Day 5: Salt Lake City
UPDATE!
****
Salt Lake City has been, without question, the most debauched city we’ve yet been to on this tour.
Even this early (Day 5), I feel at a loss to explain what is normal behavior and what is abnormal, but I think it’s safe to say this reading at Ken Sanders Rare Books was unhinged.
Matthew Zapruder started off with a short introduction and was set to begin to read when a woman in the crowd asked, “Where’s Matthea Harvey?”
The question itself wasn’t so unnerving (Matthea dropped off the reading and will join us in Laramie), but the disapproving tone the woman had had a certain challenge in it. The tone indicated we might have already let her down, before the reading even began.
In this way, Salt Lake City presented a particular challenge for the readers, both because the Bus had to prove itself to the crowd with each poem, but also that the local poets had something to prove to the Bus.
Matthew gave an excellent reading, followed by Erin Belieu, whom I haven’t gotten to hear much of and so I was thrilled to hear her read from all three of her books.
As Erin was reading, local poet Hector Ahumada arrived bearing food and cases of soda, mumbling to himself and kissing the hands of any women who happened to be in his path.
“What is time?” he asked the crowd after Erin read. “It is not absolute!”
Sitting at the merch table, Blake and I nodded. Point noted.
Local poet Alex Caldiero gave one of the most performative readings we’ve yet seen, with fists in the air and a booming voice. The crowd loved their boy, and applauded loudly after he finished.
Hector, a Chilean man in his late fifties/early sixties with a gray beard and long braided ponytail was clearly the resident shaman/poet/counterculture guru. He meandered through his reading, walking into the crowd, waving his hands and pulling at his beard. At one point he grasped the hand of a woman in a sash and a jean jacket and asked if she would like to recite a poem.
She tossed her hand in the air with a flourish and recited a poem about strawberries, tits, and Las Vegas while her husband held a little Bichon Frise in the crook of his arm.
It was that kind of night.
Next came Earl. Earl is a tall, lanky man with gleaming white choppers and wide eyes. He wears high waisted Wranglers and western style shirts his wife makes for him. He shoes horses for a living, and he is a great poet.
Earl had the tough task of following Hector and Strawberry Vegas Tits—the crowd of about fifty people seemed ready to explode into spontaneous bursts of insanity–but Earl did it.
He read a poem or two and then asked if everyone could hear him okay. There was a chorus in the back of “no,” and Earl nodded a bit and then said, very slowly and deliberately, “then move closer.”
At that moment the feeling in the room palpably changed from a certain kind of whimsical self-indulgence to attention. People hushed and leaned in.
Earl is a real poet, but he isn’t flashy. He doesn’t recite or wave his hands in the air. To get the full pleasure of his work, you must listen closely to very subtle differences between the words in his lines and the words in plain English cats and dogs can understand.
If you do listen, it is incredibly profound and pleasurable.
This can be hard to understand, but Salt Lake City did understand. Earl met the rowdy challenge of the room and with that sentence—“then move closer”—so everything that came after and before felt validated.
As Anthony McCann said afterwards, “that’s why we’re doing this whole thing.”
I took that to mean meeting the challenge of the locale, not just going to places where we know people will behave in a certain prescribed way (the acadamic nod, hmmm, and ahh, for example).
I don’t mean any of the is to knock Hector, Alex, or Ken. They were wonderful. A joy to hear and to meet. More that the reading was an exeptional experience, that of two spheres of poetry meeting.
After the reading, we went to what we concluded was very likely Salt Lake City’s version of a gay bar, Johnny’s, where we drank 3.2% beer, played pool, and tried to keep Hector from peeing in the dart room.
All the while we listened to a terrible DJ—terrible not because of song selection, but because he often played two songs simultaneously, or bumped the turntables so the songs skipped, or simply stopped a song in mid riff to fumble around for a new record.
It was actually beautiful in a way, but in what I have come to realize is the Salt Lake City way. Fucked up, but great.
After the bar, we hopped on the bus and slept while Bill drove us to the hot springs in Saratoga, Wyoming, where I’m sitting now outside of the Lazy River Cantina, listening to some kind of crowd cheering a few blocks away for what I imagine are kids playing football in the drizzle.
5 Comments
Comments RSS TrackBack Identifier URI
Leave a comment
Sounds like a great description of Salt Lake City to me…Blake: I assume that you are on that bus as your name is mentioned every once in a while and we have not heard otherwise? xoxo Mom
dear bus blogger–
this entry, on the salt lake city reading, was a pleasure to read. thanks for taking me/us along. the more external detail-laden the better, in my book. also, in the day three entry on the poetry foundation site there was mention of a broken toilet. how’s the plumbing?
best to all, john
Sounds like you are all having a rollicking good time. I have especially enjoyed the little videos of poets reading on the bus as the scenery flies past, for instance C Wing. And C Deavel’s wondrous Dickinson sendoff.
If you ever go back to Salt Lake City let me know–I must see & experience this for myself.
Guys
the stories are great — i feel like i’m there & wish i were with y’all. Could you please include a brief movie of the bus itself, the interior, etc. for those of us not on the trip? We’d love to see it.
Rock on
-MR