The Mad Poets Blog

Last night I headed over to Bryn Mawr College with fellow MPS blogger Anna and our faithful poetry cohort Don Kloss for the last reading in the BMC Visiting Writers Series, given by Yusef Komunyakaa. The reading was held in the Wyndham Alumnae House, which was a lovely – if a bit formal – place. (Remember, I like my poetry with “guts and knuckles,” so parlors and flowered wallpaper are not always the thing for me.) There was a terrific crowd, including a host of students from the college, where Komunyakaa has been teaching a Poetry Master class.

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I’m just going to pop in here for a moment to give a plug:

The Quick and Dirty Poets are hosting an open mic on Friday night with featured poet Dan Maguire. If you don’t know Dan, you’re missing out on something great: he’s a good poet, a good reader, and generally speaking a good guy.

You can learn a bit more about Dan by reading this interview with Therese Halscheid for Camden County Cultural and Heritage Commission. You can also read his poem “Leaders” here at the Pedestal Magazine.

The reading will begin at 7 p.m. on Friday, April 13th, at the Daily Grind Coffee House in Mt. Holly. Bring two poems to share in the open mic.

We hope to see you there!

Like Autumn, I have yet to catch up on Ashraf’s and Anna’s discussion below - but I’m going to post anyway. And it looks like I’m just in time, on the heels of Autumn’s post about bad poetry criticism, and how the writer concentrates on taking cheap shots at the poets rather than a valid look at the publishing houses. Along the lines of criticism (though not quite so critical), I wanted to look at another poem as a sort of counterpoint to my previous post on Ross Gay’s “Two Bikers Embrace on Broad Street.”

I suggested in that post that Gay’s poem is successful partially because it avoids using obvious Philadelphian imagery in a way that can be construed as cliche - Gay allows Philadelphia to become a backdrop to the poem: Philadelphia is important, but it’s not the most important thing in the poem. And then I got to thinking. And talking to myself in the car, which is not unusual, but probably not healthy.

But wait! I said to myself (out loud). I know a poem that totally embraces the landscape and pop-culture of Philadelphia, and is not a failure as a poem! So I’d like to take a look at a poem written by our very own Autumn - “Brotherly Love,” her gentle reminder to the Eagles that Philadelphia sports fans are entirely dedicated (and, in this blogger’s opinion, a little nuts. Sorry, Autumn.). (Continued)

I’ve been reading a lot of contemporary poetry lately (and I do mean a lot - well over 300 poems in the past 3 months, oy my aching head!) and I’ve noticed that Philadelphia is a pretty popular city to throw into poems. This makes me proud, even though I’m not a Philadelphian - I have lived in and loved New Jersey for my entire life. But Philly has seemed like something of a second home to me since I was about 16, as I spent nearly every weekend prowling the shops on South Street, heading to concerts at the Troc, the Electric Factory and the TLA, or exploring the museums.

But one poem caught my attention during my recent spurt of reading: Ross Gay’s “Two Bikers Embrace on Broad Street,” which was published in the American Poetry Review. Oh sure, I know the poem is from the September/October issue, but this is the reality of life as a working mother/student/poet - I’m just catching up on last year’s journals. But Gay’s poem is worth more than a second look - it’s worth a fourth, a fifth and a sixth, and more.

It was the casual mention of Philadelphia roads that caught my attention, but it wasn’t just the familiarity of setting that made me love this poem. No, it was the way Gay uses the impulse to stare at the unexpected: it’s normal, it’s harmless, everyone does it, although we all know it’s rude to stare (remember what your mother told you!). He presents this natural human impulse as the common denominator that allows me, as a reader, to forget that this narrator and I are gawking at an intensely private moment - we seemed to be inside that moment.

I mean, I really just lost myself in the senses of the poem - the fabric of the jackets, the rough chin-and-cheek stubble, the smell of these men. Whew. And in Philadelphia, on Broad Street, with the traffic and the noise and the people - it was authentic, and I fell right into it.

I think part of Gay’s success here is that he used Philadelphia as a backdrop, a setting which was able to fade out and leave the men embracing in a sort of EveryCity environment. He didn’t throw in super obvious landmarks (the clothespin, the Art museum), there were no cheesy references to Rocky or cheesesteaks or Yuengling. The poem was meant to be about this beautiful, intimate moment between two tough Men’s Men, and it was - Philadelphia was sort of a pleasant bonus, an extra layer to the poem, like finding two prizes in your box of cereal instead of just one.