An Interview with Alan Reade


so I turned to another section of that same paper, and I saw the pictures of devastation in the Middle East. And I had this morbid thought about how we were being all celebratory and victorious and morally smug and yellow-ribboned as a nation and drinking mai tai's on the beach, while somewhere in Kuwait, there's some little kid whose head is blown off, some woman who no longer has a throat, thousands of people without arms. And this contrast gave me the idea for the song. I ordered a video of jet fighters and made that a visual backdrop for the piece. I wrote the drum line as this really peppy 4/4 Caribbean beat, and added cello and bass. When I performed it live with a band, I had the audience blow on kazoos during the musical interludes while the jet fighter images flew in the background. And after a few minutes, the audience would realize I had been making them cheer for the war! Against their wills, almost. I wanted to evoke the feeling that I got from all the jingoistic pro-war news coverage at that time--"We won! Be happy!" So, I know that was going a bit off track, but that's as typical as any process for me to come up with a piece.

S: Besides print publication and the stock-standard poetry reading, tell us about the other "avenues" you have explored for the transmission of your poetry.

AR: I haven't explored print publication! A lot of my friends have books out and they say, "Why aren't you at least sending stuff out?" Well, it's because I practically live on the Web. So I finally put together "American Language," an online chronicle of the last ten years or so of my performance poems, as a kind of experiment in creating a compilation. But maybe I should get something together that people can actually sit down and read in a chair, or on a bus. Shame on me.

S: And now you're in print here! Albeit in prose.

AR: Yeah.

S: Do you find recurring themes in your work?

AR: I used to write more about language, the environment, and space travel. I find that I have a lot of flag imagery, especially in "American Language." Also love, loss, and death - seems I have an Emily Dickenson streak. But who doesn't?

S: Thanks for joining us Alan. Where should people

The copyright of the article An Interview with Alan Reade in Performance Poetry is owned by Billy Marshall Stoneking. Permission to republish An Interview with Alan Reade in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.

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