People came from all over the world to see Stephen Tully Dierks get his hair cut on ustream. I hoped for the best. The audience worried a little bit. Most poets have to cut their hair on their own due to financial problems. By having friends cut your hair you save money, money which can be used for food, shelter, and two pairs of jeans.
“We will find a Way” by Poncho Peligroso got read by Stephen Tully Dierks. This was posted June 8th. I consider this the fastest you can get your poetry read. Published in the morning and read late at night is a pretty quick turn-around. Most publishers couldn’t pull this off. Poncho is no ordinary poet; he is the 2011 Poet Laureate for a reason. Stephen began the reading strongly with Poncho’s hot-off-the-presses poem.
Steve Roggenbuck focused on Ron Silliman. Ron is a poet who has written twenty books which are part of a total poem called “Ketjak”. This has become his life work. Beginning in the 70s to today his life’s work is massive. You can’t really understand how massive it truly is to have so much material working with itself. I can see why Steve enjoys Ron’s work. The idea of a “Memeplex” where countless ideas are brought to work for one great purpose is something Steve’s mentioned on his blog before. I hope that Steve is able to create his ‘master work’ as he’s on something of a ‘roll’ lately.
“I worship Satan” was written by Sam Pink. As Stephen got his hair cut he multi-tasked with reading. Being a Satan worshiper allows you unlimited amounts of free blood. Sam Pink writes positive poetry about imagining his brutal death. Brutal death is funny according to Mr. Pink. “Frowns Need Friends Too” is the name of his book filled with these life-affirming messages. “Goth Girls make me horny but also make me laugh” summarized my entire time in High School. Part of me still has a certain, near-grudging respect for the Goth subculture. Listening to the poem reminded me of how I used to be, like I was visiting old me.
Chicago Neo-Realism came into being as we shifted between watching Stephen’s hair get cut, reading tweets, and learning more about poetry. Due to the reading in the middle of the week it had a laid-back feel. Usually we see a bunch of readers come and go. Going between two of my favorite readers (Steve and Stephen, the Chicago Superhero duo) made me so happy. They were happy enough to record it too.
Expansion of the poetry selection helped considerably. Finding poems on Google made the reading much funnier. One poem, called “An Erotic Poem” by Romeo Della Valle came up. Had we not decided to search for new horizons it might have remained hidden. Sharing it with you I refuse to comment on it. Read it aloud and feel the passion Romeo felt for his long lost love. It breaks my heart to picture Romeo alone without his companion. Hopefully Romeo found someone else who shares his passion for life.
This ended up being a pretty amazing ustream. Besides doing the usual poetry readings, Steve talked about flarf criticism and criticism of the boykitten movement in general. I liked hearing it from other people’s perspectives. Obviously I’m very interested it this but I always wonder how people react to criticism. Since I’m basically a sloth I don’t really receive much criticism besides being named after a sin. Excluding that, I got nothing. We’re lucky though. Both members of the ustream plan on revolutionizing poetry for a long time. Just keep in mind that age old advice when people try to bring you down:
Live your lief!