Back again :)

So far, 384 words today, about Cirellio and Cauinn travelling to a small town called Javo.  They had a discussion where Cauinn reveals a bit about her past.

Just to let you know, I do plan to do an update post showing where everybody stands in the NPI on day 5 (and pretty much every five days).

So anyway, I went to hear Steve Davenport yesterday. It wasn’t quite what I expected.

He made it clear to us he’s a dyed-in-the-wool beat poet. 90% of the time, he recited his poetry. Some were 100 lines.

Apparently, he’s also a fiction writer, but he didn’t talk about that—at all. 

Luckily, he didn’t ‘slam’. (Slamming poetry is turning poems into a performance art, common among modern beat poets.)

Some of the people there were big fans of his and thoroughly enjoyed the whole thing (it was easy to tell that much just from the insightful questions they were asking). Others were jocks with worksheets, there to fulfill some kind of college coursework. There was even an old biker dude there, complete with long, silvery-grey hair, lots of fading tattoos, and a frayed sleeveless denim vest.

I’m willing to bet most of them have never been to a real coffee-house poetry recital; the motley crowd clapped for applause instead of snapping their fingers. ;D

The guy that introduced Mr. Davenport claimed his writing could ‘dazzle us with verbs’ (Boy, do I hate the word ‘dazzle’). And that we had to be careful reading him since the words on his pages were liable to ‘burn our eyes’ on account they were like ‘flint rocks striking together, throwing up sparks’. 

…I guess I just didn’t get it.

Now I can appreciate Jack Kerouac and other poets of the beat movement. I even own a copy of On the Road, but I’m not so much into modern beat poets. I can definitely see its place in the context of the 1960’s, but hearing a middle-aged guy in 2009 wax poetics of his divorce and Elvis and cusswords and fishing and cowboys and rifles and booze … isn’t really my cup o’ tea.

I did agree with some of his sentiments, though, such as his stating that in order for art to be art, you have to start with something stable, do something unexpected to destabilize it, and then let it transform into something re-stabilized and new.

Afterwards, I got to meet a few interesting people. One was the director of the writing department at my college. After we spoke a bit, he suggested I should start a writing group. :) The other was a girl who expressed interest in starting one with me, and we exchanged emails. (If you’re reading this, email me!)

Oh, and last night, I entered a poem into a contest. And a short story into a contest. Let’s see what happens. …