The Tim Seibles BOOKBIOBOARDGAME: Tracing a poetic lineage

Abstract

The Tim Seibles BOOKBIOBOARDGAMETracing a poetic lineage Terrance Hayes (bio) Click for larger view View full resolution [End Page 134] dear lucky recipient congratulations, tim seibles fan! You are receiving this very limited edition of our BOOKBIOBOARDGAME for an extended reading of Voodoo Libretto: New and Selected Poems, by Tim Seibles, released in early 2022. Rereadings may be done alone or in pairs at your preferred light source and hour. A few members of our expert reading laboratory have reported enjoying the game best with Derridean deconstructions of the erotic in Tim Seibles. Our principles for enjoying the game are interchangeable with those of the Frank O'Hara Meditations in an Emergency Room and Board Game and the Bob Kaufman Golden Sardine Eating Board Game. But with Seibles we wanted to examine a classic midcentury Black baby boomer ironman work-a-day poet. Seibles is a poet who straddles our poetic past and future like Janus, the god of entrances and exits. ________ You are also receiving our Encyclopedic Century Poet Magic Reversible card deck. One side bears images of our extensive and ever-expanding collection of quintessential poets* and one side is a slanting mystical tarot deck of poetry trivia, scholia, tidbits, and footnotes. [End Page 135] CONTENTS INTRODUCTION YOUR TIM SEIBLES CHARM PLAY PLAYING STRATEGIES PERSONA POETS GAME VERSION STRATEGY WINNING THE GAME SAMPLE BOARD GAME RECAP BOOKS READING EQUIPMENT • Game board, constructed out of Ouija board and virtual pen and ink • Encyclopedic Century Poet Magic Reversible card deck • Tim Seibles charm (player piece) • Dice Click for larger view View full resolution [End Page 136] INTRODUCTION tim seibles was born poised at the middle of the century between Brown v. Board of Education and the founding of Motown. Seibles was born in the year Emmett Till was murdered, one of the national shocks that set the Civil Rights era in motion. Tim Seibles was born at the birth of the civil and right. The proliferation of television meant a proliferation of images of horror at home and abroad. Tim Seibles was born at the birth of popular culture. His work is one measure of Time. He came of age as political change slowly evolved into social change for Black people. ________ "The Word 1964–1981" from Body Moves, his 1988 debut, begins, "In Philadelphia / I went back to the school / we integrated. The bunch of us / had no idea how big a deal it was." The scene returns twenty-four years later in "Allison Wolff," from 2012's Fast Animal, a National Book Award finalist: "Was she Jewish? I was seventeen, // an 'Afro-American' senior transferred to a suburban school / that held just a few of us." The poem speaks in the register of memoir and the timbre of personal letters. The references to "the bunch of us" and "few of us" across the poems underscore the communal and cultural confidence encircling the racial interaction. In "Allison Wolff" "the monsters that murdered / Emmett Till—were they everywhere? / I didn't know. I didn't know enough." In the poem, Black nationalism tangles with integration. Freedom tangles with cultural solidarity. The poems are full of brothers, Black men and Black boys, Black fathers and sons in earshot of Till's murder. ________ We encourage you to look closely at the measure of time in the body of work and in the body of Tim Seibles in America, and the spirit of his poems on earth. [End Page 137] Click for larger view View full resolution [End Page 139] YOUR TIM SEIBLES CHARM make sure all poems have been experienced before assembly. Remove the Janus-head and insert a watch battery (not included) beneath the hat. Assemble the parts of his grasp and reach first. The fingers are delicate. To prevent typos and bruises, do not use excessive force. Seibles belongs to a diminishing breed of troubadour poet, a tribe of bards and guitarists with agile oversized hands, angular Thelonious Monk goatees, and smiles full of affectionate vocabularies. In Body Moves, the poem "The Snail" opens, "Sisters, / I am weak of your kisses / the wanting of them," announcing the images of mouths and kisses that will populate the poems...