Poetry is about the tiniest of the arts and within it is the poetry reading, generally a draggy affair that is about as interesting as a gum spot on the floor of a movie theatre.
What to do about it?
You could show a silent movie, so people could watch that, while you mumble along.
You could say you are dying, so people don't mind looking at your last few moments.
You could be beautiful, or at least wear a colorful hat.
You could be brief.
When my friend Aaron Belz sent me his video of his latest reading I was not delighted. I haven't been to any successful poetry readings in my life. Maybe the best was Corso, because he was so drunk he just yelled at the audience for thirty minutes. It wasn't elegant, but I was awake.
So I was surprised to enjoy the video. At first I was angry. I just thought, fine, go ahead and ruin my day with your video, Belz. But I did listen. After about a minute, I thought: this is like stand-up comedy (which I adore). And it's like good stand-up comedy. But it's also like good poetry. It's somewhere in between. For many years I wondered if anybody could pull together these two genres. Belz has finally done it.
I like Belz. We've known one another for years and years and have read together on one occasion in St. Louis at the Museum of Contemporary Art. He's a Presbyterian, and is far right. So of course we get along in terms of our politics. And in art, he's all over the place, like me. He is very interested in comedy and wrote a very good dissertation on comedy. I also have written a book on comedy. So we have a lot in common.
He's not as cantankerous as I am on the page, but I am not at all cantankerous in person (unless you know me really really well, I will never show any cantankerousness in person).
He has size 13 shoes, if I recall correctly. Mine are only sevens, but they are extra wide. He is capable of acting nicely. He has this humble thing he does, but I think it's actually sincere. He teaches at a Christian university in Los Angeles. I don't know how to link the video directly (I spent all of ten seconds trying) but here's the link if anybody wants to brave boredom for a delicious ten minute bit (ok, I actually figured it out, just press the red hyperlink bar):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KjK4NY-Y1Sg
2 comments:
Dirtier but funnier.
I have size 15 shoes, but I'm 6'4" so it's proportional.
Still, when I was a kid, people thought my feet were too big. But my ears are folded neatly against my head. People whose ears stick out seem to share some other traits. The more I think about that, the sillier I am.
"Scientists" at one time thought that races could be defined by the dimensions and shapes of their heads. Weird. People really believed it.
I do believe that we are blind to the illusions of our own time. Whenever I talk to my dental hygienist, I enjoy reminding her of the illusions of the past in dental theory. I suggest that everything we now believe about teeth and how to treat them will probably be proven wrong. It never fails to make them mad. "Sir, dental medicine is a science!"
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