Gerald Burns
Spoken Poetry
"Is our chatter the answer to any need?" --Flaubert
Other than our own, and even that may need consideration of the other, the
audience hungry for our verse a fiction, at least one crux of Modernism
why we bother, philanthropists without objects of charity, a bit ridiculous
as Eliot saw, or was it perceived, Sanskrit and Sumer no help, people who invented wheat,
the city, goats, listened to an and ha and thought "female," "male," hardly our ancestors
if that were inhedted as an interest in us we'd not have needed Baudelaire
to invent our cities, or he'd have had a better time, the thrown poet since Tennyson
unAssyrian except for the odd adjective. Long ago I heard a pressure in the tone
of modern verse, not the lovely one of someone fu11 of speech, blander, more as if
"I am saying these things and you are listening," even "The peculiar fact of what
I'm doing is never to be questioned," least of all by the writer. Even in Sumer
the hand was a choice, open or shut, staves of office a compromise like a handkerchief
or ball, our verse likewise a compromise gesture, neither open nor closed.
It's nobody's fault if one is obliged to say something at a funeral, but like a
contested will that question's there, why do we make art, why do we bother.
I was once in a circus in New Orleans during a flood. The radio said stay home, and we played
to an audience of six people. I think it was the best performance I ever saw,
the lions' steel arena still bright red, untraditional but elegant, the man who stood
blindfold on the Wheel of Death, one of two connected by a central grid, head nearly grazing
the arena beams, came off it at a run so we had to catch him, I've never seen that
better done. It was for money, "No show, no dough," but we had such pride.
One person, a caretaker or police chief, would have done. When I taught in Long Island
I heard of young men sitting under trees reading Whitman, not for credit. This does occur.
The audience, though presumed, can be an audience of one. Still the question is the tone
with which you say presumed. It's given, sense still there in the early English verb "yaf,"
miles from the sound you hear in a bright thing's glib or labored telling -- retailing -- of some
anecdote honest or sincere enough evccept in the one respect, that that I am telling you this
is privileged, sacred, the way Creative Anachronism Society people think swords and chalices
of course more interesting than zippers, toothpaste in tubes. It comes from thinking
imagination is a world, which it is, ignoring the great tracts of banality it compasses,
that artificial grass in Easter baskets is purple by extension, that giants have to duck
to enter your hut not just that they are tall but that it is a door. So the ordinary
is to be imagined, not just presented till if, standing at your microphone, a man
in armor comes roaring up the aisle, his shield green, bits of fern issuing from his armor,
cuts off his head (which in his hand speaks a short poem), glues it back on, takes off the
helmet and it's a woman with long golden hair, we're still to ask was the poem
any good, or fittingly ungood in place, commend you through the audience's distaction for your poem
on the glass of water by the bed, rueful admissions about lovers we don't care about,
whatever it was you said, performance art, poetry, art one thing, its privilege
not being exempt from being judged. We judge Picasso for his attitude to women,
and you for the sound issuing from your mouth even held at arm's length, print
in a book, the word "microphone" itself set type, for having not finessed that
first decision, hand open or shut, with a rock in or friendlily sincere as standup comic
dropping names of presidents or shops. I know people who think they are bizarre,
eccentic, admit it over and over though really ordinary, know from my own relatives
the genuine eccentric never thinks he is. Complacency of peignoirs indeed. Ginsberg and the
sunflower meet as equals, even if like the old-time cabaret performer he eats the petals
one by one, his cigar, his tie. I once mentioned that act to Al Flosso in his magic shop
in New York. He laughed and imitated that great little comedian in the men's room after,
vomiting into the toilet. His theme music sticks in my mind. He was a kind of poet.
You gotta break in the act, I agree, but finding out what works can take a lifetime,
that knowledge likewise having to be built in, right down to the level of the syllable.
Copyright © 1995 Gerald Burns
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