I first encountered Cesar’s poetry at the Lyrical Exchange open mic at Queen Bees in North Park San Diego. Attending an open mic is a bit like taking the pulse of a city. Dozens of vulnerable artists stand up in front of you and lay their souls at your feet. To be mocked. To be loved. To be understood. And –with any luck –to help you feel more understood. To connect. To be real. It’s a direct channel to the city’s heart. Why it beats and why it bleeds.
This is true with any performance art be it music, comedy, dance, or theater. Each is a unique and beautiful expression of the human soul but listening to someone read or recite their poetry in front of a live audience is particularly raw and intimate.
Perhaps because there is not the safety of fiction, humor, or melody for the poet to hide behind. Perhaps because poetry is so unmarketable that any thoughts of fame or fortune must be banished from the poet’s motivation. Regardless of the reason, having someone trust you with the words in their heart –not on paper or screen with time and distance to protect them but right there, in that room, at that moment –is a true honor.
Not all the poetry you hear at an open mic is good mind you. Not in the literary or performance arts sense. It doesn’t always have clear cadence or distinctive metaphors. Still, it’s a piece of a person who is willing to stand up and share and that by itself is beautiful.
Sometimes, however, –often even –the poetry you hear is masterfully crafted poetry in the literary and performance arts sense as well as the raw, vulnerable sense, and that’s when the real magic happens. These are the jewels that stay with you for weeks or even months after they have been performed.
What puts magic in poetry? It’s hard to say. Each poet –each poem really –has it’s own unique rhythm and flavor. Any rule you try to ascribe will quickly be discredited by an example of when it was broken successfully. There are no, and never will be, any rules to art. Art is anarchy. It is authenticity. It is a willingness to give up anything you think you know and experience life as if for the first time every day. It is abandon. It is surrender.
Still, one can abstract what one loves about a particular poem or poet in an attempt to understand what makes it it’s own unique kind of magic.
In spoken word or performed poetry there are two elements: the presentation and the poem itself. The performance is equally as important as the poem if not more. Some spoken word poets don’t even call their pieces poems. They call them scripts or simply pieces. These pieces don’t necessarily contain any of the traditional poetic devices like alliteration or simile (although, of course, they can). They tend to be more direct with a repetitive rhythm and many spoken word poets have a background in rap or hip-hop. Each word is conveyed with emotion and conviction like an actor’s monologue with an emphasis on engaging and entertaining the audience. A good performance can be downright sobering to watch as the poet takes you with them into every crevice of their piece.
I was drawn to Cesar’s poetry because it contained many of the elements from traditional poetry that I love, like lyrical phrasing and obscure metaphors, while still maintaining the directness that lends itself so well to performance. His work deals largely with themes of love and mental health with deep echoes of longing for connection and healing. He wrote his first poem in high school when he entered a deep depression after almost becoming a father. Traces of “what if” and “what could have been” still make appearances in his pieces today.
In Amanda Palmer’s book The Art of Asking she talks about how artists create with pieces of themselves. You are the raw material of your art but the degree to which you blend and puree that raw matter before sending it out into the world is up to you. Cesar says his work his mostly just him with only a moment or two in the blender before it is released. Perhaps that is another element to the charm of his work. His openness in relaying his own struggles in the hope that they might help others face theirs.
After all, isn’t that what artists have been doing for centuries? Giving voice to the things that keep us up at night. Speaking the truths that we don’t dare tell our parents and bosses and sometimes even our friends to remind us that we are not alone. That we are all human. That at the core we are all fighting the same monsters and none of us are instagram perfect.
The best poetry gives us permission to be broken along with the freedom to heal. It finds beauty in the darkness instead of trying to hide it so that we can become strong enough to create our own light. Our own magic.
A beautiful example of this comes from one of Cesar’s poetic heroes, T.S. Elliot. Elliot’s poetry about his life as a bisexual helped Ceasar come to realize and accept that he himself was pansexual. This is a brave thing to own about yourself even today but in Elliot’s time the stigma was far more universal and pockets of acceptance were much harder to find. Writing about his sexuality and then proceeding to publish what he had written was nothing short of heroism and Cesar is not the only person who I’ve spoken with who has found it easier to be themselves because of Elliot’s work. My first girlfriend admired Elliot for the same reason.
In the end it all goes back to the rawness that even the “bad” poetry has at a reading. Without that underlying current of vulnerability and authenticity none of the metaphors or rhythms or even stellar performances have any real meaning. Without the feeling and honesty behind the words they are only sounds. It is the humanity that makes them magic. It is me. It is you. It is us.
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