[Ed Shacklee]

Bill Lantry read tonight in my home town of Takoma Park, MD, just across the border from D.C., with three other poets: Anastasia Ataku, Anne Dykers and Mark Fitzgerald. This was the first of the 2012 Third Thursday Poetry Reading Series moderated by Martin FitzPatrick.

Called Granola Park by local wits,Takoma Park is the sort of town where poetry appears to have legs: maybe not legs like Cyd Charisse or the Rockettes, but good, sturdy legs. Every year a new set of poems by poets such as Wendy Cope and others who have national or international reputations are posted along the main drag -- sort of like the stations of the cross, except for poems. You can learn a lot going to the local Co-Op and back. The Third Thursday series, held at the community center next to the library, drew more than fifty people on a cold and windy night.

First up was Anastasia Ataku, who’d never given a poetry reading before but came with a handful of poems that showed real promise, including a villanelle along with the free verse, and ending with a humorous take on getting your first kiss called (I think) “The Diary of a Cat Lady.” I got the feeling that each word she read had been spoken aloud while composing and considered long and hard, but the charm hadn’t been squeezed out. ‘Bata Drums’ struck a more serious tone with percussive elements and bloodshed; then a poem about D.C.’s annual Caribbean Carnival parade, that captured its fizz and color. Then just like that, it was over. A poet should leave her audience like that, wanting more.

Next up was Anne Dykers, who in many ways I found to be the most interesting poet there -- sorry, Bill! -- not so much because of the poems, though there were some really striking lines that have stayed with me.

A word of explanation: You might think that your correspondent would be an excellent guide to the diverse world of poetry in Takoma Park, his own home town, but you would be completely wrong. Before I joined the Sphere about a year ago, I was a rude, barbaric sort who lived in a cave -- well, a basement condo -- and never went to poetry readings; nor did I know much of anything about poets and their exotic ways. So, Anne Dykers comes on stage with two other readers, having printed out her poems on long pages of beautiful handmade paper that the three of them read together, with her taking the lead most of the time; the pages were so long she moved a bit while reading, though I think she had that poem by heart -- a long one, based on Rodin’s sculpture ‘The Rape’ retold as the rape (and killing, I think) of a young person. After the reading, someone who knows her told me about a poetry group Ms. Dykers is in that meets once a month. I’d mis-report even worse than I probably am now if I went into any detail, but part of it seems to entail one or more other readers reading a poem back to the poet who brings it, and having the poet respond to that on the fly: I think the technique is called By Hearting, and a main proponent of it is T. Begley. As different as all that sounds, the reason behind it seemed to be the same as the one that makes formal poets ‘submit to the anvil of rhyme’, as Leonard Cohen put it; to flush words from the bushes and make them tell you things. These sessions sometimes go for hours and hours, I was told. All this may be old hat to the rest of you, but I found it fascinating. Here is a poet that learned how to make the paper she is writing on, and is engaging in these exotic arduous practices, all for the love of poetry. And not one penny to be made from it, I’d bet, as that’s how poetry is. It was -- I say this with full approval, though without full understanding -- very Takoma Park.

Of the three poets besides Bill, I’d say that Mark Fitzgerald seemed most like someone who’d be picked out of a lineup on suspicion of poetry. Not a bad guess, either -- he has at least one book out, By Way of Dust and Rain, and the poems he read, about sweaters and hunger and tigers, among other things, had a certain polish. He was very tall and, well, smart-looking, giving the impression of a man who’s just come up for air after some intense reading. I’ve noticed that some very good free verse does better on paper than when spoken aloud, and I think that was the case here. I’m not sure why: it may be because I’d a long day and hadn’t caught my second wind yet. There were parts, like a phrase that began ‘greed buries guilt buries. . .‘ that I’d like to have heard again.

As for Bill, I had a revelation during his reading that I doubt he’s going to like much, though I mean it as a compliment. I realized why Elizabeth Barrett Browning was such a sensation: audiences really like love poems. Yes, you can be erudite, witty, archly ironic, iconoclastic, religious, gothically chic, etc., but audiences like love poems, it seems. It’s like catnip for cats or something. As for poems a poet decides not to read at the last minute because his love interest asked him not to, since she’s naked in it: they really like that. Me, I liked ‘Lotus’ the most, which I’d never heard before, and missed that there were none -- at least none I caught -- from The Language of Birds. And I liked drinking margueritas at Mi Rancho with Kate and Bill afterwards, with young James sprawled over two chairs pulled together, like a cat before a fireplace.

A contented, simple soul though I was back when I stayed snug in my little cave, I may go back for the next Third Thursday event, which will feature the poems of Brendan Ogg. Who knows: maybe I'll even meet some local poets and stuff.

Best,

Ed

[Richard Meyer]

Ed:

What a wonderful and readable report. Traits and characteristics that I've come to expect from you shine throughout this piece: thoroughness, care, wit, generosity, good will, love of language and life and people. And that' just the short list.

Thank you. Thank you.

Richard

[Maryann Corbett]

Thanks from me too, Ed. And as a former Beltway local, I'll be smiling about "Granola Park" for a long time.

[Andrew Frisardi]

What an enjoyable article, Ed. I feel like I came out of my cave right along with you. Thank you.

[W.F. Lantry]

Ed,

Thanks for writing this up. The margaritas were indeed tasty, and it was nice to have our car back (we had to show up at our last reading in a 13 year old pickup truck!)

Forgive me, though, for quibbling with your order. I would have put Annastasia first, for being most interesting, most lively, and with the best stage presence. She really is a very promising poet, especially since she's just starting out. Then would come Mark Fitzgerald, who already has a fair amount of experience (at least two books, and he's known on the local reading circuit.) Then would come Anne Dykers, she of the hand made paper. I'd place the doofus who wore a suit (in spite of Quincy's sartorial advice) dead last, and fading at the finish!

You're right, there was nothing from the Bird book, everything came from our rapidly approaching The Structure of Desire. I'd never tried any of them before in public (I'm getting a little weary of hearing myself do Five Years and Mobius). I was extremely surprised by the reaction, and I'm starting to rethink my approach to readings.

First, the poems, even if they look pretty simple and easy to follow on the page, are better received if I supply a gloss immediately before I read it. If the poem has four main elements, the gloss should *indirectly* mention each of those four elements. It takes about two minutes to read a 24 pentameter line poem, so the gloss should be well under half that, 30-45 seconds. I was stunned to see how many heads nodded when I got to each element: the listeners seemed to feel included, rather than behind the curve, or lost.

Second, I'd always thought a selection should have wide variation, and show a good range. A "something for everyone" approach. I realize now how misguided that was. A clear and overt theme seems to work much better. The risk, of course, is that some will feel excluded. In this occurrence, a crass overgeneralization would be 'men don't respond as well to love poems.' A gross overstatement, but it may have some truth to it: can you imagine Cantor sitting through all that incense and smoke and lamplight? He'd be howling from the back row by the time I got to the allusions to her lotus blossom! After all, that stuff is a far cry from his stated preference for 'pussy and pugilism!'

Which leads me on to this last, and far more interesting thing. You point out that many listeners really, really like love poems, which bears repeating, although people have known it since before Ovid and Sappho. The interesting question is, "why do they love them?" It's a key question for poetics, and I used to have an answer: it had to do with correlative experience, future expectation, even desire (one time, a woman looked up at me from her reading a book of Neruda's, and said "I wish someone loved me as much as he loved her!")

But looking out on some of their faces the other night as I read, I realized I'd gotten it all wrong. Something else was happening. I don't have words for it, but there were a few faces of near ecstasy, almost a kind of thrall. Now, I'm no spell-caster, but I did think of something Dickinson said, something like when she hears a real poem, she feels a tingle in her neck, or the back of her head coming off. I know the citation is inexact, but it's something close to that. I trust her as an accurate describer of her own experience, and I know what she means. But I wonder about the physical mechanism.

It's pretty much established, at this point, that playing or listening to certain types of music results in rising levels of oxytocin. Links to popular research here, here, and peripherally here. Now, please don't get the wrong idea, I'm not saying there was anything remotely close to an orgasmic orgy. But oxytocin might be an explanation for that phenomenon Dickinson described. Is it possible that certain love poems could slightly elevate levels the way certain music does?

I don't know, and I don't have any way, beyond anecdotal experience, to find out. But I do find the question of some small interest. It would go a long way towards explaining the reaction, and it may even be a better answer than the ones I used to rely on.

In any case, thanks for writing this up. I look forward to the next event.

Best,

Bill

[Jean L. Kreiling]

Ed, thanks for the eloquent review, and Bill, thanks for the insights from a reader. Both fascinating!

Best,
Jean

[Ed Shacklee]

Originally Posted by W.F. Lantry

Forgive me, though, for quibbling with your order. I would have put Annastasia first, for being most interesting, most lively, and with the best stage presence. She really is a very promising poet, especially since she's just starting out. Then would come Mark Fitzgerald, who already has a fair amount of experience (at least two books, and he's known on the local reading circuit.) Then would come Anne Dykers, she of the hand made paper. . . .

It's fair and perhaps right of you to do so, but as for myself, I wasn't really intending to rank the other poets, Bill, in terms of their poems. I only meant to say that I found the way Ms. Dykers, "she of the hand made paper," went about writing and reading poems -- making paper by hand, using a chorus, very different workshop strategies, etc. -- interesting. Complicated and exotic, yes, but interesting.

As to what worked in terms of poems read to the audience that night: the love poems worked, clearly. I don't know how broad a conclusion one can draw from that, however. Quality also had something to do with it, not just content; and the type of love poem -- not bitter, but not too sweet, either, almost religious in the sense of describing a conversion, almost a philosophy in the sense of how much it sought to encompass -- had something to do with it, too, I think. So, I don't know to what extent this lesson is transferable to other poets, who must write their own kinds of poems. All the same, watching the audience react to these particular love poems was even more interesting than inspecting Ms. Dyker's hand made, extra-long paper afterwards.

Best,

Ed

[Cally Conan-Davies]

Yes, indeed, thank you both for the feeling of almost being there!

Agent - I think you are a story teller. Truly.

Cally

[Terese Coe]

Congratulations on your reading going over so well, Bill!

...many listeners really, really like love poems, which bears repeating, although people have known it since before Ovid and Sappho. The interesting question is, "why do they love them?" It's a key question for poetics, and I used to have an answer: it had to do with correlative experience, future expectation, even desire...

Oy! It's too simple a question for those multisyllabic words--as you seem already to have noticed!