Midstream Reading Series

David Shove Remembrance Event

~ Frank Hudson ~ Leave a comment

“Papa John” Kolstad worked to arrange at least one more Midstream poetry reading event tonight, as a remembrance and continuance of the series run for the past six years by David Shove who died at the turn of this year.

I know this blog has  a good number of Twin Cities Minnesota readers, but even locally the Midstream series was a less-known-than-it-should-be thing. Best as I can tell, three things made it special: David Shove himself, who had a beautiful offhand way* of presenting a wide-ranging group of poets and writers; the space itself, a large second floor room full of clutter that says unpretentious and informal;**  and the upper-Midwest kind of poets, who have a tendency to community feeling, a sense that they, their poetry, and their readers/listeners are all in this together.

David Shove Rememberence Midstream Reading 1-21-19

Community Feeling. Some of the folks gathered to remember David Shove tonight in Minneapolis

 

Therefore, even though the event occurred with the palpable absence of David Shove, it still felt part of the series—and not just because absence is a kind of presence. As it sometimes does, the reading opened with some music—tonight, Kolstad on guitar and Richard Terrill on saxes performing some jazz as folks wandered into the room from the trench warfare of our most recent eight-inch snowfall. Then sixteen people with various connections to David and the Midstream series spoke of him, often concluding with a short poem.

I was one of those, perhaps the one who knew David less than any of the others. I only knew him from the reading series, but that was still a something. Yes it was.  I did an off-the-cuff reading of the Wallace Stevens’ poem “To the Roaring Wind”  that I had posted in a musical performance here last month when I first heard of Shore’s death.

Here’s a player gadget to allow you to easily hear that performance of “To the Roaring Wind”  from January.

 

 

 

*Shove as a presenter had a slow, dry way of speaking that the first time you saw him you might not think much of it. Then the next time you’d notice the method of it, and the third time, the art of it.

**The decor of the room I think is the unstoppable flotsam of past enterprises run out  of the room and Kolstad’s own intended collage sense. Part Marcel Duchamp and part Daniel Kramer’s “Bringing It All Back Home”  record cover.

To the Roaring Wind

~ Frank Hudson ~ 2 Comments

Fifty years ago I picked up a copy of The Collected Poems of Wallace Stevens  in a college bookstore. It was a paperback edition, and looking at the price, I can see why I might have selected it. The cover says $1.45 if you can believe that. Cheaper than a record album, and chock full of more strange words and mysterious lyrics than any batch of LPs that might sit in a dorm room in 1969.

Collected Poems of Wallace Stevens

Yes, $1.45!

 

I’d probably run into a few Stevens poems before then, but my actual teenaged poetry bookshelf had no other entire volumes from Stevens early 20th century Modernist cohort yet. After reading it, I immediately set out to write poems that looked and sounded like Stevens for the next few months.

That edition started off by reprinting Stevens’ first collection, Harmonium,  from 1923. And now after a pause of decades, works from that year are now in the public domain and available for presentation.*

So now 2019 is here, and 1923 is freed for reuse. By sad coincidence, I learned last night that David Shove who organized a long-running and well-loved monthly poetry reading series had died on New Years Eve. And so that evening I started reading Harmonium,  until I finished it this morning, thinking of David Shove and his dry humored manner as he would introduce poet after poet to an audience, and how I’ll miss that. The obituary said that the monthly reading that would have happened tonight may still go on, but to my shame, I couldn’t face a crowd of people tonight.

I learned last night that David Shove who organized a long-running and well-loved monthly poetry reading series had died on New Years Eve.

Unlike crowds, with art you can allow your feelings to shake and settle into a form. It’s a smaller group, just yourself and sound. So I plugged in my Telecaster and started working on a droning riff to accompany the last poem in Stevens’ Harmonium, “To the Roaring Wind.”  Supporting the guitar I played—well, why not—harmonium, double-tracked cleanly and through a fuzz-box. I then improvised the vocal tracks using Stevens’ words as best as my voice would allow today while thinking of David and those readings.

Wallace Stevens is the Lemony Snicket of Modernists, in love with unusual words, and in the 13 words of “The Roaring Wind” one is “Vocalissimus.” Heard in passing it may remind you of “vocalization,” but someone with an education in Latin has supplied a further, more exacting, explanation.

If souls hover around, David Shove and those that sound with him, this is for them. The rest of you with mice and screen-fingers can hear “The Roaring Wind”  using the player below.

 

 

*A somewhat complicated story, but in the U.S. a law was enacted in 1998 that changed the term of copyright long after the works were created. For a few commercial properties this extended their revenue potential, but for a large portion of poetry and other non-commercial work it only helped make them largely unavailable for re-vitalization.

Grant Hart, and where’s the new stuff?

~ Frank Hudson ~ Leave a comment

A slight apology for the slight drop off in posts so far this month. While I could say I’ve been struggling a bit with some frailties,  there’s also been an element of needing to prod myself to get going again after reaching and exceeding the original goals of the Parlando Project. Don’t forget, we’ve been going on for over year now, and there’s over a hundred audio pieces available here of different kinds of words (mostly poetry) mixed with music that varies as much as my talents allow. If you’re checking in, and wondering where’s the new audio piece, remember there’s probably another piece you haven’t heard yet waiting to delight or confound you in the archives listed on the right.

This week, I had the good fortune to see Kevin FitzPatrick and some other younger poets read at the funkiest reading space in town as part of the Midstream Reading series.  Kevin is starting his short reading tour to promote his excellent new book “Still Living in Town,”  which is not yet available through Internet book merchants. He’ll next be reading on September 21st at the Har Mar center Barnes and Noble in St. Paul Minnesota at 7 PM and then on November 14th, also at 7 PM at Magers and Quinn in Uptown in Minneapolis.

Husker Du fell back into the last century, but Grant Hart kept writing great songs.

 

I’ve been noting also this week the death of Grant Hart, songwriter, singer, musician, artist and founding member of Husker Du, one of the greatest of the “get in the van” indie bands of the 1980s. Despite moving in some circles that overlapped, I never knew him, but we apparently shared one personality trait: we never figured out, or cared to figure out, how to promote the art we make to bring it to attention of others. Others who did know him, and who have a higher professional profile than he or I have,  have written eloquently about him this week, but one thing I didn’t see noted in any pieces I read—his short name, said aloud, two syllables long, is a complete prayer: “Grant H(e)art.”