February 13, 2010
Jenny Noa
Peggy Dobreer
The Guinea Hen - go ahead and click, she'll get bigger and look down on you.
Well, I wondered how long it would take for the guinea hen to reach a comfort level with poetry readings and feel it was safe to attend one. I got my answer, during the 5th event, on Saturday the 13th of February, she waltzed in through the doors and right up to Peggy Dobreer during her reading and introduced herself. It was not subtle. And, trust me, the guinea was not the only one cackling. But Peggy is not a neophyte and not one to be upstaged! It takes a professional to read here and that she is. She brought her brand new chapbook and I have to tell you that it is so beautiful, I was duly impressed. I will find out from her where to get it and post it here. It’s called “Little Captures” and I just love every word of it. When I read it, I feel like I’m in it.
I do plan to tell you more about the readings, but I want to type some observations about the boisterous audience here, the regulars. There are many people I’ve spoken with and invited to these events who just will not attend, no matter how much they care for us as friends or family. Mostly I hear things like “I hate poetry”, or “I don’t understand poetry” or even “poetry’s not my bag, man”. A couple of brave souls have admitted to just not understanding poetry and feeling intimidated by it, or the fear of looking stupid. Of the people who do come, there are only a few who have any real familiarity with poetry and if any of them write poems, they’re doing it in secret. I appreciate our guests so much because almost all of them have overcome some form of prejudice or fear of the unknown in order to participate. And they keep coming back!
I’ve thought about that a lot, these open-minded, adventurous souls who come here to laugh or gasp, and learn. Some might come for the brownies or Jenny’s Beer Bread, but from the rapt attention the artists receive and the comments afterward, I really think that the credit goes to the artists who usually drive across a sprawling city to get here. The vast majority of them are educators either by profession or nature and all of them are passionate about their work. The sort of passion that is contagious and exciting.
The Q & A that takes place at the end has become integral, it’s not only fun, and usually hysterical, but enlightening, we always learn something, not just about the artist as a person, but also about their craft, whether it’s poetry, acting, dancing, essay writing, building fine furniture, making music, guitars, comedy.
So, I would like to say to anyone who has considered attending but feels like they might not fit in or belong; you should be here! I’ve never seen such a diverse crowd of people in one smallish room. No one fits in or belongs, but everyone does.
Get this… Peggy wrote a poem for me! And she started her reading with it. Want to see it? OK.
Poema for Joanne Q. Baines
Auntie had the whole idea summed up. It would be
her next project. She would write instructions
on colored index cards. No. She wouldn’t, she would
commit them to memory, one by one, so no one
could snatch her plan. She would serve coffee
and Crispy Cremes; devil’s food variety, glazed.
The sugar would make everyone giddy, then she
would lower the boom, insist on utter compliance,
show any misguided naysayers politely to the door.
I am so honored by this that I cannot help telling everyone all about it, the checkout girl at the market knows and is just sick of hearing about it.
Now, if you show up late, like towards the end of Peggy’s reading, and I haven’t seen you in 20 years or so, there’s a good chance that I will jump up and scream out your name and draw everyone’s attention to you. I was not aware that I would react like that, I would have liked to have thought that I’d show a little more grace, but none of us knows what we’ll do in such a situation until it happens. Poor Forrest. He recovered quickly though and Peggy and Jenny only heckled him a little bit. Funny turnaround, that, the performers heckling the audience, but I’ll have to admit that when his phone rang during Jenny’s reading, he kind of deserved it. He wasn’t aware of the shenanigans we’ve had with Dexter and the Guinea Hen, didn’t realize that a puny little ring tone was nothing compared to the animal distractions. Hopefully, once he learned of that, he didn’t feel too badly about it.
Jenny read five essays AND brought beer bread! All 5 essays are on YouTube but I’ll post one here too. It’s hard to decide which one, I love all of her work so much. I give, I’ll admit a partiality to this one because it was the first piece that I saw her do…
Do you see what I mean? I still laugh so hard that my eyes are all watery as I type this. I can’t recommend the other videos enough, they’re all funny. You can hear the guinea kicking up a fuss in “Resolutionary Road” because we were laughing too loudly and she was trying to go to bed.
Guess who won the raffle? That’s right, it was Forrest! He won a copy of Peggy’s book and she signed it for him. Terri won a copy of “Rattle” and Peggy won the flower arrangement that John Simola made and donated, again!
Brendan Constantine at RED(D)RESS at Beyond Baroque
On Saturday the 13th of this month Brendan Constantine will be here. If you’re reading this, I’m guessing that you know me, and if you know me, you’ve heard me singing the praises of Brendan and his book “Letters to Guns”. Brendan is phenomenally talented, charming, charismatic and I’ve never seen anyone support the poetry community, or any community, as energetically and passionately as he does. He seems to somehow defy physics in the amount that he does. His new series, RED(D)RESS, at Beyond Baroque in Venice had it’s debut a couple of weeks ago and was a smashing success. You can get more information on that here.
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