Typewriter Poetry: Soul of the Mask, Masquerade Ball Providence

I set up a typewriter table, buddied with artist Aura Lunae at this elegant night of music and art:

Here we are! I sold some zine broadsheets of my new-this-year Cabaret Poem, and my bespoke experiment was titled Soul of the Mask (pose for poetry). People could pose for me their masquerade persona, and I typed them a single poetic line to capture the energy of the moment.

Following, some of the poetry embodied on this night:

Poem: A Wizard Sees, The Alien Observes

1

tierra
canta

espíritu
abierto

open,
spirit

sing,
earth

welcome,
people

time
now

tiempo
ahora

personas
bienvenido

journey
stars

viaje
estrellas

2

spring
up

fall
down

personas
animales

unite
breath

power
vitality

refleccion
baila

cloud
pictures

sleeping
movimiento

piedras
tumbling

sol
arising

wisdom
montaña

vista
home

3

cuerpo
emoción

sultry
heart

brazos
fuerte

calling
life

4

lights
gathering

rising
meeting

heat
expression

gifts
offered

5

origines
agua

puro
manos

energía
surrender

togetherness
durmiendo

todos
juntos

[ELE / Eva L. Elasigue CC-BY 4.0 Creative Commons]

This poem contains a lot of factors! I designed the process to accompany a multi-scene group performance across two outdoor stages. The show had its own storyline of wizards arguing with duendes (elven spirits) over the beauty or tragedy of humanity as examined through the lens of four elements. The alien in mention is a character that descended at the beginning, though assigning the wizard or the alien to either language has its own reflections of meaning, and it could be read aloud that way. Myself coming from the United States, there is a tension around the Spanish language and its association with the idea of being an alien – whereas I was the English-speaking alien in the Spanish-speaking country of Nicaragua.

I, the poet, entered as a wizard dancer with the others at the beginning, in Jedi attire with a lightsaber-like pen (of course, mightier than the lightsaber) and notebook. I accompanied the show in the audience, writing to the scenes while glowing. I also helped guide and direct the audience from stage to stage, dancing martial arts with my glowing pen while in movement. Two words to a notebook page was the format I decided would suit the fast pace of performance and the show dynamic, with words in English and Spanish for a bilingual audience. The poem as displayed was written in order.

Parts of these freshly-penned poems were sung in live improvisation, by me, with music by each of the three DJs who played after the show: Izzy Wise @izzy_wise , Danni G @dannig , and Ricardo @irickysaenz .

I played with form as I wrote, differently for each scene, and am including, below, the notebook pages where I broke down the juxtaposition and stanza-mirroring of English and Spanish, in sometimes-reversed sometimes-translation. I tightened or accented my Spanish as I’ve recopied it.

I have not seen the form employed or explained before; consider this invented wordpair flow as a formal offering for live inspiration. It can evoke a lot, two words at a time, and while able to offer beauty as itself, can serve as a base for further expansion. I reserve the option of expanding from this poem, while also sharing it in its primal form.

Formplay Observation below, marks explained after maps

E=English, S=Spanish

-1-

S1
S2
. . (stanza translation reflection)
E2 (reversed)
E1 (reversed)
[. .] (double stanza translation form reflection)
E3
E4
. . (stanza translation reflection)
S4
S3 (reversed)

E5
[ ] (mini coda language reflection)
S5

–

-2-

E
E
S
: (repetition)
E
E
S

[ E ] (standalone)

E
S
. . (stanza language reflection)
S
E
:2 (double stanza form reflection inverted)
S
E
. . (stanza language reflection)
E
S
. . (stanza language reflection)
[ S
E ] (standalone/third)

-3-

S
E
S
E

-4-

E
E
E
E

-5-

S
S

S
S

S
E

E
S

S
S