On Barcelona: Larry Goodell

On Barcelona: Larry Goodell: American Stanza Don’t be a humble haiku stretch your feet out become an American stanza we still have something to do with art be one ...

For An Audience

 

"Club Progressions,"jazz musical written by Larry Goodell, Roswell Senior High School, 1952 - Lyman Lea, tenor sax, 
Larry, piano, Sal Gonzales, drums, on stage - lyrics by Arthur Gaddis - photo, Mr. Olson

Any perception of an "audience" interrupts the creative flow. After writing a poem it is a matter of selecting particular poems for a reading performance.

How do you perceive your audience?

As large, medium, small, drunken & loud or quiet & anticipatory.
A disappointingly small audience challenges me to fight despair & perform to them as well as I can.
"Loud" is a challenge to win them over. "Anticipatory & listening" is ideal.

Good audience response obviously encourages repeating that poem at the next performance. If a poem falls flat I probably won't try it again.

I like for an audience to enjoy the poem-reading, be moved, be amused, be exhilarated, and buy my books.

There are appropriate poems for every audience of any size or age on Earth where American English is understood. The challenge is entirely mine. I must select appropriately.

Selecting the best works for a particular audience is paramount, as well as trying out entirely new works to test the response.

I try not to conceive of any audience at the time of writing a poem. Once it is written I can figure out what kind of audience it would work best for.

Does the audience serve as a gauge for the success or failure of your work? Almost entirely. Otherwise the creating of the work is only very personal therapy.

Ideal audience: Relatively large. Mostly adult. Attuned to the intricacies of American English. Having access to a little booze. Willing to be transported anywhere the poetry goes. Willing to laugh loud at themselves & myself. Willing to become even more serious about giving Nature back to the Earth.

"The images may be true to an original or not; the public doesn't care. It has gone to look and listen, to laugh and cry - not to think." Henry James

Henry James' statement is too wordy, as is most of his work. Gertrude Stein has far more interesting quotes on the subject of audience. Your more intelligent audience of any age still values learning something as well as enjoying it. Entertain as well as instruct, or better yet, entertain as well as reinforce everyone's urge to better the world.

larry goodell / placitas, new mexico / some notes from an audience questionaire 1993

 . . . audience, from  audire, to hear . . . . . present active infinitive of audiō . . . 

Some recent audiences, Duende Poetry Series, Anasazi Fields Winery, Placitas, New Mexico  . .

Accordion Fold Note Books

my current notebook (NB #71 spread out above) is this type and I made one back in the early 70's (#7) so I put together this parcel of photos and comments & a poem or two from these notebooks . . . Accordion Fold Note Books . . . kind of a little new year's project . . . this is on Issuu . . .  there is a recent poem from my newly assembled NB, Home Space with a link to my reading the poem aloud on Soundclick. 

this photograph is from last october when I needed a notebook and decided to make it out of long cutoff sheets left over from a printing project (probably when I was offset printing Fervent Valley #1 in '72 . . . 

notebook? journal? common-place book? diary? scrapbook? supplemental memory? planner? record book? jotter? absolutely essential tool for many poets including me for containing almost all first writings, the near sacred texts of first given words phrases poems everything part and parcel of life, the voice of authority when any question comes up in typing or checking original statements . . . in almost every instance the notebook writings take priority over later texts and avoid subsequent text-messing . . . again, see . Accordion Fold Note Books 

love to all and happy new year!
larry