Wave Books Poetry Bus Tour: 10.09.06-10.13.06 ANYWHERE, USA Dispatches from poets stuffed in a bus touring 50 cities in 50 days. Friday: 10.13.06 | Permalink | Comments (1)

Day 35 / Durham, NC; Asheville, NC; Athens, GA / Carrie St. George Comer

On the plane to Durham. I’m reading poetry so I’m paranoid, but the family around me is paying less attention to me than I am to them. Turbulence. The dad and the kids whoop with glee. Dad says, “Did you feel that?” Mom says, “You’d have to be dead not to feel that.” I burrow deeper into Blue Colonial by David Roderick and hope that reading really hard will keep us from crashing. Mom says, “This is jarring my bones . . . David, I’m ready for my pillow now.” I’m sitting between Mom and Dad. “Ooh, my back and legs are killing me. When we get home I’m gonna get my heating blanket.” No response from anyone. “Ooh, my back hurts.” Should I say something? Do I speak English? “Mike Wallace looks like he don’t feel good.” The dense grey outside the window clears and we can see a brown body of water, mounds of red dirt, houses going up on clearcut. We land roughly. As we pull up to the gate, Dad says, “That looks like a brand new plane, don’t it?” Mom says, “Honey, I wouldn’t know a brand new plane if it, if it—”

Oo ya—it’s cold. I’m wearing flip flops and hoping the rum didn’t shatter in my suitcase.

In line for the restroom—Southern accents, chitchat, Duke sweatshirts. For a number of reasons, Duke sux.

Switch to boots. Rum bottle intact. Sweater. Do people think I’m a terrorist? Like, ever?

A taxi takes me downtown. I’m standing on a desolate sidewalk. They’re trying to revive the city parts of the city. Orange cones. Piles of brick. Work trucks. The old buildings are beautiful but no one’s around. Such is the case with lots of American cities. The downtowns abandoned. Life takes place on the outer rim, in shopping centers and on interstates. Everyone wants a new house on clearcut. Everyone wants to be close to Home Depot and Applebee’s. It’s not that I can’t understand this. Everyone wants space and convenience. We’ve got kids to raise, after all. I can understand this. But still. “A pile of junk is a kind of faith,” says Roderick. True that. But this other kind of junk is a pile of fucking shit, in my estimation.

Did NC go red or blue? Red. Red or blue, the language I live and judge by. My state also went red. Like a bloody foot hanging off the corner of the nation. But scratch that. Some people are evil. Some people don’t care. What’s the difference?

So the reading went down in the Baldwin Lofts. Matthew closed it down with “a dress of lapping glass.” Ken Rumble read first: “seizure suit.” Sierra Nelson went after him: “Forgive me, we were made of wood when we made our wedding bed.” And also Mark McMorris: “the dog that is a star in the sky.” To mention a few.

Now it’s grey and drizzly and we’re headed to Asheville.

We’re climbing a mountain. Some fall foliage, a casual light over the trees.

Asheville’s had success with its downtown revival. People stroll the streets on Saturday night, bundled in shawls and hats. Lots of babies in slings. And sometimes when you look to your left there’s a mountain face glowing pink and yellow. We read at Malaprop’s Bookstore. Props to those guys. Big turnout. Very cozy. Just what I wanted from NC. Matthew’s friends Steve and Nava were kind enough to let us crash in their lovely bungalow with little
notice.

Sunday and off to Athens. Long drive through the drizzle. A stop at a gas station where Linas has Mark read a poem to a local guy. A stop at the bus wash where Linas has Valzhyna read a poem to the guy who washed the bus. Linas skateboards round and
round us with his camera.

Joshua cracks open the rum and the bus gets a little warmer and a little more fun. We arrive late in Athens. A long country road takes us to the ATHICA Gallery Space. There are lots of questions on the poetry bus—Why are we stopping? What time do we leave? What’s that? Who’s this?—and sometimes an answer or two. You just gotta roll with it. Roll with the poetry bus.

In the ATHICA, a circle of orange cones and a hand welded toy soldier sculpture that looks like a dead soldier in a mound of sand. On the walls, big posters of Bush and Rove prez and sez dispensers. A great big cotton mushroom cloud with a hole in the top and a ladder hanging out of the hole. A cluster of Bush voodoo dolls hanging from the ceiling. People start to show up—this always surprises me. The reading was killer. Here’s another taste. Bob: “Why don’t you just crawl off and die? That’s just the way I roll.” Joshua: “spiritually, I’m all full of cookies.” Travis: “can you find God? / He’s hunting you / with a pencil." And the Athenians went ga ga for Valzhyna: “I’m telling you this is not pain. This is just the embrace of a very strong god, one with an unshaven cheek that prickles when he kisses you.”

Vic Chesnutt closed it down, and he was brill. His voice is delicious. I wish he’d gone on. The audience was tuned in. The space was cool. Sabrina Orah Mark (she’s funny, The Babies is brilliant) took us to The Globe after. And Tonya Foster joined us last night, cool. She’s now headed toward home—New Orleans. But first, Tuscaloosa. T-town. Bama.

Day 36 / Tuscaloosa, AL / Gillian Conoley

Ok, I know I’m back-tracking, but why must things on the bus be linear? It’s good work being on the Poetry Bus, but it’s exhausting work, too. Sleeping on the bus really means not sleeping.

So forgive me, blog readers wherever you are, but here’s a report from yesterday, right before I got on the poetry bus. Tomorrow we’ll pick up on New Orleans, with more in-depth reportage of Katrina devastation.

Meanwhile, back in the time tunnel—

It’s 3 pm and I just got to Tuscaloosa. Got into Birmingham around 10 and slept well and got up just in time to catch the only bus to Tuscaloosa—a Greyhound. Birmingham bus station was slimy scene—like being in a Denis Johnson novel. I walked in and everyone in the place stared—then got my ticket and went to vending machines as had not had anything to eat or drink, was in rush to get to bus station. Then immediately accosted by a guy with a long story about his seven-year-old son who had thrown up on the last bus and he called his wife and she said get him something to eat, he’s diabetic, and could I spare a few dollars, so I gave him the two dollars in my hand and then he said well we could share the sandwich if you want, but it costs $5 so I gave him $5. And of course there’s no son, no wife, just a crazy guy who then came back to me 10 minutes later saying I don’t mean to startle you but this bus station cafe is really expensive and I told him I didn’t have any more money.

Everyone in the station extremely bedraggled looking and worn out and poor. Then got on the bus (1 hour ride) and the driver says “Good afternoon everyone, I’m Derek your driver. There is no drinking of alcohol or smoking allowed on this bus or in the bathrooms. If you get caught drinking your trip will end. You may talk on your cell phone but keep the conversation between you and the person you are talking to. Don’t go blowing your mouth off. If your cell phone goes chirp chirp and is irritating the person sitting next to you or irritating me the driver, your trip will end. I will not wait to tell you a second time to stop the chirp chirp . . .” This monologue went on for quite a while and was dead serious.

Tuscaloosa is a bit of hell hole—a cross between downtown Taylor, Texas with buildings shut down and a little Round Rock-ish, too—but it is a college town so I found an Internet cafe. I am the only person in it, sitting on a black couch. I plan to stay here for the next 3-4 hours and get school work done. It’s cool—air-conditioned. Dropped my bag off at the Bama theatre where it will be safe until the reading, where they could point me in the direction of the Internet cafe though no one could remember the name of it.

Day 37 / Tuscaloosa, AL & New Orleans, LA / Gillian Conoley

Poetry Bus rolled into New Orleans at 6 pm. On the bus: Travis Nichols, Joshua Beckman, Matthew Zapruder, Michael Zapruder, Tonya Foster, Carrie Comer, Liz Hughey, Sierra Nelson, Valzhyna Mort, Brent Hendricks, Linas Phillips, Bill Wesley, Gillian Conoley stretched out in all forms of sleeping bags, under pink streaks of sky. Cypress trees ravaged and still piercing bits of clothing. Slowly poets tumbled out into gray French Quarter morning. Haunted, half the population of the city beginning to stir. Mournful atmospheric condition.

Thanks to painter Jan Gilbert and filmmaker Kevin McCaffrey, we had a three hour tour of Katrina devastation. Emotionally wracking. Miles and miles of destroyed homes, cars, trees. With no recovery in sight. Reading at Contemporary Art Center in one hour. More details tomorrow, during the six hour trek to Houston.

Exhausted travellers, with poetry in our hearts, for the city that time forgot, the city Bush denied. Reading tonight will be one of sorrow I imagine, though rich, given this group . . .

more to follow—sorry to be brief—will make it up to blog readers tomorrow!

UPDATE

Reading in New Orleans was great. Bus readers: Tonya Foster, Carrie Comer, Valzhyna Mort, Matthew Zapruder, Joshua Beckman, Carrie Comer, myself.

But let’s go back to Tuscaloosa for a moment, if only in our minds. Reading was at Bama Theatre, a movie theatre downtown. Large crowd of maybe 60-70 people, extremely attentive, kind, warm, happy to see the Poetry Bus. Robin Behn and Kate Bernheimer extraordinarily generous with their time, hospitality, good will. Reading occurred in the lobby, wafts of concession stand popcorn, bright lights, Art Deco patterned carpets, rows and rows of seats. Audience appeared to be mostly students, though there were some people who peered through the plate glass windows and came in—the advantage of having a reading visible from the street.

Travis Nichols just leaned over across his laptop and said, “Hey, Gillian—did you call Tuscaloosa a hellhole?” “Yes, I did.” But this is ok with Travis. One gets the sense that most things are ok with Travis. I like hellholes. I was raised in a hellhole. If a college town is going to be a college town, the only thing that is going to save it is to be a bit of a hellhole. Tuscaloosa succeeds in this—at least the downtown does. Strong waft of barbecue carbonated with exhaust fumes down the main street. A few abandoned stores lining the streets, providing relief from the occasional fancy restaurant. Who could ask for anything more? Tuscaloosa is a nice relief from the typical American overdone commodity town. Ok, I’m not apologizing for the hellhole comment. Love it or leave it.

New Orleans is difficult to write about. People should go there. The devastation is far more than can be imagined. Thousands and thousands of homes spray painted with the coded symbols the National Guard developed: first the date, say 9/13, then the code for the particular National Guard unit (NE for New England, CA for California, GA for Georgia, then a numeral for number of bodies found, NA for no animals found, A preceded with number for animals, TFW for toxic flood water. Outside exterior of many homes have a black, charred line, strangely, remarkably straight—this is the flood line, how high the water came up. Thanks to our guides painter Jan Gilbert and filmmaker and producer Kevin McCaffrey, we drove through the most devastated neighborhoods-- the 9th ward, the poorest, African-American neighborhood in the city; East New Orleans, a middle class, largely African-American neighborhood; Lakeview, middle-class, largely white neighborhood; Mid-city, middle to upper middle class mixed neighborhood; Bayou St. John; Gentilly; Upper ninth ward; and on. FEMA trailers parked in some driveways. In the most devastated of the devastated: ninth ward, Lakeview, upper ninth ward, very few trailers, mostly just wracked house after house after house. Some houses crashed into trees. Some houses crashed into other houses. A lot of stoops, no houses. Clothes still caught in cypresses. The cypresses bent and pointed like in a Hawthorne novel. The oaks though were the strangest—strong, intact, gorgeous. Magnolias completely gone. And don’t even try to think about the crepe myrtles or oleanders.

In the French Quarter, however, the oleanders are in full bloom, a few balconies here and there are ornately floridly planted. Many storefronts still closed. Many decorated to look as though they are open, but then there’s a sign that says, “We’re Coming Back!” Or “We’re Opening November 1 . . . October . . . soon . . . soon.” A mournful, guarded optimism.

I take it back about everything being ok with Travis. Travis just called someone whose name I didn’t hear “a bourgeoisie, incestuous, self-indulgent, incorrigible fake, yet he is there.”

Linas Phillips the filmmaker on board loves Herzog, Cassavettes, and Les Blank. If you live in the Bay Area you can see his film on Sunday at 7:15 at the Mill Valley Film Festival. Also somewhere in Northampton soon . . . Web site: linasfilms.com. His film is about walking from Seattle to Los Angeles to meet Werner Herzog. Does he meet him? You’ll have to see the film to find out.

Day 38 / Houston, TX / Gillian Conoley

Everyone Has Lost Track of Number of Days on the Bus

Houston is steamy, rainy, lush. Big fat long-haired gray cat just galloped across lawn between the Cy Twombly Museum and the Menil Collection and Rothko Chapel, putting just the right punctuation mark to our Surrealist performance at Menil . . . But more on that, in just a minute.

Last night we read at the Aurora Picture Show, an old church with wooden arched ceilings and benches—once a functioning down-home church converted to an arts venue and also a home where a sweet family lives—Andrea Grover and Carlos and two precociously invincible children. Great hospitality from Delicia Harvey and Melissa Sonzala . . . thank you so much. Reading: Travis Nichols, Tonya Foster, Sierra Nelson, Valzhyna Mort, Brent Hendricks, Matthew Zapruder, Joshua Beckman, Dara Wier, Joshua Clover, Gillian Conoley. All the readings have been so terrific . . . particularly memorable from this particular one were Brent Hendricks’ poems about father, cosmology, absence, bomb, where on earth does the spirit and the body go after death, Dara Wier’s poem where a head becomes a cannonball and the head was more than ok with that, Joshua Clover’s sharp fine “Oh architecture you are the greatest art your content is modernity,” Valzhyna Mort’s cutting imagistic wonders spoken in a Russian accent everyone should have, everyone should run and read Valzhyna Mort immediately, Sierra Nelson’s sly shrewd quiet intelligence, lyrical musicality verging on flutes and harps if flutes and harps could be carried and played silently in a plush velvet bag, Travis Nichols’ verbal play/word machines punctuated with yahoo coming at beginning and wit and grace teetering just where grace would jump off the board into a deep end, ahhhhhhhhhhhh, how refreshing, Tonya Foster reading courageously from a brand new piece still on her laptop, Penelope’s veil falling over the audience in hushed delight, Matthew Zapruder’s long Brooklyn poem in which Brooklyn becomes city matrix for human soul facing straight ahead imagination’s seduction and turning away, turning away, back to where does thought go when you are just staring out the window when it comes back and then drifts into humanely charmed full-witted rifts one could imagine on guitar, Joshua Beckman’s patient attentive directly meandering acuteness where we are at last all friends who are allowed to love/hate/be/understand, unashamed.

Then we slept.

Late morning. Great sandwiches and potato salad and pickles gratis the Menil Collection. Thank you program director Carl Killian and Tony and Lori and Michael once owner of the amazing Brazos Bookstore. Then a few minutes to drift around Surrealist show—Tanguy, Magritte, Max Ernst, Joseph Cornell, De Chirico, Kurt Schwitters. Here’s what we did, thanks to great plan concocted yesterday by Joshua Beckman, Travis Nichols, Sierra Nelson, Matthew Zapruder: Dara and I walked around commenting on the art, making up little fragmented narratives, which Travis Nichols, wearing a Madonna-like headpiece mike, then ran a running commentary on, in which he could shift/add/change into a walkie-talkie which piped directly to Sierra Nelson in Kelly green Girl Friday Superman’s girlfriend on a job interview suit, sort of Coco Chanel meets DKNY if DKNY had a crush on Betsy Johnson, Sierra who then typed up these transmissions into her own poem, then Liz Hughey who stole the show as “the runner” in jogging clothes. Liz who then ran from the end of the gallery where Sierra Nelson was typing on did I mention it was an old manual with a good strong ding when it returned. Liz Hughey taking pink-sheeted poem from Sierra and running up gallery hall through audience to Valzhyna Mort and Joshua Clover who then read the poem, changing it, too, at their whim and fancy. Halfway through a whistle blew which relieved Dara and I, with Joshua Beckman and Matthew Zapruder taking over our roles. Thoughout all improving Liz Hughey was a mercurial wonder—once a pissed off corporate bitch saying “I can’t deal with this,” as she stomped up with the poem in her hand, once a penitent before an unforgiving God, once a crying hysteric, once a laughing hysteric, once a calm, collected creature who sat in taut delay before delivering the poem. Joshua and Valzhyna after clear, delicious delivery crumpling up the pages after each poem was read, and at the performance’s end, running, too, down the gallery, throwing crumples at the audience.

Then we rushed on to the bus, and the cat arrived, dashing across green, wet Houston dew.

And full-hearted, entire spirited, tender Jane Miller, who came to it all. Jane who is Lana Turner We Love You, Get Up.

Day 39 / Houston, TX / Gillian Conoley

Reading in Austin was at Big Red Sun, landscaping company with a beautiful outdoor space, white gravel spread, succulent plants, large stage. Readings including many Austin poets, great magazine Skanky Possum editors Hoa Nguyen and Dale Smith, with bus poets Matthew Zapruder, Joshua Beckman, Dara Wier, Joshua Clover, Sierra Nelson, Travis Nichols, Liz Hughey, Valzhyna Mort, Gillian Conoley under big Texas sky. Sounds of the night accompanying the words—sirens, dogs howling, car radios, Mexican polka music every time someone opened the door of the bar across the street. Keg of beer, bottles of wine, a good time, with Bill Wesley affable fearless bus driver picking up the guitar and singing his fabulous country repertoire long into the night.

Last day of the bus for me, until we meet again, in Santa Cruz and San Francisco.

The bus is a good place. Stay on the bus long enough, and it becomes the center, the town, the city, the home, and the stops become the guests. Something deeply American/ democratic/enterprising about the bus. The bus was a big, big dream that took hold. It gave me faith again that something this good and generous could happen in our country. Thank you Joshua Beckman, Matthew Zapruder, Travis Nichols for making it work. They worked while we rode. Perhaps the bus is a bit of miracle. If it’s made it through more than 2/3 of the trip, it can make it through the Andes, Tierra del Fuego, Cuba, Pluto. Fly on, big bad bus. Thanks for holding all the words. And for providing such large windows out into the world.