Port Veritas

the great diction of nick fox

noreply@blogger.com (veritas2) — Thu, 11 Jun 2009 01:51:00 +0000

Last night we had the last slam we will have that is an actual slam before the big and all important national slam competition. This next month we will indeed have a slam but it will be a song slam that features the competitors performing their favorite tunes in spoken word form so that really can't too well prepare you for the demands of nationals. A bunch of important things transpired last night in the immense build up to nationals.

The members of the portland slam team are going through the frantic process of looking over everything they have with a fine tooth comb and deciding if they like it, love it, or will fight to make it work. A few of them decided to slam and test the material they had. It's a good deal better then testing out an anti-catholic piece in an all catholic area(as a hypothetical example).

Nick Fox came up to feature and we were very pleased to have him, I hadn't heard of him until Wil came back from Nationals last year and had met him and come back wide eyed and inspired. He would relay to me the functional practical and poetic advice that had been given to him in all kinds of situations each time referring back to the wise Nick Fox. By the time he came I had in my mind that this was Yoda I was meeting. Nick turned out to be a tall buy in a goofy hat who is soft spoken and savagely intelligent.

Nick has perfect execution. Amazing diction and his words are so powerful he doesn't need elaborate hand motions or funny dances he can just say it and you'll listen. The people their listened and gave a standing ovation for the first time in the history of our organization. We've managed to bring in some unbelivable folks but none of them had gotten a standing ovation, it was the process of getting to know his humor, and then his seriousness and heart and then learning all over again until you really liked him. I was already standing.

I hope the Slam team took it in the same way the audience did, sometimes its better to just be a reader, a viewer, a listener and later on once you've absorbed everything and your face to face with a blank pad of paper...be an artist again.

I do not support local artists

noreply@blogger.com (veritas2) — Thu, 28 May 2009 01:42:00 +0000

I support artists. I don't care what region you are from and just because I know you or met you in Seven Eleven and know that you rap/paint/write poetry doesn't mean a thing to me. I don't begrudge artists who are jerks, turds, or layabouts as long as your content is there. If you missed it there was a four elements hip hop show to sponsor our 2009 slam team put on this Tuesday and all of the artists were great. Grant Street Orchestra whom i had never seen before really were very impressive getting the crowd pumped up and playing flawlessly. Its hard to have that many people on stage and have it all make sense. A-Frame gets better everytime I see him perform but the focus for me was on Ill by Instinct.

He just put out a new album this month called Maiden Voyage and although Portland does have a strong hip hop scene sometimes it feels like a collective of talented battle rappers impressing each other and occassionally opening for important acts when they come through. Ill by Instinct dropped a REAL SOLID and well produced album the best I may have heard to come from a Portland MC.

Last night he showed up and gave a fantastic performance taking the stage with masterful control but deferring it to his DJ and to his crew to get their time in as well. It was amazing to see a guy who I used to slam against, who we all thought had talent but never knew how much, fully realize his skills and talent himself. Maiden voyage is an album that see's him doing what he's comfortable doing like battling(Feeding the engines track 6) but showing humor(Chastity Belt track 11) and changing the tempo from a dark beginning where he illustrates one man's problems fitting into a whole world of troubles to the latter part of the album that hums, sings and dances in mock celebration of the flaws we gather.

I'm not all pumped up on Ill by Instinct because I saw pieces of his maturation over time. I'm pumped because I spent $10 on an album I will be listening too for a long time and I found an artist who can make more and they might be better.

---------GO TO AMAZON.COM and buy the album via MP3 or find it locally

God has no genitals

noreply@blogger.com (veritas2) — Fri, 15 May 2009 00:15:00 +0000

Nate is going to kill me for this one. I had a different blog planned but I scrapped it, firstly, I have to appologize to anyone who reads this nutty thing I have been lacking in my blog posts and I am catching up TONIGHT!!

I run into a lot of weird people and our society has an amazing fascination with gender, when I was a kid we were a misogynistic group set on making women feel bad about their bodies but somewhere along the line the same group of marketing minds decided limiting this guilt education to women was cutting their demographic potential in half. Now we are just a society of awkward celebrity swimsuit pictures with funny captions on the bottom. This filters through the magazines to E! News network to the little guy. Those are my friends the little guys and sometimes they ask weird questions like what if god was a woman?

WAIT...you were assuming god was a man all this time? You seriously pictured god as a big almighty Lou Ferrigno stark naked just dangling for all to see. How big was God's penis in your estimation? Now that you made god a woman how big is her vagina? When I die can I get a job as one of god's vagina janitors?

These are the questions I think about. What the hell would god use a penis for? I thought genitals were created for reproduction, who is god going to reproduce with? The question has its grounds in that pseudo-intellectual what if god was one of us arguments about taking an all powerful being and turning him into someone you could drink a beer with or go to baby gap with.
I am not someone who has god all sewn up in my mind as a certainty or even as fiction but the religious people I admire spend more time begging the advice and less time finding out the details of gods junk.

Look at me!!!!!

noreply@blogger.com (veritas2) — Thu, 14 May 2009 23:51:00 +0000

Everything I have learned in my short time working with poets in the realm of Slam can be summed up in the title. If you haven't heard this slam piece you need too, don't look it up and read it you need to have it performed for you. Its the like folklore that lives through the stories enthusiastic parents tell to their children, every slam poet that reads it on any stage pulls heads towards him and for the first time it clicks what we do here.

The goal of slam is direct dialogue with the audience. Poetry like everything else is cut into sub genre's of people who do the same thing but think they are so different they wouldn't spit on each other to put out the fire. Academic poetry is what we call it. I would like to call it something else, calling any poetry outside of slam academic poetry makes it sound like Slam poets dislike the education system at large and this is not true. The argument we would have is against the overstructuring of poetry, the restriction that exists in adhering to thousand or two thousand year old formats. Slam poetry is more popular then Formal poetry(like my new term?) and it should be, its less convoluted and you can begrudge the simplicity and ease of not having a format if you want too but it reaches more people.

Lenny Bruce understood that there are certain things you can say on stage that the audience can't ignore. Swears. Jarring imagery and volume or lack of volume. If you can gauge what the audience thinks is normal and then do the opposite you will have them interested. This is the complication of simplicity because one you LOOK AT ME I have to say something important.

bad poetry

noreply@blogger.com (veritas2) — Sat, 02 May 2009 13:04:00 +0000

The dumbest idea associated with poetry is that somehow the very existence of poetry and it being makes it somehow beyond the concept of good and bad. Sometimes this happens with art where a guy walks in and throws a bunch of paint at a canvas and claims its art and for a minute everyone scratches their heads until one free thinking common sense pioneer says "Sure its art its just not good."

The idea that there is no bad poetry is tragic in the sense that if there is no bad poetry there can be no good since having nothing but "good" poetry would destroy the terms distinction. In the nature of full disclosure a lot of people i have heard say there is no bad poetry write nothing but what most consider bad poetry and fear being labeled appropriately.

I want to give a few broad components of what poetry really stinks so that I won't leave people thinking that i'm just on here vaguely maintaining that some poets suck. The most widespread problem is the fault of factuality, a poems basis has to be true if an audience is going to listen and accept it especially read from the stage. If you are reading a poem about your love for someone else the audience will accept it but if I was to read a poem about how Arby's sauce gives me superhuman strength and people should fear me I would be dismissed. Not saying that most poems fail due to false Arby's sauce statements but this holds true for people maintaining facts no one else has. If you begin your poem by telling me that JFK was killed by French Mafia assasins hired by the government I can't help but wonder why no one else but you knew that. It's hard to think about a need for factuality in poetry since most of us think of it as allowing us complete fictional creative control but your audience inhibits that with expectations especially in slam which was founded to combat overly sophisticated none sense poetry.

Second, a poem can be too aware of itself. You can track at times when someone is dropping imagery into verse not to bolster a point or the theme of the piece but for the charm of the imagery. Indeed some poems are taken over completely by the potency of constructed contrast in images made with no point at all but to work words in a pretty way. That is bad poetry. I don't care what anyone thinks poetry and literature in any form is supposed to be a heightened form of human communication and the bottom line is what are you communicating? Flowers are beautiful? Blood is weird? Molotov Cocktails? If you don't connect it you should work on it or walk away from it.

if your better at sex then poetry your not working hard enough on your poetry

noreply@blogger.com (veritas2) — Sat, 25 Apr 2009 01:13:00 +0000

So the big showdown went down and we had the most diverse group of nuts judging since Michael Keaton and his friends broke out of the nuthouse to experiance life(the movie Dream Team) I didnt agree with a lot of stuff but Tina Smith did a new piece which I thought was going to end up biting her in the ass. Doing a new piece at a big event can make you choke on it but she delivered and people loved it, it was a superb piece.

I don't know if anyone had as much guts as Jazzy who literally guts herself on stage night after night pushing her performance further and further. Jazzy does not inspire me to write she scares me away from ever wanting to be up there, how could i match that energy? The cool part is she is still developing and I can't wait to hear her stuff years from now as she explores new content.

Sam Tietel I felt got robbed I love everything he does and sometimes I feel like the audience doesn't attend his words enough. A lot of his stuff is jarring and uncomfortable but to not score him highly enough because of that is running from the simple fact that life is full of uncomfortable shit you have to deal with. Anyway he still got a spot on the team.

Nate was Nate and if I brag about how good he is too much more i'm going to start to feel like Alicia Silverstone from The Crush chasing after the dude from the princess bride.

Wil made a concious choice as all the poets who came up started speaking louder and louder and signifying to get everyone's attention he pulled himself in and whispered to them. The motion worked and it was like a secret that everyone wanted to hear all of a sudden. He took it to the house and came back with a 29.8 which is .2 away from a perfect score.

Sean chocked by the way, no pleasant way to say it. Did exactly what I tell everyone not to do, started (a new piece) and then when he lost his place walked off stage. In the second round he left 59 seconds into his big blockbuster father piece. I was unhappy about it VERY unhappy and a lot of people were especially after his first round heroics but the kid sure did provide a lot of drama through this thing and he is such a complex character that the riddle of Sean might be fun to think about but have no answer. I thank him for giving us his incredible work and I can't make fun of him for screwing up in the second round, some of us didn't even make it there.

To those who made it congratulations, now the preparation begins.

hot and heavy

noreply@blogger.com (veritas2) — Tue, 14 Apr 2009 20:18:00 +0000

That is most likely the weather that the selected five people who win tonight will suffer through August 4th-8th in West Palm Beach Florida when they compete nationally in the SUMMERSLAM OF POETRY JAM'S!!! I just made that up but i am not copyrighting it if they are interested in using it. The final 8 are an impressive bunch with Wil leading the way followed by the New Hampshire Hammerhead Sam, Ripcord Ryan and Natradamus amadon. I didn't give Wil a nickname because honestly....isn't that just what he wants another freakin' nickname i say NO MORE!

Sean made the bravest comeback since comic book movies became popular again (YEAH!) and the number nine person(me) was .3 away from making it to #8 which just means YOU SHOULD HAVE BEEN THERE it was awesome. You should be at the north star cafe tonight around 7 just to give yourself time to get amped up for the big joust. Poets poking each other with words, it will be a sight and the top four are on the team while the 5th gets to be the alternate.

I will be doing the duties as host and I can't tell you how nervous these guys are tonight it is everything they worked for and worked VERY hard for and they are putting it all on the line, one mistake one pause that lasts too long can cancel everything. All the time i spent projecting out in my head who would get what spot is meaningless now. Its up to circumstance.

continuing in the world of jazz-poetry compare and contrast

noreply@blogger.com (veritas2) — Fri, 27 Mar 2009 13:40:00 +0000

Guys like Peddlar and Jay Davis are the classics they are part of a golden age that gave birth to our silver one now. I covered them so lets get into the silver age people for a second, Tina Smith first of all was hard initally because of how unique and in your face her style is. I solved it however and placed her as our Nina Simone, people unfamiliar with her will say "no way Nina Simone was a precious cute little jazz singer who sang stuff like Don't Smoke In Bed and Tina does raucus political poetry." That is just not accurate on either front. Nina Simone was hardcore with a blast of true humanity and so is Tina. People forget that Nina went up on stage and sang Langston Hughes poetry, she was nothing to mess with.

If you look up best jazz singer on this here internet you will see a battle for the number 1 spot between Billie Holiday and Ella Fitzgerald and its a matter of preferance. This mirrors the battle in my own mind between Lady Zen and Tricia who dont have any such battle except in my mind. Billie has this insane character to her voice that makes it so she doesn't even have to hit the notes your drunk on who she is. Lady Zen is a spellbinding performer in much the same way, someone who can captivate the whole room without trying that hard or at least not looking like it. She can make you feel her pain without her screaming it, you can't teach those goosebumps.

If your asking yourself if I get sick to my stomach for dishing out compliment after compliment to this same small group i say NO. Ella was different there was a pinpoint percision in how she hit every note that made the experiance of listening to her so rich. As I kid I grew up on Billie but I grew into Ella. Tricia is Ella, a great poetic mind capable of anything and the best at conveying what she wants nothing more nothing less and bringing you close to her for the experiance. Part of the reason everyone calls her mother is for that, her uncanny ability to not just tell a story but weave it through words perfectly plucked and leave you at the end looking up like "wow, thanks."

If Wil is the pop jazz Miles Davis then Sean is the pop jazz not by his own choice Coltrane Sean who speaks from the page in metaphors and symbols as dense and amazing as Coltrane doing a freaking sixteen minute MY FAVORITE THINGS. His notebook is filled with four bar line chunks scribbled from moments of genius the way Love Supreme staples itself together to form greatness. I say it again for the hundredth time SEAN IS THE ILLEST.

Peter Hazen from houseboat is our Dave Brubeck so versatile and full of imagination full of weirdness that he can be frustratingly brilliant. If people come back from meeting Peter and wonder "That guy does nineteen different things very very very well why I can't do one!" it is valid. Your just not built like Hazen none of us are, his timing and scheming of words puts him in a top tier.

Jazzy is our Peggy Lee because of her off beat creativity and intense sense of style, people still stick FEVER in their mp3 players right off the bat and its because she made that hers. Jazzy makes that a priority.

Wil says I am Stan Getz and if anyone is reading this please respond in the comments as to if that is a good choice and if so what makes me so Stan Getz. I DON'T DO DRUGS PEOPLE!

nerding out of control

noreply@blogger.com (veritas2) — Wed, 18 Mar 2009 15:21:00 +0000

So lately my new thing has been to take all the poets that perform regularly on Tuesday nights at the North Star and assign them a comparison to a Jazz great. Wil Gibson has joined me on this as co-decider and so listing them we have to start from the beginning with Peddlar Bridges who is our Cab Calloway. If you don't know Cab Calloway was a genius of performance with loud crazy outfits and incredible hilarious vocal shifts mid song. He knew how to keep a crowd pumped up even if they were laughing at him. No one fits Peddlar better. Then its Jay Davis and he is our Duke Ellington, artistically versitile and good natured but not only that knows how to put a band together around him that can make good music. He knows how to go to a venue and get excited about other peoples work to keep the scene alive. Nate shuddered a little when we called him Louis Armstrong but that is just his bashful side, before Nate the scene was struggling and he brought this insane passion and skill level that hadn't existed before so young people could look up and say "THAT IS A POET!" and old people could just say "WOW!" Without Nate tuesday nights would be more time for me to sit and sing Journey's Faithfully to myself while my Fiance watches(or tries) to watch CSI.

Moving on Wil could only be Miles Davis who is not the best Jazz musician or mind of all time but is the most accessable the most genius at making music that can not be represed. One of my friends said that Miles brought Jazz to white people and Wil brings real hip hop philosophy to those who don't know it. I like that. Miles had an eye for talent and bringing people up through his band and letting them grow on their own from there. Wayne Shorter is an example. Wil has lent an ear to everyone in this town and heard, digested, and given suggestions to them.

If you think I'm finished your dead ass wrong I have the whole group figured out people. Keep posted to find out more.

new champ

noreply@blogger.com (veritas2) — Mon, 16 Mar 2009 00:10:00 +0000

Last Tuesday we had a slam that it has taken me a while to recover from. It was a lot of information to take in, fourteen competitors stepped up and slammed for the love of it all and were judged numerically on their value. Its so hard to put your finger on who you feel was the best or "broke out" or "should have won" I think i'm going to stick to my original idea expressed a few blogs ago that if you go up there and make an impression, you win. If you go up on stage and stomp around enough that people are buzzing about it, that is what this whole thing is for.

Lady Zen was amazing as always and has a quiet self confidence that the crowd just soaks up, Jazzy was back to her top form. It's so hard to grade people because you just know when a performer is up there whether or not they are in that zone. Wil wasn't entirely there, a lot of us that already have a spot for the April qualifier are much more focused on that and using this stuff as practice. I think he would be the first to say he will be different in April.

Ryan, Sam, and Roller Girl are all from National Slam teams in the area and joined in. I told Sam he was the favorite and he was for a while, he has a pacing in her vocal performance and control over his body that a lot of people don't bother with. A lot of people are hooting and hollering up there trying to make broad sweeping physical motions to match, Sam has a less is more approach that keeps people pulled in to what he is saying.

It wasn't his night though. It was Tina Smith who tore down the house and gave the best vocal texturing to her words that I've ever seen her do. She's always been consistent and focused heavily on going up there with material she knows. This time you really felt it, that beyond revolution and fighting for your rights there is humanity in her words. She doesn't mask it or dress it up and the audience responded. It was her night and now she is the champ. She got a perfect score in the last round you cant really beat that.

13 of us tried.

consider the game changed

noreply@blogger.com (veritas2) — Wed, 04 Mar 2009 20:51:00 +0000

The first post I made on this site was about the night Juba came in as an unknown and won a slam pushing everyone that thought they were the best back a spot or two. That type of stuff earns you a hall of fame in my insignifigant mind. This recently took place again with someone who we all silently know will take over slam poetry if she puts her mind to it.

Her name is Lady Zen and on her first night she came to the open reading just to scope it out and perform probably put her name out there and see if the energy here(north star cafe tuesday night PORT VERITAS BABY) was interesting at all. I thought she was good but she does the singing in the middle of the poetry thing and having a terrible voice myself I resent those with good voices who want to do poetry as well. I mean c'mon just sing and be famous already!

This isn't one of those things where I backpeddle into a kiss butt session, poets are sensitive people that need to compliment each other so that they can all be friends. I'm a writer i'm speaking logistically here, this is a different situation. Lady Zen can sing at a professional Jazz singer level(not Al Jolson style either) but to top that she can drop some really skillful, creative and meaningful verse. She's not expressly hip hop she is a mixture of so many different moods and fields and last night she gave a performance that deserves to be in my top tier.

I don't think other poets should learn from her or copy her, I'm old school I want people to be like themselves first. I think they should just listen and enjoy her.

I said something intelligent this week and i'm not letting it go without a fight

noreply@blogger.com (veritas2) — Mon, 23 Feb 2009 02:36:00 +0000

All I can do when telling someone how I felt about their piece creatively is be specific. Of course there is tact involved I can't just say "What the hell were you talking about? It is just not true that legalizing marijuana would end war!" Letting people know what they do well or what they have as their major challenge in front of them(in my sometimes malformed understanding) is key to let them know I'm listening and hopefully that scares them into making more sense then they would if they were babbling non-sense to their invisible friends(don't deny it poets).

Slam poetry and performance poetry is different from just writing poetry, is what I told this person. It is hard to teach the difference, there is physical movement in the poetry even as it is written when you are talking about slam poetry. The comparison I made is that Slam is to academic poetry as writing a novel or novella is to writing a play, the great plays are written for movement and action to directly lead the audience into your point with you. Every word is presented for a different reason, the phrasing is less passive and more visual.

The problem with telling people this is that I have a hard time giving specific examples but I have experienced so many. So many people have come to me with poetry that on the page was amazing but even after a well performed shot at it the crowd was lost. Beyond performing it right and diction and breathing right something else has to be there. A narrative power has to lead the audience, look at hip hop where ninety percent of the songs are first person walks through someones perspective. Its often called a limited viewpoint to work from but its longevity disapproves that, hip hop talks to people.

Slam has to scream

I like where I started last week allow me to continue

noreply@blogger.com (veritas2) — Sun, 15 Feb 2009 03:44:00 +0000

The previous post was about making sure you attend your immediate circumstances before your art, now that is only the beginning. Truthfully that should have been my first post and this should be my second. Slam poetry is based on real life experiances, I've heard a lot of it and most doesn't involve Peter Jackson style talking trees and magic amulets. So if your writing poetry from your life and putting your energy, passion, and creativity into it(talk to me about something else if your not) then when your done with a piece you should have learned something. If you didn't then you didn't stretch yourself.

Since your writing about real life experiances that you have and unless your BATMAN are shared by others then each piece is a development in your logic. Each reflection opens new ideas and helps you grow, this can dispense with the disconnected writer so bound to his craft that he lives in misery devising it. This way your work helps you as you help it.

There is a problem with this, it leaves the artist at a constant challenge. Everything you do has the weight of moving you as a person further in the right direction. This way you don't allow yourself the easy way out by writing Slam pieces about how much of a jerk Newt Gingrich is. Create empathy for every dimension in your writing and grow it with care, it is scary though to be writing and at the point where you re-read what you have done and say to yourself "I have never done anything like this." Its that push that changes everything not just for you but for the people you show it too. It gives way to a ripple effect.

I will be honest, I was asked a while ago why I go to the North Star Cafe on Tuesday for spoken word and replied that it was like writing, I didn't know why I did it but that never stopped me. I just do it. I left out one aspect however, I don't go there for the social perks...don't get me wrong a lot of the writers there are wonderful people and some good friends but meh. I have friends. I go there because of that sonic push, that moment when someone comes and reads something that is going to shock us all and push us to stretch our own abilities not to match them but to overtake them.

Can we do it?

life and art, church and state

noreply@blogger.com (veritas2) — Sun, 08 Feb 2009 23:43:00 +0000

You don't have to live it how you write it. As the author your work is important but your life is even more important. Writing at all consistently can leave you wondering why you do it, if you do it to be acknowledged by others and of course no matter who you are you do to a certain extent. It is easy to fall so far into writing that you lose a grip on how important other things are.

Writing is so wonderful isn't it? You have power over words and a whole fictionalized world that you can both build and destroy at any point. You can articulate any number of important points and when others read them they won't have thought about it before. Not like that.

Most of us spend our time writing about the activity of humans, so how much do you miss when you don't dedicate yourself enough to the humans around you. Make hard choices, hug the ones you might lose and value humanity and good humor over intelligence. Value the chance you have to make other people happier for having known you, and the chance you have to be happier for knowing them.

I don't need to build that many worlds, I already have one and the more you try to escape it the harder it taps on your shoulder to turn you back around.

Fuck you

this isn't corny

the hardest step in not sucking major butt in poetry

noreply@blogger.com (veritas2) — Wed, 04 Feb 2009 18:44:00 +0000

I didn't start out a poet. A lot of people are like me, a lot of people write plays, short stories etc etc to find out what they like and go with it. By the time I began writing poetry I walked headfirst into the biggest trap you find right inside the doorway.

Everytime I began a line with the best of intentions, with a clean and clear idea to present...I would write it and then when I began the next line a part of me would say "Well, you know a poet is supposed to rhyme the last word of that last line. C'mon kid what is your rhyme scheme here? You haven't thought of one? OH...I see your just going to take this line off....lazy moron." Needless to say it was not my kindest inner voice but it was based off of all the preconceived expections i had of poetry. The idea that what makes poetry poetic is rhyming and thats it. If it rhymes it is and if it doesn't it isn't.

If your laughing at my stupidity then you should come to the North Star Cafe, a lot of new people fresh into performing or reading will get up there and suffer the same problem. What problem? What is wrong with rhyming all the time? Well outside of writing verse that sounds like roadblock from GI Joe it takes you out of the theme and point of your topic, it puts you in a frame of mind where all you want to do is find something even moderately related with "that sound" to it.

My solution is simple, poetry is what we all agree is poetry so just write it. Just write what you need to write the best you can and if it sucks it won't be poetry it will be deleted or thrown away. If its good work on it, understand its individual form, like dating. You don't try and fit that person into a box that fits anyone within a genre you take that person as unique and just listen and understand. Don't force anything. The same applies.

The Sly Stallone of Slam sells you on writers group

noreply@blogger.com (veritas2) — Sun, 25 Jan 2009 20:06:00 +0000

The tricky part of about Writers workshop on Wednesdays is that most of the people that come, ultimately have seen me or Wil perform on Tuesday and think that we will have the ability to impart some sort of wisdom to them. Its the hardest hump to get over in the basic initial communication with a new member of the group. I don't have a handbook or 12 easy steps to follow and I am not wise.

Truthfully, no one does. Wil can give very specific ideas on breathe control and speaking directly to the audience, specific ideas that are in fact wisdom. They are things that will always help any vocal performance gained from the experiance of continually experimenting. The actual content of a poem or piece is not so clear cut, my job is never to tell anyone that what they have written is bad but to ask them without mincing words if the moment they are intending to create by doing this piece on stage is achieved by the words they have now. If not then the words have to change until they work, no matter how long that takes(within reason..after a while you just ditch the thing and write something better).

If there is no definitive blueprint for success one could wonder the need for a writers group, well i can answer that. Writing for the stage in an insulated way is the quickest way to fail. If you write something and show it to your mother she is going to love it, so you need to venture outside of your immediate circle and ask as many relevant people their opinion as you can find. Its debateable how relevant my opinion is in the world but that doesnt change the face that the response to your work is important. You might as well get as much response before you hit the stage as possible.

If you need two people to hit you right between the eyes with direct feedback, you always have Wil and I on Wednesday 6pm at the North Star Cafe.

slam analysis

noreply@blogger.com (veritas2) — Sat, 17 Jan 2009 13:59:00 +0000

Out of everything Port Veritas does we analyze the slam the most, the scores, the rounds, the reaction of the crowd to each piece and whether it was proper or not. Sometimes a great poet gets robbed and sometimes a less then stellar performer gets thrust into the spotlight. We(the rest of the poets) pull every detail apart in our minds and this last week was no different. Its been a few days and I have some points.

It was great to see everyone step up so well this week. When Nate(Piranha) Amadon is on not many people can come close but he was on and people were challenging him. Firstly, TINA SMITH was great and its not about her reaching a new level in her poetry or anything like that. The esteemed former political dark horse and long time supporter has gotten on stage week after week and sometimes messed up but every time got better. This tuesday she was at a level of comfort with her material and performance that she was going on stage without flaws. Thats hard to compete with.

Wil Anthony gave the most stirring and mesmorizing reading he has ever given and it was sitting down, too bad for him it was about a minute and a half over. He's making huge strides with his content and he has this innate talent for bringing the crowd into his clutches. I'm not jealous of him yet but I'm getting there.

Olivia went over on time as well and came in second overall, so thats pretty insane. She projects perfectly and has this certain bobbing back and forth uneasy physical movement while she is performing that keeps everyone off kilter enough to feel every word.

Nate won and qualified for his spot in the big game and he did it the right way, by screwing up last time and fixing it. Same way everybody has to do it. Regardless of what anyone says Port Veritas has no wonderful flawless genius's just people working hard. The ones that work the hardest win.

Taylor Mali, the perfect holiday gift for a teacher

noreply@blogger.com (veritas2) — Sun, 04 Jan 2009 22:02:00 +0000

I am one of the most vain people on the planet. I bought my girlfriend Slamnation the documentary on her birthday, so she could learn about slam poetry. I tend to end up buying things for people so they can digest the present and end up being more like me. I'm fine with it at this point.

Continuing in this tradition I gave her parents Spoken Word Revolution and her grandparents the autobiography of my families favorite rabbi. They received these presents gracefully nodding and thanking me but then I had also given her parents the Taylor Mali CD A Like Free Zone, figuring her dad is a teacher and every family has a few teachers in it so this will be therapeutic. I can't tell you how much I dislike Taylor Mali as a person and honestly I don't even know him. He dresses like a car salesman from the 1980's and crafts every poem with a simple point and a lot of condiments to sweeten the pot for any random judge. Just watch Slam nation and you will know what I am talking about.

That being said I kind of new he would kill in that room, he's so profoundly funny and clever with perfect diction that I had to swallow my spit and grin. "He's Brilliant." That son of a bitch. He's completely comprehensive as an artist, every piece makes a sensible progression that ties the audience in.

The end of the story is my fiances parents and grandparents aunt and uncle listening to the album and laughing loudly with tears in their eyes while i try not too. Laughing is just what that heartless fuck wants. When that was done my fiance looked at me and said Perform one for them! She wanted me to walk in the living room and slam for all of them. That is really when the nightmare began...I was on after Taylor Mali.

If he was reading this I would tell him he is a dickhead then I would tell him he is brilliant.

If I could leave one thing to Port Veritas...

noreply@blogger.com (veritas2) — Sun, 28 Dec 2008 22:18:00 +0000

The statement in the title could be misunderstood, the answer is not a long complicated yarn about the hugging and friendship and the good times. The answer is editing. I have learned and relearned unlearning it when i'm reckless before reality wrestles me to the ground and submits me to it, Editing is the most important part of visualizing a piece.

The mining of the idea is certainly important and in that moment when you get it, put it together in your head for a second and then write it out a lot of things can happen. I have met people who just have beautiful minds, they can sit down and come up with something amazing in seconds. I have faith, however, that with time and editing and practice better poetry can be produced. Better anything can be produced.

I'm not saying to trash your original version, keep one and re read it. Try and identify the parts you cant change a bit and the parts that just don't hit like those parts. Create a second version, if you think that one is perfect then go over it one more time. I would say go over everything you do not to memorize it for the stage but just to pick it apart, three times. If you love it that third time roll with it, but if you create alternate versions you can see what you like of each and if you need to do a third try and pick the best from each.

If you don't like to edit, then don't edit. Let your thoughts walk around ass naked. Doesn't bother me none.

Nate is going to kill me for this one...

noreply@blogger.com (veritas2) — Wed, 17 Dec 2008 03:28:00 +0000

....but I hope he is fine with it. The social structure we reside in is ever changing but not like the seasons more like how rust changes a car. We need something to look up too and i am not talking about kids i am talking about all of us. For some reason we exist in a state of chasing the lifestyle of people who have it better and not just chasing but digesting them. This is going to lead me to the statement I've wanted to make for a while now.

ACTORS ARE OVER VALUED IN OUR SOCIETY!!! People talk about athletes as over valued in our society saying things like "He just throws a football" or "so what he has a good jump shot" but if you ask most sports fans that is all they say. A Lakers fan wont tell you that Kobe Bryant is a wonderful man changing the world with his career but I know a lot of people would say that about George Clooney or Brad Pitt. What do they do to be called trailblazers or great artistic talents? The director says go and you cry or kiss a girl or shoot someone with a fake gun, yeah that's great. I watch a TON of movies I am not going to lie and some of them are great artistic achievements but who talks about directors or screenplays anymore? Most people only know the star actor and they grasp at his or her image and glamor as the cure for it all.

How much talent does it take to pretend? It takes talent but I don't think it takes any more talent then a stand up comedian who can command and control an audience by himself having written the material himself for 30, 45, or 60 minutes. This isn't one of those rants where I ask you to respect firefighters and soldiers more, good god I wouldn't ask that. Having been a soldier myself I would ask you simply to try and treat them normally and as for firefighters....I'm not comfortable with giving them credibility as being fantastic while we underpay them. A higher social status don't pay the rent.

The president doesn't even carry the gravitas of your favorite actor/actress and just because its always been that way, that doesnt mean it still should be. We should stop it and be realistic. No more Entertainment Tonight no more Inside Edition no more smoking gun.com. Don't even be mad at movie stars who tell you to vote give them the consumers cold shoulder until they exihibit the same neurotic worries about grabbing too much of the spotlight that Nate did the day he proposed. He came out after the show he co-starred in was over gave her the ring, proposed and walked away. Having done the play and the ring presentation for a reason for the subject matter and not the attention.

subtlety won't make you famous

noreply@blogger.com (veritas2) — Sun, 07 Dec 2008 21:22:00 +0000

I caught myself about to say the title line in a conversation with my mother about how I could have delivered a joke more effectively. Luckily, I stopped myself knowing that the sentiment is true but nothing a writer should ever say. I feel like after repeating that to yourself for a little while you'd become like the guy working at Hustler saying "Well, sex sells don't it?" What we all agree is wrong will always sell in spades because the presentation of it is taboo and what is taboo is the PERFECT marketing tool. that's not a moral reasoning for anything.

Entirely separate from this I find myself way too deeply involved in the media I take in, I was at the movie premiere of the third star wars prequel and I turned to my friend and said "Just close your eyes and focus on the words, its like a nightmare." The dialogue wasn't just unacceptably lazy but that of a sixth grader experimenting with what imaginary people would say, the special effects could never make up for it. Everyone always tells me I read too much into things and I just need to relax and enjoy it, like taking medicine from Nurse Ratchett in One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest.

The problem becomes a grouping of questions, am I just more aware because I am a writer? If not, am I just paranoid and astonishingly abnormal? If so why don't they have special theaters for the astonishingly abnormal so I don't ruin the good times of the masses? I don't like the first idea, the thought that I'm a writer and so I exist on some higher plain of understanding, its bull crap like that, that has Kanye rapping about Robocop and acting like we are stupid for not getting it. I prefer thinking that I am that special variation of mentally deficient where I can fit in amongst others but paranoia guides me. Its also possible everyone knows that all this stuff sucks, that they are guided and addicted to cheap archetypal sentiments but the understanding of that would sicken them. So they dismiss me. I don't know how I feel about that one.

When you accept the loss of subtle literary coplexities in your movies, music, and TV nodding your head to find in their place the big and splashy John Woo gunfight ideology of every five minutes something visceral will be unleashed on the audience you lose something. It may be small and to some it might not even be important, we got war, planetary climate change, and corruption to worry about after all. With the death of the authors responsibility to intricacy comes the passing away of his great triumphs and that is all i'm always trying to explain to each consumer who looks at me cross eyed.

blogging again and like i've never blogged before

noreply@blogger.com (veritas2) — Sun, 30 Nov 2008 19:02:00 +0000

When I am not knee deep in contemporary music and pornography enjoying the fruits of our rich multi media society,I write. A favorite topic of Nate and Sean that spreads to the rest of us is the question of repetition, when you follow an artists work you notice themes that present themselves in multiple pieces, you recognize things and it makes you think about the author. Since, you as the author know your own work better then anyone else you see first hand the mind numbing repetition; the things that you come back to over and over and over. It may not be a subject you always touch on it may actually be a word or a phrase. I'm not ready to get on here and lay out every poets repetitive phrases, honestly this thing is a child of paranoia mostly. Most people don't pay enough attention or retain enough memory of your work to catch these things, its the author who knows and resents it being there and fears that you know.

I started thinking about this when a man came up to me in IHOP and said he loved my stuff, it seemed silly to be commended on your poetic merit at the international house of pancakes but It's not like i'm going be at a classier place any time soon. I started thinking about this and about Nate's relationship with it, he comes back to it all the time saying that its ok but not in the tone where I believe he believes it. He talks about Saul Williams and the infamous debate over his use or over-use of the meditative OM but in the lobby at IHOP waiting for my table so I could dine on my VIVA LE FRENCH TOAST, the thought came to me that this is all natural.

Of course we all repeat phrases or concepts or even themes, it goes beyond artistic merit these things you come back to define you. If I told Saul Williams that the term OM is the very structure from which I feel his writing comes from he might disagree but I don't think he'd be that insulted. I've noticed on a personal front that I say I LOVE YOU a lot in my poetry not just in love pieces about my fiance but in poems about other things as well. I don't want to diminish its meaning, you can't over analyze it! At least not more then I have, when I write I have a desperate need to champion the values of that which I love and whatever it is whoever its dedicated too I want to take the time with verse to kiss them on the forehead. If it means that i'm not hard edged enough or not filled enough with righteous indignations about the wrongs of the world, thats fine. I don't want to fit, I want to repeat what i'm saying because its awkward. I WANT TO REPEAT WHAT I'M SAYING BECAUSE ITS AWKWARD and inside that awkward space is where I write.

?????

noreply@blogger.com (veritas2) — Mon, 17 Nov 2008 01:18:00 +0000

The oldest question in poetry is not, why do people think Charles Bukowski is a genius? It's what on earth should I write about. Anyone who picked up a pen or pounded a keyboard (or put quill to parchment for all you nerds) had to sit there and think about it. It's a jarring process, alone with your insatiable need to write but with nothing to say one can feel their most arrogant. Think about it! Knowing that you want your voice to be heard while you can't think of what you want it to say? Sounds kind of screwed up if you have to explain it, some modern poets like Andy Rooney of 60 minutes don't have to think about what topic to pick he just jabbers words out of his crazy pie hole until he's exhausted and then goes back to quiet. Now thats a pure creative process.

You can write about politics but you won't be the only one, on any side of any issue its been taken on. If your honest with yourself and your writing for an audience you end up taking into account the balance of disclosure your craft requires. People ultimately want to know about you, but not too much. They want to watch you laugh, watch you cry but they don't want to watch you poop. If you think all topics in poetry have been covered write a whole book about urinating and pooping then try to sell it. You'll learn the hard way not all topics in life are covered and if they are some are lightly touched and its for a reason. I'm very vague right now but poetry and writing in general is about balance.

Sex gets written about and rightfully so but if your too close to your own emotions while your putting it together it can end up written just for you with so much information that it cant be looked at by someone outside of your sphere with value. I don't want to give the impression that this is a lesson and that I know what I'm talking about. I was sharing my confusion on the subject with you, I've written about some amazingly stupid things(I almost wrote a whole story about a guy who paid for hookers and didn't have relations with them he just beat them at Yahtzee)

The worst part is that every profound re-defining line of inspirational poetry will have an awful aftertaste for you as a writer. You will wish on some level that you could duplicate it and if your an honest person you'll admit you wish you wrote it. If you meet and hang out with writers you admire you should grow to fear them and use your common love for writing to create an arms race. Fear that person and write better to crush them under you and then shake that shit out of your head and what you've written will be great. I THINK! I can't be blamed for any of this stuff not working because if I'm just bullshitting but one of the great things that writing has taught me is that when you bullshit you should bullshit confidently.

The deep unnatural depression that Andrea Gibson brings to me

noreply@blogger.com (veritas2) — Sun, 09 Nov 2008 00:03:00 +0000

I've seen Andrea Gibson live before, you know. She came to the North Star Cafe on a Tuesday night and all i knew is that she was a big deal. A slam poet of the top tier and sure she killed that night but she looked nothing like her poetry. Performers should look like their poetry, mine does, its jumbled and trembling but opinionated and obese. It needs to represent me and for a while I thought most people's work looked like them. Buddy Wakefield looks just as weird as his poetry trust me but Andrea Gibson looks nothing like her verse.

She is small, and I recall even sometimes feeling like she was a scared looking person. Anyone who has read at an open mic was scared and should have been but most of the top tier mask it professionally. Like Jack McCarthy before her I didn't value her as much in person as when I got her book, I guess being somewhat of a dink I looked at her and shrugged. A poet, like the rest of us trembling like a leaf to deliver the thoughts she so carefully ironed and starched. I undervalued her until I purchased her book POLE DANCING TO GOSPEL HYMNS and I have spent a lot of time combing through it. I knew from the first poem that I had fucked up, this is the T S Elliot of slam poetry I swear. The metaphors come together so well that they become a community of words calling back to one another and each line is something you want to write down and use as the basis for a new poem. They don't seem like enough, ideas she just stumbles upon are too fantastically intricate and interesting to be left where they are. I felt that way about The Love Song of J Alfred Prufrock and now I feel that way about at least six or seven of the poems in her book.

Great poets depress me intensely, reading this made me never want to write poetry again. I honestly contemplated going right back to the short story after the third piece it is called BIRTHDAY for jenn. I was wrong because she is like her poetry, her verse is a human being raging against her own frailty beating it and beating it with lyrical strength unmatched until she feels she can live in a world with teeth so sharp.

She makes me envious and jealous and appreciative and I just wish I she could read this. I just wish I had stood human to human with her and hugged her to be able to tell people I did.

Here is hoping any of this makes sense to the few who read it.

I've taken sides

noreply@blogger.com (veritas2) — Mon, 03 Nov 2008 01:31:00 +0000

What is poetry? Well the answer I stand by that caused great discomfort to my English teacher is that poetry is democratically elected so whatever I say is a poem is a poem. Its very similar to the way I consider the word genius, your only a genius if no really argues against you. If I go up to any random person and say Albert Einstein and Stevie Wonder are genius's I bet that person will agree. Its that way with poetry, which is why I've never understood the blanket statement that rappers or emcee's are poets.

The opposite is still not true in my eyes, to say all rappers or emcee's aren't poets is just as false. To have a distinguished career that has given depth and definition to subject matter, that is a poet. Do I want to tell people that Eminem is a poet...the honest answer is no. As clever as this dude is his career is built on fart jokes and drug references. It might not even be important to meaningfully distinguish between the two, just write whatever you feel and if it doesnt suck let that be your reward.

I have seen some people so determined to be what they consider a good emcee that they never blossom into any kind of serious poet. An emcee to a lot of people is supposed to be someone who can play with words and has a mastery of that as a skill. The problem with this is if you perfect the meaningless management of words of words you never master the pursuit of the right words for your meaning. To a certain extent I am pissing in the wind here anyone who can easily define what poetry is or being a poet is...is full of crap. Rakim already defined being an emcee in a question "How could I move the crowd?"

Some emcees move the crowd with intellectual and inspirational verse that should stand right next to the classics. Some of them make cheap and tawdry party songs and yes I am old so I don't understand the layers of symbolism in the Yin Yang Twins music. All I really want people to do is think before they give someone the title, Sage Francis, Geologic from the Blue Scholars, and countless others have balanced being both emcee's and poets(who literally were spoken word poets first) but record sales and popularity don't determine it. Don't let a watered down simplistic message spread through mass media get you drunk on someone who is taking the spotlight from great minds.