Poetry. Slam.

Hit play.

To put you in the mood.

This little harmless remix, albeit slightly sinful, yet familiar tune is the best background music for what comes next. Indeed it is the only appropriate listening material to accompany what you're going to read as you scroll...

down, down, down.

Several years ago my fellow students at Seattle Pacific University, mainly the "hooked-on-the-mystery of meaning; the-beauty-of-good-and-evil; the triumph of human disaster" types; i.e. the poets-- felt that something seemed lacking in our previously perfect MFA program

They even used the word "Missing" followed by a ____________:

A new student. I'd just been accepted into the program. I had no idea what they were talking about. What's missing? Word files? Your thesis?  I clearly didn't get it.

We need to add to this they muttered. Poets often talk in really hush hush voices. 

Add what?

A dynamic longing?

A certain energy?

But they didn't respond. They already had their answer.

A multi-genre poetry slam!

~ ~ ~

I blame it on Dante.  The ancient writer inspired them into this ethereal, yet very doomed ideal of what's missing. The felt the key to their longing was an introduction to intragenre communication.  Dominated, of course, by poets. It went something like this:

"I'd Like to Teach the Genre's To Cling...In Perfect Harmony. Like Honey Bee's and Apple Tree's and Ending Rhymes, and ..."

I would quickly learn that the sixties never really ended for the poets. Most self actualized writing people avoid group participation and humiliation. We understand that in our jobs "Team Building" is more like advanced career leap froging over bigger and bigger literary agents.

And you're right, if you're, (like I was) already thinking, "As if! Poets? Lead?  Like ever?  Surely the non fiction types are the best, the most capable ones to lead anyone, anywhere---that is unless leading people to obscure after hours coffee shops count. 

Yo! What up! Lo though they walk through the valley of the shadow of the thesaurus...

Are you feeling me?

But insist on leading us they did, and because we just had to see what happens next, we non fiction and fiction writers followed. 

We had to know if all the hype over the angst of poetry was for real. 

We told ourselves, if nothing else, at least this experience could make us better writers.
 

Instead, we only learn what happens to poets when they get empowered on a strange pedestal. Control issues anyone? Dante got lead astray by a Virgil'd-up! happy-dance word trip and we got lead astray by guacamole. Truly, that's how it all started. I lie not.

The poets, who everyone already accepts never expect big advance checks anyway, like ever, felt it their duty to trick the rest of us into their familiar familial misery.  Now all of us, we suffered communally as part of one big, miserable, word-bound, writer-blocked family.  Oh Joy. 

But not I.  I am skeptical.  Non fiction types are really good at disbelief and of course I always thought--no make that I knew it was a plot.  The poets had an agenda. The guacamole challenge was their attempt to dis us back infinite helpings of "show; don't tell", acting as our psychic guides to real pain and an existential five-ticket glory ride to despair.

Dearest reader, this is the point where everyone, if you could now please put on your empathy hats?

Feel for the poor fiction and non fiction types. Journey with us as we embrace that all the levels of hell are a basic prerequisite of poetry. And really, what better way to internalize this than a lil' ol' poetry slam?

Thus the eternal "guacamole challenge" was born. 

~ ~ ~



I first encountered the poets and their competitive drive in Santa Fe. They scared me. I had never experienced such efficiency. Such passion. Such fashion.

Since that first time of tempting fate, the poets (and their little competition) has become a sort of personal growth tradition, and not nearly as ruinous to failing world economies as Skull and Bones membership, but give it time.  Someday geo political writers will do a word search to see who dominated at the guacamole challenge, and then they'll also do name searches to cross reference and trace links to banana republics the world over.  They will say, in critically acclaimed books, It all started in Santa Fe. They will gain movie rights for these statements.

The poets initially promote the guacamole slam as an optional thing but you know how poets can get with their pack mentality and peer pressure. Sure they said "no participation required".

But, we all know that you can 't win if you don't play,  And if you don't play, you can't really know the poets pain. Pay, Play, or Abstain: That was the dare.

Thus the heaviest investment in the competition, among all the genre's, was by that of the non fiction types. Fiction folks are just content to make something up and poetic failure goes down easy for them.

 "Oh that competition? I was just so distracted by the tragedy of A Million Little Pieces and what Oprah did to James Frey---again.  I mean did that have to be one of her final shows? To go back to that? Of course I tried to enter something, but really what's more important? Poetry? About Augustine? Get real.  This is truth honey, mark my words. I'm writing a novel all about Frey. You know, fiction about this non fiction writer pretending to make things up as a fiction writer who is really just writing truth? My agent says he loves the idea. Both Oprah and Frey are just so unsettling. For real.

Non-fiction writers? We promised ourselves that if the poetry slam didn't go well, at least we could write about it. You can't make this sh*t up right?

We felt to expand as writers we at least had to try at this poetry slam stuff. We could overlook our lack of poetic voice, our failed sense of place, and that we had no alliterated sense of bodily urgency. But we could not look away from the compelling nature of poetry or the chance to write about farting, in great detail. We are truth tellers. But whatever, you already knew that.

Alas the other genre students excelled at mining all available literary landscapes as they struggled to know victory, win "best of", and hopefully their peer's respect. I watched with peer envy as my non fiction classmates rose to challenge after challenge. We were beautiful failures, and many of us sought refuge in pop culture, indeed really bad pop culture, to at least show earnest attempt.

Me? I just struggled to understand meter, rhyme, end rhyme, and efficiency.

But verily verily I say unto you, I could not resist the pull of pop culture, rapping and the Pet Shop Boys. That West End Girls Have the Biggest Toys...

Poets have closets too! And I knew  that somewhere in their closets lurked a pop culture soul just waiting for affirmation. If I could just find the right Janet Jackson or Justin Timberline Song to pierce their corset or loin clothe, I could save them!

So of course I gave in.  I entered the poetry slam. Repeatedly.

~ ~ ~

Naturally, in the beginning there were rules.

Naturally, even in the beginning, I couldn't seem to follow them.

"Seven lines, with two end rhymes, must include this word, but can't mention that word, and it may or may not make sense." Blah blah blah.  Stuff like this is what I had to deal with. Oh yeah, you have to mention the poet Denise Levertov. 

All I could think to write about was Levertov's Mount Rainier Fetish, but how could I make that rhyme? What rhymes with Fetish?  Lettuce?  Radish?  Uh No. Wait, how about Reddish? Score!


With each subsequent residency, I will learn the poetry slam rules become more complicated than the last.  I buy a poetry guidebook, and yes, so what if the cover was yellow and had the word "dummies" in the tittle?

I spend days just trying to sort out the terms. I experience night sweats. I will visualize T. S. Elliot reaching out to me in the form of a traffic cop who just wants to write me a ticket for erratic driving. He isn't buying my excuse that I was not driving reckless or impaired. That I was only pounding out line meter on the dash.

I realize that rules are for losers. I make up my own. That I have done this is noted by the rest of my fellow students. Repeatedly. I decide they are jealous.

~ ~ ~

The slams go down like this. On an ordained night, all of us gather in some predetermined sanctuary of creativity.  Alcohol appears. Salsa. Chips. Ice Wine. An announcement will interrupt the nervous tension. The readings are about to begin. We are gathered together because our sole purpose is to reach out with our words and tickle the hand of God. 

Only to get slapped back like a bad kitty.

At the conclusion of each biannual residency, the poets who are not slated to graduate gather. I have never been invited to this sacred tradition but I see it as a convention for Illuminati.  Lots of importance will be in the air, oh and wisdom, followed by off-hand remarks that begin with "Bet they can't" and ending with "Oh dude, that is so rich".  Snicker, snicker.

Also at this conclave there is a choosing.  The next "keeper of the rules". This represents the only time in a poet's lifetime where they will enjoy unrestrained power over all the other writing genres.  I find this unfortunate at best.

To comfort myself and loosen my sense of displacement, I remind myself that it is rare indeed when the movie rights are sold from a poem.

Briefly, I feel better.

Months pass as the "keeper of the rules" salivate over the power they hold and they giggle to themselves as they visualize the future wrecking of great literary minds they will unleash.  The anticipation builds. A precious few weeks before the next residency this keeper of the rules, like the great pumpkin poet, in darkness arises, sending out little email messengers with a 4 am time stamp, and terror spreads throughout the land. The boundaries of next competition are unveiled. I will spend weeks struggling to understand what the hell is a sonnet. I will hate poetry with a hatred that I normally only reserve for Sarah Palin.

This will not make me feel better.

~ ~ ~

We find in our email inbox little stone tablets brought down from the mount, containing the next competition theme, complete with structural rules, and all this literary lingo conformity crap.

Last March, I'd had it. I sought help.

I sought and found traitors. I enlisted the aide of faculty poets. And they answered my plea in gentle tones. It was as if God freed the people of Israel, uh all over again. They agreed to lend their wisdom. They joined my effort and for the first time, like ever, my entrance into the competition finally included hope. When the faculty spoke a hush fell over those assembled.

Faculty participation--Who gets that?. Poet Faculty Participation. Really?  Since when have they ever crossed over to the darkness of the non fiction side?

Everything was going just fine.

And then the intern steals the show. As well as the most coveted award.  The TALA Award. An award that's rightly should have gone to those about to graduate. Or back to me.I kept saying I didn't want it again, but you know how that goes.  What if I had won a TALA for like the third time in a row? Who does that? Who has that kind of consistency? And what did it mean that they gave it to an intern?

What's a TALA ya ask?

I'll get to that.

~ ~ ~

This summer marks my last participation in the poetry slam.. I will graduate in Santa Fe in August and thus my legacy shall end where it began.  In Santa Fe. In literary ruins.

In looking back over my poetry career I should offer this caveat. Now that I've been recruited, participated, and tasted the intoxication of fame, winning "at least something" in nearly every poetry competition, I feel as if it's time to pass on the mantle bearing these greatest of expectations that I so efficiently violated.

And speaking of violated, I'd like to add that since that first competition, and in nearly every event that followed, not once have I been consulted as a judge. Funny that.

Doesn't this seem quite unfair? A person who is acknowledge time and time again but who is never called to throne of leadership to share his acclaimed gifts with others?

I'm assured by those in the know that "not being" a poet is part of this slight. Apparently only real poets are qualified to judge the efforts of others.   But I also reason that there are "other" factors preventing my judicial participation.  I understand my prohibition may possibly stem from prior example's of reckless,if not determined, participation. Poets have memory.  They know how to use it.

To this I say Pah shah!

Do they not see how many awards I've already amassed? The raw unbridled, chaotic talent that was required to win what I've won?

Timbo, you won you ask?

Well yes, now that you ask, absolutely I have WON.  Prizes that are so valuable that their worth escapes description. Random stuff. Little precious plastic things that I shall forever treasure. Tokens of greatness, really. An Air Force Survival School Mug. Another one with tiny jumping dolphins. Russian bookmarks with puppies on them. Valuable swag.

I'm acclaimed damn it! I have gathered to my bosom several rare and truly highly sought after awards.That counts for something doesn't it?

Uh no. Not so much.

It's all about the suffering.

And they have suffered much because of me.

And this is payback time.

Finally on the seventh competition I shall rest, surveying the pinnacle of my journey. I am a self actualized, poetic wrecking crew of one, capable of producing a collection of the worst random and infamous pop song lines, that duh, of course have nothing to do with the stated goal of this latest competition, but that will include as climax, Catholic Priest Duc wailing "Baby Don't Hurt Me".

And he sounding far more authentic than even I dared hope.


So they anoint me with awards to pacify me but they will not allow me to be a judge, They with their little happy trophies. "The sluttiest entrant award."  "The not likely to follow any rules of poetry award." "The 'we're pretty sure he had a point and was going somewhere with that' award."

But ultimately the judges just gave up.

In my honor, they created the Tim Anderson Lifetime Achievement award. Known as the TALA. (or something like that). I learn it's really hard for poet judges to keep coming up with literary ways to describe the task of honoring a man who just doesn't get boundaries and rules and time limits nor an appreciation for basic sentence structure.

In March of 2011, the poetry judges finally have pity on me. The topic? Lost in translation. This immediately meant I might actually have a small chance of compiling some sort of credible offering, a poem that actually fits within the stated rules of the competition. For once.

I turn from my former sloth filled ways. I got serious about the word. I also do what I always do. I cheat.

I enlisted renowned poets Jeanne Murray Walker and Jeanine Hathaway, you know the faculty types I mentioned early.  They agree to assist me with an old school exploration of a post modern interpretation of Trucker CB lingo as "found" poetry. Word spreads quickly.

No one had ever thought of corrupting faculty before. The only thing missing from my latest entry would be an interpretative dance segment. I started to suggest it but both regal women firmly and worriedly shook their heads no.

I dare not press the issue as it was miraculous that both women agreed to aide me in the first place and even then they immediately began to juggle second thoughts. I begin to visualize my winning the TALA award and what I'd say for my acceptance speech.

And lo! To them was born a timeless token, a trophy, a thing of beauty. The TALA would be passed among the greatest minds of chaos theory.  A TALA acknowledges that for some, all things are painfully difficult to put into words and probably shouldn't be anyway.

To win a TALA wasn't just about honoring me, but acknowledges all of those other faceless pilgrims who enter competitions like these without hesitation, nor any wish to save face amongst their peers, or bravely accepting you don't have a hell's chance of winning. A TALA award is a thing of beauty defined by well wasted effort..

I'd already won this TALA award. Twice.

It is a legacy I hold dear to my heart. I list it highest among my achievements,

 "Well you know, I've won two TALA's."

And everyone nods thinking wow. That is so cool.

We, the three of us, did win another award, but it was not the esteemed TALA. It was something that had never been given out before and I can't really remember the title. I can only explain it: Something to do with this could have gone really wrong, but somehow didn't. Tim's lucky. Neither faculty women will ever be the same. Both are strangely reluctant to agree to further participation.

I am actually quite proud of this for it seems that I the student have offered them a valuable lesson on the dangers of pity unrestrained. Which I find poetic.

But you can also understand why, when the intern recently stole, er, I mean "won" my TALA award, I would stand confused and humbled? Because aside from me, no other person seems more qualified to carry on this tradition and you know who you are. Tyler. But no pressure.

Dang interns anyway.

And now that you've read this you're wondering--

Why has Tim taken up my time  telling me all this.  Why have I wasted 5 minutes of my life, time I shall never get back, to read about guacamole, TALA Awards, and movie rights fetishes, while Madonna is singing into my work cubicle?

~ ~ ~

Recently, in honor of the achievement in poetic excellence this poetry slam hath generated, our leader and published author, Greggory Wolfe took a moment out of his busy schedule to summons us. He stated that all former contestants should supply him with copies of our previous efforts.  Should we not comply, he stongly hinted consequences could follow.

In my case that meant bravely going back into the drawer of the doom. A place where all the things I wish to never revisit again are exiled and here they fester. Mostly this drawer is filled with former poetry slam efforts.  Or the remains of them, soiled, charcoaled, or shredded.

ThankfullyI  found one of my previous efforts mostly intact. Jo Anna, who for the record does not look like Penelope Cruz, assisted me in the original performance. We loved one another instantly upon first meeting and her angelic voice, rising above the suprised attendees' continues to fill my heart with joy, hope, and Frito's. She is my Madonna, my Like a Prayer, my Life is a Mystery and Angel Sighing all rolled into one. I could not have won the Sluttiest poetry award without her.

Sadly this effort shall always stand as among the worst offerings of all. I post it here now. For your enjoyment. Or horror.

Just know that this entry is entirely based on the Poet John Donne, the classic writer Erasmus, and the original biographer of self, Augustine. In creating my entry to the poetry slam, I sought inspiration. And this is how it came to be that I visualized an immaculate Greg Wolfe, clouded in Cuban smoke, defending the sanctity of Percy Walker while clutching the sword of literary truth even as he recoiled in defense against my dumb ass class participation. My proven ability to let my inside voice raise it's hand, asking about unknowable things, distracting the rest of them, my classmates, who are already too easily distracted as it is.   Me, the wolfster's arch nemisis, all fantasizing about Michael Jackson and Moon walking and actually thinking this related to a classic writer such as John Donne. That Donne guy, who like Jesus himself, must have at least once in his life used a cherished safe word.

My entry, with Jo Anna's sweetness rising toward heaven, became far more like a visualization exercise than any of were used to. Sort of like meditation, but not. More like false labor, with  painful contractions yet also sweet at first, and possibly better compared to an ice cream headache later.  My entry landed me the only award that could ever fit with such ambition and I cherish my "sluttiest poetry" award.

I still find it unsettled that such an honor was immediately retired upon my winning it.

Remember my competitive spirit is one to be celebrated, vilified, and verified. A tribute to the cost of personal investment.

I have channeled the word. Made it badder than bad allowing all others to look better than good.  I am the anti poet. My number is 867-5309. Michael J, The Pet Shop Boys, and Tommy TuTone have nothing on me.

~ ~ ~

Poets, especially great ones, understand that pity is universal, and sometimes when manifested correctly, might actually encourage those who already struggle with meter and ryhme and appropriateness, to maybe find another vocation.

I hope to do something more with what started on Whidbey Island with trucker CB lingo effort. I seek to dazzle my audience with legitimacy. Maybe even get nominated for something. And potentially, maybe if I promise to swear off poetry for the rest of my days, I can drag Ms. Walker and Ms Hathaway into a new yet final translation of infamy with me. Maybe we can even, hint hint, reclaim the highly coveted Timothy Anderson Lifetime Achievement award? Ya think? Oh the honor of seeing the lawfirm like sounding names of Walker, Hathaway and Anderson engraved on a small token of almost brilliance. 

Now that would be something to inspire the poets.

So thus---after going on and on and on and truly saying nothing noteworthy, I present to you the begining of all this: The "where it all started" poem.  It wasn't the very first effort, but it is among the earliest and more memorable ones, complete with numerous copyright infringements. It is best to read this with something Cuban in one hand. Something adult and liquid in another.  And, of course, with the bathroom door securely locked.






~Like A Greg Wolfe Prayer~


A Spoken Liturgical Response in two parts:


Lady Jo Anna:


Life is a mystery. Everyone must stand alone.
I hear you call my name. And it feels like home.
When you call my name, it’s like a little prayer.
I’m down on my knees I want to take you there.
In the midnight hour , I can feel your power,
just like a little prayer, I want to take you there.
I hear your voice its like an angel sighing.
I have no choice, I hear your voice feels like flying.
I close my eyes, Oh God! I think I’m falling.
Out of the sky. I Close my eyes. Heaven Help me.




Sir Timothy:

A Letter of love, to my safe word dear.
Some would say my passion rises so queer.
I’m undone by Donne, I’m so done with him
I can hear my conscience screaming “Tim”


Lady Jo Anna:


When you call my name
It’s like a little prayer
I’m down on my knees
I want to take you there
In the midnight hour
I can feel your power
I want to take you there.


Sir Timothy:


This word I call out when my faith retreats
At 2 am as the trance music beats
When last call sounds and I’m still reading Donne
And I think I’ve found the perfect one...


Lady Jo Anna:


Like a Child, You Whisper softly to me
You’re in control, just like a child…
Now I’m dancing, It’s like a dream
No end and no beginning, You’re here with me.
It’s like a dream Let the Choir Sing


Sir Timothy:

I feel the pain, my questioning rejects
Turning toward a reckoning, erect
Among Augustine, Erasmus, Walker I stand
Farting, drinking, praying,,,toward the promised land


Lady Jo Anna:


When you call my name
It’s like a little prayer
I’m down on my knees
I want to take you there
In the midnight hour
I can feel your power
Just like a prayer,
You know I take you there.
ah huh, ah huh, ah huh...


Sir Timothy:


My safe word ain’t pretty, It’s really so base
I see it incarnate, taking up space
A vision, a challenge, a scholarly egg
You know my safe word? His name is Greg…

The Greg Wolfe above is not to be confused with the Greg Wolfe below. I swear I don't know this guy.