Writing truth in spoken word

By Keith Demanche
HippoPress.com

Say Goodnight, Grace Notes: New and Corrected Poems, by Jack McCarthy, EM Press, 2003

Jack McCarthy is a modern-day wise man. He does not sit on a mountaintop, though he does on occasion impart his wisdom upon a rapt audience gathered at his feet. His new book of poetry from EM Press, "Say Goodnight, Grace Notes: New and Corrected Poems" is the definitive collection McCarthy fans have been waiting for.

Writing poetry since the 1960s, McCarthy only really got serious in the early '90s after going to a poetry slam at the Cantab Lounge in Cambridge. Since then, he's put out a book of poetry, two chapbooks, a cassette and a CD, and his work has been published in various anthologies and magazines.

I asked him recently when he first realized that he had a poet inside him and if with that came the realization that he wanted to do spoken word. "No to the second part; I was in my 50s when I stumbled onto the open mike movement," McCarthy said. "The first time I remember thinking I could do poetry was in an English class at (Phillips) Exeter. We were reading Pope and the teacher would give us the first line of a couplet and we'd write a second line. I remember thinking 'Hey, I'm pretty good at this.'"

McCarthy said that his single biggest influence is Dylan Thomas's "A Child's Christmas in Wales." "The first time I heard it," he said, "I had tears in my eyes from the sheer beauty of the thing. I can hear echoes of it in half the things I write." McCarthy attributes his own "prosey" style to the feel of that piece.

Each of the poems in "Say Goodnight, Grace Notes" reveals a little bit about McCarthy; the words are given more like confession than story. This honesty is at times painful, at times hilarious, and often both at the same time. Did his straight style come with age or has it always been part of his personality? "I've been going to 12-step programs for 40 years. The honesty in those rooms is something a lot of people never experience. I've learned not to kid myself, and by this time I find it fairly easy to cut through the layers of camouflage and get to the sabotage," he said.

"One of the best poems I've ever written will have to be published anonymously, if ever," he said when I asked if there was any conflict in how far he should go when writing. Are there things he doesn't want to say in a poem because he so often writes about relationships, specifically his wife and daughters? "Yes, there's conflict. (That) one poem violates somebody else's privacy (not my wife in this instance). But I try to deal with the conflict after the poem is written. The violation is not in the writing, it's in how and when and whether you make the poem public. I asked my daughters for permission to use the poems about them in 'Say Goodnight, Grace Notes.'" One of his daughters did decline to have one poem in the book.

McCarthy's famous "Car Talk" poems are collected here, which he has used to win numerous poetry slams around New England, including the Slam-O-Rama last year in Manchester. The Fremont resident appeared in the feature film "Slamnation" and finished the 10th ranked individual at the 2000 National Poetry Slam. I asked if he reads all his poetry out loud when he writes or only later. "Later. The first time I actually read it aloud is often at the Cantab. But what I hear in my head rarely betrays me. And the sound is much more important to me than how it looks on the page." He added, "That doesn't sound like a very passionate commitment, does it?"

But the poems in the new collection are meant to be read aloud. Having heard McCarthy recite some of these poems live made me hear all of them in his characteristic soft, somewhat grizzled tone. I asked if he thought his poems are more effective when spoken or on paper. "I think I differ from the majority of poets in this respect: I think of the text as a script for a performance, and I think of myself as a writer of poems that perform themselves (as opposed to a 'performance poet'). That doesn't mean that I disdain the page. It means I do everything I can to help each poem jump off the page and perform itself for the reader," he said.

While I would like to have seen more new poetry in this book, I am happy to have "Say Goodnight, Grace Notes" as a collection to meditate on. The work makes the reader think about honesty and about life, but at the same time lets you know it's OK to have made mistakes. Someday, we might be wise enough to accept our mistakes and steer others away, as McCarthy does.

Keith Demanche can be reached at hippo@hippopress.com