Category Archives: set-list

I am trying to figure out why my nervousness has been progressively increasing in my last three readings. This last reading had my voice so shook that it was pretty apparent to the audience that I was not comfortable up there.

Not that I don’t get nervous before and during a reading but I can usually transform that energy into something positive and feel real good about presenting the work in a style that befits it. Lately though, my voice is shaking and I am tripping over my tongue which means the work is not getting out there properly. And that’s a shame since I think I am writing some real strong poems right now.

Ok, nuff of the negativity. The positives are that the poems are pretty strong and while they may not be getting 100% stage love, they are getting some good publication love as first three poems of the set will be coming out soon in OCHO. Askin is over at spindle and I am on a mission to make sure the lone orphan poems gets to find a home.

Since I was short on time – five minutes was the alloted time – I went with a quote instead of a cover poem and also went through this with no banter whatsoever and this reading may also signal the end of the No-Banter experiment as I have proved that I can do it but have also found that I might be willing to cut short a poem in favor of some dialogue with the audience.

Despite my nervousness, the set went well. Got to the Mission on time, found the venue, settled in and then got to see the place get packed quick. I went up first and here is that breakdown.

SET LIST

“This is the city, and I am one of the citizens/Whatever interests the rest interests me” — Walt Whitman

• Psalm for Anywhere Avenue

• Sepia

• Sonnet for the Lexington Avenue Express—Mt Eden Ave Stop

• Political Theory

• I’m Jus Askin

Quick side note: Political Theory is the new title for my We poem and I think the title might just stick.

Also on the plus side, the crowd was very attentive and invested in listening to the writing which was a pleasant surprise since this is advertised as a literary bar crawl and the threat of someone walking out in the middle of a piece or randomly sticking their head in and declare “Where’s the beer?” is a real possibility. Luckily, this didn’t happen.

Afterwards, we went and hit the Mission Laundromat to support Tea Party, Craig Perez and Claire Light. I will say that I was very much looking forward to hearing lit inside a laundromat. I’m not quite sure why, but I was. What I was not ready for was pumping techno blaring over the laundromat loudspeakers and no sound system set up to compensate for that. Which meant hearing some pretty good to real damn good fiction to the sounds of Blondie and The Gorillaz. Yeah, ain’t we lucky.

Despite the less than optimal conditions Craig and Claire were awesome and so Lit Crawl ends with a bang plus some good post-reading food and the sounds of Hall & Oates’ “I Cant Go For That” blaring on the corner of 19th & Mission.

In an effort to break out of a comfort zone, I decided that I was going into my reading on Tuesday for Kearny Street Workshops’ APAture Festival with a different game plan in mind: No banter.

Yep, that’s right. Try to go through a whole set with out trying to affect or change the mood of the audience and let the poems speak entirely for themselves. Considering that I only had 5-7 minutes of time on the mic I figured it would be a good time to try this experiment out but at the last minute the game plan changed and I had 10-12 minute set to work with.

So how did it go? Well, I pretty much pulled it off. I started off the set thanking the KSW folks for letting me read then threw a shout out to Truong Tran and all the folks in my workshop and then went right into it:

SET LIST

– How much for the building (tenants optional)?

– God Loves A Liar

– Unsolved Crimes Perpetrated by Invisible Men as Reported by an Unreliable Witness

– This Wednesday

– [Riding the subway is an adventure] by Frances Chung

– The War on TV

– Who we be

– Restoration #6

– I’m Jus Askin

The only commentary I mixed in was making sure folks knew where the cover poem came from but other than that it was all poems, all the time.

While I did like the set and how the audience received it, I will also say that I didn’t enjoy just going from poem to poem. Not because I feel the need to explain every poem but I do like acknowledging the audience and the energy they are bringing to the reading. This is particularly important to me since I feel more people should not only attend more literary events but they should also feel empowered to react and respond to the work they hear at those events which doesn’t mean I am going to be running a poll while I am reading but it does mean I will try my best to let the audience know they are appreciated.

And since I didn’t get to talk about the poems during the set, I’ll give ya some quick background:
– All the poems come from Truong Tran’s Poetry & Politics workshop which is where I got all those nifty writing assignments I have been posting the last few weeks.
– Chung’s subway poem was a serious hit and reading Crazy Melon and Chinese Apple during this workshop time helped me a lot with both my language and my view of City.
– I was surprised as to how animated I was in reading some of the poems.
– Jeff McDaniel’s arsonist poem was the inspiration for Restoration #6.

To sum up, it was a nice experiment (and one I may revisit in the future) but I think it was just that: an experiment.

Photos from the night can be found over at mochamonkey.com

The final IWL reading is in a few hours and I am still trying to fix up some new-ish poems for the feature. I always try to push myself to put out some new stuff but since we only have a few poems in the chapbook and about six minutes to read, we have to try to draw material from outside the chap.

Still on the let’s push it a lil further tip, here is the set I read at Raphael Cohen’s book launch at La Peña:

SET LIST
– Psalm for Anywhere Avenue
– On The Subway (That’s Never On Time)*
– Revelation & Anywhere Avenue*
– The Amen Break*
– After Working The Late Shift Again, A Young Boricua On Times Square Composes a Response To a White Co-Worker Concerning The Myth of Racism
– Dedication
– Sonnet for the Lexington Avenue Express—Mt Eden Ave Stop
– About B-Boys in the Boogie Down

First off, I had a lot of fun reading this set. No mic, in a small space which let me be a little loud but I still tried to reign some back for the softer parts of the poems. In restrospect, I should have quit with the Sonnet but I was on a bit of a roll so I just followed my gut. Oh yeah, this reading was around the tale end of VONA making it a nice contrast from almost a solid week of analyzing poems to just sharing some. (Which in my case equals a spot on analysis but a nice contrast none the less.)

* New-ish poems that either got edited or birthed at VONA.

Speaking of VONA, you can see some pics of folks here at there more dynamic website. For all of y’all thinking of applying next year, I recommend checking out the more practical website. For the fellows reading I read these two pieces:

– The Remixed Encyclopedia of Myths: Uptown Edition
– Poem written to the Jimmy Castor Bunch’s “It’s Just Begun” (Part 1)

The Myth poem was a spot on first draft that let me put some elements of sound and music into more direct play. I had a lot of Quincy Troupe’s Architecture of Language in my head when I wrote it but its gonna take a lot more work (and music) to get it in shape.

Off to go read, see ya on the flip side!