Published Articles
TATTLE TALE: POETRY LIVE IN NEW JERSEY
by Shotsie Gorman
Pssstt! Guess what? Poetry is not what it used to be. It still providesthat most satisfying sense of human experience when you recognize that someone else feels the same way you do about something--the sense that you,
a safe co-conspirator, are not alone in the universe after all. But it's delivering much more these days as well, and to an increasingly diverse audience. "Come on, sit a spell," the poets say, beckoning you to join
their intimate family, a close friend taken into confidence, "and let me tell you a secret." As the 13th-century poet Jalal al Din put it in "A Rubai,"
Leave the rind,
descend in to the pith.
Fold within fold, The Beloved
drowns his own being. This world
is drenched with that drowning.
We all love secrets. We want to get the skinny, the news, the inside scoop. In that way, we're voyeurs leaning in for vicarious thrills, juicy bits about our friends and neighbors. And while poetry is not gossip in the common sense, more often than not these days it offers just those kinds of thrills in emulating the confessional style of poets like Robert Lowell and those who have followed him, folks who spin tales about the Self in which Americans are so firmly entrenched. The John Harms Theater, at 30 North Van Brunt Street in Englewood, has had an ongoing poetry and prose series since 1994. Doggedly pursuing her dream to make this local arts venue a community for the "voices of literature," psychologist Dr. Joan Handler, herself an accomplished writer, has put together a comprehensive series of events--including this year's first annual Creative Writing and Fine Arts Competition for New Jersey high school students, too many poetry writing workshops to list all, and a live reading series entitled "Presenting Poetry and Prose." Reflecting on the development of this venue and the idea behind it, Dr. Handler observes, "Our vision widened. It became clear that we were committing to a community of and for artists, a home where writers could share their art, the ideas, the influences, the process, and the struggles with fellow artists and a larger audience. Based on the theory that what we know as voice in literature is actually the soul of the writer speaking, our challenge, as artists and audience, as lovers and crafters of language, is to make our way toward a place where the voice is free to speak, a center out of which we enter our dialog about all aspects of making art, creation, and craft." Among other things, Dr. Handler serves on the advisory board of the Frost Place and the Board of Governors of the Poetry Society of America.
The 1998-99 John Harms Theater schedule will introduce the collaboration between the literary series and the art gallery. You can speak to the theater for an event schedule.
At 601 Palisade Avenue in Englewood Cliffs, just up the hill from the Harms Center, you can find First Monday--a monthly literary soiree that meets from 7:15 to 9:15 on the first Monday night of every month from October to
July under the auspices of The Writing Center and Director Barry Sheinkopf. The gatherings are free of charge to all, and they provide an opportunity to listen to poets and writers read from their work (you can read from your
own, too), get "a chance to schmooze," and receive some informal feedback on your work. A published novelist and poet who once studied with W.H. Auden, Sheinkopf also writes "The Last Word" column for AYL. He founded First Monday over 15 years ago because, as he puts it, "People need poetry in their lives the way they need food and sleep, and they'll get it any way they can--if not
from poetry, than from folk singers or rock n' roll. The only difference is that we got hoodwinked, early in this century, into thinking that you had to have a Ph.D. to 'understand' poetry, so Eric Clapton is now earning the millions Byron and Tennyson once raked in. We try, here, to encourage poetry that goes to the bone."
Go to any poetry reading, though, and you too will brush up against the American Self. Often it's a presentation of unspeakable truths--suffering to ecstasy, humiliation to victory or the reverse--delivered with a pointed sense of irony. At times its brutal honesty makes you squirm in voyeuristic embarrassment. While listening to the cries for help of often emotionally wounded speakers, you are pulled along with all of your senses bristling on a journey from birth to death, or hell to heaven, in a matter of moments. More than anything else, you'll notice how poetry can, with its sense of irony and compassionate humor, provide a brisk antidote to the absurdity of daily life and an response to our own muddled cries for a good song, or a good story, to make it more bearable to take us out of ourselves into something more universal. All this cosmic traveling only takes a short trip into or away from your own county. When Lucille Clifton--a self-taught poetry powerhouse who has twice been nominated for the Pulitzer Prize and was one of 13 poets featured this year at the seventh biannual Dodge Poetry Festival, a 4-daySuper Bowl of modern poetry held just 1 hour from Bergen County at the Village of Waterloo in Stanhope--remarked, "The ear listens, the heart hears!" her observation could have served as a credo for the entire festival and, indeed, for poetry readings in general.
The opening day of the verbal fiesta was dedicated to the 4,000 high school and university students of English attending. Day Two saw some 2,000 teachers from around America coming in to discuss how to keep alive the flame of the poetry muse and the spark of teaching it. The third andfourth days brought masses of diverse new poetry enthusiasts--an estimated 14,000, including many, many younger people--to embrace the experience of hearing musical language read aloud. It's time get hip to what these youths already know: There is a vibrantly alive and electric poetry scene happening in your area. Part of what excites this younger audience is reawakened interest in the poets of the Beat Generation, whose popularity has been driven by many factors, not the least of which remains the great American pastime of nostalgia (it's always easier when you know the ending).
But a celebration of the brutal emotional honesty of the likes of Allen Ginsberg--who not only stood out as a poet but ran through this culture as a continual reflection of its own conscience--also figures heavily in the mix. Beat rebelliousness as well, the call to trust, to intuition, appeals greatly to high school and college students and encourages them to seek out venues where their own voices can be heard. At 47 Park Avenue in Rutherford--in the shadow the former home of one of our great poets, William Carlos Williams, and The Williams Arts Center--a live poetry reading series takes place on the first Sunday of every monthat The Mug and The Bean Coffee House. The cover charge is nominal, says Director John Chorazy, who wears three hats as host, poet, and editor of the semiannual Publication The Ever Dancing Muse Poetry Journal (you can get a copy by writing to P.O. Box 7751, East Rutherford, NJ, 07073).
The great Buddhist teacher Nichiren Daishonin (1222-1282) once said that, in order to achieve enlightenment, you must practice the gongyo (chanting) as if you were trying to set fire to a stone. New Jersey boasts a woman of such tenacity--Maria Mazziotti-Gillan--who has recited the poetry mantra with the same fervor and has succeeded in setting the flame and opening the path to many a poet. "Poetry has become something for everybody," she says. "Once the language became simple and more direct, like the work of Shakespeare, it reached a more popular audience. It is when poetry starts from the heart and moves to the head that it gets the passion for poetry going. The younger people have been getting more excited in large part directly as a result of the efforts of the Dodge Poetry Foundation working with teachers. The teachers didn't have to teach the more elitist style work, and they felt more in tune with modern poetry. We reacquainted teachers with what drew them to literature in the first place, and got them to begin to write poetry themselves and form their own groups. This fever is communicated to the kids when a teacher stands in front of the class with a simple and direct poem that moves them to tears or laughter instead of making them feel stupid."
Mazziotti-Gillan fuels her multicultural, multiethnic efforts from Passaic County Community College's Cultural Affairs Department, at 1 College Boulevard in Paterson, where she is the director of The Poetry Center. She and her dedicated staff set a frenzied tone, with 100 to 130 activities and events annually. These include a monthly "Distinguished Poets" reading series; many conferences drawing on major voices in the poetry world like Hayden Carruth, the late Allen Ginsberg, Amiri Baraka, and Robert Creeley;
and the Paterson Poetry Marathon, an annual event held each spring that involves week-long workshops in the public schools culminating a in a public program at the Paterson Museum on Spruce Street. As publishers, the
Cultural Affairs Department provides a "New Jersey Poetry Calendar" for members and the public that carries listings of scheduled poetry events in and around the state. In addition, they publish a beautiful, modestly priced, voluminous journal entitled The Paterson Literary Review, which includes the works of international poets and of the winners of the Allen Ginsberg Award Competition the department sponsors annually. Horizontes, a Spanish language literary magazine and reading event, is also held at the college.
Donna Spector, a skillful poet and playwright who is also published and currently has in production a play entitled Hanging Women, due to open at California State University in Hayward, is one of the gems of the New Jersey public school system. From her post as a full time English teacher in Vernon Township High School, she has set down the writings of her students for the past 10 years in a journal entitled Back Porch Review.When asked what drives young people today to poetry, she replied, "It certainly has a great deal to do with confessional poetry. They finally saw a form in which they could read living writers who were talking about their real life, modern day emotional experiences. I think they were, like many of us, writing poetry in secret, feeding that most basic need of expression." You can show your support for the needs and insights of young people, as well as dedicated teachers Like Donna Spector, by purchasing new and back issues of the journal for only $5.00 each by writing to Vernon Township High School, P.O. Box 800, Vernon, NJ 07462
"The main reason poetry readings have begun to be so popular is that they offer up the opportunity for poets to congregate and to present their work to one another," says David Messineo, publisher since 1987 of Sensations magazine (available by writing to: 2 Radio Avenue #A5, Secaucus, NJ 07094; send SASE for free calendar of events, directions, and guidelines for submission), one of our most influential local poetry journals and twice winner of the American Literary Magazine Award. "The younger, high school-aged kids have been drawn in," he adds,"primarily because of the major book chains, like Borders and Barnes & Noble, holding poetry readings where young people gather. Although it has become something of a stereotype, New Jersey's social activity is centered these days at the mall. Time is made available mostly out of the convenience of one-stop shopping, and they have the extra time to hear the poetry readings. They can get everything else they need in one place, instead of making a special trip to hear the poetry."
Messineo also hosts a reading series called "The Sensational Poets Series at Centennial Hall," with the Newark Public library, and "The Creative Events Series," which travels around the country in many venues. He says it's "the longest running traveling poetry reading series based in New Jersey, with 19 events planned for the 1999 season, and the journal is the highest paying literary magazine in America for poetry. It's in the top-30-paying fiction market, too." Offering videos and workshops as well as honest criticism of submitted work, Mr. Messineo is a virtuoso poetry entrepreneur.
Warning! Be aware you can get slammed when attending poetry readings! No,it's not the WWF move; a slam is an event at which a poet--who is indeed more likely to be 16 years old than 50 and sees language as a type of plastic to be molded to his or her needs, stands in a circle of people at a cafe or book store, library, park, even classroom, and recites a poem. Those listeners who don't like what they're hearing start to yell at the poet. If enough people do, off the stage the poet goes, and up comes the next one. Those who win the approval of the crowd at these gladiatorial encounters move on to the next round. In the end the winner is judged by level of applause, or a panel of judges. Depending on who sponsors the slam, the winning poet, or teams of poets, can receive upward of $2,000, though the mere pride of surviving the ordeal is often reward enough. Although the slam business has its roots in the counterculture of the '70s, it officially started in Chicago in the mid-'80s when Marc Smith, thinking of baseball, first applied the term to poetry events held at the Get Me High Lounge. Just this past August, a Grand Slam of Slams was held in Austin, Texas; 45 teams competed for the $2,000 grand prize, and two feature films made at it, Slam Nation and Slam, are due for release late this year. For those of us glued to the smaller screen of our computers at home, a world community of poetry is also flourishing on-line, featuring poetry competitions, conversations, classes, slams in a tame manner, and books galore. The main thing is to join the fray, as it were, and see live poetry! Under all the electronic clatter and chatter of the modern life beats a human heart that yearns for the companionship of fellow souls. This very old and
cherished idea is being hand- quilted together again by the new breed of writers and long- standing poets. Peter Tosh (the Reggae poet) once wrote, "Everybody wants heaven, but nobody wants die." These younger people are not afraid to die--at least not metaphorically--by turning the other cheek to the slap of emotional humiliation and exposing to the enemy their deepest angst. Think you're a tough one? Try standing up in front of 20 people and detailing your loves, humiliations, fears, dreams and aspirations. If you can, you too may lasso some recognition for having the courage to enter the community of life. The distinguished and widely published Teaneck NJ poet Mal Stein put it well when he wrote,
When I was a boy
I lived in the city.
There was no one to tell me what for.
No grass, no birds
to tell me what for,
just a field of stone in front of my door
now that I'm old
I still don't know
what all of the city and the stone are for.
La Dolce Vita
("THE SWEET LIFE")
First North American Serial Rights
About 1696 Words
Copyright 1996 Shotsie Gorman
The egg yolk in my dish looks so orange to me, almost bloody, I can't help but wonder how many tattoo travelers pass though this place and do not notice how rich in color it all is. I stare at it, flopped over the darkest green asparagus I have seen in a long time. The smell of aged parmesan cheese wafts through my nostrils; I am in heaven. As I eat, I consider the white of the egg is almost as pure a color as that of the tiles that cover the walls and floor of the Restaurant Diana--a stark yet warm eatery that sits midway between the tattoo expo site and the town center on the Via Independenza, the main thoroughfare and traffic filled artery that courses with the transient life of Bologna (Pronounced "Ba-lone-ya").
Lunch time in Italy starts at 1:00 PM and runs through until 3:00 PM. The Italians take their tattooing, family, friendships, and eating time very seriously, and everything closes during lunch time except the trattorias (Small informal family style restaurants) and the restorantes (Fine and expensive ones). I fill my stomach, then follow the shop lined Independenza south. It leads me to the heart and soul of Bologna--the Piazza Maggiore, saddled by the Piazza Nettuno, two large open squares that dominate the cultural life of the place. They are near a football field in size. Here people gather all day, but incredibly, on Sunday mornings I have witnessed it filled to capacity. People hug and kiss, talk of life, laugh and cry and talk some more.
Yes they talk to each other, an idea of community long since lost to America. We did at one point in history have our downtown areas where families would shop, walk, and talk of life, where politicos would converse on soap boxes and rant of government corruption and where small local tattoo shops would be open. We no longer have the human contact here. We have been emotionally nullified by the mall. That is why I think so many of us that travel to tattoo events around the globe: miss the real color.
I guess the closest thing America has to the piazza now is the internet, albeit sterilized from human physical contact. Even our major tattoo events have been increasingly distant in human terms, and less of a feeling of camaraderie exists now among the attendees than in the past. They have become, it seems, no more than a moving mall of tattoo merchandise.
That feeling of tattoo family could be rekindled for you if you attend the next Expo here in Bologna. I certainly felt it in attendance at the third annual 1995 Tattoo Expo. For three days in December people and artists converge on the Palazzzo Dei Congressi. This spanking new building of twenty years houses one of Europe's best tattoo conventions. Its interior reflective of grand '70s expectations. It has sloping white ceilings and a huge, open, and warm-toned foyer that affords a view of the whole show as you walk in. My only real complaint as a participant in the Expo is that, while the Italians have held onto more human traditions than we, they are not hip to our ideas about health. People all seem to have two cigarettes in their hands. Not much ventilation was to be had either, making the overheated working conditions a bit rough on the eyes throat and lungs. Through the billows of smoke, the mass of people flashed their pictures and talked a lot while hugging and kissing. The crowd pushed in, and filled every possible inch of space in the hall. The color of life and tattooing in Italy could be seen everywhere you looked.
Event organizer and host Marco Leoni, a well known figure for the past eleven years at American conventions, who looks suspiciously like the portrait of Caravaggio, the Venetian painter whose face dominates the front of the 100,000 Lira bill. (about $63 US) is running, the night before the event, in true entrepreneurial fashion. Buzzing around waving his hands in the air, barking Italian curses. While the floors of the Pilazzo Dei Congressi are being covered with gray felt to resist the onslaught of 8000 members of the public that cram into the show in its three-day run, the booths for the tattoo artists and exhibitors are being assembled. On the second floor, Luca, of Body Decorators Tattooing, in Bologna and his cohorts, including Gippi Rondinella, author of Mark Of Cain, from Rome, are putting together an interesting exhibition of tattooist paintings, traditional tattoo materials, and exploration photos from the South Pacific, India, and Asia.
I can sense there is plenty of excitement in the Palzzo Dei Congressi and the old town tonight for this year's Expo. Posters, the main method of youth communication in Italy, are plastered on every available space, shouting out Expo! The small town is vibrating with the coming Christmas holiday, the streets are lit up with all sorts of fanciful decorations. To be sure, before and after the Tattoo Expo, there will be a feast for the eye and plenty of things to do.
This predominantly medieval city of Bologna, was in the 13th century one of the ten largest cities in Europe. It was then called Bologna "La Dotta," the learned. Its university to this day considered to be the leading institution on European law. At the mouth of the main drag the, Via Independenza, or Street Independence, so named because of Bologna's ability to remain independent from its much wealthier and stronger neighbors, such as Florence, sits the vast open square that is the Piazza Nettuno. Just to the right of the Piazza Maggiorie, or Major Square. The physical center of the city and its activity, as it must have been in Roman times. It is now surrounded by buildings that include, at the south end a grand gothic structure called the Basilica Di San Pietro, and the palace of the notaries, including The Palzzo Bianchi, the first permanent site of the university; The Palazzo Del Podesta, with it's Medieval bell tower, and the soaring Gothic interior of the Basilica di San Pietro.
Are you looking to really understand the meaning of gothic design for your art? Well, here it is. All together they create an awe-inspiring scene. Towering in the first square, the Piazza Neptuno you can find the fountain statue that commemorates it's name. The Neptune Fountain, built and designed by a Florentine based Artist named Giambologna. Neptune is in grand scale and its base has bronze mermaids unabashedly squirting water from their breasts into the pool
below. Everywhere you look there are inspirations for new tattoo designs, the place is alive with art.
Another amazing aspect of this walking town of Bologna are the porticoes that cover every sidewalk. Arched roofs cover every path; each sidewalk is tiled and lined with shopping of every description, from the finest of shoes and leather to dazzling jewelry shops, making it pleasant even in the worst of wet weather. When you come here next year, don't miss the "Due Torri," Two Towers. Bologna has its own version of the leaning tower, except their are two and both are leaning toward each other in a potential Italian embrace. The one that was built in 1109 by the Aisinelli family is available to climb and provides a breathtaking view of the city and surrounding hills.
One thing you need not concern yourself with in Italy is food. Since the 13th century Bologna has also been called" La Grassa," or "the fat." Consider that lasagna, tortelloni, tortelline, and spaghetti la Bolognese, really ragu, or meat sauce and of course bologna (pronounced "Ba-lone-ee"), better known in Italy as mortadella, were all invented here. Bologna is considered by many in the world the gastronomic capital of Italy. Most folks don't go out to eat until after 8:00 PM so there is no need to fret when coming out of the
show at 11:00 PM. Directly opposite the congresso is the Pizza Pino a monstrous pizza and pasta joint. There will be plenty of food to choose from. I have twelve more pounds on to prove it.
Excursions to some of the greatest Italian cities are also within easy reach by train. Access to the world's greatest collections of art are less than two hours away. In fifty-
five minutes you can be in Florence and visit the Ufizzi Gallery, filled with high Renaissance art, including Botticelle's "Birth of Venus" (or "Venus on a half shell" as Americans call her). To the north in less than two hours by train lies Venice, and the gondola ride of your life.
Tattooing has exploded in here the past ten years since Gorgio Ursini organized the first tattoo exhibition in Rome. As a result there are tattoo shops in every major city in Italy. All of the artists are happy to meet and share ideas with foreign travelers. Lest we forget where Machiavelli was born and think the tattoo community here is in some fairy tale place, let's say it is not without its color wars. There is a contentious international school of tattooing just getting started in Florence. With good reason, this is causing a major rift in the tattoo scene. Perhaps the time is right for an APT extension in Europe. Certainly tattooing cannot continue to be unorganized in the world and flourish.
My advice is don't miss Tattoo Expo next year. And while you are in between the tattoo expo events, look up from your plate of eggs and see the beauty and grace of Italy. There is an old saying: "Every artist steals his ideas, but the sign of a great artist is whom he steals from." Here you can steal from the best.
The End