leave until I got to 300. After my fourth treatment and once the steroids kicked in, I finally made it to 350 and was stripped of my IV and given prescriptions for more drugs than I can afford.
The entire staff was aware that I had one foot out the door, having been told by the ER staff that I was not willing to stay overnight. They praised my response to treatment, told me to avoid smokey places and smokers and walked me to the door.
I'm gratified and appreciative to feel better, if not normal, but totally bummed that I missed a literary evening of Randall Kenan. I wanted to hear him read from works with evocative sentences like this in his southern-raised voice:
They say that day the sun shone while the rain poured -the old folks say that's when the devil beats his wife- the day Estelle Pickett died giving birth to Clarence.
Damn these lungs!
Instead, I was lying in a hospital bed, taking breathing treatments and steroids yet again. Only three days from the one-year anniversary of my 2009 diagnosis of pneumonia and I was back to coughing and wheezing. Only this time, instead of soldiering on, I went to the Emergency Room at MVC where I was told that I did not have pneumonia (whew!), but that my lungs "sounded like crap." Yes, those were the doctor's actual words. WTF?
Returning from my chest X-ray, I smiled at the man in the bed on the other side of my curtain. After my next coughing fit, he asked through the drape if I was okay, which led to a fascinating, but blind conversation. As it turned out he was a "Sir," born in Wales to a British father and Australian mother and since his grandfather had been knighted in 1935, that carried over to him and his oldest son. The things you learn through a hospital drape!
After a couple of breathing treatments, I was reluctantly moved to the CDU (Clinical Decision Unit), aka the Observation Room. I was determined not to be admitted and only agreed to four to six hours there. After my third breathing treatment, I was exhausted and requested food STAT. What I got was penne in a red meat sauce with a side of the kind of gray green beans the color of Army drab uniforms. I'm no fan of tomato sauce, but I ate all the pasta dish, although the beans remained untouched. Luckily the meal had a hefty junk food component (individually sized packages of Oreos, Cheese Nibs, Lorna Doon short breads and Ritz Peanut Butter crackers with a Schweppe's Ginger Ale to wash all those preservatives down) to flesh out the meal.
When I had arrived eight hours earlier, my lung capacity was at a pathetic 140 (optimum is 450) and rose to 220 when I got to CDU, but I wasn't allowed to leave until I got to 300. After my fourth treatment and once the steroids kicked in, I finally made it to 350 and was stripped of my IV and given prescriptions for more drugs than I can afford.
The entire staff was aware that I had one foot out the door, having been told by the ER staff that I was not willing to stay overnight. They praised my response to treatment, told me to avoid smokey places and smokers and walked me to the door.
I'm gratified and appreciative to feel better, if not normal, but totally bummed that I missed a literary evening of Randall Kenan. I wanted to hear him read from works with evocative sentences like this in his southern-raised voice:
They say that day the sun shone while the rain poured -the old folks say that's when the devil beats his wife- the day Estelle Pickett died giving birth to Clarence.
Damn these lungs!
Wednesday, December 9, 2009
Bedroom as Art
I'm always been intrigued by how the twentieth century brought about a public discussion of what constitutes art.
Marcel Duchamp's "ready-mades" pretty much established that art takes many everyday forms; his display of a urinal he dubbed "Fountain" forever changed the popular perception of art.
The VMFA has acquired an 1880s bedroom which might well fit into that expanded definition of art.
The elaborate Worsham-Rockefeller bedroom contains seventy objects, including a massive chandelier, a rug that repeats the pattern of the ceiling. a Turkish niche for seating and the repeated use of ebonized wood.
It is the bedroom of a long bygone era.
It is the kind of detail-filled room that would take some time to fully take in.
At today's lecture at the VMFA, the focus was on the remarkable woman whose rags to riches story began in RVA, namely Arabella Worsham.
Her slow rise after the Civil War from a fatherless child to the owner of the magnificent Italianate house on W. 54th Street in NYC and the accompanying high-profile relationships, would have been fascinating even if she had not taken on the creation of a house interior that was, without a doubt, a work of art.
The lecture explored how the VMFA came to receive the bedroom from the Museum of the City of New York.
Because Arabella was originally a Richmond girl, there was a compelling reason to move the bedroom here once the MOTCONY could no longer accommodate it.
Fortunately, when the negotiations began, VMFA's renovation was not so far along that they couldn't plan for inclusion of the bedroom.
When the VMFA reopens (finally!) in May, one of the new masterpieces on view will be the Worsham-Rockefeller bedroom.
Neither Duchamp nor I would question its merit as art.
Marcel Duchamp's "ready-mades" pretty much established that art takes many everyday forms; his display of a urinal he dubbed "Fountain" forever changed the popular perception of art.
The VMFA has acquired an 1880s bedroom which might well fit into that expanded definition of art.
The elaborate Worsham-Rockefeller bedroom contains seventy objects, including a massive chandelier, a rug that repeats the pattern of the ceiling. a Turkish niche for seating and the repeated use of ebonized wood.
It is the bedroom of a long bygone era.
It is the kind of detail-filled room that would take some time to fully take in.
At today's lecture at the VMFA, the focus was on the remarkable woman whose rags to riches story began in RVA, namely Arabella Worsham.
Her slow rise after the Civil War from a fatherless child to the owner of the magnificent Italianate house on W. 54th Street in NYC and the accompanying high-profile relationships, would have been fascinating even if she had not taken on the creation of a house interior that was, without a doubt, a work of art.
The lecture explored how the VMFA came to receive the bedroom from the Museum of the City of New York.
Because Arabella was originally a Richmond girl, there was a compelling reason to move the bedroom here once the MOTCONY could no longer accommodate it.
Fortunately, when the negotiations began, VMFA's renovation was not so far along that they couldn't plan for inclusion of the bedroom.
When the VMFA reopens (finally!) in May, one of the new masterpieces on view will be the Worsham-Rockefeller bedroom.
Neither Duchamp nor I would question its merit as art.
Wednesday, October 14, 2009
Six Burner Follows Poetry
"For so long I wanted my past back," read David Wojahn from his poem "Fetish Value" at tonight's Poetic Principles reading at the Virginia Museum. Wojahn, a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize and a local VCU treasure, regaled the audience with his emotional and relevant style of writing.
One poem, directed at the President of the NRA, invoked both robbery victim Tyler Binstead and Dante's Circles of Hell. Another ranged from placenta soup (exactly what it sounds) to bongs, LPs and spliffs. Several poems were tributes to other poets. "Mix Tape to be Brought to Her in Rehab" was introduced by explaining the mix tape concept to the younger members of the audience and Wojahn saying,"The lore of making a mix tape was so ritualized. It happened in real time." An outstanding reader, Wojahn could make a poetry lover out of the most adamant poetry hater, not that there were any of those present tonight.
All that poetry was making me hungry, so I stopped at Six Burner for a bite to eat and some conversation. Dave was quick to suggest the Vilarnau Cava upon my arrival and after Wojahn's references to cheap champagne, I already had bubbles on the brain anyway. To accompany it, I ordered a plate of the house-made charcuterie with homemade pickles. The enormous serving contained duck ham, mortadella and pancetta (the meats were a perfect blend of fat and lean), pickled cuke slices and onions and grilled bread. I finished what I could and shared the rest with Josh. By this time, Josh and I were already knee-deep in conversation about the Debashish Bhattacharya Folk Fest performance. I predict that in years to come, this Folk Fest will be legendary for those shows. No one (T also witnessed it) can get over how impressive it was or how lucky we were to witness it. More cava followed, for discussion purposes, of course.
Just another rainy night in River City, where we're lucky enough to have poets like David Wojahn reading and house made charcuterie for enjoying...in the present, not the past.
One poem, directed at the President of the NRA, invoked both robbery victim Tyler Binstead and Dante's Circles of Hell. Another ranged from placenta soup (exactly what it sounds) to bongs, LPs and spliffs. Several poems were tributes to other poets. "Mix Tape to be Brought to Her in Rehab" was introduced by explaining the mix tape concept to the younger members of the audience and Wojahn saying,"The lore of making a mix tape was so ritualized. It happened in real time." An outstanding reader, Wojahn could make a poetry lover out of the most adamant poetry hater, not that there were any of those present tonight.
All that poetry was making me hungry, so I stopped at Six Burner for a bite to eat and some conversation. Dave was quick to suggest the Vilarnau Cava upon my arrival and after Wojahn's references to cheap champagne, I already had bubbles on the brain anyway. To accompany it, I ordered a plate of the house-made charcuterie with homemade pickles. The enormous serving contained duck ham, mortadella and pancetta (the meats were a perfect blend of fat and lean), pickled cuke slices and onions and grilled bread. I finished what I could and shared the rest with Josh. By this time, Josh and I were already knee-deep in conversation about the Debashish Bhattacharya Folk Fest performance. I predict that in years to come, this Folk Fest will be legendary for those shows. No one (T also witnessed it) can get over how impressive it was or how lucky we were to witness it. More cava followed, for discussion purposes, of course.
Just another rainy night in River City, where we're lucky enough to have poets like David Wojahn reading and house made charcuterie for enjoying...in the present, not the past.
Wednesday, September 16, 2009
Poetry and Grits
I have had poetry written for me by exactly four guys in the course of my lifetime.
I still have copies of them all (the most talented wrote me more than one).
And while this has nothing to do with my love of poetry readings, perhaps it does show that I'm inclined toward the poetic.
Tonight's Poetic Principles reading at the Virginia Museum featured Betty Adcock, a Texas-born North Carolinian with a southern drawl and a beautiful way with words.
Her mission statement ("So many things happen. I just write them all down.") was so simple and true, but it's the way she writes things down.
After reading a recent poem, she explained, "I interrupted that poem with some post-modernist pondering...but I think it survived intact," the entire audience was eating out of the palm of her hand and justifiably so.
A southern poet should be followed with a southern meal, so I had mine at Julep, where I get to enjoy the company of my good friend Holly (it's even more fun when we're both on the same side of the bar, but that'll happen next week).
I began with a salad that included grilled peaches and loads of bacon, followed by a bowl of Grilled Andouille Sausage and Grits too big to finish (I came close, though).
Multiple glasses of Barboursville Rose kept the southern theme going and I was almost ready to call it a night when new chef Brandon Levine came out and insisted I try his Bittersweet Chocolate Marquise Torte.
He didn't have to twist my arm too hard, but I did have to leave the south and switch to a heartier red wine for the dessert course and afterwards.
The torte was unlike any chocolate dessert I've had; it was incredibly dark chocolate and as light as a feather, even with the almond whipped cream and raspberry coulis.
I was southern stuffed and feeling just great about it.
Given, poetry isn't everyone's cup of tea, but tonight it was mine, even if it wasn't written for me specifically.
Dead end after dead end
is the only way into the high places.
I still have copies of them all (the most talented wrote me more than one).
And while this has nothing to do with my love of poetry readings, perhaps it does show that I'm inclined toward the poetic.
Tonight's Poetic Principles reading at the Virginia Museum featured Betty Adcock, a Texas-born North Carolinian with a southern drawl and a beautiful way with words.
Her mission statement ("So many things happen. I just write them all down.") was so simple and true, but it's the way she writes things down.
After reading a recent poem, she explained, "I interrupted that poem with some post-modernist pondering...but I think it survived intact," the entire audience was eating out of the palm of her hand and justifiably so.
A southern poet should be followed with a southern meal, so I had mine at Julep, where I get to enjoy the company of my good friend Holly (it's even more fun when we're both on the same side of the bar, but that'll happen next week).
I began with a salad that included grilled peaches and loads of bacon, followed by a bowl of Grilled Andouille Sausage and Grits too big to finish (I came close, though).
Multiple glasses of Barboursville Rose kept the southern theme going and I was almost ready to call it a night when new chef Brandon Levine came out and insisted I try his Bittersweet Chocolate Marquise Torte.
He didn't have to twist my arm too hard, but I did have to leave the south and switch to a heartier red wine for the dessert course and afterwards.
The torte was unlike any chocolate dessert I've had; it was incredibly dark chocolate and as light as a feather, even with the almond whipped cream and raspberry coulis.
I was southern stuffed and feeling just great about it.
Given, poetry isn't everyone's cup of tea, but tonight it was mine, even if it wasn't written for me specifically.
Dead end after dead end
is the only way into the high places.
Thursday, March 26, 2009
Poetry and Politics
At last night's Poetic Principles reading at the Virginia Museum, the audience was treated to the pleasure of hearing Peter Orner read.
Orner is a Chicago native who grew up in a politically-inclined family.
Naturally, this turned him off to politics for many years, until he realized that Chicago politics, in particular, was some pretty interesting stuff.
His political poems commented on the state of the city's politicians, while offering insight into the peculiar nature of these people, good and bad.
Orner's perspective is unique; he got a law degree, tried one case and lost and decided to go back to what he knew: writing.
Which is fortunate for those of us who are readers and listeners, as the small group last night sat enthralled to the man's voice and words.
When everything in your life is a wreck, poetry can make it all feel better.
That's poetic principle number one.
I;m still trying to figure out what the others are. Give me time...and a whole lot more poetry.
Orner is a Chicago native who grew up in a politically-inclined family.
Naturally, this turned him off to politics for many years, until he realized that Chicago politics, in particular, was some pretty interesting stuff.
His political poems commented on the state of the city's politicians, while offering insight into the peculiar nature of these people, good and bad.
Orner's perspective is unique; he got a law degree, tried one case and lost and decided to go back to what he knew: writing.
Which is fortunate for those of us who are readers and listeners, as the small group last night sat enthralled to the man's voice and words.
When everything in your life is a wreck, poetry can make it all feel better.
That's poetic principle number one.
I;m still trying to figure out what the others are. Give me time...and a whole lot more poetry.
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