Aaron Belz
Encyclopedia
Aaron Belz is an American poet whose style has been compared to that
of the New York School
poets of the 1950s and 60s.
(1993), from New York University
with a Master's in Creative Writing (1995), and from Saint Louis University
with a Ph.D. in English (2007). He has taught English and Creative Writing at Fontbonne University
, Saint Louis University
, Southern Illinois University Edwardsville
, and Providence Christian College
. He currently lives in North Carolina.
His writing has appeared in Cardus, Wired, Books & Culture, First Things, The St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Exquisite Corpse, Mudfish, Gulf Coast, RealPoetik, The Washington Post, can we have our ball back?, elimae, Fence, Fine Madness, Snow Monkey and Pierogi Press. Beginning in 2008 he has also appeared in comedy venues such as the Tomorrow Show (Steve Allen Theater), Comedy Meltdown, the New Orleans Comedy Arts Festival, and Comedy on Parade, performing with Ron Lynch
, John C. Reilly
, Earl Okin
, Kate Micucci
, Charlyne Yi
, Bill Chott
, Frank Conniff
, and other professional entertainers.
of the New York School
New York School
The New York School was an informal group of American poets, painters, dancers, and musicians active in the 1950s, 1960s in New York City...
poets of the 1950s and 60s.
Biography
Aaron Belz graduated from Covenant CollegeCovenant College
Covenant College is a Christian liberal arts college in Lookout Mountain, Georgia, United States.-History:Founded in 1955 in Pasadena, California, Covenant College and Theological Seminary moved its campus to St. Louis, Missouri the following year, and, in 1965, separated from the seminary, moving...
(1993), from New York University
New York University
New York University is a private, nonsectarian research university based in New York City. NYU's main campus is situated in the Greenwich Village section of Manhattan...
with a Master's in Creative Writing (1995), and from Saint Louis University
Saint Louis University
Saint Louis University is a private, co-educational Jesuit university located in St. Louis, Missouri, United States. Founded in 1818 by the Most Reverend Louis Guillaume Valentin Dubourg SLU is the oldest university west of the Mississippi River. It is one of 28 member institutions of the...
with a Ph.D. in English (2007). He has taught English and Creative Writing at Fontbonne University
Fontbonne University
Fontbonne University is a co-ed liberal arts Catholic institution of approximately 3,000 students in Clayton, Missouri, a suburb of St. Louis. It is a member of the St. Louis Intercollegiate Athletic Conference Fontbonne is accredited by the Higher Learning Commission and is a member of the North...
, Saint Louis University
Saint Louis University
Saint Louis University is a private, co-educational Jesuit university located in St. Louis, Missouri, United States. Founded in 1818 by the Most Reverend Louis Guillaume Valentin Dubourg SLU is the oldest university west of the Mississippi River. It is one of 28 member institutions of the...
, Southern Illinois University Edwardsville
Southern Illinois University Edwardsville
Southern Illinois University Edwardsville, commonly abbreviated SIUE, is a four-year coed public university in Edwardsville, Illinois about from St. Louis, Missouri. SIUE was established in 1957 as an extension of Southern Illinois University Carbondale, and is the younger of the two largest...
, and Providence Christian College
Providence Christian College
Providence Christian College is a four-year liberal arts college in Pasadena, California. Founded in 2005, it is an independent, confessionally Reformed college with no formal denominational ties....
. He currently lives in North Carolina.
His writing has appeared in Cardus, Wired, Books & Culture, First Things, The St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Exquisite Corpse, Mudfish, Gulf Coast, RealPoetik, The Washington Post, can we have our ball back?, elimae, Fence, Fine Madness, Snow Monkey and Pierogi Press. Beginning in 2008 he has also appeared in comedy venues such as the Tomorrow Show (Steve Allen Theater), Comedy Meltdown, the New Orleans Comedy Arts Festival, and Comedy on Parade, performing with Ron Lynch
Ron Lynch
Ron Lynch is an American stand-up comedian, actor, and writer. He has appeared in a number of movies and television shows. He has worked as a voice actor for several animated shows, including Home Movies and Tom Goes to the Mayor, and has made guest appearances on Dr...
, John C. Reilly
John C. Reilly
John Christopher Reilly, Jr. is an American film and theater actor, singer, and comedian. Debuting in Casualties of War in 1989, he is one of several actors whose careers were launched by Brian De Palma. To date, he has appeared in more than fifty films, including three separate films in 2002...
, Earl Okin
Earl Okin
Earl Okin is a London singer-songwriter, musician and comedian.Born in Carshalton, Surrey, he has lived in Notting Hill since he was 5 years old, holds a degree in philosophy from the University of Kent at Canterbury and worked as a schoolmaster for 11 years before going 'full time'.He was signed...
, Kate Micucci
Kate Micucci
Kate Micucci born March 31, 1980) is an American actress, comedian and singer-songwriter, whose first major television exposure was as Stephanie Gooch in Scrubs, and later as Shelly in Raising Hope...
, Charlyne Yi
Charlyne Yi
Charlyne Amanda Yi is an American actress, comedian, musician, writer, and painter. Her performances do not include joke-telling as in standup comedy; instead, she uses different tactics such as music, magic, games, and often audience participation...
, Bill Chott
Bill Chott
Bill Chott is an American actor and comedian.- Early life :During his school years, Chott appeared in numerous plays and musicals. As a graduate of Ritenour High School he was inducted into the school's hall of fame for his tremendous success...
, Frank Conniff
Frank Conniff
Frank Conniff is a writer and actor who is perhaps best known for his portrayal of TV's Frank on Mystery Science Theater 3000 .-Early work:...
, and other professional entertainers.
Criticism
- "Fractals", Cardus/Comment, January 2010
- "Where Have All The Poems Gone?", byFaith Magazine, February 2008
- "Do We Care? Do We Dare?", St. Louis Magazine, September 2006
Reviews
Aaron Belz's enjoyable second collection flaunts its unfashionable accessibility. Belz embraces narrative, brevity, down-to-earth diction, and slapstick. His approach resembles the New York School's lighter side, where Ashbery's use of Popeye in a poem evokes pop art and O'Hara's conversational tone disarms the reader to open him up for heavier material that follows...There's no gesture here that's not pervasive, whether it's self-effacement, dissatisfaction, or failure to achieve common ground with others.
Silliness is the engine that drives this collection, but Belz proves his abilities by oscillating from the dryly sarcastic to the gut-wrenchingly convicting. At times, his tone verges on scathing and even violent. In "What," after exchanging cursory, impersonal emails with a forgotten former acquaintance, he relegates the correspondences to the inbox labeled "I hate my life." Later, in the short lyric piece "you are you," the poet elaborates on the distinction between "you" and "us," noting that the only real cause for alarm is "when you show up, coked up, crazy, / and end up passed out on the floor / with your cell phone playing a melody / just inches from your unclasped hand[.]" These kinds of inverted expectations that Belz stows away in his poems are what draw the reader in. By coloring his insights with such a poignant wit, Belz can successfully blend the poetic sensibilities of harshness and comedy.
Not every reader will take to a poem that begins, "You bore me. So be it./ I bore you and enjoy doing it." Then there's the line, "I have been thinking about the love-hat relationship," which may provoke a few Bronx cheers. Still, there is room in this twittering world for some oddly resonant deadpan absurdity, especially when it's concise and readable, as are most of the poems in Belz's second collection (after The Bird Hoverer): "I sat with my head sort of hanging—in the tiled atrium./ I sat in the tiled atrium—with my head sort of hanging." Though he evokes the hip coastal schools, Belz is essentially Midwestern and excels at transforming folksiness into dissonance. And he is best when he goes beyond silly, as in "Worms," a shrewd depiction of the human mind couched as a treatise on alternate modes of transportation: "Cyclists, as a rule, think bikers are cheating,/ because they have engines. Pedestrians, in turn,/ think cyclists are cheating... People in wheelchairs think pedestrians/ have a leg up, for obvious reasons...." VERDICT You'll want to put this book down, but you probably won't. Recommended. —Ellen Kaufman, Baruch Coll., New York
Belz asks us to be lucid enough to get the facts right and also to make the facts more grand than they really are: a poetics that is masterfully strange, weirdly comic, and as innovative and conventional as Aristotle’s plausible impossibilities. With their ethics of alterity, their faith in the strangeness we see in each other, these poems hover, bend back against themselves, and with charm make no pretense but to remind us that life “is a dirty secret / that literature exalts” and to wish us best of luck in everything we do.
In Aaron Belz's The Bird Hoverer, traditional poetic forms meet celebrities, strangeness, and biblical plagues, setting the stage for a hilarious, fiercely intelligent collection of poems.
With Plausible Worlds, his first chapbook, Aaron Belz offers us a poetry of exhilaration and exuberance where the self is drowned in a flood of pop cultural referents fading as quickly as a television commercial or a movie trailer.