This week I was interviewed by Marcia Epstein for her podcast “Talk With ME,” focusing on poetry and the arts. I read a few poems and discuss my methods and projects. You can check it out here.
Author: playhaus2015
Video still published in H& journal
Yesterday, H& journal published one of my video stills. You can check out the full size image and all the great visual poetry by other artists on the website here.
Slipstream #38 out now
Slipstream literary magazine just released Issue #38, the Water themed issue. It includes one of my poems–alongside a large roster listed in the notice above. This is a print-only magazine, so an issue costs $10–but it is a major outpost of “outlaw” poetry (for lack of a better term). You can check out some sample pieces and place an order here.
Waiting for my author copies to arrive, at which point, more on this publication.
“This Drifting Into Air, Alive,” and 3 other poems in Outlaw Poetry
Online journal Outlaw Poetry is something of an encyclopedia for what it says on the tin: outlaw poetry in all forms. Today four of my poems appeared in the journal: “This Drifting Into Air, Alive,” “Winnemucca, Nevada, 9 a.m.,” “Summer Movie,” and “Get Off the Stick and Rest.” You can read them here.
Flashback: Christmas poetry jam at 15 Minutes club
That time I read at the Christmas Poetry Jam at 15 Minutes club in DC on December 27, 1993. Looks like Silvanna Straw, Edgar Silex, and John Potash were also featured readers. And some guy named “Jeff Bogato,” which is actually me when people can’t spell my last name. Then there was an open mike, poetry games and a special guest. Of course, I don’t remember any of this, so it’s a good thing I saved these Washington City Paper advertisements.
3 Ouija poems in Midnight Lane Boutique
Today, online poetry journal Midnight Lane Boutique published three of my poems featuring the character Ouija: “Ouija Gets Infected by Flarf,” “Ouija Leans In,” and “Ouija’s Vacation.” You can read them here.
“Supreme Facts,” three other poems and six video stills in Angry Old Man
Always an event when a new issue of online journal Angry Old Man is released, and the new #4 is no exception. Crammed with piles of cutting edge images, videos, essays and poems, it covers the international experimental lit and multimedia scene more thoroughly than anything I’ve seen since Otoliths. Impossible to fairly represent the contents in a brief summary; best just to visit the site here.
I’m very pleased that this issue includes six miscellaneous video stills, the “Silenced Scribes” video, and four poems: “Supreme Facts” (brief excerpt below), “Sparkle of a Golden Nose,” “IOU-topia,” and “On the House.” You can check out the stills here, the video here (yes, it’s been on YouTube for a while), and the texts on this page.
Flashback: Faith’s Campaign Cabaret article in Washington City Paper
The following article appeared in The Washington City Paper on April 25, 1997. You can see the article archived online here. It attempts to document Faith’s campaign cabaret performances in DC, where she was running for mayor. I took the photos at one of Faith’s Campaign Cabaret performances the same year.
Faith’s Campaign Cabaret
Faith is a star. Not coincidentally, she is also a perennial candidate. In ’96, she ran for delegate against Eleanor Holmes Norton (picking up over 1,000 votes), and she has run twice against Mayor-for-Life Marion Barry. Her current campaign slogan is “Vote for Faith in ’98.” She’s running for mayor—again. Severely encapsulated, Faith’s platform involves running Congress and the feds out of D.C. (known to her as the “Devil’s Colon”) and using all those beautiful neoclassical buildings as art studios, theaters, and concert halls, a transformation to be funded by big Hollywood stars. It’s easy to get Faith on a roll about her plans: “I’ve got this one program I call ‘Shoot It on Film Before You Shoot Your Foe.’ It puts Tony Bennett in Anacostia starring as a Catholic priest, teaching kids to make movies.”
Now 73, Faith started running when she lived in St. Croix, sponsored by her then-husband, a former attorney general in the islands. “I got fewer votes each time I ran,” she remarks. “You think they were trying to tell me something?” Before St. Croix, Faith played on Broadway in a series of musicals (“They were all flops,” she says with inspiring, unmayoral candor) before landing a role as Mazzeppa in Gypsy, the play Stephen Sondheim and Jule Styne wrote for Ethel Merman. Faith claims to have stolen the show (you’ll believe it if you ever rent the video—and supposedly they tamed down her bit for the movie) with a bump-and-grind number she developed in N.Y.C. burlesque parlors. In the movie version, she teaches Natalie Wood how to strip, sings “You Gotta Have a Gimmick,” and blows a trumpet. She also appears on my thrift-store copy of the Broadway cast recording.
Faith recreates her Mazzeppa bit in her weekly Sunday-night campaign cabaret at Mr. Henry’s on U Street (formerly the Andalusian Dog; show starts around 8:30), kicking the show off with a Gypsy video clip and a strip number that leaves little to the imagination and ends with her blowing the trumpet between her legs and sporting a “Free D.C.” sign on her butt. “It has deeply sociological significance,” Faith says from the stage. The oddly magical entertainment includes calypso campaign songs, reworkings of Evita tunes (“Don’t Cry for Me, Washingtonians”), Noel Cowardlike ditties by unknown songwriter John Wallowich, a Nat King Cole tune, and a rendering of Lord Buckley’s “vintage soul talk” number, “The Nazz” (aka Jesus of Nazareth). If you’re, er, lucky, she might forget to wear her pants when she roller-skates out in red, white, and blue for her campaign speech. Her husband, Jude, accompanies her skillfully on guitar and does an uncanny karaoke Frank Sinatra. When Faith forgets the words, Jude is there to help her out, and he fills in the gaps between her costume changes with smooth calypso and Fats Waller numbers—like a cut-rate João Gilberto. Filled with broad comedy and multiculti touches, the show is a mondo exotica throwback; imagine a gene splicing between Incredibly Strange Music doyennes Yma Sumac and Rusty Warren. And think what Faith would do if she ran the D.C. government.—Jeff Bagato
Night Garden Journal Summer 2017 Anthology released
Night Garden Journal recently released its anthology of poems from last summer as a Lulu book. You can see the full list of authors above. I’m pleased to say my poem “The World is Ash” is included.
You can get a shipping discount (see image above) if you order today on Lulu at this link.
Flashback: poetry reading at some DC loft party
Nothing kills a party mood like a poetry reading. That’s the main takeaway lesson for me after agreeing to read some of my work as part of a loft party in DC in 1993. The organizer (and loft owner) named Judy saw my featured reading at 15 Minutes Club on August 9 and asked me to come by her event a few days later on August 13, which she was calling Plaid.
The place was packed with revelers enjoying the rarity of an actual loft party in DC. A band calling itself Blue Teal Tory was cranking away at the tunes. I remember my friend Alberto Gaitan was playing keyboards, and he set me up with the microphone. Somebody (maybe me?) yelled over the crowd, and the voices slowly died down. At that point, the poetry went over a cliff like a bus full of concrete.
As soon as I shut up, the nattering resumed full force. Some guy buttonholed me to talk about Ezra Pound, convinced I was influenced by him. Or something. I actually know very little about Pound, and care even less. He’s not an influence on any of my work. But being ignored and misinterpreted are some of the penalties of taking one’s creative efforts into the public sphere.
jeff bagato 