performing sound theatrically

Tonight I ventured out of Ann Arbor and down as far as I've ever been on Washtenaw toward Yipsilanti. I took my trip on the bus, having learned in Germany that buses really aren't so scary and that reading bus schedules can be a cinch--with a little practice. Tonight I went to a poetry reading by the very famous language (and sound) poet, Charles Bernstein, with the famous Tracy Morris. Their reading together was probably one of the more interesting readings I'll experience in my future [An aside: It's the most interesting reading I've been to in my life so far, but when I want to talk about my life to come... I think I had better stick to "future." But there's even another element to this which tells me that I ought not to judge interest-value of readings because they are all interesting in their own individual ways. Right?]. The two poets made the performance a collaborative one, in which Bernstein would read a poem then Tracy would read... they alternated throughout the whole performance and the poems they read were selected on the spot, based on the poem that the other person had just read (or performed). But that wasn't all of the collaboration.

The first poem that was performed was one called "Truth Be Told." This poem had been recently written by both poets together. The idea is somewhat like the braided poetry I've been doing with two of my friends (and Meg, if you're reading this, I'm happy for you to have found my blog), only their's was a single poem that they wrote in passages on and off -- usually through e-mail correspondence, they said.

Before they began reading, I thought that they might try to match voices in the poem - that they might let their styles of poetry slide into each other's - and that this would be a difficult, yet very interesting work. Such wasn't the case, however. Both poets had very distinctive voices in the parts they had written, which their reading / performance styles exemplified. Tracy, who is an African American woman, was very theatrical in her performances. When I say "theatrical," I mean that she seemed to take on characters in her poems and would give life to those characters through her lines of poetry. I can't deny that Bernstein gave life to characters in his poetry; but it was, of course, of a different flavor.

Bernstein enunciated every word clearly, he gave each word thickness. Drippiness, but a precise kind of drip - if there is such a thing (I'm thinking of honey, after you've squeezed out the drip you want and you wait for the remaining drip to rise back into the mouth of the bottle. When you can do this cleanly - without mess -, that's the drip I'm talking about.). One of his pieces (that I think was part of a libretto text he had written for a composer) was what seemed like a stuttering mess of languages and the phonetic sounds of several langues clashed into one monologue. I don't know how to effectively describe it. It was brilliant, yet a work that does not depend upon coherent - even if they are arbitrary - words.

There's a lot more I could and should say about this experience (including my awkwardness when I was introduced to Charles Bernstein after the reading), but I've taken a time to write this much... and there are homeworks to be done. I know, blah.