I may change my mind down the road, but for now I'm keeping my links on the main site. So if you want to see my new audio of "Late At Night," click here.
It's not my best reading--I was too conscious of the filming, and I think I tried too hard to not read too fast--but I like the background noise. It adds a little something.
How I got this is a bit of a story. It's also an rare example of when I'll refuse (at least for now) to list a place where my work appeared.
The first time I put my foot down was when I was published in a South Boston journal (and I know that makes it easy to figure it out, given how few South Boston journals there are, but fuggit) that took my edited and emailed poem, retyped it, and added enough typos and errors to make me look a complete tyro (and I've always taken my submitting process seriously). Not to mention that the journal looked like it was done on my cheap-ass color printer. Best to pretend it never happened. I heard from a reliable source that that work had to do with an editor who is no longer there. I hope that's true, since they've come out with more issues since (not that I'm urged to try them out any time soon).
The second time was when some poems that later appeared in Self-Portrait In Fire but were first printed in this small press effort called Shiot Crock, a book so collaborative, we put it together by mailing copies of the pages (depending no the number of contributors) to the rotating editor, who put them all together and then mailed the copies out. It was a pleasure to be included, given that I was a poet, and this small press collaborative was and still is comprised of cartoonists (some of whom dug my work and even knew me from my journalism in The Comics Interpreter), but I felt it didn't count enough to be listed, given that it only was ever meant to be seen by the contributors (and one Comics Journal editor, maybe). Sometimes, though, I wonder if the same isn't true for most poetry journals and I'm just being hypocritical.
It took a while for charming number three to happen. It was back in July of this year. A friend invited several of us to come and have us filmed while reading our poems for a DVD she was planning. I went, as did several others. Some young guy I never met before was doing the filming. When it was my turn, I went up, I read, and there were a couple of times I felt I flubbed. When I was done, I asked if I could just read one or two over to do better (and I really wanted to do well both in principal and for my friend). The film-guy talked while handing me a card: "Y'know, if you're really unhappy with what you did, contact me, and we can talk about me filming you reading your poems all you want."
One mystery of this huckster was solved. Ahhhhhh, I thought. Now I get it. You're a prick!
It was like getting a mouthful of slime Exorcist-style. I don't know if at the time I had an overall bad feeling about my friend's project or just this obnoxious little bastard, but I do know that when the final project came out, I felt nothing but anger, damn-near rage. It was the most phoned-in job I've seen in a long time, the director obviously aware that he was dealing with someone who didn't have a lot of knowledge in film. I felt I could have done a better job than the auteur-for-hire, even with the minor experience and feeble equipment than I have (A Coolpix L18, since upgraded to L20, and a five-year-old PC).
Needless to say, this DVD won't be mentioned on my résumé. This is just one more experience that makes me more careful than probably I should be of getting my work out to the public. It also makes me more suspicious of film making students. I've been either flubbed too many times this year by personalities who seem to count on you thinking that they could be the next Quentn Tarantino.
The friend who got ripped off actually urged us to put clips on YouTube if we wanted. I appreciate that, though I won't be doing that. I do, however, plan to contact said friend and offer my own amateur services for free. Lynne was mad when she heard me say this to her and wondered why I didn't want to try and get paid for my services like said prick certainly did. The reason is I just want to introduce another friend to the idea that they don't have to shell out hard-earned money to disinterested parties to get their poetry out. When all you need these days is a camera and a computer, why would you want to involve a fucking film student, of all people?
I guess that venting session was just one long intro to the link to the audio link to "Late at Night," a poem I salvaged from the DVD. I liked the background of the crowd and hope you do too. Click here for a listen. And while you're at it, visit my main site. It's been updated quite a bit over the last few months.
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