5 poets: Lady K, Wendy Shaffer, Jean Brandt, Lester Allen, John Dorsey – foto by Smith
We fed our cat early Saturday and drove east to Erie Pennsylvania to be two of 36 featured readers (plus an hour open mic) in a 12 hour poetry reading.
As Lady and I set off, we passed a sign saying “ERIE PA” and I said, “Hmmmmmm, eerie pa . . . scary ma . . . and strange siblings — it sounds like YOUR FAMILY.”
“Do you really think my mom is scary?” she asked with a tentative edge.
“No, but since I started out with ‘ERIE PA,’ I had to go to ‘scary ma’ psychologically, and once you have eerie pa and scary ma, it just naturally leads to ‘strange siblings’ — that’s just the way my brain works. It’s all about the word play, nothing real about your family.”
But I can see how she could hear my words as some sort of dark judgment on her family, especially since Freud says there are no jokes. (Her family is actually quite nice to me and very easy to get along with, even though I’m four years older than her mom and 5 years older than her dad . . . in fact, Lady says I should be going with her grandmother because while I’m 27 years older than my wife, I’m only 20 years younger than granny).
My brain leaps and plays before I know it, without asking permission or giving me a heads up, so I speak before thinking or analyzing how my surreal statements might be taken by others. I’m not used to being believed, especially when I’m aiming more for droll, dry, absurd, sardonic. Who knows how many folk I’ve left angry along the way due to some surreal one-liner I dropped in their lap.
On many levels, communication between life forms–especially humans–is fraught with peril. In fact it’s darn near impossible. When we say anything no matter how innocuous, others hear our words from within their own self-centered needs, tics, fears, insecurities, beliefs and misperceptions.
But I can’t worry about others, cannot control how they hear or think or where they’re starting from. I’m a decent person – I mean well, try not to hurt others, try to be polite and non-aggressive. But when words start playing Surreal Tag in my head, it’s best to let them out at once before they corrupt what little I’ve left upstairs.
Anyway, we drove two hours, stayed for 7 of the 12 hours of scheduled Snoetry Poetry, drove two hours back. An 11 day just for us each to read 12 minutes. Poets are crazy. But it was worth it – heard some good poetry and gave a reading that felt tight for the first time in years. Back before we left the country in 2006, I’d finally gotten some power and magic in my readings. . . I’d watch the room go silent and people start to pay attention within a poem or two. Our readings in London and Krakow reinforced this, but my last major reading was in 2006 and I lost my magic in the last three years — had good words but a lackluster performing style. Finally this reading I recaptured my mojo and am back in the game.
Lady got some of the loudest applause and vocal cheers — she read her long poem The Swim and a couple outrageous selections from our unpublished memoir of my life titled Criminal.
Found out later I was filmed while reading and appeared on the Channel 12 WICU-TV’s news at 6 and 11 pm, but I can’t find anything on it online.
All in all a good place to have been. Thanks to poet/hosts Diane Borsenik and John “Jesus Crisis” Burroughs for including us. They host a monthly reading called Lix & Kix with featured poets and open mic every third Wednesday here in Cleveland at the Bella Dubby coffee & beer bar in Lakewood.
Here is the list of poets in case you know any.
Snoetry – 12 hours of poetry and music:
A Winter Wordfest in North East (near Erie), Pennsylvania,
on Saturday 16 January, 2010
at The Last Wordsmith Shoppe (which unfortunately is closing due to poor sales)
Lester Allen (upstate NY)
Mary Biddinger (Akron, OH)
Dianne Borsenik (Cleveland, OH)
Kent Brown (Jamestown, NY)
John Burroughs (Elyria, OH)
Cold Heart Youth (Erie, PA)
Nabina Das (Ithaca, NY)
DubbleX (New York, NY)
Aleathia Drehmer (upstate NY)
John Dorsey (Toledo, OH)
Christopher Franke (Cleveland, OH)
Steve Goldberg (Cleveland, OH)
T.M. Göttl (Brunswick, OH)
Sammy Greenspan (Cleveland Heights, OH)
Michael Grover (Toledo, OH)
JJ Haaz (10-string guitarist, northeast Ohio)
Clarissa Jakobsons (Aurora, OH)
Chuck Joy (Erie, PA)
tj jude (originally from NC)
Lady K (Cleveland, OH)
Zach King-Smith (originally from CT)
Lara Konesky (Columbus, OH)
Joy Leftow (New York, NY)
Berwyn Moore (Erie, PA)
Brian Morgante (Erie, PA)
Zachary Moll (Monroeville, OH)
Alex Nielsen (Toledo/Cleveland, OH)
Dan Provost (Worcester, MA)
David Schein (Jamestown, NY)
Wendy Shaffer (Cleveland, OH)
Dan Smith (Cleveland, OH)
Steven B. Smith (Cleveland, OH)
Carolyn Srygley-Moore (upstate NY)
Sherman LS Royal Stewart (Cleveland, OH)
Vladimir Swirynsky (Cleveland, OH)
Cee Williams (Erie, PA)
The reading was in North East, Pennsylvania which is a misnomer because the town is in north west PA, near the Ohio border.
One of the best performers was Wendy Shaffer, the poet cat lady who loaned us one of her 15 cats while we live in Cleveland. Her “Not Me” poem–which says while some women may try to conform and not make waves, she won’t–had her throwing back her head and screaming NOT MEEEEEEE as her final line. She would be a hard poet to read after. I’ve never seen her give a bad performance. She’s definitely one of my all-time most-amazing poet favorites ever.
poet & cat lady extraordinaire Wendy Shaffer – foto by Smith
i wonder if that pic was taken during the poem written for my old dog justin, the part where i’m explaining that my little bicuspids couldn’t even rip open a rabbit. thank god it’s blurred.
but thank you mr. steven b. smith. you were very “on” during your reading — you lassoed me in! and kathy’s performance — the excerpts from “criminal” always good, in my opinion better than most parts of “fear & loathing in las vegas”, & her brilliant thought-provoking, thought-packed poem “the swim”.
also i was honored & pleased to read with my very good friend, the incomparable jean brandt, who knocked out three good ones, most notably “hood bitch”.
thanks so much, steve, for your friendship & support, for all you’ve taught me about collage.
I always enjoy your readings, but thought you and Lady were particularly on fire and “in the zone” at Snoetry. Great selections by both of you – I found myself particularly immersed in “The Swim.”
I’m glad you were reading when TV arrived. At that point we were running way behind schedule and Dianne passed me a note saying she wanted to take a 5 minute break after you finished. My response was “Are you kidding?” – because the flow was so outtasight (and I had no idea anyone from TV was present or coming). Then she announced the break anyway – and I ended up being glad she did, as it gave us a chance to be interviewed in time for the 6 o’clock news. I was telling Sammy and Dianne earlier that as great as many of the poets were, Wendy’s performance was one of my favorites – maybe even the best of the day – as close to perfect as possible on all levels.
A few of the folks in the list above were unable to make it – but that allowed us to incorporate more open mic’ers, particularly in the last couple of hours – and some pleasant surprises resulted. We also added Gary Bond, a poet from Toledo, to the feature list at the last minute, though I neglected to update the list on my blog.
Anyway thank you – for all of the above and more!
awesome… nice to hear the extra comments here…