New poetry, helping us all feel a little more human

An interview by Mary Greene

Laura E.J. Moran’s new CD, “Live Bait,” features 13 new poems with accompanying music recorded live at the North American Cultural Laboratory (NaCl) in Highland Lake, NY. The music ranges from original rock guitar by Bruce Balmer to Robeson’s Curly Headed Baby to Beatles classics and traditional songs like “Clementine” and “Black Girl.” Moran’s strong and riveting voice delivers her poems in tones that are lyrical, boisterous, plaintive and chilling, by turns. Having had some time to reflect since returning from national poetry tours this winter, Moran talked to The River Reporter recently at her home in Callicoon, NY.

You’ve been active on the poetry slam scene. Can you talk about that?

We poets would get together at Rhode Island College and have readings, little Thursday night readings. Then we heard about this other thing that was happening, the poetry slam. [Poet] Gary Whitehead and I were like, what are they doing to our poetry? We went. It was great! Patricia Smith was there that night, and her level of poetry has always been extraordinary. She really opened my eyes: she was living in Boston, maybe 10 years older than me; she was alive, and well, and writing, and doing new stuff, and old stuff, and she’d memorize. The world just took a major shift.

Gary and I were the finalists in the competition that night. I won a chance to go compete for the Boston team, which was unbelievable. I mean, I’d just done it once! I learned there was a network of slams across the country. I got contacts and booked my first tour. Hmm, where do I want to be? I moved to Colorado.

When you are crafting poems and thinking about performance, do you put emphasis on the poem on the page as opposed to in performance, or vice versa?

A lot happens during memorization, and I have cadences that are just stored. Sometimes the poem dictates its own cadence. That’s a subconscious thing. I edit a lot, and I let a poem sit for a long, long time. Sometimes there’s something that I really want to say, and I go back in the poem, and it’s the wrong cadence.

It’s page versus stage… but not really. They are both part of our tradition, equally important. Poets who just stay on the page are ignoring half their craft. And poets who are only memorizing stuff—they are missing half the craft. It’s having different tools, the way a good carpenter will have many tools and know when to use the right one for a certain task.

There are certain words you use over and over, like splinter, twist, faith. Do those words express something for you that comes up again and again?

You always pray that you are not repeating yourself too much. But if you look at poets who are in the canon—Sharon Olds, Walt Whitman even—they have certain themes and they are drawn to certain images. They are able to find facets in those images so it’s never boring.

Faith is huge, for me. It’s the crux of the whole thing. How to have it, how not to be a skeptic. To love unconditionally is the key to happiness, I think, but how to get there? And some of those questions are in “Live Bait.”

In “Live Bait,” you perform with a back-up band. Some of the songs veer toward rock. But the work remains poetry. What keeps it poetry as opposed to rock music?

I can’t sing! I’m working on it! But the poem, when it is accompanied by music, has got to sit higher than the music. So that you hear the poem, you hear the enunciation of the words.

Can you talk about how the choices were made regarding the music on the CD?

Well, for “Vision” … I wanted a recognizable tune in back of that poem. I didn’t want it to be a downer of a poem. I wanted to bring out the bright spots. The music can articulate what’s not actually said in the poem. I chose “Let It Be” because there’s the vision, “Mother Mary comes to me.”

One of my favorites is “Trash.” That uses the traditional song, “Black Girl,” or “In the Pines.” Leadbelly did that a long time ago. A killer of a song!

For me, the poems on “Live Bait” describe a rogue’s gallery—the people who live next door. You don’t really know them, but if you took the time to stop and listen to their stories, this is what you might hear. “Cello Boy,” for example. The middle school string ensemble, so gawky and awkward. I went to hear them, and I thought: “How did I miss how beautiful they are?” Look at these guys! This might be their most beautiful moment, when nothing is settled, where everything’s growing, they don’t know what’s happening and yet they’re still going through it. That’s hero! We just have to look at some of our teenagers to see that.

Throughout the CD, you make reference to songwriters and poets and movies, at random, as you put it. What are you paying tribute to?

Things that have touched me, that sometimes can say it better than I can. It’s shorthand. “Misfits” is definitely shorthand. It’s incredible that all these people were there at that moment, at the top! Marilyn Monroe and Clark Gable, Montgomery Cliff and John Huston, Arthur Miller! Days later, Clark Gabel had a heart attack. It was Marilyn’s last film, Montgomery Cliff’s last film. It was there, then gone.

There are people who have gone into myth now. Bob Dylan is myth. Marilyn Monroe. James Dean. “Live Bait” approaches what we think about people and tries to give a different perspective, make them a little more human. Mythologizing can be dehumanizing.

How was “Live Bait” produced?

We recorded this at NaCl Theatre, in Highland Lake, in the living room of Brad Krumholz and Tannis Kowalchuk. It was done live, in five or six hours. The only piece that is overdubbed is “Daughter.” I had the virtuosity of that group of people at that point in time, and they gave their best, for that afternoon. And the music creates collage. On “Giant,” for example, Brad suggested we use the wine glasses. It’s the perfect metaphor. It’s eerie, and quiet, and it’s the wine glass—turned into art.

Who have been your influences?

Sharon Olds is a huge influence in my work. She’s very candid. She’s gone through hell, and always she has empathy and compassion. The love is always there. You sew hate, or you sew compassion.

To order “Live Bait” contact Moran at lejmoran@yahoo.com or Photosynthesis Press, PO Box 36, Hortonville, NY 12745.