To quote Bruce Springsteen: “The poets down here don’t write nothin’ at all they just stand back and let it all be.”
But this isn’t true of the poets who have been featured at Art House Productions’ monthly Open Mic series over the last few months. They have not only have refused to stand back, they have all but declared war on a system they see as unfair, referring to social and cultural controversies in their poems.
The Art House Open Mic series is one of the longest running in Jersey City, starting at Victory Hall in late September 2001 in reaction to the terrorist attacks on 9/11. The series got going in earnest in early 2002 and has been carried out in various locations since.
Jaxx is back
In some ways Jackie Sheeler (featured at the December Open Mic) and Rich Villar (featured in February) come at politics from different directions, although both come out of a similar urban experience.
Sheeler (often known as Jaxx) holds back nothing, blasting what she sees as unfairness in the legal system, without mercy. Villar – who infuses even his love poems with political themes – comes at you like a steel fist in a velvet glove: you don’t realize you’ve been hit until after it’s over.
Sheeler came to Jersey City in December with both poetic guns blazing.
During her appearance as a featured act at Art House’s spoken word series, she took on the thorny issue of police violence against suspects, spurred on by the lack of indictments in the death of Eric Garner in Staten Island and Michael Brown in Ferguson, Mo.
I was literally raised in a world of cops. I think all that does give me some context, maybe some insight.” – Jackie Sheeler
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As described by her publisher, “Sheeler is a poet and poetry MC working in her native New York City, who has toured nationally as a spoken word artist. Her poetry captures the harder side of her city, often witnessing the conflicts between urban people at devastatingly close range.”
At Art House, she displayed every bit of this emotional turmoil, reflecting years of anguish in trying to get a justice system to live up to its own name.
“I thought I had retired this poem,” she said, referring to a poem called “The Old Man” she had written after police shot a black man in the 1990s.
She read:
“This old man, he was one, didn’t even have a gun
they had pistols, they were two
they had nightsticks and back up and handcuffs.
They had time to make another choice but
if a cop crack is trigger back,
throw the judge a bone…
and this old man ain’t going home”
Poems drawn from life experience
“My dad and his oldest brother were both cops,” Sheeler said in a later interview. “We lived upstairs from dad’s partner. I was literally raised in a world of cops. I think all that does give me some context, maybe some insight.”
Much of this inspired her anthology, “Off the Cuffs: Poems by & About the Police.”
Introduced with personal anecdotes, she also included poems of her own that she said speak directly to the experience: “What He Brings Home from Work,” “Shutting Down” and “Crayola Wars.”
Unlike the peaceful protests in Jersey City in the aftermath of the Ferguson grand jury, Sheeler’s poems were full of the violence of outrage, so heated that even the scalding floodlight that illuminated her face during her reading could not rival the intensity of heat her poems produced in that room that night.
Even her less sharply political poems are full of passion for social equality, but on this night she selected poems that attacked a system that she said was broken.
This was not her first visit to Jersey City. She was featured by Art House nearly a decade ago at Victory Hall as she fronted the art-rock band Talk Engine. She also has a heavy online presence at her personal website shoutedword.com, and she is founder of poetz.com, a premier resource for poetry in New York City.
A native New Yorker, an award-winning writer, a teacher, a vocalist, and a renegade, Steeler was recently named the Poet Laureate of Riker’s Island for her volunteer work with the young inmates at the Horizon school for 16-21 year olds. And for more than a decade, Sheeler curated and hosted the weekly Pink Pony West poetry reading series at The Cornelia Street Café.
Paterson’s visions come to Jersey City
Born and raised in Paterson, on Feb. 5 Rich Villar brought images that of growing up in an urban Latino environment to Jersey City.
In describing himself, he says he is a poet, essayist, jackass, Tu tío politico, Hearts Bustelo, on a journey to better health, and the author of the poetry collection “Comprehending Forever” (Willow Books/Aquarius Press, 2014). He has been quoted on Latino literature and culture by both the New York Times and the Daily News, and his poetry and essays have appeared in many journals.
His reading in Jersey City could be split into two phases, poems about a now-expired relationship, and others that were clearly more political. In truth, all of what he read had a political and satirical edge, full of innuendoes and literary allusions set against the backdrop of the barrio. His work reshaped people he knew or met or imagined into mythological characters that represented a life and culture that is as vibrant in Jersey City as in Paterson where he grew up.
His love poems – which are much more than love poems – are filled with sexual tension and social humor that sometimes dances as he reads. Although he can be classified at a spoken word poet, many of his poems also stand up on the page, giving his reading the benefit of performance as well as great content.
For more information about Art House Productions go to http://www.arthouseproductions.org/.
Al Sullivan may be reached at asullivan@hudsonreporter.com.