Review by Martha Quillen
Poetry – February 2003 – Colorado Central Magazine
Talking Gourds #2 – Edited by Art Goodtimes
Published by Lone Cone Press
No ISBN
WHEN LYNDA LA ROCCA reviewed Talking Gourds #1, she objected to the format. It’s “a collection of loose-leaf broadsides of various sizes, type fonts, and paper colors and weights,” all deposited in a PeeChee school folder. “My more prosaic guess,” she wrote, “is that bundling is actually a less costly method of publication, but…it’s certainly not less costly for the purchaser.”
And even more aggravating, in LaRocca’s view, contributors had obviously prepared their own selections, sometimes with their own idiosyncratic spelling and grammar. “Judging from the context,” LaRocca wrote, “these were not manifestations of poetic license; they were simply mistakes.”
In form, this second Talking Gourds is pretty much the same, so I asked Ed what he thought about the format, and he agreed with Lynda. Ed also preferred the feel and permanence of a book, and I suspect many others will agree.
But I kind of liked this unusual, unmatched arrangement of essays and poems. Several of the entries were accompanied by original designs or clip art, and there was even a full-page photo which appeared to be unrelated to any particular selection, or maybe one of my pieces was missing. But either way, I found myself as drawn to the art and form as the words.
For example, I didn’t quite know what to make of a selection in Italian, which seemed to be translated into English on the back — or at least I assume the reverse side was an English translation of the original — but the syntax was bizarre. The work concluded: “One of the first step in this direction could be, for example, to re-learn to listen the Voice of The Earth. Is it too much complicated?”
Yet even so, I liked the look and sound of the Italian, even though I couldn’t understand it, and I loved the illustrations. Best of all, though, the fractured translation seemed to work. Here’s a sampling from the essay:
“What is your vision?
Is it of a world where everybody have food, water and everything they need for a decorous life?
Is it of a world where everybody have a job and the social justice is the norm, not the exception?
Is it of a world where the food grows healty, the water runs wild and free and a multitude of birds flying high in the sky?
Then….this is a world all to be builded.”
That sure sounds more impressive and all-encompassing than “Then….this is the world we should build” — doesn’t it?
So I didn’t mind the idiosyncrasies, or the odd assortment of paper and postcards.
ON THE CONTRARY, although print design has never been one of my own strong suits, I can see a lot of potential in letting writers design their own pages — for better or worse. Personal design might even lead to a new, sculptural, textured form of poetry far beyond the minuscule innovations of poets like e.e. cummings and Marianne Moore.
Colorado could be the birthplace of a novel integration of art and literature. Poems about clouds could be printed on stationary adrift with billowing clouds; poems about diners on paper napkins; poems about the greed and waste of modern materialism on discarded packaging.
Today, we live in a post-modern world where people’s access to new printing processes — provided by computers, copiers, scanners and the like — has opened up more possibilities than we have even begun to tap.
And paper is certainly not the only medium available to writer/artist/pioneers. Words could be printed on beads and looped and strung to read in multiple directions. Verse could be grown into gardens; whittled into wood; or worked into clay.
Of course, Talking Gourds #2 hasn’t quite lived up to that potential. But even so, the publication’s format may, in time, encourage such innovations.
With that said, however, I also think that there is something a trifle off-putting about this publication. With no traditional form — and with an intro and author’s list that might get stuck in the back or the middle — Talking Gourds could use a little more structure, context, or definable purpose.
Editor Goodtimes invites the reader to join this circle. “Talking Gourds in print & bundled for your reading enjoyment is that virtual campfire where one can attend by whatever distance exists and whatever connection one has.”
BUT AN ACTUAL CIRCLE of people sitting around a real campfire creates a close, intimate assembly. Whereas I suspect that this virtual circle may seem obscure or unfriendly to many outsiders.
A theme, a literary limitation, or a regional bias, might have lent this virtual circle more of an identity. But this collection is all over the place, reaching out from California, Ecuador, and Italy, with poems, essays, a letter, and a photograph.
In a real circle, participants share the real, down-to-earth commonality of being there physically, but such connectedness isn’t necessarily easy to establish in a printed publication. Generally there’s a convention to pull the audience together; it’s a news magazine, or a book of sonnets, or a murder mystery.
Talking Gourds, however, seems to be held together by friendships, poetry gatherings, conferences, e-mails, business associations, and other publications that some of our readers may not be familiar with.
And Gourds embraces a bit of an insider’s aura that may even alienate some newcomers. For example a wonderfully poetic letter which Aaron Abeyta wrote to George Sibley is presented without explanation. Yet when I heard this same piece presented at an annual Headwaters Conference, I knew, as did the rest of the audience, who George Sibley was and why Aaron was writing to him about the Abeyta family’s history in the San Luis Valley.
Personally, I have no idea how disorienting Talking Gourds’ assumption of familiarity may be to new readers, since I’ve met Art, and Allen, and Aaron, and George, and Cathy — or, in short, about a third of the contributors. But I think Gourds tends to be a mite too focused on prior associations to appeal to novices.
And without the comfortable, traditional form of a book in hand, with an introduction and a table of contents and author biographies, all in their proper place, this publication could use a theme, an intent, a rapport — something that reaches out and shows you that you belong; something that makes the reader feel like a participant.
But I actually do believe that Talking Gourds has this certain something that makes readers connect — except it seems to lie in the actual circle, and to be a little too dependent upon the real physical circles and festivals and people who give birth to this publication.
Indeed, in his introduction, Art Goodtimes writes: “Come join this circle. Or not. For any of a number of annual gatherings. Sparrows. Fire Gigglers. The Chinese Mountains….”
And in terms of really appreciating Talking Gourds, attending some of these gatherings may be essential. But that can be accomplished. Sparrows, which is billed as Colorado’s annual “performance poetry festival” happens January 30 to February 2 in Salida. The festival offers workshops during the day; performances in the evenings; and a chance to meet and hear Talking Gourds editor Art Goodtimes, too.
–Martha Quillen
