BlogsSpring 2005Face it: there’s something in every poet that itches for rock stardom. We smooth over it with odes and sonnets, spondees and hendecasyllabics. At gallery or cafe readings, we don insousance along with tweed and scarf, as if to puree the crowd down to the iconoclasts who'd never confuse Joyce and Shelley with Jersey cocktail waitresses. Because, as much as we’d luv to be luved, there’s one thing we love even more than ourselves: Language setting sail, rigged in nuanced music, star-flung with image, yearning from beneath consciousness, up through the spine's flute and out the neocortex—schmaltz-free. As Finn MacCool puts it, we crave ‘the music of what happens.’ So, how cool to set sail east from Ohio on Rte 80 in two Jeeps and a Chevy crammed with guitars, banjos, fiddle, yamaha speakers, a bodhran and six days o’ wardrobe, bound for a Spring Break of singing just such music, original songs as phat as our inner rock-star could wish for. Songs like “The Tower,” rocking at Ben Bulben’s foot; and “Heart of the Stranger,” inspired by Whitman’s days nursing Union soldiers; or “The Old Woman of Beare,” based on the fierce cry of an 8th century crone; or “Poor Girl's Meditation" invoking a ghost of a century past. OK, I admit, I crooned all these and more to a flock of imaginary groupies before we hit Rte 81. Thank God they’d put me in a separate car.  A Day Older Than Yesterday When we hooked up, we were at Wilkes College. This was meant as our tune-up, but it was a special gig for me, since I’m a guest member of the faculty of Wilkes’ low residency MA program, and knew students and faculty from reunions past. What a great energy the place has. “Low Residency” indeed. Nothing low about the way we felt stretching our legs and unloading our gear. The program needs a better name. How about “High Spirit” since what happens in that town of poets and writers resonates through states. A grand evening, beginning with a beautiful dinner in one of those august mansions Yeats wrote of, “And grant that I myself, for portions of the year/ May handle nothing and set eyes on nothing/ But what the great and passionate have used/ Throughout the many-varying centuries.” Ah Willie…I must have been caught gawking in mid-reverie, cause Mike Lennon, Dean of Wit, elbowed my ribs and whispered that Nixon had stood under this very lintel, grinning his shit-eating grin as he handed over a flood-relief check for four million clams. Hmmm. Maybe we shoulda asked for more money, or at least another slice of cheesecake. But it was a great night—plenty of time for Istvan to concoct his magical sound-mix, and then we launched into it—first gig on the tour, belting out poems, songs, stories and tunes, ending as all celebrations should in a quiet basement bar with Mr. Jameson & friends. Or should I say Dr. Jameson, since this was Bonnie Culver’s house—Dean Culver, mind you—with a view of the valley below that almost makes me want to be Provost. Bonnie’s been the focal presence for writers at Wilkes for more than ten years now, and I think every poet-acolyte within driving distance must have a house key. Her play, Sniper, just finished a great off-Br oadway run; it’s a remorseless stare into the face of evil, fey and chilling.  Outside Murphy's Pub Which naturally brings me to Lee Schwartz, our host and one-day manager for the next night’s gig, at Murphy’s Bar in Alexandria in Alexandria. Lee is the Director of the US State Department of Geography and Global Issues, and has downed moonshine in a slew of unpronouncable countries. Domestically, he leads the league in leading us astray. This night, he piped up a whole pied-full of international hooligans, with more green beer than green cards. And in addition to characters from his shady past, Lee roped in a passel from the old days—George Collins and Manny, Bobby Lyons, Stags, Teddy Peterson, Ron Sprout, Knapper, Betsy Steele, all of us looking not a day older than yesterday, but maybe a few years older than the last time we’d all been together, which would have been a Saturday night frat bash, circa Stonehenge.  Kelly Sings "Wash" Nothing like singing in a bar. The feeling of being all alone in a crowd. Then, people start peeking up from their Shepherd’s Pie, begin to get interested, join in, sign on for the evening. Kelly was really hot, singing “Wash” in her clear alto—she makes it look so easy you forget sometimes how much power she generates, still giving the words the most delicate life and flavor. “The taste of every moment/ flavor of the past/ gathered into one drop/ in the bottom of the glass" while Steve let it go on the guitar and Istvan and Jim rhymed mandolin and bass and I tickled the goatskin with my new reed tipper. Between sets, we coaxed Elsa Higby, our NYC soapbox singer and groupie extraordinaire, into a song. She took the stage, looking small in the hum of the crowd, and leaned into a rendition of Danny Boy that turned the bar church-silent, and may have cracked a chalice or two. Then she sang “She Moved through the Fair,” that eerie Padraic Colum ballad. Accompanied only by bodhran, Elsa brought something to that beautiful song I’d never heard. Afterwards, she said that she wondered if the last lines, “I dreamt it last night that my dead love came in/” didn’t refer to the lover of the first stanza, but to some ghostly presence, emerging out of the past. Looking out at all these beloved faces from long ago, I know how she felt.  Elsa Higby In typical fashion, Lee had soon found new friends--using his newest line, "I'm with the band." Two beauties, Fiona and Nuala, were here from the city of Belfast on St. Pat’s Day for ‘the crack’ (not what you think —it’s Irish for ‘fun’). Overcoming their natural shyness (at birth, I mean), they stepped up and and sang what they remembered from "The Fields of Athenry," bringing to mind days days in Ireland when you’d sit around a pub table and everyone would take their turn at a song or story. Yes, the crack was mighty indeed. Next morning, we headed south, with a new groupie, the recently retired Stags, clutching his cappucino and scanning the Wall Street Journal in the back seat. We cruised across the Maryland border, into the lovely town of Chestertown on the eastern shore. I'd been to C-town many times over the past seven years, ever since my old pal and partner in crime, fiction writer Bob Mooney took on the directorship of Washington College's O'Neill Literary House. Bob had been hosting the Sophie Kerr weekend for all these years, bringing in writers the like of Billy Collins, Joyce Carol Oates, and Robert Pinsky. Now he was stepping down to return to teaching, and for his last blast, he'd brought in Brady's Leap to sing and recite, along with Christine Lincoln, a wonderful fiction writer and previous Sophie Kerr winner whose career started in Mooney's classroom. But that shin-dig had to wait for Friday.  Outside the Prince Theater Before that, we had a gig at the Prince Theatre, a lovely old movie house converted into a music hall. What a gas! The sound was majesterial, and we were all primed. After the sound check, our host, the lovely Meg Morris, ushered us into "the green room."' I kept thinking of that scene in "The Commitments," when the band begins to squabble, "I want real towels, not these bloody tea towels." No tea towels here: Sam Adams in the Fridge and cheese and crackers on the table. The Director of the Prince, John Schratwieser, gave us a warm introduction, and we trotted out on stage, careful not to trip over the wires. But, lo and behold--no audience! Or so it looked to me. With the houselights down, I was staring into the dark. I must admit I was a bit flummoxed, because the next words out of my mouth were, "We're delighted to be here, to share an evening of poems, songs, stories, and musical....tits." Jaysus! How did that come out? I'm supposed to save the sex stuff for the second set. Thank God for being an English Prof. Turned out everyone heard what they'd heard, but couldn't believe it. They said afterwards that they'd assumed it was some literary term. Fuckin' right. It was a great evening though; the sound was full and strong, and we really enjoyed ourselves up there. Steve got things heated up, fiddling Polkas, and Istvan's mandolin wove through ballads like "Galway Town" and "Girl in Spain." Kelly's voice resonated through the high beams, and Elsa sang "She Moved Through the Fair," beautifully. With my brother and sister-in-law and my nephew and niece in the crowd, I couldn't resist singing our mother's favorite song from the ancestral row house, "Weela Wallia" about a woman who killed her baby and was hanged. Not a dry eye in the theatre. Jim stole the show. In the middle of "Finnegan's Wake," when he does his 'whoosh' sound effect after "a bottle o'whisky flew at him.' I turned and asked, "how'd ya do that?" With the cherubic face of a physicist, he said, "basic parabola theory." Or some such nonsense. But the biggest event was Friday afteroon, the Sophie Kerr reading and performance at Washington College. What a great pleasure to see Chris Lincoln again, and to talk to Rich Gillan, one of the finest gentleman to occupy a department chair. Bob gave his usual eloquent introduction, and we were off--"Wash," then, "Angel's Share," a song Steve wrote based on a poem of mine, celebrating a visit I'd made to Stags' house in France years ago. So everyone was here, all part of the mix. That gave us a place to start the reading off. What is it--this interlacing of song and poem, this vortex of language and sound, voicing the place where self and anonymous entwine? Milan Kundera once said that in the novel, sadness is the form, and happiness is the content, since the characters die at the end, but are blissfully unaware of the end as their existence glides from sentence to sentence. Maybe poetry is the opposite. Happiness is the form and the content's sadness is sustained by the thrill of the music of word and line. That seems to be the way of it with 'Famine Ship." It's a heartbreaking song, but I never tire of hearing it, and I lean into the bodhran and give it all I've got. A good poem or song arrives at that place where sadness and happiness are both expressions of the music of what happens. With a wink up at the Brother in the balcony, I launched into the prologue of my memoir, To Prove My Blood: A Tale of Emigrations & the Afterlife, which sets the family record straight, though he calls it a work of fiction. Let him write his own damn memoir, I say. Kelly followed with a few poems that encompass, in her own unique idiom, sofas and supernovas, setting up Steve's quip that his poem was called "White Dwarf." Steve read one of my faves, "Why these Saturday Nights," which explains why we "rant and stomp and raise this hell" Yes indeed. He'd added a plaintive fiddle to the last few paragraphs of the memoir, and when Chris heard us practicing beforehand, she wanted in on the act, so Steve played during her reading too. It doesn't get any better. Or at least not at a literary reading. After a dinner and reception at the President's House, we ended up back at Marta's B&B, where we sat around and passed the bottle and sang songs, just as if we were back in Ohio. Analiese, Marta's sixth grade prodigy of a daughter, showed us what for on the fiddle--and even gave us a lesson in musical etymology. "What's the difference," she asked, "between a violin and a fiddle? |A violin has strings. A fiddle has strangs." And the next day, we really were on our way home--back to our far-flung destinations. Elsa to a funeral in Hawaii, Stags to Boston, Istvan to New Castle, the little Brady's back to Providence, Jim, Steve & Kelly back to Youngtown. I stayed on a day with the Mooney's, relaxing. It had all happened so fast, yet it felt like years--a little taste of Oisin's voyage to Tir na nOg--which took three nights or three hundred years, depending on who you ask. I suppose all voyages which register internal changes feel a little like that. And after it's all over, what's left to hold onto? I could say, "Angel's Share," that distillation of brandy or memory which evaporates into forever. Or I could raise a glass and remember "How the Whisky Rescued Me." But what was running through my mind as I thought of all the songs we'd sung and all the friendships we'd shared was the melody of Steve's newest song, based on Browning's "Love Among the Ruins."
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