Let me tell you two things that'll get people out on a Tuesday evening: poetry and piano.
I know this because when I got to the Library of Virginia for tonight's installment of Poetic Principles, the room was buzzing with people there for the reading and it's not even poetry month.
Interestingly enough, one of the three readers, Paula Champa, was a fiction writer who shared two sections of her new novel, "The Afterlife of Emerson Tang," the story of four strangers trying to reunite a car's body and engine.
She was humorous, noting that generally writers are not advised to kill off main characters but doing it anyway.
"Our stories collided so forcefully they could not be separated," she read referring to the narrator and Emerson and using the kind of language that had many of the writers in the room nodding in approval of her phrasing.
Emilia Phillips read next and immediately apologized for reading off her laptop, explaining that she had a lot of new work but is in the process of moving back to Richmond, so the easiest way to access the work was digitally.
I have to admit, it doesn't have the same charm as reading from a dog-eared copy of a book or rifling through sheaves of paper, but the important thing was that we got to hear new stuff from her upcoming book, "Ground Speed," comprised, she said of essays and poems or some hybrid of both.
Promising that we might recognize some Richmond landmarks in the numbered essay,"No Man's Land," it was only moments before the intersection of North Lombardy and Brook Road was mentioned.
That's a particularly recognizable landmark for me because it's the Budget Inn there that is the turnaround point for one of my regular walks, although she referenced "bodies wheeled out of the Budget Inn" and I can't say I've ever seen that.
"A quarter plinks into the jukebox of my heart." she read in one especially well-turned phrase.
She told of being a child of four and a Baptist minister asking if she were to die today, would she go to heaven or hell. "My Mom doesn't let me go places like that by myself," she read.
Favorite line: "We're always leaving language, our most transient dwelling."
I've heard Emilia read before and I'll undoubtedly hear her again because of her pithy observations about the world and her place in it.
Our final reader was Joshua Poteat and right off the bat, he admitted he was not good at preparing, so he liked to bring a lot of poetry and a stopwatch and "hope I stop at the right moment."
But you can't sop till you start and he began with "Nostalgia of the Finite," a poem he'd written in graduate school back in the dark ages of the '90s. Wasn't that right after Guttenberg invented the printing press?
He read from an eBay copy of one of his books which he'd bought used from the Daniel Boone Library and entreated us not to support the Daniel Boone Library.
Admitting that he'd intended to read some happy poems until he realized he really didn't have any, instead he read "Death of the Death of Youth," with the beautiful line, "The noise of time is not sad."
For a long time, he said he'd avoided telling the truth in his poetry but now that it felt to him that his neighborhood of Church Hill was losing its authentic feeling - "Instead of hearing gunshots, you see chicken wings from the Roosevelt," he lamented- he was more inclined to be brutally honest.
That had led to "Department of Aerial Photography," also known as "Death Map," an interactive project that showed a map of the area where he grew up and when you clicked on a location, his words came up.
"Every photograph is a disaster that's already happened," he read. So true.
"Letter to Gabriel Written in the Margins of Murder Ballads" was a very long piece that paid tribute to Gabriel Prosser, the woman in his neighborhood who lived in her Oldsmobile on Leigh Street and Woo Woo, the neighborhood prostitute, in a a winding, storytelling manner.
Best line: "When the highways came, the houses didn't know enough to be afraid."
His stopwatch must have told him it was the right moment because all at once, he announced, "That's all!" and the reading ended. How beautifully poetic is that?
Next up was the sundown concert series so I made my way to a favorite pocket park for music in the grass. The series began last year and I'd enjoyed many summer evenings listening to music while the sun set.
See, that's key. The shows always begin 15 minutes before sundown, meaning a different start time every week and way different in May than September.
With a few scattered raindrops falling, I arrived to find the poet lounging with some friends, so after giving her a proper hard time for not attending the reading I'd just come from, we moved over to the enclosed grassy park.
I found a bench with a good vantage point and she joined some friends on a blanket. That was the preferred mode of concert watching tonight - stretched out on colorful blankets around the park- and I saw lots of familiar faces playing park blanket bingo with pizza, wine and other delectables.
At the front of the park sat the unlikeliest of sights, an upright piano under a tree. Before long, I noticed organizer Patrick lighting a candle to put on top of the piano.
Now the mood was set.
Chrijs Dowjhan, tonight's pianist, is a multi-talented man. He's a baker and cook, a teacher and hiker, fluent in Italian and seasoned with summers working at Italian vineyards. Plus he's an all around nice guy.
"I'm not really prepared tonight. I love Patrick," he said of the man who'd asked him to play. "Patrick is reliably unreliable, so when he asked me to play, I said sure, when you get a piano in the park, I'll play. I never really thought he would."
Then Chrijs sat down under the tree, in front of the piano, to play original music and adaptations he'd been working on the past few years.
I'd seen Chrijs play at the Listening Room last March and that had been my first clue what he could do with the ivories.
As he began playing, a gentle breeze picked up and before long, the enormous wind chimes hanging nearby began adding their distinct sound to Chrijs' dynamic one.
As he played, the crowd sat rapt and newcomers continued to arrive and find a place just outside the grassy area or among the other yard sitters. No one was talking, just listening.
"I'm not that prolific," he said after huge applause. "So I only have a few more songs. This next song I love to close my eyes and go some place else."
If the composer can, why not the audience, so I closed my eyes and allowed his playing to take me to another place.
When the audience began clapping enthusiastically, a neighborhood dog joined in, barking along with the applause.
The last piece of the night came with a story about how it came to be. Chrijs was in Italy, waiting for the farmer to come back and killing time with a Russian also staying there.
The Russian began writing poetry, Chrijs the music and while copious amounts of estate wine were consumed every night, they brought forth an exquisite composition we got to hear under a darkening sky tonight.
Interestingly enough, he stopped at one point, unsure of the music, before restarting. "What's up with you guys? You're making me nervous," he said, uncharacteristically flustered.
He had to be over-thinking it. So he let his mind go and his fingers took over the thinking and the piece was finished to hollers and a long round of applause.
He took a bow and Patrick sent us on our way with a mission.
"This isn't about me, it's about you guys, it's about all of us! Tell your friends about this series," Patrick called out. "Be ambassadors for what we're doing here. It's every Tuesday night until it's too cold to be out here anymore."
There's so much summer ahead of us. It's enough to make you want to just close your eyes and listen to the poetry and the music until it's the right moment to stop.
No over-thinking allowed in the meantime.
Showing posts with label emilia phillips. Show all posts
Showing posts with label emilia phillips. Show all posts
Tuesday, May 27, 2014
Thursday, March 13, 2014
To Love Life Terribly as I am Able
Sometime between Robert Frost and foie gras, a fierceness overtook the skies.
All was calm, all was warm when I walked into Chop Suey Books and found a crowd of poetry lovers waiting downstairs for the reading room upstairs to empty.
Right in front of me was the lovely poet who had earlier today posted to no one in particular, "Let's go to this. Tonight!" As she explained, it was not a message aimed at me since she never doubted for a second that I'd be in attendance.
The only thing better than a poet I don't know reading poetry to me is a man I do know reading poetry to me. For tonight, the strangers Emilia Philips and Nick McRae were my only offer.
Once upstairs, the room filled up so quickly that extra chairs had to be brought in, a sight that warmed my poetic heart.
Coming all the way from Texas, Nick McRae began with humor, saying, "Before Emilia comes up to read and blows you away, I thought I'd read a few poems."
After a poem about a dead deer, he commented how during the copy editing process of his book, Mountain Redemption, he'd noticed that there were lots of eviscerated deer in his poetry.
Probably not a realization most poets make.
He went on to recite, not read, a poem that he explained was not his own, but Elizabeth Bishop's 1953 "The Shampoo."
The shooting stars in your black hair
in bright formation
are flocking where,
so straight, so soon?
Come, let me wash it in this big tin basin
battered and shiny like the moon.
That was followed by another of his own, this one a touching eulogy to his grandfather, Joseph, a man who once put out a cigarette on his wife's tongue and later lost an eye to a knife slip while working in a carpet factory (which he considered his "just desserts") before dying while on his International harvester tractor.
A recitation of Robert Frost's 1926 "Desert Places" followed, once again proving what a fine interpreter of others' works he was.
There was a poem he wrote interpreting the legend of St. Nicholas, the Turkish bishop, with the line, "Streets purpled by dusk."
Isn't it magical when colors become verbs?
"Metaphor" was inspired by Virginia poet Claudia Emerson and repeated a line from her poem of the same name, "But mine is in no way equal to hers," McRae warned us.
He labeled "The Cause" a little less grim and said it had been written only a couple of months ago, but what struck me was the line, "To love you terribly as I am able."
Okay, so I didn't know Nick, but what woman doesn't want to hear a man read a line like that?
Next came Emilia Philips wearing fabulous shoulder duster earrings and looking absolutely tiny after the bear-sized McRae.
She spoke of having come back to Richmond last fall for surgery and the poems that came out of that experience before reading some of them.
"The Rising Cost of Dying" took its title from a TV segment seen in the subterranean MCV cancer ward waiting room.
Her Dad was the inspiration for "The Episode of 'Cops" in Which My Father Appeared" and referenced, "No suicides on basic cable," "pantless perps" and "a Yogi Bear jelly jar of milk."
How long has it been since I thought of those cartoon-festooned jelly jars that families use for glasses? An eternity.
After seeing a roadside Jesus sign in Denton, Texas, she'd written "Roadside America," observing "apocalypse is a matter of scale" and mentioning "the parable of the paper doll."
After reading nothing but new work, she returned to her book Signaletics for her final poem, saying, "I tried to think of one poem from it that I'd never read in Richmond, but I couldn't find a single one."
As one who had heard her read before, I know I wouldn't have minded hearing something she'd previously read. It's still a poet reading to me.
She settled for reading the book's final poem about a long ago trip to the VMFA to see "The Mourners: Tomb Sculptures from the Court of Burgundy," a gorgeous show I'd also seen, here, two years ago.
When Emilia had arrived, it had been prior to opening but she'd been allowed in and the docent had watched her like a hawk, as if she was going to make off with one of the foot and a half tall statues.
Her poem, "Mourner with Cow, Hands in Sleeve" chronicled her visit, with evocative images such as "all the color of smudged lipstick" and "ravaged by revolution."
And isn't that part of the pleasure of poetry, to hear how poets combine words and evoke things I can't see or hear?
Soul fed, I went to leave Chop Suey only to see it had begun to rain lightly outside while we'd been upstairs lost in poetry.
No matter, I scurried to my car and headed it east to the Slip for dinner at Bistro Bobette.
A friend had thrown out a challenge and promised the winner he'd buy them a drink and it was time to collect.
I bet I didn't get a mile before the rain picked up considerably and by the time I reached the crest of the hill leading down toward the Bottom, all hell broke loose and horizontal sheets of rain were flying across Cary Street in front of me.
Suddenly my floral skirt and open-toed shoes seemed woefully inadequate.
After parking only semi-illegally (a tad too close to a corner in all likelihood), I waited for a break in the monsoon to high tail it up to Bistro Bobette to meet the friend known as Rainman.
The kind of guy who can tell you the exact date he met you, who won the World Cup in what year and other ephemera most people forget immediately.
I arrived before he did, a rarity, and ordered a glass of Chateau Ferry Lacombe "Haedus" Rose to sip while looking through the program for the upcoming French Film festival.
No doubt he was surprised to arrive early (as is his wont) and find me already in place, and we lost no time in ordering a pate plate and an octopus special.
It's best to get the ordering out of the way when there's much to discuss.
Starting with his earlier e-mail comment ("That thud you heard was me falling out of my chair"), we began a major catch-up session first on my life and then on his.
Changes abounded.
So did fabulous food. Baby octopus and lump crab found happiness together with seaweed salad and tiny radish matchsticks, tasting of cardamom and a hint of other Indian spices.
Doing the heavy lifting was a plate of house made pate and variations. Foie gras mousse with marmalade was obscenely rich with a silky mouth feel, earthy and deeply flavored venison pate stalked our palates, a terrine of sweetbreads and pork loin had a bottom of foie gars for a sensual melange of innards and turkey rilletes benefited from a liberal layer of fleur de sel.
Add in tangy gherkins and pickled grape tomatoes and I'm ashamed to say we couldn't even finish the last few bites. Not that we didn't give it our all.
At one point our always agreeable barkeep came over to check if we needed anything and my only request was music. Silence was suddenly reigning and who wants that when there' so much to talk and laugh about?
He rectified the situation tout de suite and the XX eased over the speakers like fine wine.
A TV director came in to have dinner at the bar and my friend showed me his IMD page, unbeknownst to the man. Tough for me to be impressed when I recognize no TV shows.
Soon after arrived a neighbor I'd met at Bobette years ago, a man responsible for the lighting and/or sound systems in dozens of restaurants around town.
He told a hilarious story about driving a big truck to Champlain and trying to go through a tunnel too small for the truck.
When a cop pulled him over he said he was certain he was about to get a ticket, but fortunately his girlfriend's large breasts distracted the cop and all he got was a "Welcome to New Joisey!" and the command to make a U-turn and go another way.
Never underestimate the power of a large rack.
Once the chef finished service, he came out and joined the lively conversation, telling tales of a former restaurant he worked at and its thrifty blue hair clientele, his favorite northern Virginia sushi restaurant and reminscing about the rillettes and gherkins his father made for him as a boy in Paris.
While my friend and I shared a lavender honey chocolate mousse, we talked about The Shack, which resulted in my getting to hear an Indian and a Frenchman try to pronounce Staunton in their best American accents.
You've never heard such flat vowels as they did their best redneck imitations. The Staunton-off was topped only by a discussion of what part of an Indian you feel for confirmation of his maleness and what part of a Frenchman.
Touching a forehead, "Wow, that's a really big brain you have, mister.
We closed out a perfectly lovely meal with blood orange sorbet so exquisitely textured that my friend deemed it a disservice to call such a creamy concoction sorbet.
With just enough sweetness on the finish and a bright wash of acidity to cleanse the palate, it was as beautifully colored as it tasted.
Tongues oranged by the night, a poet might say. Or this.
All the color of smudged lipstick tonight was on the chef's two cheeks, left there in a European kiss by a happy diner.
All was calm, all was warm when I walked into Chop Suey Books and found a crowd of poetry lovers waiting downstairs for the reading room upstairs to empty.
Right in front of me was the lovely poet who had earlier today posted to no one in particular, "Let's go to this. Tonight!" As she explained, it was not a message aimed at me since she never doubted for a second that I'd be in attendance.
The only thing better than a poet I don't know reading poetry to me is a man I do know reading poetry to me. For tonight, the strangers Emilia Philips and Nick McRae were my only offer.
Once upstairs, the room filled up so quickly that extra chairs had to be brought in, a sight that warmed my poetic heart.
Coming all the way from Texas, Nick McRae began with humor, saying, "Before Emilia comes up to read and blows you away, I thought I'd read a few poems."
After a poem about a dead deer, he commented how during the copy editing process of his book, Mountain Redemption, he'd noticed that there were lots of eviscerated deer in his poetry.
Probably not a realization most poets make.
He went on to recite, not read, a poem that he explained was not his own, but Elizabeth Bishop's 1953 "The Shampoo."
The shooting stars in your black hair
in bright formation
are flocking where,
so straight, so soon?
Come, let me wash it in this big tin basin
battered and shiny like the moon.
That was followed by another of his own, this one a touching eulogy to his grandfather, Joseph, a man who once put out a cigarette on his wife's tongue and later lost an eye to a knife slip while working in a carpet factory (which he considered his "just desserts") before dying while on his International harvester tractor.
A recitation of Robert Frost's 1926 "Desert Places" followed, once again proving what a fine interpreter of others' works he was.
There was a poem he wrote interpreting the legend of St. Nicholas, the Turkish bishop, with the line, "Streets purpled by dusk."
Isn't it magical when colors become verbs?
"Metaphor" was inspired by Virginia poet Claudia Emerson and repeated a line from her poem of the same name, "But mine is in no way equal to hers," McRae warned us.
He labeled "The Cause" a little less grim and said it had been written only a couple of months ago, but what struck me was the line, "To love you terribly as I am able."
Okay, so I didn't know Nick, but what woman doesn't want to hear a man read a line like that?
Next came Emilia Philips wearing fabulous shoulder duster earrings and looking absolutely tiny after the bear-sized McRae.
She spoke of having come back to Richmond last fall for surgery and the poems that came out of that experience before reading some of them.
"The Rising Cost of Dying" took its title from a TV segment seen in the subterranean MCV cancer ward waiting room.
Her Dad was the inspiration for "The Episode of 'Cops" in Which My Father Appeared" and referenced, "No suicides on basic cable," "pantless perps" and "a Yogi Bear jelly jar of milk."
How long has it been since I thought of those cartoon-festooned jelly jars that families use for glasses? An eternity.
After seeing a roadside Jesus sign in Denton, Texas, she'd written "Roadside America," observing "apocalypse is a matter of scale" and mentioning "the parable of the paper doll."
After reading nothing but new work, she returned to her book Signaletics for her final poem, saying, "I tried to think of one poem from it that I'd never read in Richmond, but I couldn't find a single one."
As one who had heard her read before, I know I wouldn't have minded hearing something she'd previously read. It's still a poet reading to me.
She settled for reading the book's final poem about a long ago trip to the VMFA to see "The Mourners: Tomb Sculptures from the Court of Burgundy," a gorgeous show I'd also seen, here, two years ago.
When Emilia had arrived, it had been prior to opening but she'd been allowed in and the docent had watched her like a hawk, as if she was going to make off with one of the foot and a half tall statues.
Her poem, "Mourner with Cow, Hands in Sleeve" chronicled her visit, with evocative images such as "all the color of smudged lipstick" and "ravaged by revolution."
And isn't that part of the pleasure of poetry, to hear how poets combine words and evoke things I can't see or hear?
Soul fed, I went to leave Chop Suey only to see it had begun to rain lightly outside while we'd been upstairs lost in poetry.
No matter, I scurried to my car and headed it east to the Slip for dinner at Bistro Bobette.
A friend had thrown out a challenge and promised the winner he'd buy them a drink and it was time to collect.
I bet I didn't get a mile before the rain picked up considerably and by the time I reached the crest of the hill leading down toward the Bottom, all hell broke loose and horizontal sheets of rain were flying across Cary Street in front of me.
Suddenly my floral skirt and open-toed shoes seemed woefully inadequate.
After parking only semi-illegally (a tad too close to a corner in all likelihood), I waited for a break in the monsoon to high tail it up to Bistro Bobette to meet the friend known as Rainman.
The kind of guy who can tell you the exact date he met you, who won the World Cup in what year and other ephemera most people forget immediately.
I arrived before he did, a rarity, and ordered a glass of Chateau Ferry Lacombe "Haedus" Rose to sip while looking through the program for the upcoming French Film festival.
No doubt he was surprised to arrive early (as is his wont) and find me already in place, and we lost no time in ordering a pate plate and an octopus special.
It's best to get the ordering out of the way when there's much to discuss.
Starting with his earlier e-mail comment ("That thud you heard was me falling out of my chair"), we began a major catch-up session first on my life and then on his.
Changes abounded.
So did fabulous food. Baby octopus and lump crab found happiness together with seaweed salad and tiny radish matchsticks, tasting of cardamom and a hint of other Indian spices.
Doing the heavy lifting was a plate of house made pate and variations. Foie gras mousse with marmalade was obscenely rich with a silky mouth feel, earthy and deeply flavored venison pate stalked our palates, a terrine of sweetbreads and pork loin had a bottom of foie gars for a sensual melange of innards and turkey rilletes benefited from a liberal layer of fleur de sel.
Add in tangy gherkins and pickled grape tomatoes and I'm ashamed to say we couldn't even finish the last few bites. Not that we didn't give it our all.
At one point our always agreeable barkeep came over to check if we needed anything and my only request was music. Silence was suddenly reigning and who wants that when there' so much to talk and laugh about?
He rectified the situation tout de suite and the XX eased over the speakers like fine wine.
A TV director came in to have dinner at the bar and my friend showed me his IMD page, unbeknownst to the man. Tough for me to be impressed when I recognize no TV shows.
Soon after arrived a neighbor I'd met at Bobette years ago, a man responsible for the lighting and/or sound systems in dozens of restaurants around town.
He told a hilarious story about driving a big truck to Champlain and trying to go through a tunnel too small for the truck.
When a cop pulled him over he said he was certain he was about to get a ticket, but fortunately his girlfriend's large breasts distracted the cop and all he got was a "Welcome to New Joisey!" and the command to make a U-turn and go another way.
Never underestimate the power of a large rack.
Once the chef finished service, he came out and joined the lively conversation, telling tales of a former restaurant he worked at and its thrifty blue hair clientele, his favorite northern Virginia sushi restaurant and reminscing about the rillettes and gherkins his father made for him as a boy in Paris.
While my friend and I shared a lavender honey chocolate mousse, we talked about The Shack, which resulted in my getting to hear an Indian and a Frenchman try to pronounce Staunton in their best American accents.
You've never heard such flat vowels as they did their best redneck imitations. The Staunton-off was topped only by a discussion of what part of an Indian you feel for confirmation of his maleness and what part of a Frenchman.
Touching a forehead, "Wow, that's a really big brain you have, mister.
We closed out a perfectly lovely meal with blood orange sorbet so exquisitely textured that my friend deemed it a disservice to call such a creamy concoction sorbet.
With just enough sweetness on the finish and a bright wash of acidity to cleanse the palate, it was as beautifully colored as it tasted.
Tongues oranged by the night, a poet might say. Or this.
All the color of smudged lipstick tonight was on the chef's two cheeks, left there in a European kiss by a happy diner.
Sunday, March 27, 2011
Still Living in That Time Before Cell Phones
I assuaged my guilt about my corny morning movie by going to the French Film Festival this afternoon, although I left with a guilt of a different kind.
For some real French film making, I chose Jacques Perrin's "L'Empire du Millieu du Sud," a documentary about Vietnam's endless struggle against invaders.
Things got off to a slow start when the sound failed, not once, but twice, so we got to see the beginning of the film three times before progressing any further. It was well worth it.
Director Perrin began by saying it had taken over ten years to edit the huge amount of unreleased archival footage of Vietnam gathered from all over the world.
Accompanying that was poetry and writings about Vietnam written by Vietnamese, French and American writers, all of whom had some association with the country.
Beginning with the French colonization of Vietnam in the 1860s ("Colonization is not a right, but a duty" claimed the French), the film traced the history of the country that has had no choice but to put up with outsiders.
The descriptions of the heat and the adjustments the French made when they moved to Vietnam were so telling. Tennis had to be played at 5 a.m. before the heat set in. 8-10:00 was for work and then it was lunch and nap time. Work resumed around 5, followed by dinner.
The evenings were devoted to pleasures; one writer spoke of dancing as much as possible to convince themselves that they were alive. Luckily, they had the Vietnamese to wait on them to make such a lifestyle possible.
As the film followed France's defeat by Germany in the 40s, the Japanese invasion and eventually the U.S.' intervention, the Vietnamese people are shown being wounded, killed, burned out of their homes and generally suffering in the name of aid. It was tragic to see.
As a major documentary dork, seeing so much actual footage (laying booby traps, parachuting out of planes, graphic shots of treating wounded soldiers, pulling artillery up massive hills by hand) was fascinating and utterly depressing. I was glad I had come.
To lift my spirits after such a dose of reality, I walked out of the Byrd and across the street to Chop Suey for a poetry reading.
David Wojahn began by saying, "It's so nice that VCU has more than just the top ranked Creative Writing program!" He introduced poet Gregory Kimbrell by saying he writes of Planet Kimbrell, a world away.
With references to Edward Gorey and schizophrenia, Kimbrell read his story poems. In "The Age of Miracles" he wrote of "Our great-grandfathers who had caught fire just looking at the forest."
"The Morning Ritual" yielded my favorite line: "Though sometimes the ship sinks and one did not know why," and resulted in two poets in the room nodding their heads as he read the last line. Poet-approved poetry.
Emilia Phillips had a wonderfully clear reading style, perfect for the musicality of her poetry. I loved "Creation Myth" and its line, "As a child, my grandfather ate dandelion sandwiches, nothing but Wonder Bread and weeds."
The visiting poet was Sebastian Matthews, the son of a poet. He began by saying, "How great to know that VCU is going to the Final Four and twenty people are in this room for poetry." My sentiments exactly (and way to go, VCU!).
Matthews had recently collected some of his father's last writings into a book and began with some of his jokes.
What did the elephant say to the naked man? How do you eat with that thing?
Marriage #4 for him and #3 for her: These two believe in the format.
Laughter followed.
Given today's weather, it was fitting he read his father's "More Snow" with the line, "Roads were ramps to ditches."
His father's last poem, "Sad Stories Told in Bars, the Reader's Digest Version" was memorable for the line, "Not much of a story, is it? The life that matters, not the life I led."
Then he turned to his own work and read a jazz-focused one, "Live at the Village Vanguard," with references to the sounds in the room during the performance. "The laugh lifts up to step over the bass line." Just the imagery of that line satisfied me in that same glorious way that music does.
"In a Time Before Cell Phones" he as much as made my case for the unfortunate losses the devices have brought to the modern life (although happily not mine), things like "meeting by coincidence" and "we slept soundly in the dark spaces" referring to classrooms and waiting.
How lovely to have my afternoon end with a validation of my choice to live a life in the moment, with no chance of interruption or need to connect beyond those who surround me at that time.
I knew that poetry was just what I needed. Well, that and an Industrial sub from Coppola's Deli immediately afterwards, but not having a cell phone, I had to walk over there to order it.
It was my distinct pleasure to do so.
For some real French film making, I chose Jacques Perrin's "L'Empire du Millieu du Sud," a documentary about Vietnam's endless struggle against invaders.
Things got off to a slow start when the sound failed, not once, but twice, so we got to see the beginning of the film three times before progressing any further. It was well worth it.
Director Perrin began by saying it had taken over ten years to edit the huge amount of unreleased archival footage of Vietnam gathered from all over the world.
Accompanying that was poetry and writings about Vietnam written by Vietnamese, French and American writers, all of whom had some association with the country.
Beginning with the French colonization of Vietnam in the 1860s ("Colonization is not a right, but a duty" claimed the French), the film traced the history of the country that has had no choice but to put up with outsiders.
The descriptions of the heat and the adjustments the French made when they moved to Vietnam were so telling. Tennis had to be played at 5 a.m. before the heat set in. 8-10:00 was for work and then it was lunch and nap time. Work resumed around 5, followed by dinner.
The evenings were devoted to pleasures; one writer spoke of dancing as much as possible to convince themselves that they were alive. Luckily, they had the Vietnamese to wait on them to make such a lifestyle possible.
As the film followed France's defeat by Germany in the 40s, the Japanese invasion and eventually the U.S.' intervention, the Vietnamese people are shown being wounded, killed, burned out of their homes and generally suffering in the name of aid. It was tragic to see.
As a major documentary dork, seeing so much actual footage (laying booby traps, parachuting out of planes, graphic shots of treating wounded soldiers, pulling artillery up massive hills by hand) was fascinating and utterly depressing. I was glad I had come.
To lift my spirits after such a dose of reality, I walked out of the Byrd and across the street to Chop Suey for a poetry reading.
David Wojahn began by saying, "It's so nice that VCU has more than just the top ranked Creative Writing program!" He introduced poet Gregory Kimbrell by saying he writes of Planet Kimbrell, a world away.
With references to Edward Gorey and schizophrenia, Kimbrell read his story poems. In "The Age of Miracles" he wrote of "Our great-grandfathers who had caught fire just looking at the forest."
"The Morning Ritual" yielded my favorite line: "Though sometimes the ship sinks and one did not know why," and resulted in two poets in the room nodding their heads as he read the last line. Poet-approved poetry.
Emilia Phillips had a wonderfully clear reading style, perfect for the musicality of her poetry. I loved "Creation Myth" and its line, "As a child, my grandfather ate dandelion sandwiches, nothing but Wonder Bread and weeds."
The visiting poet was Sebastian Matthews, the son of a poet. He began by saying, "How great to know that VCU is going to the Final Four and twenty people are in this room for poetry." My sentiments exactly (and way to go, VCU!).
Matthews had recently collected some of his father's last writings into a book and began with some of his jokes.
What did the elephant say to the naked man? How do you eat with that thing?
Marriage #4 for him and #3 for her: These two believe in the format.
Laughter followed.
Given today's weather, it was fitting he read his father's "More Snow" with the line, "Roads were ramps to ditches."
His father's last poem, "Sad Stories Told in Bars, the Reader's Digest Version" was memorable for the line, "Not much of a story, is it? The life that matters, not the life I led."
Then he turned to his own work and read a jazz-focused one, "Live at the Village Vanguard," with references to the sounds in the room during the performance. "The laugh lifts up to step over the bass line." Just the imagery of that line satisfied me in that same glorious way that music does.
"In a Time Before Cell Phones" he as much as made my case for the unfortunate losses the devices have brought to the modern life (although happily not mine), things like "meeting by coincidence" and "we slept soundly in the dark spaces" referring to classrooms and waiting.
How lovely to have my afternoon end with a validation of my choice to live a life in the moment, with no chance of interruption or need to connect beyond those who surround me at that time.
I knew that poetry was just what I needed. Well, that and an Industrial sub from Coppola's Deli immediately afterwards, but not having a cell phone, I had to walk over there to order it.
It was my distinct pleasure to do so.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
