It was one of those nights, the feet scarcely touched the ground.
A minimalist presentation of glorious Buddhist art, artifact, touchstone, in a building that is art on the street.
Tuneful, swinging, edgy, taking its sweet time live music.
Poets in corners and out in the main spaces, dropping poetry.
The music could get a little loud for the poets in their natural voices. So people stood around the poets, their heads bowed.
This was the best way to catch the poetry as it dropped. It happened to make living shrines of the poets.
The poets read poetry by others poets, all touched by Buddhism. This meant picking through the books of poetry in advance looking for the Buddhist-touched poems.
The poets had tagged all their Buddhist-touched poems, so the books all looked like they had sprouted dozens of little paper buds of leaves.
The people huddled around the poets like shrines, and the poets waved books that looked like they were coming to life, poetry books actively growing new pages of poetry before our eyes.
Uncle Bill, the great Soulard poet, sat watching the poets, his beard perfectly Confucian, his soul Buddhist.
K. Curtis Lyle enfolded his fellow poets in his gigantic conscious warm embrace.
Michael Castro loved Jack Kerouac's mother with Jack. Ann Haubrich loved with Kerouac the truly mad.
Allison Funk sat quietly in eternity with Kenneth Roxroth. Chris Parr fidgeted there with Gary Snyder.
Castro apologized, with Kerouac, to Charlie Parker, as Dave Stone played saxophone like Charlie Parker's godchild taking his confident time toward eternity.
Dave took a break, then it was Josh Weinstein playing the recorded music that was also, in its way, totally live. I had to talk to Dave and Josh, I consider them like my brothers, but talking with them up on the DJ balcony, somehow stupidly I missed Curtis' reading! My deepest biggest soul brother Curtis! I missed him!
That is the only way I knew I had not died and gone to heaven! In heaven I wouldn't miss Curtis' reading! And in heaven Uncle Bill would be allowed to place between the calm toes of The Buddha his little paper memorial to the dead John Lennon on the anniversary of the day the madman shot John Lennon dead!
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The image is stock, not from The Pulitzer's great show.
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2 comments:
would expect more commentary/coverage of Chris Parr, since he is (literally) an expert in this field. In fact, Chris is probably the number one person locally for this sort of thing...
Feel free to make more comments about Chris' reading. I was just trying to convey the magical impression of the evening, not cover it or comment on it.
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