In Search of the Thing Big Poppa E has Got.

It has been a little more than four days since the last time I set foot in a college classroom, and though I have one midterm left, college is essentially over for me. I couldn’t be less happy about it. In fact, I feel as if I can’t quite shake off the sensation that I somehow missed something; it is the feeling, or rather the belief, that somewhere along my collegiate experience I could have done something different. It is a sensation more exquisite than regret and more complicated than desire. And while I do honestly wish that I had found the time to meet more people and see and hear their art, it isn’t a hunger that could be replaced by hearing a few extra poetry readings. I suppose it is, at least in part, my realization that the conversation has likely ended for me.

Anyone that has been afforded the opportunity of a liberal education can’t reasonably say that they didn’t enjoy academia’s great dialogue. There is something inherently enjoyable about putting your ideas out there and watching them squirm and take shape as your colleagues test their fortitude. I loved participating in this because it afforded me the space to gauge, immediately, the viability of my claims. From here forward, in this post collegiate world, there is no guarantee that I will ever experience that again--unless of course I choose to follow the career path of Big Poppa E.

Months ago I walked into class to find a visitor whom I did not recognize. Worse yet, I had lost my syllabus and couldn’t look it up. I was forced to sit down and wait for an explanation. However, while I did , I decided to watch this guest go about his business. He did not speak initially, instead he pressed his lips together and smiled as each of my colleagues filed into their seats. He was friendly. In fact, beyond his mismatched attire and the reality that he was a few years older than the rest of us, he actually blended in amongst the group quite easily. This guy looked as if he was happy to be where he was at. Class finally began.

Dr. Mike Chasar, being the cordial host he is, introduced Big Poppa E and opened the floor to whatever structure our guest saw fit. Seizing the opportunity, Big Poppa E introduced himself and told a quick story to excuse the fact that he was wearing a peculiar combination of summer and sleep attire. He was funny, deliberate, and his oration was as impacting as it was calculated. However, it was what happened thereafter that provoked what would later grow into the realization I previously described. Big Poppa E paused and said: “I can show you guys what I do or you can just ask me questions and we can talk.”

Here he was, a perennial star in the Slam Poetry circuit, a four-time HBO Def Poetry selection, willing to not only answer our questions but interested in having a talk. Of course, we unanimously selected the former option and Big Poppa E delivered with “Tiger Lily”, a poem that frankly, made me a little uncomfortable. However, that uncomfortableness was what I enjoyed most in its performance. Big Poppa E had, in writing a poem about the return of a menstrual cycle, forced me into a place that I image was not unlike that of the speaker within the poem. The conversation had begun.

He read two other poems, one generally and the other as a dedication to one of our colleagues. The sum of the three gave the overwhelming impression that he was as sincere about his performance as he was about his diction or syntax. He adjusted invisible rear-view mirrors, and turned steering wheels that did not exist-- his every physical action was a visual extension of the words he spoke.

Yet, as I have said, the most impacting quality of the experience was that Big Poppa E seemed to be completely invested in the idea of conversation. It was as if his entire monologue would have been less meaningful to him had we responded simply with a round of applause. He seemed to want to hear from us. So having seen, visibly, the conversation I so loved alive in Big Poppa E, I had to ask: “where does this end”. He paused, smiled and responded: “I’m really not sure..."

I hope that someday, amidst the conversation, I can honestly say the same.

-Tyler Lang Mauseth

The Most Interesting Man in the World

Ben Hale, a current Fellow of the University of Iowa' Writer's Workshop, is the most interesting man in the world. He pisses excellence, such that I am afraid to even attempt a review of a recent reading of his. And in full disclosure on the part of the reviewer, Ben Hale recently wrote a letter of recommendation for me which, in part, got me accepted into the cinematography concentration of my choice. But more to the point I should give you some facts about the man:

Much like the Great Wall of China, Ben Hale's aura is visible from space.

Professional athletes no longer use performance-enhancing drugs. They just stand in Ben Hale's presence and after a couple of minutes they are stronger and more self-confident.

Ben Hale invented the taco salad. Then he reinvented it.

Dos Equis wanted to hire him for an ad campaign, but he was too busy actually being interesting somewhere.

Michael Jordan wants to be Ben Hale when he grows up.

And on February 26th of the two thousand and ninth year of Our Lord (surprisingly, not Ben Hale) this wunderkind, this cadillac of men, deigned to read a recent prose work of his named "The Fat Artist" at Public Space One in Iowa City, on the planet of Earth. When the people heard this news, they gathered in eager anticipation. How could they know what they were to hear? How could any of us know? Such mellifluous language, in the sublime movements of its text and at times raising to the dissonance of waves that break on Ilian shores, and when the tears of the people had dried they knew they had taken knowledge onto their souls, and were happy.

"The Fat Artist", a 70-page text about a man who endeavors to become the fattest person in the world, will begin appearing in journals yet to be named this summer.


Liam Neff

C.A. Conrad Reads the Color of Food

The night of Sunday, March 8th saw Philadelphian C.A. Conrad reading at the University of Iowa's Shambaugh House before a small, rain-soaked audience. Conrad, a short and hefty fellow with long brown hair and who speaks with a soft lisp, introduced himself to those gathered by starting at his very beginnings: "My childhood included selling cut flowers along the highway for my mother and helping her shoplift. I escaped to Philadelphia the first chance I got and live and write there today with others in the PhillySound Poet gang." With the audience now sufficiently prepared for the eccentricities that would follow (and after listing all the important blogs to which he contributes), Conrad began to read a series of poems from his just-published chapbook, "Deviant Propulsion."

"I only eat one color of food a day." he assured the audience. "Some days I eat red, some days I eat the color yellow. This series of poems is about that." This listener may have heard incorrectly, but the poems were as such introduced as "Red" or "Magenta", and the poem's words sometimes evoked something directly culinary, such as "Red" including the line: "A scalpal makes Italian seasoning on the Chinese food." At other moments, this was less the case: food that is the color yellow was represented by a short poem that featured the phrase "Fading cow not far from our dragon-headed sperm stains." In the time that has elapsed since the reading that night I have in fact tried to imagine exactly what a dragon-headed sperm stain would be or look like, but I will admit I've come up short. Maybe if someone was to sperm directly into a dragon-head shaped stencil?

The two dozen or so seated, mainly undergraduates, appreciated moments like these best, and they were often, and Conrad affected a reading style that sometimes, raising from the pleasant softness of his speaking voice to a harsh glee, relished in the staccato delivery of some particularly absurd or fecal image. Iowa City's own Amish Trivedi, the organizer of the reading and the very friendly person that checks out DVD's for me at the University Library's Media Services, was invited on stage by Conrad mid-delivery of a food poem to read a recent piece of his own, whose title I have unfortunately forgotten, about oceans and his childhood.

When Conrad had finished reading from "Deviant Propulsion", he introduced a previous series of his entitled "(Soma)tic Midge," a book of exercises "based on a series of astral projections I recently underwent." It is my opinion that we should all be so fortunate as to undergo even one astral projection in our own life; having a series to speak about, to me, is damn near miraculous.

I think this is a good word on which to end a review of this reading... Miraculous.

Liam Neff

Please God, Let us Be Good to Each Other

The 2nd Year MFA poetry reading on Thursday, April 30, though it happened at Public Space One, was a decidedly private affair. Each of the 20+ poets who read was preceded by an introduction that was often longer than the reading itself. Because the reading took the form of a sort of “goodbye” to the second year MFA poets who are graduating after this semester, the introductions were frequently sentimental and personal.

For two of the introductions, a woman acted crazy and used props to communicate. She spoke about the immense influence Ezra Pound had on the reader she was introducing while making a soup in a bowl consisting of a book by Pound, some foods, and some milk. She seemed to be, like many readers and attendees, a bit drunk. This was fun.

Another introduction included a woman impersonating the teenage self of the reader she was introducing. “He” read some of his “older poems,” which were overtly graphic, and which included coarse language and long, detailed descriptions of vaginal farts. This was funny. It turned out to be a kind of extreme exaggeration of the typical voice taken on by the introduced poet.

The combination of long introductions and sheer number of readers made for a three hour poetry marathon. Each poet read for about five minutes. There was an impressive range of styles. Many poets read pieces with high diction, making it a bit difficult to follow along and actually understand the poems. This is often a problem with poetry readings. An ethereal, airy tone accompanied about 60% of the poems read, so dramatically different readers like Jeff [last name] were a welcome change of pace.

Jeff read one poem that seemed to be a dialogue about, among other things, cookies, that was very funny. Another poet read a piece she had written about her experiences with her friends at David Bowie concerts when she was younger. Though these were lighthearted and less intense than many of the poems read, most were serious, almost urgent. In this vein, no one was better than Seth Abramson, the last reader of the first half of poets.

Seth’s introduction included the phrase, “But seriously, Seth is better than all of us,” which prompted a roar of laughter from the audience. Seth is a graduate of Dartmouth College, Harvard Law School, and soon will have his MFA in poetry from Iowa. He is a widely published and highly decorated poet. His final poem addressed the homeless and the meek, ending with an extremely moving, powerful line that went something like “Please god, let us be good to each other.”

Another poet shared a story as a preface to his poem entitled “Sword Swallowing.” He explained his first day being workshopped at Iowa. He had brought the poem in, which he explained was about marriage. He wrote it after his divorce. Another poet in the workshop, a woman from South America, asked, “Isn’t a sword, like, a phallic symbol?” This was funny.

In conclusion, it was funny. Everyone did a good job. A+. Candy.

By Tony Flesher

An Open Letter to Skanks

The reading on Wednesday, May 6, at The Sanctuary was put on by the teacher and students of the Undergraduate Poetry Workshop class, which was a class taught by Jane Gregory. Thirteen poets read, all of whom were, as you can guess by the title of the class, undergraduates at the University of Iowa.

The Sanctuary was a strange place for a reading. The reading was held in the side room of the bar. The poets sat at a table and read into a microphone. The audience was surprisingly very respectful, considering the setting was a bar after eight o’clock. This was probably because 90% of the attendees were friends of the poets.

Jane Gregory, the teacher of the class, introduced the poets and commented that her time teaching had been a humbling experience. She also pointed the audience to the stack of journals on the stage, which were a collection of poems by the readers.

One of the most memorable readers was Mitch Belfield, who was introduced as a man who “hates everyone.” His poem was concerned with the flatness of tables and how boring that is. His poems were different from most all of the rest in that they were much more straightforward. They were direct and had a consistent voice. It was a bit lacking in focus, but felt genuine.

Danny Mills read one particularly inspired poem that was concerned with how the speaker saw trees as a child versus how he sees them now. It was a special experience. The audience responded well to it.

The first poet read poems which were largely voice-driven. One of his poems consisted of an extended awkward response , which prompted laughter from the audience. All of his poems were short, which the audience seemed to appreciate. He was much more brief than the rest of the poets, leaving the audience wanting more. He was a very attractive man.

In general, it was hard to pay attention to most of the poets. The poems read would warrant at least two or three readings in print, so a lot was lost there. Many of the poems had a similar tone. Like much contemporary poetry, most of the poems were airy and felt mostly empty. They used difficult words and probably were structured interestingly. They said many things that felt important, but also said very little, which is strange.

Another poet was Josh Fomon, who read a couple pieces of surreal theatre. Josh read stage directions and both characters, which made it difficult to understand. He did, however, have a nice, sharp golden tie. He introduced Emileigh Barnes, who read poems that seemed to be influenced by her home state, Georgia. Josh spoke about this in his introduction.

The reading ended with a poem that was apparently a joint effort by the last two readers, Emileigh Barnes and Josh Fomon. Its title was “An Open Letter to Skanks.” It was a piece employing high diction to contrast with the skankiness of skanks. It was entertaining.

All in all, the reading was mostly boring.

By Tony Flesher

Blueberry-Pomegranate Juice Will Lure Me To Any Given Event

The Gerber Lounge in the EPB is bustling with chipper creative writing students when I walk in for the first annual reading by the Provost’s Postgraduate Writing Fellows. There is an abundance of cardigans and thick spectacles. It is four o’clock exactly and I take the last available seat; the turnout is fuller than I expected, perhaps due to the table of refreshments in the back of the room (blueberry-pomegranate juice, F yeah). The audience seems to consist mostly of the first semester writing-track students, which makes sense, because their teachers—Ben Hale, Kevin Holden, Andre Perry, and Diana Thow— are the evening’s readers.

Robyn Schiff, poet and founder of the undergraduate writing track, opens the reading by remarking upon its celebratory nature—it is, as I said, the first annual reading of the Writing Fellows at the conclusion of the writing track's first semester, which seems to have been a success. Schiff introduces each reader with a short bio of their history accomplishments and then some brief warm comments about their personalities.

Kevin Holden, the poet of the group, is the second reader. He, like many in the audience, is thickly bespectacled. His list of accomplishments is impressive—he’s a Harvard graduate with an MFA from Iowa, and his poems have been published in a series of well-known Reviews. He has published two chapbooks, Alpine and Identity. Upon taking the podium, he makes a joke about a combination letter press/cider press. Chuckles abound.

Holden’s first poem is a dream-narrative tribute to John Ashbery, published in the Colorado Review. Before reading, he announces that he wrote it before attending the Writer’s Workshop. The poem is typically lyric in structure, and is funny and wistful and bittersweet. At the end, Holden informs us that he actually sent the poem to Ashbery, who replied with something like “I’m always glad to make an appearance in your dreams.”

Holden’s second poem, “Geode,” was, he announces, written during his time in the Workshop. This poem is markedly more experimental; the enjambment is what my own poetry teacher would call “aggressive,” and I notice that Holden takes pains to pause slightly between lines so the enjambment is audible to the audience. The third poem continues in this same vein. It is an excerpt from a much longer poem (sixty pages!) called “Aspen.” It is written, so Holden tells us, in tercets, and this too is apparent from his reading. His style relies a lot on the interplay of sounds in his carefully selected words.

Because there are three other readers, Holden is cut a bit short. I felt that Ben Hale, the fiction writer who preceded Holden, was allowed more time to read. This makes sense, of course; prose typically takes longer to read aloud than poetry. But still, I would have liked to hear more from Holden; I felt that the short timeslot allotted for each reader pressured into finishing quickly and a bit breathlessly. Perhaps I can see Holden at a later date—I’m sure this was not the last reading he will give in Iowa City.

By Madeleine Wurm

Hybrids Across America

            The poetry reading at Prairie Lights on April 27, 2009 brought in a huge crowd. The seats were packed, and the aisles were filled with people sitting wherever they could find space. The presentation was supposed to start at 7:00, but at 7:10 they came in to say that it would be postponed until 7:30, but the crowd – a mix of young hipster students to older poetry enthusiasts – never ceased to give off their excited vibes.

            There were three poets who read, Cole Swensen, James Galvin, and Mark Levine. Cole Swensen introduced the book by reading an introduction to the idea behind their anthology, American Hybrid. She spoke so clearly, and with such ease that I could not help but feel relaxed. After her introduction, she read a poem called “Insatiability,” which had a beautiful rhythm that kept the poem moving smoothly the entire time; there was no clear pattern or style that I could find, which was a consistent feature of all of the poems read. American Hybrid is a book of poems written in a mixture of stylistic patterns and forms, which gave the reading itself a lot of uniqueness. Swensen continued to awe us throughout the rest of her performance, whether she was reading a poem or wrapping up the night.

            James Galvin’s presentation of his selected poems was wonderful. He seemed so comfortable in front of the huge audience that I, personally, was amazed at the immediately intimate feeling in the room. One poem that he read was titled “Nature Averts Her Eyes,” and I really enjoyed listening to it, although I am not positive that I completely understood it. It sounded a lot like a stream of consciousness from the perspective of “the fool.” Another poem he read was written in the form of a list; each number on the list was different, and each was just as confusing as the next one. My favorite, number 2, was a repetitive mess of sentences, but each repeat had some part of a word taken out, until it was completely incomprehensible on the last cycle.

            Mark Levine presented his selections in such a way that he seemed to be relating to each person in the room individually. He appeared a bit nervous when he first got up to the microphone, but after some time he just seemed to be carefully considering his words before he said them. He introduced his first poem as an assignment that was completed after dropping acid; this unique introduction to a poem gave an interesting, and quite clear point of view to listen to the poem from. The rest of the poems he read were not his own, but they covered a large range of subjects and styles; from the personification of nature to a repetitive motion, the selections that he read were presented beautifully and, again with so much ease that it felt like he was talking only to me.

            Cole Swensen closed the reading just as she opened it. She read her own selection of poems from the anthology, and the way she presented these poems really emphasized her own, unique voice; she paused a little bit between words, letting the meaning of each word sink in before she rushed on to the next one. One poem that she read, “Yawn,” consisted of metaphors for a yawn, from a snake’s gigantic jaw to the ownership – or lack thereof – of a yawn.

            This poetry reading was more than the cliché gathering of hip writers in a book store. The comfort of the readers, as well as the listeners, made sure not to intimidate anyone out of enjoying the poetry of American Hybrid.

-Suzi O'Hare

Poetry with a Side of Political Activism

The poetry reading given by Mark Nowak on April 24, 2009 at Prairie Lights focused mainly on his new book Coal Mountain Elementary.  This book included poems and pictures of coal miners in West Virginia and China.  Many of the topics zoned in on the continuous problems, accidents, and danger the miners encounter on a daily basis.  The pictures in the book were presented via slideshow during the reading, creating visual interest in addition to the traditional audio pleasure of a reading.  His poems had an easy, talkativeness that made them simple to understand, but still poignant.   

 

I found the combination of these two mediums very moving, especially considering the subject matter.  As Nowak mentioned later in the Q&A section, no other profession excluding the active duty military has a deathwatch like mining does.  Every morning husbands kiss their wives goodbye for what may very well be the last time.  I found this fact very sobering.  Why is mining still necessary?  This was the question Nowak posed to all of us through his reading.  Though he was using the art of poetry, his main goal was to inform the public of the situation miners across the world today find themselves in. 

 

One of the most prominent subjects in his reading, and his book, was the Sago mine catastrophe.  I found myself mildly embarrassed to only have a fuzzy memory of this event.  Twelve miners, who had been reported alive, were actually dead as a result of an explosion in the mine.  One of Nowak’s poems describes this horrific event and what it must have felt like to be one of the family members of those twelve miners. 

 

However, this is only one event that happened three years ago.  Nowak stressed that this happens around the world, nearly on a daily basis.  Miners are still in great danger today, yet, little has changed in these past three years to prevent another disaster like Sago from happening again.  Nowak is working hard to change this fact.  His book discusses these problems; he is actively touring to promote his book, and reading selections from it in forums similar to Prairie Lights.  He also suggested that audience members become involved as well.  His webpage http://coalmountain.wordpress.com/ links to current events involving mining accidents, and he suggested going onto PBS to look up further information on the Sago mining disaster. 

By: Shannon Green

Victorian Women's Lives ARE Worth Celebrating

On a somewhat rainy Saturday night, my parents decided to drive out from Chicago to visit me. Obviously, the time to impress was at hand. After taking them to dinner somewhere besides Chipotle, I decided that I would bring them to a poetry event my teacher had told us about—little did my parents know, I was required to go to another reading, as such events are not my typical Saturday shenanigans.

Celebrating Victorian Women’s Lives: An Evening of Music and Recitations began at 7, so naturally we showed up at 7:15. I was very surprised to discover that the Old Capitol Senate Chamber was almost packed, and we had to awkwardly walk in front of many people to find seats together. Just as we sat down, Judith Pascoe began her introduction, “Hearing Voices.” By 7:45, she was just finishing up, and I was greatly beginning to regret what had seemed like a brilliant plan. Pascoe seemed to be talking more to her students than the audience, about a topic few of us knew, and my thoughts trailed to the chandelier above and the growing cries of drunken college kids outside. I was not impressed, and quite fearsome for the next hour and a half or so. What had I done??

However, the night took a much-appreciated turn for the better. Five actors walked onto the stage, holding binders, and seated themselves on chairs. They took turns reciting poems, with piano interludes interspersed every so often. While the binders the presenters read off of were somewhat distracting (reminding me that they were indeed performing), the poems themselves proved to be much more daring than I had expected. Considering the time period they were coming from, the female author’s voice’s were much more powerful and opinionated that I ever would have expected. They did not shy away from bold topics and commanded the audience’s attention.

The night was compromised of many different sections of themed poetry, ranging from childhood, marriage, motherhood, age, and activism. They also varied from humorous to extremely tragic. The almost “melodrama” of the poems was obviously something the 21st century listeners were not expecting. For the first half of the night, giggles and laughs were often heard, even if the poems themselves were not humorous; instead, some of the actors were incredibly committed and (at times) a bit overdramatic. One woman even came close to tears while speaking about her relationship with her husband. Whether or not this was a good thing to bring to the performance, at times I felt completely out of my element and comfort zone.

My favorite poem, that moved me the most, was rehearsed by Connie Winston, who I considered by far to be the most impressive performer of the night (for those of you fans out there, she can also be occasionally seen on Law & Order). “The Runaway Slave at Pilgrim’s Point” by Elizabeth Barrett is an extremely heartrending poem about a slave who is raped by her master, becomes pregnant, and eventually commits infanticide on her own mixed child. At one point, Winston held up her arms, talking about the marks on her wrists from chains, and I honestly looked to see the scars. She was completely devoted, but never over the top, and did an amazing, moving rendition of the poem.

Overall, the night left me pleasantly surprised, due to the range of poems, themes, actors and style of presentations. I managed to sit through almost 2 hours of poetry and only checked my phone a few times. And, of course, my parents are still pleased to this day that I do such intelligent, educational activities with my weekend nights. All in all, it was an enjoyable and insightful evening.

-Lucy Williams

Harp Saves the Night

Chris Vinsonhaler begins the night explaining the need for Beowulf to be told through a story versus being read. She tells how this enhances the epic. Vinsonhaler starts off her presentation with obvious humor of telling her past experience with Beowulf and her hatred for it, much like many of the audience members. This allowed for Vinsonhaler to immediately connect with the room full of the Spring 2009 Introduction to the English Major students. The small auditorium of the Becker Communications building smelt of damp cloth from the rain that persisted outside as we all gathered to watch Vinsonhaler, in her black robe, perform Beowulf.

The two hour performance was divided into three sections. The first was Vinsonhaler acclimating the audience to the vocabulary of Beowulf, the second was the first part of Beowulf, and the third was through about half of the second part of the epic. To set up the background of the story, Vinsonhaler had the audience read ‘The Lord’s Prayer’ to “taste Gaelic upon [our] tongues.” She then translated the Old English into a language that we could understand. This allowed the audience to get a grasp of what was to come.

After a ten minute intermission before Vinsonhaler began to perform the epic of Beowulf she sang a song accompanied by her harp that seemed to be of her own composition. Vinsonhaler’s harp player a major role in her performance of Beowulf, she used it to sing, she used it during prose, and she used it to create dramatic effect during the battle scenes. In fact the performance was postponed from the Sunday, March 29th to Sunday, April 5th because Vinsonhaler had misplaced her harp tuner.

By the end of the end of the two hours the epic started to make a little more sense to everyone viewing. Even though she was unable to present the ending of Beowulf, due to time restrictions, Vinsonhaler still allowed for the audience to experience most of the poem and get a feel for the language employed throughout it. The dark sky was cool and moist as it quickly swallowed the bodies that occupied the seats of the auditorium…and we all could still hear the harp’s echo into the night.

-Annemarie Chambliss

When We All Felt Like the Kid with Red Dreadlocks

It was over a month ago that I walked into the MacBride auditorium to see slam poet Big Poppa E perform at [J]Amnesty. His words are still resonating. I remember his ode to “every gay kid who was ever beaten up for being gay…and every straight kid who was ever beaten up for being gay.” I remember “Tiger Lily,” how a girl names her period after recovering from an eating disorder, once her body has healed “enough to bleed again.” The next day, speaking to a poetry class, he revealed, “I almost never read that poem out loud.”

Mostly I remember the way this renowned poet, three-time HBO Def Poet, Austin Slam Poetry Team member, and National Slam Poetry Champion came to Amnesty International’s event and made it theirs instead of his.

It must be easy to get a big head as a respected poet, but Big Poppa E came off down-to-earth and genuinely interested and impressed with Amnesty International’s work for human rights issues. He stepped aside for members of the Feminist Majority to speak about a protest, continued to call attention to the human rights booths at the back of the auditorium, and insisted that we as the audience get off our butts and do something to change the world. It was hard not to listen to him. He adjusted his readings around the schedule of the other performers: Capes of Lead, Olivia Rose, Jarrett Hugg, and Muffin Top. Instead of performing for a straight hour and then allowing a certain poetry reviewer to duck out early, he showcased the other acts by truly acting as an emcee who happened to be performing amazing poetry, instead of a visiting poet who required his own allotted time slot.

He told the Daily Iowan, “I love [Amnesty International’s] goals and energy. I love how [the members] get young people...to do something with their world. I love how they give them the tools to do that and show them that all it takes is one person to really affect someone’s life.” Throughout the evening, he embodied that spirit with his personable performance and also with his poetry.

“Propers,” a favorite, was a structured shout-out to the kids who feel alone. At other events, he often introduces this poem with an anecdote of reading in a tiny town and being approached by “the one kid with red dreadlocks.” “Propers” is a response to that loneliness that we have all felt, the idea of a poet to reaching out, saying “I understand—I used to be you” just might be enough to, as he is quoted saying, “really affect someone’s life.”


And it seems like he meant it - he reached out to individual members of the audience, giving them nicknames for the colors of their hair or their shirts (I was "Green") and interrupting his poems to interact directly with the audience. As he showed off the guns of poetry with the line, "I don't pump iron, I pump irony," and I laughed, he stopped, pointed, and said, "Oh, shut up. You knew it was coming." (So I shut up.) But Big Poppa E's personal interaction made audience members feel as though he was speaking directly to them - that we were all the kid with the red dreadlocks.



Reviewer: Nora Heaton

"It's just art, just a change from hotel room wallpaper."

A few minutes after I sat down in the Frank Conroy Reading Room at the Dey House on Wednesday, April 29th, a woman who I did not know began to introduce the reader for the evening, Mark McMorris. Even the introduction was poetic, and the woman spoke in a very sing-song way. She told us that McMorris was born in Jamaica and is the author of three books of poetry. He is also a sound and performance poet and has written multiple fiction works. She said, “His work brings us a world…” She explained that McMorris’s poetry creates connections between different places and cultures, while also having a political edge.

Mark McMorris is a statuesque Jamaican man with graying hair and a round, friendly face. He looks academic and has the air of an experienced poet. He started by reading from a manuscript that he began writing in 2003, called “traces of current affairs.” He read many different poems that started with “Dear Michael;” Michael is the name of one of the archangels. The “Dear Michael” letters sounded very intellectual, but I have to admit that the concept of them went over my head. I did not really understand them, and I found myself listening to his voice rather than the words themselves. He has a very low, soothing voice. I feel that the reading would have been more effective if I had had the poetry in front of me; much of the reading went far too fast. He also jumped to other poems, and then went back to more “Dear Michael” poems. I feel that I would have been able to understand better how all of the poems fit together if I had been able to see them on paper.

Other parts of the reading made me wish that here was some sort of program as well… One of McMorris’s poems started with the words “Dear K.” I liked the poem, it was short and the whole thing sounded like one run-on sentence. However, I realized that I had no idea if the name of the person who was being addressed was “Kay,” or if he was shortening the name to “K.” The poem could have had distinctly different feels with each of these two options. Also, at the beginning of the reading when McMorris was being introduced, I heard the guy sitting behind me confirm with his friend that the poet’s name was “Martin Morris.” It was unfortunate that McMorris’s name was not written anywhere.

Despite the fact that there were parts of the reading that went over my head, I very much liked some of the specific stylistic choices that McMorris made as a poet. During some of his poems, McMorris’s Jamaican roots really shined through. Some parts started to sound like songs or chants, and his accent seemed to be more apparent when he was reading than when he was just talking normally. I very much liked this line: “No, no, no, no… NO a thousand nos!” As he read this part, McMorris’s voice got louder with every “no.” It was intense and added dimension to the poem. Many of McMorris’s poems did not rhyme, but I loved his use of things like alliteration and onomatopoeia. He also mirrored sentences after one another and repeated words throughout certain poems. One of my favorite lines was the following: “If myth is material practice, if I burn my arrows today, when will I begin to write?”

By Rachel McNamee

Poetry through the smoke

As the sun set on the Ped Mall on the 1st of May a small group of people gathered in the Tobacco Bowl to take part in a poetry slam being hosted by the Concrete Muse Poet Society. The event, which was scheduled to kick off at 7 P.M., kicked off a few minutes early as the host of the event started by grabbing the mic of the small PA plugged in at the front of the shop and began the slam. Her poems incorporated strong visual images with repetition to deliver her lines of "Cat pee on the floor, cat pee on the floor." The crown was fluctuating in and out the doors as the performances continued, some for the poetry, most for business. The second performer grabbed the mic and began to slam on more conventional themes found at a slam. He read on injustice, corporatism, capitalism, and the evils of a media controlled populous. He delivered his message with much gusto and was quite convincing in his tone. The third performer was a well recognized face in the Iowa City, most would know her as the lady that walks the downtown selling hemp bracelets and homemade crafts. She pulled out her loaded notebook and began flipping through her selections. Her poems were quick and numerous, a short applause crackled after each selection. The fourth performer took a different approach to the event. Being pulled off the street to and coaxed into reading, he read a longer selection from Edgar Allen Poe. He read at an accelerated pace which offered a different perspective on the classic “The Raven.” The readings continued to cycle through the select few poets in attendance. As new performers continued to show up they were added to the list. Local promoter Tyrell Spitt made an appearance after his hip-hop show in the Ped Mall and revitalized the crowd. The place erupted with applause after he began spitting his slams. This was the pinnacle of the event. People began coming in from outside to listen to his methodically lyrical verse. Tyrell won the only prize of the night, a journal for scribing resistance art. As the sun began to wane, bodies started filling up the previously empty chairs. The performers represented a wide demographic of backgrounds and ages.


The host of the performance announced that this would be a weekly event on Friday from 7-9PM at the Tobacco Bowl. The event was not technically structured like an actual poetry slam, it was more of an open mic reading. The audience was responsive after each poet read, sometimes only for the sake of being courteous however, and poets were not eliminated. This was probably due to the lack of participants, but considering this was the first event of its kind hopefully the word will spread and more people will be open to participation. As the evening wound to a close the crowd began to disperse back into the twilight of the bustling streets, people left in high spirits.

By: Spencer Poulos

Iowa Writer’s Workshop Grads Return with Quirks and Religion

On April 14th, Arda Collins and Jonathan Thirkield, both graduates from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, returned to Prairie Lights to read for the ongoing series, Live From Prairie Lights.

They read to a packed house, though the crowd seemed swollen with students required to attend for a class project. The crowd thinned about halfway through the reading, many students leaving after they had made their compulsory appearance. I sat next to two students who made their dashing exit halfway through the show.

Though the ranks dissipated for the reading, I though both poets read remarkably well, though there was a definite contrast in poetic style and their chosen styles of reading as well.

Arda Collins read first, mostly choosing poems from It Is Daylight, which, as her introduction noted, won the Yale Series of Younger Poets contest in 2008. From the beginning, she seemed nervous reading her poetry, which was only more emphasized by the neurotic quality of her poetry, which frequently placed the speaker of her poems in psychologically restricted dilemmas. At one point, she read a poem in which the speaker thought she was “so ugly I was afraid I wouldn’t be able to drive.” The audience timidly laughed at this self-deprecation, which was very prevalent throughout her reading. Most of her poems seemed to be in free verse form, though her voice fell at the end of each line. This falling voice lent some affection the poems, which gave the reading a sense of intimacy that I do not think would be apparent in simply reading the poems, which are often wrought with savage images and observations of the psychological limitations of basic action in the modern world. The voices of her poems often seemed lonely, though not bitterly lonely. She also seemed perplexed by religion in her poems, saying in one of them “I don’t know how to pray but I would try,” showing that the desire for some sort of spirituality exists though confusion and indecision, like in many other aspects of her poetry, reign supreme. Throughout her reading, Collins’ voice remained in sync with much of her content, and her quirky wit seemed at home in a world where “adorable adults always seem like untrustworthy alcoholics.”

Jonathan Thirkield took the podium after Collins and immediately began to read with very little introduction. His voice and poetry contrasted with that of Collins in a number of ways. His poems had a musical quality that was only emphasized by the various musical references that he made. The lines seemed to bob up and down in their unusually varied iambic forms. His voice had a soft and soothing tone with a modicum of fragility, which commanded a reverent silence from the audience. This only accentuated the ephemeral quality of his disparate images, which came and went just as quickly as his voice did. The most notable poem of his was one done in twelve series based on the mystery plays for York. The mystery plays for York, as Thirkield informed the audience, was a display put on by various guilds in 15th century York of the twelve stations of the cross. Thirkield does twelve sections on the mindset and images surrounding each guild’s representation of the scene. They were all done in present tense, which seemed to beg the audience to contrast the display of religion in these 15th century guildsmen with the portrayal and representation of religion in modern society.

Written by Sean Ehni who loves Mario Kart

American Hybrid of Images and Emotions

As soon as I finished climbing the stairs to the second floor of Prairie Lights Monday night of April 27th, I knew that it would be a challenge to find a place to sit. People were trailing back behind the seats, standing in single file lines. I worked my way up front slowly but surely, and I created a seat on the floor in front of the seats. The room was not loud, but there was an excited murmur emitting from the crowd. I saw a small woman dressed all in black embrace a smartly dressed man, and from their body language I could tell they were writers. They shared a glance between them that was knowing; as if because they both had to communicate with words to everyone else, they found ways to go beneath the words with each other. Shortly after this exchange, the woman approached the podium.

The woman, Cole Swensen, was the co-editor of the book American Hybrid which was the subject of the reading. She read a short opening paragraph, which she revealed was something she wished she had put in the book but had thought of it too late, about the experimental nature of poetry. She also introduced the two other speakers for the event; James Galvin and Mark Levine. She said that the unifying theme of the evening was to be the work of writers who were somehow connected with the University of Iowa or Iowa City; either because they taught there, went to school there, had held readings there, or were going to teach there.

James Galvin was next up to the podium. He was a soft-spoken man, and tended to let his statements and jokes sort of trail off for the audience to take or leave. He began his portion of the reading with an explanation of how the rivers in his native state of Wyoming sometimes run underground, then flow back out again. He then led into his first poem by joking, “This doesn’t have anything to do with that; I just wanted you to know.” His poem was indeed about the river, and his low gravelly voice seemed the perfect match for the vivid scenery described in the poem. Galvin then read a piece titled “Nature Averts Her Eyes,” which described an earthquake and several small incidents occurring during the earthquake. One recurring incident was of a woman peeling an orange, which had strong resonance throughout the piece. The speaker described the woman’s fingers as kinds of beauty, and talked about the glowing of the fingertips that touched the orange. Galvin also read pieces from the book by other poets, one of which, Robert Hass, had a poem which stood out. The poem by Hass had the audible effect of a cell phone with poor reception when read aloud, and the repetition of the lines punctuated the effect.

Mark Levine, the third reader, announced to the audience upon arriving at the podium that he would begin with one of his poems, read some work by others, and then end with his poem in order to create his own hybrid; the crowd chuckled appreciatively. He started with his piece “Chimney Song,” which had a lot of simple rhymes, creating a kind of schoolyard song effect. He read several poems by other authors, but the one that most stood out was “Variations on the Dream of the Rude” by Susan Stuart. This poem had repetition of Christian imagery and themes, such as the tree which becomes the cross which is like a man. One particular line, “from the man, a God took form,” stood out in that it reversed the usual beliefs of religious peoples.

At the end of Mark’s reading, Cole took the podium once more, reading the last selected pieces and thanking the owners of Prairie Lights. It seemed that only about ten minutes had gone by since she was last standing there, yet an hour had somehow slipped away. The poetry had a trancelike effect that was only broken when the audience’s applause concluded the event. As I descended the stairs of Prairie Lights and walked out into the night, I felt somewhat bewildered about the state of mind I was left with. It wasn’t so much of an intense intellectual experience, as an enchanting emotional and imaginative experience.

Laura Jackson

Moving into the Beyond

This past Wednesday, April 8th, Jane Gregory, a graduate student in the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, read from her work as part of the ongoing Talk Art readings at the Mill in downtown Iowa City. Her work was introduced as being “challenging, literally challenging, meditative” and the small room with about thirty attendees was warned: “Try to keep up with Jane’s work; that is the point.” In comparison to other Talk Art performances, Gregory’s poetry seemed more academic and her performance more professional, a reading that required an attentive audience (given fair warning) to key into the small nuances of her poetry.

Commanding the stage with an overall seriousness for her work, Gregory expected her listeners to do the same, beginning her reading by commenting, “My poems are not so funny, but I will work on that for next time.” The Mill, a restaurant and bar with a hometown quaintness that usually attracts blue grass and banjo playing bands, and likewise audiences seeking such entertainment, was a peculiar venue for Gregory’s poetry in that its academic quality was probably more suited to a Prairie Lights crowd of listeners. She read in a straight forward and fluid manner that sounded much like reading academic prose, leaving no room in her performance –or any indication by voice, of line break or poetic syntax. Despite the juxtaposition of poet and venue, Gregory’s work impressed the gathering and even brought the listeners to applause at the conclusion of a poem dedicated to another member in the Workshop.

Most poem titles involved going “beyond” such as “Faith in the Never Beyond,” “If the Hunt is also called Beyond,” and “How we Came Beyond Faith.” The theme of “beyond” brings with it ideas of religion, identity, and questions of the cosmos. Typically such topics have a tendency to lean toward cliché, but Gregory writes deceptively simple statements in her poetry that yearn to be re-examined: “If God gave up on night,” “You mistook my explanation for God,” and “What if God were moved to speak?” While it was never made clear as to what Gregory was exactly going “beyond,” her poetry included a sense of arrival after a long personal journey and a beckoning for others to join her, apparent in lines such as, “Here I am, pure noise” and “Beyond where the moon shone, oh how I want you to have a voice!”

Picking up on Gregory’s use of sound and language was more difficult because of the nature of her reading style. However, a close listener could not have missed the internal rhymes, puns, and Gregory’s overall interest in word formation. The use of internal rhyme may be what saved her from sounding purely prose. While the rhyme was not the strongest or most original, “this alien light in which the night bored us in,” it did offer a nice break from the fluidity of Gregory’s reading. Most interesting about her writing, though, is the way it asks to be thought of on a word by word basis. For example, Gregory writes, “In many languages this rhymes with misfit,” which both asks a listener to compare this and misfit in English in the different uses of the words, but also in accordance with other languages and how a connection between the two might be created. Finally, Gregory states, “Who gave us the word really to tell us degrees of reality?” This last line embodies the nuances in her poetry and the interworking of the poems on a word by word basis. Gregory not only asks about the origin of the words and how they came into being, but uses the words as objects put into conversation with one another rather than as only words in a stream of consciousness.

Wednesday night Talk Art at the Mill gives both the Workshop and the community an opportunity to interact. Jane Gregory’s reading proved to be academic and professional, her work demanding close attention and reading, her poetry asking for more than one examination. Gregory’s work is nicely summarized in a colleague’s words as, “Poetry that you can never touch but can always believe in.”

Kathryn Duffy

Honor Thy Father

-Poet and Writer Honor Moore Explores Her Relationship with her Father in her new Memoir, The Bishop's Daughter

This is the poetry blog. I am not in the wrong place. So why am I sharing my experiences from Thursday night's memoir reading by Honor Moore? Well, first, Moore is a poet and she is well known at The University of Iowa as she taught here in 1996. She currently lives in New York where she self proclaimes to be working on more poetry and another memoir.

This reading was from her newest book, which happens not to be specifically a book of poetry, but a memoire that touches on writing and the process of writing, especially poetry. Poetry plays an important role in the book and clearly, in Honor Moore's life. She read one section of the book in particular that deals with writing very personal family business in the form of poetry as a way of dealing with issues that seem overwhelming in print. Her writing was encouraged by her mother and disapproved of by her father, the well-known Episcopal Bishop of New York, Paul Moore.

This reading was important on so many levels. First, here in Iowa this past week same-sex marriage has been approved by the courts. As Moore's father was bisexual and married to her mother, fathering 9 children as well as maintaining a 30-year relationship with one man; one had to wonder, listening to her read, if these issues would have been relevant if her father had been free to marry a man. I thought about asking this question, hypothetically, to Honor Moore, but decided against it, as it would have been purely speculative in nature.

I enjoyed her reading very much; was interested and inspired by her poetic writing style. The Bishop's Daughter is a personal memoir, but the language, description and view is from the eyes of an established poet, so the material is far from dry or simply factual. There is a rich story woven in this book, a poet's perspective of a sensitive issue, a child's image of her father, a woman's acceptance of her father as a human being rather than an icon. This work is not 'poetry' per se, but it is poetic prose. It is lyrical story-telling at it's very best and the most interesting thing about the reading is that the book is a memoir. There is something in the literal and not fiurative that draws me to this work in particular.

It is also interesting to note that Honor Moore mentioned that most of her poetry touches on the women's movement and her relationship with her father in one way or another, so by reading the memoir, it gives the reader better perspective and understanding of her works of poetry, Red Shoes (2006) and Darling (2001). She has also collaborated on several works, edited a book of poetry from the women's movement and written a biography, White Blackbird about her grandmother, Margarett Sargent.

So, now you know why I'm writing this review in the poetry blog. I hope it inspires you to pick up Honor Moore's newest book, or perhaps touch back on some of her previously published poetry with a new perspective. I know I certainly enjoyed participating in the reading!

-Elizabeth Green

Emily Wilson: A Poet in Full Bloom

Most residents of Iowa City would remember Wednesday, April 8th as a temperate evening in the beginning of April just before the deciduous trees had come to bud. They might recall that their rusted lawns hadn’t quite begun their ascension from autumnal death to renewed vitality and that the tulips were still unrealized, tucked safely beneath the soil. I’ll remember it as the evening Emily Wilson teased her audience with poems about flourishing gardens and unrestricted life.

At 7 p.m. the man who would deliver her introduction came to stand before the podium. He spoke of Wilson as she would later speak of backyard gardens; she was described as blossoming, brilliant, and “generous in her sparseness." As she approached the microphone and the crowd began its welcoming applause, he finished: “Welcome, Emily Dickinson or…excuse me, Emily Wilson”; most within the crowd laughed. Wilson paused, giggled beneath her breath and then thanked him for the incidental compliment. She then thanked her husband, Mark, the University of Iowa Press, and a number of the individuals who occupied the reserved seats before ultimately beginning her reading.

Wilson read from her collection titled “Micrographia," a homage to Robert Hooke’s 17th Century contribution to microbiology, in a soft deliberate tone that was both eloquent and calming; in fact, throughout the entirety of her half-hour performance Wilson did not stutter or fumble with a single of her words.

The first poem, which I was not able to ascertain the title of, addressed the world that lay within eyesight of the backyard she formerly maintained in Oregon. It read nicely. One of the immediate qualities of her writing that struck me, and would later develop into a recurring theme, was Wilson’s ability to meld typically coarse scientific language into gentle poetic patterns. And while her word choices often lacked the inherent musical qualities of more conventional language, her fastidious word selections and arrangements only further exemplified her poetic prowess. Her opening poem, like those that followed, sounded neither forced or rigid.

Wilson continued thereafter to read several poems, often introduced by their location. Most originated in Oregon, or New York—places Wilson formerly resided in—but she also spoke of Montana and California, not necessarily as states but rather as locations with unique and impressive vegetation.

Some of the more memorable poems within Wilson’s performance include “Tableau” and the cleverly titled “Johnny Rotten’s Produce”; the latter, a poem set in New York, treated Dyker Heights and the derelicts of industrial Brooklyn with the same sincerity and imagination that had been given to "Bill's garden", pigeons and flowers in previous poems. For me, “Johnny Rotten’s Produce” demonstrated Wilson’s ability to move beyond the unadulterated spaces of nature to the confides of one of America’s least vegetated cities. What was most impressive and surprising about her treatment of this space was her objectivity. As foolish as it seems now, I had prematurely assumed that Wilson would treat industrial spaces with condemnation and disgust. I had assumed her obvious affection for the natural world would bias her perspective of these spaces but Wilson’s cool contemplation clearly championed over such sentiment, if in fact they had ever existed, the ultimate result being another articulately crafted poem.

Even more impressive was that Wilson‘s poetic performance was almost entirely free from standard adjectival descriptions. While most poets struggle to not muddy their works with an over-insistence on descriptive language, Wilson has the incredible ability to unpack her descriptions into sentences more accurate and meaningful than the words they replace. As her introducer had indicated, Wilson’s collection is deliberately “sparse."

Before beginning her final poem, “Excursion," a poem that moved from the painted coast to the water of the ocean itself, Wilson described her poems, with a gentle laughter, as her own “version of a still-life painting." Such self-assessment was not only founded but the perfect introduction to a poem that would dance over a series of objects, gracefully, careful not to overshadow any one subject with another.

Ultimately, I left Wilson’s reading with a respect for her ability and a yearning for nature’s beauty. Her work is the perfect companion to those Spring and Summer months when the earth’s vitality is renewed, and we are once again able to bask in the beauty of the natural world. “Micrographia," like beds of brilliantly arranged flowers, rubs the hues and shapes of our language against each other, further highlighting the beauty of it’s individual parts. It can be purchased at Prairie Lights or online here.

-Tyler Lang Mauseth

Don't Slam Big Poppa E

Terrified of what a “Slam Poetry” reading could bring, I bribed my urbanite Chicagoan friend with a cup of coffee in to tagging along. Although, it turned out to be less of talking her into it, rather her convincing me that it was going to be really cool and that she loved slam poetry. Who knew?

As we walked up to Old Brick, the air was filled with a sweet aroma of maple syrup and sweet pastries, only to find out that Big Poppa E was not serving pancakes, rather it was a fundraiser and Big Poppa E was not at Old Brick, rather the daunting lecture hall of MacBride Auditorium, so our adventure continued. Walking into MacBride brought back memories of freshman year science class as well as a complete shock. Expecting the auditorium to be packed with poetry gurus, I found a few college students sitting, a few running around frantically untangling cords and dragging massive speakers, and then a number of students sitting at tables with numerous signs and brochures. Then I saw Big Poppa E himself, recognizing his distinct style from his website and his unique voice uncovering the details of the student tables.

After watching Big Poppa E, rather than listening to him, for 20 minutes as he conversed with students and pounded a Rockstar energy drink, he finally got up on stage. He let us know that he too was a little bummed out with the turnout, but he was determined to have enough of us to do the wave. Although, I thought this might be fun, it was small enough that it almost seemed conversational. I had expected a packed house and after running across campus expecting a packed house it was nice to sit and observe, rather than be jammed in a corner of a packed lecture hall. He started to point out people in the audience giving them names, while the microphones were being adjusted. Naming kids, Red for her hair, Green for his shirt, Bandaid for his ridiculously cut arms, and finally Phish for his hair, he finally was given a mic. Big Poppa E introduced J[amnesty], and then informed the audience that he had to pee, but first would pick us out a crucial playlist for the two minutes he would be gone. At this point, my friend had become extremely irritated and hollered out asking exactly how long was the restroom break going to take him. Big Poppa E found this his first opportunity to start his “Slam” poetry. He named my friend “Angry girl” and then went in to how she was going to be referred to as his ex-girlfriend for the rest of the show. After he went off on his tangent, he finally picked his playlist and then was off to the bathroom, only then to inform us that he did not know where the bathroom was, and was a bit terrified to ask for directions, for fear that “Angry girl” might come after him. Once Big Poppa E took care of business and returned to the stage, he was overwhelmingly entertaining. This poetry reading was definitely worth the wait.

Ashley Baldinelli

GZA attacks Iowa City

GZA performing his classic album "Liquid Swords" at the Englert on April 1? Surely this is an elaborate April Fool's joke, right? Made nasty by gathering concert-starved Midwestern rap fans and telling them at reveal of no performer, how absurd it was to think they could expect someone from the Wu-Tang Clan to grace Iowa City with a visit. Well, apparently not. GZA truly opened the Mission Creek festivities this Wednesday to a sold out crowd of rabid Iowans.

Before I went to this concert, I kept in mind my mission to evaluate this concert from a poetry-minded perspective. I expected difficulty to form such a review for some reason, but actually the whole night played out as a devoted cel

ebration of the lyrics GZA wrote over ten years ago when he released the album in 1994.

I should probably include a little back story for the uninitiated. GZA hails from Brooklyn, New York where he developed his skills as a rapper with his cousins in the exploding hip-hop scene. He and his cousins eventually united to form the all-star team of the infamous Wu-Tang Clan. Wu completely changed the game of hardcore rap once they released the album Enter the Wu-tang (36 Chambers), which married themes of martial arts with their memories of violent street life, and demonstrated the RZA's unique production style which would go on to influence an entire decade of hip-hop. Members of the Wu-Tang Clan went on to make their own groundbreaking solo efforts including Raekown's Only Built for Cuban Linx..., Ghostface Killah's Fishscale (A personal favorite), and of course GZA's Liquid Swords.

Anyways, I expected a crowd consisted of an interesting mix of locals and both undergrad and grad students. Instead, a diverse mix of people filled the theater with a large proportion of the local residents. The show sold out and the bulk of crowd showed up before the openers started, showing just how psyched up this crowd had been. After the opening act ended the restless crowd threw up folded pairs of hands in the shape of a “W” famously symbolic of the Wu-Tang Clan. The crowd erupted when GZA took the stage, backed by a single DJ. GZA broke out into the first song, laying down a specific tone for the rest of the night. From that first song the crowds repeated the lyrics in step with GZA, like a minister in a rousing sermon. Throughout the songs GZA and the DJ would suddenly stop for an instant so the audience could fill in the end of a verse. It took me completely by surprise to see such a huge amount of people in Iowa so familiar with such a strange album. The material covered GZA’s hood experience told through a Shaolin warrior’s lens, as he extolled his toughness by demonstrating his mastery of the street experience, like Ramses II engraving his name over the buildings of conquered civilizations. I wondered how this crowd could possibly relate to these lyrics. But maybe instead of directly relating to the GZA’s lyrics, Iowa fans loved the album in more of an escapist sense, transporting them into dramatic scenes of hood life.

As the night progressed GZA’s performance increased in intensity. At one point he took the hand of a boy and let him on the stage. As GZA continued the song the boy danced and mouthed the words along until GZA hugged him and let him back off stage. At another point he let a girl up on stage to dance too. Between songs GZA overflowed with appreciation as he admitted he doesn’t get the chance to pass through here often.

However, the show was not without its snags. After the first song, GZA requested the “sound man” to turn his mic up. The sound guy didn’t quite respond as GZA asked and so GZA spent some minutes nearly demanding for his mic’s volume to be turned up. From the perspective of the audience, it seemed the sound guy denied the GZA because they feared it might get out of hand. However, GZA clearly wanted to give the audience the best experience possible, regardless of any other consequences. The sound problem never came to an ideal solution; I stood maybe a quarter of the auditorium’s length to the stage and even then I couldn’t hear the lyrics particularly clearly.

In the end, the pure energy of the show as created by the sheer exuberance of the audience in their love for the record made for a great experience. I would imagine that it must be every rapper’s dream to make an album so great that you can tour the country of the record to the masses even as you pass your creative prime. The GZA show makes those comments in the nineties of the limited existence of hip-hop look absurd and antiquated. The classic poets never achieved the kind of god like fervor from the masses as rappers. And yet rap doesn’t really derive from those poetic traditions, instead arising naturally from experience like a chemical reaction. It is artists like GZA who can take those natural forms and bend them to their artistic vision.

-Abhijit Pradhan

Lighthearted on April Fool's Day

April Fool’s Day 2009 brought many jokes to the Iowa City area, one event continued in the day’s jovial manner, was the poetry reading of Dobby Gibson at the Prairie Lights Bookstore. Currently residing in Minneapolis Minnesota, Dobby Gibson received his MFA in fiction from the University of Indiana and was reading selections from his second book of collective works entitled Skirmish. I was fifteen minutes early, and one of the first to arrive. By seven ‘o’ clock the room was filled up with professional young adults conversing about their travel plans to Greece, and amount of free-time they had available to read. There were students, such as myself, who were there to get down to business, with their notebooks in hand and minds ready to experience a solid scheduled hour of readings from a published poet.

The lights in the back began to go dim, as a young lady approached the podium in the front of the room and begins to introduce Gibson with a quote from the film Last Days of Disco. The poems of his first book, Polar, she claimed made him a man who could make “rivers vanish into rivers.” He was described as a tall man, who through the advantage of his stature had the ability to juxtapose a sense of alienation with the feeling of brotherhood. And with those words a tall and lanky man approached the spotlight and felt compelled to read a poem from Skirmish; “What it feels like to be this tall?” From the onset of the reading Gibson held a playful banner with the audience. Multiple times he was reminded of the playful nature of the day and one time even adapted a title of one of his poems to incorporate a suggestion from an audience member.

Gibson continued with “Self Storage” which seemed to centralize around the themes of memory and personal connection held in regard to the memories. Gibson said about one third of the poems in Skirmish, were fortune poems written about a Chinese fortune telling game he played well into to the night one evening that inspired him to write the fortune poems. He told five of them throughout the course of the reading. He soon went back to his first book for some selections. One of Gibson’s finer qualities that streamlined from one poem to the next was his use of alliteration. In both his published works he has a unique way of picking out words you couldn’t imagine flow together and make it work.

Gibson worked his way back to Skirmish, and his attempt to branch into prose poetry with two poems; “Civics Lesson,” and “Chin Music” He ventured more into the transcendental with critiques on ceremony, proclaiming gods gutless in “Civic Lesson.” “Chin Music,” told the story of an outrageous umpire married to a composer with writers block. The poet reminded the audience that is National Poetry Month and saved time for a couple questions, but limited the questions. The reading was over by seven twenty-eight.

By: Spencer Poulos

Dobby Gibson

At Prairie Lights. It is April First. I am waiting to hear Dobby Gibson read.

Originally, I was planning to write my review on Big Poppa E; however, my cousin called this morning and asked if I was aware Dobby Gibson was in town. He’s an acquaintance of hers, she says, from the year she spent in Minneapolis; she says his poetry is “quietly unbelievable.” I promise I’ll go.

At the bookstore, I am inundated with bearded gentlemen and cardiganed women that I know. I smile and whisper “hello.” I note for not the first time the slightly absurd backdrop in front of which poets perform.—we are in the self-help section, abundant with capital letters and alternate question mark/exclamation point sequences: You Mean I’m NOT Lazy, Stupid or Crazy?! and Don’t Call ME a DRAMA QUEEN!, etc. A woman takes the microphone. She introduces the poet with a quote from the movie The Last Days of Disco: “Tall people tend to have great personalities…” And indeed, Dobby Gibson is tall—his lankiness is the first thing I notice when he strolls to the podium. I’m not great at estimating heights, but I would guess, if forced, that he is at least 6”3. And I’m not great at guessing ages, but I would guess, if forced, that he’s in his late thirties or early forties. He wears hip-ish square black glasses and a starched white shirt; his manner is scholarly and coolly aloof. He speaks for a few moments about his new book, Skirmish.

Gibson opens with a poem entitled “What It Feels Like To Be This Tall.” The piece establishes him right away as an outsider, not only in the poetry field (the poem contains a snide comment about academia) but in and throughout his own life. I am drawn immediately to his poetic voice—plain, simple, very close to everyday ordinary speech. He seems to have been influenced by Frank O’Hara or perhaps William Carlos Williams (and indeed cites O'Hara as a major influence during the brief question-and-answer session at the end. ) His manner of speech, and his word choice in his poems, is soothing and familiar.

He follows this with a series of poems, each simply entitled “Fortune,” inspired by a severely mistranslated manual. The “Fortunes” are short pieces of deft beauty. I notice that the last line of each is something seemingly ordinary that, by virtue of being the last line, becomes extraordinary: “You will get your wish, but / it will arrive too late.” “You wear expensive shoes, / which you sometimes use to kill spiders.”

In the middle of his between-poems chitchat, a mentally challenged women interrupts his banter. She mumbles something indistinguishable and then says, “April Fools!” Gibson seems first surprised, then flatly unamused; he moves quickly to his next piece. I think about this for a second—in his poetry, Gibson seems somehow cool and open-minded; however, in reality, he was pretty clearly flabbergasted by this slight obstacle. In other words, he reacts radically differently than I would expect him to react if I had never seen him, but only read his poetry. This is an unusual benefit of live poetry readings, I think—you can observe the poet in action, and glean new information from his appearance and his behavior, information that you would never have access to otherwise and which can be enlightening when reading or hearing his poems. By watching Dobby Gibson in action, I feel like I have new insight to his character and thus to his poetic voice—an awkwardness, a certain defensiveness. I may be wrong about these qualities, but I feel as though I know the poet and his poems better, simply by seeing him in real life.

Gibson reads some prose poems, and then one last “Fortune”—a breathtaking piece about the sacredness of everyday life. I think about what my cousin said—Gibson is somewhat “quietly unbelievable.” He’s not an ostentatious poet, he doesn’t seem to be competing for attention; rather, he speaks to his audience of mundane wonders, the true wondrousness that can be found beneath the banality of our lives. I’m glad I went.

Madeleine Wurm

Meaning and Inspiration

My first poetry reading. I was not sure what to expect as I entered the cozy, crowded corner of the Prairie Lights Bookstore adorned with green chairs, and took a seat amongst the towering shelves of books lining the walls. The mood in the room is mixed. Some, like myself, appear clearly apprehensive, as though they, like myself, have never attended a poetry reading before. They sit in silence, eagerly anticipating the reading. Others--frequenters of such events, I would assume--chat away with one another. Shortly after seven, a woman takes the stage to introduce the reader.

Zach Savich is introduced to the crowd as a graduate of the University of Iowa's Writers' Workshop and winner of the Iowa Poetry Prize. He is described as having the ability to capture the mergence of romance and reality within his work. These are topics of particular interest to me. As he takes the stage, I am relieved at his noninvasive presence. He appears to be almost as nervous to be speaking as I am to be there. 

He begins by posing the question, "What do people imagine when they're writing poems?" I consider this. Where do people draw their inspiration? And how does that define them as a poet? He answers for himself through out the reading, telling the audience that he draws inspiration from his friends and coworkers, as well as legendary figures such as Don Quixote. Shakespeare, and Charlie Chaplin. Many of his poems are reminiscent of others' thoughts and happenings. I find it reassuring that he, a prize-winning poet, draws inspiration from those he looks up to. I am inspired.

In terms of his work, I found the poems themselves a bit confusing. I could not tell where one poem ended and the next began, or whether they were a series of longer poems. Between what I deem to be poems, he stops and addresses the audience. He speaks to some people specifically, primarily friends and people he has gone out with the night before. He sympathizes with those who feel bored by the long, rambling poems that don't speak to them and promises to read only his most meaningful material and finish at a reasonable time. He finished ten minutes later, presenting the whole reading in just a little over half an hour. 

In the short time that he presented, I listened carefully to his work to try and find that important meaning he had described. The moment when it all makes sense. It was in his poem inspired by Don Quixote that I discovered the line which inspired me the most. Buried within the long, confusing poem was the notion that everything is "out of order, but related." This notion struck a chord with me. This line alone helped me to understand the rest of his poetry--his constant jumping from topic to topic--the disconnect within and between every work. It made me delve deeper into his words and search for my own interpretation of ways in which the random, disordered topics relate and connect to make sense. I believe that I was able to discover the 'meaning' Savich had implied: it is unique to every individual based on their personal inspirations and interpretations. 

-Caitlin Ward

Refrigerator Manuscripts

Jill Bialosky returned to Iowa City for the first time since graduating from the Iowa Writer’s Workshop in 1983 on February 26^th, 2009. I found this ironic as I had never before been to a poetry reading and here I was showing up at my first one with notebook in hand observing a writer making her first appearance to Iowa City since before I was born. I was skeptical at first to post a review of Jill Bialosky given the nature of my first attendance so I attended a few other readings in the past weeks, such as translations read at the Sanctuary and Zach Savich at Prairie Lights to see what was out there, only to discover that Jill Bialosky was my favorite poet out of the poets I saw.

For my first time experiencing Live From Prairie Lights I was taken aback at the size of the audience. I had a friend save me a seat in the front row and I was thankful when I started to notice people standing in the back without seats. The audience descended into a dead silence as Jill was introduced. Not too long after being introduced she began speaking and was interrupted by a cell phone ringing in the first row (not mine thankfully). Jill politely stopped talking and allowed the woman to silence her phone before moving on and describing her process of writing and how it affected her ordinary life as “a mother and an editor being in the world”. Jill provided some more background information of her writing style, such as her use of “She the poet” vs. using “I” in order to reach a different consciousness, before reading from her new book of poetry Intruder.

Jill tells us the intruder is part muse, other, and imagined other challenging the levels of selfhood and reality we inhabit. This detailed introduction leading into her first poem had me leaning forward closer to the poet as she spoke, even though I was already in the front row. The first words from the first poem began with “blank canvas” and I could not imagine a more appropriate attention-getter to suck me in for the rest of the night. Jill then read a few sections of a ten section poem entitled “The Skiers” which she called her own version of Paradise Lost. The first section began with “Snow, lone wilderness…” and ended with “high on the crescent” with the final section she read ending “for one moment the world is calm”, which I found translating into my personal experience that night in attendance.

I was really riveted when Jill began telling us the occasion for the next poem she would be reading came from a library of forgotten Chinese manuscripts. Given my interest in Chinese literature and our class discussions of occasional poetry I knew I was in for a treat as Jill says she wanted to “blend the old and the new” with these erotic Chinese poems. The poem was not the greatest of the night, but I couldn’t stop listening with her direct references to Taoism, as I found myself referencing myself throughout her poems as she was reading.

Jill read a few more poems before reading from her novel The Life Room. She presented the themes of desire and responsibility, authentic and narcissus. My favorite lines were “I write because I can’t” and “Loneliness is inevitable, it’s a force of nature.” Then suddenly, the reading was over.

Although Jill Bialosky came off as very quiet and perhaps nervous and she ended her reading somewhat abruptly, I nonetheless appreciate all the advice she gave to the writers in the audience. She advised us against looking too closely, for one can get lost. She shared with us her enjoyment from moving between two genres. And by sharing with the audience that she kept her manuscripts in the refrigerator, I left Prairie Lights with the sense that Jill Bialosky has found a harmonious balance as “a mother and an editor being in the world”.

--Josh Elwer