I'm called "The Helen Mirren of Poetry" -- 2 New Year's Day readings

I didn't blog on 1-1-10 because I was busy. I had planned on blogging. The first day of a new year let alone a new decade did seem to be an auspicious time to be public, but I spent the morning doing nothing of use, and the afternoon and evening (until midnight) listening to poets.

I started off at the Bowery Poetry Club, where the annual poetry marathon was underway. It was too crowded to get a seat in back where the stage and bar are, so I sat at a table in front and served as a beacon to other poets who stopped by with greetings. That is until Steve Dalachinsky and Yuko Otomo whisked me away and over to the Poetry Project's annual marathon.

Here's the difference between the two events. The Poetry Project New Year's fund raiser/reading, in its 35th year invites poets and a few musicians read by invitation only; it costs at least $15 (for ten hours of entertainment). The Bowery Poetry Club marathon began in protest--battle of the East Village poets. Bob Holman, maestro of the BPC and one of the hippest people I will ever meet, donates the space so it's free. Readers also invited but there's an open mic every few hours. The BPC presumably makes money off its bar, while the Poetry Project, sharing its housing with a church, sets up large tables in the back room for potluck dishes (pretty cheap) and the like.

Both events were wonderful. New Year's Day is always a day of healing for me. I see people I've been resenting and forgive everything. Yesterday, sitting in two different but capacious "containers" for poetry and poets I also experienced a blessed sense of deflation about myself as a poet. There are so many of us. Audiences want to be entertained or amazed or given hope or blissfully confounded.

No one really knows anything. We all keep writing. We all could be doing something else but we all believe that's not the case. No one knows whose work will last. Competition is futile. Big breasts don't necessarily help. Hipness can help but so can sincerity, not that the two are mutually exclusive.

I might have taken a bus home for a quick write, but I'd left my wallet at home. That's pretty weird! I had slipped change from a ten after I'd bought coffee that morning, so I was able to buy some food, but I didn't have my bus pass.

And I decided it's better to be with friends--and I have friends among the washed and unwashed, the invited and disgruntled--than adhere to that old petty consistency. See, I'd MADE a plan and abandoned it. Reason #902 why I'm Not a Planner.

I left the Poetry Project around 8, returned to the Bowery Poetry Club (they are maybe ten blocks apart), found the Roberts (two great friends of mine) at the Bowery and sat with them for the next thee hours. Big Mike was the host for my time slot--I'd been scheduled in the 10-midnight slot this year. He has dedicated his life to shouting and vulgarity (Big Mike also calls himself Big Fucking Mike); his undergrad. degree is from Columbia and he's a nurse.

He shouted his usual lovable insults before I got on stage, setting me up for a punch line, God bless him. Good to start off with a laugh. Keeping in mind Jee Leong Koh's comment about my poetry, that it's not always easy to understand at a poetry reading, I selected two poems that do appeal to all variety of listeners and did a sterling job of it, if I do say so. The audience, a bit tipsy and very happy, was attentive when I read and when I finished, shouted and clapped. Big Mike shouted one of the greatest compliments I've ever received.

"That was Sarah Sarai, the Helen Mirren of poetry!"

After that, the evening was a dream.

The Great Nomadic Peoples: at a poetry reading

One of my early demonstrations of independence from my family was in a movie theater with my mom and three older sisters. My father would have stayed home with a glass of Scotch, Bach sheet music, a James Bond novel, Nick and Nora Charles on The Million Dollar Movie.

Usually, the minute lights dimmed, we five became alert to the possible intrusion of extraneous sounds: a piece of Juicy Fruit being unwrapped, a too-loud engagement with molars and popcorn, a whispered comment. We were guardians of the quiet, Swiss guards for hush, lookouts ever vigilant against intrusions on our concentration.

The screen with its handsome flickering images was all. Double features (that's how long ago this was) were to be our atmosphere, landmass, weather system, internal and external organ. And if we heard a fatal crinkle of a candy wrapper we'd have to move. Sometimes my mother or a sister would venture a stern, "Shush!" but that held no truck with the Milky Way lover. Nor should it have. Candy and popcorn are inalienable rights. A movie ticket is a bearer bond for sweet and salty joys.

So the Hershey Bar would be unwrapped by a happy patron sitting behind us, a handful of popcorn noisily consumed and, as if a starting shot had been sounded for the greyhounds, my family would be off and running to another row, a quieter row, a perfect row.

I found moving from one row to another, having to yet again judge the height of the people in front -- potential blockades to Sidney Poitier or Elizabeth Taylor -- tiresome, and not cool (whether or not that was the word I used when I was thirteen).

My rebellion? I stayed put. After years of moving from seat to seat, I refused to collude with my mother and sisters in making fools of ourselves. I'd frown. I'd cross my arms over my unformed chest. I'd say, "No."

And watch their tribute to the great nomadic peoples of the world as they moved, sometimes several times in one movie. I'd hear evaluative whispers, especially if my oldest sister, who'd had the most pressure from circumstance and family, was in from San Francisco. The irony of their creating distraction -- when in fact they fled distraction-- escaped them.

And how does this relate to poetry readings? Well, I was at one today (a wonderful reading at the Bowery Poetry Club). The audience was attentive and the poets strong. Personages in my row, however, were not practiced reading attendees.

We're not talking teenagers (capable of anything). These people were older than me (hard to believe). And uh-huhing and yessing and commenting. I kept my tongue. But then my friend S-- was up and this nice lady next to me became not simply a bit distracting but, well, chatty. It's as if she were a Patriots fan sitting with six other Patriots fan in a den or sports bar (with the television on and all sorts of processed snacks hot and steaming); she began narrating the events in an unaware (bless her) stage whisper.

"He seems a bit nervous." "Oh, yes, I've met his mother. She's like that, you know, just like in that poem." And, as S-- began reading the last poem of his set, she turned to me to ask, "Oh, how do you know him? Are you a student or a poet or---" At which point my genetic material took over. Not the nomadic impulse--this was a full house and fleeing to another seat was not an option; no, the "Would you please be quiet" (whispered) impulse asserted. She became quiet.

Talking and silence, cell phones, involuntary and unconscious oohs and ahas, small comments, cheers, boos, laughter, bartenders -- they are all part of a poetry reading. There's no conclusion to be drawn from the above except I'm a silly goose. Yes, she was outsized. But I keep getting annoyed and it is not doing me any good. I want the calm of the great nomadic peoples of the world, to be able to pick up tent in silence -- but only if really very necessary.

Make It New?

Make it new.

Someone said that. Oh, okay, it was Ezra Pound. He said a lot of things and wrote a lot of things, some of them in English. The English stuff was often a silk ribbon seeking your ear and soft against your soul. He was pretty good.

Intimidated as I was by Cantos well-fortressed in discouraging the insecure with their (Cantos) hefty walls of Latin and turreted Greek, I didn't tackle them until recently. Tackling friends, however, is a lifelong interest.

My Cantos tackling was enabled by the reading aloud group that meets at the Bowery Poetry Club. What this group does is to read aloud. Further elaboration involves mention of tomato paste tins and Bloody Mary mix, among which the group sits, pale but not loitering in a basement storeroom every Tuesday, late afternoon. The "club" isn't too clubby which suits me. Thank you, Bob Holman.

Getting laid off also enabled Cantos tackling. By the way, the Cantos were slightly doomed because the book as a whole does not quite come together, many have said, though its parts are mighty mighty (lettin' it all hang out). Yes, the Cantos are a brick house.

Make It New is from Confucius, translated by Pound. I may have heard it early on - I'm relatively new to poetry, but a lifelong English major - but the saying, which I later realized was often quoted - must have fallen like bricks from scaffolding while I was in another state.

I remember walking in Pioneer Square in Seattle with an artist and he said it, I want to Make It New. He meant art. I understood that much. And was abashed, shamed, appalled, startled, scared, curious. I'd been writing fiction by then, but had no idea how I was going to start to make anything new. And I raised the usual storefront objections about nothing is new under the Sun.

Blame it on Magdalena Zurawski's blog, Minor American. On June 12, 2009 she wrote of a reviewer who challenged her for not making it new when, she says, that wasn't her intention. What she writes make sense. Minor American is one of my blogs listed, to the right.

So how innovative am I? Not until I was in my forties did I even begin to reckon with the phrase. The trajectory of my life, much stupidity and wasted time for many years, and now a scramble (casual scramble) to catch up, is opposite of Pound's.

What can I make new? A turn of phrase? A simile? Dialog? I can try.

http://thecontaminated.com/famous-in-lego-world/

Mark Strand (reminds me of Anwar Sadat). Part II on slam & performance poetry reviews

A few years ago I went to see Mark Strand read at the Cornelia Street Cafe. I would be happy to observe Mark Strand pouring over a train schedule or working through one of Pound's Cantos, but, in fact, Mark Strand was to read aloud his poetry.


Of which I am a great fan, or at least a fan, how great am I, after all, well, not very. I was not disappointed. As Octavio Paz has written, “Mark Strand has chosen the negative path, with loss as the first step towards fullness: it is also the opening to a transparent verbal perfection.”


Prepared though I was to be charmed by verse, I was unprepared to be charmed by Strand. I'd never seen him in person. When the saucy, yes saucy, cocktail waitress drew near him—he was onstage at this point—he gave her a look, the like of which I have not seen since that photo with Anwar Sadat and Richard M. Nixon.


Sometime in the early seventies, Nixon went to Egypt. Sadat, Egypt's president and a great man, offered entertainment worthy of visiting dignitaries. Belly dancing. The photograph, from Life or Time, revealed a remarkably uncomfortable, even for him, Nixon, while the look on Sadat's face was, hmmmmm, appreciative


In our touchy times, and I'm okay with touchy, I am called to emphasize that in no way am I saying the visionary Sadat, later tragically assassinated, was improper. He was, however, human, and clearly able to enjoy what was before him.


Strand's face when the waitress approached to see if he wanted a refill. It was a, Send her to my room look. Sometime this Spring I went to see Strand read, alongside other poets, at the Bowery Poetry Club in an evening designed to mix writers of his ilk, i.e., Poetry Society of America members, however they're elected, etc., with high school performance poets. It was a great evening.


What impressed me most that night was the quality of performance poetry. Not all the young poets had me reevaluating the form, just as not all poets at an open mic are a call to reevaluate poetry. (Just as not all prizewinners . . . ) But there were two young women, both about to head off to college, I believe, who were extremely gifted. Images, rhythms, timing. Performance.


I didn't remember those two until after I posted my blog last night, about performance poetry and its reviewers. I gotta say, reviewers, step up. It's a new world (or a constantly self-reinventing one). Thoughtful reviewers will be rewarded with images of Strand, Sadat or belly dancers.