Sinking down into the Zinc Bar last Saturday was an exercise in walking into Kane’s Gotham. The art deco décor, steeped in red velvet, exposed brick, and the clean arcs of the style, paired to evoke the perfect mood for Alice Notley’s reading of her new book which successfully fuses poetry and the detective genera.

Notley issues through confrontational dialogue a critique of contemporary poetry wherein the suspects serve as foils against the authors own aesthetics, challenging the role of both ivory tower knowledge men and the avant-garde alike with the narrator’s rambling accusations. The witty retorts of a hospitalized poet after her own attempted murder included the line “…’ I’ve been shot, and if shot by you, I’ve been shot by a blurb!’ I say.”

And while the narrator of her poem was not explicitly stated to be a woman by the excerpted text, there was a distinct feminine flair to the character which offered a subtle undercurrent of feminism playing throughout the show.

In Notley’s reading it worked, because its presence was like perfume; a scent that did not overpower, but instead infiltrated the senses and shifted the slightest attention to itself.

In contrast, Casandra Gillig’s reading was a heavy-handed hyacinth. Gillig’s poem on Edna St. Vincent Maley’s ivory dildo, and her poem inspired by Good Friday failed to capture the imagination for a variety of reasons. While the spinning of words occasionally sounded interesting, the overall content of the poems substituted shock for statement. I’ll grant Gillig that the intention is noble, but the execution failed to leverage the ivory dong or frustrated Catholic sentiment into anything meaningful, ultimately coming across less as a poetic polemic and more as frustrated jab.

Ultimately, there is a reason you place someone who is young and has promise as the opening act for an established artist: a good act is hard to follow; however, in instances such as this reading, even as an opening act, the gap between the skill levels was too great. Notley noted that “There’s always a chance that you’re not writing poetry when someone else owns the definition.”

I hope that Gillig and others will use that insight to hone a sharper aesthetic for themselves in the future, and not use it as a justification for complacency.

#poetry #ZincBar