art/culture
photo by Lynn Goldsmith
son’s role with the house—is conducting the annual Anthony Hecht Poetry Prize. Awarded since 2005 in honor of the celebrated American poet who died in 2004, the Hecht Prize was copped in 2007 by Gaithersburg’s Rose Kelleher, whose work was selected by twotime Pulitzer Prize winner and former U.S. Poet Laureate Richard Wilbur. Kelleher won $3,000, and Waywiser will publish her collection Bundle o’ Tinder on both sides of the Atlantic this fall. Harrison says that Waywiser attracts mostly serious, formalist work—but that doesn’t mean “rigid or stiff,” he emphasizes. “We’re interested in whatever we get, as long as it seems to us to be well-written and original … particularly if it has a sound that we haven’t quite heard before. “There’s increasing interest these days in meter and rhyme,” Harrison adds. “The worm does turn. [Formalist poetry] has been out of style for so long that some of its virtues— rhythmic structure and artistic rigor—are felt to be missing by many readers and writers of contemporary poetry. If you can show younger poets how to do these things, they feel that they’re being taught a definite skill that they can use, rather than just [telling them] something vague like, ‘Put more bodily fluids in your poem.’” Bodily fluids swirled through the work and, often, the lives of the city’s poetry scenesters in the late 1970s and early ’80s. “It was pretty Wild West,” recalls Beaudouin. Back then, Andrei Codrescu, Anselm Hollo, Daniel Mark Epstein, Sandie Castle, and Joe Cardarelli presented their work at MICA’s station building, the Maryland Writers Council headquarters on Franklin Street, and Second Story Books on Charles Street in Mount Vernon. Augmenting these Baltimore-based poets were regular readings by imported heavyweights such as Allen Ginsberg, Amiri Baraka, and Alice Notley. (I once saw/heard Ed Sanders, best known as one-third of the satirical 1960s rock band the Fugs, recite poetry at MICA while accompanying himself on a mini-keyboard he’d built into his necktie.) The poetry scene that blossomed in coffeehouses and galleries during the early ’90s featured “a different flavor, a cultural richness,” Beaudouin remembers. “It brought in more of the spoken-word element and a little bit of performance. But the most exciting part of it was the fact that it was the first time— and, really, the only time—that there was a crossover between black and white poetry in this town. It was an extraordinary opportunity to broach that self-prescribed separateness, these invisible boundaries in our city.” Those boundaries between the African American and white scenes persist today, but for David “Native Son” Ross and Femi “The Dri Fish” Lawal, who front the poetry/ spoken-word/hip-hop group The 5th L, the clannish nature of Baltimore’s poetry culture
Forever men: Al Di Meola, Stanley Clarke, Chick Corea, and Lenny White of fusion supergroup Return to Forever
MUsiC
Meet Me at the Mothership
Return to Forever at Merriweather Post Pavilion, Aug 4 at 8 p.m. In 1996, I had the privilege of playing second trumpet with the Baltimore City College High School Knights of Jazz. Those evening rehearsals in the band room made it clear to me that I would never pass for Wynton Marsalis’ twin, but as I struggled through a half-century of jazz standards, I gained a greater appreciation for the music. Twelve years later, I can scat—alas, I sold my trumpet—almost every note of my favorite song from our difficult repertoire, pianist Chick Corea’s “Spain.” “Spain” sounds like the soundtrack to a flamenco dancer’s funeral. In the first minute or so, bassist Stanley Clarke bows out a deep, long moan on upright bass while Corea caresses a reluctantly hopeful melody out of his Fender Rhodes electric piano. Then, all of a sudden, the whole thing breaks into a party. Clarke lays down his upright and plucks out a quick, tricky two-step on electric bass, Corea works the keys like a madman at a calliope, and flautist Joe Farrell soars over it all. Electric bass? Electric piano? For acoustic purists this was completely against the rules. But this wasn’t traditional jazz. This was jazz fusion. Jazz fusion, a marriage of jazz and, often, rock music, flourished after the 1969 release of Miles Davis’ Bitches Brew. Davis, an innovator among innovators, incorporated funk rhythms and rock-style amplification in an album released literally a day after Woodstock. Corea and drummer Lenny White were part
of the Bitches Brew sessions, and in 1972, they formed part of what would become a rotating cast of phenomenal musicians in the fusion group Return to Forever. For five years, before disbanding in 1977, RTF delighted fans and dismayed many a critic with their blend of Latin music, jazz, and rock. They toured again briefly in 1983, but this summer’s reunion tour, including an August 4 performance at Columbia’s Merriweather Post Pavilion, is the first time they’ve played together in twentyfive years. RTF freaks from Minneapolis to Budapest are going bananas, including those like myself, born after Corea and friends broke up. Two-and-a-half decades later, Return to Forever’s intergalactic spaceship music (sample song titles: “Hymn of the 7th Galaxy” and “Theme to the Mothership”) still sound vibrant and fresh. Whether you’re a wouldbe Earthling musician or a Martian, the skill needed to execute these fiendishly complex compositions is made clear, riff after dizzying riff. Which is why I’m now so torn about hearing them live: It could be too painful a reminder of why I put down my horn. —Lionel Foster For tickets, go to www.merriweather music.com. w w w. u r b a n i t e b a l t i m o re . c o m a u g u s t 0 8
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