VANITAS READING

Wednesday evening I went to the Bowery Poetry Club for a reading by some of the contributors to the latest issue of Vanitas magazine.

It was one of those experiences you could only get there, and I was glad I went.

Vanitas is poet Vincent Katz’s baby, he publishes and edits it (with help, like this time from Elaine Equi and Martin Brody). This third issue had for its theme “popular music” which gave rise to some terrific writing as well as to this lively evening of poetry and performance.

Vincent kicked the evening off like a true impresario, he took charge of the microphone and gave a rousing introduction to the m.c. of the event, the artist/writer Jack Pierson, who designed the cover for Vanitas 3 and has more art reproduced inside.

The poets who read are all originals and included the always trenchant Elaine Equi (a fitting adjective for her work, though not always fitting in all of its meanings for her presentation of it, which can sometimes be very subtle) and the always witty, sometimes obviously but often not, Charles North.

I could listen to either of these poets anytime, not just for their writing, but for the ways they speak. They each have a unique approach to language, including when they share it in conversation that always leaves me smiling and grateful to have ears.

Others read as well, Cliff Fyman and Raphael Rubinstein, both astute observers of poetic realities, Fyman’s openness to revealing his inner life braver than most, Rubinstein’s insights into the lives of others more precise and pungent than most.

Then there was Alix Lambert (does she really pronounce her last name likes it’s French, like Colbert in the Colbert Report as Jack Pierson kept pronouncing it—“lom-bare”—?) who read her one poem in the magazine, but since it’s only six lines she preceded it with a short film she made—“Icarus”—in which she portrays a female version of the one who flies too high and falls to the ocean and drowns, entangled in her glamorous costume, which she tries to cut herself free of but not in time to prevent her drowning (much heavier than the poem, which was light and whimsical and delightful, while the movie was dark and intense and deep-thoughts provoking).

Lambert is someone whose work I’ve only discovered since reading with her at THE POEM I TURN TO anthology event on Tuesday. It seems she’s not only an incredibly gutsy documentary film maker (spending months in Russian prisons to make her Spirit-nominated THE MARK OF CAIN about Russian prisoner tattoos, or spending a year getting married and divorced four times, to three different men and a woman—I can’t wait to see both of those), but also a poet, an artist, an actress and screenwriter (she played a whore on DEADWOOD and then ended up writing one of the episodes and from there went on to write for JOHN FROM CINCINNATI), as well as a musician and songwriter (sometimes in quotes) who made a CD—RUNNING AFTER DEER—for which she "conceived" the project and contributed samples, which include dialogue and ambient sounds from the gym she boxes at! (She sounds like the Lee Miller of these times, only more so.)

(There’s so much more in Vanitas 3 that makes it the most varied and stimulating literary magazine available at this exact moment, at least in my life, from contributors who weren’t able to participate, I couldn’t list them all, but another great David Trinidad poem is one of them, as are several great Ray DiPalma poems and a Jim Dine remembrance of music in London in the late 1960s and encounters with George Harrison, “Jagger and Keith” etc., and two great pieces by Alcir Pecora and Helio Bittencourt, translated from the Portugese by Vincent Katz, as well as deft comments and work of his own by Vincent and tons more, buy it and see for yourself.)

But the most surprising part of an evening full of surprises was when Vincent got back on stage and read a poem about a general strike in Madrid (I think it was there) which had a refrain in Spanish (I think it was Spanish—no habla Espanol unfortunately) which basically meant: Support the general strike, as I caught it, and was backed by his two little boys on a loose mic behind him (and they were helped by poet and owner of the Poetry Club Bob Holman) leading the audience in shouting out the refrain after every stanza while a musician (whose name I only heard in passing and can’t remember unfortunately) who had just demonstrated his unique and amazing musical skills on an array of instruments he made himself (!) which went from sounding like bird cries to more traditional sounding, but still exotic enough, stringed instruments and percussive ones as well and blew us all away, and now he was backing up this righteous political poem of Vincent’s that was more like a new Internationale.

And as if that wasn’t enough of a crowd stirrer, when Vincent stepped down and Holman took the mic from him, he asked the Katz boys to stay on stage and back him with improvised sounds and words as he read a poem that began in a jungle in a dream and the musician with his self-created instruments made appropriate and unexpected music in accompaniment.

It was so spontaneous and casual and comfortable and at the same time so poetically magical and creatively unique, it defined for me the reason to attend events like this, beyond the poetry and old friends and the deeply bohemian atmosphere that not only supports but encourages everyone’s talents hidden or obvious.

And then it got even better as the audience called for an encore and Holman did a more rap like poem with short staccato rhymes that he began to improvise along with the musician and the boys, (one of whom yelled just “YEAH!” into the mic at one steller point making us all react with even more delight) and it was like all the times in the living rooms of what we once called pads and cribs and digs and whatever else back when any social gathering in anyone’s domicile meant making music and poetry and art out of whatever was at hand with everyone participating.

It was like capturing one of those divine occurrences and reproducing it right before our eyes and ears here at the Bowery Poetry Club—one of the last bastions of what the Bowery once was now that CBGB is gone and where it was is surrounded by new high-rise condos and upscale restaurants and clubs—and then they did it again, one more encore, and topped even their previous efforts.

I’ve never seen or heard Holman so lost-in-the-moment-jam-session good, and the added element of Vincent’s boys and the music creator on his homemade instruments, man, it could’ve been a mess or an indulgence but instead was an epiphany elevating the entire room to the level of creative transcendence and a reminder of WHY WE DO IT!

Hope there’s something happening in your neck of the woods you can fall by and release the creative juices at, or just enjoy someone else’s, ‘cause it sure helps you (or at least me) get through these sometimes trying and too often lying times, as it always has.