If there was ever defining characteristics of the Nj Poetry Renaissance if seen objectively from the outside I think observers would definitely notice that while open and welcome to everyone it is profoundly a millennial working class movement. The audience range in age but if you threw a dart into the crowd you’d for sure hit someone below the age of 35. You’d notice that there is a doomer-vibe- not woe is me but hey this is a poetry show after all- but rather that the poems focus on the now. The poets sing ballads of love and loss and sex and drugs and all those bohemian things that stand in the face of polite society (as you would expect with anything that I was involved in). But one of the most noticeable things that unfortunately the documentary Voices In The Garden didn’t showcase is the prevalence and importance of the comedians that have formed the life blood of this moment in time.
The mixing of poetry and comedy has been happening for as long as stand-up has existed which by all accounts is a purely American art form. Comedians and poets have been occupying open mic space usually with one denomination largely out sizing the other all across the country for some time. Usually it’s by accident. Usually the two don’t interact much. The poet is trying to be noticed or sell books and the comedian is typically just trying to do time and work out their bits. I have always been a fan of comedy. I watch loads of comedy specials, listen to comedy podcasts and before the Renaissance had begun I was in the process of transitioning to stand up. I was taking the train up to Manhattan and bombing on my days off in dark rooms in front of five people. But I knew the game and was eager to do more and more. At that time I thought my poetry career was over and didn’t have any interest in doing those dreaded zoom shows.
I was already taking from comedy for sometime. For my featured sets when I’d tour I had begun to actually focus on a set. Something that poets don’t normally do. They just pick out poems at random usually when they’re already in front of the damn mic. I’d tell funny stories and interact with the crowd in between the poems and this was to the chagrin of the old timers who think poets should “just read the damn poems” but I knew the times called for something else. All through the late 2010s when Nathan Stolte and I would tour we would focus on building sets that were captivating. We would listen to stand up albums as we would drive from Kansas to Missouri to Ohio to wherever. Also the work ethic of the comedians was enthralling. A comedian will work on their set. They will hit as many mikes as possible to refine their stage presence and their material. This is still counteractive to most poetry scenes in the country where even some of the best areas will only have five or so shows a month. I long theorized that if poets had a circuit like comedians and even musicians that they would get better and better. We tried it back in the old scene 2015-2018 and one day I’ll write a whole piece on that but it didn’t hit the mark I envisioned. But with the Renaissance I found myself hosting a bunch of shows and the idea of a circuit was beginning to be realized.
But right in the beginning a happy accident occurred that completely changed the entire formula and spirit of what we were beginning to do. One night Angelo Gingerelli and I decided to mix poetry and comedy together not as just some light intermingling but as an actual concept of a show. Two poets. Two comedians. The two of us as hosts followed by an open mic. That’s when we created Poems & Punchlines.
How It Happened
So Angelo Gingerelli is the guy who largely put the Jersey Shore Comedy Scene on the map from literally nothing back in the mid 2010s. He hosted comedy shows in Asbury and then built a raving comedy scene at the rock club in Long Branch the Brighton Bar. When I started hosting Bards Off Broadway at Nip n Tuck in 2021, it was the first and third Mondays as it is now but he hosted a comedy open mic the 2nd and 4th Mondays. One night he was sick with the covid and the bar asked if I would host his mic. I didn’t think I could. I was a poet. Sure by this point I had done a half dozen comedy open mics but I didn’t know what the temperature would be. I knew that I wasn’t going to pull out my shitty bits in front of these working comics but I’d do a poem or two. Fuck it. I did it all the other Mondays anyway. Afterwards the comedians approached me and said they dug it. At the time his mic was just Comedy Open Mic at Nip n Tuck and it wouldn’t be until a month later when he called about bringing me on board. We talked about trying it out. The comedy/ poetry thing had been happening inadvertently for forever but there was no actually mixing. Just people waiting for their names to be read. We figured we’d give it a try. A noble experiment. We would do two shows of this new format and if it didn’t click that we would go our separate ways. Mike Lauro who hosted a show in Staten Island and would later host Highjinks- a sister show to Puff Puff Poems- would christen it with the name that it still holds today Poems & Punchlines.
We rolled the dice.
The Experiment and the Grand Thesis Of The Mix
Poetry and Comedy are both spoken word art forms but both have striking differences in their cultures. A poem is written for the page and then performed. Some of the greatest poets in America never gave a damn to learn how to perform. They haunt the universities and bookstores droning out their words and this has rippled through the fabric of the broader poetic. Poets largely never really cared to work on their performance styles. If you did you were immediately branded slam or worse a performance poet. While comedians needed an audience. The bits were written for the audience. There was no academic attachment. Comedy has become a massive art in pop culture and poetry has lingered and continued to degrade into obscurity with the help of the very people who don the poet hat.
The thought was would the mix of poets and comedians lead to a melting pot between the two? Would the poets rub off on the comedians? Would the comedians in turn do the same to the poets? Would the audiences mesh together?
Poets are much more sensitive creatures while comedians regularly tear into each other for sport. In poetry there is a sense of camaraderie and with the Renaissance it was like a mission statement that we were working together to popularize the word but in comedy where there really are opportunities to blow up and more money available so there is a much more solo mindset for many comedians. A competitive nature where they see the other comedians as competing for the opportunities that are around. Not always but go to some comedy open mics and you’ll pick up what I’m putting down.
We really didn’t know if any of this would work at all and there were so many things in the air. But really this experiment wasn’t even my own. It actually started a whole lot earlier with a comedian I met at my first open mic way back in 2013.
If It Wasn’t For John Murdock None Of This Would Have Happened
In 2013 I attended my first open mic at a Vegan Bakery in Matawan, New Jersey small working class town sandwiched between North and Central Jersey. Chelsea Palermo ran the mic and it was the same show where I would meet Cord Moreski who I would end up starting the whole thing with later but at that same show I met a comedian named John Murdock. See Chelsea hosted a variety open mic with poets and acoustic musicians and John was the sole comedian. He organized shows in NYC at the drag restaurant Lucky Chengs and his folks lived in the Garden State. He approached me and liked my poetry and I loved his comedy. He would do these wild rants about politics and it would get absurd and hilarious. He generated money by making balloons in Washington Square Park but no not balloon animals but perverse constructions of balloon vagina hats, monkeys jerking off and prevalent balloon cocks. We began to hang out at the open mics and I was infatuated with his stories of being a comedian, of making balloon dicks for tourists and his dreaded beef with the Elmos and Spidermans that haunted Time Square and the violent territorial felons that donned their outfits. He was billed as The Gentleman Scumbag and I was hooked.
Chelsea booked big benefit shows with poets, musicians and occasionally a comedian. Chris Rockwell had been running big variety shows for so long and comedians like Mark Heneley and Jack Steiger would begin their journeys on his stages. But there was no focused poetry/comedy show. Murdock was certain this was the future.
We began to talk about the mixing of the two art forms. He was so full of energy and I was so new just twenty two and in a whole new weird world. I would perform with him twice in the city as a poet on bills of comedians and both times I would dye a horrible poets death. See typically poets never really have to worry about truly bombing because every poem is met with an applause break. And if not the poet just mutters a “thank you” and that summons the mechanical clap but this was not a poetry reading and the only one who clapped was John. I remember being destroyed and he just told me that it was the game that I would never bomb like that again and this was bootcamp. He was right.
We would try and bring our thesis to fruition at the Brighton Bar, the same bar that shortly after Angelo would build his name and we called it One Species Entertainment. On Tuesdays we would do a poetry/ comedy show and the venue even made us a dope poster. The first show went okay and it was largely girlfriends and friends and family and I’d watch him pace the floor before the venue violently sucking on his Blu e-cigarette and I never understood the wild anxiety that would consume him but now I know it is the host walk. The existential rattling that consumes the bones before a show. Attendance. I do it every show.
The show went bust. No one cared. It didn’t work at the time and this crushed us. During the last show when literally only a handful of people showed up and a drunk began trying to sell stolen radios and boomboxes during my set. Worse that during John’s set the bartender, a real sonofabitch dragged a ladder across the floor it screeched until he parked it in front of the stage and changed a lightbulb. Ugh.
We gave up on the idea. John Murdock would host one of my book release shows years later at Espresso Joes and we drifted away as the years passed. But I always thought of him and what he did for me. I thought of his long talks about mixing poetry and comedy together. I thought of maybe the time just wasn’t right.
Later Sam Rubinstein, a poet who I had known since 2011 and had gone to community college with tried to do something similar making funny poems and bringing them to comedy clubs. We even talked about a tour but just like in 2013, in 2016 when he was swinging the culture just wasn’t there yet. Maybe it was a silly idea.
It wasn’t.
The Rest As They Say Is Now History
Poems & Punchlines became a wild success and the combination of poets and comedians became a defining moment for what would become the NJ Poetry Renaissance. It was originally supposed to only be the Poems & Punchlines show that would mix the two together but quickly it spread through all the shows I host. The two art forms swelled together and created a dynamically entertaining concoction that still continues to blossom through today.
Poets began to focus on their sets. To hit open mics. To work on making their sets entertaining and digestible for the audience. Comedians became more experimental some like Nick Sanchez even began making satirical poems like his beloved “The Descent of Damian Rucci” that is a wild poem done in my voice that always kills in any Renaissance room he’s in. We’re bringing a new show together this Fall Bards On The Beach in Belmar.
Becky Terranova a poet in the scene and once host of Streetlight Poetica in Keyport began to weave comedy into her sets. John Kurschner a fantastic comedian who runs Applejacks Comedy in Keansburg booked me to feature at his all comedy show and the crowd was into it which was surprising because everyone in the bar looked like they had at one point fought a cop or been one. Becky would also feature at the same show later. I would be a judge for Comedy Fight Club a roast battle.
The blend here in New Jersey has worked wildly well and I couldn’t imagine it going any other way. But this is not where the story is going to end.
This Fall, we are going to bring Poems & Punchlines on the road to show the rest of the country that it can be done.
Hey John, you were right even back then brother.
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Niiice. Bookmarked too!
Excellent document. I am going to bookmark this and go back and re read again and again. Thank.