Literary Chicago

a review of James Payne’s poetry collection, Austerity Pleasures

Aw, man! Poetry?! LAME.

Just kidding!

But seriously, poetry kinda sucks.

James Payne’s collection of poems, Austerity Pleasures, does not suck though. Before you start screaming, “BUT MASON THAT’S CRAZY,” just hear me out. And please, for the love of God, keep your finger away from the caps lock.

Payne’s poems have all the intellect many similar poetry and chapbook collections contain, the kind of intellect you find in books that may as well come with a required reading list of boring, old, dead dudes, but with more wit and honesty, and therefore, less douche-baggery. It’s really nice to see something so well put together that, at the same time, doesn’t take itself too seriously. And Austerity Pleasures, by the way, is in fact well put together. Literally. A well constructed, little chapbook that’s nice to hold in your hands.

The poems inside encompass that mid-twenties angst that all of us youths are getting sick of. They’re self aware enough to entertain you though, to pull you in, instead of doing the opposite. The book combines all those worries – petty and legitimate – that freeze your mind and turn you into an insomniac. “Poem For Sitting in Panera,”  for example, tackles the future. Throwing worries like “where will I be in fifteen years” into a loudspeaker that exaggerates them comically while, simultaneously, keeping that keen sense of anxiety they initially cause intact. It’s a nice duality.

“Our Rattails” does the opposite, focusing on a better past:

Make my hair
back to when you were punk.
we had rattails, sure
things were fun.

Yeah, everything was fun, but if you read the rest of the poem, you’ll find a subtle undertone of what it’s like to look back: like the bad aftertaste of a great meal. It’s kind of pathetic. And depressing. That’s the impression I got, at least. Buy the damn book to read the whole poem and tell me if I’m wrong.

Many of James’ poems are quite small, practically one liners. He really excels here.  “Books of Love” examines a myriad of things (dating, pleasure, money, class…) in just two sentences. Also, it’s funny.

As a whole, much of Austerity Pleasures feels like it specifically rebels against pretension.  Against the significant others and peers in our lives that measure a person’s worth by the amount of books they’ve read and how smart they sound when they speak about them. Sometimes this rebellion is subtle, other times blatant, but always well written.

Regardless of the writing, battling pretentious jag-offs and heart-breakers is something I can get on board with – especially when it’s funny.

Austerity Pleasures is out from Monster House Press. Check out what James Payne himself has to say at  http://banalization.blogspot.com/.

Mason Johnson and James Payne

Summer is officially over. No more soaking up the sun from the comfort of your lawn chair or gobbling up ice cream cones before they melt. No more flip flops under your feet and light, gauzy fabrics against your skin. No more alfresco dinners, backyard barbecues, farmers’ markets, or fresh summer fruit. Before you curse the changing of the seasons, however, keep this in mind: NO MORE WAITING FOR WRITE CLUB.

After a grueling two-and-a-half-month hiatus, Write Club returned to The Hideout on Tuesday, September 27th for Chapter 18. This time, in addition to the large clock and the boxing ring bell, there were signs announcing the contestants:

REVENGE VS. MERCY
Dina Walters vs. Scott Whitehair
…
ROOTS VS. BRANCHES
Susan Karp vs. Patrick Carberry
…
ORDER VS. CHAOS
Ian Belknap vs. Don Hall

…
“We took a couple of months off and we now have production value,” said Belknap, series founder, host, and “overlord.” The man didn’t spend his entire summer printing signs at his local Kinko’s, though. He also helped to start Write Club Atlanta, the second branch in what will undoubtedly be a popular national franchise. (San Francisco, Athens, Los Angeles, and New York are next). The format is the same: three bouts of two opposing writers, seven minutes apiece, the order in which they read determined by games of Rock, Paper, Scissors. But they’ve got their work cut out for them, these newbies. Write Club Chicago has set the bar high. Last Tuesday, every performance displayed such humor, passion, and vulnerability that I recused myself from voting.
… 

ROUND 1: Revenge vs. Mercy

On behalf of Revenge, Dina Walters started the night off by telling us about Desiree, a girl who tormented her for smelling badly when she was a freshman at Maria Catholic High School in 1992 — “Rachel McAdams in Mean Girls, but Latino.” Remember culottes? Shorts designed to look like skirts? Well, instead of getting a “pantsing,” Walters underwent a culottesing at the hands of this ruthless Desiree. “I had been condemned to let her rake playfully at my soul.” Her reprieve came when her father suggested the unthinkable: Revenge. “It was like my father gave me permission to date the bad boy.” To this day, twenty years later, she still has the can of fart spray she used on her tormentor’s locker — her “first trophy.”

On behalf of Mercy, Scott Whitehair took the slacker’s approach. To him, it’s not about right or wrong — it’s about easy. “Revenge is exhausting . . . the gears of revenge are lubricated with sweat.” Like Walters, Whitehair, too, had a high school tormentor. He did nothing and, years later, found the bully selling scratch-off tickets in a gas station. Sometimes the universe has a way of dishing out justice itself. Whitehair suggested that the real tragedy of The Count of Monte Cristo is not that he’s wrongfully imprisoned but, rather, that he made it his life’s mission to get revenge. “It’s a waste of time and resources,” said Whitehair. “Mercy, on the other hand, is effortless.”

WINNER:
Scott Whitehair for Mercy
Proceeds go to Inspiration Corporation

…

ROUND 2: Roots vs. Branches

On behalf of Branches, Patrick Carberry shared a narrative prose poem. Fans of the Encyclopedia Show recognized Carberry as “Patrick the Intern.” In a way, Carberry is like Columbo. It’s easy to underestimate him. At Write Club, he shambled onto stage in his trademark suspenders and straw fedora, and botched his first game of Rock, Paper, Scissors, crying, “My hands were not ready!” He is the most lovable sort of manchild. Given his antics, the audience was set for light, breezy entertainment. What he delivered instead was a delicate and revealing poem that starts and ends at the spot where he watched his father “tie one end of a rope to a branch and the other to a tire,” from the time he was eight years old to the time of his future death. In his view, branches provide you with just what you need “when you know everything grows down and you want something to grow up.” Talking about the old tire swing at the end of his poem, Carberry said, “. . . it hung like something dead,” and something magical happened: one of his suspender straps slipped off his shoulder. It may seem like a small thing on paper, or on a computer screen, but in person it seemed like the planets had all aligned and were listening breathlessly to this man’s quiet acceptance of mortality. From the audience, Belknap couldn’t help but respond, saying, “Now that’s stagecraft.”

On behalf of Roots, Susan Karp did an impersonation of Alfre Woodard in A Mother’s Courage: The Mary Thomas Story. “You see this match?” she asked in an overly dramatic Southern accent. “One match is easy to break. But together we are strong.” Matches are to branches as matchboxes are to roots, I suppose. The connection was never made very clear and Karp herself admitted that she could have come up with a better analogy, that this one was based more on a “feeling” rather than any logical argument. But that’s part of her charm: despite the Lifetime-channel-spoofing theatrics, her reading seemed impromptu, as though she was as surprised by her own thought process as anyone else. During her seven minutes, roots and branches became increasingly anthropomorphized. Whereas “it’s in the very nature of branches to divide, to reach for the sun, to break because they’ve overextended themselves,” roots “strive to put dinner on the table . . . they live to serve, like butlers.” Karp also compared branches to TCBY yogurt, which, for some strange reason, caused some members of the audience to act as though they’d just won the Illinois Mega Millions Lotto.

WINNER:
Susan Karp for Roots
Proceeds go to Autism Home Support Services

…

ROUND 3: Order vs. Chaos

On behalf of Order, Ian Belknap presented a perfectly structured compare-and-contrast essay that could fit neatly into a t-chart — as much his modus operandi as it was an appropriate approach to the topic at hand. Belknap’s work is like an enormous skyscraper. Even though its steel skeleton is simple and apparent, you can’t help but marvel at its height and power. Perhaps it’s this rigid framework that allows him to be so playful with the language he places between the beams: “Order is a ladybug. Chaos is one of those gigantic centipedes with those sickening feathery legs that make you want to burn your house down and start over somewhere new. Order is table manners. Chaos is trying to eat soup on a fucking trampoline.” Given his instincts as a performer and his background in theater, Belknap could probably illicit a greater emotional response with a phone book than most readers could with Shakespeare. But he doesn’t rely solely on his stage presence, tone, timing, or body language. There is real substance in his writing — real anger, insight, hilarity, and lyricism. Consider his defense of Work in the September 2010 installment of Write Club:

Written transcript available here.

On behalf of Chaos, Don Hall gave Belknap a real run for his money. His essay was divided into eight sections of varying length, arbitrarily numbered. In one of these sections, he shared the story of a man who did everything he was supposed to do and was living the American dream until unforeseen expenses forced him to take out a mortgage on his house. The banks foreclosed on his property, his wife divorced him, he turned to alcohol and then lost his job. “Control is an illusion,” Hall said.  ”We build houses on fault lines and on beach fronts and then wonder what happened when nature decides to crush them or blow them away.  We place our faith in institutions that do not, cannot, have our interest in mind and blow a gasket when it becomes known that we were just grist for their particular profit driven mill.  We think that if we fall in line, keep our heads down, and live an orderly life that we’ll live forever and then chaos strikes and we can’t fathom it.” Although he describes himself on his website, AWG (“Angry White Guy”), as a “smartass” and “loudmouth,” Hall showed a great deal of restraint in this essay, allowing the weight of his subject to be felt without the distraction of a tantrum. It’s a good thing, too, in light of the fact that he makes reference to a gruesome real-life incident from the late 1990s, when a glass window fell out of the CNA building in downtown and decapitated a woman. “I wonder what her thoughts were in her final seconds. Death was instantaneous and she didn’t see it coming. I suspect, like most of us, she was worried about bills or petty slights at the office or the dishes that needed to be done. I suspect she was thinking about keeping her life in ORDER. Just like the rest of us.” This essay could be read in its entirety at http://donhall.blogspot.com/2011/09/write-club-chaos.html.

WINNER:
Ian Belknap for Order
Proceeds go to Open Books
…

Up Next: Write Club Does Halloween

After such an outstanding season premiere, we’re already looking forward to the next installment of Write Club. Billed as the “Super Scary Limited Halloween Edition,” Chapter 19 is set to take place on Tuesday, October 25, 2011 from 7pm to 8:30pm at the Hideout Inn. It will feature the following bouts:

DEAD VS. UNDEAD
Emily Rose vs. Samantha Irby
… 

DUSK VS. DAWN
David Isaacson vs. Noelle Krimm
… 

TRICK VS. TREAT
Ian Belknap vs. Whit Nelson

EVENT: WRITE CLUB | TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 27, 2011 AT 7PM | HIDEOUT

Jason Pettus, the founder of the Chicago Center for Literature and Photography, is throwing a huge party on August 10th at Beauty Bar to celebrate the release of the first four paper books published by the CCLaP. There’s hardly anything we love more than a big book party, and we have every intention of plying you to attend by whatever means necessary before the end of this article, but it is not the only reason Literary Chicago is taking a page or two to talk about CCLaP’s artistic mission and the man behind it; we happen to feel both are pretty damn special. How so, you ask? Well, CCLaP takes a wholistic and cooperative approach to publishing, is committed to utilizing all available publishing tools, and investigates all avenues of publicity, press, and marketing. Jason’s editorial approach spans extremes: he would like to publish your novel in every available e-format; he would also like to bind every copy of your book by hand. If editors like Jason Pettus are a rare breed, an organization like CCLaP is even more so.

Pettus recently shared his story on the Chicago Artists Resource website. Here are some highlights:

“From day one, I’ve seen the Center as more of a partner to hardworking artists, with both of us putting in an equal amount of effort towards getting projects distributed and promoted, and each keeping half of the profits in return…. I should point out, however, that ‘equal work’ here actually means ‘separate but equal,’ which is another policy that has guided CCLaP since its formation. The Center handles all the crappy little things that self-publishing artists hate the most—things that, if left undone, can keep these artists from being truly successful: responding to daily email; sending out review copies and press releases; setting up Paypal buttons for each project; creating specialty websites; licking stamps; and fundraising for production budgets. When we handle these tasks, we give artists the opportunity to do the most fun part of the ‘business’ side of things, the part that used to be the job of gatekeeper-style groups but now rests more in the direct relationship between artists and audience members: convincing these people to be fans in the first place. This is accomplished through such modern conveniences as blogs, Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube, plus such old-school activities as tours, exhibitions and festivals.

“In a world where money is becoming tighter by the day, where traditional nonprofit resources for cultural institutions are disappearing at an alarming rate, and where technology is rapidly eliminating the need for authority figures to tell us what to consume in the first place, it only makes sense that the entire industry of the arts will switch to a ‘federation’ model. In this model, an author here, a distributor there, and a venue owner over there will team up for an endless series of temporary alliances regarding each artistic project that gets released to the public. This is different from the old paradigm of an artist getting handed a ‘golden key’ by an all-powerful arts-based company.”

Jason is actively seeking new manuscripts and encourages any writer open to the idea of experimental writing and publishing to submit through the CCLaP website. And, as promised, here is some more information pertaining to The CCLaP Quadruple Book Release Party and Performance Extravaganza:

From CCLaP:

The Chicago Center for Literature and Photography, or CCLaP, is proud to announce their latest local live event, a large-scale party to celebrate the release of their first four paper books this summer. An electronic publisher since 2007, CCLaP has been quietly releasing new special-edition, handmade “Hypermodern” paper editions of its four titles throughout the summer; and on August 10th the group will be gathering at the popular Beauty Bar in the Bucktown neighborhood for drinks, free food, and a half-hour reading from all four featured authors, as well as a few surprise guests. Beauty Bar is located at 1444 West Chicago Avenue, and the free event will take place from 7 to 9 p.m., the reading itself from 8:00 to 8:30. All four books will be for sale individually for $20 apiece; or for one night only, attendees can purchase all four in a bundle for only $50.

Books and performers being featured that night include the novella Too Young to Fall Asleep by SALLY WEIGEL, about a Radiohead-listening “emo” high-school student who volunteers for the Iraq War (originally published in 2009); 99 Problems by BEN TANZER, essays about the mental intersection between running and writing (originally published in 2010); Life After Sleep by MARK R. BRAND, a day-after-tomorrow tale concerning a device that allows people to only need two hours of sleep a night (originally published this past winter); and Salt Creek Anthology by JASON FISK, a collection of linked “micro-stories” regarding four trashy couples in the far Chicago suburbs (published this summer).CCLaP’s “Hypermodern” series is an attempt to create special collector-worthy editions of all the center’s electronic books, reasonably priced yet expertly made; they feature handmade hardbound covers, including a color photo of the ebook’s original cover adhered to the front, external Coptic stitching, whimsical decorative endpapers, a special signature/provenance page for collectors, and a full Colophon in the back listing all materials used. CCLaP itself has been open online since 2007, and with a handful of local live events held in varying venues across the city each year; the center also produces a semi-weekly podcast, sells general giftstore-style merchandise, and publishes over 150 book reviews a year at its popular website. Among other accolades, it’s been featured twice at respected arts guide BoingBoing.net, and its blog is followed by almost ten thousand unique monthly visitors.

For questions or more information, please contact executive director Jason Pettus at cclapcenter@gmail.com, or visit [cclapcenter.com/events].

See you there, Chicago! And be sure to check back next week when Literary Chicago talks with Jason Fisk, author of the hyper-fiction collection, Salt Creek Anthology, just released by CCLaP.

Funny Ha-Ha Presents: “Hot Stuff” at the Hideout

Photos courtesy of Danette Chavez, staff photographer.

Someone once said, “Comedy is tragedy plus time.” Depending on who you ask, it might have been Charlie Chaplin, Woody Allen, Carol Burnett, or someone else altogether. “Tragedy” might be a strong word to describe the subjects of tonight’s readings at this installment of Funny Ha-Ha, but they were all certainly preoccupied with time—the test of time, time gone by, time wasted, and time spent peeing on an African man’s face. You know, stuff we could all relate to. The event is hosted, as always, by WBEZ blogger and TV critic for the LA Times and the A.V. Club Claire Zulkey, who is quick to turn the spotlight over to each of the funny people in tonight’s lineup.

Comedy Central’s Indecision blogger Dennis DiClaudio shares two pieces, one a relatively serious exhortation that you “Do Not Bring a Tree Into the House” and the other a series of brief open letters from the DiClaudio of today, or “Nowadays Me,” to his former selves. The advice he repeats three times, to three of his younger selves, seems personally relevant to many in the audience: “Look, I know this girl broke your heart. I know you thought she was the one . . .” The advice he gives to the DiClaudio of the year 2000 seems even more so: “Do NOT vote for Ralph Nader.”

“Ask Amy” columnist Amy Dickinson talks about how she “became an icon.” After the death of Ann Landers, she knew the Chicago Tribune would be on the lookout for a new advice columnist. Knowing that her New England background would be a liability in applying for this job, she decided to emulate one of our local celebrities, Bonnie Hunt. “I was going to have to be Judge Judy on the page and Bonnie Hunt in real life.” Her plan worked. She hit one major snag along the way, though: during the singing of “Take Me Out to the Ball Game,” which was supposed to be her grand coming out, her “Sally Field moment,” she neglected to replace “root, root, root for the home team” with “root, root, root for the Cubbies,” and consequently suffered the venomous scorn of loyal Cubs fans throughout the city. Having long since overcome that major stumbling block, though, she can now laugh at it and wear the Cubs jersey that she earned from the debacle with pride.

Write Club “Overlord” Ian Belknap pretends that being one of the most adored personalities in the Chicago literary scene detracts from, rather than adds to, his sex appeal. In characteristically histrionic tones, he bemoans his fate, saying, “I am a formerly attractive man.” We’re supposed to believe that when he worked minimum-wage-paying jobs, when he couldn’t bring himself to approach a cougar who’s into him, and when he cheated girlfriends out of money so that he could buy pot and liquor—that was the peak of his hotness. But now that he’s a master of both page and stage, a responsible breadwinner, and a husband and father—he’s unattractive. “Look at me,” he says. “I’m horrible. I should work in a dungeon or under a bridge. I should only hang out with moles and cave salamanders – the kind that have evolved to be eyeless and translucent.” Right. The only real evidence Belknap has to prove that he was once more attractive than he is now is that Uma Thurman once had a crush on him and, for obvious reasons, that evidence is suspect. He means well, I’m sure, telling us all to “carpe the fucking diem.” But he needs to stop obsessing about how, in his view, his gut has become a “marsupial repository for [his] self-loathing,” the bags under his eyes are “satchels stuffed with [his] thwarted ambitions,” and his double chin is a “pelican pouch of [his] poor choices.” He needs to get it together and prepare to be the “Minister of Veracity” for tomorrow’s Encyclopedia Show. I’ll be there with two more of his groupies—because, apparently, formerly attractive men have groupies nowadays.

Unlike Belknap, Bearded comedian (as he’s billed) James Fritz doesn’t claim to be unattractive, only angry, sad, and short. Because of his beard, build, and the sadness, some call him “Zach Galifian-sadness.” He traces back his emotional problems to his parents, saying, “A lot of people stay together for their kids. My parents are staying together for Jesus. And he’s never going away to college.” In describing their marriage, he tells us about how, once, when his mother was taking longer in the bathroom than a good Christian woman should, his father punched a hole through the bathroom door. Instead of replacing the door, his mom covered it with a pretty piece of fabric. That “hate doily,” he says, is “the perfect metaphor for a Christian marriage.”

Jezebel blogger Erin Gloria Ryan is the only one of tonight’s readers who doesn’t dig too far into the past. Her piece is about the last four years of her life, years spent working a job she hates for a company she hates. She started out with a number of various positions before she settled on being a receptionist. “I’m a corporate geisha,” she says, “a captive lady audience.” She copes with the trials and tribulations of what she calls the “stress-terarium” by taking numerous bathroom and vending machine breaks, fantasizing about quitting with a sheet cake that reads “Fuck all y’all motherfuckers,” and gathering observations to share at readings like this one. Among the characters she encounters in her “conversational cage” are Republicans who “say that Obama wants to raise the debt ceiling to pay for ‘illegals’ to have abortions,” and Mitzy, a corporate queen who “loves to see her stocks go up because that means they’re getting closer to Jesus.”

Filmmaker extraordinaire Joe Avella shares his campy movie, Chinese Star Cop, which is about a police officer who fails to bring his gun to the scene of a crime because he’s a Chinese star cop, not a gun cop. And he’s not even Chinese. Other, even shorter films are interspersed throughout this short film, including a commercial for the Chicago Park District that contains the line “ideal for soccer, jogging, and blood rituals,” and the saga of a guy who travels to Africa and drinks a bottle of AIDS in order to meet Bono.

Finally, we have Samantha Irby. It’s probably a good idea to save her for last. She’s a contributor to the Sunday Night Sex Show and the tag line for her blog, Bitches Gotta Eat, is: “I write about tacos, hot dudes, garbage-ass dudes, sexy lesbians, good music, and diarrhea. And sometimes other stuff.” This is a woman who gets jaws to drop. Anyone who reads after her is pretty much guaranteed to sound like a prude, ridiculously tame. She opens with a warning: “White people, it’s okay to laugh at this piece.” Then she proceeds to explain the very complicated relationship she’s had with African men over the years—not African American men, but African men. They seem to love her. She represents the “endless bounty” to them. But it never works out. One of them will say to her, “In my country, I have much land and woman like you would bow to me.” And she’ll respond, “Well, in my country, you park cars and wash windows, and dude, you missed a spot.” Despite her vow, she once succumbed to the charms of a freakishly smart African who was educated in a Swiss boarding school. She calls him “Amistad.” This is where it gets, well, jaw-dropping. Turns out, the man was a piss fetishist. That, in and of itself, of course, is no real cause for gasps and shudders. (We’ve all read Savage Love, right?) It’s Irby’s absolute candidness in describing the details of her sexual experimentation that takes you by surprise. Her first real foray into “golden showers” was a violent, albeit consensual affair that took place in a bathtub. She ripped the shower curtains, shattered a bottle of shampoo, and cut her face on the faucet. “I didn’t even know black people did that shit. We’re always like, ‘That’s the kind of weird shit that white people do.’” This all leads up to a horrifying incident of “piss-snowballing” that you’ll have to seek out on Irby’s website, if you dare. I’m not one for spoilers.

A riot in her own right, Zulkey has done a fine job of bringing together an incredibly funny group of people. If only we were all so adept at mining our past for nuggets of comedy gold.

EVENT: FUNNY HA-HA PRESENTS “HOT STUFF” | TUESDAY, AUGUST 2, 2011 AT 7PM | THE HIDEOUT

an interview with poets Kathleen Rooney and David Landsberger about Poems While You Wait, their impromptu poetry event

In the midst of the pounding music and the drunken laughter at yesterday’s Wicker Park Fest, there was the tap-tap-tapping of an antique typewriter. Chicago poets Kathleen Rooney and David Landsberger were on hand to create original, customized poems for anyone with a topic in mind and $5 to donate to Rose Metal Press and 826 CHI. They called it Poems While You Wait, and they didn’t make you wait long, either.

I visited their tent with one of my BFFs, Monica. We wrote our topics into a spiral notebook, paid our donations, and spent half an hour walking around and chatting. When we returned, we were astonished to find that Monica’s poem, “Labyrinth,” wasn’t written by either Rooney or Landsberger, but rather, by a 12-year-old poet named Phillip Ramey (the poem is included in its entirety, as typed, below the interview). Turns out, there were three students from 826 CHI present to lend their considerable talent to the event. It was a fantastic start to what I’m hoping will be a fantastic tradition. I’m looking forward to the day when I’ll be able to say that I’m going to the market to pick up a poem and, since Curbside Splendor already sells its books, along with others by indie presses, at the Logan Square Farmer’s Market, I imagine that day is not so far away.

You might think that one would want to follow up a poetry-writing marathon with, say, a mind-numbing-reality-TV marathon. Not so for Rooney and Landsberger. They took the time to answer a few questions for us here at Literary Chicago, making us squeal with delight like kids after a ride on a roller coaster: “Again! Again! Again!”

Did you really need to come up with a way to make poetry writing more challenging? Isn’t it enough that poetry slam has made it necessary for good poets to be good performers, too? But now timeless works of art get developed in an hour or less, like photos at Walgreen’s? What’s next? Poets on both stilts and roller skates, balancing bowls of grenades on their heads while they chisel poems onto the sides of buildings?

KR: Oh my god, are you eavesdropping on us or something? Dave and I are totally doing the stilts/skates/grenades/chisel thing at another street fest next weekend! J/K.

But that’s a great question. To answer it, to a degree, all poetry IS difficulty; all poetry consists of setting up artificial impediments to normal communication. Like: Let’s take this highly specific thing that I want to express and force it to be strictly rhymed and metered, extremely compressed, and written with line breaks—those prohibitive conventions are where a lot of poetry comes from. So it’s not so weird to do poetry on demand if you think of it that way. And I don’t think there’s any risk of Poetry on Demand putting other types of poetry out of business so to speak—neither Dave nor I would want to ONLY write poetry this way. But it’s always interesting, if you’re feeling blocked or uninspired or want to take your work in a new direction, to add restrictions—to make poetry harder. And adding an audience participation component and a time limit certainly pushed us in ways we wouldn’t have gone otherwise.

But that’s not primarily why we did this. We did it for charity, of course, but also we did it to interact with a wider and more diverse audience than poetry often receives. So much hand-wringing goes on in poetry reviews and criticism about how “People don’t like poetry; poetry doesn’t speak to the People,” but doing Poetry on Demand at Wicker Park Fest seemed to reveal that once you stop talking about the “appreciation” of “poetry” by “people” in the abstract and let people experience poetry as part of their weekend entertainment, plenty of them end up appreciating it a ton, and they end up doing so in a way that’s actually fun and sincere, not in a dutiful do-this-because-it’s-good-for-you sort of way. Also, having people pay for the poems was a key part of the experience too—when people get something for free, as most poetry is, they MIGHT appreciate it, but when they’ve given you a request and backed that up with five bucks, they’re going to read and re-read and hopefully really think about whatever it is you’ve tried to give them.

DL: Charity was the origin of the event.  It made perfect sense since I’m an afterschool tutor at 826CHI and Kathleen is one of the powers that be at Rose Metal Press.

I kind of want to steal your ideas? Is that ok? I’ve always wanted to write a poem as I free fall out of a plane and deliver it when I land.  I’ve always wanted to hang glide and drop poems on a city.  I tried to get a crowd sourced poem going at Pitchfork this year but the higher ups deemed it not worthy. I’ve shouted poems out of a megaphone while driving a Ferrari 360 GT Spyder convertible.  Kathleen and I both are participants in The Chicago Poetry Brothel.  I think it’s safe to say we enjoy decontextualizing poetry.

Kathleen’s right, it’s odd how the 5 bucks legitimizes the poetry.  Poetry as enterprise/commerce is a weird, fragile thing.  In my opinion poetry isn’t broken, but the business model of poetry is broken, which means in today’s world it’s broken in every way to a lot of people.  I kept scratching my head at how many people are willing to sardine together on a 95 degree day to hear a band they’ve never heard of at one of the stages, but our table wasn’t nearly as claustrophobic.  A lot of poets say “ah well, that’s the way it is,” but I don’t buy it.  You’ve got to make people care again, and I think writing poems on demand or for a commissioned event is a very viable and realistic way to get people interested.

It all comes back to David Blaine stuff.  A lot of magicians hate him, but that’s because he’s really a performance artist at this point.  And he’s too commercial for performance artists.  To me he’s like Evel Knievel, and that’s cool as all heck.  Are Kathleen and I like Evel Knievel? No, we’re just poets getting out of the comfy writing chair, out of the air conditioning. And that confuses a lot of people who walk by.  But confusion is way better than indifference.

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July 17th’s Orange Alert was a bit of a nightmare. For host Jason Brehends at least, after three of his five readers didn’t show up. This is enough to make anyone who plans a reading act like the priest from the beginning of The Exorcist. You know, the guy who jumps outta the window to impale himself on a spiked gate-thingy. I don’t care if you were busy at the casino, Lindsay Hunter. Just because you “felt in your loins” that the “God damn mother suckin’ coin-takin’ machine” was about to blow, that doesn’t mean you can miss a reading commitment. Nor do I care about the fact that you were gonna use your winnings to pay off those prostitutes you hired to pretend to be T-Boz and Chilli from TLC, all so you could pretend you were Lisa “Left Eye” Lopes. You didn’t even do anything kinky with those working gals. What a waste.

I think I got off track.

And I’m joking. Lindsay Hunter does not have a gambling or a hooker problem (she’s actually a pretty decent person) and she probably had a good excuse for not being there (because she’s a decent person, so go read Daddy’s). My point is this: it’s impressive that Jason soldiered on with only forty percent of his readers. Even more impressive: that forty percent made it a pretty fun night.

The first (or second-to-last) reader of the night was Steve Himmer, who read from his novel, The Bee-Loud Glade. The piece he read details a man recently unemployed, wasting away in his apartment, and not giving a shit—until he becomes a decorative hermit that is, living in the yard of a rich man who wants to live vicariously through him, as long as he’s in the safety of his own home. Nature is, after all, gross. We never got to the part where he was a decorative hermit though, but only slowly built to it. Part of me wished we’d heard a part of the piece where more was going on, after he’d gotten his job; a guy sitting around unemployed and uncaring doesn’t interest me too much. But, on the other hand, this section he read DID make me want to read more. It was clever and did move at a good, steady pace. So the fact that it made me wish we’d heard more is probably a good thing.

Jesús Ángel García was the second (or last) reader that night. He read from his novel, Bad Bad Bad, an interesting experience for everyone present. His work seems to be sex-focused. Now, you might be thinking, “but all writing is about sex somehow.” You clearly have a one track mind. Even if that is true, Jesús takes that idea and pushes it further. He offers the reader sex-filled stories, exploited in every way possible. Maybe we won’t “see” everything, but exaggerated gestures help move the story along while giving us good sights. Sometimes what he does with language is impressive, especially with dialogue. Other times it all seems too much, and I just think about the fact that my fourteen-year-old self would probably enjoy his stories more than twenty-something Mason (though little has changed). Regardless, he knows how to entertain, as shown by his second piece where he pulled a female audience member up in front of the stage to read a passage from of one of his stories. This stranger from the crowd did a great job with Jesús’ sex driven material, putting on a fake accent and saying every lewd term with gusto. I could see this bit being less funny and more painfully awkward if a volunteer with less character (or more character?) and bravery did it. Thankfully, that night of Orange Alert offered up a great volunteer.

And I don’t just call her a great volunteer because she was my girlfriend.

One of the reasons I like to go to Orange Alert is that it’s exactly how I wouldn’t do a reading. Any readings I host, I want the stories to be quick and funny. I don’t need beautiful prose; I just need to be entertained. While Orange Alert definitely leaves room to be entertained, Jason also encourages his readers to pick longer pieces of work, pieces of novels, pieces that can stretch out a bit. Orange Alert is my monthly dose of medicine that forces me to slow down. Orange Alert may do something different than what I want from most readings, but it does it well, and I really appreciate that.

The cocktails at the Whistler ain’t all that bad either.

Orange Alert’s every third Sunday of the month. Check it out.

EVENT: ORANGE ALERT | SUNDAY, JULY 17, 2011 AT 6PM | THE WHISTLER

Literary Chicago’s very own Lauryn Allison Lewis has just joined the ranks of William Faulkner, Edith Wharton, and George Orwell. Yes, she’s written an achingly beautiful book. But that’s not what we’re talking about here. She is now one of the writers featured in Patricia Ann McNair’s ongoing series, View From the Keyboard. Click here to get a peek inside Lauryn’s writing life, see the nest she built for robot-birds, and find out, among other things, one of the ways in which she is like a cat.

McNair is an associate professor in the Fiction Writing Department of Columbia College Chicago and the author of The Temple of Air, a collection of linked stories set to be released by Elephant Rock Books this September. She’s also a self-proclaimed voyeur. In the debut post of her series, she asks, “Is it because I am a writer, or am I just plain nosy?” Whatever the reason, it’s great to see where the magic happens for great writers, old and new—especially now that one of those great writers is Lauryn.

McNair will be celebrating the release of The Temple of Air at Women and Children First on Friday, September 9, 2011 at 7:30pm. The book has already gotten a good deal of praise from critics such as Leah Tallon, Assistant Editor of Fiction at The Nervous Breakdown, who describes New Hope, the town in which the stories take place, as “one person’s cell and another’s safe hiding spot.” “Small towns,” Tallon says, “are a catch-all for every type of person and McNair shows the variety, no two alike, contrary to the stereotypes. She reaches down deep into the cores of her characters, pulls out their secrets, the things that make them human, and presents them to you in this book.” From the secrets of writing to the secrets of everyday life, McNair seems to have a flair for pulling back veils and revealing what matters.

Lewis Ford draping a rattlesnake onto a member of his congregation (1945). Image taken from http://teenangster.net.

It is the night of July 5^th and we are toasting the birth of America. We are listening to gospel music while digging through our pockets for money to contribute to the circulating basket.

By and by, when the morning comes,
when the saints of God are gathered home,
we’ll  tell the story how we’ve overcome,
for we’ll understand it better by and by.

But don’t worry. We haven’t joined the Tea Party or anything like that. (Sorry, Tia, my aggressively “born again” aunt.) We are at the Hungry Brain for So You Think You Have Nerves of Steel?, the literary variety show which was originally conceived of by Todd Dills and others at The2ndhand, and it’s just the kind of religious experience we need. Series host Harold Ray is our kind of minister (he is played by Jacob Knabb, editor of Another Chicago Magazine). “We let you in for free,” he says, “because we’re low-rent like that. But we are trying to raise money for a projector so we can show pornographic images.” (That’s a joke, Tia. Well, sort of.)

Chicago Artist’s Resource (CAR) describes Harold as a “ruinous West Virginia janitor who secretly longs to become a famous country singer but who has no discernible talents other than the ability to drunkenly croon.” It also says that “he only hosts the show because he thinks it will lead to a record deal.” What it fails to mention is that he’s ferociously honest and immediately likeable. After a charming performance by folk rock band Good Evening that includes a fiddle, a ukulele, and tap dancing percussion, Harold introduces the first reader of the evening, James Kennedy, by saying, “I don’t know this motherfucker. But the last time I saw him, he was dressed like a wizard. So you can’t really respect him.”

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a review of Ben Tanzer’s novella, My Father’s House

When a loved one dies unexpectedly, their sins are suddenly pardoned, lifelong points of contention are forever set aside, and those left behind to mourn huddle together, able to recount nothing but good times, the joyful highlights of the deceased person’s life. It is a common phenomenon.

But what happens when a person’s death is foretold in low blood platelet counts, a mysterious seizure, a trip to the hospital that ends in a diagnosis of cancer? What happens when a family is denied the grace of losing a loved one quickly, and instead must find a path toward making amends, finding closure, and saying goodbye, all while their father and spouse is suspended in the disquieting limbo between life and death?

Ben Tanzer’s latest novella, My Father’s House, soon to be released by Main Street Rag Publishing Company, examines this conflict and several others others often found in Tanzer’s fiction.

For instance, the narrator of My Father’s House is a social worker by profession:

“I am at work. I work at a drop-in center for the homeless. When people first walk in, there is a ping pong table to their right and a bunch of couches to the left crowded around a television. After that there is a desk where we greet people and I am sitting at that desk, trying to greet people as they come in for lunch and trying my best to answer their questions.”

An oxymoron of marital terms (deeply loving but not strictly monogamous):

“I’m in pain. I’ve got a dying father and this girl has something to offer, something almost medicinal, and it’s okay then, okay, okay, okay, something I keep telling myself as we have sex in the backseat of her car, legs everywhere, and then I walk back to my father’s house, stopping long enough to shower once there before climbing into bed with Kerri and drifting off to sleep, drunk and restless.”

A son driven to make his parents proud, but self-aware enough to admit that at times there were detrimental oversights in their parenting:

“I remember that he and my mom asked me to sit down in the kitchen so we could talk…they sat me down and told me how my father was moving out for a little while, but that things would be the same, and that I’s still see him as much as I ever did. I remember sitting there trying to look nonchalant and unbothered by the news, staring straight ahead the whole time, no emotions, no nothing. They asked if I had any questions but I didn’t say a word, choosing instead to casually shake my head no, focused on getting out and moving on before the tears came.”

Much of this is explored during the narrator’s therapy sessions, amid parallel, nearly-obsessive inner monologues concerning the therapist’s tiny hands. “I’m at the therapist’s. She is looking at me with that curly hair. And those hands, those tiny little hands that I want to suck on.”

Tanzer’s latest work will immediately strike a familiar chord in those who have had the great pleasure of reading his previous novels and collections. Still, My Father’s House is in many ways a stunning departure from the writer’s thematic repertoire. The writing here is incredibly direct, emotional, tender and honest. And again, Tanzer weaves in musical inspiration throughout the novella via Bruce Springsteen, but does not hide behind these references or use them as a catch-all to articulate what his characters are feeling.

Lastly and perhaps most importantly, I beg you not to be deterred by Tanzer’s exploration of one family’s medical crisis. Heavy though the subject may be, this writer is one of very few who possess the ability to balance sadness with humor; dry and self-deprecating, and understated so as not to seem incongruent, his humor is thoroughly appreciated and at times much needed.

My Father’s House is a novella brave enough to strip itself bare and stand before its audience, vulnerable but unashamed. It is one you’ll hold to your heart after reading; a literary light capable of illuminating a story familiar to so many with nothing but utmost respect, love, and understanding.

Let’s make this quick(ies), I got shit to do.

Heh, get it? Quickies. Like the reading series that just said goodbye to co-host Mary Hamilton cause that ho is moving to LA? Like the reading series I’m reviewing right now, at this very moment?

Oh, go to hell. Puns are cool.

Anyways…

Goodbyes can get awkward. They can be teary-eyed catastrophes where people turn into miserable, blubbering messes. If you’re a pussy, that is. Thankfully, Mary Hamilton ain’t no pussy. She’s one tough broad. She kept the waterworks at bay, which helped her last Chicago Quickies! stand out as something to remember (and not be embarrassed about).

Quickies!, the reading where participants must read their entire story in four minutes or less, had a few differences this time around. Firstly, Lindsay Hunter (1), Mary’s other half, had instructed all the writers involved to read something that had to do with Mary. The topics and themes were quite varied. Robbie Q. Telfer’s honored the Hamilton by speaking about Night Court’s Bull Shannon. (3) Most interesting was Jacob Knabb, who is typically loathed for singing at readings, I mean, really hated, but outdid himself with his extremely enjoyable rendition of Boys II Men’s “End of the Road” (4). What stood out most was Theo Huxtable (5), mentioned in practically every piece, exemplifying Mary’s apparent “perfect man.” (Dyslexic, but handsome, amirite? High five!)

The most entertaining parts of the night came from Mary Hamilton’s whistle (not a euphemism). Typically, whenever a reader hits the four minute mark, Mary blows a whistle to signify that they should get the hell away from the mic. Rules were different this night though. She was free to whistle whenever she wanted to. For example: through all of Patrick Somerville’s piece. I have no idea what it was about, but boy is he a tough li’l soldier for continuing through Mary’s sonic onslaught. Mostly the whistle was used to keep our emotions in check, lest we turn into a buncha fourteen-year-old girls leaking salty water from our eye sockets (Dave Snyder and I turned into fourteen year old girls once, it was awful). If Robyn Pennacchia tried to profess her love to Mary while she read, then she’d get the whistle to put her in place. If Lindsay started to read something she wrote that was actually somewhat sentimental, BAM, whistle. She should know better anyways. The whistle really exemplified what Mary Hamilton is to everyone: a chick who keeps everyone in line. And everyone lets her because everyone loves her. Without Mary Hamilton, where exactly will Chicago be? I don’t quite know, but it’s gonna be real damn depressing, that’s for sure. Thanks for leaving, Mary. You asshole. (6)

Addendum/Footnotes

1. Originally, I wrote “Lindsay Hamilton,” combining Lindsay Hunter
   and Mary Hamilton into one person. Big mistake, especially because
   this real life combination would be disastrous. Like the perfect
   serial killer. Our hobo population would disappear. I don’t care what
   you say about hobos, I like them.
2. This comment has nothing to do with Mary (not everything’s about
   you, Hamilton), I just wanted to point out that footnotes really don’t
   work well in WordPress. Sorry.
3. This guy! Ugh…
4. Originally, I thought he had performed “I’ll Make Love To You,”
   which is another great B2Men song. I was wrong. Again. I was wrong a
   lot in this review. Also, Jacob’s real high point that night was when
   he and I picked up two glasses of beer, both from strangers, and drank
   them down. The story to that exists below in the comments section.
   Matt Rowan corrected my use of “peaked,” pointing out that I was
   looking for “piqued.” He’s peaked my interest in punching him in the
   face.
5. I originally wrote “Huxely” instead of “Huxtable.” As if the
   handsome dyslexic were really a lame sci-fi writer who liked LSD.
6. Nothing has been pointed out as incorrect in this paragraph… yet.
   Give it time I suppose. I think I learned something from writing this
   review. Mainly, writing a review of a reading two weeks after it
   happened, on your smart phone as you ride the train, is a bad idea.
   Especially when you were half sick / half tipsy at said reading,
   sitting in the back where you couldn’t see the readers and could only
   hear half of what they said. Whoops. Sorry for being a failure. <3
   Mason

EVENT: QUICKIES! | JUNE 14, 2011 AT 7PM | INNERTOWN PUB

Related Posts
You Don’t Know How It Feels To Be Pulled Inside Out: An Ode To Bull Shannon (story by Mary Hamilton published in PANK Magazine)
Reader Meet Author (interview with Mary Hamilton in What to Wear During an Orange Alert?)