Of Kill Fees and Presidential Musicales

How many times is a poet paid to NOT sing for her supper? In fact, how often is it that a poet gets her dinner when she goes out to do a reading?

On January 18, 2009, this poet was invited to do a seven-minute reading at 3:30 pm in celebration of Gival Press’s new anthology Poetic Voices without Borders 2 in A Sunday Kind of Love poetry program at the 14th & V Street Busboys & Poets restaurant. What this meant to this poet was writing a new poem to present, selecting the poems that would be read, deciding the introductory remarks, practicing the reading several times, inviting friends and family to the reading, and getting myself to Busboys on time. All this cost me time and money and I had no expectation of getting anything except a copy or two of the new anthology as total payment.

My husband Jim Rich decided to go with me because he likes Busboys and so by some miracle we got there just before 3 pm (Jim wanted to have lunch ahead of the poetry reading). By miracle, I mean the roads leading downtown were packed with cars headed into the city for a pre-inaugural event. At Busboys, we headed straight back to the Langston Room and found one unoccupied table that we claimed. What we realized straight away was that president-elect Obama’s musicale was being broadcast live from HBO on the big screen in this room set aside for poetry in honor of Langston Hughes. The people assembled were vocally reacting to the performers and Barack Obama and his family.








About 15 minutes later, Melissa Tuckey, the current host of A Sunday Kind of Love, and her husband Dave appeared and we all started conferring about what a tough transition it was going to be when the HBO broadcast got turned off at 3:30 pm. Being first on a list of six poets, I said I would dedicate my first poem to Michele Obama.

Then the other poets started showing up Yvette Neisser, Patricia Gray, Joe Ross, and Sydney March. Only Christopher Conlon didn’t make the event since he had alerted me he might not, due to succumbing to a cold.

Last came Robert Giron and his partner Ken Schellenberg with a box of books.




When the assistant manager announced to the crowd that there would be a poetry reading starting a little late at 4 pm, the crowd voiced their disapproval. So he called the Busboy’s owner Andy Shallal and Andy said, “Go with the most popular program and offer the poets dinner on the house and a kill fee of $25.” So there you have it, in a room bearing a poet’s name, poets were paid off not to sing their lyrics.

Nonetheless, I went around to each table of folks and gave them literature from The Word Works and everyone apologized and took my poetry propaganda. Two tables of people were disappointed and said so. Pat Gray and I gave one table a private reading of one poem each. Seeing Obama did remind me that when Martin Luther King delivered his “I had a dream” speech at that very same memorial, my mother refused to let me attend. It also reminded me that having grown up in a family of six children, I don’t like crowds and what could be better than to see the musicale from the comfort of Busboys?

Next time I do a reading, I’m inviting Barack and Michelle.

Mathematics & Love

Just in case you, Dear Reader, do not do numbers, I'm warning you now that this post is about participating in a poetry reading on the theme “Mathematics and Love” in conjunction with the national Joint Mathematics Meetings that were held in Washington, DC, on January 7, 2009. The reading featured poets who were recently published in Strange Attractors: Poems of Love and Mathematics edited by Sarah Glaz and JoAnne Growney.

The reading drew a large crowd, perhaps 100 people or more. The publishers—A. K. Peters Ltd set up a table to sell their books and others brought by the poets, including The Steiny Road to Operadom, but I think this was a hard crowd to sell to despite them turning out in record numbers for a poetry event.

Because both Sarah Glaz and JoAnne Growney are mathematicians, the reading ran like clockwork. So I'm picking up the program list and supplying photos to give the flavor of what happened. The numbers after the poem titles indicate the anthology page number where the poem can be found. All of the poets were asked to read a poem by a poet who was not at this reading. As you can see from the what follows the poets' names (those in attendance), many are affiliated with a university or college and quite a few are mathematicians as well as poets. What is also obvious is that many of these participating poets traveled from a significant distance to be at this reading and/or conference.

SARAH GLAZ, UNIVERSITY OF CONNECTICUT
Love Story (91)
Mathematics (Hanns Cibulka, 136)

KARREN LALONDE ALENIER, CHEVY CHASE, MD
Dialectic of the Census Takers (75)
from Five Poems about Zero (Eryk Salvaggio, 55)

JUDITH BAUMEL, ADELPHI UNIVERSITY
Fibonacci (7)
Why Does Disorder Increase in the Same Direction of Time as That in Which the Universe Expands? (Roald Hoffman, 31)

MARION DEUTSCHE COHEN, ARCADIA UNIVERSITY
Scared and the Intermediate Value Theorem (1 37)
What Drove Me into Math (138)
My Number (Sandra Alcosser, 128)

JENNIFER CROW, WEST FALLS, NY
Mathematics (83)
from The Cyberiad (Stanislaw Lem, 38)

KATHRYN DEZUR, SUNY TECHNICAL COLLEGE AT DELHI
Fibonacci Numbers (85)
We Sat, So Patient (Len Roberts, 183)

BOB GRUMMAN, PORT CHARLOTTE, FL
Mathemaku No 10, (95)








ISRAEL LEWIS, SILVER SPRING, MD
I Find my Faith in the Flatness of Space (104)

KAZ MASLANKA, D3 TECHNOLOGIES
Sacrifice and Bliss (168)
Addition (Langston Hughes,99)
Useless (Randall Munroe, 171)

WILMER MILLS, UNIVERSITY OF NORTH CAROLINA;

Equation for My Children (105)
Sine Qua Non (A E Stallings, 116)
Statistics (J V Cunningham, 15)
Proportions of the Heart (Emily Grosholz, 92)


WENDY MNOOKIN, EMERSON COLLEGE
Math (110)
Flash Cards (Rita Dove, 86)

KYOKO MORI, GEORGE MASON UNIVERSITY;

Barbie Says Math is Hard (111)
Self-Improvement (Tony Hoagland,29)

DEANNA NIKAIDO, BALTIMORE, MD
July 18, 2005 (50)
from Chaos Theory (Ronald Wallace, 66)

BECKY DENNISON SAKELLARIOU, KIFISSIA, GR;
Math is Beautiful and So Are You (54)
“Number Man” (Carl Sandburg, 185)

JOHN VIEIRA, POTOMAC, MD
The Lake Swan, the Tom (124)
Let’s Live and Love: To Lesbia (by Gaius Valerius Catullus, 12)
from Lilavati (by Bhaskaracharya, 131)


Part 2

Poems for this part of the reading primarily came in response to a call for submissions in the preliminary program for the 2009 Joint Mathematics Meetings.

PATRICK BAHLS, UNIVERSITY OF NORTH CAROLINA, ASHVILLE
Inverse
Symmetry


RAD DIMITRIC, PITTSBURGH, PA
If They Try


CHARLOTTE HENDERSON, A K PETERS, LTD
Couple Theory

ROSANNA IEMBO, UNIVERSITY OF CALABRIA, ITALY
All the World's a Complex System --- Of the Imaginary and the Real CHONG M. LIN and R. IEMBO ( violin by IRENE IACCARINO).


RON MOSIER (1938 -2008)
Finishing the Math, read by RUTH FAVRO, Lawrence Technological University.

JUDITH BAUMEL, ADELPHI UNIVERSITY
Thirty-six Poets

BOB GRUMMAN, PORT CHARLOTTE, FL
Mathemaku for Beethoven


ISRAEL LEWIS, SILVER SPRING, MD
Cantor—a poem with two voices read by Lewis and DEANNA NIKAIDO

KAZ MASLANKA, D3 TECHNOLOGIES
Prometheus's Epistle to Job


JOANNE GROWNEY, SILVER SPRING, MD
My Dance is Mathematics (158)
San Antonio, January, 1993 (160)


After the reading a bunch of my friends and I went to the hotel bar (it was a fiercely rainy night) and hung out with the organizers and some of the poets.




if you want a review of the reading, check out the blog called Conversations with a Stone (great title, huh?).

Behind and Ahead: Year in Review, Year Coming

Opportunities to meet and hear the Steiny Road Poet are looming on the horizon and can be seen in detail on her events calendar at http://members.tripod.com/alenier/events.htm. The rundown of events include several readings, a book fair in Chicago, a talk in NYC, and a workshop. Variety often produces new audiences and opportunities. So far, 2009 looks very fertile.

January 7, 2009 7-9 pm Reading from Strange Attractors: Poems of Love and Mathematics at The Joint Mathematics Meeting in DC

January 18, 2009 4-6 pm Reading from Poetic Voices Without Borders 2 at DC’s hippest restaurant Busboys and Poets.


February 11, 2009 6:30-9 pm WNBA-DC Workshop on Blogging.

February 12-14, 2009 AWP Convention & Book Fair in Chicago.

February 20, 2009 2-5 pm 75th anniversary of the Broadway premiere of Gertrude Stein's and Virgil Thomson's Four Saints in Three Acts at City University New York.

Thursday, April 16 at 7:30 pm Nora School reading.

Reflecting on 2008, The Steiny Road to Operadom had book launches in DC (January at Bridge Street Books) and in New York (October at the Drama Book Shop).

The Poet had opportunities to promote her book at
--a New York City opera party (January for Encompass New Opera Theatre),
--a NYC production of a musical play based on a Gertrude Stein Text (February – Al Carmine’s In Circles),
--a conference on Thornton Wilder (February at Catholic University),
--a conference for Executive Women in Business and Government (March--DC),
--a town hall meeting for dramatists (July at the Kennedy Center), and
--a literary conference where the Poet presented a paper on Gertrude Stein (September at Duquesne University).

Travel to New York (January, February, May, October), Virginia Wolfe’s Time of the Mighty Dogwood (April), Paris (June), Las Vegas (July), New Hampshire (August), Pittsburgh (September), Minneapolis (December) widened the Poet’s audience in various ways.

Just for a some exotic variety, the SR Poet participated in an Exquisite Corpse collaboration (July in Silver Spring, MD), crossed paths with a much admired critic author Alex Ross (February), and got great tips on publicizing new books from some pros (January).


And a confession, the Poet had a reading November 17 at The Word Works Cafe Muse Literary Salon with poet Kevin Prufer and failed to report that! However, books were sold and the reading was well attended.

Steiny Road Poet on Stage with World-class Singers

How many authors have the privilege of launching their books in New York City with world-class artists? On October 19, 2008, this author shared the stage of the Arthur Seelen Theatre at the Drama Book Shop with Eve Gigliotti and Rosalie Sullivan, the originating singers who helped make the premiere of Gertrude Stein Invents a Jump Early On a success.

TRANSFORMING THE BLACK BOX

Nancy Rhodes and Encompass New Opera Theatre set up the event, hiring, coaching, and directing the singers and pianist Tony Bellomy.
She also worked with Drama Book Shop’s resident children’s theater artistic director to transform the Seelen Theatre from a dark black box to one with color and warmth.

Nancy delivered the introductions and gave background on the connection between the Stein opera, which she helped develop and produce, and The Steiny Road to Operadom: The Making of American Operas, for which she wrote the introduction.
As I explained in my opening remarks, the book is a tribute to the work Nancy does in the field of new opera and was to a large degree inspired by our conversations about the difficulties everyone in the field of opera has in developing, producing and executing new work.

LINKING WORDS AND MUSIC

My job as the presenting author for this particular event was to link details from the book to the four numbers Eve and Rosalie would deliver with accompaniment from Tony. My strategy for these musical setups was to consider each intro I made as part of the musical number and to keep the entire talking and singing to five-to-seven-minute segments. Because Nancy and I both agreed that the duet “What a Catch She Is” would be a good final number, the presentation of the entire musical selection was not in the chronological order mapped in the opera.

The Steiny Road book has many themes that I could present that range from my collaboration with Nancy and composer William Banfield, the collaboration between Gertrude Stein and Virgil Thomson, and what it takes to get a new opera on stage in America. What I thought about in constructing my Drama Book Shop talk was what would the audience want to know to make them feel comfortable. So my first thought was what is the Stein opera about? In a few words: an artist dealing with her critics. This covered the first aria by Gertrude who tells who brother Leo I know what I’m doing with my words and I need your support, and it also covers the aria “The Trouble with Arriving” in which Gertrude tells Alice that her American public does not appreciate her serious work and that as an author she needs to take back her name.


With these two arias, I established what the Stein opera was about and introduced the subject of collaboration. This blended easily into the next number sung by Rosalie as Alice: “Me, as Your Secretary.”
In this ballad, Alice describes standing in Gertrude’s shadow, which gave me an opportunity to address the plight of the librettist who is often treated as a second-class citizen in the operatic world. While I understand why the composer gets not only the limelight but also the money—if there is any to be had, I say call me poet and not librettist. For this event, my collaborating composer did not appear, though he had hoped to, and so the audience didn’t get the opportunity to either hear from him on this topic or discuss it with him at the reception.

Thus the situation of pecking order made me realize early in the process that I must travel with my tribe to ensure that I don’t burn any bridges and that I present myself in the best light. This is what Gertrude did in joining forces with Alice. The audience could hear this in their playful and loving duet “What a Catch She Is.”


LEMONADE WITH AN ALICE B. TOUCH

Besides the emotional poignancy Eve and Rosalie delivered—and sometimes with just one glance, what also made this event memorable was that Nancy’s partner Roger Cunningham made a delicious claret lemonade, an Alice B. Toklas recipe Virgil Thomson gave to them.
I think the secret ingredient lies in the frozen grapes that by the time the thirty-five program had concluded, the grapes had had a chance to chill the punch but yet thaw and be eatable.

In New York, as in any busy city, getting an audience is always a challenge. In attendance were just fewer than 25 people all tallied, but clearly it was a high-quality group networking on next opportunities. Perhaps this event will help Encompass do another production Gertrude Stein Invents a Jump Early On!

To conclude the day's events, my friend Maxine Kern and I went to visit the buddha sculpture of Gertrude Stein in Bryant Park so that we could pay homage to the writer who has given Nancy, Max and me so much inspiration.