Poetry in Motion
Like every published writer, I torture myself. I check my books’ online ranking chez Amazon and B&N. I anxiously scan the shelves of bookshops to see whether or not they’re stocking me, in any of my incarnations.
It’s an occupational hazard, but one that takes us further from the center: from the real reason why we write.
And then in the midst of my fretting, I received the foreword to my upcoming book. The book is about reading, about books, and about stories, and I had asked (with some trepidation) a brilliant poet with whom I had once shared a reading whether he’d be willing to write it. To my delight (and astonishment), he said yes.
He did not disappoint: “Reading is more than fundamental—it is elemental,” he writes. “Books are essential to our self-perception, and not to have them limits our access to beauty and dream (imagine the world of Fahrenheit 451!). Conversely, when we have unfettered passage to the worlds great books contain, that is, the stories of our species, we begin to ’shuffle off th[e] mortal coil’ and are renewed.”
His name is Regie Gibson, and the late Kurt Vonnegut thought rather a lot about him: “When you perform, you are supersonic and in the stratosphere … you sign and chant for all of us. Nobody gets left out.” He is a National Poetry Slam Individual Champion and has been featured numerous times on National Public Radio, on HBO’s Def Poetry Jam, and on the WGBH-2 program, “Art Close-Up.” His first collection of poems, Storms Beneath the Skin, received the Golden Pen Award. He is currently working on two manuscripts and recently completed a MFA in poetry from New England College.
My husband–who for reasons beyond my understanding abhors poetry–was captivated by Regie. He performed a poem about Jimi Hendrix, and afterward, all that Paul could say was, “He sounded like him! He sounded like his guitar! How does a person do that?”
You can find Regie on the web in any number of places, but you would do best to listen to his words in his own voice. Please do. and if you’re ever in the Boston area, come and hear him in person at one of the many performance venues in the area. I’m honored that he’s a part of my project and look forward to what he’ll be doing next.
Regie Gibson is way … beyond the elements of style!
Posted in The Writing Life, Creativity, Words on August 13th, 2007