Returning from Saints & Sinners

Ah, how exhilarating and exhausting a week in New Orleans can be, especially if you're doing a conference by day and still sneaking out at night to enjoy the Big Easy nightlife.
The Saints & Sinners literary festival, one of my favorite LGBT annual events, coincides with the Tennessee Williams and New Orleans Literary Festival. This year their were quite a few poets on the official reading program and more poetry representation on panels than at some of the past festivals, which was fun for me -- especially since I got to be one of the readers.
Since I do public readings rarely, I'm still, despite hotel room rehearsing, a little nervous beforehand, and about midway through my eight minutes in the spotlight I found myself trying to rush through my reading, a mistake I've made before. But then I calmed down and managed to make more eye contact with the audience and add a little extemporaneous conversation between poems, and I think my work was fairly well received by people in the room. It was a mix of fiction, nonfiction and poetry folks, so the audience was perhaps more diverse in terms of literary tastes than at most poetry readings. I read exclusively poetry from my chapbook, Gotham Gray, and my general perception was that the poetry that had narrative content was more well received than my more abstract musings. I had the good fortune of reading with some very accomplished writers, namely Christian Baines, Kimberly Dark, Sven Davisson, Sukie de la Croix, J.M. Redmann and Jeffrey Round. Other poets participating in the festival included the amazing Justin Phillip Read, who was on a joint Saints & Sinners/Tennessee Williams festival panel with Garth Greenwell talking about what they write about when they write about sex; Brian Riggs, Steven Sanchez, Steven Riel, Brad Richard, Franklin Abbott, Louis Flint Ceci, and Gregg Shapiro. And Judy Grahn received a lifetime achievement recognition from the festival.
At any rate, I read a good article via Facebook recently that had some tips for doing public poetry readings, the most important of which is to remember that it is a performance, you are a performer, and you have to embrace that role. (I'm paraphrasing, of course, if I can find the link I'll share it here later. And I remember hearing the distinguished poet Timothy Liu say at a reading one time that the most important advice he'd received about doing readings was to always show up on time and be in a good mood, no matter how small the audience. (That was several years ago, so I hope my recollection is accurate.)
At any rate, I think I should seek out more reading opportunities, including open mikes and whatnot, if I want to improve. Hotel room rehearsing only goes so far -- in the end, that experience of speaking to or with an audience is what makes a reading a reading.

Hello Kelli

Somehow, I just couldn't help but think Kelli O'Hara was channeling a bit of Carrol Channing in "Hello Dolly" when I saw her in the Roundabout's production of Kiss Me Kate last night at Studio 54.
The show was a delight in every way, and featured some of the best dancing I've seen in a Broadway musical in years. Corbin Bleu infused every scene he's in with delight and sparkling footwork. At the beginning of the second act, James T. Lane leads a sublime ensemble performance of "Too Darn Hot," which got the biggest applause of the evening. The whole cast was fantastic.
But how cannot you not land the spotlight on Kelli O'Hara? She seems to have been born to sing Cole Porter songs. Parts of the book seem, well, a little dated after all these decades, though I still admire this mash up of The Taming of the Shrew with a modern show business drama. And the laugh lines are genuine and still fresh. But the songs...pure delight. A highly recommended show for anyone in NYC during its limited run.

Blinded Me with Science

I've long been a fan of poet Kimiko Hahn, and so I was delighted to go hear her read and discuss the intersections of poetry and science with Janna Levin, with whom I was unfamiliar, at Housing Works Bookstore.
As often happens at these events, my reading list just got a little longer. Hahn read mostly from her newest collection, Toxic Flora, and talked about her use of the New York Times science reporting to inspire and inform her poetry. I'm a big fan of Brain Fever, her earlier work, and this one sounds compelling and startling as well. She's an essential poet for me.
Now I don't think I'll ever understand exactly what a black hole is, but like a lot of scientifically uninformed people, I'm fascinated by the idea. And in explaining the concept of a black hole (essentially gravity suffering a "catastrophic collapse" and yielding something black on the outside, but perhaps light on the inside, and bigger inside than outside -- I hope I'm not bastardizing the concept) Levin made an interesting point -- which is that you cannot fully comprehend what a black hole is without understanding the math behind the concept. (My mathematical education ended with introductory statistics in college -- which I did find fascinating -- but left me well short of the advanced calculus needed to shed light on black holes.) Levin exposed me a little, from my layperson's place in the back of the audience, to the beauty and story telling capabilities of mathematics. She said trying to summarize the science behind a black hole to someone who doesn't comprehend the math is somewhat akin to translating a text from an original language to a different one. Something will always be lost in or left out of the translation.
So, in addition to Hahn's latest collection, I've added Levin's Black Hole Blues and Other Songs from Outer Space to my reading list as well.

New to Me

Quick thought -- as a white theater patron who enjoys seeing plays written by people of color and spends most of his theater budget on Broadway or major nonprofit theater productions, I often see the same "hot" playwrights getting more and more exposure. By almost any measures, plays by playwrights of color I've seen at the Public Theater in New York or the Guthrie in Minneapolis have been excellent and have expanded my frontiers of theatrical experience. I'm not complaining, but I sometimes find myself wondering what about other playwrights of color? Are there only these handful that tend to get major productions at major theaters that are worth seeing?
Of course not, and thanks to forward looking institutions like the Mixed Blood theater in Minneapolis for giving lesser known playwrights, particularly African American writers, an audience.
The Mixed Blood this fall produced "Prescient Harbingers, a trilogy of plays by three black male playwrights. I got to see two of the productions, "Gloria," by Branden Jacobs-Jenkins, and "Hooded, or Being Black for Dummies," by Arvelle Chisholm. Both plays have been produced by highly regarded theater companies in other places and have received accolades, but both playwrights were new to me. Both plays were excellent, dealing with gun violence from two very different perspectives, but one similarity that struck me is that both plays incorporate humor abundantly in telling their stories. (I missed Hype Man, a Break Beat Play" by Idris Goodwin, but it received great reviews as well.)
Lesson learned: I need to get out more and see more productions by minority playwrights, especially those produced by great theaters that are a little off the beaten path.

The Burdens of History

Well, that's a pretentious title for what I plan to be a short and snappy blog entry. I recently saw the musical Hamilton on Broadway (it lives up to the hype) and I'm thinking about the extent to which a dramatist or fiction writer is expected to portray historic figures in a fair, reasonable light.
To put it in context, I read online that some historians have criticized Hamilton for its treatment of some of Alexander Hamilton's rivals and peers in the early years of the Republic.
Thomas Jefferson particularly is portrayed in a pretty satirical mode, and John Quincy Adams also is portrayed as a kind of phlegmatic caricature. (There seems to be little complaint about the treatment of King George III, who receives the most comical skewering.)
And I say: it's all fair game. Hamilton the musical isn't striving to be a history lesson. It's a dramatization of one of the more interest figures among the founding fathers of the United States. The play examines Alexander Hamilton's motives, his character, his ambition. It puts a spotlight on his enormous role in the formation of the republic. If Lin-Manuel Miranda used humor and caricature to achieve that goal, that's well within his rights as far as I'm concerned.
The show, even after three years on Broadway and several generations removed from its original cast, continues to receive a roaring ovation from the audience.

Girl from the North Country

I had been eyeing tickets for the Conor McPherson musical incorporating Bob Dylan songs, "Girl from the North Country," for a few days. I didn't realize that the production at the Public Theater, which was already nearly sold out, was still in previews. Then can Ben Brantley's ebullient review in the New York Times. I checked online after that review appeared, and the entire production run was sold out.
Enter the remnants of Hurricane Michael. I've had good luck getting theater tickets in bad weather, in the past, when a lot of people commuting in from outside of the city turn in their tickets rather than face the torture of driving into the city in bad weather. Still, it seemed something of a long shot, given how highly praised the production is.
But I went to the box office, and I was rewarded for my effort. I ended up seated near the center of a row, bout ten rows back from the stage.
Here's a quote from the Brantley review:
"What’s created, through songs written by Mr. Dylan over half a century, is a climate of feeling, as pervasive and evasive as fog. It’s an atmosphere of despair — with lyrics about lost chances, lost love and enduring loneliness — that finds grace in the communion of voices coming together."
Count me a bigger fan of Bob Dylan than I already was. And count me a big fan of playwright Conor McPherson as well. The story, which intertwines the residents and visitors to a boarding home in Duluth, Minnesota, during the Great Depression, is haunting, heartbreaking and often bleak, but McPherson uses Dylan's music to tease some hope and faith out of the beleaguered characters. The entire ensemble cast is excellent, but I'd have to single out Mare Winningham in particular for praise. Both her acting, and especially her singing, added depth and texture to the soul of this beautiful musical. 
According to the NYT review, representatives of Dylan actually approached McPherson about possibly using Dylan's songs as the basis of a musical. It seems to have been an inspired choice. 

Writ on Water

There are many ways to feel humbled as a poet (as the author of a mere chapbook, I'm familiar with most of them). But it can be equally disturbing to see a poet you hold in esteem fading into obscurity. For whatever reason, I don't feel like naming names at the moment -- perhaps out of a sense of denial that such a wonderful writer could be someday forgotten.
Since I'm on something of a budget, it's not beneath me to order books online from sellers that specialize in used books. In fact, I've saved quite a few shillings by settling for used copies. And since I often forget what I've ordered, the arrival of a small package in the mail is often a pleasant surprise, akin to receiving a book in one of those chain mail games where you send one of your favorite books to a stranger. I open them eagerly, and am often delighted to find a volume by an other who just happened to cross my mind a week or so ago.
Not for the first time, the volume I ordered most recently was one that had been decommissioned by an academic institution (in this case, Harvard College). I find it sad to think that curious readers browsing the open stacks at Harvard's library may not have the good fortune to stumble upon one of the most esteemed poets of my generation. He happens to be a writer I met once or twice at an LGBTQ writing conference a few decades ago, and he was quite charming in person. He's also one of the many writers of his generation who died well before his time, so his poetic output -- though I would consider him prolific -- was limited to a few volumes.
I'm trying to be optimistic. Perhaps Harvard had redundant copies of his last collection. Perhaps students at one of the nation's most esteemed universities still have opportunities to stumble upon his work. But for the moment, Harvard's loss is my gain. I finally do have a copy of his last volume in my collection.