[Jeff Holt]

Okay, this started out as a reply to an invitation to another one of hundreds of invitations to awesome poetry readings and like events that seem to occur in one of the boroughs of New York City--often Brooklyn, with so many great poets being clustered there--as well as in Massachusetts, especially around Newburyport, where the mighty Powwow River Poets hold court--and West Chester, Pennsylvania, naturally, where I get to visit every 2-3 years and feel both fantastic and overcome with envy simply for the growth promoting atmosphere for poets!!--and numerous other places as far, far away from Dallas, Texas as they could possibly be.

Dallas.... What is the atmosphere of Dallas like? Slick. Veeery surface. Money, Fundamentalist Christianity, and Sex, Sex, Sex. Then all of the extreme poverty, of course, that doesn't make it onto all of the billboards filled with brightly smiling, half naked Stepford People. On the show "Good Christian Bitches," which I wound up watching the first episode of, the main character states, at the end of the show, that Dallas, statistically, has more churches per capita than any other city, and also more strip clubs per capita--the great double standard. I don't know, or care, if that statistic is true--it feels true, regardless.

So, what does Dallas have for a poetry scene? About 8 years ago, when I was single, I went looking, and the ONLY people I found were the Dallas Slam Poets, who were doing something completely different than me, or anyone in whom I was interested. I went to a few of their readings, and even stood up and recited Larkin's "This Be the Verse," as well as a couple of really dark Frost poems, before launching into some of my angriest stuff. People clapped, and I made my tiny impact, but it SO was NOT my scene.... It was more like a bunch of (predominantly) white people who were actually able to write pretty clever rap lyrics (a rare thing) and then PERFORM them.... everything was about the performance..... I got bored with it very quickly and cut out.

So, whenever people ask me if I go to poetry readings, I tend to respond with melancholy or bitter chuckles, explaining that the poetry I write just doesn't fit in around here... Then I wonder if I sound pompous and/or self-pitying and hate that. And thus I have existed, feeling trapped in Texas.... Like a country song (which I hear too many of, simply b/c I live here)... "trapped in Dallas with mah meeeter an' mah rhyme / Ain't no one 'round heah wanna paaaay me no mind....."

Now, Rhina Espaillat has always told me, when I have lamented the lack of anything in my area happening, that I should organize something myself. Well, because I am needed as Daddy at all 3 year old functions for the twins on weekends, and tend to work 10-11 hour days at my managed care job, I really don't think that I can organize something completely on my own.

However, it did occur to me that it wouldn't hurt to take the first step and just put a post out here, asking: Is anyone here from Dallas? Plano? Garland? Frisco? Somewhere else within driving distance? More specifically, is there anyone here who would be interested in getting together semi-regularly (even just once a month would be a great start) just to read metrical poetry? My ideal would be to have a group of anywhere from 5-10 people who showed up somewhere who simply loved poetry and, regardless of whether they had something of their own to read, would bring along work by a metrical poet whom they loved to share with the rest of us. If a person did have their own work to read, that's great, but I would definitely want to include something from a poet from the great tradition. This is actually something that I picked up from Dana Gioia, when I was first listening to him read.

But anyway, that is getting awfully specific for something that does not, at this point, exist. I first need to know if there are any like minded souls out there who exist within this proximity. I do know that Frederick Turner teaches fairly close by where I live, but I am betting that he would be too busy for this, though it would not hurt to contact him.

So, to quote the Pink Floyd song that has been running through my head all day, "Is there anybody out there?"