I have mentioned before that Monday nights are open mic nights at the Artist’s Quarter in downtown St. Paul. But the first Monday of every month is devoted to a more organized endeavor, the Soapboxing Poetry Slam.
The Poetry Slam in St. Paul, and the Poet’s Groove in Minneapolis, serve two different tribes. The Poetry Slam is an actual competition, with a winner at the end. The 3-minute upper bound is strictly enforced, with poets losing points for running over (more about that in a moment). No props, no costumes, no music, just you, the mic, and the audience. The audience is divided up into 5 judges, and everyone else. The judges score the poems from 0 to 10.0, and are explicitly instructed to pay no heed to the rest of the audience. The rest of the audience is explicitly instructed to do everything in their power to influence the judges. I was sitting quite close to one of the judges, and I thought that the judges were thinking about how a particular poem was playing in the room, as well as how it was playing with them personally. The top and bottom scores are eliminated, and the sum of the remaining three scores is the score for the performance. Therefore, 30 is the score to which every poet aspires, but very few attain.
I was nervous that there were just going to be a few people there, but there were about 40 people shoehorned into the Artist’s Quarter on Monday, February 1. The gentleman running the Slam is Matthew Rucker, who I know for his paintings. My children have seen his paintings at two different art shows. This picture is from the 2007 Fall Art Crawl…
The poets who wished to compete put there names in a hat. The custom is to start with twelve, cut down to six on the basis of score, then three, then one. I was not one of the twelve names drawn. I want to think that Matthew remembered the happy conversations he had with my children. He said “I’m going to add two more names to the list.” I was one of the extra two names drawn.
The spoken-word blog Minnesota Microphone has a very nice after-action report of the February Slam by Cole Sarar with pictures of the performers, and videos of the finalists. I took notes of the poems in the first round, and I think looking at my comments side-by-side with Cole’s might give a good picture of the proceedings.
Sam Cook was the emcee for the proceedings, having won the January slam. It is the custom for the winner of the last slam to be the host of the next slam. It’s part of the job of the host to make sure that the scores are recorded for the purpose of determining who advances to the next round.
Sam instructed the judges to refer to Homeless Ryan K as the “calibration poet.” They were to give him whatever score they thought best. If someone did better, they were to give her a higher score. If someone did worse, they were to give him a lower score. I didn’t mark down the scores, but I seem to recall Homeless Ryan K’s scores in the 7’s and 8’s.
Em was the first poet. All I wrote down for her in my notes was that she had a score of 23.3. It should also be noted that I was the third poet to speak, chosen by random selection. I also think I was just getting the idea that this is a great place to go for poetic inspiration, great lines to steal, etc. Em did not advance to the second round. One thing that Sam Cook did after every performance that I really appreciated, was to get people’s minds off the score by yelling “Come on people, **** the score, applaud the poet!”
Shane Hawley rocked the audience with the poem which should be titled “I wanna love you like that!” I’m standing on the ramp behind the stage, waiting to go on, and I’m laughing my head off at Shane’s poem, with it’s running tag line, “I wanna love you like that!” There was a little train of thought in my head saying “Oh, dear, he’s knockin’ em dead, and I have to go on after that! I have to poke through the charred remains of a burned down stage and explain to the Fire Marshal that it was all Shane’s fault! Great! Just great!” Shane not only advanced to the second round, but won the whole shabang, and is thus the host for the March slam on March 1. Later on I would say to Shane, “Is it all right if I blame my crummy score on you?”
I did “America Is Thinking To Itself Today.” My original plan was to recite Love-Dogs by Rumi, but the rules stated it had to be one’s own composition. I added a few lines both to make some implied references more explicit, and to fill up three minutes. I might have been a little fuzzy on the delivery because of that. The lowest score was 5.something, and the highest score was 7.6. The total score was 20.3. On the one hand, this turned out to be an inadequate score to advance to the second round. On the other hand, since 0 was the minimum and 30 was the maximum, being given a score of two-thirds of the maximum was a very nice score indeed for the first time of doing this sort of thing.
Michael Lee had a poem with a running line I loved: “My gloves feel guilty at the sight of your naked hands.” For reasons I don’t really understand, running lines seem to work in slam poetry. The listeners’ minds take comfort in a certain amount of rhythm, of familiarity.
Nilsea had a poem with the opening line “I am the Bone Queen” I wrote “She scares me,” but at some other time I might enjoy that poem more. She was one of two poets who used a music stand for their poetry. Neither poet who used a music stand advanced to the second round. I consider it pointless to wonder whether one is going to advance or not. But on the other hand, if one is going to attend a slam, one should have three poems prepared, in the event that one advances to the second or third round.
Chadword had a poem about the last time he competed in a slam. I loved the line: “I’m a nervous guy, but being nervous reminds me I’m alive.” Chadword didn’t advance to the second round. He was encouraging to me after the first round.
“The Derbs” from Mankato was waxing lyrical about anesthetizing himself from the pain of a separated existence. I loved the final line “I’m a child of the 90’s. What do I care?” I’m certain some people in the room thought “What’s up with wearing shorts in February in Minnesota?!?” I believe he was the only poet to be penalized for going over the time limit. But even with the penalty, The Derbs advanced to the second round.
When cometh the day we lowly ones,
Through quiet reflection, and great dedication
Master the art of Judo,
Lo, we shall rise up,
And then we’ll make the bugger’s eyes water.
Bleating and babbling we fell on his neck with a scream.
Wave upon wave of demented avengers
March cheerfully out of obscurity into the dream.
The line from Neil that I remembered the most is “We’ll take Alabama, because no one will notice!” Neil did not advance to the second round. I don’t get it. The audience loved him more than the judges.
Cole: The tone took an abrupt turn when Jason Raymon struck up an erotic tone with his piece “Aftermath”, a quiet poem read with a soft a.m. radio voice that would undoubtedly fare better at an erotic slam.
Jason Raymon was the other poet who used a music stand. What he was providing just wasn’t what the room was here for. I wrote down “ZZZZZ” as he was performing, and I feel horribly guilty for doing so. Jason didn’t advance to the second round.
Dylan brought back a familiar poem from last season, garnering a communal groan of happiness from the audience at the suggestion of the “sound of a redwood slamming shut”. He has found a comfortability in the poem that emanates in his performance.
Dylan had a poem with an opening line I loved: “God, we don’t know how to comfort You.” Dylan advanced to the second round.
I grasped from Dave Beck’s performance that emotional breakthroughs are a no-no for slam. I grasp stand-up is a little bit more interactive than slam poetry. Dave gave a lot of appreciation for the poets, but he didn’t advance to the second round.
Xena had a poem about the strength and magnanimity of her mother, and the potential downsides. I told Xena after the first round that a martyrdom intervention was a tricky business. She might have thought I was being a smart-aleck. I hope not. Xena did not advance to the second round.
Alice had a poem about searching for a cure for death, among other things. As I heard Alice’s voice, sweetness and thoughts of ways to serve others came into my body. Thoughts that maybe I should try really hard to be less of a jerk. What was her poem about, again? She mentioned mayflies in her poem, and she appreciated it when I told her about Richard Wilbur’s poem about mayflies. Alice advanced to the second round.
The room found Rob Weekend’s poem about losing his virginity to be hilarious, as sex kept squirting out the logical categories Rob, and all the people in his world, kept trying to put it in. Rob advanced to the second round.
I probably should have paid more attention to Jenn Sparks’s poem about the life and times of a queen bee, but my mind was buzzing with lines and poems and poets and buzzes and flows. Jenn advanced to the second round.
I left after the first round because I didn’t make the cut, and I was also catching the 74 Bus from downtown St. Paul to my Highland Park neighborhood. But there was a short break in which I could chit-chat with the other poets, express appreciations for lines I was going to steal I liked, etc. Cole goes on to cover the second and third rounds in her post. The slam was videoed, and I believe the video will be shown on the St. Paul Neighborhood Network. I say that because the January slam was aired seven times during the month of February on Channel 15.
I haven’t asked for comments on the presence of Twitter search widgets in posts, and no one has told me anything about it. But I’ve already been rewarded by the widgets. The search widget in the post reviewing National Monuments found a tweet by radio station KFAI. KFAI tweeted that Heid E. Erdrich would be speaking at the Minnesota Humanities Center on January 28.
This is my first time to attend an event at the Minnesota Humanities Center. The $5 admission price was quite reasonable. The event was held in a large room filled with chairs and couches. I had a comfy chair, a cup of coffee, and a cookie. I was ready to go. All I was missing was a laptop and some wi-fi.
A lady gave a brief chat about how the purpose of the Minnesota Humanities Center was to develop a thoughtful, literate engaged society. There was a little bit of introduction of Heid E. Erdrich, talking about her work in preserving the Ojibwe language, her work with educators in using Native American literature authentically, and her association with Birchbark Books (run by her sister, Louise Erdrich, an award-winning author in her own right).
Heid E. Erdrich started out her talk with some plugs for other books. I appreciate that she handed out a book list before the talk, and then made comments on the books on the list. I had heard of Sherman Alexie, and I had heard of The Repatriation Reader, but only because Erdrich had mentioned them in the notes to National Monuments. But I had never heard of any of the other books or authors before.
Erdrich read poems from National Monuments, then brought up various websites from a nearby computer (Kennewick Man, NAGPRA, etc.)
Some time ago, I wrote that Langston Hughes wrote “I, Too, Sing America” as a snappy comeback to Walt Whitman’s “I Hear America Singing.” On further review, I grasp that part of a poet’s job description is to write snappy comebacks to other poems. I learned that “The Theft Outright” by Heid E. Erdrich is a snappy comeback to “The Gift Outright,” recited by Robert Frost at President Kennedy’s Inaugural.
The evening actually didn’t last that long. She started slightly after 7:00 and finished around 8:15, so there was plenty of time for shmoozing afterward, and checking out the book table.
During the talk, my mind wanted to know more about the Ojibwe. I’ve seen the name spelled Chippewa, Ojibway, Ojibwa, Ojibwe and Ojbwe. The Ojibwe call themselves Anishinabe in their own language, which means ‘original person.’
A young lady behind the booktable told me that the Ojibwe once lived in what is now Quebec. They had a prophecy that they should move west until they found food that grew on the water. That food they found was wild rice in Minnesota. I can just imagine the Dakotas saying “Oh, you had a prophecy! Well sure, just come and take our land. Not!”
But because of this westward migration, there is now an Ojibwe diaspora, with bands as far west as Montana, as far east as Quebec, and as far north as southern Canada.
Heid E. Erdrich is a member of the Turtle Mountain Band. The young lady behind the book table is a member of the Red Lake Band. I felt like the racist of the world when I asked her if she was an Ojibwe.
Heid mentioned that there were somewhere between 70,000 and 100,000 Ojibwe speakers. Ojibwe was pictographic for a long time. A system for using the English alphabet for writing the Ojibwe language was developed in the 1950’s, and I believe it is being used in the blurb by Margaret Noori on the back of National Monuments:
Some people might think that the preservation of the Ojibwe language isn’t the best use of people’s time and energy, but the heart language of people is a big deal. Anything in nature will reveal its secrets to you if you love it enough, and the Ojibwe language has secrets that are yet to be revealed to the world.
As I thought about the Ojibwe, I recalled the book Bruchko by Bruce Olson, missionary to the Motilone of Columbia. There was a part of the book where the Motilone believed Jesus was one of them. I wonder what the Ojibwe think of Jesus. Heid read the poem “Mahto Pata, Bear Butte” about Christian motorcyclists who want to build a church in a spot sacred to a number of tribes, so I think she thinks Christians are colonizers and desecrators.
I am generally against the idea of hyphenated Americans. I do not refer to myself as a Scottish-American, for example. I believe it goes against the American ideal of “E pluribus unum” The Ojibwe challenge that view for me. One the one hand, I think they might be better off if they became full-blast Americans, and dropped any special status. But that doesn’t seem quite right. On the other hand, things staying as they are doesn’t seem quite right either.
Even with all of the awkward moments and unasked questions, it was still a rewarding evening for me.
Twin Cities spoken-word high priestess Desdamona has been mentioned in this space before, but I never heard any of her poems until about three weeks ago at the Poet’s Groove. This can be found on her latest release, Inkling
I’m sharing this particular poem with you because this is Desdemona telling her story.
Sometimes I rhyme slow
Sometimes I rhyme quick
You thought I was nice and smooth
But I’m really just slick Rick I
Tick and tock with my biological clock
And I crawl when I can’t walk.
I’ve seen joy and pain, and realized
That there’s always sunshine after the rain
I’ve got it made
Got everything from cotton to suede
Seen the ledge from the edge
Wanted to be a leader of the new school
But ended up in special ed
They told me I was too short and too Vanilla Ice
Said I shouldn’t rock the mic because I wasn’t too hype
They called me MC Lyte
(And it wasn’t because I was skinny)
See I thought P.E. stood for physical education
I called in a request, and they said I had the wrong station
I drifted from the Pharcyde until I saw the De La of my soul
But the beat kept passin’ me by, so I decided to let it go
I found the honeycomb and that’s where I met A Tribe Called Quest
But the Killa Bees chased me out of the nest
See, I just wanted to be part of the Goodie Mob
But they told me I was just an Outkast, and that I would never, ever last
So I went down to the Lords of the Underground
But they told me not to bust a rhyme, they said
“Common sense will tell you that it’s just not the right time”
I went from Biggie to Smalls to find lyrics that fit
And then they asked me if I was ready to be a true fooshnit
They showed me the M.E.T.H.O.D. and the treacherous techniques
They blessed me with the rhythm, but I still couldn’t find a beat
They scribed heiroglyphics and traced it back to the roots
I saw the show, and then I got juiced
I met this cat named Eric B. and I asked him to listen
But he told me I didn’t rock him, and he started dissin’
I put the needle on the record, and thought the sound was Mos Def
Went to the store with 50 Cent and bought some Eminems
I passed out on the way back to my house
My mom found me on the sidewalk with water she doused
She said “Are you concious, daughter? Or should I call Dr. Dre?”
And I said “No no, it’s ok, I just need a tall glass of LL Cool J”
That night, I dreamt of black stars and jazzy Digable Planets and it made me feel high
Then I saw little red men floating in the sky
The Beastie Boys who lived next door woke me up, the little creeps, and they said,
“If you’re gonna be an MC, don’t sleep”
I thought these Souls of Mischief have got to be alcoholics
Because they took my bottle of Brass Monkey and then they stole my wallet
That’s when I realized that this hip-hop thing just wasn’t for me
So from then on I called on my rhymed poetry
And the rest, as they say. I give you R.hythm A.nd P.oetry by Desdamona
I purchased the book National Monuments by Heid E. Erdrich because it won the 2009 Minnesota Book Award for Poetry.
What do I like about National Monuments? I like it that she asks a good question, which is “When do the remains of the dead stop being sacred and inviolate, and start being materials for scientists to examine and entrepreneurs to trade?” She writes in the notes at the end:
Because the body has become a location, a site and a text to scholars, what would seem violation of a sacred space (say a temple or shrine) has become a legitimatized and urgent need of study. The rules in place to protect our bodies when we die simply to not apply to anyone who has been dead long enough. That seeming contradiction troubles me and made me want to express my dis-ease learning that an ancestor’s bones have been crushed for testing.
I consider “Dis-ease” a good word for the describing the emotional tone of National Monuments, especially the final section “Discovery: An RSS Feed Series.” When do the remains of the dead stop being sacred and inviolate, and start being materials for scientists to examine and entrepreneurs to trade? Heid E. Erdrich’s answer to her question is “It should be ‘Never,’ even though it isn’t right now.” You might disagree with her answer, but her poems will definitely encourage you to think about your answer to the question. Would you donate your body for scientific research after your death? Erdrich is against the very premise (in the poem “Body Works’). And don’t get Erdrich started on the Bodies exhibit at the Mall of America. She would consider the creators of that exhibit to be desecrators of sacred spaces.
I like it that one doesn’t have to belong to any particular nation (like the Ojibway, to which Erdrich belongs) to appreciate her poetry. That’s because she asks the kind of questions that a poet is supposed to ask. There are some Ojibway themes (“De’an,” “Star Blanket Stories”), but her poetry is more addressed to a general audience.
I like that Erdrich has created some small series of poems about certain characters. One of the blurbs on the back cover says she is having an argument with the poet William Carlos Williams, but it was too much of an inside joke to me. Williams wrote a poem “To Elsie,” and Erdrich wrote a number of poems in National Monuments about various aspects of Elsie’s life. I recalled “Madam to You” by Langston Hughes when I read them. Kennewick Man is another character that inspired a group of poems. I sincerely hope that Erdrich will write a book’s worth of Elsie poems and Kennewick Man poems.
What do I not like about National Monuments? I don’t like that I almost stopped reading after I read the poem “Desecrate,” the exclamation point for the first section “Grave Markers.” Desecrate is a bitter, venom-dripping hate note to Western civilization, describing what it would be like if Western civilization had done to it what was done to the Ojibway and other First Nations. I had just seen the movie “Avatar,” another hate note to Western civilization, and after reading Desecrate, I had my fists up, ready to rip this book a new one. I believe other readers might stop reading after reading Desecrate.
I don’t like the blurb on the back by Robert Warrior:
Heid Erdrich’s new poems are beautiful and brave explorations of the depths of national identities and the real people who live them. These are arguments with historians, archeologists, William Carlos Williams, and the overwhelming, deeply rooted, conflicting myths of what being an American is all about.
While most of these two sentences are true, I grasp that this book is only incidentally concerned with what being an American is all about. Erdrich neither embraces being American nor repudiates being American. It’s not the conversation that National Monuments is about.
I don’t like the faux-Cyrillic lettering for the title, back cover and section title pages. I found it a distraction from the conversation of the poems. Is it a reference to the fallen Soviet Union and its desecrated sacred places?
The things I like about National Monuments are much more significant than the things I don’t like. It was definitely worth the investment. It should also be noted that one of Erdrich’s previous books, The Mother’s Tongue, was a Minnesota Book Award nominee. Her persistence was rewarded. Denise Low-Weso, Poet Laureate of Kansas, wrote a blurb for the book. Perhaps Heid E. Erdrich will be Minnesota’s Poet Laureate one day, the wise grandmother Kookums who we cannot leave.
Many people in the Macalester College community will be happy to know that poet, Macalester alumnus and former Macalester faculty member Alex Lemon will be visiting the Twin Cities on Thursday and Friday. I found out about this from an interview of Alex Lemon by Katy Read in the Star-Tribune.
Katy Read writes:
Alex Lemon is warm and affable on the phone, and it’s easy to see how he acquired the nickname “Happy” as a freshman at Macalester College. But as the title of his memoir, the name is weighted with irony.
“Happy” covers a decidedly unhappy couple of years in Lemon’s life, starting in 1997, when the hard-partying 19-year-old and former baseball star learned that he had a brain malformation, suffered a series of strokes, endured a deep depression, underwent risky brain surgery and was left with permanent disabilities and chronic pain. Lemon made it through it all with help from loved ones — particularly his mother, an eccentric sculptor who cared for and encouraged him through the crisis.
Lemon, now 32, graduated from Macalester, received a master of fine arts degree from the University of Minnesota, taught at Macalester from 2004 to 2007 and has published three books of poetry. He spoke from Fort Worth, where he now teaches at Texas Christian University.
The Star-Tribune interview is about the events chronicled in Happy. But I’m interested in his poetry, and I hope he will read some of his poetry. He has written 3 books of poetry so far, Mosquito, Hallelujah Blackout and Fancy Beasts. Here is the poem Mosquito:
Mosquito
You want evidence of the street
fight? A gutter-grate bruise & concrete scabs–
here are nails on the tongue,
a mosaic of glass shards on my lips.
I am midnight banging against house
fire. A naked woman shaking
with the sweat of need.
An ocean of burning diamonds
beneath my roadkill, my hitchhiker
belly fills sweet. I am neon blind & kiss
too black. Dangle stars–
let me sleep hoarse-throated in the desert
under a blanket sewn from spiders.
Let me be delicate & invisible.
Kick my ribs, tug my hair.
Scream you’re gonna miss me
when I’m gone. Sing implosion
to this world where nothing is healed.
Slap me, I’ll be any kind of sinner.
He’s certainly not shy in this poem, is he? As I was rummaging for more information, I came across this article on Alex Lemon in the TCU Daily Skiff from January 2009. There was a little overlap between this article and the Star-Tribune interview, but here was a bit that got me:
Lemon jots down ideas for future poems using a voice recorder and revises old work, he said. After the surgery, Lemon said he never fully recovered the ability to write by hand, so he prefers to use a voice recorder to take down ideas.
One of the many lessons of Alex Lemon’s life story is, a person doesn’t even have to be able to write, to be a poet. That’s something to think about.
Lemon will be at Magers & Quinn Booksellers, 3038 Hennepin Avenue South, Minneapolis, at 7:30 p.m. on Thursday. He will be at Micawbers Bookstore, 2238 Carter Avenue, St. Paul, at 7 p.m. Friday.
This poem was mentioned in the Sunday NYT crossword.
This ode was written in spring 1819, between mid-March and early June. On March 19, Keats wrote of his ’sort of temper indolent’ in a letter to his brother George and sister-in-law Georgiana. And on June 9, he told one Miss Jeffrey that ‘the thing I have most enjoyed this year has been writing an ode to Indolence’. The ode was first published in 1848.
In the letter to George and Georgiana, Keats described his indolence: ‘This is the only happiness; and is a rare instance of advantage in the body overpowering the Mind.’ The ode itself is the least well-known of the six great odes of 1819. Most critics consider it the least accomplished of the group.
It should be noted that even though it is the least well-known and least well-received of the odes of 1819, it is well-known enough and well-received enough to merit a Spark Notes mention.
‘They toil not, neither do they spin.’
One morn before me were three figures seen,
With bowed necks, and joined hands, side-faced;
And one behind the other stepp’d serene,
In placid sandals, and in white robes graced:
They pass’d, like figures on a marble urn,
When shifted round to see the other side;
They came again; as when the urn once more
Is shifted round, the first seen shades return;
And they were strange to me, as may betide
With vases, to one deep in Phidian lore.
How is it, shadows, that I knew ye not?
How came ye muffled in so hush a masque?
Was it a silent deep-disguised plot
To steal away, and leave without a task
My idle days? Ripe was the drowsy hour;
The blissful cloud of summer-indolence
Benumb’d my eyes; my pulse grew less and less;
Pain had no sting, and pleasure’s wreath no flower.
O, why did ye not melt, and leave my sense
Unhaunted quite of all but – nothingness?
A third time pass’d they by, and, passing, turn’d
Each one the face a moment whiles to me;
Then faded, and to follow them I burn’d
And ached for wings, because I knew the three:
The first was a fair maid, and Love her name;
The second was Ambition, pale of cheek,
And ever watchful with fatigued eye;
The last, whom I love more, the more of blame
Is heap’d upon her, maiden most unmeek, -
I knew to be my demon Poesy.
They faded, and, forsooth! I wanted wings:
O folly! What is Love? and where is it?
And for that poor Ambition – it springs
From a man’s little heart’s short fever-fit;
For Poesy! – no, – she has not a joy, -
At least for me, – so sweet as drowsy noons,
And evenings steep’d in honied indolence;
O, for an age so shelter’d from annoy,
That I may never know how change the moons,
Or hear the voice of busy common-sense!
A third time came they by: – alas! wherefore?
My sleep had been embroider’d with dim dreams;
My soul had been a lawn besprinkled o’er
With flowers, and stirring shades, and baffled beams:
The morn was clouded, but no shower fell,
Though in her lids hung the sweet tears of May;
The open casement press’d a new-leaved vine,
Let in the budding warmth and throstle’s lay;
O shadows! ’twas a time to bid farewell!
Upon your skirts had fallen no tears of mine.
So, ye three ghosts, adieu! Ye cannot raise
My head cool-bedded in the flowery grass;
For I would not be dieted with praise,
A pet-lamb in a sentimental farce!
Fade softly from my eyes, and be once more
In masque-like figures on the dreary urn;
Farewell! I yet have visions for the night,
And for the day faint visions there is store;
Vanish, ye phantoms, from my idle spright,
Into the clouds, and never more return!
As I consider this poem, I recall listening to Mischke on the radio, on the occasion of the Minnesota fishing opener. He was talking about how good it might have been if Hitler was just a little less industrious, or Stalin was just a little lazier. I remember Mischke saying “Put a worm on a hook…and find God.” I grasp Keats is saying “Love, ambition and poetry get most people. Poetry certainly gets me, but not today, because I’m really enjoying doing a whole lot of nothing, and I don’t even care if you have a problem with that.”
James Whitcomb Riley’s poetry was the inspiration for not only the comic strip Little Orphan Annie, but for Raggedy Ann dolls as well.
Riley’s childhood and home were also great influences on him. His most famous poems were about people and situations from his real life. His poems, “The Raggedy Man,” and “Little Orphant Annie,” are about a hired hand and an orphan girl who helped on the family farm. The farmhand and Annie told the local children stories that Riley immortalized in his work. His poems, though of epic proportion in many senses, told of everyday things.
To all the little children: — The happy ones; and sad ones;
The sober and the silent ones; the boisterous and glad ones;
The good ones — Yes, the good ones, too; and all the lovely bad ones.
LITTLE Orphant Annie’s come to our house to stay,
An’ wash the cups an’ saucers up, an’ brush the crumbs away,
An’ shoo the chickens off the porch, an’ dust the hearth, an’ sweep,
An’ make the fire, an’ bake the bread, an’ earn her board-an’-keep;
An’ all us other childern, when the supper-things is done,
We set around the kitchen fire an’ has the mostest fun
A-list’nin’ to the witch-tales ‘at Annie tells about,
An’ the Gobble-uns ‘at gits you
Ef you
Don’t
Watch
Out!
Wunst they wuz a little boy wouldn’t say his prayers,–
An’ when he went to bed at night, away up-stairs,
His Mammy heerd him holler, an’ his Daddy heerd him bawl,
An’ when they turn’t the kivvers down, he wuzn’t there at all!
An’ they seeked him in the rafter-room, an’ cubby-hole, an’ press,
An’ seeked him up the chimbly-flue, an’ ever’-wheres, I guess;
But all they ever found wuz thist his pants an’ roundabout:–
An’ the Gobble-uns ‘ll git you
Ef you
Don’t
Watch
Out!
An’ one time a little girl ‘ud allus laugh an’ grin,
An’ make fun of ever’ one, an’ all her blood-an’-kin;
An’ wunst, when they was “company,” an’ ole folks wuz there,
She mocked ‘em an’ shocked ‘em, an’ said she didn’t care!
An’ thist as she kicked her heels, an’ turn’t to run an’ hide,
They wuz two great big Black Things a-standin’ by her side,
An’ they snatched her through the ceilin’ ‘fore she knowed what she’s about!
An’ the Gobble-uns ‘ll git you
Ef you
Don’t
Watch
Out!
An’ little Orphant Annie says, when the blaze is blue,
An’ the lamp-wick sputters, an’ the wind goes woo-oo!
An’ you hear the crickets quit, an’ the moon is gray,
An’ the lightnin’-bugs in dew is all squenched away,–
You better mind yer parunts, an’ yer teachurs fond an’ dear,
An’ churish them ‘at loves you, an’ dry the orphant’s tear,
An’ he’p the pore an’ needy ones ‘at clusters all about,
Er the Gobble-uns ‘ll git you
Ef you
Don’t
Watch
Out!
Attending the poetry reading last month stirred up an interest to explore other poetic opportunities in the Twin Cities. The Artist’s Quarter in St. Paul has had an Open Poetry night on Monday nights for some time. I was less aware of the Poet’s Groove at the Blue Nile restraurant, a little southeast of downtown Minneapolis. Cole Sarar writes:
Lots of open mics are awkward, empty affairs, tucked into corners of coffee houses and bars, their schedules unreliable. The Poet’s Groove is something else entirely. It’s been a weekly Seward neighborhood institution for six years, and calls the Blue Nile home. Hip-hop/spoken-word artist (and winner of the Twin Tongues award) Desdamona hosts along with drumming phenomenon Kevin Washington. One of the event’s biggest draws is the live house band; they can make trite poetry sound downright brilliant. A pickup band populated with musicians of every race and age, its strength comes in adapting to the style of the performer at the mic. The Poet’s Groove won “Best Open Mic” at the inaugural Urban Griots Spoken Word Awards this year, and with good reason.
So who was there around 10:00? There was a group of 10 people already waiting to sign in. There was an Augsberg English/philosophy double major and a couple of his friends, 3 rappers, 4 singers, a lady reading her poetry, and me.
Ann Betz was the lady who read her own poetry. Her poetry was fine, but I realized the audience of about 50 people didn’t really care if it was her first time or not. I also realized they wanted something with a beat. The Scarlet Villains did a rockabilly number. A singer doing a Luther Vandross song got some people showing some enthusiasm out on the dance floor. After a rapper finished his set, I was up.
I turned to the band and said “Gimme a beatnik coffee house.” The bongo player realized what I was looking for and started playing, and the rest of the band joined in. I gave “The Book” in a way I never read it before, in a self-absorbed beatnik sort of way. People seemed to like it. I got the band to switch to 3/4 time for reading “A Poem Is Writing Itself In Me.” Again there were some woo-hoos from the house. Before I went on, I had told the house bass player I wanted “America the Beautiful” as background music for one of my poems. They played it straight as I read “America Is Thinking To Itself Today.”
I say Amen to Cole Sarar’s testimony that Kevin Washington is a drumming phenomenon. He is a brimming, overflowing mug of invention, skill and imagination.
Then I got the stage and walked outside. The rapper who was on before me was outside chatting with someone. I thought he had missed me, but he said “No, no, I heard you. You did spoken-word.” I repressed the impulse to say “Oh, is that what you call it?” I’ve been called a lot of things in my life, but spoken-word performer is not one of them. He was very nice and encouraged me to come back another time.
Somehow I was under the impression that the Light Rail line came to every station every 20 minutes or so. I had missed the 12:30 light rail, and I would have to wait until 1:20 to get the next one. I wasn’t particularly happy about that, so I caught the 12:40 light rail to downtown, and wolfed down a calzone at Downtown Diner, before getting home sometime around 2:00 am.
What worked? Just showing up, making preparation, having poems memorized (I had the first two memorized), acting fearlessly. What didn’t work: being unclear as to whether I wanted to hold the mike or not, not having a clear way of showing when I was finished, not having the last poem memorized well enough, so I had to look at it when I was momentarily distracted.
This was Tuesday night, and it took me a full day to calm down from how excited I was for having done this. It’s taken me another couple of days to write this blog post about it. The last time I recited a poem I wrote in front of an audience of my peers was in 1967. 42 years is a long time to wait.
This poem was mentioned in the Sunday New York Times Diagramless by Fred Piscop. I don’t have the puzzle in front of me, but the clue was something like “Maya Angelou poem “Still _____” The poem is called “Still I Rise,” but there seem to be a lot of people who think the poem title is “And Still I Rise.” I am patiently waiting for someone to clue the title for this poem in a crossword puzzle as something like “Angelou poem about yeast?” I suppose it’ll have to be me, won’t it?
You may write me down in history
With your bitter, twisted lies,
You may trod me in the very dirt
But still, like dust, I’ll rise.
Does my sassiness upset you?
Why are you beset with gloom?
‘Cause I walk like I’ve got oil wells
Pumping in my living room.
Just like moons and like suns,
With the certainty of tides,
Just like hopes springing high,
Still I’ll rise.
Did you want to see me broken?
Bowed head and lowered eyes?
Shoulders falling down like teardrops,
Weakened by my soulful cries.
Does my haughtiness offend you?
Don’t you take it awful hard
‘Cause I laugh like I got gold mines
Diggin’ in my own back yard.
You may shoot me with your words,
You may cut me with your eyes,
You may kill me with your hatefulness,
But still, like air, I’ll rise.
Does my sexiness upset you?
Does it come as a surprise
That I dance like I’ve got diamonds
At the meeting of my thighs?
Out of the huts of history’s shame
I rise
Up from a past that’s rooted in pain
I rise
I’m a black ocean, leaping and wide,
Welling and swelling I bear in the tide.
Leaving behind nights of terror and fear
I rise
Into a daybreak that’s wondrously clear
I rise
Bringing the gifts my ancestors gave,
I am the dream and the hope of the slave.
I rise
I rise
I rise.
If there was anything I could do for Maya Angelou, I’d like to do it.
This is the poem mentioned in the northwest corner of the puzzle Colonization by Robert W. Harris.
This is the final version published in 1843, not the original version published in 1831. Furthermore, the 1938 Poe anthology at my local library has the order of some of the lines in the last stanza as different than what I find on the intarwebz.
Ah, broken is the golden bowl! the spirit flown forever!
Let the bell toll!- a saintly soul floats on the Stygian river;
And, Guy de Vere, hast thou no tear?- weep now or nevermore!
See! on yon drear and rigid bier low lies thy love, Lenore!
Come! let the burial rite be read- the funeral song be sung!-
An anthem for the queenliest dead that ever died so young-
A dirge for her the doubly dead in that she died so young.
“Wretches! ye loved her for her wealth and hated her for her pride,
And when she fell in feeble health, ye blessed her- that she died!
How shall the ritual, then, be read?- the requiem how be sung
By you- by yours, the evil eye,- by yours, the slanderous tongue
That did to death the innocence that died, and died so young?”
Peccavimus; but rave not thus! and let a Sabbath song
Go up to God so solemnly the dead may feel no wrong.
The sweet Lenore hath “gone before,” with Hope, that flew beside,
Leaving thee wild for the dear child that should have been thy bride.
For her, the fair and debonair, that now so lowly lies,
The life upon her yellow hair but not within her eyes
The life still there, upon her hair- the death upon her eyes.
Avaunt – to-night my heart is light!- no dirge will I upraise,
But waft the angel on her flight with a Paean of old days!
Let no bell toll, then,- lest her soul, amid its hallowed mirth,
Should catch the note as it doth float up from the damnèd Earth!
To friends above, from fiends below, the indignant ghost is riven-
From Hell unto a high estate far up within the Heaven-
From grief and groan, to a golden throne, beside the King of Heaven!
The mourners tell Guy de Vere, Lenore’s fiancee, to weep now, or nevermore. The Raven was written in 1845, so the existence of nevermore in this poem is strictly coincidental. Some of the lines have internal rhymes, like lines 2, 3 and 4. So there are lines that rhyme, and rhymes within lines, but not always. There are rhythms, and rhythms within rhythms. Guy de Vere says the other mourners were fair-weather friends who were glad she died. The mourners said “Well, yeah, but you’re not sad because she’s dead, you’re sad because you didn’t get to marry her! Neener neener neener!” And Guy de Vere says, “I’m not going to be sad, I’m going to be happy that she’s going to Heaven. In fact, I bet she gets a front-row seat!”
