The Mad Poets Blog

  Vincent Quatroche has been a member of the Communication and English Department @ JCC since 1997. He has BA in English and Master of Science in Education from SUNY @ Fredonia. In addition to his adjunct position with JCC,  Vincent has been a member of the faculty in the Communication Department @ Fredonia State since the late 80s. Mr. Quatroche is also an Instructor in Adult Education for Erie-2 Chautauqua-Cattaraugus BOCES @ the Chautauqua County Jail since 1996. He is a published author of numerous creative projects, including audio recordings and books. His poetry has been distributed widely throughout the United States and abroad. A profile of his work appeared on PBS in 1998. Mr. Quatroche’s professional credentials and accomplishments are recognized and included in the 25th edition of the International Biographic Center’s Dictionary of Who’s Who in the Field of Education, Cambridge CB2 #QP United Kingdom, England. Please visit www.rubbereden.com to see the works of Vincent Quatroche.

What others say about Vincent Quatroche:

“When Vincent Quatroche’s voice begins to scratch the groove, you realize you’ve had an itch you didn’t know about. Maybe you would rather not know that itch; but Vincent does not care. Either way he’s going to keep doing what he’s been doing these past couple decades –putting down the best writing in the United States, unassuming, cutting, hilarious. Real poems from a real poet.” - Bob Holman, Nuyorican Poet, NYC

“Quatroche is primarily an oral poet, influenced by and working in the tradition of Whitman, Sandburg, Ginseberg, Ferlinghetti, Ken Nordine, Tom Waits, Charles Bukowski and similar experimenters in the American oral tradition. His work expresses a strong element of social criticism–sometimes angry, sometimes ironic or absurd, with the element of the highly personal and lyrical. One of his greatest strengths is the effective use of telling details and powerful images and metaphors to bring us face to face with our foibles, our failures and our loves.’- David Lunde.

The Interview:

Q. You read for the Mad Poets at the old Newtown series last year. Did you enjoy your visit? 

 Very much so. Totally unique experience. Quite an intimate setting, all of us sitting around the old huge oak table in the shadows under the glower of that huge painting of William Penn hanging in the Newton Library. As I remarked at the time Newton during the Christmas season reminds me as something straight out of central casting from an old Frank Capra Movie. How could you not dig a roving Glee Club of clean cut, handsome young college boys singing Carols in the downtown streets. Strange beer laws however, seems you can only buy suds by the case, usually I embrace the volume principle, but wasn’t going to be in town that long. I would like to go back there and read again someday.     

Q. Over the last year you have read in York, Pa., Buffalo, NYC and
Newtown to name a number of cities you have visited. Is it important for a poet to read their work in public?  

   Well I think so. More a matter of opinion here. I’m an old school Oral Tradition guy (in more ways than one) from way back. Kind of depends on the poet. Some of the great ones had really lousy reading voices. I remember hearing a compilation of some really big names years ago and thinking they might have been better off sticking to the page. No sense naming names, it’s all a subjective judgment call anyway. I just think it is like you have a voice in your head that the writer invokes with their printed words from the page, that you surrender your stream of consciousness to. Sometimes upon hearing the actual voice, in real time audio they just don’t match up. A lot like the DJ effect (which I was once on Public Radio for years) you’re always getting that, “Hey….you don’t look anything like your voice” remark.      

Q. “Sleeping Giant Records” has produced your CDS. What was it like working with Dan Berggren?  

  Could never say enough good things about this rare individual  He is an extremely talented singer/song writer and performer who knows his way around the sound recording studio like few I’ve ever worked with. His 25+ year career at the State University College @ Fredonia was a revelation to thousands of students he mentored (including myself) There ought to be a statue of him somewhere on that campus. He helped everybody. I first met Dan in the early 80s when I returned to the East from the Pacific Northwest to finish my education. We hit it off immediately even though we both were coming from very different directions musically. Sort of like jazz/Ambient/Advant-Garde meets Traditional Folk/Bluegrass/gospel. I’ll let you figure out who was who. But creatively ? We spoke the same language. So almost thirty years later, after 4 cassettes, 2 CDs and countless gigs preforming with each other, we are still very much in touch. He’s retired now living in the foothills of his beloved  Adirondacks with his wife Nancy, still writing, performing and producing projects (like my last 2 CDs). He has a new release out on Sleeping Giant Records w/ Dan Duggan and Peggy Lynn entitled “Jamcrackers” Db is the man and I am Goddamn proud to be able to call him my friend.  

      Q. Jim Briggs of the NYC Sound Designer said of your work Matador From Another Planet; ‘’Quatroche can also can just spit it out, as he claims in opener Of the Aural and Visual. Taking dead aim and hitting the mark often, Quatroche simultaneously questions and embraces absurdity in his many takes on the “unfinished symphony of madness! ‘  Is this the desired effect?      

Briggs is a very astute judge of musical composition and is on his way to being very influential in his career to the development of a lot of emerging young artists. His insights and reviews of the current music scene are usually dead on. Now his kind words about my stuff while very flattering make an interesting point about the nature of my work. Actually the line he quoted was from a piece on “Matador from Another Planet” and goes the “unfinished symphony of contemporary madness”. It’s like adding more notes to the blaring cacophony of this really scary soundtrack to the “terrible now”. And we are all living/dancing to it. As for “desired effect ?” Certainly I have my creative intentions when I conceive the work to be presented in a specific way, but (and this is very important) the listener makes the final decision on just how it strikes/resonates with them based upon the world inside their heads that their ears are the doorways into.     

Q. I recently visited with you in Fredonia New York. I was amazed at the excellent interaction you have with your students. They also greatly enjoyed your work. Should we expect to see some developing poets out of Fredonia
New York?   

Well….most of my students anyway. You might get a few differences of opinion in certain college barrooms here in town. Regardless I love teaching at SUNY Fredonia as well as other education venues in Chautauqua County,(a community college and county jail). To answer your question there have been some very good poets to come out of this area over the years, most have just passed through. My old Friend, Poet & Translator David Lunde comes to mind. Perhaps one of the better known successful writers, Mark Brazill worked on ”That 70s Show”. His contributions to plot lines were based upon his experiences here during that time period attending school in area.   

Q. As many poets hit mid life it seems a continued fascination with Baseball and Jazz flourishes. A common trait you share with New Jersey Poet Dave Worrell. Why does the inspiration continue? 

   Ick. Mid-Life. Guess that means you are half over. Well guess it’s time to face the facts, I guess. Let’s start with Jazz. I was raised on it. My Dad saw to that. He was my humanities teacher in music, art, theater and general aesthetics. Charlie Parker was my first baby sitter and I had a Jackson Pollock coloring book. To this day Jazz is always on in my house. For the record ? When Dexter Gordon speaks through that tenor ? I listen to the bone.  As for Baseball ? I dunno. Something about the game. Sure aspects of it have changed over the years. The human-growth league was quite an innovation, but really the event of a ball game is still great metaphorical rich stuff. Life lessons, history, drama, really you name it. Perhaps the pastoral 18^th Century nature of the ritual endures and still attracts. Anything can happen in those nine innings, hell you might even get bonus panels, but just like life, it can be all over with one swing of the bat and the best, (as they say) fail 7 of 10 times. Sounds about like the daily odd-spread to me most days.  BTW thanks for the tip on Worrell. I’ll look him up. 

Q. You have several books published and a number of CDs. Where should folks look to find the works of Vincent Quatroche?  

  Any of my efforts can be ordered via the web. I’m all over the place. Just type my name in to any search engine and all manner of stuff will come up. Best bet is just to check out my website www.rubbereden.com  and contact me directly.  It’ll all be quicker and cheaper that way for anybody interested. Around New York  State you can find some of my work at St. Marks Books down in the East Village in NYC and at Rust Belt Books in the Allentown section of  Buffalo. 

Q. You have been around the poetry scene since the 1970’s. What direction do you see poetry moving in? 

   Poverty. Confessional reflection, really anywhere the Post-Modern muse flows here in the Rubber Eden. Never seems that Poets/ Poetry ever go away in Gridville. Sure. We get marginalized, trivialized, ignored on a daily basis and I think the worst of us are celebrated and fawned over in the mainstream media. Most popular stuff is common denominator populist drivel specifically designed to move units (slim little booklets of sheer poop) Some days I get a little concerned that the imagination gene pool is drying up. (either the capacity to create or the ability or desire to appreciate)  Me ? Stick to the underground. I belong down here. More freedom. Less hate mail. Interesting fellow disenfranchised fellow poets, cheaper beer. Look all this should be really rewarding and fun, if not ? Why in hell bother ? You aren’t ever going to make any money with it all, in fact you can count on forking over dough just to be a part of it. Why not ? You sure can pay one hell of a lot more for much, much less in life.   

Q. Your poetry has been described as unique, where does your inspiration come from and who were your major influences? 

   My poetry has been described as a lot of things. Some even repeatable Truth is? Mostly I’ve been ignored. Best quote I ever heard about my work was something like it has traveled around the country like a pen stuck in the pocket of a shirt in the washer. So far the lid hasn’t come off…..yet. The only thing I don’t want it tagged as is invisible. Inspiration ? Anything, everything. I have a special bonus card account for preferred consumers with the All for a Dollar/ 5 & 10 cent slightly damaged, dented, scratched retail “id” outlet of the 5 senses and a direct agreement with the devil for nightly shipments of the 6^th. Influences ? The usual suspects..(well my usual ones anyway) All the Beats… Bukowski, Brautigan, Weldon Kees, Hurbet Shelly, Hemmingway, Stienbeck, Hurbet Shelly, Robert Stone, Tom Waits, Brian Eno, The Residents, Vivian Stanshall, Elvis Costello, Ken Nordine, Robert Mitchum, Edward Hopper, Elia Kazan, Sammuel Beckett, Frank O’Hara, John Berrymen, e.e. cummings, Walt Whitman, Rod Serling , Thomas Wolfe, Frank Zappa, the list could go on and on and on

Q. Do you have any projects in the works you can share with us?  

  Sure. Currently working on a recent collection of Po/Prose to be printed in the late Fall of this year. Number #4. And for the record ? Yes, I am self-published. And I make no apologies. At this point of my life after writing all these years I’dl be Goddamn if I’m waiting around for some validation from a snotty book division of some corporation or local “ham & egger” local poetry publisher . I know what my stuff intends to accomplish and its place/value and worth in this world. Period. That being said if some smarmy suit showed up with a big fact contract/check tomorrow ? I’d be ass kissing all the way to the bank.    

Q. Isn’t Fredonia the country in the Marx Brothers movie ”Duck Soup”?      

Ok…..here we go. Heard this once years ago somewhere. According to sources that I can’t substantiate the story goes something like this. The Marx Bros where touring upstate NY somewhere in the 1920’s and had a gig in Buffalo. At this point they were a relatively unknown group of wild vaudevillian stage comedians. Somebody suggested they could pick up a few extra dollars in this little farm town about 35 miles southwest of the city. They decided to do it.  After performing at the local Opera House The manager refused to pay the guys explaining they weren’t funny and the crowd didn’t like them. Word was Groucho was furious and swore revenge. So years later when it came time to name a ridiculous place where everybody was a fool in a movie guess what he came up with? Yup. He remembered. Smart too. Changed the spelling to Freedonia.  No lawsuit. Just as a foot note. Groucho probably knew that the opera house would someday become a movie house and maybe some of the same people who didn’t like their act the first time would sit there actually having pay to watch the guys make fun of them. Might not be true. But never let truth stand in the way of a good story. Mark Twain didn’t. His, ”The Man who Corrupted Hattiesburg”, was based on the pious, phony citizens of Fredonia in the 1800s. Sounds like people who wouldn’t get  the Marx Brothers.       

Q. Any plans to be in the Philadelphia area? 

  Ahh…the City of  Brotherly love ? Love too. All you have to do is ask. Rent me by the hour or the pound. Call for prices.