While I'd be pleased to propose the paucity of publications since my previous post was atypical, I shan't purport that preposterous prevarication upon you, my people.
(I need to purge my alliterator from time to time, else it spills forth into the poems. Thanks for your patience.)
****
It's been a busy summer at Vincenti Central. I'll tell you about the poetry stuff at the bottom of this post, but I think I'll deliver the rest to you in rough reverse chronological order....
I suppose my May appearance with Alex and Janel must have gone OK, because they were nice enough to invite me to appear with them again, this time at Rockwood Music Hall. I realize what most people think when they see the accordion appear (at least those who recognize the instrument - it's not a frequent sight at most Manhattan clubs), and it's a joy to be able to join in with great artists like these to bust up a few misconceptions. I think there are likely to be more such opportunities; if you'd like a chance to open your mind to a new free-reed experience, go "like" my FB page, or drop a note to the davidvincenti.com list email address and we'll keep you in the loop.
****
The reason I was available to join Alex and Janel was that I was not able to join my Staten Island Music School bandmates at the 2011 American Accordionists Association National Festival in Charleston. I have it on good authority that the Busso Accordion Orchestra rocked the ballroom with our southern medley; you can check out one of our warm-up sessions here (audio only).
****
I am now officially a Project Management Professional; last weekend I passed the PMP exam! All PMPs are honor-bound not to divulge any bit of the content of the exam, but this much I can tell you: Don't take it lightly when the prep materials tell you that you're at a real disadvantage if you haven't managed a large (seriously, LARGE) project previously in your career.
This was the first significant educational challenge I'd set for myself in quite a long time, and I'm a little surprised at how I settled into a study routine. Granted, it was a routine heavily tailored to my schedule (audio books for commuting time, microexercises for those moments before meetings start, etc.), and my family was gracious enough to give me the 4 Saturday mornings leading up the exam for uninterrupted study time. Sitting in a library studying... THAT brings a person back...
****
Finally, the Voices From History tour is taking shape. S. Thomas Summers and I trialed the event, in which we present stories from the lives of Galileo Galilei and a confederate soldier, at The Theater Company during Monroe Arts Center's May Open Studio day. We're pretty pleased with the way it comes across. So far we've got presentations planned in Campbell Hall, New York and Fanwood, NJ, and we're expecting to present more in the months to come. The best way to keep track of that is through FB, but don't worry, we'll find a way to get you the news.
****
We wish watermelons for you to welcome the warm weather as we wander away....
Rats. Fire up the alliteratinator!
Sunday, July 17, 2011
Saturday, June 18, 2011
Let's Be Fathers Today....
I presume everyone has heard about Adam Mansbach's new book, Go the Bleep to Sleep, by now. There's an audiobook version out with the Samuel L. Jackson at the microphone; he's great in just about everything, and I'm sure he's great in this.
Now, I'm sure I'll read, maybe even own a copy at some point, Walter the Farting Dog won me over, after all, but I'm really looking for something else in these books. Not that the book isn't funny, or isn't well-written, but I'd also like to have a Father's Day in which fathers are not absent, or caricature, or sitcomically self-absorbed. Where are the books that celebrate the spectacular mundanity of fatherhood?
In my experience, books intended for or about fathers revel in their ignorance of pregnancy, birth and rearing, start and end with religious intent, or are specific to a small segment of fathers. A few (the Armin Brott series, most notably). Fathers' Day "poems" are gooey verses that also celebrate our shortcomings more than anything that might be called a strength.
Is it possible I'm the only one interested in writing this space? Or reading about it? I hope not. So let me exhort my peer group this way: Fellow fathers, take this pledge with me today: Let's stay on the road to being the fathers we've never stopped hoping we'd be, and let's talk about the trip.
Happy Father's Day to all who celebrate. May you have moments your children will talk until net Father's Day.
Fellow fathers, take this pledge with me today: Let's be the fathers we've never stopped hoping we'd be.
Now, I'm sure I'll read, maybe even own a copy at some point, Walter the Farting Dog won me over, after all, but I'm really looking for something else in these books. Not that the book isn't funny, or isn't well-written, but I'd also like to have a Father's Day in which fathers are not absent, or caricature, or sitcomically self-absorbed. Where are the books that celebrate the spectacular mundanity of fatherhood?
In my experience, books intended for or about fathers revel in their ignorance of pregnancy, birth and rearing, start and end with religious intent, or are specific to a small segment of fathers. A few (the Armin Brott series, most notably). Fathers' Day "poems" are gooey verses that also celebrate our shortcomings more than anything that might be called a strength.
Is it possible I'm the only one interested in writing this space? Or reading about it? I hope not. So let me exhort my peer group this way: Fellow fathers, take this pledge with me today: Let's stay on the road to being the fathers we've never stopped hoping we'd be, and let's talk about the trip.
Happy Father's Day to all who celebrate. May you have moments your children will talk until net Father's Day.
Fellow fathers, take this pledge with me today: Let's be the fathers we've never stopped hoping we'd be.
Saturday, June 11, 2011
Bits for Early June
My kids keep a list of "Things you would never expect to hear in conversation". On that note, I find myself asking "Is it possible to be friends with something other than a human being?" Facebook forces me to conclude that no, it's not possible (certain large domestic animals excepted). That's probably a bit self-defeating, I know.....
***
In the middle of "The Reading Promise" by Alice Ozma. Subject hits close to my heart. Best line so far: "It takes a certain type of child to develop a crippling, life-changing fear of the corpse of John F. Kennedy."....
***
The Mets are kind of an analog for my artistic year to date: Not great, moments of wonder, better than reasonably hoped for, but not exceptional. Worth contining to root for, though....
***
Just finished celebrating my mother-in-law's birthday with bowling and chinese food. Another reason I can't join in the traditional badmouthing of the mothers-in-law during office small talk....
***
Studying for the PMP exam at present. First really major educational challenge I've set for myself in a long time (other than the pathological need to learn something new - even something useless - every day). Will be back to collect your wishes, vibes and mojo as the event presents itself more imminently.
***
As Father's Day approaches, I ask myself what kind of father I have been so far. Well, when I remarked earlier today about the weather that "It's cold and it's damp", my kids replied in song. In unison.
I'm good with that.
***
In the middle of "The Reading Promise" by Alice Ozma. Subject hits close to my heart. Best line so far: "It takes a certain type of child to develop a crippling, life-changing fear of the corpse of John F. Kennedy."....
***
The Mets are kind of an analog for my artistic year to date: Not great, moments of wonder, better than reasonably hoped for, but not exceptional. Worth contining to root for, though....
***
Just finished celebrating my mother-in-law's birthday with bowling and chinese food. Another reason I can't join in the traditional badmouthing of the mothers-in-law during office small talk....
***
Studying for the PMP exam at present. First really major educational challenge I've set for myself in a long time (other than the pathological need to learn something new - even something useless - every day). Will be back to collect your wishes, vibes and mojo as the event presents itself more imminently.
***
As Father's Day approaches, I ask myself what kind of father I have been so far. Well, when I remarked earlier today about the weather that "It's cold and it's damp", my kids replied in song. In unison.
I'm good with that.
Saturday, May 21, 2011
A busy collection of bits
Two things I should have mentioned weeks ago:
The Spoken Word Series' new sponsor, The Theater Company, his hosting an afternoon of planned and open-mic performance as part of Monroe Arts Center's May Open Studio Day Sunday. Siobhan Barry and Scott Summers will join me in presenting the literary side of the arts spectrum, and we'll be joined on the schedule by some of the great musical talent that works the Hudson County area (and beyond!). Scott and I will be unveiling a new project called Voices from History where we showcase voices from times in history that you don't find in contemporary poetry all that often. We think it's worth a visit; check out the TTC website for the schedule, or just arrive at 1 and spend the day with us.
I have a poem in the last issue of Redheaded Stepchild - one I'm particularly proud of because it's quite a departure for me. It derives from a scene from Fred McBagonluri's Dusk Recitals; writing about an image that originated in someone else's mind and is completely outside my experience is quite atypical for me. I'm quite proud of the poem when you're there, make sure you read the rest of the issue, especially A True Princess Bruises; it's always gratifying for me to appear alongside poets whose work and counsel has guided me, and Jeannine Gailey's poems take you to a place you think you know but still surprise you.
And here's one thing I don't know that I'm supposed to mention, but I'm too jazzed not to: there's a rumor going around that Alex and Janel have invited some special guests to sit in with them during the release show for their new collection "You Won't Be Alone", and that one of these guests may be packing an accordion. You should go even if there's no accordion. But there may be one. Maybe.
The Spoken Word Series' new sponsor, The Theater Company, his hosting an afternoon of planned and open-mic performance as part of Monroe Arts Center's May Open Studio Day Sunday. Siobhan Barry and Scott Summers will join me in presenting the literary side of the arts spectrum, and we'll be joined on the schedule by some of the great musical talent that works the Hudson County area (and beyond!). Scott and I will be unveiling a new project called Voices from History where we showcase voices from times in history that you don't find in contemporary poetry all that often. We think it's worth a visit; check out the TTC website for the schedule, or just arrive at 1 and spend the day with us.
I have a poem in the last issue of Redheaded Stepchild - one I'm particularly proud of because it's quite a departure for me. It derives from a scene from Fred McBagonluri's Dusk Recitals; writing about an image that originated in someone else's mind and is completely outside my experience is quite atypical for me. I'm quite proud of the poem when you're there, make sure you read the rest of the issue, especially A True Princess Bruises; it's always gratifying for me to appear alongside poets whose work and counsel has guided me, and Jeannine Gailey's poems take you to a place you think you know but still surprise you.
And here's one thing I don't know that I'm supposed to mention, but I'm too jazzed not to: there's a rumor going around that Alex and Janel have invited some special guests to sit in with them during the release show for their new collection "You Won't Be Alone", and that one of these guests may be packing an accordion. You should go even if there's no accordion. But there may be one. Maybe.
Saturday, May 7, 2011
A Few Words From My Mother
Traditional Mother's Day poems, like most poems written for Hallmarkian holidays, tend toward sweetness, and since I don't (think I) do that very well, I'll not contribute to the buffet here (for some occasion poems, check out the last week at yourdailypoem.com or David Young's "Mother's Day" at poets.org). A rare alignment of circumstances gave me a couple uninterrupted hours with my mother this weekend, which we spent mostly by talking about events from long ago - some well known and raised for reliving, some that I knew less well. It's interesting to revisit events for which I have some memory of as an 8- or 12- or 17-year old through the filter of being a father now, and to hear my mother describe these events to me as a peer, without the softening or misdirection that sometimes infiltrates the parent-child relationship.
Some of the events we relived made their way into poems 20 years ago, some more recently; I've mentioned in this space that the older I get the righter my father becomes, and gaining a little context makes me want to return to that material and treat it a bit differently. And of course, there are the poems about my father as young man, whose subjects I know only from what my mother has told me. Lord knows he wasn't about to talk about them.
So though I've written more about my father than my mother - because ours was the more complicated relationship, and because I tried to write my way through the months after his death. But I suppose in a way those poems about Dad were almost as much about the shared experience with my mother as they were about my memory of my father.
Which reminds me of a quote; I don't know where exactly I first heard this, but Google turns it up intact and similarly attributed in enough places that I think it must be accurate. And after watching my daughter compose a poem for my wife, I'm convinced that whether it's accurate or not, it's true:
"My mother is a poem I'll never be able to write, though everything I write is a poem to my mother." Sharon Doubiago
Happy Mother's Day.
Some of the events we relived made their way into poems 20 years ago, some more recently; I've mentioned in this space that the older I get the righter my father becomes, and gaining a little context makes me want to return to that material and treat it a bit differently. And of course, there are the poems about my father as young man, whose subjects I know only from what my mother has told me. Lord knows he wasn't about to talk about them.
So though I've written more about my father than my mother - because ours was the more complicated relationship, and because I tried to write my way through the months after his death. But I suppose in a way those poems about Dad were almost as much about the shared experience with my mother as they were about my memory of my father.
Which reminds me of a quote; I don't know where exactly I first heard this, but Google turns it up intact and similarly attributed in enough places that I think it must be accurate. And after watching my daughter compose a poem for my wife, I'm convinced that whether it's accurate or not, it's true:
"My mother is a poem I'll never be able to write, though everything I write is a poem to my mother." Sharon Doubiago
Happy Mother's Day.
Saturday, April 23, 2011
On Easter Sunday, a poem might also be....
This is a story about a poem.
For the past few years, I have taught 7th grade CCD (religious education) in my church. I began teaching it for the reason I think many intellectual smorgasbordists* would: I wanted to get to know my own faith and beliefs better. Part of that is self-interest, being at the time in my life when one tends to do a lot of recursive examination; part is practical, as my kids are approaching the ages when their questioning (well, more their insistence upon answers) will begin to strip my ability to answer unless I maintain myself better than I'd been.
With a very few exceptions, I've found my students' questions to be relentless, unembarrassedly personal, and ruthlessly fair and honest. One of the more common questions I get from the kids is whether or not I believe the particular miracle we just discussed actually happened (surrounded by 3 minutes of what they would do if confronted by such unbelieveability). The subject of miracles is a tough one to broach with a 12/13-year old - their world is complicated and indefinable enough without the burden of believing in an otherworldly power. But -- unlike the persona I adopt in my poems -- I always tell them the truth. Which starts with my grandmother.
What faith have comes, ultimately, from my grandmother. In the whole of my life, hers was the strongest faith I have ever encountered. Not the loudest, not the most obvious, but the strongest. I was well into my 20s before I started to learn about the hardships Nana had faced in her life, hardships which might have caused another person to adjust their disposition toward the cynical. But Nana's was definitely an Easter faith; she believed that no one would ever be burdened with more than they could handle, and that renewal and restoration was waiting for you if you could manage your burden just a little longer.
Which is why Nana continues to show up in my poems, and why I feel pretty strongly about those poems. I'm not objective about them and I don't pretend to be. But there was one particular disappointing episode in her life that I've always felt was perfect for a recollective poem, one that ought to be presented in sepia tones, it's so much a peek at the past. I've been writing and rewriting it for years, never quite sure what to do next with it, or whether to call it done. But I've thought for a while I had handled it well enough to let my peers have a look.
A short while ago, I learned of John Newmark's online journal Generations of Poetry, a new (this year) literary effort in support of the geneablogging (online genealogy) community. It seemed a logical place for this poem I've wanted so much to take out of the folio and expose to the light. It takes place (mostly) in 1937, and it has a lot to do with the records we keep about our families. I won't tell you more; you can read it for yourself.
Today. Easter Sunday.
Now I don't know if that means anything. It's presumptuous to think that the cascade of coincidences that led to the appearance of Grand Canyon, 1937 on Easter is anything more than just that. And don't mistake me for anything other than a (slightly sentimental) realist. I know enough about statistics to know that if you flip a coin 50 times every day, one day you'll get TAILS 50 flips in a row. I know enough about people and their faith to know that a divine hand is frequently and perhaps foolishly seen in things those people are desperate to make sense of.
But.
I will have a new group of 7th graders in September. And sometime before Halloween they will ask me if I believe in miracles. As I do every year, I'll tell them I don't know. Then maybe I'll tell them this story and ask what they believe.
If you are celebrating it today, I wish you a joyful Easter.
* relentlessly curious on a surprisingly far-flung set of areas of interest.
Saturday, April 9, 2011
Truth Is Not the Caramel Center
Pulled again this week into the old conversation: Truth in poetry. Answering the question "Wow, did that really happen?" Whether to show my mother what I write*.
It's that same question again and again: whether it's reasonable to expect a person reading a poem not to place the poet into the person of the speaker, or just to assume it's all true. I haven't found a way to convince people that it's really not, and I'm not just talking about novices or non-poets, but also about people who have a reasonable claim at being writing hobbyists.
I usually try to bring the visual arts into this discussion, ask whether people look at paintings and ask if the scene really happened. It usually doesn't work, but I think I finally hit on the way to connect this comparison. I think it's probably true that visual artists prepare a sketch or use (pencil/light) guidelines when producing a piece of art suitable for hanging; these are the equivalent of truth to the poet. They may get you into the piece, but they're not there when you're done, though their shape may be visible.
The problem, I think, is the old opinion of poetry as therapy, not as craft. I'm not saying there isn't therapeutic or cathartic poetry, or music, or painting, but that it's silly to think it all is catharsis. Even established writers talk to me about poems "needing to be written". Do we think of screenplays in that light? Novels? Some, to be sure, but we don't start with their truthfulness as the assumption. I don't think we do, anyway.
And that, I'm afraid, goes back to how poetry is taught. It's either dry and dead or first-person pathos. That's one reason I like to follow the Poetry Out Loud competition; giving voice to other's work breaks wide open the idea that the poem must be a confessional or observational moment.
Truth is not the element that makes the poem essential or beautiful; it is not the reward. It's not even essential to the poem. It's just another way into the moment. No, I don't think the conversation's over, or that I'm winning many people over, but I intend to keep trying.
* - Not all of it. Sorry, Mom.
It's that same question again and again: whether it's reasonable to expect a person reading a poem not to place the poet into the person of the speaker, or just to assume it's all true. I haven't found a way to convince people that it's really not, and I'm not just talking about novices or non-poets, but also about people who have a reasonable claim at being writing hobbyists.
I usually try to bring the visual arts into this discussion, ask whether people look at paintings and ask if the scene really happened. It usually doesn't work, but I think I finally hit on the way to connect this comparison. I think it's probably true that visual artists prepare a sketch or use (pencil/light) guidelines when producing a piece of art suitable for hanging; these are the equivalent of truth to the poet. They may get you into the piece, but they're not there when you're done, though their shape may be visible.
The problem, I think, is the old opinion of poetry as therapy, not as craft. I'm not saying there isn't therapeutic or cathartic poetry, or music, or painting, but that it's silly to think it all is catharsis. Even established writers talk to me about poems "needing to be written". Do we think of screenplays in that light? Novels? Some, to be sure, but we don't start with their truthfulness as the assumption. I don't think we do, anyway.
And that, I'm afraid, goes back to how poetry is taught. It's either dry and dead or first-person pathos. That's one reason I like to follow the Poetry Out Loud competition; giving voice to other's work breaks wide open the idea that the poem must be a confessional or observational moment.
Truth is not the element that makes the poem essential or beautiful; it is not the reward. It's not even essential to the poem. It's just another way into the moment. No, I don't think the conversation's over, or that I'm winning many people over, but I intend to keep trying.
* - Not all of it. Sorry, Mom.
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