Pivot Points:
The last Pivot crowd of the season (photo by Phoebe Wang)You know we’re approaching the holidays when you can see your breath in the chilly air, the snow turns into slush, then into ice, and back to slush again, and there’s a huge poster of Hulk Hogan adorning The Press Club’s frosty front window. On Wednesday, November 27th I attended the final Pivot Reading for 2013 and was excited to see the bar as packed as ever, with devotees ready to celebrate the end of a great year for the series.
Souvankham Thammavongsa (photo by Phoebe Wang)The first reader of the evening was the talented Souvankham Thammavongsa whose new collection Light, published by Pedlar Press, has been a hot topic on the internet these past few months. So hot, in fact, that Phoebe Wang reviewed it for Issue XXIII of The Puritan. Light prevails thematically throughout the collection like “some flame thrower’s flame tossed over and over and over by itself,” as Thammavongsa explores the multi-faceted representations and meanings of light. In “Leos” light functions as a metaphor through which to explore trajectories, “the other ending starts in the middle too.” In “Lightning Storm Seen from the Window of an Airplane” Thammavongsa uses a miniscule anecdote to create descriptions of lightning that are very unique and striking (no pun intended). Thammavongsa has re-imbued light with poetical substance so successfully that she takes the ubiquity out of an energy source and reveals its most profound properties, as in the line “Tinsel dangled from what wasn’t there.” 
Jacqueline Turner (photo by Phoebe Wang)Jacqueline Turner has published four collections of poetry with ECW Press including her latest collection, The Ends of the Earth, released this year. She joked that her thirteen-year relationship with ECW Press is longer than some marriages, which was a great segue into her explanation that The Ends of the Earth is a book that explores the idea of endings. She read from the section “Monuments to Audacity” that deals with her seventeen-year-old son Sam leaving home for the first time. Each poem within the section is dated and located in a specific place giving the book a very biographical feel. While her poetry comes from a heartfelt sentimental place, Turner does not allow her writing to be sappy or too obvious. In one piece, she is told that her son has a heart murmur and she imagines it whispering to her. Handled incorrectly, this moment would be gimmicky, but Turner manages to use the duality of “murmur” in a way that was unexpected and fragile. In another piece, she captures the feeling of simultaneous pride and awe: “you are the word independence made tangible, arms of it, legs of it, strong spine too.” Turner is currently working on a new collection, the working title of which is Perpetual—it ought to be a very different take on duration.
Nathaniel G. Moore (photo by Phoebe Wang)The penultimate reader and the only one to be sharing fiction was Nathaniel G. Moore. His work has appeared in several issues of The Puritan and last week saw the launch party for his novel Savage: 1986-2011 published by Anvil Press. Before I even discuss his reading in detail, let me say this: if you ever have a chance to hear Moore read, go. Sure he’s talented, and the fact that he’s published five books speaks to that, but he’s also absolutely hilarious. At one point he complained about being too warm so he took off his flannel and lo-and-behold, there was a shameless self-promoting t-shirt underneath. Why don’t more readings have such fun participants? He’s comfortable in front of a crowd, very charismatic, and it doesn’t hurt that he’s also a great writer. Since the evening was filled with poets, he shared two pieces from Let’s Pretend We Never Met, which features the Ancient Roman poet Cattulus, though set in the modern day. His writing has a cinematic quality, as though his stanzas are structured like close-ups. In “New, Tall, Elegant Rich Kids” there’s a woman “speaking through the film of her lip gloss” and his diction transforms something as simple as speech into a more sultry, gritty, even sinister moment. Moore then read from Savage: 1986-2011 and chose a section where the narrator writes a letter to his friend, encouraging him to run for student council together. Among the bright ideas Moore includes “Come to School Naked Day,” “Wednes-Day,” a Food Drive where they would drive over food, and a program that would allow students to bring in cassettes and the council would remix them. Adorably, the letter ends with the slogan: “Don’t be Sour, Vote Mega Powers.” His friend isn’t too keen on the campaign and Moore masterfully portrays the awkward conversation, the slight mannerisms of the dis-interested, and the naïve excitement of the narrator’s “production studio mind thinking of background music.”
Marc di Saverio (photo by Phoebe Wang)The final reader of the night was Marc di Saverio who read from his debut collection Sanatorium Songs, published by Palimpsest Press. Not only did he read, di Saverio performed with an intense stage presence uncommon among poets just published for the first time. His writing is very acoustic and he has a talent for putting words into sonic combinations that are very creative and dynamic. Many writing instructors will tell you to avoid alliteration and assonance so as not to date your work, but di Saverio’s penchant for writing with his ears as well as his imagination is a unique talent. He reminds me of a modern-day Ginsberg. His poems are also very long but they maintain momentum and have enough variation to keep them interesting. Even when he uses a refrain, as in “Code Yellow,” di Saverio re-arranges the words in “my shard-studded club feet blaze me astray” many times to capture the audience’s interest. Whether or not you know what that line “means” its rhythmic quality is so catchy that it can linger in your memory for hours. His use of rhyme, assonance, alliteration, and repetition can be compared to a kind of poetical weaving. The words build on themselves, become taut, tense, interlocked, and full to bursting.
Books for sale at blowout prices! (photo by Phoebe Wang)2014 should be another great year for Pivot Readings and since the series is solely funded by audience members, I encourage you all to take your friends and make a night of it on January 15th. Host Jacob Arthur Mooney handed out a schedule for their next season and there are some amazing writers and Puritan contributors slotted to perform, including Catherine Graham, Liz Howard, and Angela Hibbs. As you stumble through shopping centres and recover from festive highs this holiday season, make sure to stay up-to-date on the great reading series that will be picking up again next year.
