Performance – A Motley Vision

Wrapping up the #MormonPoetrySlam

In case you haven’t been following the Mormon Poetry Slam at home and have an interest in Mormon poetry (I mean, who doesn’t, right?), here’s an update (which I initially posted here):

The final performance in the slam—which I’ve been hosting on FireinthePasture.org and which as far as I know is the first online competition of its kind—posted last Friday. (You can find the event archive here). Now it’s time to determine the winner of the Audience Choice Award and we need your help with that because, well, the participants need the audience to vote. So, if you would: Take several minutes to consider the slam performances, then vote for your favorite before Wednesday’s end (voting rules are outlined below). For your consideration and reviewing pleasure, here are the fourteen entries, listed in order of appearance: Continue reading “Wrapping up the #MormonPoetrySlam”

Listening Closely to James Goldberg’s “In the Beginning”

“In the Beginning” on Everyday Mormon Writer (click to enlarge)

(Cross-posted here.)

James Goldberg’s poem “In the Beginning”* exults in orality. It begins, “When he was young, / they read the books / out loud.” But the poet doesn’t revel simply by stating that his experience with language is grounded in the spoken word. He also alludes to the revel-atory power of speech with his title, which echoes John the Beloved’s (later the Revelator’s) witness that “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God” (John 1:1). What we read as “the Word” is here translated from the Greek term logos, which according to Strong means “something said.” So John’s “Word” refers to something spoken, an idea mirrored in the additive, parallel structure of his opening statement, whose coordinate structure (“. . . and . . . and . . .”) parallels the rhythms of spoken language. When translated with the article, as it is in John, “the Word” refers especially to “the Divine Expression,” who is Christ, who was–who existed–“in the beginning,” before taking on flesh, and who did so “with God” and who “was God.” Through this witness of Christ, when heard in conjunction with what we now have as John 1:2″“5, it becomes clear that Christ is the Father’s deepest, most creative, most transformative expression to humanity. He is the Father’s promise of salvation spoken through the very structures of the cosmos.

James calls upon these associations from the beginning of his poem with its title and its subject matter, both of which suggest that the sounded word has a transformative effect on those with ears to hear (see Alma 31:5). And he deepens these associations with word-power through the additive, parallel structures of the poem, which mark its essential orality. These structures are evident especially in the repetition of “When he was young”; in the poet’s simple language; in his use of the second person mode of address, which suggests a face-to-face conversation (“You could still. . .”); and in the additive phrasing of the second and third stanzas: “And . . . so . . . and . . . . Then.” Continue reading “Listening Closely to James Goldberg’s “In the Beginning””

Slamming Mormon Poetry

Margaret Young’s Pater Noster

Or, Some Reflections Made upon Having Translated a Blog Post into a Persona Poem

For various reasons I haven’t written much poetry lately. I’ve written a lot about poetry, but not much poetry. Because of this, I was excited the other day when I felt a poem welling up as I read Margaret Young’s meditation, “My Prayer upon Opening the Internet,” which she posted on The Welcome Table, her blog at Patheos. Margaret’s been catching flak since she posted some thoughts on the Ordain Women movement and I can only imagine what effect the sometimes vitriolic response has had on her soul. From what I know of her, she’s a very empathetic person, something that I’m sure has been magnified and made raw by her father’s failing health, especially as she walks with him his path through the valley of the shadow of death. I sense this desire to understand and to connect with others in “Prayer.” Continue reading “Margaret Young’s Pater Noster”

Public Uses of Poetry: Two AML Proposals

I submitted two proposals for this year’s AML Conference, both poetry-centered, of course. Here they are:

Proposal 1: Live Poetry Anthology: Mormon Poets Read (Two full sessions)

Based on the success of the two poetry reading panels I organized for last year’s AML Conference, I approached my poet friends to see if there was any interest in organizing more readings for this year’s conference. I have around twenty poets* who said, “Heck, yeah! We’d love to read at AML in 2013.” So this proposal is for two (2) sessions (preferably back-to-back sessions) filled with poetry read by a range of Mormon poets. Each session would include approximately ten poets reading for around five to six minutes each. Michael Hicks has called this event format “a live poetry anthology” because it allows space for many poets to voice their poems and shows how the community of poets so involved is a living community whose canon of texts is constantly expanding.

*As of right now, my list of definites includes the following: Alan Mitchell, Alex Caldiero, Amber Ellis, Brian Brown, Doug Talley, Elaine Craig, Elizabeth Pinborough, Jim Richards, Jonathon Penny, Laura Baxter, Laura Stott, Lisa Fillerup, Mark Bennion, Michael Hicks, N. Colwell Snell, Rachel Noorda, Sarah Duffy, Sarah Jenkins, Susan Howe, and Terresa Wellborn.

Proposal 2: Performative Poesis and the (Un)Making of the World

In the days following the tragedy at Sandy Hook Elementary in Connecticut, I came across or remembered several texts that were composed in response to this event and to other violent events in contemporary America, including 9/11 and the 2007 Virginia Tech shooting. The first text I encountered was an article published by The Onion, satirical online news rag, the day of the Sandy Hook shooting. The article, “F*** Everything, Nation Reports,” is short–it comes in at only 456 words. But as the title suggests, its language is potent: of the many profanities included, 16 are the f-word. The second text was a poem called “In the Loop“ by Bob Hicok, who explores with the poem a response many people had to the Virginia Tech shooting: to say “how horrible it was, how little / there was to say about how horrible it was.” The third was Alex Caldiero’s “Poetry is Wanted Here!,” a poem dedicated to his friend “Bob Heman, in New York, Oct. 2001 re. 9/11.” And the fourth was a poem by Shane Koyczan: “.” Unlike the other three texts, Koyczan’s poem isn’t a response to a specific event; but it does reference “kids who turned their school into a shooting range,” kids who “play Russian Roulette with guns . . . they found on their playground,” and “airlines [that] plummet from the skies.”

Beyond similarities in subject matter–all reference violent events that have received national, even global, attention–the one thing that connects these texts in my mind is the way each shows how four very different writers turned to words in response to violence as a way to mediate the ongoing effects of violence. These movements toward language in the face of destruction jibe with the understanding I’ve developed as a Latter-day Saint that words are an act of faith and have a profound, creative influence on the world. As noted in the Lectures on Faith, faith works by words; indeed, faith’s mightiest works have been and will be performed with words. These works, of course, include God’s eternal performance as World-Maker (his poesis), which proceeds through his Word, who is Christ. Through personal and scholarly reflections on the texts cited above, this paper explores my LDS-informed view of words and the Word, especially in terms of how we mirror the World-Makers’ creative performance in our own word-making.

(Also posted here.)

Situating Sonosophy: De/Constructing Alex Caldiero’s Poetarium

(Cross-posted here.)

Back in April, I presented some of my recent research on Alex Caldiero’s performance poetics at the annual conference for the Association for Mormon Letters. Since then I’ve been thick in the middle of preparing for, then taking (and passing!), my comprehensive exams for my doctoral degree. Now it’s time to dig into that dissertation, which is on Alex’s work. The presentation I gave at the AML Conference, of which this post is an extension, is a result of my dissertating. It seeks to represent the performance ecology out of which Alex’s poetics has grown and to which it responds.

In order to get the most out of what follows, it’s probably best to view my Prezi presentation in conjunction with my commentary (maybe you can split the screen, with my comments in one window and the Prezi in another? I leave the logistics to you…). I’ve tried to make this as simple as possible by correlating my comments to each stop you’ll make as you move through the Prezi. And after you’ve made your way through it, I hope you’ll leave your comments on my ideas, which are, as all poetics, in process.

With that in mind, here goes:

http://prezi.com/bin/preziloader.swf

Situating Sonosophy: De/Constructing Alex Caldiero’s Poetarium on Prezi

Continue reading “Situating Sonosophy: De/Constructing Alex Caldiero’s Poetarium”

A (Perhaps) Not-so-modest Proposal

Or, Tyler’s Making Progress

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The past half-year I’ve been consumed with dissertation preparations: narrowing down a topic, questioning that topic, narrowing it again, compiling a bibliography around which my comprehensive exams will be built, drafting a dissertation proposal, revising that proposal, and revising again, then again. And I’ve only really just begun. Now that my proposal has been approved by the graduate director in Idaho State’s Department of English and Philosophy, I have to tackle the real work. This includes 1) gutting the works on my exam lists so I can be ready for my comprehensive exams, which are tentatively scheduled for mid-may/early-June, and 2) beginning to draft my dissertation, which I’ve committed* to finish by the end of spring semester 2012.

But I digress.

This post is really meant to pass along that approved version of my dissertation proposal, which dissertation is titled (at this point)—drum roll, please— Continue reading “A (Perhaps) Not-so-modest Proposal”