The title of this post is misleading. I hate post titles anyway, though.
Some background...
I keep this notebook in my bag. It's one of those black Moleskin-type things that I bought because I had a lot of time to kill when I flew through Amsterdam, and because Euros, as everyone knows, are not real money, which is why it's ok to spend 9 Euro on a cup of coffee. Euros come out of a magical "Euro fund" not connected to any actual bank account.
Anyway, I take notes in this notebook whenever I come across something interesting, and then every so often I'll go back and try to figure out what the hell I was thinking. Here's a representative sample of things that currently appear in my notebook:
"Page 150. Is happiness boring?"
"Pradeep Kumar - Assistant Sanitary Inspector"
"HEDONIC TREADMILL"
"How long has India run a current account deficit?"
Buried in between these nuggets is this list:
-a broken arm and an iPad
-blind boys with keyboards
-a 10-year-old girl
-a sardar with a guitar
-satirist talking about the UP elections
What is this? The cast of a Salvador Dali painting? The opening of a very long and convoluted joke? No, it turns out these are the people I saw at an open mic night I went to in Delhi two months ago.
This open mic night - last Friday of every month - is a recurring event. It takes place in an open-air amphitheatre and is MC-ed by a man whom I don't know but whose disembodied voice could feature in radio commercials.
I went to the open mic night because I had romantic visions - let's call them memories - of the last time I read at an open mic night, when I was 17. I read a poem that I thought was okay and that had won a few random awards, and afterwards I got a compliment from a dude who, at the time, I kinda fancied. (As the Brits would say) So that was a 100% success, the way I measure things.
Although the circumstances were totally different this time around, I decided to give it another go. I'd heard about the open mic night from a friend, an aspiring actress who directs alternative plays. I got to the amphitheatre on time and sat in the audience, where I was promptly "befriended" by the man next to me, who didn't look a day younger than 50. The audience was mainly Indians and a few repesentative foreigners. I'd printed out two or three poems that I might want to read, and sat there nervously shuffling them as the first speaker stood up.
Let me cut to the chase: I didn't end up reading my poems that night.
There are a lot of reasons why this happened, but I think the most important is that I got caught up in listening to everyone else. They were all reading in Hindi, and most were veterans of this particular scene. I understood about 1 line in 4, but they'd cheer each other and comment appreciatively at particularly witty lines. Most of them were great presenters. They wanted to give their words the space that they deserved.
This was mostly young people in their 20s, but there were older women and men, and all the unusual people mentioned in the list up above. Two blind men got up to sing a song they had written. One of them - short, uncertain - had to be turned by a spectator in the direction of the mic. But he sang a stunning love song, and got the only standing ovation of the night. It reminded me of that famous Susan Boyle video. Why are all of us, whether we admit it or not, surprised when we encounter something beautiful in people who aren't beautiful?
Recently, I've been reading a lot of poetry, and thinking about what the word 'good' means in the context of poetry. I've bought books by Kathleen Graber, Gary Whitehead, Kim Addonizio, as well as my usual favorites: translations of Kabir and Neruda, original Walcott. Each of these people does beautiful and innovative things with language. Anyone who thinks that poetry is dead, dying or boring should read Kim's "31-Year-Old Lover," which is about as scandalous as the English language can get, at least within the shell of artistry.
The world has decided that these people are good poets.
Poetry gets a lot of flack for being obscure and pretentious, and definitely, a lot of it is. But writing a good poem is really, really hard. I don't think I've ever managed it, not once, and I've tried hundreds of times. One of the things that I've realized, or at least come to value more, is what a journalism professor told me in college: "Always keep your language simple."
I'd become obsessed, somewhere along the way, with form. I thought that "good writing" in general meant arguments welded together, sentences as complicated and looming as Jenga towers. But overly elaborate writing is rarely the mark of a confident author, at least from what I've observed.
At this point, I should tie together everything I've said into some grand observation or insight into "good poetry." Alas, I don't know what this should be. I do think, though, that what we get (as performers, as audience members) out of sharing art with others is maybe one of the most important things we have as a society. Sure, there's such a thing as literary poetry, which is enjoyable in its own right, but there's also the very real "experience of poetry" and of art. (Not that the two are mutually exclusive)
I think the reason I wanted to go to that open mic night - whether I read or not, and maybe I'll go again this Friday and work up the courage - is because I've begun to let go a bit of this need that everything I do be deemed "good" in order to be presentable. We are all of us always trying to get better, or at least, to express ourselves more perfectly, whatever that means.
----
Because I love italicized font: originally, I planned to write some other blog post. I was going to call it something horrendous like "In Defense of Poetry." Shudder.
Some background...
I keep this notebook in my bag. It's one of those black Moleskin-type things that I bought because I had a lot of time to kill when I flew through Amsterdam, and because Euros, as everyone knows, are not real money, which is why it's ok to spend 9 Euro on a cup of coffee. Euros come out of a magical "Euro fund" not connected to any actual bank account.
Anyway, I take notes in this notebook whenever I come across something interesting, and then every so often I'll go back and try to figure out what the hell I was thinking. Here's a representative sample of things that currently appear in my notebook:
"Page 150. Is happiness boring?"
"Pradeep Kumar - Assistant Sanitary Inspector"
"HEDONIC TREADMILL"
"How long has India run a current account deficit?"
Buried in between these nuggets is this list:
-a broken arm and an iPad
-blind boys with keyboards
-a 10-year-old girl
-a sardar with a guitar
-satirist talking about the UP elections
What is this? The cast of a Salvador Dali painting? The opening of a very long and convoluted joke? No, it turns out these are the people I saw at an open mic night I went to in Delhi two months ago.
This open mic night - last Friday of every month - is a recurring event. It takes place in an open-air amphitheatre and is MC-ed by a man whom I don't know but whose disembodied voice could feature in radio commercials.
I went to the open mic night because I had romantic visions - let's call them memories - of the last time I read at an open mic night, when I was 17. I read a poem that I thought was okay and that had won a few random awards, and afterwards I got a compliment from a dude who, at the time, I kinda fancied. (As the Brits would say) So that was a 100% success, the way I measure things.
Although the circumstances were totally different this time around, I decided to give it another go. I'd heard about the open mic night from a friend, an aspiring actress who directs alternative plays. I got to the amphitheatre on time and sat in the audience, where I was promptly "befriended" by the man next to me, who didn't look a day younger than 50. The audience was mainly Indians and a few repesentative foreigners. I'd printed out two or three poems that I might want to read, and sat there nervously shuffling them as the first speaker stood up.
Let me cut to the chase: I didn't end up reading my poems that night.
There are a lot of reasons why this happened, but I think the most important is that I got caught up in listening to everyone else. They were all reading in Hindi, and most were veterans of this particular scene. I understood about 1 line in 4, but they'd cheer each other and comment appreciatively at particularly witty lines. Most of them were great presenters. They wanted to give their words the space that they deserved.
This was mostly young people in their 20s, but there were older women and men, and all the unusual people mentioned in the list up above. Two blind men got up to sing a song they had written. One of them - short, uncertain - had to be turned by a spectator in the direction of the mic. But he sang a stunning love song, and got the only standing ovation of the night. It reminded me of that famous Susan Boyle video. Why are all of us, whether we admit it or not, surprised when we encounter something beautiful in people who aren't beautiful?
Recently, I've been reading a lot of poetry, and thinking about what the word 'good' means in the context of poetry. I've bought books by Kathleen Graber, Gary Whitehead, Kim Addonizio, as well as my usual favorites: translations of Kabir and Neruda, original Walcott. Each of these people does beautiful and innovative things with language. Anyone who thinks that poetry is dead, dying or boring should read Kim's "31-Year-Old Lover," which is about as scandalous as the English language can get, at least within the shell of artistry.
The world has decided that these people are good poets.
Poetry gets a lot of flack for being obscure and pretentious, and definitely, a lot of it is. But writing a good poem is really, really hard. I don't think I've ever managed it, not once, and I've tried hundreds of times. One of the things that I've realized, or at least come to value more, is what a journalism professor told me in college: "Always keep your language simple."
I'd become obsessed, somewhere along the way, with form. I thought that "good writing" in general meant arguments welded together, sentences as complicated and looming as Jenga towers. But overly elaborate writing is rarely the mark of a confident author, at least from what I've observed.
At this point, I should tie together everything I've said into some grand observation or insight into "good poetry." Alas, I don't know what this should be. I do think, though, that what we get (as performers, as audience members) out of sharing art with others is maybe one of the most important things we have as a society. Sure, there's such a thing as literary poetry, which is enjoyable in its own right, but there's also the very real "experience of poetry" and of art. (Not that the two are mutually exclusive)
I think the reason I wanted to go to that open mic night - whether I read or not, and maybe I'll go again this Friday and work up the courage - is because I've begun to let go a bit of this need that everything I do be deemed "good" in order to be presentable. We are all of us always trying to get better, or at least, to express ourselves more perfectly, whatever that means.
----
Because I love italicized font: originally, I planned to write some other blog post. I was going to call it something horrendous like "In Defense of Poetry." Shudder.
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