You know I love a whole month in which the rest of the world thinks about poetry.
This Thursday, 17 Poets! welcomes poet, artist, and teacher Sunday Shae Parker to the stage with a multimedia performance, 8 PM. www.17poets.com
April brings a whirlwind of ruth weiss events as she returns to New Orleans for the first time in 61 years.
Her book DESERT JOURNAL is just out from Trembling Pillow Press.
ruth weiss events:
Tuesday, April 3, 7:15PM: The Black Widow Salon at Crescent City Books
For info. and to RSVP as seating is limited, email: books@crescentcitybooks.com
Wednesday, April 4th, 7:30PM: Zeitgeist Multi-Disciplinary Arts Center presents rare screenings of filmmaker ruth weiss' work including "The Brink" a 40 minute film that Stan Brakhage called "one of the most important San Francisco films of the period." visit: zetgeistinc.net
Thursday, April 5th, 8PM at 17 Poets! Literary and Performance Series: ruth weiss reads and signs DESERT JOURNAL with the POET OF NEW ORLEANS BRASS BAND featuring Joe Zeno, Sr. on tuba; Christopher Davis, trumpet; Chad Moore, clarinet; Mark Francis, trombone; and Clyde CM3 on drums with special guest Hal Davis on on-da-log
from the latest issue of Entrepôt (issue 7)
April 10th head over to Octavia Books to hear Lee Meitzen Grue read from DOWNTOWN (Trembling Pillow Press) and Niyi Osundare read from City Without People (Black Widow press), 6pm. (Osundare's poem "Raindrum" was recently selected by the US Olympics committee to represent his native Nigeria in the winter olympics. )
If you're in Baton Rouge, head over to the River Writers Reading Series at Boudreaux's to hear New Orleans poets Bill Lavender, reading from Memory Wing (Black Widow Press) and Geoff Munsterman, editor of Entrepôt. Tuesday, April 10th, 8PM
April 12, 8PM 17 Poets! Literary and Performance Series welcomes poet Bruce Andrews as well as poet and OffBeat writer Alex Rawls
April 19th: Baton Rouge Poets Christopher Shipman and Vincent Cellucci (hosts of the River Writers Series) read and sign books along with Portland poet Allison Cobb, 8PM
Can't be in New Orleans 'cause you in Lafayette: no problem, cher!
On Saturday, April 21st, at 7 p.m., CARPE DIEM! GELATO-ESPRESSO BAR invites the public to spend a spring evening experiencing poetry and performance art while enjoying gelato, espresso, tea, and pastries when it hosts "VOICES IN SPRING: Poetry by Marthe Reed and Performance by Bonny McDonald"
April 26th: Book Signing and Reading by Moira Crone of her new novel, The Not Yet (UNO press)
The People Say Project, backed by innovators Brian Boyles and Jarret Lofstead, along with NOLAFugees created a magnificent tribute to Lafcadio Hearn last night staged at Cafe Istanbul in the Healing Center.
How does one bring to life the eccentric and exacting prose of Hearn from his ability to wax poetic about his adopted city to his ear for sounds on the streets to his witty diatribes poking fun at the inane and the deadly serious?
People Say answered the call with a multimedia presentation that both gave space to Hearn's prose but that also provided an entertaining backdrop as well as interludes of pure joy for the audience in the packed house at Cafe Istanbul.
The program included performers coming to the mic to read aloud samplings of Hearn's writings from 1877-1880 that center around life in New Orleans. Short passages on the beauty of the city led into commentary on the weather, the political corruption, the sounds of street vendors, the crime and Hearn's ability to capture the particular characters of the streets such as in "Complaint of a Creole Boardinghouse-Keeper," which was beautifully acted out by Trixie Minx in full costume and with a Creole patois. Kataalsyt Alcindor gave a beautiful rendition of "A Creole Courtyard" in a sonorous voice that carried the audience into the tranquil, minutely described details of the titled piece.
Among these careful selections of Hearn's works were constant surprises as a white alligator crawled on stage before a screen backdrop of swampy images for "The Alligators, " which begins: "None discover aught of beauty in them; yet they were once worshiped as gods," or an interpretive dance was acted out of a crab putting itself to boil complete with carrots and veggies flying out of the pot and into the audience.
Madame Mystere of the Fleur de Tease
Ratty Scurvics hopped on the piano to accompany the piece "Eleusis" while Trixie Minx did a reverse strip tease dressing up in the ballerina costume that the piece describes in exacting details.
Chuck Perkins recited a piece while a troupe from the "Hip-ocrisy Belly Dancers" stood in the background ready to take to the stage with their flipping fans adding a carnivalesque atmosphere to what was overall a love-fest for New Orleans in words, gestures, and images.
Hip-ocrisy Belly Dancers
As much as the show was a tribute to Hearn, it was really New Orleans that took center stage, and the finale which brought forth the whole cast embodied that with the piece: "Glamour of New Orleans (Nov. 26, 1878)," which is as poignant now as it was when Hearn wrote it. In fact, maybe more poignant in that about half the audience nearly witnessed the end of what we know as the city of New Orleans. Hearn's piece captures what we hold in our hearts about this city that we adore, and Hearn's pieces on violence and crime seemed sadly just as relevant today as well capturing the side of New Orleans that often breaks our hearts. In "Glamour of New Orleans" the city whispers: "My streets are flecked with strange sharp shadows; and sometimes also the Shadow of Death falleth upon them; but if thou wilt not fear, thou are safe. My charms are not the charms of much gold and great riches; but thou mayest feel with me such hope and content as thou hast never felt before." Written over a hundred years ago and the city still promises, and the city still provides for those with eyes and hearts open to receive.
The People Say Project and the cast of the Lafcadio Hearn Literary Late Night production casted a magical spell last night that compressed time reminding us all how wondrous and unique this city continues to be. Other cast members included: Andrew Vaught, C.W.Cannon, and Chris Lane, with photographs and images by Leslie Addison and George Yerger. Grant Ingram was on hand capturing video of the production from every angle possible, so check the People Say Project soon for video of this event.
Also see Mark Folse's take on Odd Words/ Toulouse Street in addition to Mark's write ups on the entire Tennessee Williams Fest.
Entrepôt is the French Quarter’s newest literary periodical, a monthly source of discussions on poetics, literary history, music tradition, community, and contemporary events and book reviews. Entrepôt aims to explore New Orleans cultural history as well as its ongoing foothold in the world of art and letters; by presenting new documents, scholarship, and documentation to restore the importance of New Orleans’ storied past in contemporary poetics and art.
If you've talked to me about poetry in the last month, it's quite possible that I have talked at length about my ongoing obsession with this video: "Stupid Hoe" by Nicki Minaj.
I didn't know who Nicki Minaj was until the Superbowl when she performed with Madonna and then I googled her and this video was the first one I watched. I watched it on a loop repeatedly for a few hours one day and thought, I'm gonna write a poem about this. Then that poem became a whole project based on the images, history, lyrics and anything contextual that the video and song bring up for me.
I aired what I call the panel screening of this Project at McKeown's bookstore on Friday, March 16th. Originally, the talk consisted of screening the video with me stopping and discussing the various points along the way in my poetic analysis of the "Stupid Hoe" video. The talk is called "Stupid Hoe (explicit)." The store where I wanted to perform the piece does not have wi-fi, so I had to compromise and made a power point with the audio from the song.
Nicki Minaj: some tribe: this wicked talk back
One of the items I talk about in the beginning of the video is Kate Durbin's project Gaga Stigmata, which is an incredible resource for being able to talk about media imagery and the rise of the "pop star" as well as the art that is being created in this context. I was drawn to a particular piece by a doctoral candidate in theological studies Peter Klein who discusses the use of religion in Lady Gaga's performances and persona. He states that she is both deadly serious and mocking in her rebuttals and insertion of religious phenomena and ritual in her performance and even outside the performance (if there is an outside that we view) in her persona. I'm not a Lady Gaga fan, so I can't really speak to the articles and all the things happening on Durbin's site, but I'm intrigued by it as a construct for thinking about language, theatrics, poetry and politics. I think the same idea of Klein's thesis applies to this project as inhabiting both a space for the absurd and the serious, a place of inquiry that can also laugh and poke fun at exactly what is being uncovered and deconstructed.
The political body of Nicki Minaj: To inhabit the persona
Some of the items I talk about in the screening range from Angelina's infamous leg to the Lil' Kim argument that spawned this video to Minaj's use of Barbie in her personas and Rush Limbaugh even makes an appearance thanks to his timely throwing around of the slur "slut."
What's most interesting to me is the way that Minaj's use of "Stupid Hoe" and the traditional framework that it falls in within the rap genre of elevating oneself and one's lyrics by basically calling
everyone else out, is how Minaj's absurdist approach can be contrasted and compared with
the far-reaching and almost ubiquitous male rap lyric that seems to revel in the degradation and vicious, disturbing name-calling that is hurled at women in so many rap songs. In fact, it's interesting to look at the label and rappers associated with Minaj's "rap group" as Lil' Wayne, for example, engages in particularly hostile remarks about women in his lyrics.
Not only do I recite a handful of really obscene, obnoxious hate-filled lyrics in the talk but
I like to note how many time these videos have been viewed on youtube. I wonder about how we allow language in certain places (spaces) and yet reject it and come up in arms when that language emerges in another venue where we have decided it is not allowed and how this relates to access and exclusion.
Youtube is this fascinating recorder of imagery to me. We can get some sort of idea of how many times images have been viewed as well as people's likes, dislikes, comments and my personal favorite, the youtube response video. There are a number of angry response videos to Minaj's "Stupid Hoe" as well as clever parodies, several videos showing you how to do her tribal make-up, a few poetic readings of her lyrics and then some people just filming themselves in front of their computers lip synching this song.
Wow, I love the internet.
Sexually: full frontal: shipping platinum
One of the reasons I'm so attracted to this video is the amount of thievery it employs. Part of this is a direct response to Lil' Kim's attack song on Minaj "Black Friday." Lil' Kim basically accuses Minaj of being a "clown clone" copying her looks and lyrics, etc. It's so bizarre that a genre of music that changed the idea of copyright based on sampling also contains this intense authority and ownership. I don't prescribe to it: I think everyone is a copy cat. I invite discussion to the contrary and encourage theft.
The power point project turned me towards really considering the stills from the video without the audio. Stan Brackhage tells and teaches us with his films that when audio is removed, our eyes begin to really see.
This in turn generated the next part of the project which consists of poems based on still images from the video.
To the left is one image from the beginning of the video:
This blog post is part of the project and discussion and responses generated from it. We haven't even begun to dive into what exactly happened at the Grammy's and, of course, the new video of 'Roman Holiday' with Eminem. It's a swerve from "Stupid Hoe," but that particular clinamen we will save for later discussions.
Poet Camille Martin has an excellent interview with poet and editor of Fell Swoop, the indefatigable Joel Dailey. I reviewed Dailey's last chapbook, Surprised by French Fries here.
Martin's interview has a great chapbook cover display as well showcasing some unique Swoop covers. We have quite a collection of Swoops here at Casa Brinks/ Burns. Read the full review here.
This is my new chapbook fresh from the Fell Swoop factory. Cover by Tracey McTague.
Poems based on the Surrealist Game of Questions: Irrational Knowledge of the Object
Review: Niyi Osundare's City Without People (Black Widow Press, 2011)
Note: This review was originally published in Entrepôt(Vol. 2, Oct 2011).
Dr. Niyi Osundare will be the featured reader Tuesday, March 6, 2012 at the 1718 Series held at the Columns Hotel. The series begins rather promptly at 7 and is usually SRO, so get there early for a seat. The readings are usually followed by a Q & A with the author.
Niyi Osundare’s City
Without People: The Katrina Poems is a narrative journey from the first
moments that the water breached the levees to the traumatic experience of the
author and his wife trapped in their attic to the slow journey back to some
sense of normalcy. Instead of a straight
shot chronologically though, these poems vacillate from the first terrible
hours followed by the one year anniversary and then back to earlier
experiences. In this way, they capture the way memory holds a seemingly endless
amount of hours and experiences in a brief recollected interlude. This movement
in time as well reflects the book’s attempt to capture the ebb and flow of fear
and anger as well as passion and hope in the years following Katrina. These poems then are arranged strongly around
the tone and the emotion expressed in each section. It allows the poet to not
only examine the various reactions to this event, but it also plumbs the depths
of the poet’s personal experience as survivor, evacuee, displaced professor,
New Orleans citizen, and as part of a Nigerian community in New Orleans that is
displaced after the storm. Osundare’s Nigerian background and cultural milieu
allow him the opportunity to translate this event through his African heritage.
In cultural signals and codes, Osundare brings his own particular blend of
Nigerian influence to this historical New Orleans event. It’s this blending of
cultures, this looking back to the familiar in the midst of chaos, that brings
such a unique voice to this topic. In addition, Osundare’s ability to range from
anger to quiet desperation amid heartbreaking images and then soar back to such
heights of optimism and resilience makes this book one of the most important
books to emerge from the Katrina debacle. Unlike earlier books, this collection
benefits from the author’s deliberate need to process and collect his thoughts
and responses. The reader receives not one overwhelming sense of raw or heated
emotions, but instead passes through the ever-changing sense of response and
recovery that takes years to really name and comprehend.
The initial
section to this collection “WATER,
WATER!...” opens with the subtle line, “It all began as a whisper among/
The leaves.” The poem titled “The Lake Came to My House” is just the beginning
of several difficult poems in this section that recount the disastrous damage
that the water inflicted upon the city of New Orleans. The poem ends with the same
subtle tone that belies the vast trauma embedded within the lines: “The day the
Lake came down my street/ And took my house away.” Osundare easily moves from narrative
lyrics to stark lines that have imagistic overtones and then to more formally
rhymed and metered lines. His penchant for song is evident in poems like
“Katrina Anthem” which begins “Ka ka Katrina” and then continues out in
quatrains composed of rhymed couplets beating out a rhythm as tense and pitched
as the misery and distress that forms the subject:
Blood on your
hands, skulls in your fridge
You
swamp the river and swallow the bridge
In
your crowded kitchen a foul fleshfeast
Fit
for the monster and the hellish beast
In stark contrast to this melodic, albeit dark poem, is the poem
that is the title piece for the book, “City Without People.” Here Osundare
delivers a straight punch, no rhyme or song, but instead the bleak report from
the voice of the witness: “The trees are dead/ The birds are gone/The grass is
scorched” and later, the questions: “Tell me/ What do you call a house/ Without
walls?” One of the powerful aspects of this book is Osundare’s ability to
return again and again in various forms and tones to this subject. In one poem
where the reader finds despair; there will be another that sings of rebirth.
It’s an inconstancy that perfectly reflects the chaotic nature of responding
and surviving a catastrophe. In the midst of resilience, the author finds
himself angry and distraught and then in the next moment, “the sexy serenade of
the sax-o-phone” rises breathing new hope into the lines.
Osundare’s poems as well cover vast topics brought about by
the disaster from the negative response of outsiders who loudly criticized the
city’s rebuilding to the “Katrina refugee” moniker to the disaster tours that
descended into destroyed neighborhoods for tourists; this book in a sense
becomes a catalogue, a reminder of not only the city’s event but the fallout
from that event and how the nation responded.
As the unacknowledged legislator, Osundare pokes fun of these notions
while also cutting to the quick of the issue. In “Disastourism” he warns:
“Careful now,/ Dear Tourist/ Mind the bristling bones/ Beneath your sole.” In
other words, take care where you walk for in these empty hulls are the souls of
a city, and what does it say of your own heart to drive by in a bus pointing a
camera at this destruction. Osundare
points out that to uncap the lens of our own view would mean accepting that
this could have been prevented and that any region protected by levees could be
another “New Orleans” story.
The book ends with a poignant interview between Niyi Osundare
and Rebecca Antoine, which was collected in Antoine’s Voices Rising II: More Stories from the Katrina Narrative Project. It’s
incredible after reading these poems, which attempt to encapsulate a series of
swirling emotions and responses to disaster, to read this interview that
clearly recounts Osunadare’s experience from the moment the levees broke to the
point where he returns to New Orleans almost a year later. People from poems in
the book acquire new depths as Osundare relates with wonder and appreciation
all of the people who helped him and his family not only survive their
harrowing entrapment in their flooded house but who continued to help them long
after the water had receded and the city had become a fading news story.
Osundare opens up a world interconnected by scholars and university colleagues
who came to his aid as well as Nigerian community members and friends both here
in America and in Africa who helped support him and his family at this time.
Osudare’s ties to Nigeria and to the country of his childhood are largely
represented in this book that talks of his new home. In song and in references,
in the call and response and in the chant, there are, in the bones of these
poems, beliefs in homes that span oceans and in communities not bound by
geography. From the preface, Osundare says, “I sing of a city which insists on
its own right to life, liberty, and the
pursuit of happiness.” This is a
book about people: People filled with the need to raise their voices against
the silence.
There's no BBQ in New Orleans BBQ Shrimp. It is super fattening and delicious for dipping copious amounts of french bread in.
Take about 1-2 lbs of shrimp, pull off the heads but leave the shell and tails on, rinse under water
In a separate bowl, melt 3 sticks butter
add about 2 tablespoons of Worcestershire Sauce
about 2/3 of Abita Amber Beer or another beer that's got a good flavor
For this dish, I added Prudhomme's Seafood Magic
Lots of Black Pepper
and a dash of Mexican Vanilla
Season to taste as you like
(You can also add Hot Sauce, garlic, paprika, cayenne)
You can let the shrimp soak in the liquid for a bit.
I just toss the shrimp in the pan, pour the sauce over and cover with tin foil.
Bake at 300 in the oven.
Be careful not to overcook. It dries out the shrimp and makes it hard to peel. The shrimp should look pink and not have any more translucent flesh parts under the shell.
Yum. Peel to eat shrimp and dip bread in all the sauce.
Also, here's a shot of some fresh broccoli and cauliflower from our garden, so you can eat your shrimp
