Bob Stein’s comment about Sekou Sundiata and his desire to have a DVD recording of Blessing the Boats in order to be able to savor it, “it wouldn’t do just to have a text transcription since hearing the many voices is a crucial aspect of the piece. it really was a genre-busting performed essay,” brings to mind the origin of poetry and its deep roots in the oral tradition. Rhymed stories that were to be sung, so people would still remember them generations later. This tradition is almost universally shared across cultures, and is still alive today. Think of hip-hop, epic poems, the Colombian vallenato, “Martn Fierro” that repository of everything Argentine, or the itinerant poets whom one can still hear in the markets of Central Asia and North Africa. It is precisely that centuries old internal rhythm which makes poetry practically untranslatable, but also gives us a tinge of shared pleasure when we hear poetry in a language we don’t understand.
The “genre-busting” aspect has been there all along. It was concealed when poetry became so obscure in the baroque, that one had to possess all the codes in order to understand it. It became a mind game and reading it was easier than listening to it. Then, in the 19th century, poetry began to look inside itself becoming aware of its raison d’tre; to give shape to an ontological reality, a sort of miracle that, in Baudelaire’s words, is flexible enough to adapt to the lyrical movements of the soul. So poetry was freed from form, inaugurating true genre-busting. The poem in prose was born. Musicians have set poems to music, or composed symphonic poems. Genre became blurry, because poetry was going back to what was meant to be.

All this brings us to the future of the book. I often think that today there is a sort of “presentism,” of looking towards the future in the form of the last gadget on which we can read, listen, watch, play, in a word, communicate. But there is a lot to learn from the past, from the visionaries that have been advancing history all along. Think of Alfonso X, the Wise, the poet king in whose court flourished Arab, Jewish and Christian cultures. Thanks to his books of poetry, mostly zejels (Arab-style poetry set to music) it has been possible to study Romanesque, Gothic and Arab instruments. Why? Through the illuminations (in the most complete sense of the word) that adorned his “Cntigas de Loor.” Those miniatures depicting Arab musicians playing the instruments upon which most of the modern orchestra originates. We now have in our hands the tools to advance this concept ad infinitum. And, what ‘s best, knowledge can be shared in a democratic way that resembles its origins.
So, we wish to be able to hear poetry. Reading alone doesn’t do it any more. Sundiata belongs to an old, illustrious tradition, so do Bob Holman, Sarah Jones, Joan La Barbara, Pedro Pietri, Algarn, and the poets that in the 70’s dared to bring poetry to the forefront. Jaap Blonk’s poetry of sounds without words, “Messa di Voce,” that was so beautifully illuminated by Golan Levin, is another example of the hybrid. Poets have become performers, claiming their old role. Genre has been definitely busted. Think of hip-hop without its sounds, or Pedro, or Bob, or Sekou without theirs. I continue to be obsessed with a multiple book, the book of the future, the only one that does justice to poetry, and to them.