Young and Growing, Older and Wiser: Denver Poets for Change in America

 

Young and Growing, Older and Wiser: Denver Poets for Change in America
Sunday August 22, 2004
Mercury Cafe, 22nd Street and California, Denver
Beloved Friends,
The title is the whole project, the mission statement, which came to me in the shower one morning recently. We got poets together for a "feed-and-read" community gathering at the Mercury Cafe, two professional portable video cameras and recording equipment, to produce a thirty minute DVD we have sent to a hundred public-access television stations. No ulterior motives here, no negatives, no vitriol, no partisanship;just positive hope for the future. We need to participate openly at the community level for the sake of our country and the world.
There is pure harmony here. There is hope. There is whole positivity. Change for us is growth only (for degeneration and dissipation need not be expressed; despair is not growth, not art). Each of us and all of us are poets, making music, making art with words. We come together to read the rhythm and the image of America's growth. No one tells you what to say; they cannot,for this is America and our speech is free, our imaginations unlimited. All of us are artists: this is for great-grandmothers and grade school children, workers and wanderers, small boys and tall girls of any age—especially for those of us who may have been silent until today. Walt Whitman will swell with pride.
I have been relieved of the burden of my own ego and thank goodness I have a day job (for no one ever made a living as a poet;. > can underwrite the basic expenses of the food and of the technical costs of production of our DVD of this American spiritual communion. Those of you who have day jobs also are welcome to contribute modestly toward the expenses (not so much as to threaten to inflate your own egos to the bursting point, but perhaps enough to deflate mine). This is a We project, We the People. Here is the finished product, the DVD which includes the edited 28 minute artwork in words and images, sounds and color which we have sent gratis to a hundred of the public access television broadcasters. Whatever proceeds come from the sale of these DVDs will be used toward the technical expenses of production. Poets in other communities are welcome to gather as Young and Growing, Older and Wiser; Poets of New York and Santa Fe and San Francisco and Seattle and Tulsa and Cleveland... This doesn't belong to Nathan or to Denver but to America. It's our growth, our future.Thanks for your help.
Peace and Love. .Nathan
Executive Producers
Nathan Pollack Joe Lyon
Associate Producers
Louis Underbakke Tony Wagner Eugene Zandler Orville Springs Ken Greenley
Directed @ Edited by
Nathan Pollack (structure/continuity} Joe Lyon (remix/composition)
Musk
Chris Nathan
Cameras
Steven Flanders Joe Lyon
Fractal Plate Crtw
Zandler/Wagner/Lyon
Poets: Rose Leon, Ken Greenley, Sally Ortizjudah Freed, 8arb Test, Kane Ver!ey,Orvill Springs,Alex, Tony Wagner, Tom Parson, Cord ley Coit, Carson Reed, Nathan Pollack, Jerry Smaidone, Marilyn Megenity, Eugene Zandler,Titus Owen Coit, Carolyn Parry, Hal Small,and Wardell Montgomery Jr.
Cover Design
Noah Pollack