Suzanne Burns

…just another Whole in the Wall.On a recent road trip to the sleepy berg of Mitchell, 82 miles from Bend, my husband and I stepped into a world that would make David Lynch jealous. Mitchell, population 170, is the kind of town that embodies the wholesome earnestness of Agent Cooper of Twin Peaks praising a small town's coffee and cherry pie blended with the quasi-dark undertones of the Twilight Zone. Where was Rod Serling, stepping in front Mitchell's Whole in the Wall, a dilapidated shack that once sold modest treasures, to wax philosophic about the prizes and pitfalls of small town life?

Our unofficial tour guide, a friendly woman corralling her curls into a stocking cap, invited us into her second-hand store to warm our hands by the woodstove. On this unseasonably cold day in mid-April, our guide motioned toward a card table heavy with tattered Garbage Pail Kids trading cards, a Flowbee Haircut System (the intriguing device you once saw on late-night infomercials that cuts hair through a masochistic vacuuming process), and too many bodice-ripping romance novels to count.

Call me the tumblin’ diceLast month I found myself the substitute player at a Bunco party where every one of the thirteen women was a former high school cheerleader. Me, the person who skipped any high school assembly remotely promoting "spirit" to drink coffee at Denny's, the classic dichotomy of Us vs. Them, the Jocks vs. the Goths, intense as gang warfare.

When I received the invitation to be a substitute player in the form of a cheery call from my sister-in-law, a twinge of post-angst nostalgia ground beneath my thirty-five-year-old bones. I was forced to cross a line no less important than a political or religious conviction, hanging out with my hometown's ex-cheerleaders. Still, I said yes, intrigued with the chance to observe my generation's version of something close to the American Dream.
I won't pretend to grasp why some girls want to be cheerleaders any more than I can understand why groups of women all over the country meet once a month to roll dice. And I hated to admit it, but I was nervous. As they say, I didn't want to throw away the "street cred" I had earned from years of calf-busting platform shoes and Morrissey concerts and too many bottles of black nail polish to count just to fit in - even for one night.

The work beneath the gloves…Boxers don't walk. Boxers don't strut. Boxers glide, eyes forward,
their profiles reminiscent of Dick Tracy, strong and dashing, with a
hint of vulnerability that belies the ballet of brutality to come.

Noted
author Joyce Carol Oates refers to boxing as, "the lost religion of
masculinity," and the horde that gathered on a Friday night in the
Middle Sister Building of the Deschutes County Fairgrounds for the
preliminary bouts of the Oregon State Golden Gloves championship came
to re-christen this loss. Men dominated the throng as Ozzy Osbourne,
Rammstein and Mexican rap detonated from speakers. The overpowering
smell of nachos and popcorn blended with the bittersweet aroma of mixed
drinks. The bartender, resplendent in a jewel-toned vest and bow tie,
attempted to create a little bit of Las Vegas elegance on a
linen-draped card table positioned near a hall water fountain.

Noted literary critic Harold Bloom calls spoken word poetry, "the death
of art" but I prefer comparing the monthly Bend Poetry Slam with an
Andy Warhol quote: "Art is what you can get away with."

The academic
community has criticized poetry slams since their inception in the
mid-80s because they challenge what is literary merit, though the same
devices of repetition, alliteration and rhyme, beloved by classic
poets, are shunned by critics when used in a slam setting.
Poetry
began as a way for ancient societies to record history. Over time,
iambic pentameter became the most common meter in the English language.
Think Shakespeare's sonnets. Think of this line, "to swell the ground
and plump the hazel shells" by Keats. Then how about, "complacency is
not the common place to cultivate the seeds of resurrection" mirroring
this poetic construction, from a poem by Jason Graham, who performs and
regularly places in the top three at the slam as Mosley Wotta?

As a writer, I am dubious about whether creative writing can be "taught," suspicious of an art form that, when everything is flowing, brings words that link themselves together with an almost supernatural effortlessness. But one conversation with Ekiwah Adler-Beléndez, the youngest author, at just 19, to present a workshop during this year's Nature of Words, has opened my mind. Ekiwah, who has been called a poetic prodigy, began writing poems at the age of 10, he told me, because, "I fell in love with a girl and had to write a poem about it. It was the first feeling that poetry really pulled me into its world. It wasn't so much that I chose it, but that it chose me."
What struck me most about Ekiwah was that, for all of his success, including multiple book publications and the much-coveted respect and endorsement from poet Mary Oliver, he seemed just as interested in me and my work as a writer, and also what he can learn from coming to Bend.