The Best American Poetry

A Broad, Abroad (installment, the seventh)

I've been slack, lax, and spattering about my posting duties. Such is the rock and roll lifestyle, you know. In my room at the moment, a Time Life Best-Loved Country Songs of All Time 30-minute paid advertisement on the telly, an empty packet of prawn-flavored crisps and a the remnants of a Tesco sandwich at my feet.

And I'm beat.

This was, effectively, the last show for me. I have tickets for a show in Berlin in a couple of weeks, but that's like the Porto after the great meal. I'm damn near saturated. I've undone the metaphoric top button of my jeans (and only the metaphoric button, Brother. I'm a good girl, me!).

I call this photo "If this ain't rock and roll, then I dunno what is."

(I also call portions of this set of photos: "Jill fucking around with the sepia settings on her new camera.")

Got into London on Tuesday evening, found my hotel, went and slept me but good. On Wednesday, I did the thing I usually do, which is find the venue and camp the fuck out.

London's Hammersmith Apollo.

Camping out with Caroline and Ingrid.

I met Caroline and her friend Susan-- not pictured--in Glasgow, but I've seen Caroline at other shows before. Ingrid I only met yesterday, but she is great fun. Originally from South Africa, she's been in London for two years. The band she most follows around is My Chemical Romance. I sold her my spare ticket for tonight's show.

Last night's show was problem-plagued. The sound was off in a wild way, Nick was having trouble hearing the band and so the cues were all amok, and there were some really obnoxious fuckers pouring beer over people and trying to press towards the barrier.

A sound tech called Davros asked me if I wanted to stay for a drink last night. I went backstage with him, talked to some of the other roadies (an apparently outdated term), but because of all the problems with the sound, he was too tied up to take me and Ingrid (who was with me) to the party. So Ingrid and I called it night, sans drink. It was ok. I've been very worried about giving off the appearence of tacky. I may be low-rent, but I damn sure ain't tacky.

Tactless perhaps, but not tacky! (And yes, that's Emily D. emblazoned across my bosom. Under the picture it reads "Suck My Dickinson." Appropriate rock and roll attire!)

Mostly, tho, I hate the idea of being in folks' way. And being thought of as someone who's just out to try and do naughty things just to get close to rock stars-- not my scene.

But: Me do loves me rock stars, of course!

Ok, so I went back to the hotel last night, slept, woke, went to the venue today. I was so early, that I even had time to get a much-needed haircut, which I procured for 15 quid at Hammersmith Station. I haven't wanted to get one in Zurich as that would require speaking German aloud and vaguely well, which I have, of late, not been quite able to do. Thus, I submitted my mop-top to the able talents of Gilly Scissor-Hands, a Kosovar ex-pat bride-to-be and thus spent a fair 30 minutes of waiting time, never to be waited again.

It was a lovely day, a sunny day. The wait went well and quick. Sandra, the Belgian lady, was back for this show. We all got in and made it to the barrier. And speaking of Barry-ers, the swoon-worthy Barry Adamson was on again these first two London nights.

Ladies and Gentlemen, the cooler than cool Barry Adamson.

And then there was Nick.

I like this picture because it shows him as the holy man he is. Or, er, sumthin'.

The show was insanely good. I felt all melty and loose and lucid and gooey when it was over. I've completely lost my voice, I screamed so fervently. And my calves ache from dancing. All the sound problems from the previous night got fixed, and the show did what a rock show is supposed to do, which is to transport you to a place beyond all real worry. It was, to be sure, sublime.

The sound tech from the night before caught up with me tonight again. Asked if I wanted a drink. And this being my last night in London, and me being caught up in the rolling and the rocking, I shrugged and said why the hell not? And in short order I-- me, little ole', a nobody, a yokel, a 36-year-old jobless teenager, a good and godly choirgirl-- got whisked up to the afterparty. Wherewith I shared 2 JB and Cokes with soundtech and, ahem, the band. Nick wasn't there. But everyone else was. It was accidental and unexpected. And I had a blast.

A damn blast.

And that, Dearhearts, is how it's done.

--
*** Apologies for the liberal peppering of this post with the F bomb. It's the music, Baby. And possibly the London water.

A Broad, Abroad (installment, the sixth, I think...)

Came home last night, to Zurich, then took an immediate train to Basel where I gave a reading with the intensely talented, lovely and formidable Ivy Alvarez. Her new book is called Mortal, and lemme tell you, it's good. Hung out in Basel with the poet Andrew Shields who arranged the reading, and rode back into Zurich with the also quite talented, lovely and formidable Miz Dusie herself, Susana Gardner. It was a great night.

But now I am hurrying to pack. I have tickets for two shows in London, and then I return to Zurich for a bit.

I have much to tell you all. Including posts about Keith, one of the roadies who used to be a tour manager for Kim Wilde and Rickie Lee Jones, Wally, a crowd control guard who I met in Dublin who pantomimed suicide throughout the entire set of the opening act and who much prefers country music to anything else and will be seeing George Jones in Ireland sometime in the near future, the German women who stood behind me in Dublin-- a high school physics teacher and an organic farmer-- who showed up at the concert without tickets but were able to score some once arrived, Caroline and Susan, the women in Glasgow who've seen Nick live more times than I have hairs on my head and promised to hold my place in line at the London shows, the drunk and toothless Glaswegian who kept coming up to me as I stood in queue asking me if I was "up" for anything*, the man in the concert in Glasgow who brought his 14 year old son to his first NC&TBS show. It's as instructive and as interesting for me to meet the people who come and see Nick as it is for me to actually see the concerts.

In Glasgow, we were spared Dave Graney and his Lurid Yellow Mist as an opener, and were instead treated to the PHENOMENAL Barry Adamson. How come no one told me such a Mancunian as he existed? Do you not know his work? Go and check it out immediately. It's jazz and blues with a lot of horns and Spector-esque Wall of Sound. Incredibly compelling performer and apparently long-time friend of Nick and a former Seed of sorts himself.

Here is a YouTube clip from the Dublin show. As you can see, the stage is too high and wide for optimum Cavian viewing. But: at about 52 or 53 seconds into the clip, in the lower right hand corner, you see a big ole head of black hair turning around and smiling to talk to who would have been the high school physics teacher (the blond in pink standing next to her was the organic farmer). That big head o' hair is me.

Enjoy.

--
* I wasn't.

A Broad, Abroad (installment the fifth)

In Dublin airport. Last night's show was at Dublin Castle, pictures possibly forthcoming.

The stage was a little high, the barrier a little too far from the stage, and Jillie was a little too schlaflos to enjoy this show as much as, say, the Brussels gig. But tonight is the Glasgow concert, and I've seen him twice in this venue before, and both concerts were impeccable.

The picture of Nick reading Harlot was taken in the Brussels airport, where he and I had a nice-sized chat. I was on the same plane as the band, and I had a nice long chat with most of the guys (see the Barrelhouse Blog for the ever so ridiculous Patrick Swayze-related fruits of that labor, as well as a picture of Nick making a shocked face (as per my request) while reading a steamy passage of the book).

Actually, he hadn't read any of it at this point, nor did I expect him to have, if at all. However, he left me the gate for awhile and when he returned, he came over to me and said "The poems are good. No, they're really good." I asked him if I could quote him and he said I could. So, I quote him.

So if any of y'all been holding out on Harlot, because you don't know who the hell I think I am... then take it from Mr. Cave. (Sorry for the used-car salesman-like pitch, but if I can't tell y'all, then who can I?)

Now alls I need is to run into Simon Armitage in an airport or something.

The best thing about chatting with the guys at the airport was that they are exactly as cool and as affable as they present themselves to be. And that's how I like my rock stars, you know. Easy to talk to.

I hadn't realized how tall the drummer Jim Sclavunos was. Nor how mannified and, frankly, juicy.

At this moment, however, I'm feeling exactly my age plus about 15 years. After Glasgow I go back to Switzerland to give a reading in Basel, but go then to London for two shows. Then I will have about two weeks and then my last show is in Berlin. That will make 8 shows for me on this tour, and 19 shows ever. I kind of wish I had thought it out better to make it an even 20, but what can you do?

Best Day Ever

That's my book.

And that's Brother Cave.

A Broad, Abroad (installment the fourth)

Belgium. Ah, Belgium.

Who knew I would find you so damn charming?

Who knew it would rain at least 7 times today?

I left my hotel and took two different trams to get to the venue. I, alas, rode the first tram without paying for it. This is not something I am in the habit of doing (in German, it's known as schwarz fahren). But I made up for it on the second tram by buying two tickets instead of just one. I'm like that, me.

When I got to the venue it was raining chats et chiens, or whatever the French turn of phrase is. And no one was there. But there was a cafe, and my ass found its way atop one of its barstools. There was a man and two women inside. I drank a coffee and had a nice chat with them. The bar was affiliated with the venue, and there were photos of many artists on the wall, including John Cougar, David Bowie, Bob Dylan, and beaucoup d'autres. One of the women, Marie-Therese, was the owner. The other, Francoise, was mopping floors. I learned that she had run up her electricity bill at her house and they just turned it off. She was very sad and I think was crying a little, and Marie-Therese was helping her formulate a plan to get it turned back on. That warmed me, the one woman comforting the other. We should all be so kind and encouraging to one another. Behind the bar, Marie-Therese's son, a 36 year old man named Xavier. We talked about music, Club Med (for whom he used to work), Dublin (where I go tomorrow), and how he thought I resembled Alanis Morissette (um, I don't). Marie-Therese asked me what I did for a living and I made that queer face that we all make just after people ask us what we do and just before we summon the inner fortitude to speak the words "I poem." But I was not ridiculed. In fact, she said that she knew when she saw me I was a poet or an artist (must have been my purple hat). I felt a little justified as she spoke, for I've not been really presenting myself as anything but a wannabe teenager lately. I stayed in the bar until 3 or so, but promised I would return after the show.

I went back around to the front of the venue, and saw a woman in a purple coat who I met before the Paris show. Her name is Sandra and she is Belgian. We walked over to the band entrance, but we couldn't get close because there was a gate. We saw the supporting act drive through though. Nick and the boys were already inside.

After a bit our crowd of two expanded to five. It included me, Sandra, Yuka, a Japanese civil servant who has been to nearly 40 Nick gigs, Ava, a girl from the Netherlands who won her tickets on the radio, and Jean-Baptiste, a piano tuner from Bretagne who had a pair of delicious hazel eyes as glass-clear and sweet-seeming as a throat lozenge.

... forming a queue in the rain...

Later, a girl I met at a show in San Fransisco arrived with her boyfriend. I'd seen her at nearly all the other shows I've been to, but I hadn't heard from her in a year, so it was very nice to catch up. Her name is Eva and she's a German seminary student who starts her internship year soon. Her boyfriend, Arne, was tall and they seemed happy together.

And others. Hannah, a femme-Flamande, Hannah's friend (name not caught), Wilfried who lives in Luxembourg but goes by the name Sam (he works in a bank and wore banker-chic eyeglasses), Thomas, another German who runs a Nick Cave fan site in Deutschland, a couple of Canadian boys studying in Brussels, and, yes, some other Americans, though I didn't catch their names. This was the first time the two Flemish girls had seen Nick.

I have to say that as much as I liked the Paris concert, this one out-did it on all counts. The sound was fantastic. Nick was in possibly the best mood I've ever seen him in, and he played and sang and danced like the devil was chasing him.

...I get a little giddy when he does the big hands thing...

... I, too, dig the digging of Lazarus, digging...

No set list for Jillie tonight, but the two Flemish girls got one, and I took their picture.

...Flem-Fatales...

After the show, I went back to the bar with Yuko. If you're ever in Brussels, take the number 92 Tram all the way to the Forest National and find the Club des Artistes, 22 Avenue du Globe and ask for Xavier or Marie-Therese. They are terrifically nice people.

...me and my new Belgian, Xavier (I look a little spooked in the picture, though I wasn't)...

The taxi ride back to my hotel had the driver advising me that I needed a Belgian lover. Dunno where that came from but... ok.

He also said that he was free.

God Bless Belgium.

Read installments one through three here.

A Broad, Abroad (installment the third)

A post about nothing much from Brussels.

I wish I could tell you I've had a fantastic day, but I haven't really. I did NOT want to wake up this morning. I'm sure I'm not alone here, but I'm one of them poet-types who is plagued by the demoness Insomnia. Once I fall asleep, I sleep long and hard (that's what she said), but the falling of the asleep is typically the most difficult task I accomplish in a day. Add that to being dizzy with joy after a show, and I was lucky my head hit the pillow at all.

I called Timothy Bradford (a poet living and writing in Paris) this morning to see if he wanted a coffee, but he'd been traveling and needed to go into work so he couldn't come out. So I had a coffee alone at a bar near the Gare du Nord. I watched an American couple get pissy with the waiter because he didn't understand that they wanted to share the single plate of chicken they ordered and when only one plate of food came, he took the lady's silverware away. And so the Americans were confirmed of their suspicions that the French are rude, and the waiter's notions that Americans are gauche, particular, and too self-justified are formally corroborated. People: Can't we all just get along? That's what I say.

It was raining today, and cold. So much for a Parisian springtime. I got chatted up by one of the guys in front of the cafe. He liked my purple hat. (These aren't blog posts, properly, they're a catalog of my flirts across the continent. Tell true: Is that cool or lame? A little of both, I imagine.)

The train ride to Brussels: Uneventful. I arrived in the city, bought a map, and spent about 20 minutes studying the damn thing and took a chance and just hopped willy-nilly onto the metro, no clue where I was going. But by instinct or accident, I got it right, which I took as a triumph. It's windy in Brussels. Did I know that before? My purple hat blew off my head! I found my lodgings, went to the market, bought cookies, beer, and bread, then put myself into an early bed, and I napped until just this moment.

The Brussels show is tomorrow. My plan is more or less the same for each city-- install myself at the venue early, and edge in close to the stage so I can see. This plan leaves little room for sightseeing. And if I'm being honest, the plan leaves little energy for anything beyond the plan itself. I'll take a book with me to pas the long before time. I'm currently reading a biography of Eva Braun. Today is coincidentally the anniversary of her death. It was her lot to love a monster.

The wind outside the window is loud enough to resemble the sound of a badly-tuned car revving its engine.

I am missing something or someone right this moment, though I cannot say what.

A Broad, Abroad (installment the second)

Just got back to my hotel room after the NC&TBS Paris show.

The day began at the train station, where I went to get a train ticket to Brussels, which I did. The very dapper looking gent behind the counter told me I spoke really nice French. This was after he asked me where I was from. So it was semi-unsolicited (I didn't solicit it, at least). This is the second time this has happened since I've been in Paris. Admittedly, both people worked in the service industry where you're supposed to be friendly (the first 'you-speak-french-good' person was a woman working a counter at FNAC) but even so, this is France and they hate having their language run up the flagpole in an unsaluteable manner (or, shall I say, un-Salut!-eable?).

The truth is, my French isn't all that formidable. But what little I do speak, I speak the hell out of. And it's always a pleasure to be complimented. Especially by a dapper gent. And a charitable Parisian is the best of all kinds.

Went to the venue--Casino de Paris-- around noon today to make sure I knew where it was. There was no sign of a queue so I left and had a coffee and did some window shopping. I got flirted with by some men doing some construction near the cafe where I took my coffee, but there was too much noise for me to properly flirt back (I find that aggressive background noise disturbs the flow of a good flirt). When I got back to the venue this time, there was only me and a guy from Quebec who I noticed but didn't talk to at the Marseilles show. We chatted for a good 2 hours. It rained and was very, very cold. I teeth-chattered. We were waiting at the band entrance. I saw the whole band arrive (Warren in a taxi, Nick in a hire car, and Martyn, Conway, Jim and Mick in a kinda crappy van). Nick gave autographs and took pictures with a few people, but I stood away from that and didn't join in. I didn't want to be an asshole. Being an asshole is one of my greatest worries. And I don't want to be the obnoxious chick who bothers the band.

The show, I must say, was phenomenal. I was up front and a little off to the right side. Nick tends to favor this side of the stage, so I was in a good line of sight to see Nick be his wild self.

That is a photo of Nick not being particularly wild, but I didn't manage to capture a wild pose because I don't like taking too many pictures at the shows (it's annoying-- just watch the show, folks!). And I only use the flash at the start, when he lets the professional photogs take their pictures (the flash is distracting to the band).

In any case, here's another decent photo, for those of you who care to see...

Now tell me true: has a mustache ever been rocked so hard as his? That's not facial hair, it's fucking art.

I still haven't explicated to any real justification the impulse that drives me towards Nick's work. I'm ass-dragging tired at the moment, so that will need to wait. But I can tell you this much right now: every time I see him live, I'm instructed as an artist in my own right. Tonight's lesson had to do with performance, delivery, and how one might go about filling her work with just a little bit more of herself. It was a lesson against schtick, in favor of sincerity. Or, if you prefer, unfeigned exuberance. An entirely open performance.

The highlights of tonight's show include the opening song, "The Night of the Lotus Eaters," an unrehearsed but impeccable version of "Far From Me," the throbbingly good "Papa Won't Leave You, Henry," "Hard On For Love," and as ever, "Stagger Lee."

I might be away from a proper internet connection tomorrow, so I don't know when I'll post the Brussels update.

But, to tide you over until we meet again, I give you a final photo, a self-portrait taken with the built-in camera in my MacBook. Lookie me with the set list I scored at the end of the show!

(ps... I really do have spare tickets to a couple of the London shows. Is there a poet out there who lives in London who might want to accompany me?)

A Broad, Abroad (installment the first)

I am 36 years old, well past the years that one typically dedicates to wrecked and reckless abandon, wanton acts of surliness, and the lure of rock and roll.

And yet Saturday afternoon had me tramping around Marseilles's seamiest arrondissement all by my lonesome in order to be the first in the queue to see Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds. (I was first, actually, but then I got spooked by a grabby Frenchman and left the venue for a more populated area of town. When I returned, I was 5th in line).

And yesterday I TGVed to Paris where in just 24 hours, I will traipse down to another venue and install myself in front of it for a few hours so that when they open the doors I can be exactly where I want to be, and that's right up front, baby.

The Paris show is also a Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds show.

Wednesday, I go to Brussels. Then Dublin. Then Glasgow. I didn't manage to get tickets to the Birmingham show (they sold out fast), but I got tickets to both London shows in a week and a half and, later this month, to a show in Berlin.

I feel very strongly about Nick Cave, and seeing him and his fellas perform live is one of my greatest joys. I'll speak to this more explicitly later.

In any case, for my guest blogging stint this week, I invite you to accompany me on my adventures.

(I haven't had any yet today, but this is Paris, so adventure is just a metro stop away...)

Yesterday was disappointingly adventureless as well. The train ride was nondescript, my dinner was a sandwich purchased from a vendor. I sat a couple hours in a cafe not far from the Church of the Madelaine and drank coffees and watched French men. Twenty years ago in a small town in Texas, I longed to live the life that I thought belonged only to poets. What I imagined that life to be more or less resembled the evening I enjoyed last night. The ease of self and soul that is only accomplished by getting lost in the tumbling Paris crowds, the delight of french sentences lolling across my tongue, lingering on my lips, lifting in the air before me, taking the shape of a desire more precise than there are words for. The piss-stained alleyway walls, the fumes of bus exhaust. My God I love Paris. I raised my tasse de cafe to that. In honor of the sixteen-year-old me and the cliches she clung so maniacally to. I had to. Without those tropes, I'd never have become a poet. (I'm unapologetically convinced that it's the Lure of the Grand Ideal--insert whichever Grand Ideal you please-- enwombed deeply and at a very young age, that made all of us poets.)

Let us all raise our glasses, mugs, teacups, juice boxes and sport drink bottles to the Grand Ideal!

More very soon.

jill alexander essbaum

Best American Erotic Poems Makes Booksense Top 10

"A saucy look at American poetry from the preeminent anthologist of poetry," says bookseller Michael Schiavo, Northshire Bookstore, Manchester Center, VT

From the book:

On Reading Poorly Transcribed Erotica

She stood before him wearing only pantries
and he groped for her Volvo under the gauze.
She had saved her public hair, and his cook
went hard as a fist. They fell to the bad.
He shoveled his duck into her posse
and all her worm juices spilled out.
Still, his enormous election raged on.
Her beasts heaved as he sacked them,
and his own nibbles went stuff as well.
She put her tong in his rear and talked ditty.
Oh, it was all that he could do not to comb.

-- Jill Alexander Essbaum

Buy The Best American Erotic Poems here or here.

--sdh