Episode 4: Poetry – Straight, no chaser

[00:00:05] Speaker A: Be drunken. That is the point. Nothing else matters. If you would not feel the horrible burden of time weigh you down and crush you to the earth. Be drunken continually. Drunken with what? With wine, with poetry, with virtue, as you please, but be drunken. And if someday on the steps of a palace, or in the green grass of a ditch, or in the dreary solitude of your own room, you should awaken and find the drunkenness half or entirely gone. Ask of the wind, of the wave, of the bird, of the star, of the clock, of all that flies, of all that sighs, of all that ticks, of all that talks. Ask what hour it is, and wind waved bird, star o'clock would tell you it's the time to be drunken. Be drunken. If you would not be the mortal slave of time. Be drunken continually with wine, with poetry, with virtue, as you please, but be drunk. [00:01:19] Speaker B: Welcome to through the mill, the podcast about poetry slams, slam poetry, featuring Mark Kelly Smith and the origin stories of all this poetry stuff. This is our fourth episode, mark. [00:01:30] Speaker A: Oh, boy. Yeah. Did we ever think we'd get this far? No, but I'm charged up now. I mean, this. I first, you know, me, a detecting. Yeah, but I am. I'm. I like this. I like that it's getting out there. Some of it makes me uncomfortable, but I like it. Good. [00:01:51] Speaker B: We kind of got up to the get me high. 1980, 619 87. The Chicago ensemble poetry ensembles going. You're at the Green Mill Jazz lounge in uptown Chicago, and all these famous Chicago voices that are coming alive. [00:02:08] Speaker A: Yeah, no, that. That was the important thing. You know, there's. You know, I don't know if I can go here or not, but, you know, there's an important aspect of. Of who I am and how things started, and that has to do with my drinking. [00:02:24] Speaker B: Right, right. There's a long history of the arts and drinking going together. You're not the first. [00:02:29] Speaker A: I know, I know. But I've been reluctant. Well, I've chose not to make a big deal out of it overseas. I've spoke about it several times because there is an important link to things. So I'm like anybody else. I'm a Chicago kid. Grow up. It's a drinking culture, so. But when. When I started to perform, you know, I used drinking as my courage to get on a stage because I am basically kind of a shy guy. You know, I'm afraid. I'm afraid to do things. [00:03:03] Speaker B: Liquid courage. You're speaking of liquid courage. [00:03:06] Speaker A: Of course. Yeah. And. But more than that, that once I started to see just at open mics. I'm going to open mics all the time he owns. It's an excuse. It's an excuse to have some more beers because I got to get some courage up on the stage. And then. It's funny that nobody else in the Chicago poetry ensemble has the problem, but I do. They were all heavy drinkers, but they could do it. And nobody has had a lot of damage of it in their lives from it. But when we started working and we talked about this last episode, the start of the Green Mill was the Chicago poetry ensemble writing a show, right? [00:03:55] Speaker B: Right. [00:03:56] Speaker A: Rehearsing a show and putting a show up every week. [00:04:01] Speaker B: Every week. [00:04:02] Speaker A: Every week. They weren't long. They were like 2030 minutes. Skits, I called them. They hated that I called them skits, but they were poetry skits. [00:04:10] Speaker B: And just be clear, because this always runs in my head. There are costumes, there is blocking, and there are scripts. [00:04:18] Speaker A: We had permission to do that. We didn't always have the elaborate costumes, but we did. For instance, Rob dressed up as a Vietnam vet at the bar. He was a plant, you know? And he's like, these people don't know what they're fucking talking about, you know? And even the bartender knew who he was, knew him, but he's dressed up. He didn't recognize him, and he's ready to throw him out. And of course, Ron Gillette also had elaborate costumes. But we didn't say, this show has to have costumes. Just if it so happened, we used it. We didn't tell ourselves, we can't do that. [00:04:59] Speaker B: Okay. Okay. [00:05:00] Speaker A: And so two nights a week, maybe we're working on the script, and of course, we're drinking at the mill. When we rehearsed on Saturday, we rehearsed Saturday afternoons and Sunday afternoons at the mill. Dave, the owner of Green Mill, let us drink free. You know, just a beer. [00:05:20] Speaker B: Beautiful green mill jazz lounge on Dave Gemilo, right? [00:05:23] Speaker A: Yeah. Dave let us drink. And it got progressed more and more and more and more and more, and I'm doing the get me high show at the same time. At the get me high towards the end, you know, I'm just. I'm bypassing butchie. I'm just going right in the cooler and taking the beers. [00:05:44] Speaker B: Oh, okay. [00:05:44] Speaker A: You know where I'm getting to is this. So I. In February 1987, I take a trip with Tony Fitzpatrick. [00:05:55] Speaker B: So Tony Fitzpatrick, the famous. [00:05:57] Speaker A: Famous. He wasn't that famous then. [00:06:00] Speaker B: You started all those. Every time you spoke about them, it's, you know, famous Tony Fitzpatrick. [00:06:04] Speaker A: Famous Tony Fitzpatrick. I think I met Tony at the feminist guild, which later became the guild complex on Lincoln Avenue. I think I met him there. [00:06:16] Speaker B: Was he wearing his pussy hat yet? [00:06:18] Speaker A: No. [00:06:18] Speaker B: Okay. [00:06:20] Speaker A: I met John Sheehan, who was a member of the Chicago poetry ensemble, and I think he was friends with John Sheehan. I'm not sure he was friends with Julie Parsons, who was a big part of the feminist Writers Guild. I think Tony started coming to get me high then. I can't. It's a lot of fault. [00:06:40] Speaker B: I bet Tony will fill us in on this one day. [00:06:42] Speaker A: I hope he does. I hope he does. We'll compare Tony's lies and my lies and see what comes out. Anyways. Tony's in my life. And then when I started at the green Mill, big time there all the time. [00:06:55] Speaker B: Tony. [00:06:56] Speaker A: Tony Fitzpatrick. I wanted to find out what was happening in New York in the poetry scene. I want to see if anybody in New York was doing what we were doing. [00:07:10] Speaker B: Now, one of these connections, too, in relationships is when Gene Howard was on the podcast. It's multi dimensional art going on. It's. It's paintings. It's performance art. It's poetry. There's music going on. Is that. [00:07:29] Speaker A: Absolutely. In fact, probably during some time in that first year, probably, Tony was one of the guest poets. [00:07:37] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. [00:07:38] Speaker A: With a. I brought an old film screen that I had. [00:07:42] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:07:44] Speaker A: From the super eight days and hung it on the back of the stage of the Green Mill. And Tony would project his art on the screen and do his poetry. I forget what book he had. He came out with a book. [00:07:58] Speaker B: Was it the serial killers? [00:07:59] Speaker A: No, this was. I forget what. I forget what. It's very funny. I had a very first little chap book called cat on the coffin. [00:08:11] Speaker B: Okay. [00:08:11] Speaker A: And Tony's first book, the one I'm talking about, it was a totally plain cover. Just cat on the coffin. His first book came out. Instead of having his art on it, which everybody loves, he had this real. I pretty sure. We have to ask him. Pretty sure. He just had a plain cover like mine, and they had the art inside of it. [00:08:33] Speaker B: And if once you see Tony's art, you know, that style and what it is, how would you describe. [00:08:38] Speaker A: Right. [00:08:39] Speaker B: How would you describe it? [00:08:40] Speaker A: You know, iconic. A little organized chaos, just like I look, think about the show. He's got all these little magical figures, you know, I think you call them. [00:08:53] Speaker B: Icons or matchbooks with, like, years on them, and. But what year is smart? [00:08:59] Speaker A: But at the time, that was a later style. At the time, he was doing the boxer series. [00:09:05] Speaker B: Okay. Okay. [00:09:06] Speaker A: And that's the little slates. He did them on schoolroom, old schoolroom chalk slates that were about, you know, eight inches by six inches. [00:09:16] Speaker B: Okay. And 1987 ish. [00:09:19] Speaker A: This is 1987. [00:09:20] Speaker B: Okay. [00:09:21] Speaker A: Well, he was afraid to take them on the plane and storm. Cause they thought, boy, if it takes a bump, they all crash. [00:09:28] Speaker B: Cause he wants to go to New York and sell them. He's got an art dealer, he's got. [00:09:31] Speaker A: An art guy on the lower side that's gonna pitch his work. [00:09:35] Speaker B: Awesome. [00:09:36] Speaker A: So I'm gonna take him and. And this is the green Mill show has gone on and it's very successful. It's, you know, in its 8th, 8th or 9th month or something. And I wanted to find out what's going on. So I'm. I'm gonna go. I go with Tony. [00:09:52] Speaker B: So you and Tony are getting in the car to drive to New York. So you can scout poetry stuffs and Tony can meet his art dealer and. And start selling art together. [00:10:03] Speaker A: Right. He had an opening there was the first guy that, I think the first guy that paid attention because people. I don't know, he'll have to tell you, I don't think the gallery owners in Chicago were paying attention to him. He had this guy in New York did. That's my story. [00:10:19] Speaker B: I don't know if that's the same on this trip. Are you making a documentary too or. [00:10:24] Speaker A: No, that's a later. That's after I sobered up. That's the trip to New Orleans later. That's another. There's another podcast, Mark. [00:10:34] Speaker B: But is the poem Clifton from this? [00:10:37] Speaker A: No. [00:10:37] Speaker B: Okay. [00:10:38] Speaker A: No, no, that's the. That's. That's over. This trip we got there, I'm. I took my mother's car because the car I had, I didn't think was going to make it. So my father had died and my mother had his car, but she never used it. So we drive there and we get out. And to make it, we could talk forever, but to make it short, I'm going around to every poetry reading in town. [00:11:05] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:11:06] Speaker A: First of all, nobody's doing what we're doing in Chicago. Anybody? [00:11:10] Speaker B: The style? [00:11:10] Speaker A: Yeah, no, nowhere. Nowhere, you know, nowhere. The poetry readings, St. Marks and all that old style. Just like the thing I would react it against in Chicago, nobody's doing. Tony's being very successful with his art. Me, I'm out of control. I'm starting fights in New York. In New York, you know, I'm in a cab and being belligerent in a cab. And Tony says, look at these cab drivers. They got guns what are you doing? You know, Tony leaves me. Leaves me on my own. My mother's car gets stolen. Tony paid for me to get back to Chicago. My drinking now is really accelerating. Tony is a recovering alcoholic. He knows the whole thing. He knows what's going on. He's, like, by my side. He's done this with several top personalities in the performance art business. I didn't know it at the time. He's by my side, and he's saying stuff. If you mark everything out of problem, you know, and I'm going, oh, yeah, yeah. I'm pretending like I got a problem, thinking I don't have a problem, but I want to be next to Tony, you know, hanging with Tony. And by that time, he's with Buzz. [00:12:28] Speaker B: And all that, you know, Tony goes on to be a dj on the loop with Buzz, and he's forming these relationships with bride de Palma in the movies. [00:12:37] Speaker A: Right, right. [00:12:38] Speaker B: Lou Reed is a friend of his and all that kind of stuff. [00:12:40] Speaker A: Right. Yeah. I didn't get close to that because I'm. I'm out of control. I'm nothing. So. But the show. Here's mark on the stage, the maniac on the stage. I mean, I'm drinking a pint before, and I'm drink chugging pints of Guinness on the stage. [00:12:59] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:13:00] Speaker A: And this crazy personalities that. That is part of me, you know? But the inhibition being drunk lets that part of me come out. [00:13:12] Speaker B: Yeah. But there's, what's the. With the rebel without a cause or. Or even the wild ones with Marlon Brando, and they go up to Brando and what, you know, what. What is it you're rebelling against? He said, what do you got? You got some of that, too, because you're, you know, you. You are. You like to. You like to push back. And it's interesting because you do have to. You got a limit because you are a shy guy, and you will be soft spoken and you're not gonna jump out in front. But it's like, as that meter rises, and I've seen you do it, that one big russian guy at the show who is, thank God he did you a service by not engaging. But this, this sort of thing had a legend in and of itself at the mill for a while. You weren't gonna. You weren't gonna satisfy fools, quite frankly. [00:13:58] Speaker A: Unfortunately, a lot of that was after I sobered up. [00:14:01] Speaker B: It was after. Okay. [00:14:02] Speaker A: Because the rage. The rage that was in me, I didn't figure out that anger stuff years afterwards. It's very, very shameful. I remember my son Carl was at a show, and I lose it on the stage after this guy, and we're out on the street, and my son comes up to me in tears, not falling, but his eyes are misty. Dad, why are you doing this stuff? And that's when I went off in my head, what am I doing that for? I had become sobering up. I had become such a better man after I sobered up. But I didn't really look completely at all my flaws. I'd become five times better than I was. But I was bad. I mean, when I would go out, I never did that much around the family. I did, though, towards the end, but when I would go out into the world where nobody knew me, I don't even want to tell you those stories. And that same rage would come out on the stage. But that stuff. A lot of stuff I did sober. I wrecked a lot of stuff sober because I didn't work the program of alcoholic tsunamis as best I could. Okay, but getting to this is a long story. We're talking. I didn't know we'd be talking this much. [00:15:35] Speaker B: There's a lot there, Mark. [00:15:36] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:15:36] Speaker B: So what's your last drinking story? Because Rick Kogan wrote about it once in the Tribune. [00:15:41] Speaker A: Okay. So I went to a reading at the guild complex, the feminist writer guild. And I'm. Those first couple years drinking and being the poet, a celebrity, a small time celebrity. I was outrageous. I would offend people. You don't know what you're doing. I got an audience. You don't got an audience. What's this bullshit? You know, I was just so fucking arrogant, self centered, selfish, belligerent, you know, and I thought nobody knew anything about poetry but me. And go to this feminist writers guild, and I eat their cheese, and I told off everybody in the room that they're full of shit. All the Chicago poets, they're full of shit. You know, I went across the street and bought two pints, and I went to see a poet that I loved, Scott Momonde, the native american poet, and I would go to the circle campus to see him, and I go there, and he's wearing a suit. And in me and my fucked up mind think, what do you. What do you got a. You're a suit. You're wearing a suit. You're not supposed to be wearing a suit. I stand up in the middle of this arena and starts shouting, what the fuck is with you? Carlos Cupillon was there. Carlos Cupicon, famous Chicago poet, he was there. He. He was. He got a kick out. He was egging me on, so he egged me on. And I'm. As if everybody in this auditorium knew who I was. They didn't. They didn't know shit about me. Am I had enough? No. I get in the car, I go to the get me high, because I'm still doing the get me high show. And Larry the gypsy is running it for Butch. And I had a deal with Butchie that I want to get a. I would get a quarter off of every drink to pay for the advertisement and everything, okay? And I wasn't getting that much money anymore, so I knew Larry the gypsy was fucking with me. So I go in there and I call them out, and we're out on the street almost in blows, but we never got the blows because each one of us would stop and go in and get another drink. Wait a minute, I got to get another. I go, and then he said, wait a minute. Get another drink. Doesn't come to blows. I get in the car, and I'm driving through that intersection in Wicker Park. Damon, Milwaukee north. Right through the lights. I'm going thousand miles an hour. You know, I get pull up behind these kids. They're giving me the finger. I'm tailgating. They're giving me the finger, and I pull them around. I pull ahead and pull them off. They stop. They get out of the car. I ain't content now. I get out of the car, and I start screaming at them. They think, oh, boy, what's this guy carrying? Or something? They start to go back in the car. I'm not satisfied still. I think of something else to say to them. And I can see to this day, I can see the guy's face turn, and he comes at me. Some guy goes around back. I think he must have had a tire on it or something. Whacks me, put me down on the ground and kicked the shit out of me, right? They pull off. I'm laying there for I don't know how long. Somehow I get back in a car, and I get home, I walk in, and, Sandy, I've gone through all kinds of stuff. [00:19:34] Speaker B: This is your wife, your first wife. [00:19:35] Speaker A: Kids are hiding up in the bedroom. I get in, I got blood all over me. Shut up. I'm out. You know, I had a tooth that was dislodged, and I think I'm gonna go down in a two room and pull the tooth out of my mouth so I can get to bed and sleep it off like I've done a thousand times. I mean, this is just one episode in a life of thousand of these episodes. I'm trying to pull the tooth out. [00:20:06] Speaker B: Got a string around it. [00:20:07] Speaker A: Got a string. It's my jaw. My jaw is. [00:20:10] Speaker B: You put the string around the door knob, too. [00:20:12] Speaker A: I'm trying to pull my jaw out of my mouth. Sandy is crying. She calls up Tony, and Tony talks me into going to the hospital. [00:20:23] Speaker B: So Tony Fitzpatrick comes and grabs you. [00:20:26] Speaker A: He doesn't come. He just talks me into it over the phone because I look, you know, I want to be in Tony's. I looked up to Tony, you know, rightly so. He's a genius. So I get to finally, I get to the hospital and we'll end this. We'll try to. This is a long story. I can't believe I'm telling it, but I get to the hospital. They put me in the emergency room. I just been in those pictures in the Times, in the Tribune, and I'm in the emergency room, and they have the curtain open on them. And I'm so ashamed that somebody's going to see me as if they could recognize me because I'm all beat up because I'm a big celebrity, you know, my pictures in the newspaper. What if they see me now? You know, I laid there and I cried for hours, thinking about everything that happened in my life. I just thought about all of his stuff. I'm just crying and crying. So ashamed. They come and scam me. They say they're not going to operate on me until I see a counselor. So I see the counselor, and the counselor says to me, do you do things when you're drunk that you wouldn't do when you're sober? And I thought, are you kidding? Those were the magic words. And I stayed in. Stayed in. And Tony. Tony Fitzpatrick was there. My. You know, he was there before he knew I was a candidate. Yeah, there were several people in the audience that knew I was a candidate, but he stuck by me. Then out with my years of sobriety. He truly was a friend. Not only a friend, he was completely important to my sobriety. You don't know. Without his guidance. And then I stopped listening. I think he. I lost my family in sobriety, which was a mistake because I didn't work the program the way I should. There's principles and there's ideas in the programs that you. That if you get them right away, your life blossoms right away. It took me a few years before they completely blossomed. And another important part of this is that, is that those principles of AA became guidelines for how I led the slam world when it went national. [00:23:05] Speaker B: Right, right. Because while you were. Because you were, I think the Wall Street Journal article was out by then. The New York Times was running their articles. You were in everything in Chicago pretty regularly. And then the show itself had started to take off, too, because that was the Bob Holman who helped reopen the new Eureka poet Cafe with Miguel. He came, he wanted to see your show. He called you. He's like. And he was working at St. Mark's and work. And he was in Chicago for a while himself, and he wanted to see the phenomenon that was both Mark Smith and the poetry slam. [00:23:40] Speaker A: Yeah, he didn't get to see me because that was October 87 and I. [00:23:45] Speaker B: Was in the hospital, which is interesting because the kind of the three heads of poetry as I've written it, and think of it, are you Mark Smith, Bob Holman in New York and Gary Glasener in San Francisco. [00:23:58] Speaker A: That's the truth. [00:23:59] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:23:59] Speaker A: Those are the three main people at the very beginning there. Nationally. [00:24:04] Speaker B: Yeah, nationally. Right. When you were in the hospital and then you started going into the program, what are some kind of nuts and bolts around? How long was that? And then if you could touch again on what does it mean to lose your family during your attempt at sobriety or your success at sobriety? [00:24:22] Speaker A: Well, so when they decided to operate on me and they had a fix my jaw because my jaw was broken and I was beat up in other areas. What? And I almost didn't do it. After they did that, I went in for the 21 day program. They still had those. There was a time back then when the insurance companies would pay for a 21 day program where you stay in the hospital and you learn all about alcoholism and drug addiction. Fortunately, Sandy had insurance because she had taken a job and she had that had her health insurance. And the family, they were right by me. The kids and Sandy were all just right there for me and we were still a family. And I went through the program in the hospital and, oh, this is a disease. I learned all this stuff. Alcoholism was just a word and I learned all about it. And I'm around other people with the same problem. [00:25:29] Speaker B: Was your father a drinker? Archie? [00:25:32] Speaker A: My father didn't drink, but he was a dry drunk. I know that now. He didn't drink because Daisy, my mother, wouldn't have it. Every once in a while, like every Christmas, he might go out with the uncles and he come back and he was actually, he was a little fun because he was laughing and everything and everything, but his father was a super charming guy. I get some of my charisma from that. But when he drank, super violent. And my uncle, my father's brother, my father would have to go to the bars and get his brother out of there. And his father, my dad's father, my grandfather would take my father out with him on dates so he could get young. Screwed up stuff. But my father was a dry drunk in the program, you know about it. Dry drunk is somebody who's got the disease and just abstains but never does anything other stuff, psychological and spiritual stuff you have to do to get the anger out. So my dad was an angry guy. Super temper. That's where I have a. I'm a shy guy, but I have had a super temper. It's one of the great things that was lifted from me when I got sober. The temper finally went away, but not years in sobriety. When you talk about on a stage, you know, I'd lose it on the stage. Everybody think it's so cool. Mark's being real screwed up. Screwed up. Took me years to evolve into a good human being. I'm the Jekyll Hyde type. You know, I can be the nice guy, but I'm the Jekyll Hyde type. Those alcohol traits that you develop as a survival mechanism, as an alcoholic or growing up, those traits stay with you. You have to be very conscious when you're working the program to get rid of those defects, because they become survival. You know, I grew up in a fairly tough neighborhood. To be angry and to be ready to go was part of what you had to do. I was a lightweight in a heavyweight neighborhood, but when I got in the art world, it was a little different. [00:28:00] Speaker B: Not for Tony Fitzpatrick, though. He's a boxer. [00:28:02] Speaker A: No, Tony was the same thing. He was. He was. He would probably tell you the same story. All of us would. We all resemble each other in alcoholics. And that's why it works, because you can't fool. You can't come up with some bullshit story. We've all been there. We've all been to this degradating place. It takes you because we can't handle it. We can't drink. When I start, if I were to, even today, if I were to pick up a beer, you know, you wouldn't. You'd have to be looking at the police stations to find me. [00:28:40] Speaker B: Did the Chicago magazine used to do their end page? The Chicago Tribune magazine used to do their end page. And it was like, what would you take out of a burning apartment? There were a bunch of Chicago writers and figures. Did you have your last, like, a beer that you didn't drink or. [00:28:58] Speaker A: No, no. I kind of remember. Maybe they came to me with that. I can't remember what I told them. [00:29:05] Speaker B: Cause I was thinking that you and I have talked about this before, because we've known each other for a long time, since 1991. And when Roger Ebert, the great film critic, he kind of outed himself not too long before he passed away, and in the Sun Times, where he wrote his articles for a very long time, started talking about his own sobriety. And you weren't comfortable with him outing himself like that. And the other story in my head was Jack McCarthy, the slam poet that we published and our good friend who passed away. [00:29:37] Speaker A: E and M published it. [00:29:38] Speaker B: PM Press published it. Yeah. [00:29:39] Speaker A: That's your press? [00:29:41] Speaker B: That's my press, yeah. But I've seen you be able to eyeball out fellow drunks fairly quickly, those who are working the program, but those who are also not part of the program. And you've, I've seen you distance yourself from people because you have some understanding that other people don't. Like, I don't want to, these are nice people, but I don't want to get mixed up in that kind of stuff. So there must be, what, what about now that looking back when you got sober, was there something in there that you took on the stage with you when you started reshaping things and it's come more to life in your head? Maybe now then, I don't know if that's a fair question. [00:30:18] Speaker A: I don't know sure what you're saying. What's the crazy guy on stage? I've been learned in sobriety how to have that same energy and same take a chance type of personality that the drink enabled me to not be as inhibited as I was a kid. That's, that's. [00:30:41] Speaker B: But what are the, what are the AA traits that, that you took into that? [00:30:45] Speaker A: Oh, well, okay, so, well, why would, was uncomfortable with Jack McCarthy and Ebert? There's a principle in AA that, that we should not, it's written down, we should maintain anonymity in press film. They were going against AA traditions. [00:31:06] Speaker B: Okay. [00:31:07] Speaker A: With them. [00:31:08] Speaker B: Because you can monopolize and commercialize all the stories. [00:31:12] Speaker A: Yeah. Well, the idea back then, back in 39. Back in 39 when it started, was that if you're a big shot and you say, I'm an alcoholics anonymous and I've sobered up and everybody, oh, and then you fall off and become a drunk again, public in general is going to say all this AA stuff. Doesn't work, it makes it hard. And this, you gotta think, you gotta get the history of a, because back at the, at the beginning, it was like the only, and nobody, these are drunks that had been to all kinds of institutions to get sober. They couldn't. So there was, oh no, he's not gonna stay sober. You know, it was very important for the AA as a general AA in general, for their reputation for people to be solid, that this, this works. And that's been upheld for years and years. You know, lately, you know, it's fallen, it's, it's, people don't adhere to it as much as they did way back in the thirties and forties. [00:32:24] Speaker B: Well, I imagine the stigma is probably not there as much as the fifties, sixties. [00:32:28] Speaker A: I think that people respect aid people. Most people who know about a, they know this, this is the solution. No other solution really is solid. But any of us in the program can. We've seen so many people that you thought was, this guy's never going to stay sober. But they do. There's other principles also, which I introduced into my leadership of the slam when it went national. Alcoholics Anonymous is a worldwide phenomena with no real organization at all. We have service boards and, but anybody can form an AA group anywhere and be legitimate. I didn't know that I could go down the block. Wherever there's two alcoholics together, that's an AA meeting. They get supported by these service organizations that aren't really, they're organizations, but there's no hierarchy. There's no bureaucracy. The service boards probably have a bureaucracy, but they don't, they don't run the meetings. They don't tell anybody how to do it. It's all horizontal. That's another principle. [00:33:37] Speaker B: This is a horizontal, this is making sense now. Yeah. [00:33:40] Speaker A: So I wanted all these slam shows. I don't want no higher. Nobody's in charge. You want to start a slam, this is how you do it. That's how it got passed on from person to person. This is how you do it. [00:33:53] Speaker B: And when you say slam, that's the organization of the show. But even learning how to be a performer, learning how to write like that's, there's a lot of components in that horizontal. [00:34:03] Speaker A: Right. And it's all passed on person to person, not with some institution telling you how to do it. Unfortunately, we did end up in the middle of the nineties, made a bureaucracy. We made a nonprofit. Yeah, 1996 is what we made it. We went from a Chicago based thing to a worldwide phenomena without any organization. I sure wish that I had not broke down and consented to having an organization. [00:34:37] Speaker B: You also is the family. So I remember if you watch Slam Nation, the documentary about slam by our good friend Paul Devlin, which is still kind of the documentary for the thing, there's a very interesting scene where some teams are like, because you came up with rules, honorable, like you shouldn't repeat the same poem. And there had to be a group piece and everybody's writing had to be represented. And if I remember correctly, in the movie, there were a lot of good things in that movie. When in the movie, Taylor, Molly, Danny Solis. Solis, who recently passed away, our good friend Danny, great poet, good man. He thought that Taylor was forcing his team to read his poem. And you have a whole slam family meeting, which was a tradition at the Nationals, a slam family meeting. And as they're talking about it, you just kind of step up and cut off the whole conversation and say, hey, we all live in the gray areas. We're going to honor the spirit and the good faith of what this means. So Taylor, if you tell us that everybody wrote your piece, good, just make sure it happened. Danny, are you good with that? Michael Brown, are you good with that? There was some democracy and some curating and some spirituality to it in a real human way. [00:35:55] Speaker A: And at one point, the national family, they trusted me completely. And everything that we did at those crazy family slam family meetings was by consensus. And it was basically the same, an AA idea that here's all these different voices. You know, one story's not right and one story's wrong, but that we had. The primary purpose of alcoholics Anonymous is to say sober. The primary purpose of poetry slam, the poetry slam movement was performance poetry. The show, that's the primary person. The difference which I came to understand is that in Alcoholics Anonymous, we know that to be self centered and dishonest, it's based on honesty. They're not, everybody isn't always honest, but we, you can call somebody when they're not honest. We know you're supposed to be selfless. You're supposed to be a servant to each other, right? It's supposed to be about honesty. Unfortunately, in the slam world, we have the service, many, many service minded people. All the organizers. Yeah. Alan Wolf, Ginger Wolf, Steve Marsh. Steve Marsh, Henry Samson, Henry Sampson, Brenda. [00:37:18] Speaker B: Moosie, Maria, Emily Calvo, our great. [00:37:21] Speaker A: And so many of them were the people that set the stage for the poets, right? And they were poets themselves, but they never took the spotlight. You got that group that's making it happen, right? Putting together, national slams without any money that, that are attended by thousands of people. [00:37:42] Speaker B: Yeah, that's true. [00:37:43] Speaker A: You have the other side. Ego, are the ego minded and it's, it's just the base. It's what I was when I started egotistical, out for myself. I was the, I was just worst back then. I'm important. I'm the one that's important. We've got that element at the same time. And they start to butt heads more and more as what's happening for the slam, because each year the slam becomes more and more important. 60 minutes prizes. Patricia Smith gets a prize to go to Osaka, Japan. It gets more and more and there's more and more at stake and more. [00:38:29] Speaker B: And more and more that this makes sense. And so some of your, and I've seen it in action, but that's the curation part where you were a strong enough personality and a good enough performer that you were, you were the no guy. And I'm thinking again of slam nation. Cause Bob Holman, our good friend now and always was and a great, great advocate for poetry, but he had a different vision back then and that was the rock and roll, the ego and the names and kind of, and there's a scene in slam nation where you and Bob quite literally go, oh, no. [00:39:04] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. [00:39:05] Speaker B: You go off on him. You tell him there will be war. [00:39:08] Speaker A: Bob, I love you. Bob and I are so close. A lot of people didn't understand not exploiting it, and I wasn't going to exploit it. It belonged to everyone. [00:39:20] Speaker B: Yeah, but you're the guy that got pissed because M. Scott Mamade wore a suit to UIC for a reading. [00:39:26] Speaker A: I mean, there is a certain, that's when I'm drunk. [00:39:28] Speaker B: Yeah, well, but there is a, yes, but there is a certain everyman, Chicago, Carl Sandburg quality to you. That is your ethos. And when it bunts up against a lot of this other stuff, you see through a lot of it. [00:39:44] Speaker A: I don't know. I think that if I hadn't sobered up, it wouldn't be what it is. It wouldn't be what it is. [00:39:53] Speaker B: No, I see that and I see your point and I see those spiritual elements that are in the show. And there is a, certainly the whole creation of it is very democratic in nature that if you have something to say, come up and say it. I mean, those principles. But you're also, hey, you've been going on longer than three minutes. Hey, we saw you last week. [00:40:14] Speaker A: Hey. [00:40:14] Speaker B: Okay, you got your paper, you got your newspaper article. Now who else. But somebody has to do that. [00:40:21] Speaker A: And I think that that is a Chicago element. [00:40:25] Speaker B: Okay? [00:40:25] Speaker A: I'm from that Chicago school that you think you're a big shot. You're not anybody else, you know? So, you know, Chicago's basic Chicago people, they don't want no big hot shot. I think there was some polish king that came here in the 19th century that said something. Then. The Chicago citizen just slammed. [00:40:46] Speaker B: Can I give you my second Bob Holman story? Okay, so we do the spoken word revolution. [00:40:51] Speaker A: Forgive mark for calling you all. [00:40:54] Speaker B: No, this is a. [00:40:54] Speaker A: This is a good one. [00:40:55] Speaker B: This is a good one. The other one was good. You guys were young and you were holding your turret. But this is we, the spoken word revolution book. And for a book release, we went to the Bowery Poetry Club. Bob's wonderful. Great. I mean, I think it's the only club dedicated to poetry. [00:41:13] Speaker A: What a great thing. He tried. He tried something that I thought was the way to go to, like, comedy clubs. Let's have performance poetry clubs. And that was his effort to do that. [00:41:23] Speaker B: So we were gonna. We're gonna do the book release. And I overbooked. And Bob, even, like, before the show began, he's like, mark, you programmed. He's talking to me. Mark, you programmed two weeks worth of entertainment here. He's like, this is too much. And so you, me, him. And starts with a Z. Zoloft. [00:41:43] Speaker A: Zork. [00:41:43] Speaker B: Zork. Zork. We go to dinner, right? Bob is taking us to dinner. And you guys are thick as thieves at this point. Love each other. And Bob honors us with his brand new book that he does of the artist. Chuck, close. Remember that? [00:41:57] Speaker A: Of course. Sure. [00:41:58] Speaker B: And they're like. They're like $200 books. He gives a copy to you that he's put this wonderful inscription in. Very. And he gives one to me, also, says something nice. You take the book and you look at Bob and you go, where's Zork's? And Bob goes, I didn't know Zork was going to be here, Mark. So without looking at the book, you give the book to Zork. [00:42:20] Speaker A: That's Mark. [00:42:21] Speaker B: That's Mark. [00:42:22] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:42:23] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:42:24] Speaker A: Mav's a great guy. He has done. He's done so much for not only performance poetry, but for poetry, it's itself. He has that great film about the languages that are disappearing. [00:42:38] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:42:39] Speaker A: That digitized language. And he keeps them alive through the poetry that they still circulate. [00:42:44] Speaker B: Because I remember writing early press releases for you. And my hyperbole was, you know, the greatest poet, blah, blah, blah. And you're like, you can't say that kind of stuff, kid. Like, bob Holman's done more for poetry than most people breathe in. [00:42:58] Speaker A: I've never claimed to be the great poet. I'm a pretty good performer still. But, you know, you do something for 30 years, you should know how to do it. Look down at it. Look at it, shaping the hexagons in this porcelain room. A finger game. Mommy, daddy, see, see mommy, daddy too. I said look down it. A face so much a part of the pattern that all you have to do is squeeze your eyes and it's you. Head at the base of the water closet, cheek and eye rubbing the floor, cotton lips, damp skin, rocking, rocking. Mommy, daddy, see, see, mommy daddy, do. Oh please do. Look at it, running its fingers along the grouted joints, finger painting the tiles, drawing pictographs that say, look at me. Look at what I've become. The brown soup I lay my face in, the stink smeared on the floor. The oh no, oh no, oh no. Look at me. I'm your floor. You're my floor. We live for the floor. Tightening our stomachs with guttural bones, tracing and retracing the patterns, splattering our lives like dizzy morning echoes that stick to the bowl. Mommy daddies see what mommy daddies see, and mommy daddies do what mommy daddies do. [00:44:57] Speaker B: You've been listening to through the mill, our podcast about the poetry slam. My name is Mark Elleveld. I'm the editor of the spoken word revolution books. Emily Calvo is here with us. She named the podcast, it's an anthology she's been working on since the early nineties. And we're here with Mark Kelly Smith, the founder of Poetry Slam. We're going to be bringing some podcasts and shows to you to hear the origin stories from a bunch of different poets and a bunch of different organizers. Our director, Hugh is over there in the corner. I hope you had a good time and we'll talk to you soon.