An Experiment: Walking Poetry's America, Pt. 1
In 1993 Dana Gioia wrote an essay entitled, "Notes Towards a New Bohemia". I had read this essay before, but it was brought back to my attention yesterday by a fellow poet while immersed in a brief discussion about the nature of performance poetry on Facebook, of all places.* I re-read the essay to see if there was something I could use (and because Gioia is always immensely readable if nothing else), and while I didn't find much of it more relevant to the issue we were debating than anything else, I did find this line that captivated me:
"I sometimes think it is now possible for a poet to walk across the United States and be able to give a bookstore reading every evening."
Gioia was speaking to how many poetry readings there were outside of the academy these days (or those days, I suppose), musing casually we should assume that there are so many you couldn't walk a day without bumping into one.
Why oh WHY did I read that? You know that when I see something like that the artistic Evel Knievel in me gets all riled up.
I in turn spent a good deal of last evening pondering, arguing and calculating what it would take to achieve such a feat, assuming it were even possible. I mean, he made the statement (flippant and unintentional as it might have been) 17 years ago. How many readings and venues have been added to the poetry firmament since Gioia had this thought? Surely hundreds! I can think of 100 readings right now that didn't exist 17 years ago. Even with the closing of many independent book sellers in recent years, the number of places poetry lives and breathes has to be larger than it was in 1993, and I am certain it exceeds 1993 statistics by a healthy margin.
(THIS is the kind of musing that generates 24-hour poetry features and mile-long poem thoughts out of me.)
"I sometimes think it is now possible for a poet to walk across the United States and be able to give a bookstore reading every evening."
So how to determine its viability:
EXPERIMENT & THEORY RESEARCH
1. Fix the context
If you replace "give a bookstore reading" with "perform at a poetry reading" you strike closer to the current state of things. There are so many avenues that poetry exist in these days that to confine it to bookstores is meaningless. Not to take a swipe at Gioia or anything; if he wrote the essay today he probably wouldn't make the bookstore distinction again. So I point this out only to get this experiment past the little hurdles that could slow the discussion down later.
Conclusion: Any regular poetry reading fits the premise.
2. Define, "regular"
The basis of Gioia's statement is to point out how popular poetry is based on the number of venues in which it occurs. So while one could line-up readings to appear at during this literary equivalent to the Bataan Death March, one should not have readings set-up to fill in the gaps to make it a daily experience. Setting up readings that weren't here at the beginning of the journey defeats the original "theory"**: that there is so much existing interest in poetry that you can't walk a day without bumping into a place that features it.
Conclusion: The journey can only be determined and tracked through existing readings. No "rest stop" readings.
3. Calculate
This is the tough part. You really need to settle some things up-front here:
a) How many readings are there?
b) What is the greatest concentration of readings, and can this concentration be traversed point by point on foot on a daily basis?
c) Which end of the country do you start on? And in?
d) Define “walking”.
e) Determine reasonable distance per day.
f) Determine how long it would take to accomplish the feat given a daily reasonable distance.
g) Determine budget.
Conclusion: tbd
I will continue this experiment and pick these elements apart in a separate post.
NOTES
* I get why discussions take place on Facebook (because it's easy to launch and engage them, as well as become popular). I guess that's fine. It's certainly better than having no discussion at all. That said, I find it not very conducive to thoughts or platforms requiring more than a few lines of ink.
** If I MUST say it out loud: I get that Gioia wasn’t entirely serious. This is no reason to not consider it seriously. The implications - let alone the actual undertaking - could be mind-blowing. Risking a genuinely mind-blowing activity is worth a couple of hours of research as far as I’m concerned.
"I sometimes think it is now possible for a poet to walk across the United States and be able to give a bookstore reading every evening."
Gioia was speaking to how many poetry readings there were outside of the academy these days (or those days, I suppose), musing casually we should assume that there are so many you couldn't walk a day without bumping into one.
Why oh WHY did I read that? You know that when I see something like that the artistic Evel Knievel in me gets all riled up.
I in turn spent a good deal of last evening pondering, arguing and calculating what it would take to achieve such a feat, assuming it were even possible. I mean, he made the statement (flippant and unintentional as it might have been) 17 years ago. How many readings and venues have been added to the poetry firmament since Gioia had this thought? Surely hundreds! I can think of 100 readings right now that didn't exist 17 years ago. Even with the closing of many independent book sellers in recent years, the number of places poetry lives and breathes has to be larger than it was in 1993, and I am certain it exceeds 1993 statistics by a healthy margin.
(THIS is the kind of musing that generates 24-hour poetry features and mile-long poem thoughts out of me.)
"I sometimes think it is now possible for a poet to walk across the United States and be able to give a bookstore reading every evening."
So how to determine its viability:
EXPERIMENT & THEORY RESEARCH
1. Fix the context
If you replace "give a bookstore reading" with "perform at a poetry reading" you strike closer to the current state of things. There are so many avenues that poetry exist in these days that to confine it to bookstores is meaningless. Not to take a swipe at Gioia or anything; if he wrote the essay today he probably wouldn't make the bookstore distinction again. So I point this out only to get this experiment past the little hurdles that could slow the discussion down later.
Conclusion: Any regular poetry reading fits the premise.
2. Define, "regular"
The basis of Gioia's statement is to point out how popular poetry is based on the number of venues in which it occurs. So while one could line-up readings to appear at during this literary equivalent to the Bataan Death March, one should not have readings set-up to fill in the gaps to make it a daily experience. Setting up readings that weren't here at the beginning of the journey defeats the original "theory"**: that there is so much existing interest in poetry that you can't walk a day without bumping into a place that features it.
Conclusion: The journey can only be determined and tracked through existing readings. No "rest stop" readings.
3. Calculate
This is the tough part. You really need to settle some things up-front here:
a) How many readings are there?
b) What is the greatest concentration of readings, and can this concentration be traversed point by point on foot on a daily basis?
c) Which end of the country do you start on? And in?
d) Define “walking”.
e) Determine reasonable distance per day.
f) Determine how long it would take to accomplish the feat given a daily reasonable distance.
g) Determine budget.
Conclusion: tbd
I will continue this experiment and pick these elements apart in a separate post.
NOTES
* I get why discussions take place on Facebook (because it's easy to launch and engage them, as well as become popular). I guess that's fine. It's certainly better than having no discussion at all. That said, I find it not very conducive to thoughts or platforms requiring more than a few lines of ink.
** If I MUST say it out loud: I get that Gioia wasn’t entirely serious. This is no reason to not consider it seriously. The implications - let alone the actual undertaking - could be mind-blowing. Risking a genuinely mind-blowing activity is worth a couple of hours of research as far as I’m concerned.