Scenes from a Book Launch

A Celebration of Karren Alenier's From the Belly, Vol 2

Last week I had the pleasure of celebrating the release of Karren Alenier’s From the Belly Vol. II. The series is a deep dive into Gertrude Stein’s Tender Buttons. Poets are invited to write poems based on specific selections from the work. The results are beautifully raucous, creative outbursts. Today, I’d like to showcase this process by looking at the way poets Majda Gama and Holly Bass reacted to their prompts.

Majda Gama Responds to “Cream”

Here’s the short poem-fragment, Cream, from Tener Buttons:

Cream

Cream cut. Any where crumb. Left hop chambers.

If I were making a response to “Cream”, I might be thinking of ‘Ginger’ as in Ginger Baker, Eric Clapton and Jack Bruce—members of the 1960’s rock group. But Majda did us all better with her mysteriously lyrical response, using the same name as the selection.

Cream

His white t-shirt yellowing in a drawer
Full-fat with clotted crust of gold
Now scoured sour by the tight wound of time

Here’s a short video of the prompt presented by Karren Alenier along with Majda’s response:

It may not be another Sunshine of Your Love, but certainly rocks with a stunning sunshine of its own.

Holly Bass Responds to “Sauce”

Here’s the fragment from Stein:

Sauce

What is bay labored what is all be section, what is no such. Sauce sam in.

In her response, poet Holly Bass delivered a poem of crab cakes with delicious hints of privilege and injustice.

it’s all gravy

look at how they do us
giving a morsel a drop
and we be the special sauce
can't make real crabcakes
without old bay
without labor
to pick the sweet meat
pink and cream from the shell

Here’s Karren and Holly working through the prompt.

If you’d like to see the entire video taken from the book release party, check out the YouTube:

My Poem in From the Belly, Vol. I

As a contributor to From the Belly, Vol. I, I was asked to respond to Stein’s Piano. Here’s the Stein selection followed by my response.

A Piano.

If the speed is open, if the color is careless, if the event is overtaken, if the selection of a strong scent is not awkward, if the button holder is held by all the waving color and there is no color, not any color. If there is no dirt in a pin and there can be none scarcely, if there is not then the place is the same as up standing. 

This is no dark custom and it even is not acted in any such a way that a restraint is not spread. That is spread, it shuts and it lifts and awkwardly not awkwardly the centre is in standing. 

And here’s the surprising love poem I came up with:

An Open Piano

It was the day
	I noticed the mustard jar squatting heavy
	on the refrigerator shelf. The day
I looked up the word ‘awkwardly’ in our blue
	promiscuous dictionary. Yes,
it was the day I noticed my socks running
	out of thread so I called upstairs for a hand.
That day. The one when the telephone was let off the hook
	and almonds broke out all over us. The
very day I handed you my drivers license
	and took your glass of warm refreshing milk
	in a careless never ceasing way. You know, that
day. The time I heard a sound like a salon
	coming out of our living room.
The day I looked in to see the black enameled cover
	lifted off the piano and keys exploding
	all over your finite grin. That day
when nothing stood between us.

If this were a game show I might say something like, “…and there’s more!” The poem also inspired a YouTube video-poem of the work which is still one of my favorites. Here’s the video, An Open Piano.

Gertrude Stein, a force behind much of 20th Century art is still a source of creative energy, stoking up the fire in creatives more than a century after the publication of Tender Buttons.

Coming Up

October 27, 2024, Writing in the Land: A Nature Poetry Reading, Patti Ross, Naomi Ayala and Hiram Larew at the Howard County Conservancy.  Here's more info -- Amphitheater Performance Series: Writing the Land | Facebook

November 4, 2024 at 7:00 Café Muse will feature poets Henry Crawford and E. Ethelbert Miller, live at the Writer’s Center in Bethesda, Maryland and on Zoom. Register here for the event.

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As always, feel free to email me with questions or comments at henrycrawfordpoetry@gmail.com. Stay creative!

If you’d like me to list an upcoming poetry event in Everyday Poet, please let me know by emailing me at henrycrawfordpoetry@gmail.com. Use the subject: “Coming Up”.