Harlan Steinberger

JOHN ROGERS

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Poetry readings have always been a blast for S.A. Griffin, but the tour that the venerable Los Angeles poet plans this spring may be his most explosive.

This time the author of such collections as “Unborn Again” and “One Long Naked Dance” will be packing his poems inside of a Cold War-era bomb and taking them on the road. The idea is to create the constructive from the destructive.

“I’m taking one of the most iconic images of destruction of the 20th century and turning it into something positive,” says the strapping Griffin, who at 6-foot-3 is nonetheless dwarfed by the gun-metal gray performance-art companion that rises more than 7 feet tall when tilted on end. He found the dummy bomb, which contains no explosives, on the Internet and bought it for $100.

His plan: bring the bomb to a city near you, dropping rhymes and free verse by the hundreds on audiences everywhere from Atlanta to Montana, Oregon to North Carolina and points in between. His aim is to get people to wake up to poetry.

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The Pedestal Magazine Reviews Ellyn Maybe’s Rodeo for the Sheepish

Reviewer: JoSelle Vanderhooft

Of all the things I review for Pedestal, spoken word CDs are my favorite, both because of their rarity (few poets, after all, have the resources to put one together) and the ingenuity with which they blend visual art, music, and, of course, poetry read aloud. The best of these CDs blend all of these disparate elements to make something that is neither music nor poetry but which uses the common roots of each to create something bold, new, and frequently difficult to categorize, save for the term “performance.” Indeed, the successful spoken word poet is one who does not just read his or her work, but performs it as if it were a stand-up routine, a monologue, part of a “Happening,” or simply as something meant to live beyond the confines of the page.

Ellyn Maybe is a poet who knows how to do just that. Not only a strong poet on paper, she is also a consummate performer with a warm, full voice that is as friendly and inviting as it is delightfully quirky. Few poets—indeed, few performers of any stripe—have the personality, honesty and, yes, unabashed geekiness which Maybe displays in her readings of the ten poems on Rodeo for the Sheepish. Her voice is not only entrancing but unforgettable; indeed, I would very much like to hear her perform live someday.
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I’ve never been that big of an advocate of “oral” poetry (in fact it suggested sex to my dirty mind). Nor did I care that much for “voice” or “performance” poetry, which always suggested to me a way to present otherwise dull poetry where everyone bows their head to the grave task of “understanding.” I thought of it as more arts org decoration because no one knew what real poetry was when funding it, so applause would thus take cues from Jerry Springer with all the slam and “stuff.” I am old fashioned enough to know that in black ink the love of poetry still shines bright. So what do I get in the mail but the new wave of the future of publishing: a cd of the recorded voice; a little booklet of poems; the photo of the poet’s life all in one neat little package! i revised my thinking on the topic. Maybe it WAS important to hear the old Celtic tremble of Yeats, or the dramatic sculpted prosody of Pound in recordings. So here is the gift of the voice of Robert Peters, Professor Emeritus who is probably the last academic scholar and real voice in American poetry to be heard.
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By Bob Holman & Margery Snyder

About.com Guide

(Hen House Studios, 2009) Ellyn Maybe got her moniker because she was too shy to commit when she signed up for the open mic list—“Ellyn,” she’d write, “maybe.” She’s an LA phenomenon, published by Henry Rollins, the lovechild of Gertrude Stein and Allen Ginsberg, a lyrical poet in hippie couture, a one-of-a-kind. Now, with Rodeo for the Sheepish, she shows she’s ready for Las Vegas. Brilliant settings by producer Harlan Steinberger, superlative vocal backtracks by Tommy Jordan—all of a sudden, she’s gone Motown and you can hear the sheer force of Poetry vs. Pop music in an arena the size of Radio City Poetry Hall. Humor, poignancy, universality, individuality—like all great artists, how she does it is a mystery, but Ellyn Maybe is for real.