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 joshua poteat. Show all posts
Showing posts with label joshua poteat. Show all posts
Tuesday, May 27, 2014
Saturday, January 25, 2014
None Such as She
You know it's unpleasantly cold and windy when I forgo my walk for a movie.
I'll concede that part of the allure was that it was "The Philadelphia Story," guaranteeing the wittiest of dialog from Hepburn, Stewart (no one says "doggone" like that man) and Grant, but I'd also read that it was considered one of the best "comedies of remarriage," a genre I hadn't even know existed but was apparently big in the '30s and '40s.
What is it about a couple being together, divorcing and then remarrying that seems romantic to people, I wonder?
Cracks about the working class like, "I can't afford to hate anyone. I'm only a photographer," got things rolling.
For the record, writers can't afford to, either.
Or the mother/daughter conversation.
Mother: We both might face the facts that neither of us has proved to be a very great success as a wife.
Tracy: We just picked the wrong first husband.
I've heard it happens.
Give the film's year (1940), politically incorrect jokes abounded, like, "Since this is the south parlor, I rather expected picaninies and banjos" and "I thought all writers drank to excess and beat their wives."
I heard a woman in the row behind me ask her companion incredulously, "What year was this film?"
Three quarters of a century ago, my dear. We've come a long way, baby.
Language aside, the movie demonstrated three essential things: that champagne is the great leveler, women who don't drink lose their husbands and that you can never be a first class woman until you've learned to have some regard for human frailty, namely your husband's.
Lessons learned.
I finally got around to walking late this afternoon, once the sun peeked out from behind the bank of clouds and the temperature reached a balmy 35 degrees although it felt like 26 with the wind still gusting.
But I had no choice because my legs were aching to stretch, cold or not.
The highlights were the woodsy aromas of fireplaces smoke and seeing a skater knocking a hockey puck around on the frozen tennis court at Abner Clay Park.
Probably a transplanted mid-westerner or northerner.
Once the sun went down, I joined a group of poetry-lovers, partially to share body heat but also because I love having poetry read to me.
Chop Suey Books was filling up fast when I arrived in time to see the store cat, Wonton, knock over books as he sashayed from table to table.
Owner Ward said Joshus Poteat had been doing readings at the store since they'd opened and I bet I've been to almost all of them.
Naturally he read first, and like the poet who introduced him, Allison Seay, said, Josh has his own Wikipedia page, so he's a pretty big deal.
Allison is right, though, for as many times as I've heard him read, I always enjoy it.
From his "Orinthology" collection we heard "People Who Kill Me" with lines like the evocative, "Evening light folded around her" and "As if her nakedness was a chore I could forget."
Now there's a way to woo a woman - tell her more about the evening light folding around her nakedness.
Explaining that he was getting to the point in his life where he didn't care to explain things and his books were getting more conceptual, he said he was just going to start reading and we could extract what we wanted from it.
Given the past week's weather, I was taken by the line, "The snow, absolute in all its vastness," from "Illustrating the Snow Line."
He referred to a joint project he'd done with architectural historian Roberto Ventura but didn't want to go into detail about it.
He didn't need to for me because I'd not only gone to Ashland to see the show, "For Lucy and Yard Sale," here, but bought one of the pieces the two had created for it.
As he read "Illustrated Construction for Railroad," I eagerly awaited hearing, "There is agreeable sound here under the thistle," the line carved into the collaged piece that now hangs in my living room, reminding me of Josh's poem whenever I need a fix.
Saying, "It's nice that people want to come out for poems," he showed a map of the land in North Carolina where he'd grown up and said he was working on an essay about it.
Then he clarified that whenever a poet says he's working on something- an essay, a novel, an article- he's really working on new poems and so was Josh.
So new it doesn't have a name yet, but my favorite line so far was, "A living radio mouthing news to the wind."
Then it was Allison Seay's turn to read from her book, "To See the Queen," about her struggles with depression.
"I saw a figment of my imagination, I was healed and that's my story," she said to explain the progression of the book, which had not been written in order, the third section's poetry having been written first.
"I strung up a clothesline in a room and hung my poems up to figure out the structure of the book," she explained. I don't know about you, but the thought of poems on a clothesline struck me as poetic in and of itself.
"I wish I could arrange the disturbances of my life," she wrote in "The Difficult Way."
She said that learning that stanza was Italian for room changed her poems as she began thinking of each poem as a house or town with rooms.
In the title poem, "To See the Queen," she wrote, "My life for a while was forgotten and so repaired."
With lines like that, it wasn't surprising that she acknowledged, "My book is despairing, so I have to check with the audience to see if you're okay."
We were, but she seemed a tad shaky at times.
Sharing a favorite lines from Yeats, "We make out of the quarrel with others, rhetoric, out of the quarrels with ourselves, poetry," she went on to read some new work written during or since her first trip to Italy.
It was wonderfully different, as in "Inside the Well," with the lines, "All I need is the climate of you."
She closed with what she's calling her "spinster poems," a term referring to her 14-year old students' concerns for her unmarried status and her own jokes that she is a spinster.
"When we can, we save what we wish would come back," came from "May, the Occasion," and concluded the reading.
It's nice that poets want to come out and read to us on a Saturday night.
With words of longing and blackberries swirling around in my head, I walked a few doors down to Secco for dinner, finding a stool open in the middle of the bar.
I began with a small plate of delicately tempura-fried oyster mushrooms with lemon-espellete ailoi while chatting with the couple next to me who were curious why I wasn't drinking ( a fair enough question at Secco).
Moving on to an earthy and filling Asturian bean stew with smoked chorizo, slow-braised pork and leeks and the last order of garlic and herb focaccia in the house (they'd also 86'd the Spanish tortilla), the couple on the other side of me requested an audience.
"Are you Karen from 'I Could Go On and On'?" he asked, remembering meeting me at Amour Wine Bistro last summer. I'd noticed her earlier, specifically her curly hair, but couldn't place her out of context.
Like me, they'd been at Amour's anniversary party last May when the disco music was loud, the mirror ball spinning and we'd met and talked.
Tonight we just talked...about Amour's reopening and the couple's upcoming move to Dallas (a place I don't care for except when it houses my best friend).
It didn't seem to bother them that I wasn't drinking, much less to excess like a writer should. In related news, I don't have a wife to beat, either.
I only wish I had enough quarrels with myself to write poetry.
I'll concede that part of the allure was that it was "The Philadelphia Story," guaranteeing the wittiest of dialog from Hepburn, Stewart (no one says "doggone" like that man) and Grant, but I'd also read that it was considered one of the best "comedies of remarriage," a genre I hadn't even know existed but was apparently big in the '30s and '40s.
What is it about a couple being together, divorcing and then remarrying that seems romantic to people, I wonder?
Cracks about the working class like, "I can't afford to hate anyone. I'm only a photographer," got things rolling.
For the record, writers can't afford to, either.
Or the mother/daughter conversation.
Mother: We both might face the facts that neither of us has proved to be a very great success as a wife.
Tracy: We just picked the wrong first husband.
I've heard it happens.
Give the film's year (1940), politically incorrect jokes abounded, like, "Since this is the south parlor, I rather expected picaninies and banjos" and "I thought all writers drank to excess and beat their wives."
I heard a woman in the row behind me ask her companion incredulously, "What year was this film?"
Three quarters of a century ago, my dear. We've come a long way, baby.
Language aside, the movie demonstrated three essential things: that champagne is the great leveler, women who don't drink lose their husbands and that you can never be a first class woman until you've learned to have some regard for human frailty, namely your husband's.
Lessons learned.
I finally got around to walking late this afternoon, once the sun peeked out from behind the bank of clouds and the temperature reached a balmy 35 degrees although it felt like 26 with the wind still gusting.
But I had no choice because my legs were aching to stretch, cold or not.
The highlights were the woodsy aromas of fireplaces smoke and seeing a skater knocking a hockey puck around on the frozen tennis court at Abner Clay Park.
Probably a transplanted mid-westerner or northerner.
Once the sun went down, I joined a group of poetry-lovers, partially to share body heat but also because I love having poetry read to me.
Chop Suey Books was filling up fast when I arrived in time to see the store cat, Wonton, knock over books as he sashayed from table to table.
Owner Ward said Joshus Poteat had been doing readings at the store since they'd opened and I bet I've been to almost all of them.
Naturally he read first, and like the poet who introduced him, Allison Seay, said, Josh has his own Wikipedia page, so he's a pretty big deal.
Allison is right, though, for as many times as I've heard him read, I always enjoy it.
From his "Orinthology" collection we heard "People Who Kill Me" with lines like the evocative, "Evening light folded around her" and "As if her nakedness was a chore I could forget."
Now there's a way to woo a woman - tell her more about the evening light folding around her nakedness.
Explaining that he was getting to the point in his life where he didn't care to explain things and his books were getting more conceptual, he said he was just going to start reading and we could extract what we wanted from it.
Given the past week's weather, I was taken by the line, "The snow, absolute in all its vastness," from "Illustrating the Snow Line."
He referred to a joint project he'd done with architectural historian Roberto Ventura but didn't want to go into detail about it.
He didn't need to for me because I'd not only gone to Ashland to see the show, "For Lucy and Yard Sale," here, but bought one of the pieces the two had created for it.
As he read "Illustrated Construction for Railroad," I eagerly awaited hearing, "There is agreeable sound here under the thistle," the line carved into the collaged piece that now hangs in my living room, reminding me of Josh's poem whenever I need a fix.
Saying, "It's nice that people want to come out for poems," he showed a map of the land in North Carolina where he'd grown up and said he was working on an essay about it.
Then he clarified that whenever a poet says he's working on something- an essay, a novel, an article- he's really working on new poems and so was Josh.
So new it doesn't have a name yet, but my favorite line so far was, "A living radio mouthing news to the wind."
Then it was Allison Seay's turn to read from her book, "To See the Queen," about her struggles with depression.
"I saw a figment of my imagination, I was healed and that's my story," she said to explain the progression of the book, which had not been written in order, the third section's poetry having been written first.
"I strung up a clothesline in a room and hung my poems up to figure out the structure of the book," she explained. I don't know about you, but the thought of poems on a clothesline struck me as poetic in and of itself.
"I wish I could arrange the disturbances of my life," she wrote in "The Difficult Way."
She said that learning that stanza was Italian for room changed her poems as she began thinking of each poem as a house or town with rooms.
In the title poem, "To See the Queen," she wrote, "My life for a while was forgotten and so repaired."
With lines like that, it wasn't surprising that she acknowledged, "My book is despairing, so I have to check with the audience to see if you're okay."
We were, but she seemed a tad shaky at times.
Sharing a favorite lines from Yeats, "We make out of the quarrel with others, rhetoric, out of the quarrels with ourselves, poetry," she went on to read some new work written during or since her first trip to Italy.
It was wonderfully different, as in "Inside the Well," with the lines, "All I need is the climate of you."
She closed with what she's calling her "spinster poems," a term referring to her 14-year old students' concerns for her unmarried status and her own jokes that she is a spinster.
"When we can, we save what we wish would come back," came from "May, the Occasion," and concluded the reading.
It's nice that poets want to come out and read to us on a Saturday night.
With words of longing and blackberries swirling around in my head, I walked a few doors down to Secco for dinner, finding a stool open in the middle of the bar.
I began with a small plate of delicately tempura-fried oyster mushrooms with lemon-espellete ailoi while chatting with the couple next to me who were curious why I wasn't drinking ( a fair enough question at Secco).
Moving on to an earthy and filling Asturian bean stew with smoked chorizo, slow-braised pork and leeks and the last order of garlic and herb focaccia in the house (they'd also 86'd the Spanish tortilla), the couple on the other side of me requested an audience.
"Are you Karen from 'I Could Go On and On'?" he asked, remembering meeting me at Amour Wine Bistro last summer. I'd noticed her earlier, specifically her curly hair, but couldn't place her out of context.
Like me, they'd been at Amour's anniversary party last May when the disco music was loud, the mirror ball spinning and we'd met and talked.
Tonight we just talked...about Amour's reopening and the couple's upcoming move to Dallas (a place I don't care for except when it houses my best friend).
It didn't seem to bother them that I wasn't drinking, much less to excess like a writer should. In related news, I don't have a wife to beat, either.
I only wish I had enough quarrels with myself to write poetry.
Thursday, October 18, 2012
To Live This Life
Almost back in the saddle again, with only an occasional reach back.
Things got rolling at the Library of Virginia for Poetic Principles, a reading by Joshua Poteat and Henry Hart.
Arriving in the Library of Virginia garage, it was just me and one other woman and the parking attendant knew nothing of a poetry reading.
In the elevator going upstairs, we wondered if we'd both gotten the wrong date.
It seemed unlikely.
She introduced herself ("Hi, I'm Carol") as we took the elevator up.
Fortunately, there was a poetry reading when we got there, but we were the only attendees.
I've been an audience of one before, so I have no problem being an audience of two.
Eventually others arrived, meaning Carol and I had not been mistaken.
Best line overheard as I sat waiting for the reading to begin?
"Ever hear of the singer Elliot Smith?" a 20-something guy asks of a girl entranced by her phone. "He sang really sad songs."
Nope, she replied, going back to her phone.
Silly me, I'd have thought Elliot Smith would have been a terrific conversation-starter at a poetry reading.
Eventually Josh Poteat began the reading by thanking us for coming rather than going to the Byrd Theater for author Tom Robbins and a screening of "Even Cowgirls Get the Blues."
I've heard him read before (in fact, I have one of his lines of poetry etched into a piece of collaged wood hanging over a doorway), but he was reading new stuff tonight.
He dedicated "Curiosities of Puritan Nomenclature" about the strange names given Puritan children by their crazed parents (favorite line: "Make sweet what's given") to his wife.
From there, he spoke of a project where his inspiration came from the city of Richmond and the 1900 Sears & Roebuck catalog.
Wonderful imagery arose from poems with departmental names.
"Department of Telescopes" provided, "There in the night orchard of the clumsy city."
Oh, but we can be such a clumsy city sometimes.
In "Department of Taxidermy" came, "When there is another darkness, I'll admit it."
Between poems, it occurred to him that this was not a feel-good kind of reading.
"These are kind of bummer poems," he confessed. "Richmond isn't as bad as these poems make it sound."
Actually, Richmond is pretty cool if you ask me. Not perfect, but better all the time.
He introduced "Department of Masonry" by saying, "This poem begins with death metal bands and ends with me pouting in the backyard."
If that isn't the defining range of a whole generation of men, I don't know what is.
Best line: "It isn't enough, but I'll take what I can get."
About an unfinished poem concerning his obsession, the slave Gabriel Prosser, Poteat admitted, "This poem could be 120 pages long and that's a bad sign."
What was good were lines like, "The houses didn't know enough to be afraid" and "Help me, moonlight."
In "Department of Hymnals," we heard, "The night has used itself up" and "There's nothing I won't do to live this life."
I am particularly taken with the passion of the latter line.
Just before starting "Lighting Department," he said, "Thanks for coming and I hope I will see all of you again someday."
My guess would be at the next poetry reading.
Next up was Henry Hart who referred to Carol, the woman I had met in the garage, as "the guardian angel of poets."
Turns out Carol was Carol Weinstein, she who funds the series Poetic Principles and supports residencies for poets to work.
You know, that Carol.
Hart began with what he called an old poem, "A Gift of Warblers" about the art project he'd made for his grandfather who was always supportive of his poetic leanings.
"Janet Morgan and the Moon Shot" was about the moon landing in 1969 and had the line, "Discovering grace still depended on shifting weight."
"Mystery Play: November 22, 1963" was about his performance anxiety at being in the school musical when he couldn't sing.
"You know how some teachers like to torture students?" he said as if it were fact.
I didn't but he's a teacher, so I took his word for it.
Best line: "His face had hardened to a ridgeless nickle."
I've seen the ridgeless nickel look and it's not one I want directed my way.
A poem about his mother's occasional need to escape her three sons was called "Independence Day" with the line, "All summer she dreamed of storms."
"I doubted everything but luck" came from "Crossing the Gobi Desert Summer 1900," a poem about days lost crossing the desert.
When he finished reading, he offered to take questions, but none were forthcoming, so we scattered like crows.
I decided to go east to the Roosevelt for dinner, arriving to find I was one of scads of people who had made the same decision.
Every table was full, every bar stool was taken and there was a six-top ahead of me waiting for a table.
Even so, Sam Cook's "Chain Gang" was rising above the level of the chattering masses, so I wasn't going anywhere.
Since I had just come from hearing lines like, "Wind droned like bees," I took the drone of chatter for something more appealing and sat down on the waiting bench.
I was perfectly content crowd watching when a server offered to bring me a libation, swearing he had nothing else to do at the moment.
Not long after, a girl at the bar spotted me and reminded me she'd waited on me at Bistro Bobette.
She especially remembered a man I'd come in with, according to her, someone with a very dry British sense of humor, and I had no idea who she meant.
Still, it's always nice to be remembered.
White Hall Cabernet Franc was delivered and sipped until, as if an alarm went off, suddenly tables and bar stools were emptied.
Starving by then, I looked at the menu for new dishes to try, eventually deciding on rice grits, risotto, ham, crab and purple cape beans.
When I placed my order, bartender T. looked at me like I was crazy.
"Really, Karen? Risotto? Didn't you just get back from Italy?"
As I tried to sputter a justification, he went into full placating mode.
"No, no, that's good. You've got to wean yourself off slowly. You're doing the right thing."
I laughed out loud at that, but didn't have the heart to tell him I'd almost ordered the gnocchi as well.
Just as I was finishing the lovely combination of flavors, Chef Lee came out to chide me.
"You went to Italy for two weeks and you come here and order that shit?" he teased, pointing at my empty risotto bowl. "It's not going to be any good."
Of course, it was very good, but I understood his point.
To make peace in the kitchen, I promptly ordered Lee's chicken skin slider with kimchee mayo and pickles, hoping to use southern to knock Italian out of my head.
Kind of like rebound dating after a bad breakup.
As Neko Case's "Favorite" played, I ate fried chicken skin with my fingers, the better to reprogram my brain and taste buds.
That, my friends, is how I replace the pleasures of Italy with those of Richmond.
Poetically speaking, that's the way to make sweet what's been given to me.
Things got rolling at the Library of Virginia for Poetic Principles, a reading by Joshua Poteat and Henry Hart.
Arriving in the Library of Virginia garage, it was just me and one other woman and the parking attendant knew nothing of a poetry reading.
In the elevator going upstairs, we wondered if we'd both gotten the wrong date.
It seemed unlikely.
She introduced herself ("Hi, I'm Carol") as we took the elevator up.
Fortunately, there was a poetry reading when we got there, but we were the only attendees.
I've been an audience of one before, so I have no problem being an audience of two.
Eventually others arrived, meaning Carol and I had not been mistaken.
Best line overheard as I sat waiting for the reading to begin?
"Ever hear of the singer Elliot Smith?" a 20-something guy asks of a girl entranced by her phone. "He sang really sad songs."
Nope, she replied, going back to her phone.
Silly me, I'd have thought Elliot Smith would have been a terrific conversation-starter at a poetry reading.
Eventually Josh Poteat began the reading by thanking us for coming rather than going to the Byrd Theater for author Tom Robbins and a screening of "Even Cowgirls Get the Blues."
I've heard him read before (in fact, I have one of his lines of poetry etched into a piece of collaged wood hanging over a doorway), but he was reading new stuff tonight.
He dedicated "Curiosities of Puritan Nomenclature" about the strange names given Puritan children by their crazed parents (favorite line: "Make sweet what's given") to his wife.
From there, he spoke of a project where his inspiration came from the city of Richmond and the 1900 Sears & Roebuck catalog.
Wonderful imagery arose from poems with departmental names.
"Department of Telescopes" provided, "There in the night orchard of the clumsy city."
Oh, but we can be such a clumsy city sometimes.
In "Department of Taxidermy" came, "When there is another darkness, I'll admit it."
Between poems, it occurred to him that this was not a feel-good kind of reading.
"These are kind of bummer poems," he confessed. "Richmond isn't as bad as these poems make it sound."
Actually, Richmond is pretty cool if you ask me. Not perfect, but better all the time.
He introduced "Department of Masonry" by saying, "This poem begins with death metal bands and ends with me pouting in the backyard."
If that isn't the defining range of a whole generation of men, I don't know what is.
Best line: "It isn't enough, but I'll take what I can get."
About an unfinished poem concerning his obsession, the slave Gabriel Prosser, Poteat admitted, "This poem could be 120 pages long and that's a bad sign."
What was good were lines like, "The houses didn't know enough to be afraid" and "Help me, moonlight."
In "Department of Hymnals," we heard, "The night has used itself up" and "There's nothing I won't do to live this life."
I am particularly taken with the passion of the latter line.
Just before starting "Lighting Department," he said, "Thanks for coming and I hope I will see all of you again someday."
My guess would be at the next poetry reading.
Next up was Henry Hart who referred to Carol, the woman I had met in the garage, as "the guardian angel of poets."
Turns out Carol was Carol Weinstein, she who funds the series Poetic Principles and supports residencies for poets to work.
You know, that Carol.
Hart began with what he called an old poem, "A Gift of Warblers" about the art project he'd made for his grandfather who was always supportive of his poetic leanings.
"Janet Morgan and the Moon Shot" was about the moon landing in 1969 and had the line, "Discovering grace still depended on shifting weight."
"Mystery Play: November 22, 1963" was about his performance anxiety at being in the school musical when he couldn't sing.
"You know how some teachers like to torture students?" he said as if it were fact.
I didn't but he's a teacher, so I took his word for it.
Best line: "His face had hardened to a ridgeless nickle."
I've seen the ridgeless nickel look and it's not one I want directed my way.
A poem about his mother's occasional need to escape her three sons was called "Independence Day" with the line, "All summer she dreamed of storms."
"I doubted everything but luck" came from "Crossing the Gobi Desert Summer 1900," a poem about days lost crossing the desert.
When he finished reading, he offered to take questions, but none were forthcoming, so we scattered like crows.
I decided to go east to the Roosevelt for dinner, arriving to find I was one of scads of people who had made the same decision.
Every table was full, every bar stool was taken and there was a six-top ahead of me waiting for a table.
Even so, Sam Cook's "Chain Gang" was rising above the level of the chattering masses, so I wasn't going anywhere.
Since I had just come from hearing lines like, "Wind droned like bees," I took the drone of chatter for something more appealing and sat down on the waiting bench.
I was perfectly content crowd watching when a server offered to bring me a libation, swearing he had nothing else to do at the moment.
Not long after, a girl at the bar spotted me and reminded me she'd waited on me at Bistro Bobette.
She especially remembered a man I'd come in with, according to her, someone with a very dry British sense of humor, and I had no idea who she meant.
Still, it's always nice to be remembered.
White Hall Cabernet Franc was delivered and sipped until, as if an alarm went off, suddenly tables and bar stools were emptied.
Starving by then, I looked at the menu for new dishes to try, eventually deciding on rice grits, risotto, ham, crab and purple cape beans.
When I placed my order, bartender T. looked at me like I was crazy.
"Really, Karen? Risotto? Didn't you just get back from Italy?"
As I tried to sputter a justification, he went into full placating mode.
"No, no, that's good. You've got to wean yourself off slowly. You're doing the right thing."
I laughed out loud at that, but didn't have the heart to tell him I'd almost ordered the gnocchi as well.
Just as I was finishing the lovely combination of flavors, Chef Lee came out to chide me.
"You went to Italy for two weeks and you come here and order that shit?" he teased, pointing at my empty risotto bowl. "It's not going to be any good."
Of course, it was very good, but I understood his point.
To make peace in the kitchen, I promptly ordered Lee's chicken skin slider with kimchee mayo and pickles, hoping to use southern to knock Italian out of my head.
Kind of like rebound dating after a bad breakup.
As Neko Case's "Favorite" played, I ate fried chicken skin with my fingers, the better to reprogram my brain and taste buds.
That, my friends, is how I replace the pleasures of Italy with those of Richmond.
Poetically speaking, that's the way to make sweet what's been given to me.
Sunday, February 20, 2011
My Sins Found Me Out in Ashland
If art and writers are placed at the center of the universe, I will go on a Sunday afternoon.
That meant a short drive up Route 301 to the Flippo Gallery at Randolph Macon for the opening of "Artists and Writers II," a biennial invitational exhibit of collaborative works between, duh, artists and writers, even when they're the same person.
Which was the case with comic book artist Dash Shaw, whose monochromatically blue and green panels of a dating adventure opened the show. I was especially taken with the panels of a couple discussing their pasts.
Him: When I was in college, I was with a 33-year old.
Her: What did she teach you?
Him: There are things that are illegal in certain states that women really enjoy over the age of 30.
I was the only one who laughed out loud at those panels, admittedly, but I was in a cluster of people all of whom appeared to be under 30.
The Susan Singer/Valley Haggard collaboration involved Singer taking over 300 nude photos of Haggard and from them producing three paintings which hung in today's show, surrounded by two lists of words.
One held negatives (fat, cellulite, lard ass, thunder thighs) and the other positives (luscious, curvy, voluptuous, goddess), demonstrating the mental progress Haggard made about her body over the year they worked together.
Man-about-town Harry Kollatz collaborated with Amie Oliver for a series of paintings that included some of Harry's scribbles over the past fifteen years. The paintings of coffee cups, flowers and Harry were all done in beautiful winter shades of white, gray and black.
Oliver had traced over Harry's jottings to achieve words on canvas, my favorite being "I have lived long enough that my sins have found me out." A painting of Harry's ubiquitous hat was overlaid with, "C'est ne pas Harry," for a touch of humor.
Poet Joshua Poteat and architectural historian Roberto Ventura came together for a series of panels called, "For Lucy and Yard Sale," based on a news story about a homeless man's murder and the friends he left behind. The thematic nature of the piece was based on railroads, since the friends had hopped trains together.
Lines from one of Poteat's poems were used on wooden panels for a site-specific installation and some also had bits of the news story on them; the proceeds of the sale of the individual pieces will go to the Daily Planet.
I was so taken with a line of poetry on one of the panels that I immediately found the gallery's director and bought it.
While I'll have to wait until April when the show closes to collect it, I look forward to having a piece of poetry on my wall, especially one purchased for a worthwhile and local cause.
The opening was packed and most people stayed for the reading afterwards. Haggard began with ruminations about the self-exploration she'd done during the course of the project.
She said the end result was the ability to allow her insecurities to coexist with her body's past (six surgeries, six miscarriages and one child) in a peaceful and gentle way.
Harry put on his actor's hat (that is, voice) for a reading from old journals of random jottings and overheard conversations; thus we heard things like, "You have to be young, stoned and have good bowels to make art." He spoke of seeing graffiti saying, "Jesus is a gay Boy Scout" in three different handwritings.
Josh Poteat read his previously-written poem, the one that had resonated so strongly when they began their site-specific project. It's the second such piece he's done with Ventura and they hope to do more.
And I got to hear the poet read the line which had compelled me to buy a piece of art in Ashland when I had no intention of doing any such thing.
There is an agreeable sound here, under the thistle...
Not that craving words and art could be considered sins, at least not in my (illustrated) book.
That meant a short drive up Route 301 to the Flippo Gallery at Randolph Macon for the opening of "Artists and Writers II," a biennial invitational exhibit of collaborative works between, duh, artists and writers, even when they're the same person.
Which was the case with comic book artist Dash Shaw, whose monochromatically blue and green panels of a dating adventure opened the show. I was especially taken with the panels of a couple discussing their pasts.
Him: When I was in college, I was with a 33-year old.
Her: What did she teach you?
Him: There are things that are illegal in certain states that women really enjoy over the age of 30.
I was the only one who laughed out loud at those panels, admittedly, but I was in a cluster of people all of whom appeared to be under 30.
The Susan Singer/Valley Haggard collaboration involved Singer taking over 300 nude photos of Haggard and from them producing three paintings which hung in today's show, surrounded by two lists of words.
One held negatives (fat, cellulite, lard ass, thunder thighs) and the other positives (luscious, curvy, voluptuous, goddess), demonstrating the mental progress Haggard made about her body over the year they worked together.
Man-about-town Harry Kollatz collaborated with Amie Oliver for a series of paintings that included some of Harry's scribbles over the past fifteen years. The paintings of coffee cups, flowers and Harry were all done in beautiful winter shades of white, gray and black.
Oliver had traced over Harry's jottings to achieve words on canvas, my favorite being "I have lived long enough that my sins have found me out." A painting of Harry's ubiquitous hat was overlaid with, "C'est ne pas Harry," for a touch of humor.
Poet Joshua Poteat and architectural historian Roberto Ventura came together for a series of panels called, "For Lucy and Yard Sale," based on a news story about a homeless man's murder and the friends he left behind. The thematic nature of the piece was based on railroads, since the friends had hopped trains together.
Lines from one of Poteat's poems were used on wooden panels for a site-specific installation and some also had bits of the news story on them; the proceeds of the sale of the individual pieces will go to the Daily Planet.
I was so taken with a line of poetry on one of the panels that I immediately found the gallery's director and bought it.
While I'll have to wait until April when the show closes to collect it, I look forward to having a piece of poetry on my wall, especially one purchased for a worthwhile and local cause.
The opening was packed and most people stayed for the reading afterwards. Haggard began with ruminations about the self-exploration she'd done during the course of the project.
She said the end result was the ability to allow her insecurities to coexist with her body's past (six surgeries, six miscarriages and one child) in a peaceful and gentle way.
Harry put on his actor's hat (that is, voice) for a reading from old journals of random jottings and overheard conversations; thus we heard things like, "You have to be young, stoned and have good bowels to make art." He spoke of seeing graffiti saying, "Jesus is a gay Boy Scout" in three different handwritings.
Josh Poteat read his previously-written poem, the one that had resonated so strongly when they began their site-specific project. It's the second such piece he's done with Ventura and they hope to do more.
And I got to hear the poet read the line which had compelled me to buy a piece of art in Ashland when I had no intention of doing any such thing.
There is an agreeable sound here, under the thistle...
Not that craving words and art could be considered sins, at least not in my (illustrated) book.
Saturday, April 3, 2010
National Feed Me Month
On the off chance you don't keep up with such things, April is National Anxiety Month, National Humor Month And National Welding Month. And if you weld together anxiety and humor, what do you get but National Poetry Month?
Fittingly, 1708 Gallery hosted a poetry reading tonight featuring three Richmond poets. The art-filled gallery was an ideal place for a reading and the exhibit, "Home is Where the Art Is: 1708 Gallery's 20th Annual Art Auction Benefit" displayed a fascinating exhibit of close to 50 artists. I may have come for poetry, but I made sure I saw the entire exhibit before actually sitting down.
The poetry began with Joshua Poteat who appropriately set the tone by saying to the audience, "Nice day to be inside, huh? Thank you for being nerds." That's a greeting that speaks to someone like me. He showed his own nerdiness when just after finishing a poem, he pointed to his book and said, "There's a missing period there that I've never noticed before," and tossed the book aside in mock-disgust (or perhaps true disgust). The imagery in his poems was beautiful; I particularly liked "Illustrating the Theory of Twilight."
Tarfia Faizullah's poetry had a distinctly outsider's viewpoint, both as a woman and as one with roots in India. She began by telling us that due to limited time, she had begun writing sonnets because, "...fourteen lines, how long could it take?" Writing her "Poetry Recitation at St. Catherine's School for Girls" caused Anglican flashbacks for her since she'd gone to a girls' school in Texas. It also caused high school remorse because, "I want a do-over. I could do it so much better now." Couldn't we all?
Daniel Coudriet teaches at UR and admitted right up front that tonight's reading was the first he'd ever attempted without contacts or glasses. After a bit of trombone playing, he found a comfortable distance from which to read by saying, "I see something that looks like the English language." He introduced "Lyric" by saying, "Just imagine it's snowing," which was no easy feat given today's weather. He warned us before reading "The Rodents" that "This is weird stuff and they get weirder." For him, the high point came when he was able to read the phrase "disembodied beard" something he never expected to say, much less write.
Since it was a walking night, I ambled down to Bistro 27 afterwards for dinner and conversation. Chef Carlos was sitting at the bar since it wasn't busy yet, so he patted the stool next to him and I took it. We had loads to catch up on since the last time I'd been in I'd had a friend with me and we hadn't been able to really talk. He had a lot to share about the hoopla at First Fridays, soliciting other restaurant owners' opinions on hot topics and the differences in red and white wine for him. He insisted I drink his wine of choice for the evening, the Tenuta San Pietro Gavi di Gavi and it was the ideal sip for a spring evening.
"Are you going to eat?" he asked me after a while, jumping up as he asked. As opposed to...what, I asked. Yes, of course I was there to eat and he told me to sit tight and he'd make me a favorite Brazilian dish, one his momma used to make for him and that he now recreates because he loves it so much. He warned me of its African influences (because of Brazil's enormous African slave population) which only made it sound more appealing.
The next thing I know he was placing a plate of Bobo de Camarae in front of me. It appeared to be shrimp and all he'd tell me is that the sauce had coconut milk, yucca and palm oil. What I register is that it's incredibly fragrant and enticing. He says that it's usually served over rice, but instead he wants me to use bread for sopping up the sauce. It does have a distinctly African flavor to it and my only regret is coming to the end of something so unique and delicious Still, I'm incredibly grateful for such a gift; I only wish it were on the menu.
Next up was the highly-recommended asparagus bisque with crab meat and fried proscuitto. Nothing could have topped the Bobo, but this soup was excellent. It had a depth of flavor that could have stood on its own without the crab and pig, but they were such lovely additions in their own right. Let's find more reasons to fry proscuitto, shall we?
There were three other regulars at the bar tonight and one was the high society type, so he regaled me with stories of foxhunts and charity balls until I was bored (and perhaps a but tired of his drunken repetition). Luckily, it was easy enough to move myself and my glass of Villa Mt. Eden Cabernet Sauvignon to a nearby table to allow for catch-up chats with certain staff members who wanted a private audience; they're a varied cast of characters with whom I have ongoing discussions on completely different subjects.
Once the bar cleared, I returned to finish out the evening talking to Carlos about being Catholic, customers who arrive tanked and changes in restaurant service. He's got a new manager whom I know well from other restaurants and he added his witty two cents to the discussion.
When it was finally time to go, neither approved of me walking home alone so offers were made. I chose the manager's proposal to be walked home (he'd biked) over being chef-driven because my intention all along had been to make it a neighborhood night and walk.
Besides, the only way to end a night that involves poetry reading and the gift of bobo de camarae is with a leisurely walk through Jackson Ward. If you haven't tried it, I highly recommend it.
Fittingly, 1708 Gallery hosted a poetry reading tonight featuring three Richmond poets. The art-filled gallery was an ideal place for a reading and the exhibit, "Home is Where the Art Is: 1708 Gallery's 20th Annual Art Auction Benefit" displayed a fascinating exhibit of close to 50 artists. I may have come for poetry, but I made sure I saw the entire exhibit before actually sitting down.
The poetry began with Joshua Poteat who appropriately set the tone by saying to the audience, "Nice day to be inside, huh? Thank you for being nerds." That's a greeting that speaks to someone like me. He showed his own nerdiness when just after finishing a poem, he pointed to his book and said, "There's a missing period there that I've never noticed before," and tossed the book aside in mock-disgust (or perhaps true disgust). The imagery in his poems was beautiful; I particularly liked "Illustrating the Theory of Twilight."
Tarfia Faizullah's poetry had a distinctly outsider's viewpoint, both as a woman and as one with roots in India. She began by telling us that due to limited time, she had begun writing sonnets because, "...fourteen lines, how long could it take?" Writing her "Poetry Recitation at St. Catherine's School for Girls" caused Anglican flashbacks for her since she'd gone to a girls' school in Texas. It also caused high school remorse because, "I want a do-over. I could do it so much better now." Couldn't we all?
Daniel Coudriet teaches at UR and admitted right up front that tonight's reading was the first he'd ever attempted without contacts or glasses. After a bit of trombone playing, he found a comfortable distance from which to read by saying, "I see something that looks like the English language." He introduced "Lyric" by saying, "Just imagine it's snowing," which was no easy feat given today's weather. He warned us before reading "The Rodents" that "This is weird stuff and they get weirder." For him, the high point came when he was able to read the phrase "disembodied beard" something he never expected to say, much less write.
Since it was a walking night, I ambled down to Bistro 27 afterwards for dinner and conversation. Chef Carlos was sitting at the bar since it wasn't busy yet, so he patted the stool next to him and I took it. We had loads to catch up on since the last time I'd been in I'd had a friend with me and we hadn't been able to really talk. He had a lot to share about the hoopla at First Fridays, soliciting other restaurant owners' opinions on hot topics and the differences in red and white wine for him. He insisted I drink his wine of choice for the evening, the Tenuta San Pietro Gavi di Gavi and it was the ideal sip for a spring evening.
"Are you going to eat?" he asked me after a while, jumping up as he asked. As opposed to...what, I asked. Yes, of course I was there to eat and he told me to sit tight and he'd make me a favorite Brazilian dish, one his momma used to make for him and that he now recreates because he loves it so much. He warned me of its African influences (because of Brazil's enormous African slave population) which only made it sound more appealing.
The next thing I know he was placing a plate of Bobo de Camarae in front of me. It appeared to be shrimp and all he'd tell me is that the sauce had coconut milk, yucca and palm oil. What I register is that it's incredibly fragrant and enticing. He says that it's usually served over rice, but instead he wants me to use bread for sopping up the sauce. It does have a distinctly African flavor to it and my only regret is coming to the end of something so unique and delicious Still, I'm incredibly grateful for such a gift; I only wish it were on the menu.
Next up was the highly-recommended asparagus bisque with crab meat and fried proscuitto. Nothing could have topped the Bobo, but this soup was excellent. It had a depth of flavor that could have stood on its own without the crab and pig, but they were such lovely additions in their own right. Let's find more reasons to fry proscuitto, shall we?
There were three other regulars at the bar tonight and one was the high society type, so he regaled me with stories of foxhunts and charity balls until I was bored (and perhaps a but tired of his drunken repetition). Luckily, it was easy enough to move myself and my glass of Villa Mt. Eden Cabernet Sauvignon to a nearby table to allow for catch-up chats with certain staff members who wanted a private audience; they're a varied cast of characters with whom I have ongoing discussions on completely different subjects.
Once the bar cleared, I returned to finish out the evening talking to Carlos about being Catholic, customers who arrive tanked and changes in restaurant service. He's got a new manager whom I know well from other restaurants and he added his witty two cents to the discussion.
When it was finally time to go, neither approved of me walking home alone so offers were made. I chose the manager's proposal to be walked home (he'd biked) over being chef-driven because my intention all along had been to make it a neighborhood night and walk.
Besides, the only way to end a night that involves poetry reading and the gift of bobo de camarae is with a leisurely walk through Jackson Ward. If you haven't tried it, I highly recommend it.
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