Poetry Beat

Remembering John Logan

A poem by Perry Nicholas, which will be featured on the July 1st Poetry Page, is dedicated to the late John Logan, the much admired "poet's poet" who lived in Buffalo and taught in UB's English Department from 1966 to 1985.

An entire generation of Buffalo poets and writing students came to know the book-strewn living room of Logan's apartment on Amherst Street directly across from the Buffalo Zoo as both a salon and a saloon where the company of poets was always welcome, always celebrated.

This November will mark the 20th anniversary of Logan's death, and I, for one, hope it will not pass unnoticed.  The cynical-hearted may choose to remember Logan as a very good poet who came to a very sad end--someone who had he lived and remained productive for another decade might well be considered a "major" American poet today.

There is also a growing body of critical writing that identifies Logan as one of the two or three most important "Catholic poets" of the 20th century.  This work tends to focus on his early volumes The Cycle for Mother Cabrini and Spring of the Thief as well as his years as a junior faculty member at Notre Dame.

I prefer to remember Logan for the self-questioning, spiritually transformative work he produced during his years here in Buffalo.  One simply cannot read through Logan's volumes The Zig Zag Walk (1968) , The Anonymous Lover (1973), The Bridge of Change (1979), or his volume of selected poems Only the Dreamer Can Change the Dream (which received the Lenore Marshall Prize from the Academy of American Poets in 1982) and fail to be moved by their lyricism and search for redemption through language.

In the heyday of "confessional" poetry, Logan counted the number of syllables in each of his lines and asked, "How's your soul?"  His answers were often daunting, as when he suggested that lacking a sense of guilt, we are incapable of change.

Rooftop series goes inside

Outdoor poetry readings tend to be desultory affairs.  Even if insects don't attack and the thunderstorm passes it by, there is still the distinct possibility that the poetry will be no match for the rare beauty of an evening in June.

One notable exception has been Buffalo State College's Rooftop Poetry Readings, which move from late afternoons during the academic year to early evenings in the summer.

Renovations to the rooftop garden area of Buffalo State College's E.H. Butler Library will mean that this summer's series won't feature the gentle cross-breezes of last summer's memorable series.  Gone too, at least until August, are the acoustic sets by Buffalo area songwriters and musicians that precede and follow each reading. 

What remains, of course, is the poetry.  Lisa Forrest, the talented poet and senior assistant librarian at Butler Library who runs the Rooftop Poetry Club (with help from Media Services specialist Dennis Reed) has scheduled seven readings beginning tonight (June 20th) through August 30th in the air-conditioned main lobby of the library.  All the readings begin at 7 p.m. and feature two poets (or occasionally a poet and a prose writer) per event.

Leading off the series tonight are Michael Tritto, a former high school Spanish teacher whose well-crafted poems have been published widely, and Mark Lloyd, a poet and dramatist, who has directed six of his own one-act plays locally and is vice president of the Amherst Players.

Next Wednesday night (June 27) the series will continue with readings by Carol Townsend, a poet and associate professor of design at Buffalo State, and Ryki Zuckerman,  a former art teacher turned literary activist, and one of the longtime editors of Earth's Daughters magazine.

For a complete listing of readings this summer, and to learn more about the Rooftop Poetry Club, visit www.buffalostate.edu/library/rooftop.

Gray Hair Series

When Ryki Zuckerman of Earth's Daughters--the Buffalo based magazine that is widely believed to be the oldest extant feminist literary and arts periodical in the United States--contacted me last summer with plans for a new reading series at Hallwalls featuring community based poets and writers who have contributed significantly to the Buffalo area literary scene , I remember thinking that it was seemed an idea that was long overdue.

"We're calling it the Gray Hair Series," Ryki said.  I did a double take, convinced I had misheard her.

Ryki gave me stern look over the bridge of her lowered glasses.  "We're calling it the Gray Hair Series," she repeated firmly.  "Buffalo is the City of No Illusions, a place where we don't need to pretend to be the younger than we are or subscribe to the latest literary trends."

The Gray Hair Series concluded its 2006-2007 run last week with a joint reading by three of the Earth's Daughters' longtime editors--Kastle Brill, Joyce Kessel, and Zuckerman, who also served as the series organizer and host.  True to the spirit of Earth's Daughters origins as a feminist collective, Brill and Kessel opted to exchange poems in alternating fashion, with each piece essentially reacting and responding to its predecessor.

In its unassuming way, the series provided many of the most memorable readings Buffalo has seen in years over its 10-month run.  No one who saw 94-year-old playwright Manny Fried read from his memoirs about blacklisting, heard 88-year-old Bill Sylvester recite projectivist poems that soared off into the linguistic empyrean, was moved by Olga Mendel's memoir of how exile from their native Cuba transformed her relationship with her mother, or Anne Pluto's stirring "October Requiem" for the murdered Russian journalist Anna Politkovskaya will soon forget them.

If you missed the Gray Hair readings or want to revisit some of the work featured in the series, the good news is that forthcoming issue #72 (The Gray Hair Issue) of Earth's Daughters will publish a sampling of the work of all 21 poets and writers who read in the series this year. Subscriptions to Earth's Daughters are $19 for 3 issues and can be obtained from Post Office Box 41, Central Park Station, Buffalo, NY 14215.  For more information, visit earthsdaughters.org.

New Spoken Word Series

Last week I heard from a talented young poet and spoken word artist who was frustrated with the "poetry slam" format as a way of presenting her work.  Her objection was how the three-minute time limit and the mindset of most competitors combine to restrict rather than broaden the range of expression.

She's right, if not about the value of poetry slams in general, then about the fact that they are not the best forums for the work of many poets and spoken word artists.

At the local slams I've attended, most competitors approach the constraints of the format with the same strategy: to utter as many syllables in as histrionic a fashion as 180 seconds will permit.  One might call this the "Red Bull effect"--the impression one gets that every contestant has consumed an entire six pack of the so-called "energy drink" before he or she took the stage, resulting in paroxysms of Extreme Talk.

Any competitor who opts for an understated or minimalist performance runs the risk of a puzzled response from his or her peers and the audience and likely first round elimination.  One can only wonder how a young John Cage or Jackson MacLow would fare in such a setting, but just once I'd love to see someone speak in a whisper or rant in randomly generated phonemes.

Fortunately for my young friend, a new showcase for spoken word poetry performance in Buffalo is in the offing.  Beginning at 8 p.m. this Sunday (June 17th), Allen Street Hardware Cafe', located at 245 Allen (near College Street) will present a weekly Sunday night spoken word series organized and hosted by versatile poet and spoken word artist Liz Mariani.   The format of '"Spoken Word Sundays" will feature performances by two invited spoken word artists each week, followed by (or alternating with) "open mic" performances obtained from a sign-up sheet that will be available prior to each event at 7:45 p.m.

Mariani is currently searching for "dynamic, positive, wordsmith/spoken word artists" to fill both the open mic and the featured artist slots. If you are interested, e-mail sample mp3s and other relevant attachments (i.e., a CV, other recordings, poetry manuscripts, etc.) to her at liz@lizmariani.com.

For additional information on the series, contact Mariani ia her e-mail address (above) or Allen Street Hardware proprietor Mark Goldman at Markgold46@hotmail.com or www.allenstreethardware.com.

Canadian & U.S. poetry

Two quick observations on last Thursday evening's reading by former Canadian Poet Laureate George Bowering at Talking Leaves Books:

1.) Bowering is an eccentric storyteller, quick wit and would doubtless be an entertaining dinner guest.  In front of a shirtsleeve crowd on a warm evening in the intimate space of the bookstore, he told anecdotes, bantered about his 2006 book Baseball Love, and gave an informal reading that did much to dispel any apprehensions one might have about the approachability of a Canadian laureate. 

Like former U.S. Poet Laureate Billy Collins, Bowering knows how to work a room.  But unlike Collins--who might be thought of as a romantic ironist -- Bowering is an iconoclast by nature whose postmodernist writings stand significantly outside the mainstream traditions of both Canadian and American poetry.  It's difficult to imagine someone so committed to an oppositional poetics ever being appointed U.S. Poet Laureate.

2.) That's no knock on Bowering.  It says more about the cautiousness with which the appointment of the U.S. Poet Laureate is made by our Librarian of Congress, who in recent years appears to have settled on always making the safest choice possible, lest our laureate be caught in a public utterance that might be interpreted as critical of the current administration or its policies.

There's a considerable difference between the Canadian literary establishment, with its official recognition of a wide range of different (and to some degree contrary) poetics and multicultural influences, and the "official verse culture" (a term coined by Charles Bernstein) of the U.S., which tolerates an even broader spectrum of pluralistic "poetries," but privileges a mainstream of expression (with publishing contracts, reviews, and awards) at the expense of other marginalized alternatives.

Readers, feel free to weigh in on this.  What other differences between Canadian and American literary culture are worth pointing out?