Fringe Festival, Tranås

Fringe Festival, Tranås

An enclave of aficionados of the NY School (poetry)

Before leaving for the Kungsleden, before leaving home, I’d prepared my Tranås  at the Fringe workshop on Micro-Memoir. Once in Tranås  at my friend’s house, she even printed off my workshop notes:

It went out the window. It was the participants that directed the discussion. And, very early on, it became apparent that 1) I’d, indeed, prepared well and 2) the focus of my talk on the New York School of Poets was EXACTLY spot on.

I know, it sounds ridiculous and even I questioned what I was doing. Why talk about poetry when the title of the talk was Micro-Memoir? Then, if not confusing enough, why bring in obscure American poets?

Over a smorgasbord breakfast my friend in Tranås  had said, I’m not familiar with the literary term—flash.

It seems it isn’t a thing over here.

Hmmm. The bedrock of my seminar was shredded. I’d have to scrap everything.

But once at the library and in the meeting room—it seemed that wouldn’t be an issue, since perhaps no one would come. The start time came and went. Several guys lingered in the doorway. Why come in when the subject is unfamiliar, foreign?

I had three participants, plus me and Lotta, my friend. I asked them to introduce themselves. One of the men was the seminar facilitator. Okay, Magnus HAD to be there. Then came Thomas, also a poet. Lastly, Ann Dahlstrom, who I would come to find out was a prize-winning poet. So I led out with my perspective that flash is like prose haiku, one has to be in the mindset of a poet to approach flash.

And, here’s where things got weird: Thomas and Magnus brought up Frank O’Hara. Excuse me while I fall out of my chair. Then Magnus leaves and comes back with a stack of books,

the Swedish translation of Lunch Hour poems, poems from John Ashbury, and other titles I couldn’t read but with names associated with the NY School. We talked about Ron Padgett, I brought up his poem, Chocolate Milk as an example of how the mundane is the basis for art, everyday is fodder for our notebooks. For a minute I thought I was crazy. Here I am, in Tranås , Sweden, at a relatively small literary festival, and have run into an enclave of NY School aficionados. How random.

On a worksheet I’d sent over to Magnus beforehand for him to make copies was a poem June 30, 1974, by James Schuyler. They’d never heard of Schuyler. Imagine my joy at introducing them to Jimmy, a quick overview of his life and how he fit into the “school.” Then sharing with them that JUST NOW there’s a biography of Jimmy, new on the scene, from Nathan Keenan: A Day Like Any Other: The Life of James Schuyler—that I’d had to leave off reading in order to come on my trip.

We read through the poem, at least the excerpts on the handout (Remember: I’d chided myself beforehand that none of this would make sense, so had shared on the handout only a portion of June 30) and noted the short lines, as if written in a small notebook and then transcribed in that same format. We talked about where he sat: In a kitchen, at the breakfast table, looking out a window, morning before the others in the house have arisen. The accessibility of the writing, his flow of thought. All of this was highly relatable—maybe  this was WHY I’d decided to share Jimmy. He’s someone I can relate to, and, indeed, the whole group of us at Tranås  At the Fringe. The misfits.

At the end of the hour and a half, we parted with email addresses exchanged and Thomas’s (Wahlström) just published chapbook, Cab Rank, tucked into my bag.

From Cab Rank—

Almost

 

You were almost killed

once

you were almost living

now