May 5, 2011
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The Daily News1 Had a bit of fun with my classes yesterday with a Rat-a-Tat Poetry session in which I ambushed them with some GREAT poems. I had a chair and a microphone, and introduced them to such luminaries as Maya Angelou, Lorna Dee Cervantes, Juan Felipe Herrera, Langston Hughes, and more.
2 I had the Gabe Dixon Band playing as they walked in, and natural daylight from the huge windows in my room. Some walked in snapping fingers.
3 As I passed out each poem, I had a student gather the poem we had just enjoyed, so that it ran smoothly.
4 What I didn't tell them was that many years ago, Lorna Dee and Juan Felipe came to the YB Theatre to give a reading. Margarita Robles, Juan Felipe's life-companion to this day was there as well. As I recall there were five poets in all.
5 The office requested that we set up some microphones and tech for the poets, so they were sent down to the Theatre.
6 It was one of those meetings in which everyone hit it off famously, and the room turned warm and full of good "vibes". Juan Felipe and Margarita were fun, frivolous and WAY ready to play.
7 I recall the immortal Jean Rivers being backstage, and I asked if these guys would like some special lighting, or even projections on the cyc.
8 Juan Felipe was "into" performance art before it became popular, and he got really excited about our enthusiasm to accomadate. Jean made jazz colors using colored gels and overhead projectors. It knocked Juan Felipe out. We also threw all sorts of fun colors and artistic lighting effects up on the stage.
9 Juan Felipe and Margarita absolutely loved it, so instead of just doing a sound check, we welcomed these poets into the magical, mystical world of our Theatre,
10 Those who can move their minds through the mists of time might remember the immortal mirror ball that we would use for all sorts of fun things. The mirror ball was always one of the cheapest and to this day best effects I think we ever had on a constant basis.
11 For whatever reason, it always destroyed me when someone would refer to it as a "Disco Ball", the connotation being a pretty tacky period of time in American history, and not at all the artistic piece I always enjoyed. I once saw a mirror ball in an old movie theater in Burlingame called the Encore, a lovely art-deco place that was a holdover from the 1930's. It had a bar on the second floor, but it had seen better days. But they used a mirror ball between movies, and I never forgot how much I enjoyed that effect, as simple as it is.
12 With Jean's incredible work on lights, and the mirror ball going, congas playing, and at least three mics on stage, it turned into an incredible rehearsal.
13 Juan Felipe jumped up on the stage, advanced to a mic, and told the other poets, "Let's all bring our books [of poetry] to the stage. I'll call out some random number, like '59' or something, and then all of us will turn to page 29 and read any random line from our poem on that page. Only it will be each of us with one line, and then I'll yell another number!"
14 They did. Jean brought in a galaxy on the cyc. The words were ALL poetic, so that it was like this amazing jam session of images and moods. They got into a rhythm with each other, and the entire Theatre turned into this incredible jam session of truly talented, professional poets having a wonderful time. The best way I could describe it is words in space creating rhythm and music. We had a live flute going as well.
15 Midway through, Lorna Dee stepped up to the mic. She was a San Josean, pure, through and through. She lived on Bird, and began talking through her raven hair about life on Bird. She read a poem called Emplumada from her first book of the same name. She recited a poem called Freeway 280, about the changes that happened so swiftly from her childhood in the early '50's, and how this small town of orchards had come under the shadow of concrete, and yet the mustard grass would still grow, and the flowers would continue to bloom despite the concrete shadow of progress.
16 Time stood still.
17 By the end, it was an amazing evening. They did a performance that brought down the house. After everyone left, we were exhausted and hungry. Someone, I think it was Juan Felipe, suggested House of Pizza. Amazingly, all of these famous poets knew EXACTLY where that was. We all spent the rest of the night chilling on a job well done, eating greasy, wonderful pizza, and enjoying a few cold beers. It was absolutely amazing, and they treated us!!!
18 Great memory, if it is accurate. We remember the good moments, and that night I had met others of my ilk, people who love writing, and who love poetry, and who just as easily love House of Pizza, and an occasional cold one.
19 I shared that story with my students so they could see that poetry isn't a "subject" in school, but something that comes from the heart of real human beings.
20 What they didn't know was that later on, after House of Pizza and all, I sat down and wrote a poem about the entire evening. It caught the evening entirely. I wrote it that very night, spacing all of the words just as haphazardly as the evening performed. For years I would share my own poetry with my students in exchange for them sharing theirs with me.
21 For some reason though, I was always a bit nervous about the poem, because without the proper background, it never worked for me. Also, because it is part visual, part space (like the evening), I have yet to find a computer that will transfer the Word doc, which I recently edited, to any blog site without pulling the words to far apart, or ruining the spacing, most of which spiraled down the page like an anorexic tornado.
22 For one thing, it is a space poem, meaning that I put each word in a space that just seemed to work with my soul that evening. I loved how the words just shot through me and dictated by sheer will where they should wind up on the page.
23 That was really the essence of it for me. To an outside reader, it might have looked like absolute rubbish. So I never shared it, because it was certainly esoteric and meaningful to the handful of people who drank in that evening.
24 So I read the poem to my class, but didn't tell them who wrote it. Some thought Juan Felipe may have. Some Lorna Dee. Others who weren't paying attention even said Langston Hughes. Dude. You're messin' with the lesson. Lanston Hughes does use fragments and misdirection, as well as random thoughts in his work. But nopt.
25 So here it is, for the first time in public. On my Xanga, it appeared perfect, but when it goes public, the words tend to split. I could have fixed it, but it would have taken hours. So you'll get the gist of it, hopefully.
26 Here's the poem:
space landing by poets once long ago on a may evening
in the yerbabuenahighschool Theatre
They came
in
many colors
the stagelights put
David
in
a turquoise
and
pink
coloured
silhouette
his drum
at his
side
poised for
theatrical battle
Juan Felipe, the spirit
of the child
creating
a
playground
out of
coloured space
climbing
in and out
of
images
dazzled with
--the lights
rose petals
drape
themselves
delicately over
the Theatre seats
turned
pink
by
stage
lights
Lorna Dee
--emplumada-
jazz music
bird
Charlie Parker stuff
thrown off a little
by the
staging
of words
she smiles
at
all of it
shyly moves to
the Stage
and
her words
about life
on Bird
capture us
hold us
our heads are lit
pink and turquoise
halos
Jean is backstage
on the overhead
projecting
city skylines
cow pastures
galaxies
on the back
wall
hands becoming
enormous shadows
and then
small
again
and then
huge
a magical backdrop
magnifying
the
stature of
the raving poet
but
her
words
continue
to
fly like wild blackbirds
ravens
and she stops
breathless
with Theatre
lights
shining
in
her
black pupils
Margarita
conducting
the symphony
of
poems and
poets
asking Francis
to
play a
flute
piece
and
discussing
stagings
with David
intense
concentration
in
moonglow
from
a
spotlight
filtering over
shoulders
causing
cris-cross
shadows
of
color
27 And the evening ended. Just like that. The trouble with putting the poem out there anywhere is that the words and letters won't line up like the original, which was all more towards center, but you get the idea. The internet distorts and throws the words way further than I did. But this is as close as I could get to the actual text.
28 I followed the careers of the poets. Another whose work I couldn't find is a local poet by the name of David Piper, referenced in the last part. Nor could I find a piece of work online by Margarita Robles.
29 I think I traced David to Mission College, but not really confirmed. I have more research to do. And for the life of me I can't remember who Francis was. If anyone remembers, let me know.
30 And I find it proper that Jean Rivers should be considered a poet. I haven't seen Jean in years, but she was as graceful and amazing a presence in our Theatre as anyone who ever wandered around backstage.
31 And she jammed perfectly with these amazing beings.
32 Space landing. Time and space and any sort of rules flew out the window that night.
33 I wondered the other evening as I was putting all this together for my students if any of those wonderful poets ever wrote about that night, or if the incident has been published, or might have been published in a literary anthology.
34 So fun times, and yesterday's session felt almost like the grandchild of that once long ago on a May evening in the yerbabuenahighschool Theatre sans upon a time.
35 The students walked away with at least a sense that literature is not schoolwork; rather it is the spirit of different human beings trying to scream something to the ages.
36 I wanted to get that to them before education, standards bearers, "rigorous" high school teachers who mean well, and fierce professors steer them completely away from one of the world's most beautiful arts: voices of the human spirit. They eventually do everything in their power to dissect, analyze, tear into, and ultimately ruin that spirit. It's annoying. So here's how I feel about all of that:
37 Not on my watch.
38 Not on my watch
39 If it isn't fun, I won't do it. The human spirit deserves more.
40 End of lesson.
40 Peace.
~H~
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