"I sort of defenestrated poetry all together"

In 2007, Virginia's Poetry Out Loud state champion, Alanna Rivera, took third place in the Poetry Out Loud National Finals. She won a sizable scholarship and round-trip plane tickets to anywhere in the USA. I was so proud to cheer her on as her coach. Here's a snippet from the interview she gave at the time to the NEA. 

NEA: What's your favorite memory from the National Finals?

ALANNA RIVERA: My favorite memory from the National Finals was meeting Garrison Keillor. He inspired me to wear my favorite sneakers.

NEA: Has the program increased your interest in poetry or in performing?

RIVERA: When I was younger I used to write poems but was so unsatisfied that I sort of defenestrated poetry all together. I started out thinking that I was doing this all for the sake of performing, but I ended up reestablishing my relationship with poetry. I like it again, but I don't love it, because we still don't know each other that well.

...

NEA: You said in your Poetry Out Loud bio that you participate in jazz band and marching band. Did your knowledge of music affect the way you delivered the poems?

RIVERA: In jazz you learn the thoughts, feelings, and perceptions of the musicians, though sometimes it takes you a while to hear them. I think poetry is a lot like that. Reciting a poem is like a jazz solo: you're allowed to play your heart out, but you have to respect what the composer was feeling when he gave you those twelve or sixteen bars. You play for yourself, but you also play for the people who couldn't be there to voice their opinions, and you tell everybody what they had to say. My musical background helped me in understanding that I was no longer the musician, I was the musical instrument.

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I bet that girl is gonna go very, very far. Recently, the NEA interviewed me about working with Alanna, and about the value of keeping poetry recitation alive through the Poetry Out Loud competition. You can find that interview here. An excerpt:

NEA: Obviously the POL competitors get a lot out of working with mentors. What did you get out of being a coach?

BEASLEY: When I worked with Alanna, she was at the exact same age as I was when I first fell in love with poetry. As an adult, poetry is a career; I have a degree, a professional community, some formal goals. But once upon a time poetry was an elusive and fancy fish, glimmering in the very crowded river of 1,000 other high school fascinations. It was fun to see that same glimmer catch Alanna’s eye, and to be reminded that art must first and foremost be enjoyed for art’s sake.

NEA: What do you think are the benefits for students in learning to memorize and recite poetry?

BEASLEY: In memorizing poems, you return the art to its ancient origins, as a way of preserving stories and voices, and passing them from one generation to the next, that can never be denied. The poem becomes embedded in your muscle memory. I can’t think of Emily Dickinson’s “My life closed twice before its close–” without thinking of how it felt, as a nine-year-old, pacing back and forth across the shag carpet of my grandmother’s living room as I repeated the stanzas over and over to myself. I could be locked in prison someday, deprived of access to all paper, but no one can take that poem away from me. 

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This year's nationals take place April 26-27, at George Washington University's Lisner Auditorium. If you're interested in attending--these events are free and open to the public--find out more here.

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In other news...Raisin Bran is the unhealthiest breakfast cereal? Seriously? I feel betrayed.

Publisher's Weekly Review!

From the April 19 issue of Publisher's Weekly:



I Was the Jukebox    Sandra Beasley.   
Norton, $24.95 (96p) ISBN 978-0-393-07651-6

More fun than most recent books, Beasley's second collection can also get quite serious: in the best parts, the poet pretends she is any number of nonhuman things—a jukebox, an orchid, the Egyptian god Osiris, an eggplant (in a sestina), grains of sand. She also writes “love poems” to big ideas: “Love Poem for College” begins “You hit on me. You hit on everyone.” Beasley portrays the sometimes chaotic landscape between sex and love, youth and adulthood, the young men and women who hope for everything and the grownups who settle for less. “For an hour I forgot my fat self./ My neurotic innards, my addiction to alignment,” says the piano, remembering when she was played. In “Another Failed Poem About Music,” “even the name” of a percussion instrument, “triangle... is a perfect betrayal.” Beasley can sound regretful, but also flirtatious: “You are the loneliest of the three bears,” she says in “Love Poem for Wednesday,” “hoping/ to come home and find someone in your bed.” If Beasley's conceits owe something to Kenneth Koch, her tone and her subjects might place her with chick lit, too: this is a book that could go a long way. (Apr.)

Holy hell. I'm thrilled.

IndieFeed

IndieFeed has made April its First Annual IndieFeed Literary Journal Appreciation Month, and this week they are celebrating the amazing BARRELHOUSE. My poem, "Antiquity," which first appeared in Issue 7, went up today; check back for work on Wednesday (Catie Rosemurgy) and Friday (Farid Matuk). The shows can be downloaded via iTunes and the Indiefeed Performance Poetry Channel. Journals featured earlier in the month were PANK and RATTLE.

Speaking of Barrelhouse, I picked up the brand-spankin'-new Issue Eight in Denver, which includes the winners of the "Office Life" Invitational Competition and essays on 1) Facebook status updates, 2) Thin Lizzy, and 3) the Big Star song “Thirteen.” (To each their own holy trinity.) Contributors include B.J. Hollars, Maureen Thorson, Cristin O’Keefe Aptowicz, and the tag-team poetry of Elisa Gabbert and Kathleen Rooney. Check it out.