Lola takes the mean girl out

Last night a good friend and I took in the 2nd annual Shimmy Showdown at Jumpin' Jupiter. A Lola Van Ella production, the Shimmy Showdown mashes up burlesque routines with solo improv comedy and the "death match" model of competitive live performance.

It goes like this. After lavish and hilarious introductions, twelve dancers compete in groups of two for the first round. The pairs are drawn one at a time from a bowler hat. For each pair of dancers, Lola goes back to the hat and pulls a prop and a musical genre (big puffy red stuffed heart pillow; "hip-hop classics").

The dancer whose name was pulled first takes the first pass at a solo routine, incorporating the prop and danced to an unexpected piece of music; then the second dancer is handed the same prop (often fresh from the clenched teeth, or some other hinge, of the first dancer) and faces a different, unexpected piece of music within the same genre.

After each pair of dancers is finished, there is no raw instant elimination. Rather, the girls ("girl" is the word when the stage lights are on) giggle their way backstage as the names of the next pair are picked. Only after the first round of twelves dances is completed does Lola move into elimination mode.

She does this with great tact and insight into morale. Half of the dancers sail right through the first round; the other six face a modified dance-off, where two winners advance to the next round while four girls are escorted off-stage. They are escorted (by impeccable-looking stars from the local burlesque scene) to a V.I.P. lounge replete with craft cupcakes, chicken satay and champagne. That's what "losing" is like in Lola's world.

It goes like that until the final dance-off -- the very final round -- which is the first time for any girl the dance is sudden death elimination, with a single winner and a single loser. So the only time the potential hurt is that raw, it's all over right away and the "loser" is being lauded with love and gifts as the second to last girl strutting.

Lola totally takes the mean girl out. That's one of her most sustaining gifts. The production team of wild women (and the odd stray man) that has evolved around her just pulses with love and compassion. She creates a safe space, a sanctuary. It's a major reason why dancers from other cities gravitate to St. Louis. I admire this in Lola dearly and have tried to learn from it as her friend and occasional production colleague.

Okay, so I totally get the more immediately amazing things about the St. Louis burlesque scene -- the pee-your-fishnets hilarity; the dangerously acrobatic dancing; the absurd and fabulous costuming; the incomparable beauty of all these differently sized, shaped, and toned women stripping down nearly to how God made her in the flesh. But if you watch how Lola (and Kyla and Katie and Michelle ...) operate, it starts by taking the mean girl out. I love these girls!

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Photo by Alex Rimorin.

When are we going to get together, John Ashbery?

I have been thinking about John Ashbery, because he was honored by President Obama yesterday, and I have been thinking about love poetry, since it's Valentine's Day. So, I pulled out Ashbery's book-length poem Flow Chart (1991), which has several sustained passages of straight-forward love poetry -- unusual for a poet who is seldom straightforward and seldom in the mood to sustain anything.

Reading my marginal notes over a Valentine's Day dinner with my daughter, I picked out this passage from part I of the VI-part Flow Chart. It takes awhile, in this bit I've typed in, before we get to the straightforward love poetry, but that's essential to give the flavor of Ashbery.

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This mound of cold ashes that we call
for want of a better word the past wouldn't inflict the horizon
as it does here, calling attention to shapes
that resemble it and so liberating them into the bloodstream
of our collective memory: here a chicken coop, there a smokestack,
farther on an underground laboratory. These things then wouldn't
depress (or, as sometimes happens, exalt) one, and living would be just that:
a heavenly apothegm leading to a trance on earth. Yet one scolds
the horizon for having nothing better to offer. Did I order that?
And when the bill comes, tries to complain to the management
but at that point the jig, or whatever, is up. Yes I've seen many fine
young girls in my time take that path and wonder afterwards
what went wrong. I've seen children, taken from their homes
at too early an age, left to wander about like Little Nell,
not knowing that they were never obliged to do this thing. O
paradise, to lie in the hammock with one's book and drink,
not hearing the murmur of consternation as it moves progressively
up the decibel scale. Yet I see you are uncertain where to locate me:
here I am. And I've done more thinking about you than you perhaps realize,
yes, a sight more than you've done about me. Which reminds me:
when are we going to get together? I mean really -- not just for a
drink and a smoke, but really
invade each other's privacy in a significant way that will make sense
and later amends to both of us for having done so, for I am
short of the mark despite my bluster and my swaggering,
have no real home and no one to inhabit it except you
whom I am in danger of losing permanently as a bluefish slips off
the deck of a ship, as a tuna flounders, but say, you know all that.

*

Then he goes on like that for another 187 pages!

Flow Chart is dedicated "To David," that would be David Kermani, Ashbery's partner since 1970. It must be a central work in Ashbery's mind, as it certainly is in mind, since he apparently has named his legacy The Flow Chart Foundation.

A town without shade and a Cherry County corn man

I was happy to receive a package in the U.S. mail from a friend in northern Italy this week. It's the first solo record by Andrea Van Cleef, Sundog, a more quiet folksy statement from a leader of rock bands.

Andrea sent me the record because it has a co-write with me on it, "Town Without Shade." Here is that song.

Andrea.Van.Cleef.Town.without.shade by ChrisKingSTL

Andrea wrote the music, I sent him some lyrics, and then he rewrote the lyrics quite a bit.

The lyrics I sent him were drawn from my first visit to Lakota country, all those reservation towns without shade.

I'm most proud of these lines, which conclude his song:

I wish we could get the sun drunk and high
And watch it fall down, off the sky

That sums up the desperation I saw in Indian country. It wasn't all desperation, but that's what the desperate parts looked and felt like.

I took this trip a very long time ago, about twenty years ago, so it's odd that in the same month Andrea's record with this song was released, I also released a chapbook with a poem culled from that same journey across the Plains.

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CHERRY COUNTY CORN MAN

He tore each head open, see
it’s good, I done good, I can do something right,
I can make people happy.
I’ll give you a deal: fourteen head, two dollars;
here, you can take two for free.
He never wanted to see forests on fire.
Nobody ever explained

Communism to me. Not democracy
either. I went to study
trees in Missouri, but they sent me to die
in Vietnam. Now isn’t
that nice? He can’t pronounce the name for what went
wrong, but he can grow corn, so
sweet, fourteen head, two dollars; here, take two free.

On giving anarchism to the anarchists & Cherokee Street before superfluous hipsters

Today I went to Black Bear Bakery on Cherokee Street to drop off a few things.

Last year my friend Paul Reiter was shot dead interrupting the burglary of his neighbor. I helped Paul's sisters clean out the bachelor's house and sell some of his stuff. I held onto a book called Anarchism Today -- the "today" in question being 1972 -- thinking Paul would like it if I took it to our local anarchist bakery. More than eighth months after Paul was taken from us, I finally put that book into anarchist hands.

When I grabbed the book from my trunk, I also snagged a copy of my new chapbook, The Shape of a Man (Intagliata Imprints). A friend who is a successful businessman paid for this printing, so I am doing my very best to sell the little books rather than give them away, as is my wont. But my publisher is a far-left progressive and student of philosophy, and I just knew he'd like the thought that our first library copy was donated to the library at an anarchist bakery.

And then there is the example of Roque Dalton to think about. The great Salvadorean poet and revolutionary -- one of my most important models as a poet -- wrote, "Poetry, like bread, is for everyone." Roque Dalton approved of this donation.

The man at the bread counter accepted both donations. So, if you want to read up on anarchism ca. 1973 or read my new poems, Black Bear Bakery is the spot.

I also brought a copy of the CD Outstandingly Ignited: Lyrics by Ernest Noyes Brookings Vol. 4. This 1995 compilation of bands making songs from a nursing home resident's poems features my band, Eleanor Roosevelt. I've kept in touch with the producer David Greenberger, who recently mailed me a box of these discs.

Some neat-looking young Asian woman at the Black Bear counter liked the looks of the CD, her eye drawn first by the cover art work, drawn by Daniel Clowes.

She has her own copy now.

Walking up and down Cherokee Street, which I no longer visit as much as I'd like, I was struck by the things one hears about "The Street" nowadays, namely, the influx of so-called hipsters. I have a soft spot for hipsters, having lived in St. Louis at a time when one would have killed to have thousands, hundreds, even dozens of strangers running around who liked weird music, tattoos and comic books.

When I see this new Cherokee Street in formation, in fact, I am reminded of the years that I lived in the neighborhood, when there was no such thing as superfluous hipsters on Cherokee Street, or any other place around here. I wrote a song one day after walking up and down Cherokee Street right about when Eleanor Roosevelt was appearing on this hip compilation in the mid-1990s.

It's pretty grim, but this is what "The Street" looked like then.
"Song from Home"
Chris King
Recorded by Roy Kasten


Song From Home by ChrisKingSTL

Chris King's "Medley of bad guys"

So like I was saying, there will be a poetry performance at Mad Art (2727 South 21st St.) at 7:30 p.m. Monday, January 30 to close The Shape of a Man group art show. The event is free and open to the public. Mad Art will run a cash bar. The reading will last about an hour and be followed by a reception.

The performing poets will be K. Curtis Lyle, Stefene Russell, Nicky Rainey and Chris King (that's me), reading in the opposite order of that list. Leading up to the event, I plan to post a little more info about each of the poets, along with one of their more "manly" poems.
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A MEDLEY OF BAD GUYS
By Chris King

He showed up drunk, a syringe
tattoo turned into a knife. Put out a lit
cigarette on his tongue, like
a guy hit by lightning strike left thirsty
the rest of his life, or wine
country scavengers left deaf by cannon bursts.
He carried cyanide in

his shoes, knew creepy people, figured creepy
people must want to blow up
other creepy people, so sold explosives.
In the joint, he rigged a bed
sheet and magazine, fanned himself by waving
one toe. You gave me a grave.
I made for myself a little open door.

*

Florida: she made me chase
a lizard from her house. I should have known right
there. Then, she married the worst
kind of bastard: the kind that can kick my ass

*

He was a Cajun screw from
Port Arthur, Texas. Got a blow job, didn’t
feel a God damned thing. Don’t think
you’re owed, now. Just because I got a lot of
shit don’t mean it ain’t all mine.
Kind of guy could never write the novel of
his own life. Why? Because he
doesn’t know how to laugh, cry, at the right parts.

from The Shape of a Man (Intagliata Imprints) (c) 2012

**

Chris King is a multi-media creative worker and producer based in St. Louis, Missouri. He casts his poems as 7/11s, a form innovated by the St. Louis poet Quincy Troupe. The Shape of a Man group show was the occasion to publish his first collection of 7/11s, also called The Shape of a Man (Intagliata Imprints, 2012). He has published one previous chapbook of poetry, A heart I carved for a girl I knew (Skuntry, 2006). He serves as creative director of Poetry Scores, which translates poetry into other media. Expected later in 2012: the second movie he directed for Poetry Scores, Go South for Animal Index, and a boxed set of Bascom Lamar Lunsford's Library of Congress recordings, to be released on our national record label, Smithsonian/Folkways.

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At the January 30 show-closer for The Shape of a Man, I will perform poems with Josh Weinstein on double bass.




And I will perform my poems through Noah Kirby's sculpture, With Solid Stance and Stable Sound.



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Also in this series:
K. Curtis Lyle's freedom is the Monster Among Us.
Stefene Russell's manly love song
Nicky Rainey wants to tell us where Leo is now

Nicky Rainey wants to tell us where Leo is now

So like I was saying, there will be a poetry performance at Mad Art (2727 South 21st St.) at 7:30 p.m. Monday, January 30 to close The Shape of a Man group art show. The event is free and open to the public. Mad Art will run a cash bar.

The performing poets will be K. Curtis Lyle, Stefene Russell, Nicky Rainey and Chris King (that's me), reading in the opposite order of that list. Leading up to the event, I plan to post a little more info about each of the poets, along with one of their more "manly" poems.


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Where Leo is now
By Nicky Rainey


As soon as the BP oil spill began, my cousin Leo started finding fishes in his dedicated spaces -- an anemone in the bathroom sink, krill wiggling out of his ear, a baby shark flopping around in his underwear drawer. The dreams were worse. One night he got chased by clansmen through a post-apocalyptic coral reef. The next, eyeless cavefish replaced his teeth. Like many of us, Leo’s nightmares led to insomnia, gluing him to CNN live -- you could see it refracted in his eyeballs during the daytime as he played cards or ate a sandwich. The ticker tape, talking heads, looping stories, the endless ebbing and flowing of black gloss and sea.

On day 43 of the spill, Leo found a handful of oysters in the urinal at work. By 55, kelp fingers untied his shoelaces. Soon, he completely stopped sleeping and the dream animals took over. As the disaster worsened on his television, the wildlife in his reality thickened and buzzed. His house became a clam-shell, a pile of turtle eggs replaced his lover. And so, Leo left. Remembering 1980s images of EarthFirst! teenagers scrubbing herons with toothbrushes, he packed modest supplies and caught a Greyhound bus to Baton Rouge where he's staying by the seashore, calling me on the payphone collect to say, "Tell my boss I'm not coming back, Nicky. My heart is aligned with this filmy tide." I said: "Do you need me to send a tent, baby?" He laughed, asked about our mothers, and hung up to plot his revenge for us all.

(Where Leo is Now was previously published in Bad Shoe Magazine, issue #3).

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Nicky Rainey makes zines, writes grants, stories and letters to her pen-pals. She represented St. Louis in the National Poetry Slam 2009. For a copy of her latest zine, "Let's Talk About People," send her an email at n.k.rainey@gmail.com.

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Lead photo of coated gull from TheDailyGreen.

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Also in this series:
K. Curtis Lyle's freedom is the Monster Among Us.
Stefene Russell's manly love song

Stefene Russell's manly love song

So like I was saying, there will be a poetry performance at Mad Art (2727 South 21st St.) at 7:30 p.m. Monday, January 30 to close The Shape of a Man group art show. The event is free and open to the public. Mad Art will run a cash bar.

The performing poets will be K. Curtis Lyle, Stefene Russell, Nicky Rainey and Chris King (that's me), reading in the opposite order of that list. Leading up to the event, I plan to post a little more info about each of the poets, along with one of their more "manly" poems.


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Love Song
By Stefene Russell

He’s herbaceous. He’s a creeper.
A Mandrake in a crumpled suit
strutting his stuff down the street.

He thinks he’s a black angel,
but he’s just a dark green one
that looks darker after midnight,

A metallic singing telegram
with heavy elements
in place of vowels.

He tries the fake-out.
Says he bears flowers.
A bract is a flower
made from leaves
that aren’t green.
A dogwood has wood
but no flowers.

He says he’s The Deleter.
The lady says,
Bract, broken, bled.

Grains of gunpowder.
Itch of the firecracker
under the paper.
Red stars! Blue stars!
Saltpetre, motherfucker.

I see through you,
conjurer, with your
dark green magic.


(c) 2012 Stefene Russell. All rights reserved.

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Stefene Russell is the culture editor at St. Louis Magazine, and the former co-editor of 52nd City and Prinssess Tarta literary magazines. She is currently a member of Poetry Scores, an arts collective that translates poetry into other media. Manliest fact: she once won an arm-wrestling match in a bar with a guy named Friend, but suspects it was rigged in her favor.

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Also in this series:

K. Curtis Lyle's freedom is the Monster Among Us.

K. Curtis Lyle's freedom is the Monster Among Us

K. Curtis Lyle

So like I was saying, there will be a poetry performance at Mad Art (2727 South 21st St.) at 7:30 p.m. Monday, January 30 to close The Shape of a Man group art show. The event is free and open to the public. Mad Art will run a cash bar.

The performing poets will be K. Curtis Lyle, Stefene Russell, Nicky Rainey and Chris King (that's me), reading in the opposite order of that list. Leading up to the event, I plan to post a little more info about each of the poets, along with one of their more "manly" poems.

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from THE MONSTER AMONG US
Excerpt from the Merovingian Erosnaut Told in Tongues
By K. Curts Lyle

My freedom is the monster among us
A chant is a form of madness
My freedom is a chant inverse tragedy
First animate song against suicide pause of
Color between love and death pre herald
Of what is coming my freedom is
A ten stage tongue rocket already decreed

My freedom is the monster among us
Not your freedom not our freedom but
My freedom is selfish like a billion
Year old gene undying walking in reverse
The new man posing as a retiree
My freedom cracks mirrors for a living
My freedom casts no shadow no where

My freedom is the monster among us
Has no border cannot adjoin is both
Light shield and gravity my freedom shuns
Length and depth and breadth and joy
And pain and does not respond to
The short version my freedom has met
All yogas and tasted all pending psyches

Of Bella Dona Datura Amanita Father Peyote
My freedom can pick out a warrior
From a cluster of pimps she can
Stop the world turn a warrior back
Into a pimp a hero into a
Bum cake the one thing you’ve loathed
All your life into a secret lover

(c) 2012 K. Curtis Lyle
All rights reserved

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K. Curtis Lyle was born and raised in Los Angeles, California. He was a founding member of the Watts Writers Workshop, joining it in 1966 and becoming a prominent member of the Los Angeles renaissance that the group represented. He has taught, lectured and read his poetry in performance in the major intellectual and urban centers of North America.

Lyle has published widely over the years and been anthologized in the United States, Canada, Latin America and Europe. Lyle’s work has been widely adapted to music, especially to jazz. He built a performing and recording relationship with the late world renowned saxophonist and composer Julius Hemphill (1938-1995). The text of Lyle’s poem, Drunk on God, was recorded for Julius Hemphill’s Big Band (Electra/Asylum).

In June 2003, Lyle published a work of selected poetry entitled, Electric Church. In February of 2008 he published a long prose poem, The Epileptic Camel Driver Speaks to a Refugee Death (Poetry Scores & Firecracker Press). In November 2008, Poetry Scores and Firecracker Press published a new work entitled Nailed Seraphim.

He currently lives in St. Louis, Missouri.


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The Shape of a Man group art show, featuring Amy VanDonsel, was organized in conjunction with the publication of Chris King's new chapbook of poetry, The Shape of a Man (Intagliata Imprints, 2012). The peformance Jan. 30 will include a reception and book signing.

Extra! Extra! Free Gerald Early essay on the great Joe Frazier!

When the great heavyweight champion Joe Frazier died, I felt The St. Louis American should run a news obit. I suspected Michael Spinks or someone from the Spinks team would provide our local St. Louis hook, and I was right, but I also asked Gerald Early for a quote.

As author of The Culture of Bruising, one of the great brainiac books on prizefighting, Gerald would pass muster as an expert quote on boxing in any publication. As a black man who lives in St. Louis, he was the perfect quote for St. Louis' black newspaper. More than that, Gerald is a Philly guy, and Philadelphia is the city that defined Frazier as a fighter. I hit him up.

I never heard back before deadline. I didn't take it personally. Gerald is a busy man, and Frazier died on a Monday night, only giving me one full day before our deadline day to pull my story together. I'm the paper's managing editor, so I do any reporting by hook or crook between managing assignments and crunching copy. The time I'd like to spend nagging my sources for their quotes I actually spend nagging my reporters and photojournalists for their copy and photos.

More than two months after Frazier's tragic death, I heard back from Gerald. He said he needed more than a quote in someone else's newspaper piece, which is why he wrote the Belles Lettres piece. Belles Lettres is a publication of the Center for the Humanities at Washington University, which Gerald directs. Since I am one of his Community Advisory Board members, Gerald fairly assumed I'd read his piece, but for some reason I had not received my copy. I asked for one.

Yesterday I received in the mail the September/December 2001 issue of Belles Lettres, which ends with Gerald's essay "The Fire-Breather, the Gym, and the City: How Boxer Joe Frazier Defined Philadelphia." It's just exactly what I wanted from to hear from him when I asked for my quote: the perspective of a black man from Philadelphia who knows and loves prizefighting. It's an unforgettable, bravura piece of writing.

I see now you can find the essay online, but when I assumed there was only the print edition, I asked Gerald how my friends who love boxing and his prose (not a small number of people) can get a hold of a copy of Belles Lettres. He reminded me our magazine is a free publication with an open subscription. To request a copy of the issue with Gerald Early's classic Joe Frazier essay, and sign up for future issues of Belles Lettres, simply notify our adminiastrative assistant Barb Liebmann at liebmann@wustl.edu or 314-935-5576. This particular issue is a slick, handsome 36-pager; any fan of prizefighting will treasure it.

Here is what's funny, and I pointed this out to Gerald before I'm telling you. I'm sure Frazier died on the doorstep of his magazine deadline, just as he did on our newspaper deadline. In rushing this essay to print, Gerald dropped his byline from his essay. The essay appears without author credit. Gerald is the publisher and editor, so he only has himself to blame, and I'm sure he has forgiven himself. But Washington University can be a conservative and stuffy place, and like any high-profile institution it is very jumpy (and rightly so) on issues of race. I'm fairly certain that Gerald Early is the only person at Wash U who would sign his name to a piece of writing in a Wash U publication that drops both the F-bomb and the N-word. Yet the writer of this essay is a non-bylined phantom!

Strong language, Gerald explained his choice of words, for a strong man. Absofuckinglutely!

K. Curtis Lyle, Stefene Russell, Nicky Rainey, Chris King read manly poems

The public will have a last chance to see the group show The Shape of a Man at Mad Art when we host a show-closing poetry performance there 7:30 p.m. Monday, January 30 at the gallery, 2727 South 21st St. in Soulard in the old Police station.

The event is free and open to the public. Mad Art will run a cash bar.

The poets for this farewell Shape of a Man reading are K. Curtis Lyle, Stefene Russell, Nicky Rainey and Chris King (that's me), and we will read in the opposite order of that list. I will perform with Josh Weinstein on double bass and through Noah Kirby's sculpture With Solid Stance and Stable Sound.

Each poet has been asked to perform for 15 minutes, so the whole reading should last about an hour, from 7:30 to 8:30. After the reading there will be a book signing and reception in the gallery, with a last chance to see the art show in the company of lead artist, Amy VanDonsel.

The art show and this reading are organized in conjuction with the publication of my chapbook of poetry The Shape of a Man (Intagliata Imprints). All of the poets have been asked to read poems that are in some sense "manly".

In a review of the book by Missouri poet laureate David Clewell, Clewell writes, "Musician/poet/agent provocateur Chris King discovers some acutely painful sharp angles that contribute to The Shape of a Man. These are poems full of beer, bad guys, car rides, near-talismanic ears of corn, and a laundromat where the speaker’s determined to see his dirty laundry through, all the way to dry.”

In her review, Stefene Russell writes, "Though his poems are not the average lyrical domestic still life, that’s not to say they float in some ionosphere, or don’t sound like they were written on Earth. On the contrary, they are earthy, randy, often hilarious, disarming in their lack of sentimentality."

Yesterday at lunch, K. Curtis Lyle told me, "These new poems, they are not as scattered. They are much more incisive. I don't know if it's the influence of Leyla, or what. "

Leyla is my eight-year-old daughter. My old friends like Curtis have noticed a vast maturation process brought on by fatherhood. Just as important to my starting to improve as a poet, as I told Curtis, was my discovery of the Seven/Eleven poetic form innovated by our mutual friend Quincy Troupe. Here is my review of Quincy's new book Errancities where he introduces the form. All of my poems in my new book are cast as 7/11s.
I'll be back to blog more about each of these poets and to post some of their work in advance of the January 30 show. Hope to see you there!

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The image is one of Amy VanDonsel's pieces from The Shape of a Man.

Before they set up the carnival (poem for a Bearded Lady)

We had a great night last night with The Shape of a Man at Mad Art Gallery. Lots to say about it, and very few regrets.

One regret: too late to involve her, I learned about Brunhilda Beardsky, The Bearded Lady from The Beggars Carnivale. 
As I told her, my chapbook The Shape of a Man has a Bearded Lady reference. It's in the poem that got Amy VanDonsel and me started on the concept of the show.

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BEFORE THEY SET UP THE CARNIVAL

I was at the carnival
before they set up the carnival. I saw
them setting it up. I saw
The Pirate when it was buck seats in the dirt,
The Tilt-a-Whirl before it
tilted or whirled, the tonsils of the plastic
clown fitted with balloon lips.

I saw The Bearded Lady
putting on his beard. I saw The Strong Man hit
up in the ass with human
growth hormone, administered by a midget
still in street clothes. The Midway
at the beginning, when there is no money,
only hungry drunken men
with disassembled games, paper tickets, and
candy for kids. I saw you
when no one saw the You in you that dazzles
everyone now, but not me.

-- Chris King

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Another regret is we did not prepare a performance poetry component that would work with a smashing success of a Mad Art opening. That's okay, I like having to work around smashing successes!

It does, however, beg for a performance poetry event at Mad Art before the show comes down at the end of the month. I think I'll have to talk to The Bearded Lady about that.