I just got this from my friend Nathan:
Young and Growing, Older and Wiser:
Denver Poets for Change in America
Sunday August 22, 2004, 1:30 to 6:30
Mercury Cafe, 22nd Street and California, Denver
Beloved Friends,
That's the whole project, the mission statement, which came to me in the shower one morning recently. I need your help and support. I'll tell you the whole long story if you wish--another "God-job"--but suffice it to say we hope to get poets (including great-grandmothers and school children) together for a "feed-and-read" community gathering at the Mercury Cafe, two or three professional portable video cameras and recording equipment, to produce a thirty minute DVD we will send to every public-access television station. No ulterior motives here, no negatives, no vitriol, no partisanship; just positive hope for the future. We need to participate openly at the community level for the sake of our country and the world.
Marilyn McGinnity stood in the mist outside the Mercury Cafe last week as I walked up the sidewalk with Tony Wagner; like a full moon just rising over the far horizon, her serene pale visage framed in a big black picture hat about it, storm clouds receding dark behind her, she nodded greeting to you. We repaired to the bar to have a glass of tea, chose an open space in the Mercury's schedule, agreed to meet then, feed us all and read for the cameras and recorders of Joe Lyon, Steve Flanders and Ivan Suvanjieff--Young and Growing, Older and Wiser: Denver Poets for Change in America, Sunday August 22, 2004, 1:30 to 6:30 Mercury Cafe, 22nd Street and California, Denver.
There is pure harmony here, I assure you. There is hope. There is whole positivity. Change for us is growth only (for degeneration and dissipation need not be expressed; despair is not growth, not art). Each of us and all of us are poets, making music, making art with words. You will come together to read the rhythm and the image of America's growth. No one will tell you what to say; they cannot, for this is America and our speech is free, our imaginations unlimited. All of us are artists: this is for great-grandmothers and grade school children, workers and wanderers, small boys and tall girls of any age--especially for those of us who may have been silent until today. Walt Whitman will swell with pride.
Thank goodness I have been relieved of the burden of my own ego daily for the last fifteen years and more, and thank goodness I have a day job (for no one ever made a living as a poet). I can underwrite the basic expenses of the food and of the technical costs of production of our DVD of this American spiritual communion. Those of you who have day jobs also are welcome to contribute modestly toward the expenses (not so much as to threaten to inflate your own egos to the bursting point, but perhaps enough to deflate my own). This is a We project, We the People.
You will likely want a copy of the finished product, the DVD which includes the edited 28 minute artwork in words and images, sounds and color which we will send gratis to all the public access television broadcasters in the country. Whatever proceeds come from the sale of these DVDs will be used toward the technical expenses of production.
We all will volunteer in different ways, especially to spread the word. Tony will put out posters or flyers with your help. One of you artists should sketch a poster or DVD cover design; until then the attached flyer will be a start. You all will carefully select and forward this very message to those in your e-mail address books who need to know, who do write and should read. Readers will be paid handsomely with hugs and kisses and applause.
Poets in other communities are welcome to gather as Young and Growing, Older and Wiser: Poets of New York and Santa Fe and San Francisco and Seattle and Tulsa and Cleveland... This doesn't belong to Nathan or to Denver but to America. It's our growth, our future.
Just come on Sunday, August 22nd at 1:30 with your text (so we can display your very words on DVD), your friends and family and your appetite for joy.
Thanks for your help.
Peace and Love.
Nathan
Young and Growing, Older and Wiser:
Denver Poets for Change in America
Sunday August 22, 2004, 1:30 to 6:30
Mercury Cafe, 22nd Street and California, Denver
Young and Growing, Older and Wiser:
Denver Poets for Change in America
Sunday August 22, 2004, 1:30 to 6:30
Mercury Cafe, 22nd Street and California, Denver
Beloved Friends,
That's the whole project, the mission statement, which came to me in the shower one morning recently. I need your help and support. I'll tell you the whole long story if you wish--another "God-job"--but suffice it to say we hope to get poets (including great-grandmothers and school children) together for a "feed-and-read" community gathering at the Mercury Cafe, two or three professional portable video cameras and recording equipment, to produce a thirty minute DVD we will send to every public-access television station. No ulterior motives here, no negatives, no vitriol, no partisanship; just positive hope for the future. We need to participate openly at the community level for the sake of our country and the world.
Marilyn McGinnity stood in the mist outside the Mercury Cafe last week as I walked up the sidewalk with Tony Wagner; like a full moon just rising over the far horizon, her serene pale visage framed in a big black picture hat about it, storm clouds receding dark behind her, she nodded greeting to you. We repaired to the bar to have a glass of tea, chose an open space in the Mercury's schedule, agreed to meet then, feed us all and read for the cameras and recorders of Joe Lyon, Steve Flanders and Ivan Suvanjieff--Young and Growing, Older and Wiser: Denver Poets for Change in America, Sunday August 22, 2004, 1:30 to 6:30 Mercury Cafe, 22nd Street and California, Denver.
There is pure harmony here, I assure you. There is hope. There is whole positivity. Change for us is growth only (for degeneration and dissipation need not be expressed; despair is not growth, not art). Each of us and all of us are poets, making music, making art with words. You will come together to read the rhythm and the image of America's growth. No one will tell you what to say; they cannot, for this is America and our speech is free, our imaginations unlimited. All of us are artists: this is for great-grandmothers and grade school children, workers and wanderers, small boys and tall girls of any age--especially for those of us who may have been silent until today. Walt Whitman will swell with pride.
Thank goodness I have been relieved of the burden of my own ego daily for the last fifteen years and more, and thank goodness I have a day job (for no one ever made a living as a poet). I can underwrite the basic expenses of the food and of the technical costs of production of our DVD of this American spiritual communion. Those of you who have day jobs also are welcome to contribute modestly toward the expenses (not so much as to threaten to inflate your own egos to the bursting point, but perhaps enough to deflate my own). This is a We project, We the People.
You will likely want a copy of the finished product, the DVD which includes the edited 28 minute artwork in words and images, sounds and color which we will send gratis to all the public access television broadcasters in the country. Whatever proceeds come from the sale of these DVDs will be used toward the technical expenses of production.
We all will volunteer in different ways, especially to spread the word. Tony will put out posters or flyers with your help. One of you artists should sketch a poster or DVD cover design; until then the attached flyer will be a start. You all will carefully select and forward this very message to those in your e-mail address books who need to know, who do write and should read. Readers will be paid handsomely with hugs and kisses and applause.
Poets in other communities are welcome to gather as Young and Growing, Older and Wiser: Poets of New York and Santa Fe and San Francisco and Seattle and Tulsa and Cleveland... This doesn't belong to Nathan or to Denver but to America. It's our growth, our future.
Just come on Sunday, August 22nd at 1:30 with your text (so we can display your very words on DVD), your friends and family and your appetite for joy.
Thanks for your help.
Peace and Love.
Nathan
Young and Growing, Older and Wiser:
Denver Poets for Change in America
Sunday August 22, 2004, 1:30 to 6:30
Mercury Cafe, 22nd Street and California, Denver
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