Yeh, liked it. It spoke volumes. Remind me to tell you about the Poem on a
Chair ... Andrew
On 11 February 2010 05:26, Stephen Vincent <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> from After Language / Letters to Jack Spicer
> ******
> The trouble with comparing a poet with a radio is that radios
>
> don't develop scar tissue...
> from "Sporting Life" in Thing Language from Language
>
> Dear Jack:
>
> That line, that thing of a line, has never failed to elude me! In fact, for
> a long time, it hung like an "audio vice" tightened about my head. Once,
> with the help of a friend, I went theatrical to try to - if not expose it
> for what is - get rid of it! Naturally, like the ghost imprint of any
> language, the thing still haunts!
>
> Perhaps for your benefit, and maybe for mine, let me tell you the story.
> Back in the summer of 1977, the Grand Piano, a coffee house in the Haight,
> hosted a weekly series of what some might call "conceptual poetry readings".
> One thick foggy summer night, several of us were asked, or invited ourselves
> to do short theatrical pieces. I made a cassette tape in which I read- quite
> slowly - the first few sections of "Sporting Life". Then I put three white
> band-aids around the sides and edges of a small, black leather encased
> transistor radio. I suspect it was the same kind you carried to Aquatic Park
> to listen the Giants baseball games.
>
> When my friend, Hal Hughes and I, went to face the full & darkened
> audience, I turned on the recorder to the sound of the poem. We stood across
> a few feet from each other. Maybe like two clumsy kids, we gently tossed the
> radio back and forth to each other while the white band-aids caught and
> reflected the overhead light.
>
> ...The poet is a radio. The poet is a liar. The poet is a
>
> counter-punching radio....
>
> When the poem came to its inevitable end, I turned on the radio. Quite
> accidentally a voice was calling the night's ball game at Candlestick Park.
> "The count is 3 & 2." We kept tossing the radio back and forth while the
> announcer's voice punctuated the room's absolute quiet darkness. You could
> hear the crack of the bat strike the ball. "Foul out of play into the
> stands."
>
> The Grand Piano audience - many of them your readers, if not young
> contenders - were stunned, as I was. For just those few moments, there you
> were, poem and game in hand. I do not necessarily believe in magic, Jack,
> but that was magic. Then it was over. Hal and I joined our arms in a
> two-step dance across the front of the audience and, other plays unfolding,
> the night resumed.
>
> Elusive as ever, Jack!
>
> Stephen Vincent
> http://stephenvincent.net/blog/
>
>
> Stephen Vincent
>
>
--
Andrew
'Beyond City Limits', pub. ICLL @ ECU, available at topnotch indie bookshops
- list at http://hispirits.blogspot.com/
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