lunchtime blog (between grant-writing and teacher-training-planning):

so after seeing Lou Reed and Jim Carroll and Karen Finley and others last night at Joe's Pub, I wonder: how can we advance the form of performance poetry, break new ground, experiment and abstract and do new new new and never-done things, and still maintain ties to meaning?

I thought my head was going to explode with the contradiction of wow, these people really DID things, really broke things, helped expose the walls of capital-P poetry for the rickety cardboard they were/are -- fused music and poetry and movement and nakedness (literally, in some cases) -- but WHERE NOW? WHAT NOW?

Lou Reed read one piece: his own version of Poe's Raven, and it wasn't an improvement. Jim Carroll read some excellent work -- of course, he's barely coherent in the moments between poems, with the shaking and mumbling (just say no, Jim, just say no). the guy from Sonic Youth -- can't remember his name now -- had some interesting lines, but no hold on craft or seeming interest in actually connecting with the audience.

Karen Finley with a flock of Liza Minnelli impersonators -- you gotta love New York. what a spectacle. of course, that's a little bit of my issue with it: spectacle. the piece was clearly about being the "black sheep" and embracing that, embracing others, embracing yourself -- and then, getting naked and celebrating life in the face of so many dying. interesting, but not *new.*

how strange to sit there and watch all this "radical art" taken in very calmly and appreciatively by people who could afford $60 tickets -- aging hipsters? art world people gone mainstream? successful artists? hard to tell. (we got in on the Asylum Street Spankers' coat-tails -- their show beforehand was far more genre-busting, in my humble opinion.)

what is the New? what are we reacting against now? is the highly political, narrative work that dominates slam/"performance poetry" a reaction against the experimentation of the 60s/70s? is there a way to create that doesn't take us backward?