Once a music/pop culture critic for the Chicago Daily News, I learned to write about the arts from Harry Bouras and Richard Christiansen.
I love music. I begin my day by singing along to taped music in the shower, usually with lyrics in plastic waterproof sleeves. Bouras was a great artist, art critic, and radio show host, and a wonderful man. Christiansen, formerly an editor at the Chicago Daily News where he taught me so much about covering pop culture, moved to the Chicago Tribune as a Critic-at-large. I've enjoyed every review by him I've read. Like Harry Bouras, Richard Christiansen is a wonderful man. While in Chicago, I also studied poetry under Paul Carrol and Gwendolyn Brooks at Columbia College, and Lucia Getsi at Illinois State University.
I read mostly poetry. Lately I've been reading work by Joseph Somoza, Sheila Black, Richard Thomas, Ellen Young, Keith Wilson, Bobby Byrd, Donald Levering, Tony Hoagland, James Penha, Steve Fellner, and Li-Young Lee. And listening to poets on CD recorded by Bruce Holsapple
Authors presented in the June issue of Lunarosity include poetry byJessica Bodford, Howie Good, Donald Levering, Matthew Moran, Sangnam Nam, Laura Sobbott Ross, and fiction from Joe Speer, Gregory Louis Candela, Albert Sgambati, and in memory of Rochelle Ratner .
Superman, of course. I've written a series of poems about him. Here's one that was published first in NewVerseNews.
Clark Kent and the New Airport Security System
Meek Clark Kent can't slip
through airport security. The Man
of Steel leaps
faster than a speeding missile, --not
fast enough to trick
a refurbished metal detector.
Beeping alarms and flashing lights
swell a mob
of Homeland rent-a-guards,
recently hired, to bug-eyed, red-alert,
empty holster panic,-- a clear
and present danger to all.
Latexed hands rake through luggage,
single out extra eye
glasses with fake lenses,
a form-fitting body
suit, obviously custom-tailored
for a criminal act,
a large red letter "S" embossed
on the chest, maybe an Arabic symbol,
coded threat to the American way.
Kent is stripped, searched
for detonators and tiny foreign
language scripts. An anal exam reveals
a tight ass. He pleads
incoherently to make a phone call
in a phone booth. Considering
that he might be gay--he is
well-built, well-endowed, good-looking,
and color-coordinates his belt
with his shoes, one guard, displaying
a red jock strap, warns that terrorists
have reached a new low, sending
queer men to do a straight job.
By the time Kent is cleared
for boarding--feted
as a metrosexual from Metropolis,
his flight cancelled, his cape
missing, his glasses broken,
and some woman who looks--
in the surveillance camera video--
like Mimi from the Drew Carey Show
walks off in his boots.
He decides, then and there,
next time he schedules an emergency
flight, instead of leaving or arriving
in El Paso, Texas, he'll lift off
and land near Roswell, New Mexico
where he can travel without hassle
as just another of their promotable
unidentified flying objects.
A poet who resides in Las Cruces, New Mexico, hosts a poetry critique group that meets twice monthly, I also emcee a local open mic the second Thursday of each month at The Bean, a coffeehouse in nearby Mesilla, and help support another on the third Tuesday of each month at Palacio's Bar, also in Mesilla.
I edit an online journal, Lunarosity,which I began in 2001, and which now presents more than 200 authors. I have help from former Poet Laureate of Alaska, Joanne Townsend and non-fiction writer Rus Bradburd (Paddy on the Hardwood).
With Richard Thomas, I co-manage an offline regional anthology, Sin Fronteras/Writers Without Borders, which is entering its 13th journal publication season currently.
With Thomas and Joseph Somoza, we launched Sin Fronteras Press to publish invited regional poets who've been published often but not had a book of poetry.
My most recent chapbook, The Corner of Clark and Kent (2004). First Cd, Migrating Toward Wellness (2006).
My full-length collection of poetry, Sugar Trail (2007), is available for purchase. Click on title to read excerpts or purchase at Sugar Trail.
I'm currently working on a new book of poems in which the desert figures prominently as location and metaphor. It's called "Dancing Skin."
I recently recorded poetry with musician and Swiss hang performer Randy Granger. "Dancing at the Totem" is available on itunes, and it is the performance you can hear right now by clicking on my music bar to the left. As well as itunes, you can hear music by Randy Granger by following this link to CDBABY.
We also recently performed together at an art gallery in Mesilla, and you can see a video of our collaboration on "Echo Teaches Her Daughter to Sing" by following the link to Randy's blog, "Hang and Spoken Word Peformance”
You can hear an interview with Granger and Crawford about their collaboration with the Hang and poetry on KTEP 88.5FM NPR station with host Monica Gomez. click or copy the url. It lasts about 8 minutes. Hope you enjoy it. Listen to the interview at: www.randygranger.net/ktepinterview.html
My fourth and best spoken poem(spopoem) video, follows. It's called, "Echo Teaches Her Daughter to Sing," and was written for my daughter. Also, the great art is provided by Louis Ocepek.
The Sun Waltz video below is the first poetry video I made--clearly homemade, but I had fun doing it.
The second home-made video, "Workers Work" is intended to be humorous, but also recognizes the struggle that work embodies, and appreciates the commitment to it that most of us give. I copied a number of images about death from the internet. If I am using something copyrighted and shouldn't be, please inform me and I'll delete the image from this 2-minute video. Also, I'm using several images courtesy of Freedigitalimages.
The video below is of me reading "Superman's Recurrent Dream" at the art gallery, "Black Gold from the Sun." I've written several Superman poems.
(Besides family and friends, and everyone interested in poetry and writing, music, art, performance, architecture and landscaping) Lennon, Hendricks, Elvis, Shakespeare, Einstein, Wilde, Jesus, Miss Marple, Socrates, Sherlock Holmes, Angela Lansbury, Julius Ceasar, Aristotle, Salvador Dali, Matisse, W.H. Auden, Abraham Lincoln, Alexander the Great, Buddha, Picasso, Kafka, Gide, Genet, Camus, Hesse, Flannery O'Connor, Marshall McLuhan, Ovid, Goethe, Fitzgerald.
Also:
Ralph Ellison, Martin Luther King, Jr.,Mahatmas Ghandi, Bernard Shaw, D.H. Lawrence, Roy Orbison, Frank Lloyd Wright, a dog named Ancho, a cat named Harold, a selection of porn stars, top chefs, architects, interior designers, gardeners, landscapers, four dozen brave and modern poets, an army of comedians who don't yell, ballet dancers who leap like Nureyev, voluptuous nurses, and a cadre of gray-skinned undertakers with red carnations in their black-glitter lapels
I wanted to let you know that I discovered your poem "Echo Teaches Her Daughter to Sing" on Fickle Muses and I just love it, have read it several times. Thank you for your words, Wendy
We hope you'll help us on our journey towards the completion of the first English language documentary that will dive into the Chilean poet Pablo Neruda's life, poetry and times.
Ahhh, Wayne, definitely something so delicious about a poet! -- probably because I'm so jealous, my own rhyme schemes are always so --moon, June, spoon, spittoon --sophomoric! Think in all of my over 200-published books, I've only included two poems. Can't count all of the Verlaine/Rimbaud poems in my erotic novel ARDENNIAN BOY (written under my persona William Maltese), because they weren't mine but translations from original French by my co-author Professor Drewey Wayne Gunn. --This, though, is mainly just a short note, from the olde vampyre himself, in thanks for stopping by the FAMILY DRAQUAL page and "welcoming us into your life". Hugs (if you're confident enough of your manhood, AND/OR if you dare get that close), Vlad.
