Zaedryn Meade's Fervor at the Bowery Poetry Club and Café
Emerging from Cafe Colonial on Houston, where I'd found refuge from the rain (just: they weren't keen on a single diner; and you should have seen their faces when I got out my notebook) I set off in the general direction of the East Village where I had a late appointment at a jazz club, thinking of picking up a beer somewhere along the way. But instead, happily I chanced on the Bowery Poetry Club where I found a launch party and reading from a small press collection, Fervor, by Zaedryn Meade. I love the place. It's a bit like the Poetry Café in London except that the bar is much better (it's perhaps the most pleasant bar I found in New York) and the audience space more comfortable. It also has a friendly welcome for the passing poetry buff. So with great pleasure I ordered a Brooklyn Lager (a decent beer, amber coloured like a Kölsch, quite superior to any American beer marketed in Europe) and watched a show which consisted of readings by Zaedryn and her friends. I'm not generally a great admirer of performance poetry: it seems to me deliberately to abandon all the advantages poetry has in favour of superficiality, shock tactics and the ease of rhythm, rhyme and cliche. Phew, that's got that off my chest. Perhaps you'd better bear my prejudice in mind as you read on.
Well, Zaedryn Meade's poetry didn't impress me hugely, at least not her personal love poems. It wasn't that she was excessively focused on sexuality and identity - she's not, though she is obviously a lesbian poet. The main issue I had with her was her occasional use of hackneyed phrases ("bring it on", "I call the shots") and the, I thought, slightly naive feeling her poems have of personal confession combined with spiritual optimism. It's a poetry of emotional memoir of a familiar kind, a kind I think reduces poetry and prevents it from reaching out. Sounds damning, I know. But I was interested in a political poem she performed, which I'm afraid I can't quote from - it's not in the book - in which she compared her feelings for America with attraction to a woman, picturing America by turns as a cowgirl and a long-haired hippie chick. That was much more like serious poetry, and I'd like to hear, or really read, more of it from her.
Emily Haines read a political poem that was much more predictable and was really just a ranting leftist speech. All right as far as it went, but that wasn't all that far, and I found it interesting that here, as in London, the audience for performance poetry can safely be assumed (or perhaps simply is assumed by poets), to be receptive to any leftist sentiments however unoriginal. Jeanette Anderson read a couple of thoughtful poems, and Ariel Federow gave a funny performance that had little to do with poetry.
But Cheryl B. was perhaps the best poet of the night. This was definitely performance poetry at its best. Her list of quotation from publishers and other about her work was really funny, and she was clearly interested, more than the other poets who read, in the plain sound of language. I know I'm a harsh critic; and I'm sorry. But I did think all the poets he had something, and Bowery Poetry Club has a lot to offer. Anyone interested in contemporary poetry could do a lot worse than to drop here on a visit to New York. It's on Bowery, opposite East 1st Street.
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