By Annie Holub
Arizona Daily Wildcat
February 5, 1998

Arizona Book Festival Drops Down South for the Night

Photo courtesy of Silver Wave Records Arizona Daily Wildcat Joy Harjo and Poetic Justice perform Thursday night at the Rialto Theatre, as part of the Grace Notes performance.

The Northern Arizona Book Festival kicks off Friday, Feb. 6 in Flagstaff, but tonight in Tucson is the preview. Grace Notes: An Evening with Quincy Troupe, Joy Harjo & Poetic Justice, Alfredo Vea, Jr., and Dana Jennings comes to the Rialto Theatre at 7 p.m. It's a reintroduction of poetry to the masses, ready to reverberate within the theater walls.

Poetry readings are the simplest, and yet the most refined, form of entertainment; the poet merely reads, tells. But so much is being projected into the open verbally ; it's imperative that you pay attention. And that's just with plain old readings.

Grace Notes' lineup of poets consists of people who have been written up in literary magazines and arts journals as musicians who use language as their instrument, creating melodies from words. The entourage will more than likely provide an exhilarating performance.

That's something both Quincy Troupe and Joy Harjo concentrate on: the performance. "Performance became a storytelling event around the initial urge for the poetry," Harjo said in a 1997 interview in the Bloomsbury Review. Joy Harjo and her band Poetic Justice mesh together poetry and music, truly presenting the work instead of just reading it, making it doubly intense.

Quincy Troupe's poetry has been likened to jazz solos. It flows rhythmically and quickly - your eye skips across the page, led by the poem. You're not reading it, it's reading itself to you. His work is no doubt floating on the edge of the poetic trend everyone's talking about now - the revival of rhyme and rhythm in performance poetry.

Grace Notes could help to unravel a current myth: the idea that no one seems to really care about poetry anymore; no one wants to go hang out in coffee shops and read/write/listen to poetry. Which is why the event tonight is so interesting; it's a poetry event the size of a concert, part of a huge festival celebrating books.

"The Northern Arizona Book Festival is one of the largest literary gatherings in the Southwest," says Jeff Biggers of the Coconino County Literacy Volunteers. The eight-day road show stretches from Nogales all the way up to a place called Kayenta on the reservation. It's "truly an Arizona event, something everyone in the state can take part in," adds Biggers.

The novelty goes deeper still. Not only is it poetry in Tucson tonight, it's performance and creativity of expression rearing its adept head, striking the hands of those who believe poetry is not cool enough. Yet another aspect of the whole draw of the performance is its location in the much-heralded Rialto Theatre.

"The revival of the Rialto is perhaps one of the most exciting things to happen in Tucson in decades," says Biggers, "[It may even be] the next Temple of Music and Art."

So this deal tonight, with well-known poets Quincy Troupe and Joy Harjo, is a big deal inside an even bigger deal.

Arizona Daily Wildcat Quincy Troupe performs his jazz-influenced poetry tonight as part of "Grace Notes." Troupe also conducts a writing workshop this afternoon from 4-5:30 at Hotel Congress.

Troupe is known in the jazz world as well, not only as a poet who incorporates improvisational musical style into his writing, but as someone who was a close friend of Miles Davis. He co-wrote Miles: the Autobiography in 1989, and a memoir of Troupe's own experiences with Davis is forthcoming. His most recent poetry book, Avalanche, came out in 1996.

Harjo's poetry works within the realm of the earth - her pieces have that earthy spiritual feel to them. A Native American who writes poetry and plays the saxophone, she has released a cassette tape with horn solos accompanying the spoken words (The Woman Who Fell From the Sky), and a CD with her band Poetic Justice (Letter From the End of the Twentieth Century); she's also helped edit an anthology of Native American poetry, The Enemy's Language, that contains works by well-known poets such as Leslie Marmon Silko.

Alfredo Vea Jr. and Dana Jennings are also slated to perform tonight. Vea is the author of La Maravilla and The Silver Cloud Cafe and was born in Arizona. Jennings, also a novelist, has written three nationally acclaimed works and is an editor at the New York Times.

The whole shebang benefits the UA Extended University Writing Works Center Scholarship Fund, and they're asking for a $5 donation. All four of the writers will be up north in Flagstaff for the book festival, which features Toni Morrison, Demetria Martinez, and John Nichols. The festival kicks off Friday at 7:30 p.m. at the Procknow Auditorium on the Northern Arizona University campus with A Poetry Extravaganza, in which Troupe and Harjo will perform as well.

Morrison will give a lecture Saturday at 8 p.m., in the Ardrey Auditorium. The festival runs through Sunday, with readings and lectures all over the city of Flagstaff, all of which are free and open to the public.

In other Tucson-related news, Quincy Troupe will also give a Writing Workshop today from 4 to 5:30 p.m. at Hotel Congress, 311 E. Congress. The originally announced time has changed from 2 to 4 p.m., due to Troupe's travel plans, so make note of it if you've been planning on going. Pre-registration is required, and it costs $15, but you'll get to discuss poetry and the like with Troupe to get into the proper mindset for the performance.

For more information on the Book Festival, call the Coconino County Literacy Volunteers at (520) 556-0313. For more info on Grace Notes, call the Extended University at 626-4444. Doors open at 6:30 tonight at the Rialto, and the performance should get underway at 7 and leave you free to wander the streets in a post-artistic haze at about 9:30.