OK, I know it is sort of silly to write poems in shapes, like angel wings or diamond rings. I get that it has the tang of the effete, as in a goose quill humanist script penned by a hand encased in an ink-flecked flocked-velvet cuff. The words locked in the vise of a vase or crammed in a crate... but... I digress...
I can't stop.
Calligrams. Word warps. Shape shifters. Visual poems. What would you call them?
And like anything I take time with, the obvious is fading and I'm considering my rules of play with this enterprise. I won't call it "form" since the form is the shape. So what are my rules?
HOW TO WRITE A SHAPED POEM
1. Like a joke, move beyond the obvious punchlines and tame set-ups. Go ahead, write the first ideas that come to you and agree they are lame and write more. And more after that. Riff on a shape. Aim for exploring the unexpected.
2. Use meter, rhyme (both internal and slant), and pauses to make the poem read aloud as if it existed full and complete outside it's assigned shape.
3. Accept that line breaks are more arbitrary once the poem is packaged, so build suspense in other ways.
4. The "thingness" of the shape must be used to flavor the poem but not direct it.
5. After many a rewrite, give up when the foot won't naturally fit the shoe, it just won't be worth the blister.
6. Accept that only 1 in 25 shaped efforts will be worthy to move on for consideration for publication or inclusion in my as yet unnamed chapbook (soliciting title ideas from friends).
7. Consider the folly of assigning cookie cutter shapes to ideas; shrug, write more.
Saturday, March 27, 2010
Thursday, March 25, 2010
Get a grip and Flash on the Whoopi
Yesterday Flash needed an assistant to operate a mic at a live event. I am, of course, not world renowned for my skills in audio capture, but game, I am. So imagine me, dressed in black, in the elegant glass-domed Bartos auditorium, pre-show, trying to look like the grip of the century. I occasionally gave a thumbs up to the professional dude filming the event on my left. I suspect he could tell my skills weren't up to his when the mic demonically spun upside down several times and I tripped over the feet of our tripod.
This from the official press release after the event : "Live from the NYPL presented an evening to honor the publication of George Carlin's posthumous “sortabiography” Last Words (written with Tony Hendra)... an evening of warm and lively remembrances of late comedian George Carlin on Wednesday, March 24 in the Celeste Bartos Forum. Hosted by Whoopi Goldberg, the tribute featured special appearances by Carlin's family, Jerry Stiller, Anne Meara, Ben Stiller, Amy Stiller, Kevin Smith, Lewis C.K., Dylan Brody, Floyd Abrams, and Lewis Lapham." Not to mention an impressive list of performers playing the role of audience in the front rows, including Steve Martin.
Flash is Artist-in-Residence for LIVE from the New York Public Library and she draws responses to the spoken events they host, which are projected onto a screen as she does them. Later, she creates videos, a.k.a. Conversation Portraits. Last night she tried adding a new approach, by inviting audience members to step up to the mic, tell a joke, and she'd illustrate it for them and the entire audience would see the joke drawn and written in real time and projected over their heads.
Sadly only a few stepped forward to tell their jokes. But given that George Carlin was one of the funniest guys ever, and the main event, who would feel equal to adding their brand of humor as a warm up? Precious few. For those that came forward, I managed to walk them to the mic, press the record button and laugh at their jokes, usually in that order. Luckily Flash had brought a slew of Carlin jokes and illustrated them.
Dressed in her usual black and white patterns, she sat and drew madly, using pens, watercolors, and expressive moves of hand, zoom and paper to make the art of her response the main show for me. Until they ran the Carlin films. Then I was laughing so loudly the video guys will have to edit out my hoots and wheezing snorts. Flash and I laughed until we cried during a live recitation of Carlin one-liners looking at each other the way you do when it is that funny. After, we agreed Carlin was a master of language, a poet of humor, with inner rhyme and rhythm.
Great to see all the Stiller family on stage, not one of them demure. Whoopi is totally natural. Lots of cussing all around. But hey, this is for George Carlin after all. They played his 7 words bit. The lawyer who protected his right to use those words spoke, and everyone said how much he had helped them and other comedians.
Flash and assistant (me) were invited to the after party! Of course we had to pack up the pens, pencils, duct tape, brushes, cables, earphones, and papers first. When we got there, we didn't see Whoopi. I was so hoping to hear someone introduce Whoopi to Flash. "Flash meets Whoopi!" or "Whoopi meets Flash," Sounds like a vaudeville act. I may need to change my name to a verb soon. Although "Enjamb" (or would that be "N-Jam") doesn't have the same ring, does it?
As I walked in I reminded myself to respond to celebrities like real people and avoid the empty fannish things that can blurt out of my mouth and kill conversation. So over the chopped veggies I recognized performer Caroline Rhea and instead of blathering about Sabrina or The Biggest Loser, I said what I would to someone I didn't know, "Hi, I'm Claudia, what's your name?" because actually, I really didn't remember her name, just her face. We talked about the food, she loaded my plate with carrots and cucumber saying after all the years of catering it was hard for her not to serve. She introduced me to someone I didn't know, Scott Blakeman, saying his classes in improv helped launch her and Jon Stewart's careers. He was both modest and self-assured and has the ability to listen in a way that makes you feel interesting. The three of us had a lovely conversation punctuated with flashes from cameras, which I am guessing, weren't focused on me. I told them about Natalie, just finishing up at Actors Theatre of Louisville and most likely coming to NYC to pursue improv instead of Shakespeare. It is always great the way people who know, give a little start, when you tell them your daughter is in the best acting apprentice program in the country. Like saying junior got into Harvard. We talked about political humor and Scott's role as the liberal minority on Fox. I likened it to my year working at Lehman Brothers with very conservative folks that were smart, often sweethearts, even though their politics were so different than my own. I told them I was a poet and reading my poems was as close to performing as I wanted to get!
I met several editors of the Latham journal (love talking literary press talk), Ben Stiller's good-looking sister Amy, library important persons, and then I met a very very tall woman who told me she is in a tall person's club. I mentioned I was the shrimp of my family, with my 6'4" brothers and daughters of Amazon heights. You aren't short she exclaimed, you must be 5'8" or so. No, really I'm average, just under 5'6". Nooooo, no way, you must have heels on. No, no heels I assured her, I just stand tall. She peered at my sneakers with disbelief. Apparently they serve very tall cakes and record their adventures on very tall newsletters. I felt a bit like Alice in Longerland.
The whole evening was dreamlike actually. I walked Flash back to her studio and we couldn't stop laughing. She has an ability to respin the world and words, I have never heard her use a cliche, ever. We passed the windows of Lord & Taylors featuring spring frocks. "That one, only the skirt is worth wearing," she said, then to the next window "that one, only the color is good," and finally, "in that one only the window is good!"
And then I took the subway home, happy my career as a grip passed without a gripe.
This from the official press release after the event : "Live from the NYPL presented an evening to honor the publication of George Carlin's posthumous “sortabiography” Last Words (written with Tony Hendra)... an evening of warm and lively remembrances of late comedian George Carlin on Wednesday, March 24 in the Celeste Bartos Forum. Hosted by Whoopi Goldberg, the tribute featured special appearances by Carlin's family, Jerry Stiller, Anne Meara, Ben Stiller, Amy Stiller, Kevin Smith, Lewis C.K., Dylan Brody, Floyd Abrams, and Lewis Lapham." Not to mention an impressive list of performers playing the role of audience in the front rows, including Steve Martin.
Flash is Artist-in-Residence for LIVE from the New York Public Library and she draws responses to the spoken events they host, which are projected onto a screen as she does them. Later, she creates videos, a.k.a. Conversation Portraits. Last night she tried adding a new approach, by inviting audience members to step up to the mic, tell a joke, and she'd illustrate it for them and the entire audience would see the joke drawn and written in real time and projected over their heads.
Sadly only a few stepped forward to tell their jokes. But given that George Carlin was one of the funniest guys ever, and the main event, who would feel equal to adding their brand of humor as a warm up? Precious few. For those that came forward, I managed to walk them to the mic, press the record button and laugh at their jokes, usually in that order. Luckily Flash had brought a slew of Carlin jokes and illustrated them.
Dressed in her usual black and white patterns, she sat and drew madly, using pens, watercolors, and expressive moves of hand, zoom and paper to make the art of her response the main show for me. Until they ran the Carlin films. Then I was laughing so loudly the video guys will have to edit out my hoots and wheezing snorts. Flash and I laughed until we cried during a live recitation of Carlin one-liners looking at each other the way you do when it is that funny. After, we agreed Carlin was a master of language, a poet of humor, with inner rhyme and rhythm.
Great to see all the Stiller family on stage, not one of them demure. Whoopi is totally natural. Lots of cussing all around. But hey, this is for George Carlin after all. They played his 7 words bit. The lawyer who protected his right to use those words spoke, and everyone said how much he had helped them and other comedians.
Flash and assistant (me) were invited to the after party! Of course we had to pack up the pens, pencils, duct tape, brushes, cables, earphones, and papers first. When we got there, we didn't see Whoopi. I was so hoping to hear someone introduce Whoopi to Flash. "Flash meets Whoopi!" or "Whoopi meets Flash," Sounds like a vaudeville act. I may need to change my name to a verb soon. Although "Enjamb" (or would that be "N-Jam") doesn't have the same ring, does it?
As I walked in I reminded myself to respond to celebrities like real people and avoid the empty fannish things that can blurt out of my mouth and kill conversation. So over the chopped veggies I recognized performer Caroline Rhea and instead of blathering about Sabrina or The Biggest Loser, I said what I would to someone I didn't know, "Hi, I'm Claudia, what's your name?" because actually, I really didn't remember her name, just her face. We talked about the food, she loaded my plate with carrots and cucumber saying after all the years of catering it was hard for her not to serve. She introduced me to someone I didn't know, Scott Blakeman, saying his classes in improv helped launch her and Jon Stewart's careers. He was both modest and self-assured and has the ability to listen in a way that makes you feel interesting. The three of us had a lovely conversation punctuated with flashes from cameras, which I am guessing, weren't focused on me. I told them about Natalie, just finishing up at Actors Theatre of Louisville and most likely coming to NYC to pursue improv instead of Shakespeare. It is always great the way people who know, give a little start, when you tell them your daughter is in the best acting apprentice program in the country. Like saying junior got into Harvard. We talked about political humor and Scott's role as the liberal minority on Fox. I likened it to my year working at Lehman Brothers with very conservative folks that were smart, often sweethearts, even though their politics were so different than my own. I told them I was a poet and reading my poems was as close to performing as I wanted to get!
I met several editors of the Latham journal (love talking literary press talk), Ben Stiller's good-looking sister Amy, library important persons, and then I met a very very tall woman who told me she is in a tall person's club. I mentioned I was the shrimp of my family, with my 6'4" brothers and daughters of Amazon heights. You aren't short she exclaimed, you must be 5'8" or so. No, really I'm average, just under 5'6". Nooooo, no way, you must have heels on. No, no heels I assured her, I just stand tall. She peered at my sneakers with disbelief. Apparently they serve very tall cakes and record their adventures on very tall newsletters. I felt a bit like Alice in Longerland.
The whole evening was dreamlike actually. I walked Flash back to her studio and we couldn't stop laughing. She has an ability to respin the world and words, I have never heard her use a cliche, ever. We passed the windows of Lord & Taylors featuring spring frocks. "That one, only the skirt is worth wearing," she said, then to the next window "that one, only the color is good," and finally, "in that one only the window is good!"
And then I took the subway home, happy my career as a grip passed without a gripe.
Sunday, March 21, 2010
Going to the Theater in Other Languages
My favorite activity is going to the theater. (I guess that's why I'm a playwright--it just took me many years to realize that one could lead to the other.) So, naturally, when I travel, I look for opportunities to do the same. But this can be problematic when you're travelling in countries where you don't know the language. (Does this include England? Well, it did when I saw Lionel Bart's musical MAGGIE MAY - his next musical after OLIVER! - in London many years ago. All the characters spoke with a thick Liverpoolian--or, more correctly, Liverpudlian--accent. To this day, I have no idea what was going on in that show. Nor did my brother, who accompanied me.)
I recently travelled to Madrid on vacation and was excited to discover that it's is a thriving theater town, with as many theaters as New York (despite a much smaller population). I could choose from about 35 different shows at what were more or less the equivalent of Broadway theaters. Plays and musicals like Tom Stoppard's Rock 'n Roll, Chicago, God of Carnage, Agatha Christie's The Mousetrap, Calderon's The House of Bernardo Alba, a musical called 40, and so on. The only problem being that they were all in Spanish and my Spanish is less than elementary. In the end, I settled on three English-proof shows:
(1) Spamalot. I'd seen it in NY, so I figured I'd know what was going on. And I more or less did. Except that I tended to laugh out loud at the physical comedy while my fellow theatergoers responded more enthusiastically to the verbal jokes that went right over my head.
(2) Zarzuela. This is an art form unique to Spain--a cross between opera, musical comedy, and flamenco dancing. I saw Dona Francisquita. Luckily, there was an English synopsis in the playbill. Otherwise, I didn't know exactly what was going on but enjoyed the spectacle--except for the occasional scene where 60 people stood around singing and swaying. Kind of like a performance of the Ladies Light Opera Society (or whatever it was called) on I Love Lucy.
(3) Flamenco. I went to what I guess would be considered a modern neo-Flamenco show called Cambio de Tercio. Not much of a language barrier here--though there were some lyrics. Otherwise just the universal language of dance and percussion.
All of which reminds me of two other excursions into theater in other languages. In the Summer of Woodstock, I travelled around Europe with my roommate, and we saw two shows in Paris. One was a comedy called Quarante Carats--which was in fact simultaneously playing on Broadway back home as Forty Carats starring Julie Harris (later made into a movie with Liv Ullmann, Gene Kelly, and Edward Albert). Fortunately my French was pretty good at the time, so I was able to follow most of it and thoroughly enjoyed it. The other was the musicalHAIR--yes, while the original was playing on Broadway, I had to settle for the French-version in Paris (Laissez, laissez entrez le soleil - Let the Sunshine in!) Full nudity, too - but in French. And no one seemed to note that HAIR is the French verb "to hate." A show about love called hate. It was great, at any rate.
For information about my work, go to:http://williamfowkes.com/Site/HOME.html
For NEWS, go to: http://williamfowkes.com/Site/NEWS.html
For PLAYS: http://williamfowkes.com/Site/PLAYS/PLAYS.html
For FICTION: http://williamfowkes.com/Site/PLAYS/PLAYS.html
For PHOTOS: http://williamfowkes.com/Site/PHOTOS/PHOTOS.html
Take care,
William
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