Expanding the Words into Sounds

The site for all of our "Two Poets…" gigs: Counter Culture in Santa Fe.

A year or so ago, I wrote the line: "Jazz always left stains on her mind…"

The other night, I had the opportunity to figure out more fully what that line means.

I read a new poem about illness, death and secrets to a full house at the Two Poets and a Piano gig in Santa Fe. The poem was potent, heavy with sadness. I have only ever heard it as my voice, solo, but from now on, I will associate it with the music that accompanied it.

In rehearsal, I asked to create a conversation, a  call and response with New Mexico's most astounding horn player, Arlen Asher. I proposed reading a line from the poem, and having Arlen play a line in response.

I asked for a deep sound. He chose his baritone sax. That's as far as we got. We never tried it together until the audience was in front of us…

…and the audience was so quiet. I read; Arlen played. Again and again. Line by line by line. The music flowed out of his horn and into me, and my words moved back toward him. Our two forms and sounds came together seamlessly, and the audience stayed quiet.

Arlen and I have both lost necessary people. That's how we knew what to say and how to say it. 

And those words belong with that music. The music that Arlen played has definitely left stains on my mind -- and on that poem.

Jazz and Poetry - Part 2 - Tonight's Performance

Santa Fe's most versatile horn player Arlen Asher

Performing with musicians is an unexpected thrill. For a poet, hearing your words with even more melody and actual sound than you ever could have in your head or at your desk is an unparalleled experience. 

I look for opportunities to do this as often as I can. I crave the improvisations that musicians create in different configurations, and I am always looking for a way to bring my medium into that kind of musical group interaction.

In the last post, I mentioned the next jazz/poetry performance in an ongoing, loosely biannual series.

I'm the only female, very musical but with no direct understanding of music. When we rehearse, I talk to the musicians about what I want using my poetic vocabulary instead of their terminology: I need more energy here. Could you do something  angular or anxious at this part of my poem?

Somehow our languages meet, and they give me a sound that makes my poems more alive, more real, darker, more potent, more dramatic. I slow to meet the music, my voice deepening or reaching; or I stop in places and let the musicians stretch out on their instruments, play a coda, or the head of the tune. I breathe deeper, and they play. 

Please join us!

Chris Ishee - piano, Arlen Asher - reeds, Paul Brown - 

bass/oud, 

Lauren Camp and Richard Atkinson - poetry

Co

unter Culture, 

Santa Fe, New Mexico

March 22 - 7PM

Jazz and Poetry - Part 1

This is a big month for performances. I've had two very successful ones already, the first was a reading and panel discussion with three other poets, and the other a collaborative, multiphonic, poetic response to artwork that I've posted about in this blog several times.

The next in my schedule is a jazz and poetry event at a neighborhood cafe and restaurant. This is a reprise of a reprise of an event, which makes it kind of a chorus (in musical terms). The players keep changing but the feel is the same: swinging jazzy music, and words that inspire or interact with the notes.

The musicians are stellar - some of Santa Fe's best. The other poet is a man who grew up with New York's jazz scene, in the pocket of the beat poets. He's still very much there - in those small clubs with those large words. He is a wanna-be drummer with a deeply resonant voice.

I'm the fifth person in the group. I bring something different: dark words and a quietly powerful sound.

A Poem for Eric Dolphy

Here's my poem from Upstairs at Duroc, Issue 12:

RINGS (for Eric Dolphy, 1964)

by Lauren Camp

On a ledge, I align 20 stones,

dark ovals smooth as the inside of my thigh, small orbs

ringed with white.

“Something Sweet, Something Tender,”

circles written when the seas retreated,

the raw song of mourning.

Dolphy’s clarinet turns a slow tide that surges and drifts.

He holds a bag of logic and many colors

fitted into keys, an anthem of sense and anger,

the loud shadow of a burden. His reed pushes, scatters.

Vibes burble on the ocean of tomorrow

as bass strings sink spasms

of plodding sadness in cool air; each returning swell

a sphere collected on a beach the size of sound.

The trumpet comes in sullen; tones drop

like an anchor.

No one realizes, and a soul bleeds.

New language forms.

Everyone collects behind the beat

until the clarinet grabs a line and knots up dusk

with ginger-sharp thought.

Understanding makes me dizzy. My pulse syncopates

in rhythm to the plucked, torn sound,

a noise that wears itself down, the chunked voice

of five men playing a deep confusion layered by time,

the sediment constantly smoothing, forever softening,

until all that remains is dark –

rimmed with a white bracelet from another era.

Alice Notley, Eric Dolphy and Upstairs at Duroc

Saxophonist Eric Dolphy:
the subject of my poem in the latest issue of Upstairs at Duroc

I’ve been reading the latest issue of Upstairs at Duroc. This international journal comes out once a year; this is the 12th issue.

Published in Paris, Upstairs at Duroc is filled with literary works of prose and poetry in English.

I'm about halfway through the issue.

Alice Notley’s work is included, which isn’t so odd, seeing as she lives in Paris.  I knew of Notley from Grave of Light, which collects her writing from 1970-2005. I’ve included some of those poems on my show, “Audio Saucepan.”

The 4-page piece in Upstairs at Duroc begins with the author in conversation with a word. Or no, it begins with a conversation with someone named Marie.

It returns to the idea of the word as person, a thing that can talk, that can ask questions. This is one of the things that I love about poetry, the way it grabs my hand and takes me into the surreal.  Suddenly, I’m in a place where “the word” talks.

That, in itself, is dimensional.  Of course, we all use words to talk, but this word has emotion; it thinks and feels. It talks back.

Alice Notley’s writing makes me certain I’ve walked into a dark tunnel. Even though I don’t know what’s happening, I like it in there. It’s weird, but it feels good. Cool and damp on my skin.

Turns out, this is an excerpt from Notley’s new book, Culture of One, due out next month from Penguin. It’s about the Southwest - my home. I want to read more….

And, by the way, one of my jazz poems is in this issue of Upstairs at Duroc – a piece about jazzman Eric Dolphy.