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What’s the animating spark that begins a poem for you? In my case, I think it’s usually a little bit of wonderment or curiosity about something. Maybe I could cite a poem of mine: “I Chop Some Parsley While Listening to Art Blakey’s Version of ‘Three Blind Mice.’” In fact, I was chopping parsley for dinner, that song was on, and I was in one of those good moods where my mind was drifting. I started thinking about the three blind mice and how they came to be blind. As soon as I knew I could take this in a silly direction, I stopped chopping parsley and started writing a poem. I followed my curiosity: Was their blindness congenital? Was it an explosion that caused them all to go blind? Or were they separately blinded and somehow found each other? I realized there was some momentum to the thing, but I didn’t know where it was going or where it would end up. So that’s an example of an animating spark. What do you find you’re often doing when a poem comes to you? I came across an article in the newspaper one morning that announced what happened today in history, and it said “Cheerios was invented 70 years ago
SHERYL NIELDS PHOTOGRAPHY
e’s a 73-year-old university professor whose poems carry a wry sense of humor and a widespread appeal. She’s a 53-year-old rocker with a shock of long blond hair and a crop of smart, lyrical songs. This Thursday, April 17, Billy Collins and Aimee Mann will appear together onstage at UCSB’s Campbell Hall to offer up their distinct yet complementary forms of wordplay. In advance of their Santa Barbara appearance, Collins spoke to us from his home in New York about the animating spark for his poems, the writing process, and the relationship between the words on the page and poetry as a spoken form. For tickets to his performance with Mann, which takes place at 8 p.m., call 893-3535 or visit artsandlectures.sa.ucsb.edu.
STEVEN KOVICH
BILLY COLLINS TEAMS UP WITH AIMEE MANN
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BEYOND BURLESQUE
WORDS WITH FRIENDS: Poet Billy Collins will share a stage with songstress Aimee Mann to deliver a night of spoken and sung words on April 17.
today,” which was how old I was when I read the article, so I realized I was a few months older than Cheerios, and that was enough to write a poem about mortality. What’s the relationship between the words on the page and the words as they sound being read aloud? I think they’re inseparable; I don’t think there’s any such thing as silent writing. As I’m writing words, I’m hearing them. I think the mind is a little auditorium
where even if you’re reading or writing in silence, you’re hearing the words. People who move their lips when they read give physical proof of that. So when I feel a poem is done, I do not leap up from the desk or get up on the roof and declaim it out loud. I would confidently take that poem that has never been said out loud into any auditorium and read it, because I already know how it sounds. — Elizabeth Schwyzer
BUELLTON SILENT PARTNER It doesn’t get much more homegrown than Buellton. The Santa Barbara band named after a Santa Ynez suburb made a strong and sparkly debut way back in 2001 with their equally localized Avenue of the Flags LP. Now, 13 years and a whole lot of “life stuff ” later, the S.B. boys are back. For Silent Partner, they’ve teamed up with the fancy beer gurus at Telegraph Brewing Company for a release model that’s both thirst quenching and subtly genius. (See more about that on p. 25.) But this marketing trick is only a small part of what makes Silent
L I F E TRAVIS SHINN PHOTOS
WRITE OUT LOUD
Partner a solid investment. Over the course of the album’s 13 tracks, Buellton successfully resurrects the best parts of indie rock’s simpler times, channeling the big, melodic guitar riffs that put bands like Pavement and Yo La Tengo on the map. Like its predecessor, Silent Partner is marked by delicately wrought and simply orchestrated sad-core (“Mirror,” “Tyranny”), but it’s the boisterous moments that make for some of the record’s brightest highlights. In particular, “N.O.D.” is a sunny pop jam driven by frontman John Nygren’s oh-so–Stephen
Malkmus speak-sing. It’s joyful, catchy, and it calls to mind Slanted and Enchanted in the best way possible. So, now that Silent Partner is finally here, let us hope we’ll be seeing more of Buellton, around town and beyond. — Aly Comingore
In the last decade decade, Los Angeles has become the cre creative ative t epicenter for a new kind of immersive cabaret experience, and in the last five years, this new aesthetic has taken off worldwide. Next Tuesday-Wednesday, April 22-23, one of the leading groups in this post-cirque, post-neo-burlesque movement, Zen Arts, will be teaming up with Kerrilee Kaski and Jen Smithwick, two talented artists from Santa Barbara, to create something called When the Lights Go Out at Carr Vineyards & Winery ( N. Salsipuedes St.). The show is Kaski’s baby — she said it’s something she’s been dreaming about ever since she came here several years ago to produce the entertainment for the burlesque program at The Savoy. While that particular match didn’t pan out, Kaski nevertheless found plenty of other good reasons to stick around our city, and several of them will be participating in When the Lights Go Out. These loosely connected vignettes will be filled with great music, teeming with acrobats and topquality professional dancers, and twisted into provoc ative FLYING HIGH: Cabaret and acrobatics shape by Kaski and collide in When the Lights Go Out. Smithwick, who will act as a mistress of ceremonies and a provocateur. For those of you who were at the recent Direct Relief benefit at the Bacara, the beautiful Zen Arts crew will be a familiar sight. And if you were not, well, perhaps you caught them at Coachella or the Ultra Music Festival in Miami, as those are both events at which they have been main-stage performers. According to Kaski, the show is meant to be a dancer’s dream, into which the audience will be invited. Aerialist Autumn Phillips is in the cast, and choreographer Jason Young, who has worked with Britney Spears and Madonna, will be creating the movement. Set designer Victoria Imperioli plans to give the same careful attention to the seating and the setup for the audience as she does to the set for the performers, and Allen Murray, a top prop designer on such Hollywood hits as Scarface and Alien, will lend his own brand of light and magic to the proceedings. Doors open at 7 p.m., and the show begins at 8 p.m. For tickets, go to whenthelights gooutshow.com. — Charles Donelan
WHEN THE LIGHTS GO OUT AT CARR WINERY
M O R E A R T S & E N T E R TA I N M E N T > > > april 17, 2014
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