The Written Word

I went to a poetry reading last night at Real Art Ways which was pretty good. The first one, Martha Collins, who is a professor at Oberlin College was just not very good. Boring and artifical and controlling and phony.

She is a white women, older, and she wrote about lynchings of black people. The subject is truly horribly awful. And I felt just sensationalistic on her part, you know to have this petite white older women read about the horrors that people can inflict on other people and the results of the mob mentality.

Maybe I am misreading her (no pun intended). Perhaps she meant well. In fact, I am sure she did. She is sooo sincere and earnest, I can't imagine she has any recognition of how inauthentic she comes across.

She was so sweet that I feel badly bashing her work. But she torchured me.

She spent the first fifteen minutes of the reading - explaining what she was going to be reading. And then she read what she was going to read. Ugh. I almost left.

Her style of poetry is not my favorite either.

Leaving sentences unfinished and....
Say words, words and stopping
at odd places for....

That kind of stuff...I find that kind of style vapid and old fashioned - very beatnik "lawrence farlinghetti" type stuff. Fragmented - I hate fragmented poetry.

The other two were very good. Very performance oriented to have the words read from their hearts and minds. Both black. One, is CT poet laureate Marilyn Nelson (reminded me a bit of Maya Angelou or Toni Morrison) and the other I teaches in Brooklyn NY and was so funny - Colin Channer. He is an assistant professor of English and the coordinator of the B.A. creative writing program at Medgar Evers College in Brooklyn, New York.

He read a story
How to Beat your Child good and proper,
from the perspective of a black Jamaican woman. I tell you he channelled this character - who is based on his mother. The stories about that woman and the way he tells them are so lovely, loving and amazing.

He was an inspiration. And very handsome, which never hurts either.