Publishing since 1970
2008
ESSAYS/ BLABS/ METABLABS
- Coyote poetry
an essay about coyote poets and poetry by Stephen Morse
- Concrete Crows
Stephen Morse talks about Concrete Poetry and shows an example.
- Big Show in the Skulletarium
"Poetry was never anything else than a performing art..." - Gene Fowler
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found an old photocopy of an article that ran in two columns but in segments on two pages so that it was all patched together onto one 8.5" by 11" page. Looked like coyote's hide nailed up on a barn-side and the essay tattoo'd on it. I thought an image would go well here. But anything useful got up into thousands of bytes - so I'll do what I can to keep the flavor as I type it. It was in a tabloid sometime in the sixties or seventies - very likely Harry Smith's NEWSART. --g.f. Big Show in the Skulletarium Big show in the skulletarium! Poetry was never anything else than a performing art - though that might come as a surprise to a very private person like, say, Emily Dickinson. But you could remind her that it's possible for a theatrical company to give a full dress performance for an empty theater, or for an orator to present his best wretor's manner while speaking only to God. Poets from the beginning were showmans, even as they were shamans in the hunt for power, shemans in the androgynous wholeness (before Charles Pierce sang); they were shamers before school teachers worked, and they were sham...ers before masques. And no private shows early-on. The urpoets shouted, chanted, more or less sang, before singing was; they stomped and jumped and crept, danced ____________________________________________________ ALL THE WALKS SITTING Night coffee on the marble table top, dark ring of warmth; the suf's tavern the Turk's dark sugar pit, swirled half coffee grain, half sugar half! The secret, the doubling, the left and the right the day & the night the arched heaven the bird's flight half! ____________________________________________________ before dancing was; they painted on the walls (of cave depths), scratched runes on bone, marked stone, before Cristo rigged fences to the Pacific; they donned skins they weren't born with, and mimed their never silent poems. And there were no private shows. The poets rounded up all the tribal folk for their antics, even if only curing Joe Ugh's mother-in-law of the hives. They " called." And it always ended up... a poem! And there was never, never "no audience." Out after a gname dream or the secret of the kosmos... on a lonely hilltop? Well, whatever the truth of the matter, the young gent, hugging his sensitivity or, in a few rare camps, the maiden was pretty sure the elders were in the bushes marking points; and there was always old Bear up in the heavens, or Eagle or whatever. So poetry is, indeed, performance. (But then, too often, so is sex, so I ain't suggesting we give Oscars or Emmys.) THE WHOLE THING IS, THE WHOLE POINT GETS MISSED IF YOU HUNT UP A READING AND GO IN FIGURING THE POET WILL STAGE THE SHOW. Oh, you'll seem to get what you expect, if that is your expectation. The poets, all them bright lads and lasses, caught in their dreams, will posture, move, shout, stomp, sing, dance, draw on the walls or their resources, whatever. If nothing else drops your jade- fastened jaw, some of 'em will doff costumes to the buff. Performance enough? and inside all that, they'll tell you a good deal, informing you of this or that, urging you to courses of action or simple loyalties. The urpoets, our ancestor shamans, told us something - when they did their paintings, maybe their dancings and speakings, too, in those far back caves. They didn't have planetaria, or even the mo'on pictures, of course. But they knew, and hinted to their audiences: THE REAL SHOW IS IN THE SKULLETARIUM. The words, the voice, the body language, the pictures - the gesture and suggesture - isn't the performance; it's the stage managing, the engineering, done to "create" - out of nothingness - the real show. WHO IS ALL THE ACTORS AND EVEN THE "OFF- STAGE VOICE"? WHO BUILDS THE SETS, BODIES OUT THE ACTIVITIES ON 'EM? YOU DO! When you hear what's said, see what's shown - you hear and see outward into "space." You do that magical thing you probably take for granted: you make sense of it all. Uh huh! You make sense (and sort from it all the senses), and the sense you make is "mental space," where it all happens. The sense (images, ideas, feelings, thoughts, self-sensings) is the stuff of the show. The kosmos on the unseen dome. That's the show, "called out" and shaped by the poet. IT'S THE SHOW YOU MIGHT MISS, "WATCHING" A POETRY READING. You're better at opening up the real show if you grew up on radio drama rather than tv drama. You're better still if you grew up reading - listening to the (felt) voice that makes no sound. BUT A FREE TICKET GOOD FOR ALL PERFORMANCES IN THE SKULLETARIUM IS YOU BIRTHRIGHT - COMES WITH WALKING ON YOUR HIND LEGS - AND YOU CAN GET A SEAT IN THE THIRD BALCONY, WITH A KIND OF FADED VIEW, JUST BY HEARING THAT SUCH A THEATER EXISTS. THEN, YOU WORK YOUR WAY DOWN TO EIGHTH ROW CENTER... BY ATTENDING! Now, that's a good bit easier on psyche and wardrobe than is wriggling through tight tunnels and mud puddles to one of those early caves and old Circlin' Buzzard's Big Show in the Cavetarium. Think about it. Y'know poet translates as maker. Nobody ever asks, "what's s/he make?" Answer? Shows. Experiences. Experiences that leave, as human "nature," geometries for ordering experiences. Not a bad final curtain aura, eh? -- Gene Fowler |