Matt Cook . . . Bombs?
Matt Cook is a brilliant East Side poetry icon. Somewhere in that vast Cookian neurology rests the strange alchemy that can turn, "some guy at a bar who works as a janitor at UWM," into, "an instructor at Marquette with a voice heard on a Nike commercial and a Bill Moyers compilation." What I’m trying to say here is: everybody who has performed poetry on the East Side of Milwaukee for long enough has a Matt Cook impression. On Monday night, May 9th at Poet’s Monday on the stage of Linneman’s Riverwest Inn, those in attendance got to see Matt Cook’s Matt Cook impression. Honestly, I’ve seen better.Cook’s been published by a small company out of California called Manic D Press. Cook's material can, presumably, be found on shelves at well-stocked chain mega-bookstores all over the country. His third book The Unreasonable Slug is a follow-up to his first two: Eavesdrop Soup and In The Small of My Backyard. Having heard Cook read excerpts from that third book on the 9th, one gets the impression that it isn’t very good in comparison to the first two. The fact that one could get the same impression from actually reading the book is not the point. The point is this: Matt Cook, who has almost never failed to deliver a good performance . . . performed poorly. The audience seemed polite. They clapped at what seemed like pre-designated intervals. Normally, a Cook audience doesn’t have a chance to be polite. Normally they’re too busy rolling around the absurdly incomprehensible corners of his thoughts. Everybody has a Matt Cook impression. Last night we got to see his. It was awful. He was nervous—visibly sweating. No doubt aware of the fact that he wasn't doing well, he started perorming louder. This is the equivalent of watching Arnold Palmer or Tiger Woods' efforts not having the desired effect on the golf course and seeing them react to the situation by hitting the ball harder with each swing.
The poetry in that third book seems inspired by Cook, but not written by him. It’s weird hearing Matt Cook trying to read a poem inspired by Matt Cook that was actually written by Matt Cook. What’s worse, Matt Cook’s bad stuff is actually better than most of the good stuff that gets performed on the East Side, so it wasn’t actually unpleasant, just uncomfortable, confusing and disappointing. My wife and I had looked forward to it since his last Poet’s Monday reading. Matt Cook had let us down. It reminds me of a poem he wrote about Stravinsky—how people rioted after The Rite Of Spring because it wasn’t very good. People were disappointed. Note here that even seeing a bad performance by Matt Cook reminds me of really good poetry by Matt Cook.
Since Matt Cook bombed last night, everything’s been slightly out of synch. Busses have been off schedule. People have been making the wrong number of left turns. Squirrels have appeared more confused than usual. The cats seem listless. Late in the day, my wife and I head off to a café for a romantic meal . . . things begin to seem better. Matt Cook will write again. Matt Cook will write better stuff. The day fades into night . . .
Posted by rfindley on 05/08 at 06:30 PM