A couple of months ago I used the NCAA Men’s Basketball tournament as a gimmick to get my English students to read some poetry.  Since April is National Poetry Month, the timing was right to siphon off some of the interest in this sporting event to power some interest in reading poetry.  If a few ridiculously painted frat brothers wound up flapping on a dry river bottom during their spring spawning, I was ok with that.  It worked out as well as I could have expected. While I did not formally use this activity in my own classes (it was too much fun to have to grade it), I got comments from some of the students in the building and a couple of the reading teachers followed the progress as part of their classes.

I thought I was done with it, but soon after I came upon a new link to my blog (a rare thing indeed!).  Max Wolf Valerio, a poet with whose work more people should be acquainted (myself included) mentioned my use of his poem in the poetry bracket.  I’m not sure that getting a nod on my blog counts, as Mr. Valerio states, as “appearing on the radar”, but I’ll take what I can get.  The poet just needs to know that my little site is more O’Reilly than Doppler.  I have been unable to find a book of poetry from Valerio (based on a comment at the bottom of his Livejournal page, he seems to be planning one) , but he does have some of his poems published here.  I’d like to mention that I get very excited about comments from the people who write all the stuff I talk about on this page and from the little I read, Mr. Valerio’s poetry deserves some conversation.

I consider myself a poetry lover, but I am not sufficiently studied to discuss it beyond what I like and don’t like.  I cannot place Mr. Valerio into a particular school or appreciate how he has been influenced in a scholarly way.  What I can tell you is that his poetry is an exciting challenge to read.  He uses the spacing and physical location of words in addition to their meanings.  Like a guitarist who slaps his axe to produce percussion, Mr. Valerio places words in order and provides his “slap” by spacing them so that one almost wants to read from top to bottom and right to left, instead of left to right.  This is in no way a gimmick.  I teach high school English and have read volumes of bad poetry.  Mr. Valerio constructs the visual aspect of his poems as carefully as he constructs the linguistic.

A bit of e-research and one will quickly learn that Max Valerio is a seeker who has used identity like a canvas upon which to question and make art.  Perhaps it is his breadth of experience that gives the poetry a universality and an appeal to humanity, rather than one particular group.  I think many artists are framed by their backgrounds and identity rather than by their art.  Perhaps Valerio, who seems very focused on his individual and inward journey and whose art reflects that, will avoid being pigeon-holed.

One last thing I wanted to address was the poet’s comment about his being paired with Sherman Alexie in the poetry bracket.  Valerio said, “Now, I am not entirely sure why I would be put in direct competition with Sherman Alexie, since our poetry is not at all alike, but most likely cause we’re both Skinz (American Indians).“  I wanted to reiterate my explanation of how matchups were created.  “Seeds were for match up purposes only, and reflect the order in which I found the poems to use.”  Indeed, I thought about changing this first round match-up when I noticed that I had two “Skinz” going head to head, but in the end decided to let the chips fall where they may.  The exercise was not really about competition, but about looking at two poems together and allowing them to provide context for each other.  It was a conversation piece.

I see in his bio, that Valerio is planning five books of poetry for publication.  I look forward to seeing them.

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