2012 24-Hour Solo Poetry Feature Set List & Notes: The Last One
Below is the set list for 2012, followed by an assortment of observations. This is my last year doing the 24-hour solo poetry feature, a decision I was not even contemplating going into this year's reading and which I speak more on below.
7:00 PM - 8:00 PM - Scott Woods
What the Black Poets Will Kill Me for Telling You
Big Man on Campus
Saint Veronica of the Emergency Room
The Break Room
Juvenilia
I Remember Me
A Better Origin for Black Manta
Smokestack Lightnin’
Why You Don’t Remake The Thing
Stalag 3:16
Blurbs for Poetry Books I Didn’t Like
Lullaby
(12)
8:00 PM - 9:00 PM - Catie Rosemurgy
Twelve and Listening to the Stones
Grace Lies on the Sofa and Waits for Her Boyfriend to Get Home from Work
The Feeling of Accomplishment I Get When He Is Pretty
What I Wanted to Say Instead of Yes When a Guy at a Bar Asked Me If I Grew Up near Lake Michigan
Lake Superior Confesses to the Shore of Keeweenaw Bay
Steel Blue
Jesus, the Perfect Lover
Grace Lies Down to Write Her Boyfriend a Letter
The Office Party
Why God Invented the Cold
The E-String Strut (or heaven According to the E String on Steve Earle’s Acoustic Guitar
1, 2, 3…I’m Perfect Starting Now
Grace Lies Down on the Hood of Her Car
Mostly Mick Jagger
Fifteen Minutes after the Movie
Blow Your House Down
(16)
9:00 PM - 10:00 PM - James Tate
The Book of Lies
Why I Will Not Get Out of Bed
Prose Poem
Shadowboxing
I Take Back All My Kisses
Lewis and Clark Overheard in Conversation
IF You Would Disappear at Sea
My Girl
Deaf Girl Playing
Teaching the Ape to Write Poems
Man with Wooden Leg Escapes Prison
Sensitive Ears
Read the Great Poets
On the Subject of Doctors
Marfa
The Life of Poetry
Goodtime Jesus
The Motorcyclists
Interruptions
Poem to Some of my Recent Poems
(20)
10:00 PM - 11:00 PM - Jarret Keene
After Watching a Local High School Stage Production of George Romero’s “Night of the Living Dead”
Monster Fashion
Inside Mystery Funhouse
In Honor of the inauguration of the World’s First Baby Abandonment Station
What Denis Johnson Said When I Gave Him a Pair of X-Ray Specs
An Usher’s Reprimand
Godzilla’s Waltz
Upon Visiting the New Orleans Pharmacy Museum
So Loved the World
Writing Against God
Hair
Cut-Rate Liquor
Questions I’ve Yet To Ask my Father, a Fireman
Wedding Bells
The Yoganaut
Crowded Rooms
Our National Anthem
Hangover Remedy
(18)
11:00 PM - Midnight - Pedro Pietri
January Hangover
October Hangover
November Hangover
Intermission from Thursday
Intermission from Sunday
1st Untitled Poem
10th Untitled Poem
Conversation in a Dark Room
Conversation in a Darker Room
A Day in the Life of Nobody Else
Rehearsing for an Argument
Traffic Misdirector
A Lie in Progress
The Title of This Poem Was Lost
(14)
Midnight - 1:00 AM - Scott Woods
Surviving a Zombie Apocalypse
Beer Goggles Smash
Red Dead Redemption
What Your Next Man Better Realize
Braille in the Time of Miracles
Things I Did While Writing This Poem
Salt
Resume, Professional Poet
Forgotten Password
To the Stalking Husband of My Ex
The Endings to All of the Movies Playing Right Now
The Confession (A Stephen King Cento)
The Rainbow Trout Extols His Virtues to the Squid
(13)
1:00 AM - 2:00 AM - Alberto Rios
I Heard Him with My Back
Mesquite Coyotes
A Marrow of Water
What He Does to Me
Her Secret Love, Whispered Late in Her Years
The Used Side of the Sofa
Indentations in the Sugar
Marvella, for Borrowing
Teodoro Luna’s Two Kisses
Teodoro Luna Confesses After Years to his Brother, Anselmo the Priest, Who Is Required to understand..
Small Risings
In Second Grade Miss Lee I Promised Never to Forget You and I Never Did
Eating Potato Chips in Middle Age
What We’ve Done to Each Other
(14)
2:00 AM - 3:00 AM - Amy Gerstler / Jeredith Merrin
Amy Gerstler
For My Niece Sidney, Age Six
Advice from a Caterpillar
Interview with a Dog
Dig
Dear Departed,
(5)
Jeredtih Merrin
Family Reunion
Depression
At the College Yesterday
(3)
3:00 AM - 4:00 AM - Wendy Rose
Mano
Long Division: A Tribal History
For the White Poets Who Would Be Indian
Chicago
What the Mohawk Made the Hopi Say
Mount Rushmore
Remember Waking Up with Me
Holodeck
Coyote
Handprints
The requirements of a target
Detective work
Trickster
Bird at the base of a tree
(14)
4:00 AM - 5:00 AM - Jane Kenyon
Finding a Long Gray Hair
The First Eight Days of the Beard
The Socks
Falling
Afternoon in the House
Apple Dropping into Deep Early Snow
Drink, Eat, Sleep
Trouble with Math in a One-Room Country School
Briefly it Enters, and Briefly Speaks
After the Hurricane
The Pear
The Clearing
Private Beach
While We Were Arguing
The Guest
Cultural Exchange
Litter
(17)
5:00 AM - 6:00 AM - Kevin Prufer
Ars Poetica
The Internet
What I Gave the 20th Century
Love Poem
God’s Grandeur
The Villain and His Helicopter: Possible Movie Rental Versions
Recent History
Pre-Elegies
The 20th Century
Postscript
(10)
6:00 AM - 7:00 AM - Raymond Carver
Fear
Medicine
In the Lobby of the Hotel del Mayo
The Debate
The Window
Cadillacs and Poetry
The Child
This Word Love
The World Book Salesman
Caution
The Attic
What the Doctor Said
Cherish
(13)
7:00 AM - 8:00 AM - Ovid vs. Greek Poetry
Ovid - Love Poem I, 3
Ovid - Love Poem I, 4
Ovid - Love Poem I, 14
Ovid - Love Poem III, 7
Tassos Denegris - Impressions of a Poetry Reading in Japanese
Apollinarius - “A grammarian lost his balance…”
(6)
8:00 AM - 9:00 AM - Diane Glancy
Driving
Words look for a place to belong
If Indians Are Coming It Won’t Start on Time
Animal Transformations
Oil Field Wife
Wohah, Buffalo Bill
Dance Hall Indian
Lacrosse
The Declarative
Boarding School for Indian Women
Home Plate
Amelia’s Breakfast
(12)
9:00 AM - 10:00 AM - Elaine Equi / D.A. Powell
Elaine Equi
The Fool on the Hill
Some Questions Movies Ask Us
Amidst a Froth of Ferns
Why I Read Nietzsche
The Libraries Didn’t Burn
On Hold
Love Song for an Enemy
He Looked Liked Jesus
Reading Linda Howard’s Death Angel Over Someone’s Shoulder on the Subway
Envoi
(10)
D. A. Powell
The Fluffer Talks of Eternity
The Kiwi Comes to Gridley, CA
Little Boy Blue
Chicken
Dying in a Turkish Bath
An Elegy for My Libido
Donkey Basketball Diaries
Pupil
Magic Kingdom Come
Space Junk
Do the Hustle
(11)
10:00 AM - 11:00 AM - Eleanor Ross Taylor
The Chain Gang Guard
Long-Dreaded Event Takes Place
At Your Own Risk
Cocoon
A Permanent Dye
Maternity Ward
Grief
The Searchers
The Going Away of Young People
Love Knows
Woman as Artist
To a Young Writer
The Young Writers’ Reply
Limits
Where Somebody Died
Short Foray
Diary Entry, March 24
The Accidental Prisoner
Three Days in Flower
The Dead
How To Live in a Trap
Disappearing Act
(22)
11:00 AM - Noon - Miller Williams
The Musician
On the Slaying of a Music Student in Philadelphia by Teenagers
Notes in a Minister’s Hymnbook
Learning to Read
We
The Story
Rebecca at Play
Paying Some Slight Attention to His Birthday the Associate Professor Goes About His Business…
Letters
Birth of the Blues
Learning Russian
The Stripper
Out of a Clear Sky
Folding His USA TODAY He makes his Point In the Blue Star Café
She Prays for Her Husband, The Good Pastor Lying on His Deathbed At Last
The Serial Murderer Says Something To the Priest
The Head of the Wandering Family Speaks of His Brother
The Art Photographer Puts His Model at Ease
Hello
A Question of Time
(20)
Noon - 1:00 PM - Naomi Shihab Nye
Someone I Love
Sewing, Knitting, Crocheting
Frequent Frequent Flyer
Headache
Please Describe How You Became a Writer
Tell Me About Yourself When You Were 17
First Day Without in 99 Years
Guide
Lives of the Women Poets
Dictionary in the Dark
The Day
The Story, Around the Corner
During a War
Why I Could Not Accept Your Invitation
He Said EYE-RACK
The Wreath that Eats Two Ice Cubes
It is not a game, it was never a game.
I Feel Sorry for Jesus
Music
Truth Serum
(20)
1:00 PM - 2:00 PM - Gregory Corso
For Miles
But I Do Not need Kindness
She Doesn’t Know He Thinks He’s God
Poets Hitchhiking on the Highway
The Saving Quality
How Happy I Used To Be
Friend
Marriage
Poet Talking to Himself in the Mirror
(9)
2:00 PM - 3:00 PM - Tom Disch
Abecedary
Zewhyexary
Poems
Haikus of an AmPart
Ars Poetica
An Argument
The Prospect Behind Us
On the Use of Masculine-Preferred
Garage Sale
To an Elder Brother, Aborted
The Friends of Long Ago
The Self as Product
Why This Tie, Why That
minor poets are human too
excuse the language
(15)
3:00 PM - 4:00 PM - Charles Harper Webb
Charles Harper Webb
Prayer for the Man Who Mugged My Father, 72
Peaches
Tenderness in Men
Someone Else’s Good News
Love Poetry
To Make My Countrymen Love Poetry
Consciousness
Rat Defeated in a Landslide
Conan the Barbarian
Superman, Old
My Wife Insists That, On Our First Date, I Told Her I Had Seven Kinds of Hair
The Animals Are Leaving
Goddess
I Have Much Better Poems than This
(15)
4:00 PM - 5:00 PM - Derrick C. Brown (was Stephen Dunn)
I Just Wasted a Minute of Your Life
My Speech to the Graduating Class
Cotton in the Air
Patience
The Best Pickup Line is Howling
New Machines
The Unlimited Noises of Silence
Meatloaf
Power
If You Buy an Old Polygraph at a Swap Meet, Do Not Break It Out at a Party
Frozen Valuables Catalogue
Radvertising, Extreme Advertising That is Extremely Rad, Tomorrow
The Problems with Falling in Love with Circus Folk
Please Welcome Dick Richards, The World’s Worst Poet
My New Tombstone
Great Titles You Can Buy Off Me For Your New Hair and Nail Salon
Grocery List
Slackjawed BBQ Honkey, or Man, I Really Love Chili’s Bar and Grill, Dinner and Tournament
(18)
5:00 PM - 6:00 PM - Adrian C. Louis
A Month After No E-mails, I Call Back East and Learn You’re Dead
The Obituary
E-mail to a High School Sweetheart Who Recently Tracked Me Down
This Is the Time of Grasshoppers and All That I See Is Dying
For the Fullblood Girl Next to Me
Star, Can You Hear Me?
One of the Grim Reaper’s Disguises
Adios Again, My Blessed Angel of Thunderheads and Urine
The Promise
A Visit to my Mother’s Grave
At the Knight’s Inn in Reno
In the Ghetto on the Prairie There is Unrequited Love
The Hunter’s Blood Quickens
Sometimes a Warrior Comes Tired
A Funeral Procession of One
(15)
6:00 PM - 7:00 PM - Scott Woods
Dungeons & Dragons
Flotsam
Ugly Teeth (Yang Peiyi)
Jesus, Judas and the Case of the Talking Pig
Crutches
Supermarket Egg
Ten Places Jesus Shed His Blood
Allegedly
Red Tails
Race War
(10)
352 poems total for 2012.
2526 (+/-) poems over 7 years.
You can see the set lists from all the previous years here:
http://scottwoods.livejournal.com/349110.html
Notes:
- I didn’t go into this thinking, “This will be my last one.” I was all set to knock this one out and keep rolling. But I’m always saying I learn so many things during each one of these, and one of the things I learned here was that I didn’t need to keep doing it. There were a number of factors that contributed to the formulation of that idea, and I know it’s dangerous to make decisions like that in the heat of the moment, but I can tell you in the perfect light of a new day that it is the right decision. “Having nothing left to prove” is kind of at the top of my list of reasons. Moving the educative element out of this reading and into something more formal is also appealing. And let me tell you: this doesn’t get easier every year…it gets harder. I have to write more and more new work to maintain the amount of poems I read from year to year, and because I was so busy on average, that just wasn’t getting done over time. So I end up cramming. And while I am ideally suited for pressure writing, I shed certain responsibilities so I wouldn’t feel like I had to do stop the rest of my life to get some poems done. I want to see what the freer Scott has to say, what he’d like to do. And my grass sorely needs cut most of the time.
- Adrian C. Louis is my favorite Indian writer. I say this knowing full-well who Sherman Alexie is and living him too.
- Jarret Keene should come back to poetry.
- Though I am not a religious man, Jesus appears in my work and the work I choose for this reading a lot for a poet and a reading that isn’t religious. I probably have more poems about Jesus than half the Christian poets I know (in that way that a poem is distinctly about Jesus, not in the sub-cultural way that a Christian’s poems are all “naturally” about Jesus, like my poems are all “naturally” Black). My point is, performing poetry is how I worship, in a very real sense. I don’t write about Jesus because he’s a great myth; I believe he existed in some way, shape or form. You can’t write what I write about him if you don’t, and you can’t write what I write if you don’t believe in some kind of God. And you really can’t write what I write about him if a part of you doesn’t love him.
- Having read hundreds of poems just in the last couple of days, it amazes me how little people who spend so much time on poetry understand about its possibilities, its range, its magic. People who say “That’s academic poetry” or “I don’t hear much form poetry these days” probably don’t know what the hell they’re talking about. I think a lot of people say “academic poetry” when they mean “poetry that didn’t get self-published at Kinkos”, and that a lot of people who comment on form probably can’t name more than six forms. When I read academic and form work aloud, these same people would struggle to know the difference.
- You cannot read Eleanor Ross Taylor’s “To a Young Writer” and not also read “The Young Writers’ Reply”. Seriously: It’s a law in three states.
- You want to talk persona poems? Miller Williams KILLS. Most performance poets I know don't even know who he is...and he's an inaugural poet. His stripper poem? His photographer-with-model poem? Psh...please. GET YOU SOME BOOKS IN YOUR LIFE.
- I have had some real pat-on-the-back moments with poets who have been chosen for this reading. I love having received, out of the blue, an email from Adrian C. Louis asking to have a recording of me performing his poems. I love that Kim Addonizio sent me a gang of poems that were forthcoming in a book because I had read so much of her already. I loved having Sherman Alexie tell me, after hearing that I performed his Sasquatch poems in their entirety, that “No one ever asks about those poems!” Anybody can be a fan of a poet. I shoot for disciple.
Random Silliness:
- Breaking into reggae impressions and phrases upon reading the Diane Glancy title “Dance Hall Indian”.
- “Your face looks like your skull.”
- “I think I’m done.” (Uttered around 4:30 or 5:00 AM. I can’t recall the time.)
- Church with Vernell.
- The Cheez-It commercials
- Chastising a stranger about zombie movies
- I was supposed to read form Stephen Dunn’s latest book but it disappeared between my house and the reading. So I used the coffee bean poet instead; Derrick C. Brown. Which worked out because I’d only read about 4 poems of Brown’s up to that point (4:00 PM), so I still had a lot of ammunition. Wish I could have shared that Dunn though. You know Dunn is my MAN, yo.
- Deciding to stop this during the same month as I’ve decided to step out of organizing for PSi makes it seem like I’m on some kind of campaign to get free of poetry things. I’m not. I’m looking forward to all of the poetry I will write or perform, all the things I can impart, all of the other cool experiments and shows I’ve had simmering coming to light. Shedding some of the big things is only making me light enough to travel new roads.
Good bye 24-hour solo poetry feature. Maybe we’ll see each other again. You have been a brutally honest, non-compromising, fully embracing teacher. I feel a little like Kwai Chang Caine leaving the temple with burning arms.
7:00 PM - 8:00 PM - Scott Woods
What the Black Poets Will Kill Me for Telling You
Big Man on Campus
Saint Veronica of the Emergency Room
The Break Room
Juvenilia
I Remember Me
A Better Origin for Black Manta
Smokestack Lightnin’
Why You Don’t Remake The Thing
Stalag 3:16
Blurbs for Poetry Books I Didn’t Like
Lullaby
(12)
8:00 PM - 9:00 PM - Catie Rosemurgy
Twelve and Listening to the Stones
Grace Lies on the Sofa and Waits for Her Boyfriend to Get Home from Work
The Feeling of Accomplishment I Get When He Is Pretty
What I Wanted to Say Instead of Yes When a Guy at a Bar Asked Me If I Grew Up near Lake Michigan
Lake Superior Confesses to the Shore of Keeweenaw Bay
Steel Blue
Jesus, the Perfect Lover
Grace Lies Down to Write Her Boyfriend a Letter
The Office Party
Why God Invented the Cold
The E-String Strut (or heaven According to the E String on Steve Earle’s Acoustic Guitar
1, 2, 3…I’m Perfect Starting Now
Grace Lies Down on the Hood of Her Car
Mostly Mick Jagger
Fifteen Minutes after the Movie
Blow Your House Down
(16)
9:00 PM - 10:00 PM - James Tate
The Book of Lies
Why I Will Not Get Out of Bed
Prose Poem
Shadowboxing
I Take Back All My Kisses
Lewis and Clark Overheard in Conversation
IF You Would Disappear at Sea
My Girl
Deaf Girl Playing
Teaching the Ape to Write Poems
Man with Wooden Leg Escapes Prison
Sensitive Ears
Read the Great Poets
On the Subject of Doctors
Marfa
The Life of Poetry
Goodtime Jesus
The Motorcyclists
Interruptions
Poem to Some of my Recent Poems
(20)
10:00 PM - 11:00 PM - Jarret Keene
After Watching a Local High School Stage Production of George Romero’s “Night of the Living Dead”
Monster Fashion
Inside Mystery Funhouse
In Honor of the inauguration of the World’s First Baby Abandonment Station
What Denis Johnson Said When I Gave Him a Pair of X-Ray Specs
An Usher’s Reprimand
Godzilla’s Waltz
Upon Visiting the New Orleans Pharmacy Museum
So Loved the World
Writing Against God
Hair
Cut-Rate Liquor
Questions I’ve Yet To Ask my Father, a Fireman
Wedding Bells
The Yoganaut
Crowded Rooms
Our National Anthem
Hangover Remedy
(18)
11:00 PM - Midnight - Pedro Pietri
January Hangover
October Hangover
November Hangover
Intermission from Thursday
Intermission from Sunday
1st Untitled Poem
10th Untitled Poem
Conversation in a Dark Room
Conversation in a Darker Room
A Day in the Life of Nobody Else
Rehearsing for an Argument
Traffic Misdirector
A Lie in Progress
The Title of This Poem Was Lost
(14)
Midnight - 1:00 AM - Scott Woods
Surviving a Zombie Apocalypse
Beer Goggles Smash
Red Dead Redemption
What Your Next Man Better Realize
Braille in the Time of Miracles
Things I Did While Writing This Poem
Salt
Resume, Professional Poet
Forgotten Password
To the Stalking Husband of My Ex
The Endings to All of the Movies Playing Right Now
The Confession (A Stephen King Cento)
The Rainbow Trout Extols His Virtues to the Squid
(13)
1:00 AM - 2:00 AM - Alberto Rios
I Heard Him with My Back
Mesquite Coyotes
A Marrow of Water
What He Does to Me
Her Secret Love, Whispered Late in Her Years
The Used Side of the Sofa
Indentations in the Sugar
Marvella, for Borrowing
Teodoro Luna’s Two Kisses
Teodoro Luna Confesses After Years to his Brother, Anselmo the Priest, Who Is Required to understand..
Small Risings
In Second Grade Miss Lee I Promised Never to Forget You and I Never Did
Eating Potato Chips in Middle Age
What We’ve Done to Each Other
(14)
2:00 AM - 3:00 AM - Amy Gerstler / Jeredith Merrin
Amy Gerstler
For My Niece Sidney, Age Six
Advice from a Caterpillar
Interview with a Dog
Dig
Dear Departed,
(5)
Jeredtih Merrin
Family Reunion
Depression
At the College Yesterday
(3)
3:00 AM - 4:00 AM - Wendy Rose
Mano
Long Division: A Tribal History
For the White Poets Who Would Be Indian
Chicago
What the Mohawk Made the Hopi Say
Mount Rushmore
Remember Waking Up with Me
Holodeck
Coyote
Handprints
The requirements of a target
Detective work
Trickster
Bird at the base of a tree
(14)
4:00 AM - 5:00 AM - Jane Kenyon
Finding a Long Gray Hair
The First Eight Days of the Beard
The Socks
Falling
Afternoon in the House
Apple Dropping into Deep Early Snow
Drink, Eat, Sleep
Trouble with Math in a One-Room Country School
Briefly it Enters, and Briefly Speaks
After the Hurricane
The Pear
The Clearing
Private Beach
While We Were Arguing
The Guest
Cultural Exchange
Litter
(17)
5:00 AM - 6:00 AM - Kevin Prufer
Ars Poetica
The Internet
What I Gave the 20th Century
Love Poem
God’s Grandeur
The Villain and His Helicopter: Possible Movie Rental Versions
Recent History
Pre-Elegies
The 20th Century
Postscript
(10)
6:00 AM - 7:00 AM - Raymond Carver
Fear
Medicine
In the Lobby of the Hotel del Mayo
The Debate
The Window
Cadillacs and Poetry
The Child
This Word Love
The World Book Salesman
Caution
The Attic
What the Doctor Said
Cherish
(13)
7:00 AM - 8:00 AM - Ovid vs. Greek Poetry
Ovid - Love Poem I, 3
Ovid - Love Poem I, 4
Ovid - Love Poem I, 14
Ovid - Love Poem III, 7
Tassos Denegris - Impressions of a Poetry Reading in Japanese
Apollinarius - “A grammarian lost his balance…”
(6)
8:00 AM - 9:00 AM - Diane Glancy
Driving
Words look for a place to belong
If Indians Are Coming It Won’t Start on Time
Animal Transformations
Oil Field Wife
Wohah, Buffalo Bill
Dance Hall Indian
Lacrosse
The Declarative
Boarding School for Indian Women
Home Plate
Amelia’s Breakfast
(12)
9:00 AM - 10:00 AM - Elaine Equi / D.A. Powell
Elaine Equi
The Fool on the Hill
Some Questions Movies Ask Us
Amidst a Froth of Ferns
Why I Read Nietzsche
The Libraries Didn’t Burn
On Hold
Love Song for an Enemy
He Looked Liked Jesus
Reading Linda Howard’s Death Angel Over Someone’s Shoulder on the Subway
Envoi
(10)
D. A. Powell
The Fluffer Talks of Eternity
The Kiwi Comes to Gridley, CA
Little Boy Blue
Chicken
Dying in a Turkish Bath
An Elegy for My Libido
Donkey Basketball Diaries
Pupil
Magic Kingdom Come
Space Junk
Do the Hustle
(11)
10:00 AM - 11:00 AM - Eleanor Ross Taylor
The Chain Gang Guard
Long-Dreaded Event Takes Place
At Your Own Risk
Cocoon
A Permanent Dye
Maternity Ward
Grief
The Searchers
The Going Away of Young People
Love Knows
Woman as Artist
To a Young Writer
The Young Writers’ Reply
Limits
Where Somebody Died
Short Foray
Diary Entry, March 24
The Accidental Prisoner
Three Days in Flower
The Dead
How To Live in a Trap
Disappearing Act
(22)
11:00 AM - Noon - Miller Williams
The Musician
On the Slaying of a Music Student in Philadelphia by Teenagers
Notes in a Minister’s Hymnbook
Learning to Read
We
The Story
Rebecca at Play
Paying Some Slight Attention to His Birthday the Associate Professor Goes About His Business…
Letters
Birth of the Blues
Learning Russian
The Stripper
Out of a Clear Sky
Folding His USA TODAY He makes his Point In the Blue Star Café
She Prays for Her Husband, The Good Pastor Lying on His Deathbed At Last
The Serial Murderer Says Something To the Priest
The Head of the Wandering Family Speaks of His Brother
The Art Photographer Puts His Model at Ease
Hello
A Question of Time
(20)
Noon - 1:00 PM - Naomi Shihab Nye
Someone I Love
Sewing, Knitting, Crocheting
Frequent Frequent Flyer
Headache
Please Describe How You Became a Writer
Tell Me About Yourself When You Were 17
First Day Without in 99 Years
Guide
Lives of the Women Poets
Dictionary in the Dark
The Day
The Story, Around the Corner
During a War
Why I Could Not Accept Your Invitation
He Said EYE-RACK
The Wreath that Eats Two Ice Cubes
It is not a game, it was never a game.
I Feel Sorry for Jesus
Music
Truth Serum
(20)
1:00 PM - 2:00 PM - Gregory Corso
For Miles
But I Do Not need Kindness
She Doesn’t Know He Thinks He’s God
Poets Hitchhiking on the Highway
The Saving Quality
How Happy I Used To Be
Friend
Marriage
Poet Talking to Himself in the Mirror
(9)
2:00 PM - 3:00 PM - Tom Disch
Abecedary
Zewhyexary
Poems
Haikus of an AmPart
Ars Poetica
An Argument
The Prospect Behind Us
On the Use of Masculine-Preferred
Garage Sale
To an Elder Brother, Aborted
The Friends of Long Ago
The Self as Product
Why This Tie, Why That
minor poets are human too
excuse the language
(15)
3:00 PM - 4:00 PM - Charles Harper Webb
Charles Harper Webb
Prayer for the Man Who Mugged My Father, 72
Peaches
Tenderness in Men
Someone Else’s Good News
Love Poetry
To Make My Countrymen Love Poetry
Consciousness
Rat Defeated in a Landslide
Conan the Barbarian
Superman, Old
My Wife Insists That, On Our First Date, I Told Her I Had Seven Kinds of Hair
The Animals Are Leaving
Goddess
I Have Much Better Poems than This
(15)
4:00 PM - 5:00 PM - Derrick C. Brown (was Stephen Dunn)
I Just Wasted a Minute of Your Life
My Speech to the Graduating Class
Cotton in the Air
Patience
The Best Pickup Line is Howling
New Machines
The Unlimited Noises of Silence
Meatloaf
Power
If You Buy an Old Polygraph at a Swap Meet, Do Not Break It Out at a Party
Frozen Valuables Catalogue
Radvertising, Extreme Advertising That is Extremely Rad, Tomorrow
The Problems with Falling in Love with Circus Folk
Please Welcome Dick Richards, The World’s Worst Poet
My New Tombstone
Great Titles You Can Buy Off Me For Your New Hair and Nail Salon
Grocery List
Slackjawed BBQ Honkey, or Man, I Really Love Chili’s Bar and Grill, Dinner and Tournament
(18)
5:00 PM - 6:00 PM - Adrian C. Louis
A Month After No E-mails, I Call Back East and Learn You’re Dead
The Obituary
E-mail to a High School Sweetheart Who Recently Tracked Me Down
This Is the Time of Grasshoppers and All That I See Is Dying
For the Fullblood Girl Next to Me
Star, Can You Hear Me?
One of the Grim Reaper’s Disguises
Adios Again, My Blessed Angel of Thunderheads and Urine
The Promise
A Visit to my Mother’s Grave
At the Knight’s Inn in Reno
In the Ghetto on the Prairie There is Unrequited Love
The Hunter’s Blood Quickens
Sometimes a Warrior Comes Tired
A Funeral Procession of One
(15)
6:00 PM - 7:00 PM - Scott Woods
Dungeons & Dragons
Flotsam
Ugly Teeth (Yang Peiyi)
Jesus, Judas and the Case of the Talking Pig
Crutches
Supermarket Egg
Ten Places Jesus Shed His Blood
Allegedly
Red Tails
Race War
(10)
352 poems total for 2012.
2526 (+/-) poems over 7 years.
You can see the set lists from all the previous years here:
http://scottwoods.livejournal.com/349110.html
Notes:
- I didn’t go into this thinking, “This will be my last one.” I was all set to knock this one out and keep rolling. But I’m always saying I learn so many things during each one of these, and one of the things I learned here was that I didn’t need to keep doing it. There were a number of factors that contributed to the formulation of that idea, and I know it’s dangerous to make decisions like that in the heat of the moment, but I can tell you in the perfect light of a new day that it is the right decision. “Having nothing left to prove” is kind of at the top of my list of reasons. Moving the educative element out of this reading and into something more formal is also appealing. And let me tell you: this doesn’t get easier every year…it gets harder. I have to write more and more new work to maintain the amount of poems I read from year to year, and because I was so busy on average, that just wasn’t getting done over time. So I end up cramming. And while I am ideally suited for pressure writing, I shed certain responsibilities so I wouldn’t feel like I had to do stop the rest of my life to get some poems done. I want to see what the freer Scott has to say, what he’d like to do. And my grass sorely needs cut most of the time.
- Adrian C. Louis is my favorite Indian writer. I say this knowing full-well who Sherman Alexie is and living him too.
- Jarret Keene should come back to poetry.
- Though I am not a religious man, Jesus appears in my work and the work I choose for this reading a lot for a poet and a reading that isn’t religious. I probably have more poems about Jesus than half the Christian poets I know (in that way that a poem is distinctly about Jesus, not in the sub-cultural way that a Christian’s poems are all “naturally” about Jesus, like my poems are all “naturally” Black). My point is, performing poetry is how I worship, in a very real sense. I don’t write about Jesus because he’s a great myth; I believe he existed in some way, shape or form. You can’t write what I write about him if you don’t, and you can’t write what I write if you don’t believe in some kind of God. And you really can’t write what I write about him if a part of you doesn’t love him.
- Having read hundreds of poems just in the last couple of days, it amazes me how little people who spend so much time on poetry understand about its possibilities, its range, its magic. People who say “That’s academic poetry” or “I don’t hear much form poetry these days” probably don’t know what the hell they’re talking about. I think a lot of people say “academic poetry” when they mean “poetry that didn’t get self-published at Kinkos”, and that a lot of people who comment on form probably can’t name more than six forms. When I read academic and form work aloud, these same people would struggle to know the difference.
- You cannot read Eleanor Ross Taylor’s “To a Young Writer” and not also read “The Young Writers’ Reply”. Seriously: It’s a law in three states.
- You want to talk persona poems? Miller Williams KILLS. Most performance poets I know don't even know who he is...and he's an inaugural poet. His stripper poem? His photographer-with-model poem? Psh...please. GET YOU SOME BOOKS IN YOUR LIFE.
- I have had some real pat-on-the-back moments with poets who have been chosen for this reading. I love having received, out of the blue, an email from Adrian C. Louis asking to have a recording of me performing his poems. I love that Kim Addonizio sent me a gang of poems that were forthcoming in a book because I had read so much of her already. I loved having Sherman Alexie tell me, after hearing that I performed his Sasquatch poems in their entirety, that “No one ever asks about those poems!” Anybody can be a fan of a poet. I shoot for disciple.
Random Silliness:
- Breaking into reggae impressions and phrases upon reading the Diane Glancy title “Dance Hall Indian”.
- “Your face looks like your skull.”
- “I think I’m done.” (Uttered around 4:30 or 5:00 AM. I can’t recall the time.)
- Church with Vernell.
- The Cheez-It commercials
- Chastising a stranger about zombie movies
- I was supposed to read form Stephen Dunn’s latest book but it disappeared between my house and the reading. So I used the coffee bean poet instead; Derrick C. Brown. Which worked out because I’d only read about 4 poems of Brown’s up to that point (4:00 PM), so I still had a lot of ammunition. Wish I could have shared that Dunn though. You know Dunn is my MAN, yo.
- Deciding to stop this during the same month as I’ve decided to step out of organizing for PSi makes it seem like I’m on some kind of campaign to get free of poetry things. I’m not. I’m looking forward to all of the poetry I will write or perform, all the things I can impart, all of the other cool experiments and shows I’ve had simmering coming to light. Shedding some of the big things is only making me light enough to travel new roads.
Good bye 24-hour solo poetry feature. Maybe we’ll see each other again. You have been a brutally honest, non-compromising, fully embracing teacher. I feel a little like Kwai Chang Caine leaving the temple with burning arms.