Performance Poetry

[poliphilo]

I write book reviews. It's a painful business. I don't like hurting people, but how can I avoid it when so much of what passes under my nose is so dreadfully bad?

The book I reviewed yesterday, for example- a book of performance poetry: it should never have been published. Performance poetry is a branch of stand-up. Take it off the stage and it's like a fish on a slab, all the wiggle gone out of it. Would you put Frankie Howerd's monologues in a book? Well, would you? I jolly well hope not.

I'm trying not to be scornful, but as a print poet, one who writes for the page, it niggles me that you can make a reputation on the back of such limp stuff. I understand that performance poetry can't be complex, that it has to be fully comprehensible at a first hearing, but, even so, I'm surprised at the low-level of verbal invention, the banality, the lack of technique.

But I guess it's the way they tell them.

Which reminds me, Cyril Fletcher died a couple of days back. They didn't call 'em performance poets in his day, but that's essentially what he was. British readers may remember him as the chap who sat in an armchair and recited "odd odes" on Esther Rantzen's TV show. The odd odes were pretty naff- coarser, clumsier versions of Hillaire Belloc's Cautionary Tales- but Cyril's delivery just about made them work. He had a slight squint and a plummy voice and he wore a velvet smoking jacket (green I think it was.) He was quite old even then and the rest of the cast treated him as a beloved great uncle- a link to an earlier era of entertainment.

Dare I say I didn't like him? Yes I dare. I squirmed at the way he caricatured my profession. Green velvet smoking jacket indeed!

At least these days we no longer think of poets as effete wimps. And I'll concede that we've got the performance people to thank. Today a poet is a person with a cigarette (or spliff) in one hand and a pint in the other who holds forth to raucous audiences in pubs. The verse in the book I reviewed isn't literature, but it's chippy and sparky and it deals with topics of real interest, like race and politics and war. It's my (getting to be hackneyed) complaint about print poetry that so much of it is so dully middle-class- all about my lovely garden and the churches I visited in Spain last summer. Performance poets would have things thrown at them if they served up that tepid, suburban stuff.

Which brings things full circle, I guess- because that's how poetry got started. The first poets were popular entertainers who went from town to town with epics in their heads. Have harp, will travel. Homer was a Performance poet.

So, OK guys, you've got the cred back. Now how about learning some craft?

Comments

[jackiejj.livejournal.com]

Performance poetry is an unknown to me, so this was most interesting.

When I was searching for library books for my visiting grandchildren, I came across a fine book of poetry for two voices. What a great idea--two children read at the same time from the page from two side-by-side poems. Here's a sample from the book, Joyful Noise: Poems for Two Voices, which is a Newberry winner. You can see how one child would pause in the space while the other child would fill in.

We tried it. Even with two adult voices, it's musical and charming, and the singled out lines become very important.

When you were growing up, did you ever do choral readings? They can be very stirring. A thrilling way to discover the rhythm of a fine poem.

[morrison-maiden.livejournal.com]

Hmmm. When I think of performance poetry, I think of that HBO program called Def Poetry (or some such name), which I never really liked. Sometimes it just seems forced, the voicing and harshness of the readings. I hate reading my poems aloud because I feel like something is lost when I start to recite it...I guess I just think that it's stronger in written form, where the reader can interpret it whichever way s/he chooses.

[hepo.livejournal.com]

I often pop into Waterstones and pick up a 'Top Ten' best seller, read the first few pages, toss it back. I'm so annoyed at the dribbley mush that purports to be dynamic, the here and now, writing. Bull S++t!

Poetry you say! I adore poetry. Try and pen it myself. But thank heavens I understand that poetry may take several minutes to write but a lifetime to master. So don't publish before you've lived.

I remember Cyril Fletcher. A wonderful orator. So what colour is YOUR smoking jacket?

According to statistics [Waterstones] only one in ten thousand reads poetry, and worse still, only one in one hundred thousand purchases it. I like those figures, being a reader, writer, buyer, kinda makes me an elite. In America every man and his hound writes poetry, has published, has vanity problem, has bonfire with unsold copies.

So you go ahead and hammer the book. There's far to much rubbish out there. Here's some useful phrases [and I do jest in my comments]:

'Couldn't put it down' -- 'Shakespeare! Eat yer heart out!' -- 'Very nice.' -- 'Lovely poems.' --

Poets so hate sarcasm or words that are non descriptive.

Yours

HePo