Arizona, Part Deux

[scottwoods]

Bill Campana's feature tonight was, no joke, mind-blowing.

Forget that he bought me genuine Mexican food yesterday or that he told me he liked my feature last night.  Forget all that.  I can certainly post in my journal without kissing anyone's hind parts.  I could have bypassed his whole feature here if I wanted to.  I don't want to.  It was

Comments

[campana]

the biggest, loudest thank you of the night goes to this post.

[only1miouo]

Sorry I missed it. The main reason I went to Fair Trade was because my cousin wanted to see Talaam Acey and Wisdom was supposed to be there and I wanted to get the advance ticket price. She didnt get there until about 10 mins before it ended. :-/

I enjoyed Chesko, Tom, Niel, and Alvin. But Bill's set sounded like more fun from what I read in your entry. Oh Well, maybe next time. :-)

Plus, the dinner with Holli, Therese and Klute sounded BOMB. I'll have to email Klute to get the info on the spot.

[scottwoods]

See what you missed?!

[dj_muse]

"without making me feel like I'm being processed like a hundred other audiences. "

I wonder if the slam format and that kind of time-obsessed memorization makes so many poets have that robotic, over-rehearsed quality. In the last couple of weeks, I had a really nasty feeling of "being processed" when every gesture, every inflection, was exactly the same thing I'd seen six months or so before. Not a good feeling at all.

It always needs to be about the poetry (and who you're with - the audience).

Sounds like you had an awesome trip, friend.

[scottwoods]

That's part of it, sure. Another part of it has nothing to do with Slam per se, and that's not being willing to break new poetry out. If you do the same poems you've done for years every time you get a chance to feature, you're probably going to be well rehearsed (shall we say).

My features tend to vary greatly because I'm either always switching poems in and out or trying to stay interesting to whoever is there. I never just go, "Well, here are my five high-scoring Slam poems" and walk off the stage.

[dj_muse]

I agree about it not necessarily being a slam-related offense. Some poets I've seen haven't been anywhere near a slam in years as far as I can tell and it still feels that way.

OTOH, I was at Tony's "old-school" impromptu reading (when his bassist got kicked out of the bar by an overzealous bartender) and even these really old poems were fresh to me. Tony may have done them "a lot" back in the old day, but it didn't feel like he was doing something he'd done a hundred times.

It's strange how that works sometimes.

I need to see you more often, it's always a fun experience. Funny, I see you don't do a poem in a set (like "Flavour of Love") and I think "hey, I like that one" - like I'm there and missed it or something. Yes, I am a dork.