The workshop last night far exceeded my expectations. People brought a lot of varied but interesting work and it seems to me that people have real projects going on, and a lot of craft, experience, street-smarts, what have you.
I passed out the "Princess Sputnik" poem; one comment was that I needed to slow down the poem with a sprinkling of periods, and lighten up the syntax, which people thought might be a little too complicated for its own good. What say you, gentle reader? (BTW, if you're interested in seeing the painting the poem is based on, here it is).
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Princess Sputnik
Anemones and galaxies--
an entirety of wishes: Watch the eucalyptus
drop its hoary, ancient fruits.
Oh, we know
we're not in Kansas anymore, as if anyone
could forget your easybake
exoskeleton,
your crown of plastic dinosaurs, or set aside
nine months, set aside
the brief history
of time and all the other space-age materials
and then see
if you can indifferently
consider the present rage for balance,
for the harmonious
existence of god
and rocketry, trilobites and honey.
We'll yet discover
the undiscovered
country, the hidden territory, the secret
of the old clock,
the moonstone castle
mystery, and we'll do it presently, as soon
as we've finished
our walk on the surface
of things, mapped the moon, Copernican
frame of this latest
dimension in our endless
collection of oddities, of empties, this nothing,
this space, this final frontier.
(6) Tests of Balance and Hydration
The drunken sailor appears
on the rooftop at night. Flanked
by the cedar water tower,
he looks an unavenging angel,
bedraggled,
his dark dumb eyes glass-fronted
beneath his crew-cut hair.
I stand beside him as he waves
his torso in response
to the pulse of the traffic below,
as it blurs with the too fast tears
of the sentimentally drunk.
His face runs with salt.
We're far from his home. He waves
and he cries, this unbalanced tide.
I stand very still, thinking,
he'll cry an ocean, you know.
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Tuesday: Hat Party, otherwise known as "La Fiesta Del Sombrero," 6:30, The Bowery Poetry Club.
Wednesday: Joshua Clover and Tan Lin, 8:00, The Poetry Project
Thursday: I start taking a workshop at the 92nd Street Y. I have not been in a workshop in a long time. I plan on bringing one of my new drunken sailor poems.
Friday and/or Saturday: BLOW ME DOWN!, or The Daring Exploits of Spanish John, Pirate, an original musical play about pirates in three short acts, 8:00 at The Coffey Street Playhouse (the backyard)
132 Coffey Street (Van Brunt/Conover), Red Hook, Brooklyn, NY, $10 (includes one free drink). Email RadioFreeRedHook@gmail.com for reservations.
Sunday: I read drunken sailor poems and more at the oceanically themed Feast reading, 5 p.m., at Camaje, 85 Macdougal Street, in Le Village.
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