Jack McCarthy Last Night

[scottwoods]

So we had Jack McCarthy feature last night.

What can I possibly say about Jack that most of you who know him and his work haven't said before?  Probably nothing.  What I can offer are a couple of anecdotes, a link, and an observation.

Anecdote 1: When I MCed the very first Rookie Open Mic at NPS (2002, Minneapolis), the audience was filled with

Comments

[succulentpoet]

I'm normally someone who memorizes my poems. But I hadn't performed in almost six months, and I had some new stuff, so I did two brand new pieces (one that I finished about ten minutes before the show started) off the page at our last slam and won.

Made me think of you, and laugh.

[stefan11]

ED Mabrey says that not every poem calls for memorization and recommends to memorize only th stuff that needs it; e.g., because it involves lots of movement. I decided to take this lesson to hear.

(BTW, I saw him doing extremely well at a very prestigeous slam, while still reading from the page. So, Ihave a reason to think he klnows what he is talking about.)

[scottwoods]

As a person who memorizes nothing, I'm not sure what that means, but okay.

[stefan11]

Suppose I haev a poem about dog's playing, or playing with dogs. It would involve lots of movement and gestures. So, it would be a kind of poem that I wopuld like to have memorized, so I free my body to move.

Otherwise, maybe there is no need for memorizing.

[scottwoods]

Oh, well if this - body movement - is the determination about whether or not to memorize I couldn't disagree more.

[stefan11]

Do you just drop few words because you like when a young performing poet like me begs you for more?

[scottwoods]

lol! That's some serious Scott Woods action there!

One of the poems I did at Nats this year was really new. Both of them had only been performed once, maybe twice before. Slam is all about the right poem at the right time. People (and judges) needing to see memorized poems to score slammers well is a myth I've been trying to do away with for years. I think telling potential slammers that it's a practically necessary tact to score well in slams keeps away some really good poets and poems, and feeds the impression that only certain types of work belong in Slam.