Silence to Page to Stage with Poet & Performer Don McIver

A Review from Dr. Dezember’s View

Defying Time & Space: Response Poems

Recording—whether analog or digital formats—offers a type of communication that defies space and time.

The recording of one’s thoughts and creativity—such as in books, videos, photos—can reach anyone who is reading or viewing.

Even if the creator or person featured is no longer alive, it seems as though they are there speaking to us through the recording. In these cases, our predecessors can “reach” us from even centuries before. Think Shakespeare—as just one example, of course.

However, can a recording we do today reach back to those who have come before us?

If we are talking about poetry recorded (printed) on the page, recorded digitally, or performed, then, yes. By writing response poems, poets can, in a sense, defy time by reaching back to those poets who are our predecessors.

Response poems are poems that, in some way, “speak” to another poet, living or dead, as a form of homage or of parody or as a direct address.

The response poem can be an attribution to the form, style, or particular wording of a part of a poem or of an entire poem of another poet. The response poem, because it is a type of imitation, always credits the original poet and poem.

Ultimately, writing poems as responses to other poems demonstrates an engagement with poetry, a personal appreciation of recognized poems, a love for the art of poetry.

Silence to Page to Stage

Creating poetry is about silence,
not words, not rhythm,
rhyme, or conceit,
but listening to silence
and plucking the poem
as if it were a blooming dandelion
and blowing parts of it
upon this blank page
and hoping some of it would
grow.

From “The Blank Page,” in The Blank Page, pg. 10,
by Don McIver

From silence to page to stage, poet and performer Don McIver proves time and time again his dedication to poetry.

Don performs nationally; he produces, curates, and hosts numerous poetry events.

A member of the ABQ slam team as a poet and a coach, Don is the author of The Noisy Pen (iUniverse, 2005) and The Blank Page: Selected Poems 2006-2012 (D.I.Y. Publishing, 2013) and is an editor of A Bigger Boat: The Unlikely Success of the Albuquerque Poetry Slam Scene (Mary Burritt Christiansen Poetry Series; University of New Mexico Press; Pap/Com edition, 2008).

My copy of Don’s second book of poetry, *The Blank Page*, on a blank page, cool pen poised, ready for me to write.

Photo by Mary Dezember

“Poetry as conversation:
poem replies to poem;
poet dances with poet;
poetics blind-dates poetics.”

Don’s recent response poems, shared with me for this review, are also the topic for his presentation as the featured creative at Creatives in Conversation on Wednesday, August 3, 2022. Don will speak about and read his response poems in his presentation entitled:

“Poetry as conversation: poem replies to poem; poet dances with poet; poetics blind-dates poetics.”

“Thirteen Ways of Listening to Vinyl”

I am particularly intrigued with three of Don’s poems he has planned for his presentation. One poem—“Thirteen Ways of Listening to Vinyl”— is an homage in form to the meditative poem “Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird” by Wallace Stevens.

Don captures compelling memories of living in the day of vinyl records, then concludes with an epiphany of the listening power produced by vinyl:

XIII.

There’s a holiness in hearing the blue static
bleed from the needle dropping down on an album,
a few seconds telling you to stop
before the music winds itself
from the grooves to your speakers
and then your ears.

From “Thirteen Ways of Listening to Vinyl” by Don McIver

Ginsberg’s Ghost

Two other poems are both in homage to Allen Ginsberg.

“A Supermarket in Albuquerque” is a homage to Ginsberg’s homage poem to Walt Whitman (entitled “A Supermarket in California” and published by City Lights Books in 1956 in Howl and Other Poems.)

As Ginsberg did with his poem to Whitman, Don navigates the grocery landscape with humor:

“Where are we going,” Allen Ginsberg?
As another thing on my list is missing
and I realize I will have to navigate another store
or might not be able to make the pie at all.

From “A Supermarket in Albuquerque” by Don McIver

However, unlike Ginsberg, Don directs two sobering and important stanzas at his grocery ghost:

I think of you Allen Ginsberg
and the throng of faculty members
that surrounded you when I heard
you read at the auditorium
from my days in college.

You, in professing love for young
men would, no doubt, be called
out and have to deal with the repercussions
of power imbalances, asking for consent,
and yet, you died before
any of that could tarnish your reputation.

From “A Supermarket in Albuquerque” by Don McIver

Don’s second homage to Ginsberg is in the form of Part II of “Howl,” calling out Moloch, which is the term, in part, coined by Ginsberg as the urban monster of civilization. Don sees this creature rise up in his response poem entitled “Howl — The Neighborhood Clean-Up Day Edition.” An except follows:

Moloch whose love is cracked asphalt and uprooted concrete! Moloch whose soul is pitch covered telephone poles! Moloch whose poverty is the drug dealer on a BMX bike! Moloch whose fate is a litter strewn driveway! Moloch whose name is the neighborhood association! Moloch in whom I type emails!

…

Civilization! Neighborhoods! Apartment complexes! Small businesses!
Breakins! Under the bush! Surgical masks and tissue paper! Pushed here by wind!

Real holy nodding heads! They grabbed it all! The people walking through! The revving engines! They found the script! A page of Ginsberg’s poem lost on the wind! Down to the juniper! Crumpled in the roots!

From “Howl — The Neighborhood Clean-Up Day Edition”
by Don McIver

Do you have a poet in another space or time to whom you’d like to pay your respects or parody—or, a poem you’d like to write, as Don will be discussing, as a response or conversation in which “…poem replies to poem; poet dances with poet; poetics blind-dates poetics”?

Find out more about this poetic connection by speaking with Don McIver and by hearing his presentation and poetry performance at Creatives in Conversation.

From a poem’s creation in silence to its rendering on page then to the performing of it on stage, Don McIver offers us valuable lessons and poetry that can spark our own creativity.

Join Us!

From the Divine Studio: Creatives in Conversation featuring

Poet & Performer Don McIver
presenting—

"Poetry as conversation:
poem replies to poem;
poet dances with poet;
poetics blind-dates poetics”

Wednesday, August 3, 2022

5:30 pm MT via Zoom

Learn more and Register to Attend this Free Event Here

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Creatives in Conversation is a free online live event Zooms you—while in your own “divine studio” (creative space, home or inner sense of creativity)—to meet with our featured Creative.

NOTES: Poetry excerpts by Don McIver and used with permission.
Photo of Don McIver on stage at Thirsty Eye Brewing Company in Albuquerque,
New Mexico by John Barney.