27 MAR 06
Thanks to Matt Henriksen, I read last night at the Brooklyn venue of his Burning Chair series and was made to feel very welcome. The Fall Cafe was packed with people who had (mostly) come to hear Joe Massey and/or Brenda Iijima and the room itself was friendly (leaf shapes stenciled on its wooden floor). I was happy to lay eyes and a hand on quite a few people I've known only from their poetry or blogs or via email.
Brenda read from her new manuscript Remembering Animals. She had enlisted poets in the audience to also occasionally read lines: two-person choruses--one chorus female, one male. Having voices from the world of the poem suddenly arise from different parts of the room created an experience I haven't had before, and I'm interested to see what she'll do next with that.
Each poet is faced with the challenge of bringing the poem off the page and delivering it to the listener. And we each have to deal with our own obstacles. Joe was by his own assessment drunk, but his poetry was characteristically lucid. I look forward to hearing him when he reads in New York again, with Jess Mynes at the Poetry Project in June.
I still have a long way to go until I can create the sound I'm after. For one thing, I need to get into a better relationship with the microphone, so I can read in a relatively quiet voice without causing anyone to strain. And of course there's always fear to work through, the change in me that the poems demand.
As a contributor to the Bring Joe Massey To NYC Fund, I was given a copy of the first issue of Cannibal. A work of art.
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