Friday, July 29, 2011

Audio: Unsummoned

For Multimedia Friday, I have audio of my poem, "Unsummoned." The image that inspired this poem is a photo I took at WWE's Summer Slam 2010 (yes, really). Wrestling is fascinating to me in terms of performance and identity--and I find it interesting that people so quickly dismiss it by saying, "You know it's not real, right?" While the wrestlers are indeed portraying characters and enacting scripted story lines, the movements of the wrestlers are completely real (and undeniably athletic). It's a bit like dance---choreographed and scripted, and requiring training and skill.

The word "wrestling" made it through to this poem, but otherwise, you won't see any fireworks or spandex or signs held up by the crowd. Hope you enjoy it!

Unsummoned by The Storialist

8 comments

  1. Like your thoughtful commentary about wrestling - it's so quickly dismissed and yet the play-acting is real - and glad not to be looking at spandex.

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  2. Good point. I think I'll start being obnoxious at the theatre during the next Shakespeare festival and harassing the audience.
    "You know Romeo and Tybalt aren't real, right?"

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  3. I love that last line about the moon.

    I'm the kind of tuff girl who finds someone large to stand behind and cry, "get 'em! yeah!" ;-)

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  4. I would rather listen to you read poems than watch wrestling, that's for sure.

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  5. "Professional" Wrestling = working-class opera, someone once said. I've been to only one event live. What a spectacle. A man with a 6 year old son was debating about whether to buy another beer for himself or a WWE shirt for his son. He chose the beer.

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  6. Hannah, this is a FANTASTIC poem. Love "the body that we pilot out" and that "latched" thought about the moon. Would you send it to me by email? Really want to SEE this one. xo

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  7. i also love the line about the moon & the one about how experience doesn't require our permission!

    i've been thinking about adding audio to my blog -- do you like the sound cloud thing? (that's a technical term, "thing")

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  8. "blood surging out like a choir" -- I love that, surprise and inevitability in the phrase ... And I am fascinated with the process of how an origin in a wrestling photograph transmutes into this poem..... (The word verification is "losses" -- and now I am thinking of the elegiac edge in this poem....)

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