Journal, Day 25

Boston, MA / Major Jackson

O Boston! My Boston! such a historic, literary town, where if you attend any of the open mics or featured readings, you’ll likely not be served a standard dish of self-indulgent minor verses about broken-hearted trips to the movie theater alone or exceedingly played stanzas about sibling rivalries or paeans to a lost adolescence of programmed resistance as a third-wave punk rocker but really good translations of Mayakosky and Akhmatova, or sharply observed and witty lines about one’s co-workers and their weeklong, giddiness and over-excitement at the arrival of new office chairs. That was Michael Brodeur’s poem, which he read last night at the Burren Irish Pub. Michael was the local organizer of last night’s event and owner of the crashpad in South Boston where a number of the poets slept.

The Burren Irish Pub in Davis Square of Somerville has two sections: a bar/restaurant in the front (by the way, which I observed last night had more redheads standing in one room with beers in hand than any other place I have seen in my life) and a bar/performance space in the rear. Clearly those in the front half (college students, young professionals, and neighborhood locals) were clueless about what was happening in the rear although a sign pointed their way “Wave Poetry Bus Reading.” Predictably, old concert posters of “The Pogues” lined some of the walls. The stage took up one half of the room, and opposite it, was the bar; all along its wooden edges stood rapt a host of people ranging in ages and gear, attempting to figure out what was going on, for the evening did not begin with an introduction, but with Typing Explosion typing furiously poems on paper and notecards. Donning 1950-ish matching skirts and tops, they battered away to an endless stream of retro-lounge music. Just at that time, I was returning to my table where seated was poets Rebecca Kaiser Gibson, David Rivard, Jennifer Flescher, poet and PhD candidate, 2006 Bread Loaf waiter, friend of Jon W., Ben (who told me that when he walks by my books on his bookshelf, he salutes them), and a lovely woman I think her name was Amy. I asked, “What was going on?” and Rivard replied, “You’re in a Fellini film, and you don’t know it.”

The crowd was at times sedate and vaguely supportive and at other times enthusiastic and loud. I met Morgan who teaches at Emerson College, Joshua Beckman’s cousin who was eating a topless burger when I asked to take her picture, and a guy who I have seen at two separate poetry readings this month; he came up to me to let me know that he’d been expecting “counter-culture itself to spill out the bus,” but instead the audience as well as the poems seemed too “academic.” On the surface, it is a good point, as touring buses of “fringe” artists do conjure up images that are well-worn and unfortunately associated with the '60s and 70s. Joshua Beckman’s beard, glasses, and hairdo do not help the image of the tour, either; as one person or more has noted, both make him appear as the son of Jerry Garcia. But, I do not know what that term “academic” signifies in this day and age, given the number of MFA graduates and types of MFA programs to serve everyone from newly-minted, non-ivy undergraduate poets to affluent, Appalachian grandmothers. Plus, I have always thought that term “academic” was erroneously applied to poets who were initially regarded as interlopers in English Departments. But, this guy redeemed himself by saying that what would have been hipper and more original is if the organizers had instead rented a number of limousines and traveled the highways and byways of America like a cortege of executives, except when they pulled into a town they would drive around and scream poems through bullhorns. Nice.

Last night’s poets have mad skills. I was happy to hear a host of people for the first time including Jon Woodward, Noelle Kocot, Monica Fambrough, and Caroline Knox. Catherine Wagner is also a new discovery; she had her son Ambrose for most of the evening. (Turns out, according to Cathy, the organizers do provide daycare.) Chelsey Minnis was a particular treat; she read poems in which a bunch of prefaces that she wrote for her new manuscript had begun to colonize the book. Mary Jo read from her marvelous collection of ekphrastic poems. David read the title poem to his book Sugartown as well as a remarkable poem to his daughter titled, “To Simone,” then closed out with Alan Dugan's “Closing Time at the Second Avenue Deli.”

Well, I gotta go deposit some cash in my checking account, so I can live comfortably over the next couple of days. I better do some laundry, too, otherwise, I’ll have to just grab some suits and pretend I’m being fashionably different.