How bad would it be...

If we opened the reading on Sunday with this Jock Jam:

I just want people to feel really pumped up and this song makes me feel really pumped up. I like to listen to "METHOD MAN" by the Wutang Clan before I give a reading but I think I'm going to start listening to this instead or in conjunction with.

I just really feel like people don't get that it's okay to be SUPER PSYCHED for a literary reading, just as one might feel SUPER FUCKING AMPED for a sporting event. Poetry is like baseball: slow-paced, methodical, calculated for accuracy and impact with moments of startling, revelatory, sublime excitement and I want to change all of that. Poetry readings should be like a basketball games, just like full on intensity and breathless engagement from start to finish, plust cheerleaders and a mascot. No time for thought, no time for reflection, just FULL ON IN YOUR FACE LITERATURE for 20-30 minutes and then BAM! it's over and we go eat pizza and talk about how tall the readers were.

Hot Little Flyer : For Hot Little Book Party

For Hot Little Chapbook : "Whistle While You Dixie" : by Hot Little Dodie Bellamy : published by Hot Little Summer BF Press !!!

* Flyer by Neil LeDoux, artissimo excellente de cover artwork!

Keeping up

I watched about 5 episodes of the reality show "Keeping Up with the Kardashians" last night. Thanks to Netflix Watch It Now I have watched all kinds of crap I would never otherwise watch. KUWTK is a terrible show. It's clearly scripted and the Kardashians are terrible actors and actresses so you know, you notice and still, somehow I found myself crying during the 5th episode. Khloe Kardashian flies of the handle at her sisters then goes on a bender and winds up with a DUI. All of this on the night of the anniversary of her father's death. Everyone describes her as "Out of control", "a freak", "crazy". Even the scripted discussion of each family member's grief over losing their patriarch, the neat pacakage of explanation for Khloe's bad behavior and Khloe's terse, jaw gritting admission that she has not properly dealt with her father's death but that she will now, at the close of the show, still tapped my seemingly bottomless reservoir of personal grief and/or empathy for those grieving.

Crying about the Kardashian's packaged loss is admittedly much easier than comprehending the grief of two third graders in the after school program where I teach poetry last week. There mother passed away from a sudden heart attack. There are four kids, including a six month old. I ran into them at Walgreens 30 minutes after their father told them and about 20 minutes after our program's director told us teachers. Seeing the shock of death on an 8 year old's face is I don't know, it's awful. Seeing the fear, grief and bewilderment on their father's face was, awful.

Brain can't hang.