Urban Poetry
by Carolin Messier
Every Sunday a pair of poets ply their craft from the edge of the sidewalk, offering single-verse poems on any topic to the neighbors and tourists who stroll the Ballard Farmers’ Market. Your Topic. Your Price. They set up their manual typewriters and work old school, tapping out letters and lines on quarter pages precisely torn from standard 8 1/2 x 11″ sheets. No sketched out drafts. No edits. No spell-check. No corrections. You just give one of them a topic and he goes, riffing on old themes or new ideas, the master of keyboard improv. Then three to fifteen minutes later, depending on how long the wait list is, you’ll receive your custom poem neatly typed. You can see the force of the hammered strokes embossed into the paper, giving this slip a certain weightiness and dignity.
Yes, I said wait list. For poetry. Every time I’ve commissioned a piece from the tapping troubadours, there have been at least a couple of topics listed on a notepad next to the machines that other people had already requested. Sometimes there are close to a dozen. Rather than hover, I leave my poet to his task and head for coffee or cruise the market, letting him know that I’ll return in an hour. He’s never asked me to prepay; I’ve said I’ll return and he trusts that I will. That feels good, the way people should always respect one another. The wait doesn’t bother me. It’s not a text message, something quick and disposable. He’s creating an original piece of art, for me. And I’m glad that he and his brother scribe are well-supported by the community.
When I return in an hour as promised, he pulls the piece for me from a small stack of finished verses, each from a different inspiration, each for a different patron. He reads it aloud to me and I smile. It’s a little quirky. I like his style. The subject I gave him to write about today was “fly fishing”. In return he gave me his urban poet’s vision of something he had only ever imagined, never having even seen a trout stream or held a rod. I hand him a five dollar bill in exchange and feel that we’ve made a fair deal.
This particular poem I commissioned as a gift for a fellow writer and new friend who found one of my stories worthy of wider readership and forwarded it to an editor at WordPress. I’d like to thank that editor, Krista, for choosing The Translation of I Love You and featuring it on Freshly Pressed last Wednesday, October 1st. And I appreciate all of you who took the time to read it and then shared your feelings about it as well as your own very personal stories. I am humbled by the generosity of praise and support my work has been receiving since then. To thank my new friend I wanted to pay it forward and support another artist as he has encouraged and supported me, a writer he knows only by her words on a screen. This one is dedicated to Utahrob.
fly fishing.
by wC
wheel removed
the whip
the stick
released upon the waters.
catching unfamiliar
fish, counting
scales of captured bliss.
dinner in the
house of hunters
finds the flesh of
sea farers munchers.
What a great idea to sit at a typewriter and wait for commissions – and I love that they have a waiting list! How inspiring:-) Thanks for sharing this, and for your thoughtfulness in paying a kindness forward. H xxx
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I love the idea too! Seattle definitely supports its writers. We’ve had at least three, no, at least four independent bookstores OPEN in the past three years! And this is the fully tech country of Amazon’s headquarters.
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I love that two men thought their craft worthy, and that they set themselves up to be approached, and that people approach them. That they write, and people look forward to what they write. That the people who read what they wrote, find value in it.
And thanks to Fresh Pressed, that’s how I found you! So thanks to the writer that forwarded you on!
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I agree! Seattle is a beautiful place, I’m fortunate to live here for many reasons. Not the least of which is this city’s obsession with the written word. Our libraries are amazing, several new independent bookstores OPENED in the past three years (and this in the tech-land home of Amazon), we have a physical place for writers called Hugo House and a Lit Crawl in October. And people line up to commission verses from street poets! It makes me have faith that the world has not completely fallen apart.
I’m grateful you found me too. I enjoy reading your insightful words.
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Thank you Carolin (a little blushing going on here).
I am super jealous of your beautiful Seattle. What a setting for someone who loves words. I love book stores. But have put myself on a self imposed purchasing freeze (unless it’s near cheap on Kindle). The house is over flowing with paperbacks/hard backs. I love them.
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Yeah, they can bury you and make you broke if you don’t watch it. I’m able to keep my habit in check because of the great libraries- 26 neighborhood branches plus the big downtown central library. Our former head librarian, Nancy Pearl, used to even have her own action figure!
http://mcphee.com/shop/librarian-action-figure.html
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OHMYGOLLY!!!!! That is AMAZING! I think she is my favorite action figure! 🙂
And yes….broke and books go hand in hand. 😉
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I know! Female action figure without a curve-clinging costume. And man, does she have superpowers!
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Jealous, I’m telling you, I’m jealous. 🙂
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Thanks, Carolin. You deserved to be recognized. Thanks for thinking of me. 🙂
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You’re welcome. Telling people how I feel about them is one of the codes I live by.
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“Seafarers munchers” – perfect really.
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I liked that line too!
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