Posts Tagged ‘Chris Barth’
Due to the untimely passing of RYDER founder and director Peter LoPilato, the time for a planned April Poetry Issue had come and gone, though there still is some hope for a near-future revival. But poetry is an impatient mistress, and so the May Bloomington Writers Guild “Second Thursday Spoken Word” (cf. April 11, et al.), dedicated to Peter LoPilato’s memory, was set to be a festival of the poems that were to have appeared in that issue.
Thus deviating from the usual pattern, after opening music by neighboring Brown County singer/guitarist Chris Barth, MC Tony Brewer read an introducing piece about Peter LoPilato, then, explaining that perhaps a better event description would be “a sampling of pieces that were to be in THE RYDER,” several poets being from out of town or otherwise unavailable to read that night, we heard the first of two groupings of poets. Then came another musical interlude/intermission, after which those of the second group read for a total of about twenty presentations in all, to an audience of around the same number, followed by a final musical selection.
For myself, I was in the second grouping, third poet from the end, with a single poem (as was the case for a majority of the other poets as well). Starting with a brief explanation of the nature of what I’d be reading, a poem informed by an at the time popular group of early twentieth century poems called “Little Willies” (see also February 20), I concluded with an 18-line entry about the Christmas gift of a chemistry set, “Scientific Method,” “hopefully informed by the spirit” of the example I’d just read.
jamesdorrwriter 