Published: September 02, 2009 08:35 pm      

LIFESTYLE: Poetic justice for local scribes

BY Paul Lane

paul.lane@tonawanda-news.com

Hard economic times can claim a person’s job, investments, home, possessions and much of their identity.

But there’s one thing that a recession can’t seize.

A person’s mind.

Despite a drooping economy, and contrary to the scholastic trend of teaching to standardized tests, the poetry community of Western New York has endured — thrived, even.

“During hard economic times, it seems like artists rise to the top,” said Verneice Turner, a Buffalo poet and actress who works at the Praxair site in the Town of Tonawanda. “Whenever there’s an economic, political shift, it’s like churning the butter. The cream rises to the top. And in society, artists are that cream.”

Turner recently took part in a roundtable discussion on poetry with four of her peers who share a connection to the Tonawandas. Piggy-backing on Turner’s comment, Josh Smith — a Kenmore resident and one of several panelists with a link to Kenmore West High School (he’s an alumnus) — said that Western New York’s poets have combined their artistic traits with a can-do attitude.

“Poets are go-getters these days,” said Smith, who makes his living as a professional comedian. “There are so many new venues opening up these days ... and they say, ‘We don’t care if it’s dancing. We don’t care if it’s upside-down fire-spinning. We don’t care if it’s puppet shows. We want entertainment here.’ ...

“With poets, there’s that mentality of, ‘We can reach every single place. We have enough venues. We have enough poets. Why not do it?’ ... Poetry is readily available, and we’re not going anywhere.”

The members of this quintet of wordsmiths were intimately familiar with each other, both in terms of works created and lives lived, but they made a newbie reporter feel like a long-ago initiated member of the group. They joked, shared ideas and politely disagreed with each other, in a manner similar to two siblings discussing current events at the dinner table, but the mututal respect for each other’s work was evident throughout the 90-minute discussion.

And they did an admirable job of articulating an artistic drive and vision that many people might find impossible to put into words.

Down to work

One common trait among the panelists was abhorrence for poets who don’t labor at their art, a trait that seems quite fitting in this blue-collar region.

“This is work, too,” said Ken Feltges, who now teaches at Mount St. Mary’s Academy in the Town of Tonawanda after a long career as an English and poetry teacher at Ken West. “There are people who have a thought and think they need to be heard ... There is an audience. Whether that audience is three people or 103, you owe them something.”

“I have to admit, as not only a poet but even as an artist in general, sometimes we can become self-indulgent. We can operate from the viewpoint that we’re doing people a favor by being up there on the stage. ” Turner said. “(The people of) Western New York (are) a very generous people, almost to a fault, because other artists come to Western New York and think we don’t know art. No. We know art, but we appreciate effort.”

That appreciation of effort extends both to the performers — whether they be established veterans or first-timers just working up the nerve to do a reading — and audience members. While those in the panel have seen more nonpoets in the audience — people whom they referred to as “casuals” — many readings do take on what Feltges referred to as an “incestuous” feel due to the crowd’s poet-heavy bent.

“Poetry, like opera and ballet, is a cultural intimidator,” said Feltges, who said an increased focus on the part of some schools in incorporating poetry into the classroom has started to disintegrate that barrier.

Not that the barrier is gone, of course. Loren Keller, a retired Ken West teacher who extensively studied poetry on the West Coast in the 1960s, said that the cultures among some of his favorite pastimes still clash from time to time.

“The people at the poetry readings say, ‘You go to bowling banquets?’ and the people at the bowling banquets say, ‘You go to poetry readings?’ ” said Keller, who once wrote a poem about Buffalo Bills wide receiver Roscoe Parrish as a challenge from someone else.

So how are these barriers overcome? Feltges thinks pointing out poetry’s importance — and surprisingly frequent appearance in life — could help.

“People use poetic language, metaphors and similes, and don’t even realize it,” he said.

Jane Sadowsky, a Ken West graduate who works at a Falk School in Buffalo, said that educating people on poetry’s benefits — which include being used as a therapeutic tool in her place of employment — is key.

“It’s important to have an outlet to be a whole person,” said Sadowsky, who lives in North Tonawanda.

Take the stage

While writing poetry can be its own form of therapy, the performance of that poetry adds another element to the title of poet. Smith, who had been performing stand-up comedy about five years before he read his first poem, was booed off the stage during his virginal reading.

“I said, ‘I’m not getting thrown off the stage,’ ” said Smith, who counts among his early influences professional wrestler Jeff Hardy — who can waylay poetry fans with his words as well as his ring opponents with a steel chair — and carries one of Hardy’s poems around in his pocket. “ ‘I’m getting back up there, and I’m shoving it down their throats.’ ”

Feltges can recall doing a reading at the Central Park Grill during which he had to contend with the sounds made by rolling beer bottles and frying chicken wings. But these experiences only made him better, he said, by improving his timing and educating him about audience reactions.

Whether the audience is indifferent, appreciate or in awe, though, Feltges feels poetry is meant to be shared.

“Imagine Van Gogh with a painting with no one to go see it. What’s the point?” he said.

Smith agreed, saying that performing has served as a motivator for him as well as an emotional outlet.

“There’s a big difference between if you’re just writing for yourself and if you’re writing for others,” he said. “(If you’re writing for yourself) you get content, you get happy and you’re happy with your return. You’re not challenging yourself ... you’re going to bore the audience.”

As previously stated, some poets might turn the audience off through a lack of effort. That shouldn’t discourage someone from trying to perform, though, as the poets shared an appreciation for someone trying the craft for the first time, as well as the joy in seeing someone who’s just discovering a hidden talent.

“When you hear applause and it’s genuine, when ...there’s an intake of breath on a particular line you read and somehow you’ve wounded someone with wonder or with pain or whatever else you could, you say, ‘Ooh, I appreciate that,’ ” Feltges said. “When you hear somebody new ... to discover another voide that’s good out there, that’s fantastic to discover.”

So what is poetry?

One area upon which the poets could not come to a concensus was what goes into a good poem/performance. Where Feltges often edits pieces 40 or more times, Smith prefers to just “get out there and botch it.” Keller still finds himself find-tuning his written poems when he gets on stage so that they sound better when read aloud, while Sadowsky has stopped her dinner preparations mid-cooking to get a sudden burst of inspiration down on paper.

Whatever the method, though, the poets agreed that the local poetry scene is only getting better.

“It is therapy for a lot of people,” Turner said. “Through that creativity comes your engineers, your doctors, your professionals.”

“Can you make money on this? No,” Feltges said. “But going away is this notion of, ‘If you get it, it’s too easy and it can’t be art’ ... I don’t have to understand the whole poem, but this one line is like a silver bullet ... it made me see better. it made me feel better. That’s what it’s about.”

“The other thing that is getting whittled away are the people that are seeking glory or seeking this out for the wrong reasons,” Smith said. “People are beginning to realize ... nobody is going to invite us on ‘The Tonight Show.’ There’s no plane ticket waiting for us to go do a reading in Fresno. Nobody’s booking us to do ‘Showtime at the Apollo.’ This is all it’s going to be for many, many people, and so the people that are coming out to these are really the people that love it for all the right reasons.”

Contact Paul Laneat 693-1000, ext. 116.