Journal: Aug 01, 2010
[Previous entry: "Full-length build-out: Teaching My Daughter My Language"] [Main Index] [Next entry: "Missing tonight is harder"]
05/02/2006 Archived Entry: Redding Sum-Up
Last night was the William Redding award reading with Andrea Scarpino (1st prize), me (2nd prize), and Annie Price (3rd prize). It was a long night. Andrea had a full feature. Annie and I each got 10 minutes.
I'm going to jump to talking about my audience, then the set list, and then I will write something about the reading. But first I want to thank my friends who came out. Thank you, guys. You might not know it, but it meant a lot to me.
About audience:
I have found that there's usually someone in the audience who hears me more than anyone else. I didn't know it while I was reading, but last night this person was an older woman sitting at the bar. When I was walking back to my seat, she pulled me in and gave me a big hug and told how much I spoke to her. This woman? Andrea Scarpino's mother.
Set list:
Sin-Eater
Terri Schiavo's Heaven
Adopted People
Helen to the Sea
Anticipating the Death of My Father
On to the reading! Andrea Scarpino looks a lot like the babysitter -- a lot.
I learned something from Andrea's reading. I learned that even though I didn't know prominent locally-based recently-deceased poet David Citino, I have heard a lot of people influenced by him. Andrea is one of them -- probably because she was a student of his. Gina Blaurock "called it" (in other words, identified the influence) before Andrea mentioned she'd been one of Citino's students. She has a nice voice and I think she's got potential once she gets a little further away from her MFA and away from description-based poetry.
See, my MFA drove me away from my reason-based or idea-based poetry. Uck, that doesn't make sense here. Let me go back a little. Before I went to GMU most of my poems were about something. Often they were sketches of people I knew. Other times, they were inspired by events happening to my friends (e.g., the attempted suicide, the death by AIDS of a best friend's father, etc.). When I got to GMU, I began getting and making assignment poems. Assignment poems are like this: write a pantoum, make up a form, discover a "found" poem. They don't have a reason for being written, but they do have a purpose. After that, forces drove me toward an immersion in image and description-based poetry. See, the first thing a person does when freed from assignment poems is break out in poems which have no-purpose but to show you how well-wrought a person can make a poem. However, there was a time when I was still holding onto reason or idea-inspired poetry and writing assignments and breaking out in let-me-show-you-how-good-I-can-make-it poems. That's when I wrote Penelope, Helen, and the Laurel Tree. But then I won those fellowships and those awards and I thought I was great! Everything I wrote was great! I am a great poet! I am King of the Hill people! Mawawahahhahahaha!
Anyway it drove me away from my original reason for writing: I had something to say. It drove me into the arms of writing poems for the sake of showing how well-wrought I can make them. (BTW, after a big break, this is a terrible place to start writing again. Here let me show you 6 months of poems about the weather as proof.)
And now I am back to expecting there to be some reason for a poem -- a standard I apply to other people as well as myself. That's why I'm not throwing any great support behind Andrea. She read too many assignments. Waaayyy too many assignments. I look forward to seeing her when she gets a little distance from it all.
Annie Price on the other hand dished out some fantastic idea-poems.
And then there was a big open mic in which Joanna showed us her short game, Gina brought out some new stuff (one poem seems to have been nicely edited on the spot), Scott read Swimming with the Whales, Rachel didn't read (but having tall-beautiful-smart Rachel there at all is poem enough). Rose didn't read. Then I drove Gina home, went to my home, and paid the Andrea-Scarpino lookalike babysitter a bunch of money.
Replies: 2 comments
You did your thing, sis!
Posted by Scott @ 05/02/2006 07:46 PM ET
Thanks. It was a good night.
Posted by Louise @ 05/03/2006 07:16 AM ET