HYCANITH GIRL + GIGANTIC SEQUINS PRESS // STEPHEN LIN // RUNAWAY STUDIOS VERSE SESSION // POND HOCKEY ETC.

"If I had to choose between body or mind, I would still choose both" says Kimberly Ann Southwick at the Gigantic Sequins  + Hycanith Girl Press Reading last night, the 20th... One of several readers over at Modern Formations... Kimberly's work was that which most impressed me, she built a kind of power out of insouciance to support her literary po-mo stuff... I think I heard her read poems about snakes going to prom last year at "Free Snake Poems About Snakes. Lets Do This.", another Hycanith Girl Press event.

Last Night: I went to four or five events, the Hycanith Girl/Gigantic Sequins Reading, a punk show over at City Grows featuring my poet friend Stephen Lin, part of the verse session at Runaway Studios, and the Bloomfield Tavern Bridge which featured Pond Hockey, a rock band composed of some of PGH's great literary minds, i.e. Scott Silsbe and Jason Baldinger, playing for the birthday celebration of Tommy Amobea, who is married to Phat Man Dee, who sang (Tommy Amobea also sang).

Most notable thing was Stephen Lin reading poems off a posterboard with post-it-notes on it, these poems composed of lines from the post-it-notes which were individually tied to letters of the alphabet which formed words chosen by the crowd. That is, Stephen asks the crowd for a word, someone says "Testosterone", so he links a poem together from the lines on the post-it-notes tied to T, E, S... This all sounds cheesy and gimmicky, but as I said to Stephen after the show, "I thought it was gimmicky but once you started doing it the poems were too good to ignore." These poems were too good to ignore, and everyone in the crowd was impressed, not just enthused.   ...I was also impressed. Maybe it's that the lines themselves were curbed from Stephen's other poems and therefore displayed his skill with sound and arch imagination: "His teeth rattled in his skull, as if in song." But I also think that the aleatory method behind the composition gave the poems a natural, organic feel; most of Stephen's poems are polemic, but these poster-board poems didn't have that opportunity.

At the Runaway Studio Verse Session: some guy I failed to record the name of, a mathematician who doesn't write much poetry, had some great poems, I think I can recite them by memory: here's one:

"pigfuck chuck" 

There was a kid named chuck in our school who fucked pigs. we knew this because he showed us pictures he took of himself fucking pigs. We would laugh at him and call him pigfuck chuck on the bus. He wasn't careful and left the pictures on his desk at school, and so a teacher saw it, and he was never heard from again. That was the end of pigfuck chuck.

This poem is very appealing. Cool things about this poem:

• It's impossible to make fun of.
• It's impossible to ignore.
• I can recite it from memory, only having heard it once, and it doesn't matter if it's paraphrased.
• It's controversial.

Is that what I'm headed for, when I think of "punk" poetry? Disturbing... --poetryburgh@gmail.com

also: check out stephen's bandcamp: http://stephenlinpoetry.bandcamp.com/

I ALSO WENT TO VERSIFY BUT IT WAS TOTALLY FORGETTABLE