PJ Swift and Ellyn Maybe, Word Troubadours (2024) 32 pages, poetry, $10.00 PDF; $15.00 Physical book. Order here.
Ellyn Maybe is a spoken word artist I first came across when she was in the Los Angeles area about 15 years ago working in a creative group centered more or less around Beyond Baroque that included the likes of Yvonne de la Vega, Ray Manzarek (formerly of the Doors), and Michael C. Ford who took Beat concepts, wrapped them in a confessional flare with a punk rock graffiti edge, and rapped them - sometimes whimsically, sometimes cooly, sometimes sing-songy - over jazzy soundtracks. This is the first of her works I have encountered as a purely on-the-page experience. This is also a collaboration with PJ Swift.
This creation is titled Word Troubadours and music is therefore an important theme throughout. Music, singing, performing, visual art - this collection is the space where poetry intersects with most other forms of artistic expression. PJ Swift presents the metaphor of poem as a Rave and Ellyn suggests that life is a Musical. I personally would argue against both concepts as being either misconceived or over-romanticised, but each to his/her own. Still, that gives you an idea of the highly unconventional, almost dreamscape of these poems. And I'm always excited by hyper-imagined, nonconventional mentalscapes in poetry.
Ellyn Maybe includes a kind of personal Odyssey with "Ellyn Maybe's Dream" where she travels to Prague - whether only in dream or also in waking life, I'm not sure - and has a transformative experience that involves a gargoyle.
Some phrases I wrote down that stand out:
"We resist the temptation to crawl into the world/ and pull our psyches over our heads./... We need our exuberance more than our math." - "Cinema Dance" - Ellyn Maybe
"I know how men make women wear armor of all kinds" - "I Heard What Sounded Like A Song", Ellyn Maybe
"Perhaps life is like a multiple choice question my friend/ The answer's in a circle dance with no beginning or end." - "Somewhere in the Sky", Ellyn Maybe
"an era whose burdens/ have granted no choice" - "Creation of Myths" - PJ Swift
"avalanche in the bones of the land" - "Train", Ellyn Maybe
May these Word Troubadours keep on soothing our souls with their songs and stories of our time for the ages to come.
