The Importance of the Opening Line: Part 4 of 4

Patrick starts the segment with a story from the old times and how he dressed for success. Marcus then dives into the recent author post that no one had come to their reading. Marcus then shares his own story from his first poetry tour that would make you cringe. Patrick shared that he would take the. Risk of reading a piece right after writing it, a risk that did not always pay off. 

Things and people that get mentioned:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Selden_(author)

https://www.bjjglobetrotters.com

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confessions_of_a_Yakuza

About Author Patrick Hare

A performance poet for more than twenty years, Patrick Hare has always redefined the ability of poetry to be a weapon of humor, using a sardonic scalpel in his language and theme choices to un-apologetically reveal the areas of our lives we’d all rather not see.

Patrick has performed nationally, including several National Poetry Slams. Learn more at https://brickcaveclick.com/f6lvdvq

About Author Marcus Campbell

Marcus Sterling Campbell is a poet and film enthusiast from Phoenix, Arizona. Graduating from Mesa Community College, he received a high distinction in Creative Writing, along with degrees in Journalism and General Studies. He is a Vortex Award winner and has placed in several writing contests within the Mesa community. Marcus sweats when he writes and while growing his Magic collection. His work can be found scattered across the web or @marcus_s_campbell on social media. Learn more at: http://www.marcusscampbell.com/about.html

About Brick Cave Media®

The Brick Cave Podcast is ©2024 Brick Cave Media LLC., all rights reserved. for more information on Brick Cave Media, visit the organization's website at https://brickcave.media. The Brick Cave Membership Community is called the BC Book Club, and you can join at http://bcbookclub.com.

Episode Transcript

(00:00):
Gonna be there, and I'm just gonna suck. Yeah. It's
it's hard to balance which thing is more terrifying. Like, which thing is
more terrifying? If 0 people come or if it completely sells
out and, you know, like my flight was down the whole time? Or, you
know, like, what which is the more horrifying thing? And I'm not
entirely sure. I know. Well, that you could say you had a good crowd. I

(00:21):
mean, long time ago, I
intentionally came to, like, the Mary McCann, the
DJ had a a poetry slam, and she had this poetry. Well, she had
this event called the Arty farty party at at in,
Chandler. And so, my roommate at the
time and I were going to thrift shops, and we found I found this, like,

(00:43):
leisure suit that was, like, lime green. It was horrible. It was but
the whole idea was, if I look this stupid, I I can't worry about
anything else at that point because I I already looked like an idiot, and and
I killed it. And so it was a it was a great
moment in my poetry career 25 years ago.
So I've I've just downhill ever since,

(01:05):
I guess, but I it just it was it was fun.
And if I could because I looked like a complete dork. Yeah. No. It makes
a lot of sense to me. Like, I mean, there's a lot of, like, little
strategies like that. And I think a lot of one thing that I thought was
cool yester or this week on Twitter that I saw was, like, one of the
this author posted that no one came to her reading. Oh, yeah. And then did

(01:26):
you see that? Yes. And it became like a viral sensation. Yeah. So I
wonder if we could do something similar kind of piggybacking off of your
story a little bit there. So what's one, like, horrific
reading tidbit that you could share with people that might help, like,
aspiring writers or people getting into writing to feel a little bit more
confident about where they might be or how things might be going for them?

(01:50):
If you need time to think, I'll go first. So I'm Go ahead. Yeah. I'm
currently on a on a poetry tour for my first book and on the first
show, of my tour for my first
book, so my really, you know, my first time putting myself out there
cemented. I had someone full on fall asleep
in the front row, like, not 7 feet

(02:12):
from me. Like, right, like, as far as you are
from me right now, like, could not have been that far from me. Full
on asleep. Husband's just sitting there, sweet as could be, just
listen just listening and sipping his coffee and then wakes up with
questions. Still, how do you
go to sleep and then wake up with questions? Like, can

(02:35):
you clarify this? I couldn't hear you. So not only was I
so boring that I put you to sleep, but I was also
inaudible. Fantastic. It was
wonderful as it went so well and I
also have power read through about an hour's worth of poems in about I think
7 minutes and 10 seconds. It would I read through all the poems so

(02:58):
fast that the owner of the coffee shop didn't have time to come out and
take a Instagram reel of me. Oh, jeez. So all there is,
he was just making coffees. He didn't know I was gonna be done that quick.
So as I'm finishing up my set I go, you know, this is gonna be
one of my last couple poems. I hope you see you on the rest of
the tour maybe yada yada yada. And you you see him running out from behind

(03:18):
the counter like, to come get whatever little video he could to
help me out. I love you, Jared. I appreciate you. But yeah. No. I bombed
super hard. Hopefully, that's
motivating.
I don't know. I've I've I've I've I've bombed it more than once.

(03:38):
And, sometimes because
well, there were times where I would write the piece and then
go directly to the coffee house. And so
sometimes a piece just sucks, and you have to read it out loud and know,
okay. This isn't good, or it's unreadable.
It's a tongue twister. And and now sometimes you can, you

(04:02):
know, you can work out the cadence of it and make it work right. But
other times, I'm like, okay. This doesn't work. This is yeah. It's repetitive.
It's it's junk. It sucks. So
but yeah. I guess part of it is, you know,
read it to yourself a couple times. Decide does this I mean, you don't
have to be super critical of it. You don't have to say what if they

(04:24):
don't like it. But you can say, jeez. Is it is this hard to read?
Are Are people going to get it? Do I understand it when I'm saying it?
Yeah. Because you can always edit. I mean, there's a whole line of
Ginsberg never edits his poems or whatever, but guess what? You
should revise your stuff if you wanna get up on stage and read
it. Yeah. Yeah.

(04:45):
We're not Ginsberg, though. No. No. No. We're not. And I think that's I think,
I mean, you could just have been saying that. I mean, how is anybody gonna
know? Yeah. That I mean, it it would kind of line up
with some of his contemporaries of the time. Like, the other peep the other people
were gonna know. Yeah. Stuff like that. Yeah. But, I mean, then the
publishers edited that. So what does that really mean? I have the original scroll at

(05:06):
home. It's completely unreadable. There's no breaking points. Like, literally, the
second you have to put it down. It's amazing what happens to the brain when
all of the structure of narrative and how it
literally sits on the page goes away. How all the structure of narrative also goes
away as well and starts to bleed. It's really hard for me at least when
I close the original scroll that when I open it back up again to remember

(05:29):
where the hell I am in the story because there's no paragraph breaks
so you never it's really hard to stop on the end of a
thought. It's hard to tell where the end of a thought ever is because there's
no paragraph breaks and there's no sentence breaks and it's just nonsense
speaking on the original scroll and why we edit poems. Yeah. Yeah.
Exactly. So I think I have a few poems that

(05:51):
really work for me on the page, but do not work for me at all
when read out loud. And I think that's that's another thing that's been
disappointing for me on this poetry tour is some of my favorite poems on the
page, I don't like at all out loud. And some of my favorite
poems out loud, I don't like on the page.
And reconciling those is just Oh, yeah. And and and getting back to the

(06:13):
whole 25 years ago in Austin, check your microphone before you get
up there because I was on a hot mic and no one could under nobody
could understand a word I was saying. And then Patricia
Smith went and ripped on me.
It's it's like because it sounds like you're eating a microphone. Like and
she said that before the judges even have their scores up. So that

(06:36):
was, not the best time. Well, I mean, I was
drunk. So, yeah, it was a good time. But, it was like, okay. This is
if I the First National Poetry Slam, I didn't know that they
adjusted microphones that way. So and the place was called the Twist, which
was all concrete and, like, aircraft cables inside, stuff like that.
So, echoey. If I

(06:58):
just known, hey. You can stand back far away enough from the microphone and
people can still hear you or because later
on at at other poetry slams at nationals, you could
they would let you check the microphone so you could stand up there and talk
into it. And that made a world of difference. Like, okay. This is
a hot mic and this is not a hot mic. So you know where to

(07:19):
stand. Fair enough. There's your
advice, aspiring poets. You have any
favorite books of 2022?
I have been reading books from, like, 50 well, actually, 70 years
ago. So, no. Okay. Yeah. Same. I have I read

(07:40):
this. There's this book I read in 4th grade called The Cricket in Times Square,
and I found it at Bookman's. And so, of course, I bought it
and read it again. It's it's amazing that, you know, you read something
when you're not in 4th grade. It's like, well, this is an interesting book because
it seemed like it was more of a metaphor for the author that, you know,
he because it's like the cricket gets, you know,

(08:04):
caught in a picnic basket in Connecticut and ends up in Times Square
as opposed to, like, the the writer who was from Connecticut and ended up in
New York. So when you when you understand the metaphor a little bit
more of, okay, it's like he's in he's a he's a fish out of water,
but he kinda thrives there. That's cute. Did
it have like that familiar fable like quality?

(08:27):
I would say so. Yeah. Yeah. He makes friends with a mouse and
lives in a newsstand, and the mouse is a friend with a
cat. And, yeah, it was a good book. That's
adorable. I I'm I'm reading nothing new. I
think I'm reading a book that's 5 or 6 years old. No. It's gotta
be older than that now. But it's the founder of

(08:49):
BJJ Globetrotters, which is an organization that does jiu jitsu camps all around the
world for people to travel to and train and stuff.
It's his book about how he started the organization after one of his friends committed,
suicide and how that kind of inspired him to start this organization. That's
a great read. And then I'm also reading a confessions of a yakuza,
which is awesome. That book is cool. Definitely

(09:12):
not a new book of 2022, but that book is awesome. A friend gifted it
to me a while back, and I've started it a couple of times, and this
is the furthest I've gotten in it. So I'm cranking through to the finish line
on this one. I'm a I tend to read multiple things at a time,
and sometimes I don't always finish. Has he got to cut off any of his
own fingers yet? No. Not yet. Not quite yet.

(09:33):
It's a good text though. It's a good text. It's got good framing
mechanics too. I love a good framing mechanic on a on a
narrative. So the whole thing is is kind of framed by
the journalist interviewing this Yakuza member. So it's
very interview with a vampire y kind of vibes to
it. I love a good framing device. I think I watched Balto too

(09:56):
young when I was a kid, and it just kinda jammed its way into my
brain. So You don't get too many framing
devices with poetry, do you? No. No. It's super rare. More conceits
and less framing devices. I I think conceits often become
framing devices in poetry, so we don't often need the framing
devices. Maybe the

(10:17):
framing device in poetry is the identity of the poet.
That could be it. Yeah. Because there's so much there's one thing
that I talked about in my poetry of trauma panel at Tucson book festivals
that it's the eye in poetry. It's very hard for
the the reader will always assume that the eye in poetry is the author.
Fiction doesn't have that problem. If someone writes in a fiction book, they write

(10:41):
I, they assume it's a fictional character. If someone writes I in poetry, they immediately
assume it's the poet. And I think poets put distance between themselves and their
work a lot of the times. So maybe that's the conceit of poetry is the
persona of poet.
That's a good point. Yeah.

(11:01):
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(11:22):
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