As the first snow of the season descended on College Hill Friday evening, poet Regie Gibson provided a mellow performance of his highly personal work to an audience of about 50 people at King House.
Kurt Vonnegut calls Gibson's work "supersonic and in the stratosphere, where you can see that the earth really is a ball, moist, blue-green." Quite an appraisal, but Gibson's poetry is really something beyond this physical world, daring to straddle the grey area between poetry, song, lyric and all the possibilities in between.
Although Gibson is used to performing in larger spaces, he took full advantage of the intimate setting of King House - the fireplace, the hot cider and the centuries-old history of St. Anthony Hall, the coed literary fraternity at Brown that sponsored the event. Gibson said his performances are affected by the venue, but said, "Whether it be a crowd of 5,000 people or in a church or synagogue ... the ultimate goal is to communicate."
Gibson, who has performed everywhere from the Art Institute of Chicago to Literature Haus in Hamburg, fuses instrumentals, drums, song and poetry in a way that defies convention. Five years ago, Gibson founded the Church of The Funky Word, which, he writes on his Web site, is "a literary and musical arts ensemble utilizing ancient, contemporary and original literary text combined with world music and rituals from various world cultures."
Gibson said one of his poems was inspired by a professor he encountered at a recent talk who seemed wrapped up in the confines and norms of language.
"This is not your daddy's poetry reading," Gibson joked. "Poetry is more than the sum of its parts."
Gibson, a Chicago native, is the son of a Jehovah's Witness and a police officer, and one of his poems was centered around his childhood, the joys of being young and the fiery rhythms of Chicago nightlife. Interjecting the poem with Congo drumbeats, tapped feet and song, Gibson quipped that he was guilty of having "metaphoric Tourette's."
"We're only young once. ... Those moments (of youth) are feral, sweaty with passions," Gibson said.
Gibson also performed his poems "Anthem," which celebrates the street vernacular he was surrounded with as a teenager; "All Praises Due," his musings about living in Massachusetts with his family; and "I Will Not Know You Until I Watched You Sleep," which explores discovering the essence of a sleeping loved one.
Gibson said his poetry is influenced by a wide gamut of music and literary styles, and he is presently working on a manuscript inspired by the life and times of Jimi Hendrix.
"Jimi Hendrix is perennial. He helped me out through some really hard times," Gibson joked. "Hendrix made it all right for a heterosexual black male to still wear chiffon."
Gibson is intensely intrigued not only with music but with fusing different instruments and styles, then relating that product to language.
"This is the time of world music when we can fuse 4,000-year-old rhythms with 300-year-old cantatas and 50-year-old saxophone (tunes)," Gibson said. "Poetry changes as the music changes. Through the '50s, the '60s, the '70s, through beat music, through disco and hip-hop, people spoke a certain way as the music inspired them - a corresponding colloquialism."
Gibson is also working on a piece titled "The Ballad Mozart Brown" that expresses his artistic existence in multiple worlds - relating the past and the present in a dynamic way. The piece will bring the works of Mozart and James Brown together using classical European music and African-American funk.
Gibson said the work of Langston Hughes resonated with him early on, especially because Hughes was greatly influenced by music. "Hughes used to go out into Harlem and absorb what was around him," Gibson said.
Gibson added that he is also motivated by the works of authors Charles Baudelaire, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, John Milton and Edith Wharton.
"They are springboards. (We need to) try to understand what they are telling us and make it relevant," he said. "We have to break down antiquity. Knowledge needs to be updated."
"We divide poets into different eras - transcendentalist, enlightenment, romantic - but poetry is a long, unspoken train of dialogue from time immemorial. ... Poetry means a lot more to other cultures," he said.
A community activist, Gibson believes in the power of poetry to transform lives. In addition to lectures and workshops at Northwestern University, Harvard and the University of Michigan, he has done work in Roxbury and Dorchester, Mass., as well as with Youth Speaks, a poetry, spoken word and creative writing program in San Francisco.
Kelly Hall '06 described herself as a "huge fan" of Gibson's and said, "I've known Regie since ninth grade through his workshops and performances. He is a perfect teacher and guide for young people to find their expressive outlet ... and nurture their creative processes."
"I'm very excited that he was able to come. We hope to have more events like this in the future," said St. Anthony Hall member Cassie Ramirez '06.
According to Clair McClung '05, literary chair at St. Anthony Hall, the event was made possible in part from a grant from the St. Anthony Hall Educational Fund. "(It) allowed us to bring some amazing speakers including a storyteller and the romance novelist, Judith Arnold."
The audience was visibly amazed at Gibson's poetry, responding many times with moans, cheers and pressed lips. Many people simply closed their eyes to absorb Gibson's words.
"I didn't know what to expect. ... He was really dynamic," said Joss Whittaker '06.
Gibson's poetry has the power to appeal to many people because his voice is made up of everything from, in his words, "Homer to hip hop." Gibson's Web site quotes author Kurt Vonnegut as saying, "Regie, you sing and chant for all of us. Nobody gets left out."
Much of this appeal is probably due to Gibson's philosophy.
"I believe art is my politic," Gibson said. "Not political art, now, but the fact that art has the power to transform in very subtle ways. It's about revelation. I know what it must be like for people to hear someone who looks like me speak of many cultures in this muddled voice ... (but) I believe art is our highest dialogue with ourselves."
