The Renegade Fortune-Telling Machine: The poetry of Joel Dias-Porter
2023; Wiley; Volume: 111; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês
10.1353/tyr.2023.0018
ISSN1467-9736
Autores Tópico(s)Cultural Studies and Interdisciplinary Research
ResumoThe Renegade Fortune-Telling MachineThe poetry of Joel Dias-Porter Terrance Hayes (bio) Click for larger view View full resolution Courtesy the author. [End Page 124] The legendry one-of-the-a-kind Renegade Poetic Fortune-Telling Machine can be found near the boardwalks of Atlantic City, but you will need to read between the lines of Ideas of Improvisation, the first full-length poetry collection by Joel Dias-Porter, to locate it. Like the poet himself, the figure inside the machine wears a black and gold wizard's robe with a Steelers logo on the chest and a tilted baseball cap. The Fortune Teller is made out of the refurbished parts of a straightforward tape recorder, the motherboard of somebody's supercomputer, a Cape Verdean's Volkswagen, miles and miles of speaker wire, an old-school slot machine, and a casino stool with a plush seat cushion. [End Page 125] Click for larger view View full resolution Courtesy the author. [End Page 126] ______ the contents of the machine (which has the same dimensions as Doctor Who's TARDIS Police Box) include: the Fortune Teller, his old-school records, a white disco crystal ball, a turntable, a cell phone, poker chips, tea bags, and the book Ideas of Improvisation. The latter is a Black man's collection of odes and meditations, full of poems decades in the making, which reveal the people dear to him: his muses and loves, his memories, testimonies, and allegories. The poem "Whitman's Sampler" reads: Here, take this gift,Which too long I was offering to feed my soul This is the gift of a poet who has devoted his life to writing. The poems are not autobiographical in any typical way (and certainly not in the manner of a standard debut), instead conveying memories rooted in ideas of form and language. I think of Elizabeth Bishop writing and rewriting her poems in the long years between each book. The end result is not so much an autobiographical account as the document of an artistic process. These poems live in different forms at different moments in the poet's life; the hours put into them make them invaluable. Imagine a meal so amazing it would take twenty years to prepare. [End Page 127] Click for larger view View full resolution Courtesy the author. [End Page 128] ______ the renegade poetic Fortune-Telling Machine offers the Tarot of Voices when it senses you are in need of conversation with other poets. When it comes up, your reading of Ideas of Improvisation will be guided by resonances ranging from Hughes's blues to Walt Whitman's wildness. [End Page 129] Click for larger view View full resolution Courtesy the author. [End Page 130] ______ whatever your question, the Renegade Poetic Fortune-Telling Machine will spit out a tarot card, conjuring an answer for you. The Machine answers your questions in the subtextual threads of Dias-Porter's poems. Fragments of imagery and lyric flash in the text of each card. For example, the Tarot of Sisters card alerted me to presence of Black women in Ideas of Improvisation. The Tarot of Sisters card prompted me to revisit "The Bashō in You," six surreal haiku-ish stanzas flashing with imagery of pistachios, ponytails, blackberry brandy. Inside the poem is the inner poem in red: pearl earrings among dreadlocks your grin. The image emerges like a koan-ish snapshot of beauty. The dreadlocked smiling presence becomes muse and ghost across the book. "The Bashō in You" is an ode to haiku and desire. The tone here, and in many of the collection's poems, combines a sense of play and longing. I recalled the hair of women I loved as I read Porter's poem. I have received a different fortune, a new joy and insight every time I've read these poems. [End Page 131] Click for larger view View full resolution Courtesy the author. [End Page 132] ______ these poems are the meditations of a poet who has found his muses in music. The machine plays Kind of Blue some days. On other days Cesária Évora can be heard echoing through the piping...
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