Spontaneity Theatre: The Almost Uptown Poetry Cartel

Posted @ Aug. 10 2011 05:38PM by Kari - city-beat

Per the encouragement of my fellow contributors and the serendipitous occasion of Ms. Maria James-Thiaw's birthday last week, I attended an assemblage of the Almost Uptown Poetry Cartel.

Before I get into it, do me this one thing and Google "CAT bus." Bask in your image results as I proceed. I took the CAT bus to see a special rendition of the Cartel's usual Thursday night (7 to 9!) - Maria was to premiere a selection of her Auvillar poems, and the winners of the Central Pen Poetry Prize were accepting their awards and presenting their material. This happened preceding an open reading, which I was suprised and pleased to find myself walking into, especially considering what I was coming out of - the legitimate beginning to this story being that it rained torrentially.

My little, inadequate umbrella blew itself out. I miscalculated the time, ducked into Cafe Fresco and dripped on everything, dashed out after being seated, and sprinted to the Midtown Cinema. This is not too much to ask for poetry, but I was apprehensive about looking such a wreck. It takes a certain atmosphere to generate that belong-ed feeling, and it's usually contrived through the plushy anonymity generated by big-box stores, where you feel it is your right to have a private conversation on your cell phone, all emphatic about treachery, sitting squarely beside the espresso machine and shouting blithely over it. Not at the Midtown Cinema! I have rarely felt so genuinely welcome in a public place, and I am a self-alienating machine. The first time I went there - to see "Milk" and cry like an idiot - the ticket taker distinguished himself by being the first person ever to recognize that the man on my lapel pin was Franz Kafka. Archaic literary references: the obscurantists' handshake!

On this evening, I ducked in and the open mic was swinging. Maria had not arrived yet, but Marty Esworthy, presiding over the event, was fast and gracious about planting me somewhere - after Maria showed up, anyway, and after I quit gawking. I got in the back so I could survey and incured a few quiet, curious nudges. The readings are performed with lightning vim - no sign up list, no introductions. A service bell marks the ending of a work and a signal to applause. The magical acoustics in the Cinema insure that no one's utterances invades the theatres beyond. This was a relief for me - I am a loud reader, and breathless and worse when I don't have a plan. And I did not have a plan! I just happened to have a poem on me. The happenstance, second-natural way, bolstered by my very practiced confidence, that I am comfortable pulling the spotlight onto myself and my work belies a relative ignorance about how to be a pristine, assertive self-promoter. So bounding up to the lecturn, I had no problem launching into a piece, "Diablerie," from a long work I just finished - befittingly for a cinema, a cycle on the actress Anna Karina - and I shocked myself by managing to plug the poem's impending appearance in the New Fraktur Arts Journal, published by the Blind Willow Bookshop in Emmaus. I believe it was the next gentleman that read who had the poem about Jimmy Stewart's Harvey. I really basked in that. I find thoughts of Jimmy Stewart a great stress-leveler, and even though the prospect of performance never bothers me, I am prone to wicked aftershocks. Impulsivity is something I learned and something way down deep likes to struggle against it. I was busy with that when Marty came up and so graciously requested the information my anxiety had strangled out of me - poem name, publication, my name. I tore the bottom of the poem off and dashed it before I had time to think about it too hard. I misspell my name when I'm very nervous. You have this now to hold over on me.

Next, the winners of the Central Pen Poetry Prize were graced with their winnings. The mysterious Raymond W. Britcher, philanthropist, endowed Central Penn with the funds for a poetry prize, a marvelously supportive gesture. Yale's new $150,000 creative writing endowment may be unprecedented in its girth, but it is a very special thing that Central Penn is able to provide this to its students - who, this year, happened to be four gentlemen: Timothy Kearney, Greg Jones, Jordan Parrish, and Barend Woode. They read to warm applause, as did professors Christine O'Leary-Rockey and Maria herself, who sang a strain of Nina Simone and reduced me to steam. I dissipated into the night after that. I look forward to misting my way back in.

Invigorating as it was to finally get to an assembly, the real reward of my premiere experience of the Cartel was the ferocity. Having been in residence for over a decade, the feeling is vibrant, and it is the farthest thing from starting to watch "The Sopranos," mid-season, mid-series - the highest compliment I can afford an institution. The lack of formality and sheer consistency bespeak the importance of art in this community. And you can definitely read poems about sex. I wasn't going to put that last, but let me assure you, people were getting Oedipal and appropriating jazz in healthy measure. Perhaps it is because due to federal funding being massively withdrawn and my local Planned Parenthood being open a total of sixteen hours weekly on which the wonderful people that staff it cannot survive, but any place where I feel at ease about inhabiting my body in the place where I live is a place where I want to be. And a place where want to spend money. Heed my words, lobbyists, capitalists.

I hope to get back and talk properly with the Cartel's key figures, but I felt it appropriate to warm you up for your immanent drop-in one unsuspecting Thursday. 7 to 9. Midtown Cinema (250 Reily Street). The Almost Uptown Poetry Cartel.

Kari Larsen is a writer and on the internet, and those things have been thus far mutually exclusive. You can follow her at her blog Cold Rubies.