I decided to build a Memorial Day set since it is coming up next Monday. I read five poems, all of which are built around this one:
I wanted to try this poem in this setting because I had multiple discussions yesterday with
and . We were substack-chatting about the context of poetry. There are a lot of people who simply don’t like poetry. That’s fine. I make a cassette magazine in 2025. I understand unpopular mediums.But as an amateur media theory scholar, this provides a challenge. How can I make poetry more approachable without just writing approachable poetry? Because the New Yorker always includes two or three poems and I don’t think people are buying this magazine just for the poetry, but they did just release a pretty epic collection of the last 100 years of poetry.
Also, I’m pretty new to poetry. Not a year ago I was in the never-poetry camp. So I empathize very much with this group. I started just a month or two ago going to open mics and I first went to a poetry-specific open mic. I did not like it. Then I went to an open mic here at the Lyric where I was the only poet amongst musicians. And I loved it.
First of all, the sound guy at the Lyric, Sparky, is amazing. But apart from that, the poets (and it was a slam so there’s that) dropped right into the poems. But I noticed even the musicians warmed up the audience — they didn’t just get up there and start signing right away.
So when a poem posts here on substack, just as it is, I think it acting as filter. A filter to those that already accept poetry will read it, but it is difficult for non-poetry fan to accept as face value. It’s very in-your-face. Take this for example:
Every breath taken in by the man who loves, and the woman who loves, goes to fill the water tank where the spirit horses drink.
Now if that poem was a Substack post with the title What we Provide, it would probably just do OK here with some supportive comments. But I think most people would skip it and instead click on the substack post Why David Lynch is horrible.
But when the above Robert Bly poem is snuck into something else, you might think this is actually a beautiful love poem and give it more consideration than you wanted to.
All of this to say, I don’t think Stone Memories is my best poem, but I was trying to explicitly build on something that requires some very specific references. It needs context. So I wanted to try this again live at an open mic.
The result was one of the better reactions. The audience was smaller last night — the college graduation had just let out. But the other musicians made very nice remarks in their own sets about these poems and a documentary film maker, who was just randomly in the audience, came gave me his contact information.
I don’t think every poem has to be posted with a context here. But I think as substack artists that write poetry here we should understand the media environment in which we participate. I think we can learn a bit from musicians and realize that if there is a piece that is harder or has a deeper connection, we can go far by warming up the audience.
The sleezy marketing term for this is priming. Which makes most writers, except those that used to copywrite feel icky. It’s the same idea though. More of this can be found in Tony Schwartz’s book, Media: The Second God.
Going forward, I don’t know if I want to write an essay like this with each poem. But this realization has helped me set expectations and realize that Substack is not the place for all media, despite what their advertisements in Washington, D.C. say. Another way to say this is I’m trying to align the Message to match the Medium.
Share this post