Guest Review - Lix and Kix @ the 806

Guest Reviewer
Christina Brooks aka Rune Warrior

Lix and Kix at the 806

I had the fun opportunity
of attending the “Lix and Kix” Poetry Reading on January 20th, 2009. The event is hosted by Poets Dianne Borsenik and her partner John “Jesus Crisis” Burroughs. It’s held every third Tuesday evening at the 806 Wine and Martini Bar in Tremont.

This was the fourth monthly installment of the Lix and Kix program, the first trial run occurred in October of last year, followed happily by a regular booking of the event into a regular poetry venue. They now have upcoming features scheduled thru June of 2009.

This was my second time to the Lix & Kix venue in Tremont. And I can say honestly it was a blast.

The 806 is not a large venue but it makes up for that in style and attitude. The art deco furnishings give the spot a very upscale feel and the wonderful selection of beverages keep the poets lubricated and content. John and Dianne’s hosting give it some amp and spunk. They run a very relaxed venue that is welcoming to the “virgin” poet, the savvy street poet and academic. My first visit in December and the second one this past week, were both very enjoyable.

The two featured readers this month were Elise Bonza Geither and C. Allen Rearick. Elise read several short poems, a short story selection titled “Through the Wood of the Door”, and also an excerpt of dialogue from an as yet untitled play. C. Allen Rearick shared several pieces from his poetry book, “Through These Eyes”. His piece,”Sizing up the Situation”, which I’ve heard him read before, brought gales of laughter, loosening up the crowd. I liked the contrast in the featured readers chosen and the material they presented. Elise’s material being touching and dramatic; C. Allen’s being both funny and personally poignant. Their performances were a yin-yang of one another as was Dianne and John’s hosting, a pleasant contrast and interplay of material. After the featured readers there was a rousing and sometimes wild open mic with more than ten participants from Cleveland and beyond which included a piece by a singer, Jodi Dobos, who shared a Joni Mitchell song.

The evening’s festivities were punctuated with offerings of music and poetry by John and Dianne. John singing three songs, one originally written by himself for a play that was performed at the Marion Correction Facility, and some poetry both original and by others. Dianne sharing a few pieces including a “colorful and bawdy” new villanelle she’d written.

I can say that the evening started on time and flowed smoothly even though things were very relaxed. Everyone felt comfortable getting up and sharing their offerings, and appeared to be having an awful fun time listening to poetry and making new friends.

I think the only thing I can honestly criticize is there is not enough seating in the 806 to accommodate everyone that was there or would want to be there. The place was packed with people seated even on the floor. Considering this is only the fourth month since their inception this will be a continuing problem. Many Cleveland poets haven’t even been to the 806 yet. I can imagine once they discover it, it will become a fixture in the poetry community just like the Lit Café, and Mac’s Backs, etc. Things can only get better as John and Dianne groove their niche there at the 806. So I recommend you go down any third Tuesday, check it out, and maybe bring a chair, because, between the drinks and the crowd you will need one. Things can only get better and better at Lix & Kix.

The Lix and Kix events postings can be found at:

CrisiChronicles Blog: https://www.crisischronicles.com/

And their Lix & Kix MySpace page

The 806 Wine and Martine bar is at 806 Literary Rd., Tremont. The program starts at 7:00 pm.

Christina Brooks

Etymology recapitulates phylogeny

Guest blogger Terry Provost says:

The proverbial “they”

call it the “etymological fallacy”, casting the truth as a falsehood before it even gets out of the starting-gate.

The idea is simple enough: the original meaning (temporally original) of a word is its correct meaning.

Taken to an extreme and deprived of pluralistic context, the “fallacy” is indeed a prescription for “mind forged manacles”, a prescription for prescriptive linguistics itself: but the world is always already the sum of all its meanings; we grasp a “meta-meaning” by including the historical process of its evolution in our understanding of its use, and this deepens and enriches our deployment of, and participation in the language.

All this by way of an introduction to an etymology that has intrigued, guided, and directed me for some time now: the idea that the word “poetry” comes from a Greek word meaning “to make”.

Arthur C. Danto, the historian and philosopher of art, has made much of how Andy Warhol’s “Brillo Box” collapsed the question of “what is art” into a single art-transcending instantiation.

I know of no equivalent poem, but certainly the question “but is it poetry” has never been far from the modern poet (“tennis without the net”.)

You will perhaps begin to sense my enchantment when you reflect that the Latin equivalent to the Greek “poem, is “fact”. That is, the legacy of the Roman word for “to make” is, in English, a “fact”. A Greek poem is a Roman fact.

Very… poetic.

The remnants of this legacy are palpable. “Manufacture”. “Factory.” The etymology of the word “manufacture” preserving as it does the Latin root for “hand”; to manufacture being “to make by hand.”

My how things change.

As a digression I can’t help but note how the words “manacles” (mind-forged or otherwise), “emancipation”, and “manumission” are allied.

If you share my fascination, perhaps you will wonder at how a “factory” would correspond with a Greek poem. As a first approximation, consider an MFA program in poetry.

Although I am skipping around quite a bit, and concentrating on the word “poetry”, I would like to make clear that the methodology I am using, the “etymological fallacy”, is quite general. It is also authoritative. Beyond this, it is scientific, both evolutionary, and ecological.

Without dwelling on it, recall the old evolutionary tongue-twister “ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny”, the answer as to why, according to whichever evolutionary authority you choose, Charles Darwin to Sarah Palin, people have gills as embryos? At the end of the day, any evolutionary process will select genes that preserve pre-existing ecological functions, since it is relative to these “functions” that competition will be defined. Now observe that that evolutionary origin of language (in the sense of natural history) had to preserve whatever ecological function predated it. Not only this, but every subsequent linguistic “improvement” has therefore been a successful evolutionary adaptation.

OK, so even I can barely understand what I’m saying. It’s just that the idea of a poem as a fact, and a fact as a poem just kind of hits me over the head and sends black tarantulas down my spine.

The bigger picture is that language has an evolutionary and ecological function, and by studying language, we are studying natural history.

Thus, poetry is an act of making, and anything made is a poem.

In this context it is worth recalling that there is both an orthographic and semantic echo of this sense of poetry as making, in the words “hemopoiesis” (the making of blood), and “onomatopoeia” (the making of words from related sounds.) “Off-shore, by islands hidden in the blood/ jewels and miracles…”

It is possible to debate whether this or that is a “good” poem, but that will depend on the etymology of good (it is useful in this regard to meditate on the etymology of the word “etymology”), but it is not possible to debate whether anything “made” is a poem. In this sense, we possess an objective measure of whether or not something is a poem.

In a post-logical reality however, it is possible for something both to be, and not be a poem. What is or is not a poem to me may not be or be to you in the same way or others.

What then does a poem make?

Like the New York Times, it may make little more than a wonderful liner for collecting droppings in a bird cage.

Things are called poems most often when they make rhyme, when they make new language, or, and this is related, when they make, believe.

A poem is what makes, believe.

Review

GuestGuest blogger J.E. Stanley

weighs in on our very own Joshua Gage’s “breaths”.

“breaths”
by Joshua Gage
Cover Photo by Rosann Gage; Cover Design by Heidi Della Pesca
(vanZeno Press, www.vanzenopress.com)

In “breaths,”

Joshua Gage shows his respect for traditional haiku yet manages to transcend that tradition by infusing his work with a modern, urban sensibility. Nature and neon, snowfall and cigarette ash exist side by side in this unflinching look at present-day life.

Modern haiku writers strive to place their images and ideas into profound juxtapositions such that the poem implies more and, in fact, becomes more than the sum of its parts. Gage is one of only a very few with the ability to do this exceptionally well. Consider the following excerpt:

our son in Iraq
wasps build a nest
in the mailbox

The depth of the book is further enhanced by the inclusion of recurring themes and images viewed from differing perspectives. Love and sensuality, the moon, the lake (Erie in this case, although not specifically named), the uneasy merging of civilization and the wild are woven throughout and viewed from fresh angles in the same way filmmaker might add depth by shooting his scenes from alternate points of view.

“breaths” is filled with original images but also permeated with moments to which nearly everyone can relate. Consider “the sound of rush hour / a deer grazes / in my front yard” for example.

This is an essential book of keen insights that reveals additional layers with each rereading and it comes very highly recommended.

Reviewed by J.E. Stanley.

Guest Blogger John Burroughs

Saturday 22 November,

Bree

I had the privilege and pleasure of attending a benefit for the Sudanese Lost Boys of Cleveland at The Lit. I suspect anyone who reads this blog regularly knows a bit about the Lost Boys and why this is an important cause, so I won't go into that here. But if you don't, you should, and I encourage you to check out their website at www.sudlbc.com for more information.

Not lost anymore?

Being a relative newbie to the Cleveland arts scene after decades of writing primarily for the boxes in my attic (and living in Elyria and Marion), I didn't know most of the folks in attendance. But I did know the work of the poets who were slated to read, and even without the good cause to support, I was happy to brave the elements and drive 45 minutes each way to see and hear them. Bree of Green Panda Press not only did a fantastic job of putting this event together, she also read poetry and sent chills up my spine with her haunting rendition of Bob Dylan's "Masters of War."

Silent auction
Michael Salinger served as the evening's emcee. He almost effortlessly kept things moving at the perfect pace, while sharing some fine African poetry and sprinkling in some of his own work. I was particularly moved by a Sara Holbrook piece he read. Other featured poets included several of my favorites from Cleveland (or anywhere): Phil Metres, T.M. Göttl, Elise Geither, Ray McNiece, C. Allen Rearick, and Mary O'Malley. And as Salinger joked, how often do you see poets pay to read? Each was sponsored by a local business or organization that believes in "thinking globally and acting locally."

Elise Geither
But lest you think the night was all poetry, there was also a silent auction featuring work by some fantastic local artists including Jim Lang, George Fitzpatrick, Tom Kryss, js makkos, and Bree. Whole Foods Market provided some delectable yum yums for our tum tums. And there were plenty of cool, kind people to meet. The place was packed. And though I kept seeing Lit executive director Judith Mansour-Thomas and others coming in with more chairs, I believe they eventually ran out. But it's always encouraging to see folks willing to stand up for good poetry and a good cause. And according to a message Bree posted on the ClevelandPoetics Yahoo listserve, this event raised $1973 for the Sudanese Lost Boys of Cleveland!

C. Allen Rearick
Here are a few (more) random photos I took that night:

Ray Mcniece
Vertigo Xi'an Xavier
Mary OMalley
T.M. Göttl
Michael Salinger
Suzanne DeGaetano
Steve Thomas
Judith Mansour-Thomas
Claire McMahon and Philip Metres

Jesus Crisis and Dianne Borsenik
I applaud everyone who played any role whatsoever in making this event a success! I encourage anyone who hasn't already to please visit the Lost Boys' website to find out more. Click here to learn about other ways you can help. And thank you for allowing me to play a very small part by writing this blog.

Peace and poetry,
John "Jesus Crisis" Burroughs

Guest Blogger: T.M. Gottl

Poem Without Meaning

My future sister-in-law told me that her writing professor assigned her class to "write a poem that has no meaning." I thought that assignment sounded more like a philosophical debate for a lit theory class than a writing assignment.

Before someone could even start writing such an impossible assignment, he'd need to define "meaning." Does he just not want his students to try to write a metaphoric poem? Does he want a poem that's completely literal with none of those hidden layers of meaning? Or does he just want random words written on the page in such an order that they won't make sense? My initial reaction was to tell her to turn in a blank sheet of paper. After all, by writing any words on the page, wouldn't she be giving meaning to something? The words on the page are indicators pointing to other ideas, objects, and abstract concepts, thereby imbued with meaning. Writing anything at all would end up meaning something, even if that something didn't happen to be terribly insightful or poignant.

I don't think writing a poem without meaning can be done. And if someone claims to have written one, I don't think it could really be a poem.

Personally, I love playing the game called "What does that mean?" My favorite responses to that question are, "I don't know," and "What do you think it means?"

Is that fair? Probably not.
But is it true? I think so.

Without trying to delve into too much more lit theory, I think the readers' interaction and the meaning that they give to a piece matter more than anything I ever intended while writing it. From that point of view, an author could never write a poem without meaning unless no one ever read it.

I might be a bad poet for admitting this, but I often write without intent. I don't frequently plan where the poem will begin and end ahead of time, and often I write my best work in that way. Yes, there's always an editing and revision process, but even so, the finished product won't always "make sense" to me. But then I will read that piece at an open mic or a show, and someone will explain how he or she connected to the poem in a way that I never understood before.

To whom should the poem have no meaning? The author or the reader? Maybe this is a better question to be asking.

Since a professor probably won't tolerate the student who will hand in a blank sheet of paper (or the student who will write a poem without turning it in, thereby depriving it of its meaning), it almost sounds like he's instructing his students to purposely write bad poems.

I want to give this professor the benefit of the doubt and hope that he only wanted to make a point, using this as an exercise to illustrate certain theory concepts. But even so, I think that's a poor way of making a point.

In an art form so dedicated to the use of precise language, to ensuring that every word, punctuation mark, and line break means something and contributes to the piece as a whole, why would anyone purposely instruct his students to write something "meaningless"?

T.M. Göttl is a winner in the poetry category for the 2007 Wayne College Regional Writing Awards. The 2002-2003 edition of the literary magazine, The Mill, published some of her work, and she has performed at readings such as Wayne College’s Annual Poetry, Prose, and Acoustical Jam, the Erewhon Poetry Society, Deep Cleveland Poetry, and Gallery 324.