Winning ways in the war of the words

TODAY, class, we’re going to talk about two of what are usually considered to be dying arts – poetry and opera.

There’s a bit of a war on, folks. And it isn’t pretty. No, not that war. This is a war of words – very carefully chosen words – the words of poets. The war erupted when Ruth Lilly, heir to the Eli Lilly & Co. founder, donated $200 million to “Poetry” magazine.

Your Prozac dollars at work! They created the Poetry Foundation and hired a man named John Barr, an investment banker/poet (I kid you not.) to run it. The problem is that Mr. Barr is a bit of a traditionalist who believes that poetry should be made more accessible than the stuff the modernists and academics are producing. Feathers are being ruffled.

Now I can tell you for sure that it’s nearly impossible to make money selling poetry (see my job title below), but I am not willing to give in to that “dying art” label. Not yet, anyway. I think that Mr. Barr should take a lesson from Peter Gelb, general manager of the Metropolitan Opera in New York City. If ever there was an art form more at risk than poetry, it’s opera – traditional or modern. Right? I mean, who goes to the opera?

But wait: Mr. Gelb makes a deal with Sirius Satellite Radio to carry four live performances, in season, per week. Live – in your living room. And when not live, Sirius is working its way through 75 years of live-on-tape from the Met’s famous Saturday afternoon radio broadcasts.

Caruso, Tibaldi, Callas, Bjoerling. Bravissimo! And then Mr. Gelb arranges for six, live, high-definition video broadcasts from the stage with Cinemark at Montage as one of the theaters. The first one, “The Magic Flute,” which is about as accessible as you can get, filled the theater. Then a little later, Gelb slips in “The First Emperor,” a very contemporary Chinese piece.

Guess what? It fills two theaters. This experiment is so successful that next season they are going to do eight videocasts, including “La Boheme” (10+ on the accessibility scale) and “Tristan und Isolde” (not so high on the accessibility scale, but at over five hours, you get your money’s worth). Along the way, he has developed some innovative ticket promotions that seem to be filling the house in Lincoln Center.

So I’m thinking Mr. Barr is on the right track, but he should buy Mr. Gelb lunch and pick his brain. Maybe he could make a deal with Garrison Keillor to do four days of traditional on the Writer’s Almanac and one day of avant-garde. Surely there are ways.

Now if you want to partake of a little poetry, check out the upcoming Maslow Reading Series at Wilkes University. There will be some heavy-hitters in the world of literature reading their stuff next Sunday through Thursday evenings. If you can only make one night, pick Thursday – two poets and two fiction writers – you won’t be sorry. For the schedule, go to www.wilkes.edu and look on the left.

Mike Burnside is managing editor of Etruscan Press at Wilkes University. You can reach him at burnside@epix.net.

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