AMONG ALL THIS YOU STAND LIKE A FINE BROWNSTONE
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I always thought this antiperformance prejudice was a shame. Not just because it reinforced the commonly held belief that poetry is boring and hard to understand (an attitude that a university writing department, as the keeper of the “mysteries” of creative writing, would have a vested interest in maintaining). But also because locked within the confines of the deliberately chosen words and phrases of some poems is a power that can only be released when they’re performed.
From time to time someone tries to take a dozen or more poems and mold them into a full evening of theater. Sometimes–like last year, in City Lit’s evening of Raymond Carver poetry–this tactic works. Sometimes–as in Jean Howard’s 1988 production Psychopoetica–it doesn’t.
According to the program, Vantile Whitfield has been working on this show since 1976, and I believe it. Every element–from the unobtrusive lighting to the jazz that plays between scenes to the simple set, which never competes with the poetry for our attention–seems carefully calculated to make Brooks’s words sing. If only my graduate-student friends could see this show.
