BIG BANGS, PINSKY PARKS, AND THE G
Maya Angelou comes to Brookdale Community College in Lincroft this Wednesday for a SOLD OUT speaking engagement.
We’ve grown up with her never far from our eyes and ears; checked dog-eared paperbacks of her books out of our school Media Resource Centers and watched her count it down with Herry Monster on Sesame Street. Seen her on screen in everything from Roots to Madea’s Family Reunion, then watched her take the podium to bless presidential inaugurations and college commencements with that honeybarbecuejackdaniel voice; those grand gestures and inflections so nailed by David Allan Grier on Chocolate News. Maya Angelou — Grammy-winning poet/performer, actress/activist, linguist/literature prof, columnist/calypso singer — needs a month all her own just to run down her résumé.
For us, it takes a visit to the American Museum of Natural History’s Hayden Planetarium and Rose Space Center — specifically the “Big Bang” exhibit and the Cosmic Pathway — to put the woman into some sort of scaled perspective. Stand and watch the universe get born at the large circular floor screen, and chances are good you’ll hear Angelou (one of several rotating readers of the pre-recorded narration) explain how “Space itself exploded in cosmic fire, giving birth to all the energy and matter in our universe” before inviting us to “begin at the beginning…of space and time.” There’s something almost comforting in it; the fact that this woman of outsize accomplishment and reputation is there to explain it all for us, even some thirteen billion years before the brownstones of Sesame Street had cooled. Not just ubiquitous in our lives, but present at the creation.
The doctor without borders comes to the Robert J. Collins Arena at Brookdale Community College in Lincroft this Wednesday evening, for an appearance that seemingly sold out some 3000 seats in the few seconds it took to register the barely/badly promoted event. If you’re sad about missing the poet, or just in need of some kind of poet with which to combat the SADS these days, Red Bank oRBit has a couple of recommendations — one a legendary and lauded Laureate; the other a canny chronicler of societal secrets and personal pain who rides the subways like a ghost.
Street poet, sweet singer and spoken word artist Rock Wilk returns Shoreside for a handful of live appearances.
Last summer in the virtual pages of Red Bank oRBit, we introduced you to Rock Wilk, a seriously skilled guy from Brooklyn who we described as “a veteran of the recording studio and a chronicler of stories. A poet who works in the cadences of the hip-hop tradition, and a character who claims to do his best writing while riding the subways.” Rock spent some time down Asbury way last year, where he spread the love via his GOT WILK? stickers and brought a multimedia show of songs and stories to the historic Stephen Crane House.
“The subway is the place where I feel most creative,” said Wilk, who in our profile had some refreshingly contrary things to say about the local state of the arts — and the distances we all need to travel to truly make this system hum. “I feel private when I’m there…sometimes I just ride the trains, all day and all night.”
Well, riding the pedal-car jitney up and down the boardwalk all night just doesn’t have the same kind of cachet, so Wilk took it back to the tubes to work on some different projects, including a whole new set of spoken-word with music compositions represented on his latest self-released drop, Valentine’s Day. He’s even started a second MySpace page, dedicated to this developing aspect of his art and craft.
“The work is something I’m very proud of, a result of a real evolution of my art,” writes the music veteran who’s lent his backup vocals and arrangements to the likes of Nile Rodgers and Patti Labelle.
“I’ve been living in these spoken word clubs since just before Thanksgiving, performing all over the place doing poetry slams and finally finding my OWN voice in this genre, perhaps creating a new genre, somewhere between hip hop/music/spoken word.”
Wilk has uploaded several examples of his recent work to the page (as well as edited snippets appearing on his official website), and we think they’re a savvy synthesis of musical language and a forceful, yet conversational style of writing-out-loud. In “22 Stops to 198th Street,” Wilk wonders “who the fuck am I?” as he pieces together snapshots of the birth parents with his self-realizations as “my own little man” in a culture that still views the adopted kid as The Other. He’s that guy sitting across from you on the G line, suddenly shouting out not in subway-craziness but in epiphany. Think much-maligned Eminem in his his most devastatingly personal moments, minus the mawkish victim trip.
“A Letter” works a similar theme of Wilk’s thoughts on finally meeting his bio-mom, set against a jazzy upright-bass plunk that for once isn’t some corny hip-hop hybrid. This is a guy who knows words and music and the ways in which they either cooperate or compete. And best of all, there’s not a vein of vanilla ice running through it.
“The material is born of a lot of pain that I’ve been thru recently,” says Wilk. “So some of the material is brutal, but honest to say the least.”
The Wilkman cometh again to the Shore for a handful of appearances spotlighting his new projects, beginning this Thursday with a school show at Asbury Park High. On Friday, March 13, he’ll perform for the first time at the interesting setting of the Borders store on Route 35 in Eatontown, and one week later on March 20 he’ll be at Core Restore, that rather unique space devoted to both art and physical therapy, on Mattison Avenue in Asbury Park.
United States Poet Laureate (and son of Long Branch) Robert Pinsky makes a special homecoming appearance as part of Monmouth University’s Visiting Writers series.
Lost amid all the back-and-forth pertaining to the Presidential transition has been the oft-neglected office of Poet Laureate of the United States — and if you even realized that America has such a thing as a Poet Laureate at any given time, you probably assumed it’s a duty not unlike the centuries-ago scriveners who were charged with the task of quilling odes to the glories of whatever syphilis-addled monarch happened to be farting into the silk cushions of the throne at any given moment. It’s a craft that likely lives on today in Kim Jong Il’s North Korea.
Here in the colonies, the post of Poet Laureate is basically a sort of roving ambassador for poetry appreciation — and during the second term of the Clinton administration, that post was manned by Robert Pinsky, a major literary light who, like Dorothy Parker and Norman Mailer before him, was born in Long Branch.
Pinsky, who teaches these days at Boston University, came down the Shore last fall for his 50th high school reunion, but declined an invite to attend a dedication of some newly reclaimed public space on lower Broadway — a “Pinsky Park” to be named in his honor.
The city of LB may not have gotten their Pinsky Park — at least not while the vibrant and vigorous Pinsky himself is on the scene — but hometown audiences will get a great chance to see and hear this Pulitzer-nominated passionate advocate for poetry in action, with an appearance at Monmouth University’s roomy Pollak Theatre on Thursday, April 2.
For the afternoon speaking engagement — an entry in the school’s Visiting Writers series that’s co-sponsored by the Jewish Heritage Museum of Monmouth County — Pinsky will read from and sign copies of his most recent volume Gulf Music, discuss his status as one of North America’s most visible poets (he’s a regular contributor to Slate, The New Yorker and The Washington Post) and the ideas that led to his dynamic Favorite Poem Project.
Admission to the 4:30pm event is free of charge, and additional information can be obtained by calling (732)571-3512.
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February 23, 2009
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