Poetry New York

Ugly Duckling Presse Reading
Friday 25 April 02008 7:00pm

 

The UDP reading this past Friday seemed more a gathering of friends who like to read and produce poetry together than a formal poetry reading. The evening followed the standard introduction-introduction- readings-mingling format, but the hum of congenial conversation as well as the space itself - a room in the abandoned cannery that houses Ugly Duckling Presse - created the atmosphere of a more casual and private event. A voyage to Gowanus, Brooklyn, by sub-cum-above-ground train, which culminated in a walk that wove through a construction site to whitewashed cement hallways inhabited by the occasional mechanical apparatus, solidified the sense of distance from the usual poetry scene.

Introductions: Nathan (?), proprietor of the former cannery, a content- and healthful-looking bald man in a mandarin-style tunic, and Matvei Yankelevich, founding editor of UDP

Readers (in order): Gregory L. Ford, Phil Cordelli, Filip Marinovich, Elizabeth Reddin, and a guest performance by Julien (Poirier?)

Greg Ford, a founding editor of UDP and 6x6, read "The Invention of Perspective" in a distanced and analytical yet deeply interested tone. Much like Huysmans' Cathedral or Barbara Guest's critical work, Ford's poem uses the direct analysis of a visual medium to discover poetic meaning. Lines like "remember that your subject is just out of sight," "why learn? - well, why is there light?", and "effort in the art" combine the lingual palate of an essay with the ethos of a transcendental meditation. As still and subtle as a gothic painting itself, Ford's reading was strongly contrasted at one point by the sensual combination of rap and jazz that a pause in the traffic outside the window brought thrumming and jumping into the room. Ford smiled but did not alter the dry, solemn rhythm of his speech.

Then Phil Cordelli read pieces that employed metonymy to evoke a shore-side atmosphere, factories, the maritime industry. His imagery would sometimes coalesce into a phrase of meaning but then drift apart into fragments. He read deliberately, enunciating every line break with a pause or shift of infection. He began each section with a number (1/11, 7/11, 71/12, 20), serial in code, not missing a beat in his chosen lexicon of manual work. His generally restrained sounds were peppered with sexy alliteration and humor: "bed-wetters and blood-lickers," "boneset," "burning set," "do I feel lucky?"

Filip Marinovich followed with readings from Zero Readership, which consisted of teenage angst, humorously hyperbolic at a distance, and wry observations on contemporary sexuality, emphasis on odd words in sometimes nonsensical phrases ("tomahawk green"). Marinovich then injected increasingly raw, loud emotion into the evening with Elegy Diary--pieces that revolve almost obsessively around the death of an inspiring, beloved, respected, sometimes eroticized grandfather. Reading each line in Serbian and English broke the syntax into shards of meaning, a feeling of each phrase being torn and incomplete, phrases which eventually resolved themselves into fluent English: daringly coherent personal memory and sentiment; the suggestion that we might "come to heaven as our best selves."

Next up was Elizabeth Reddin, who had to pee, so we as an audience enjoyed an intermission and had to be encouraged back to our seats. Reddin is also a musician, and she displayed a marked degree of comfort with the microphone. Her poetry is full of memories and dreams, mirage-like ("miragetown" in her lyric)--"You said 'run in the flames!'"--sometimes playful tone and gesture, surreal, repetitive imagery: a burning wig that the voice of the poem dances around, later takes up and puts on; you "pointed at me between the eyes... leaving me behind." Reddin laughed inside her mouth when the humor was private. Placing her poem inside modern war, she declared "I want your life banned" in a matter-of-fact tone.

Rather than singing a song of her own at the audience's plea, Reddin finished her reading by cajoling Julen, another UDP poet, up to the microphone. Julien accepted with a crooked smile ("I'm so lit up" in semi-deadpan) and then brought the readings to a satisfactory close with a sultry Everglades lullaby. Frogs and flies and wedding cake in slow rhythm, the melody smooth and clear.