hallawayjoe

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hallawayjoe
Andyland

2002-10-19 11:27 PM
After the Mali

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Mood:
The Dawn still burns

What a night. well... I spent the day with Taylor and Dawn, picking them up from the airport this afternoon, and we hung out a bit over at my house as my dad watched tennis. I went with Taylor and Dawn to the Venetian Hotel and we ate a light lunch at the Venetian. Then we went to Karen Lumos's house. Karen and Steve have a wonderful and spacious house. We finally got to Espresso Roma and started not too late with Taylor performing a scintillating set of his social satire and his poignant and forceful accounts of his experience as a teacher. He is the teacher, the consumate teacher. He doesn't just raise the bar for slam poets, or teachers or students, but for everyone. In slam, he is a fierce competitor, but as a feature, he has the look of love as he reads and recites to an audience be it large or small, he gives his all, even if he is struggling with jet lag, strained muscles and many other ailments.

Dawn Saylor who is now a New Yorker, has a realism in her poetry that sets genuine tears at the ready set phase. Her accounts of a rough childhood are not the cliched laden angst we've come to associate with parent/child anger, but rather a compassionate imagistic view at the pain handed down from generation to generation.

Both hung around and chatted with the Roma crowd, many of whom read amazingly brilliant work upping the ante (not that they weren't already good). Bruce Isaacson was there as well and read a few poems. That makes three Outlaw Bible poets in Las Vegas in one weekend.

Andy Kenyon was a brilliant glib host, of course, she relentlessly teased Dawn about quitting smoking. Listen, in Las Vegas, it is still in vogue to smoke. Not that that is a good thing.

anyhow, Thank you Taylor and Dawn.

I look forward to seeing Taylor and MuMS the Schemer tomorrow night at the Venetian.

Will report on that and Glazner later this week. Meanwhile I got 80 or so papers left to grade.

BTW, one of my eng 102 students, Draco, read and he also did a brilliant card trick and monologue poem. He couldn't slam that one though, because it is a prop poem, and needs the intimacy of a relatively small audience, but I could see him doing a Vegas show one day. He could develop that sharp Penn and Teller thing. It is just a matter of following his bliss... or as it sometimes is, curse.

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