24-Hour Prep (or, Man, Does My Brain Hurt)
You'd think by the fifth time I'd have the system all worked out. Ideally I would pick poems all year long between features and store them away, little acorns of poetry in a tree, awaiting spring. Or a camel hump filled with metaphors like this one, time-released over a 24-hour period every April. Also, I'd already have a crew of people set-up to set the room up before I get6 there on Saturday so all I have to do is sit down and hit it. I'd have water already placed, the PA on, and a table, chair and mic stand ready to go.
Nah.
I will say that it is a LOT easier to pick poems for this when you block out the hours with specific poets. Trying to just pick 400 random poems wears you out. Because I try to make each hour work on its own, it can be tough to approach it the old way. This way, I can pick 22-30 poets I like (or enough of their poems that I like) and slot them. Then I can pad them out as needed if the book/s isn't strong enough to carry 20-45 minutes on its own.
I have some choice cats this year, and some poets I've never performed before, like always. I haven't featured a slammer yet, but Cristin makes this year's cut. I used her as the "coffee bean poet" last year (a poet whose work you pull out when things get stale or weary), so a lot of her work got used then. Fortunately, she's prolific and recently published again.
A few poets have developed a bit of a following from this event over the years, and fortunately for me 2009 was the year some of them decided to put out new books. So I could pick from crowd pleasers without worrying about if I repeated them before: Sherman Alexie, Kim Addonizio, etc. Billy Collins is always popular too, but I've read a lot of Collins. Not enough that he can't still carry an hour though.
Then there are the poets I can't wait to introduce people to, like Dorothy Barresi, Brenda Shaughnessy, Katheleen Sheeder Bonanno. I've also got an hour of two poets who recently passed: Lucille Clifton and Ai. I've never read any Ai work at this and Clifton, only a couple. I look forward to exposing them to people who might not see what the big deal is.
Because of the length of the show, I'm always on the lookout for really long work (think Silliman or Ashbery). Unfortunately, a lot of long form poems are not very engaging or meaningful beyond the exercise. I had a couple of them on deck (Ashbery's "Flow Chart", Claudia Emerson's "Late Wife", etc.) but the only thing that has the same sense of theme that made the cut ended up being Patricia Smith's collection of Hurricane Katrina-themed poems, Blood Dazzler. While not a long poem, I love collections that have a sole author and a big theme that they punch at over and over again in one sitting, so this one made the cut, even if it isn't quite the sort of thing I mean.
Of course, I am writing new work for this show, and it compensates for the long work I cut by being long work itself.
One of the hours I'm doing is one long prose poem piece that is adapted from the novel I wrote a few years ago, The Gospel of Smoke. Yeah, I turned my novel into a poem that may very well take an hour to read. That process - still ongoing - has been very gratifying. I've edited it a lot to get it into something that still smacks of poetry, but retains an engaging narrative (which a lot of prose poetry of any length doesn't do). I don't "kitchen sink" it. I think I got it down to 15 pages after a hard first cut. Now I need to polish and time it this week at some point to make sure it fill sits slot. This marks the second time I've done an hour at midnight of original work (one year I read all of Watering Hole: Juke Joint Poems), which means a couple of years in here I've done about 3 hours of original, non-repetaed work.
The other piece I'm working on - still - is a long-form piece about Prince. I'm currently calling it "The Prince Songbook", and it's a poem in 17 parts, each part named after a song, and all of the pieces in Prince's "voice". Why 17? Because of "17 Days", of course. Just have to decide when to read it. Usually I do new, experimental stuff in the first hour so that the last hour is all power. See no reason to change that now.
Going to sleep now. I told myself I'd go vegetarian the week of and that I would go to bed by 10 except on Wednesday, when I'll slam. I've been keeping with the veggie thing, but the bedtime got blown tonight. If I've been out of touch this week, this is why. This Prince poem will be the death of me this week.
See you on the other side!
Nah.
I will say that it is a LOT easier to pick poems for this when you block out the hours with specific poets. Trying to just pick 400 random poems wears you out. Because I try to make each hour work on its own, it can be tough to approach it the old way. This way, I can pick 22-30 poets I like (or enough of their poems that I like) and slot them. Then I can pad them out as needed if the book/s isn't strong enough to carry 20-45 minutes on its own.
I have some choice cats this year, and some poets I've never performed before, like always. I haven't featured a slammer yet, but Cristin makes this year's cut. I used her as the "coffee bean poet" last year (a poet whose work you pull out when things get stale or weary), so a lot of her work got used then. Fortunately, she's prolific and recently published again.
A few poets have developed a bit of a following from this event over the years, and fortunately for me 2009 was the year some of them decided to put out new books. So I could pick from crowd pleasers without worrying about if I repeated them before: Sherman Alexie, Kim Addonizio, etc. Billy Collins is always popular too, but I've read a lot of Collins. Not enough that he can't still carry an hour though.
Then there are the poets I can't wait to introduce people to, like Dorothy Barresi, Brenda Shaughnessy, Katheleen Sheeder Bonanno. I've also got an hour of two poets who recently passed: Lucille Clifton and Ai. I've never read any Ai work at this and Clifton, only a couple. I look forward to exposing them to people who might not see what the big deal is.
Because of the length of the show, I'm always on the lookout for really long work (think Silliman or Ashbery). Unfortunately, a lot of long form poems are not very engaging or meaningful beyond the exercise. I had a couple of them on deck (Ashbery's "Flow Chart", Claudia Emerson's "Late Wife", etc.) but the only thing that has the same sense of theme that made the cut ended up being Patricia Smith's collection of Hurricane Katrina-themed poems, Blood Dazzler. While not a long poem, I love collections that have a sole author and a big theme that they punch at over and over again in one sitting, so this one made the cut, even if it isn't quite the sort of thing I mean.
Of course, I am writing new work for this show, and it compensates for the long work I cut by being long work itself.
One of the hours I'm doing is one long prose poem piece that is adapted from the novel I wrote a few years ago, The Gospel of Smoke. Yeah, I turned my novel into a poem that may very well take an hour to read. That process - still ongoing - has been very gratifying. I've edited it a lot to get it into something that still smacks of poetry, but retains an engaging narrative (which a lot of prose poetry of any length doesn't do). I don't "kitchen sink" it. I think I got it down to 15 pages after a hard first cut. Now I need to polish and time it this week at some point to make sure it fill sits slot. This marks the second time I've done an hour at midnight of original work (one year I read all of Watering Hole: Juke Joint Poems), which means a couple of years in here I've done about 3 hours of original, non-repetaed work.
The other piece I'm working on - still - is a long-form piece about Prince. I'm currently calling it "The Prince Songbook", and it's a poem in 17 parts, each part named after a song, and all of the pieces in Prince's "voice". Why 17? Because of "17 Days", of course. Just have to decide when to read it. Usually I do new, experimental stuff in the first hour so that the last hour is all power. See no reason to change that now.
Going to sleep now. I told myself I'd go vegetarian the week of and that I would go to bed by 10 except on Wednesday, when I'll slam. I've been keeping with the veggie thing, but the bedtime got blown tonight. If I've been out of touch this week, this is why. This Prince poem will be the death of me this week.
See you on the other side!