LITERARY LIFE
Luigi Russolo's 1913 "Art of Noises" manifesto states: "We have had enough of [Beethoven et al.] and we delight much more in . . . the noise of trams, of automobile engines, of carriages, of brawling crowds", opening up music to the sounds of industry and to mechanical noise. The first world war was persistently noisy.
After World War II, artists slept to the sounds of their FrigidAires. Hrmmm.
Danced in fields of neon. Streets of freon. Olivier Messian took to the fields to transcribe birdsong and John Cage incorporated the sounds of everyday life into
his compositions. Right now cabs are being hailed, toilets are flushing. A guy in Brooklyn is gargling, then whistling on his way to work. The train in Lemoyne is blowing its whistle.
Spike Jones and Harpo Marx communicated with bicycle horns. Sumerians silently made impressions in cuneiform. Some versifiers-- well, Vachel Lindsday, read their works out loud.
Hugo Ball, La Monte Young and John Cale were inspired by telephone wires and hums of power generators. The rattle of a taxi cab. Train whistles.That steady, reassuring, beep- beep, honk-honk-honk, siren call of car alarmism echoing through the urban night. O, yeah, it’s real. Literally, redundantly real. Yeah. Face it: some things are deeply, und primarily real.
Along came an advocate for new sound poetry and cross-discursive media, Marty Esworthy, Megaera-award-winning poet, editor emeritus, Steel Point Quarterly, and renowned poetry impresario, co-founder of the Almost Uptown Poetry Cartel.
A renowned performance artist, for many years, he secretly aspired to be a noise band.
Esworthy taught in Carrol County, MD public schools, did Rock Music classes at Rutgers; University of Maryland; Johns Hopkins Free University; Vanderbilt, and the University of Tennessee, as well as pop culture lecture series at various branches of the Enoch Pratt library system.
He’s presented poetry/writing/performance workshops at Fisk University, Catonsville Community College, Baltimore Experimental High School, Baltimore Writer’s workshop, Elizabethtown College, Penn State, and St. Joseph's University.
Numerous journal publications include the Fox Chase Review, text_TOWER, Literary Chaos, Fledging Rag, Haggard & Halloo, Syzygy, The International Digest of World poetry, and the Miserere Review.
Recent Esworthy books include hard reality, Pacobooks, 2004, and The Object Stares Back, Uh-Oh!, T&T Press, 2009. Forthcoming, in 2014, Dra ihop Aztec glypher, a collection of words "after the aughts" (2010--2014).
Twenty-Six Javanese Proverbs, was awarded the 2006 R.E.Foundation Award for Outstanding Poetry, Iris G. Press, 2006.