So my good friends at notnostrums loved to watch and listen to these videos, and then further thought that poetry might benefit from similar treatment. Poets could be filmed reading (or reciting) their work out in the world, perhaps even while moving, but in any case, happy to let their art wander around in a public space and see what becomes of it. I hope I am not spoiling things by talking about a work in progress, but what I really wanted to write about was why I immediately thought that Stop & Shop was the perfect place to read poems. And it's not just me. As soon as I brought it up to my friends, they said that Stop & Shop was already taken. (I believe that since then the Stop & Shop poet may have been reassigned to a hot tub. We shall see.)
What makes supermarkets so appealing? They are a little bit Jonathan Richman and a little bit Allen Ginsberg. (The sidebar on that page links to "Be Drunk," by Baudelaire, which reminds me of a time a friend quoted that poem to a bartender when she had threatened to cut him off. That is a video I would very much like to see.) But supermarkets! And especially Stop & Shop! The colors of all the produce seem like a perfect background through which to walk and read. There is such abundance and strangeness. Such a Coinstar and such voices in the self-checkout lanes! "Move your…tomatoes on the vine." "Move your…item." This robotic woman, she pauses, like she is looking for that next word, like she herself is a poet and the line is full of possibility.
And I wonder, do you have similarly strong feelings about where poems ought to be spoken? Who would you put where? And what would you have them read?