Chaos is like a box of Chocolates February 1993
Rosette Capotorto, the host of the Love & Chaos poetry
reading called the collection of writers and poets a sampler. "Like the
chocolates," she said. There was even a box of half eaten candy near the
entrance with little messages written inside the wrapping like fortunes. When I
was a kid, my aunt used to poke her finger into the tops of her valentine
candy. She hated the hard ones. While the fingerprints on this collection were
not hers, there was a hard edge to their poetry and fiction my aunt would have disliked.
Not sweet or soft enough to fit the occasion. As one of the poets put it:
"This is more chaos than love" and for this reason, it was largely
effective, reflecting the honesty of love rather than projections of how it
should be.
Although I only
stayed until eleven o'clock <197> a five a.m. engagement with a weekend
job calling me to sleep before midnight <197> those poets I witnessed
presented a dazzling display of local talent as varied and efficient as the
paintings displayed int he gallery around them. Over a 100 people showed up for
the event, crowding the chairs in the center of the room, exhibited unusual
sensitively and attention to the works in progress. The whole event was part of
the Love & Chaos art showing that started in January and ended with
Valentine's Day. Nearly 25 poets and writers were scheduled read with one or
two added during the event.
Capotorto opened the
night reading a short selection of fiction she said she had read before, a
comfortable metaphor about people growing together under the influence of love,
and the exclusivity relationships bring. Not skin color, but red fir became the
symbol of their difference from the rest of the humanity, in which these two
lovers "pitied those not of fir." Her images blended fantasy and
realism in a relaxed comparison, partly humorous, with rich sentimental, though
not without a sense of underlying pain.
B.J.Kowalski played
with images of dance, more bitter undertones playing against the lighter rhythm
of words, describing the bar scene and sensual meeting of potential lovers.
"In dancing, no
words were needed," she read. "The thread of time connected our
limbs."
Then to undercut it
all, a poignant regret of how her lover could have been the father of her baby
had she not gone to the clinic.
Kris Nicholson
painted a lighted image of love, though with no less heartache. It was she who
said her poetry was more "chaos than love," though her short,
one-line philosophical poetry tended to say it better. "Love is in my
blood, under my skin, out of my hands."
Geoffrey Jacques was
one of the unscheduled speakers and tended to bring poetry back in images of
18th century romanticism, drawing upon visual color combinations of more
traditional poetry for his effect. But all of the short poems he read were a
competition between space, all moving in and out of rooms that contained the
characters. The "naked room" contained in one poem became the
"room with curtains" in another or the "small room in trees"
in another. His vision of love seemed to move from "skin sucked
crimson" to "rocking away a nervous sunset." Bitter but
beautiful.
Lyra Ward read New
Year's pieces, bitter, funny and ironic with the sharp, clipped language of a
comedian. Most of her images were taken from every day contexts like
"dirty dishwater on the page of life" or small anecdotes shot out in
a scat-like monologue. He chatty style incorporated the audience and its
response, drawing knowing laughter from them as if each had known similar
experiences.
Loretta Campbell
brought deeper poetry with her, along with the deeper sense of black culture.
Her ironic retelling of Christ from the view of Judas was clever and
surprisingly not pedantic. Her classical style of rhyming poetry did not stop
the quiet drumming from rising above the words, like a parade beat for soldiers
going to war. The vocal style of Martin Luther King Jr. was obvious as were the
issues she raised.
David Mills came
across like a blue player, influenced more by beat and rap with a short-lived
impact to his words. I had to listen carefully to catch the rapidly passing
metaphors like "tears slowly dragging inside my eyes," or "Piano
pleading in a minor mood."
For Loyse Brown who
had just flown in over the Atlantic, the definition of love was never constant.
"I change love like underwear," she said, then launched into a
vulgar, bitter, and sometimes brilliant poem on power, with sharp, rhythmical
phasing that said she had read this before and often. It manipulated the
audience in shouts of approval and applause, drawing upon their own bitterness
as a source of power. Less poetry than political anthem, but very, very
effective.
Don Phifer slowed
things down with a long poem about self-identity and the struggle of a black
man looking in Ellis Island for his ancestry. Isolation. Obedience to
regulation. Following signs that his inner self knew would lead him nowhere,
preferring the obvious signs of prejudice to the subtle ones: "metal bars
instead of mental ones."
One of the more
poetic readers was Susan Scutti whose style was reminiscent of 1970s era New
York poets who continually tried to paint a scene with words, playing against
other mediums. Her poem panning out on a wedding scene was based on a video and
presented a stark, angry, fearful vision of love, as sensual and angry as any
of the previous poets, yet with a sense of style and humor that made the anger
bearable. "Fear touched her face through the veil," she wrote, as
fear came through her words.
The most delightful
and surprising reader ended the first half of the festivities. Ophelia
Rodriquez Goldstein started in a style that seemed destined for sentimentality
and by the end of the poem turned the mood and message around into significant
statement about love and its desires. Is skin color a reason for unhappiness?
"After twenty
five years not noticed I'm brown, brown like the bark of trees, but lived in
the forest."
All in all, it was a
surprising collection of poets and writers with a promise for more after the
break. But my cinderella pumpkin called for me to leave and I left, exhilarated
by the realization that word-arts were far from dead in Hudson County. Perhaps
the gallery 111 First Street will host more combination art and poetry sessions
like these. Ahn Behrens and Rosette Capotorto said various events are planned
for the future. We shall see.
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