This poet has a word or two for you along the Las Vegas Strip — VIDEO
Shane Knode has set up the tools of his trade along the Strip, in the shade of a small tree on the sidewalk in front of the Bellagio fountains.
There’s the folding chair he sits on. The manual typewriter — the inexpensive, basic kind that every high school kid owned back in the pre-digital dark ages — that rests on his lap. And, most important of all, there’s Knode’s own verbally agile mind, which can distill the essence of anybody’s day into a few well-chosen words.
Exactly what Knode does with all of these workaday tools is explained on a sign propped against his shins:
“Open. Raw Soul Live. Here Now. Poem Store. Your topic, your price.”
Knode, 35, is a Seattle poet who has been taking a sort of busman’s holiday in Las Vegas during the past week, exploring the city and writing made-to-order poems for passers-by seeking a bit of poetic wisdom, perhaps, and a unique souvenir of their trips to Las Vegas, for sure.
The process is straightforward. Potential clients simply walk up and explain to Knode what sort of poem they want. Then, about 10 minutes later, when the poem — presented on a card about one-fourth the size of a sheet of paper — is completed, the customer, as the sign promises, simply pays whatever he or she deems appropriate.
It’s a little weird at first. If it helps, think of it as commissioning a poem from an actual poet — Knode says he’s been writing poetry since he was a kid and even now also participates in spoken word, free-form and other subsets of poetry — without all of the paperwork and pretension and at way more affordable prices.
Knode says some customers approach with topics in mind. Other poems are the product of a conversation with Knode, a low-key, personable guy, in which he’ll ask, maybe, what the customer’s day has been like and what’s on his or her mind.
It’s obvious that Knode enjoys the interaction with strangers as much as creating poems. “Your topic, your price,” he says, “but I really want to know what you’ve been going through, what you’re concerning on.”
Knode says most customers’ poems involve love or travel, and almost always are “relationship-based.” Surprisingly, he’s not yet been asked to craft a marriage proposal in the form of a poem.
“I have written poems to lovers,” he adds. “Yesterday, somebody was not sure. They wanted me to write something to their separated wife.
“But it’s interesting watching the curiosity bring people here. Then, it’s like they’re not sure, and (think) there’s something suspect about all of this, you know?”
True to form, during his gig in front of Bellagio, a group of tourists passed by, stopped, talked among themselves then, finally, drifted back to Knode. They ordered a poem about zombies and, about 20 minutes later — and only after a good deal of laughing and conversation with Knode — received “In The Incinerator,” a poem that was goofy, metaphorical, observational, a bit moving and even funny with its observation that “when I go jogging with my friend … we are, indeed, training for the zombie apocalypse. The slower of us will be devoured.”
Kristi Kremer of Seattle, the instigator of the whole thing, explains that she had seen a poet do something similar once in New Orleans, and “we got an inspired poem out of it — not about the zombie apocalypse, of course. So I thought we should try it.”
And the poem? “It’s good,” Kremer says.
Knode isn’t sure what he made on that poem, and says he makes it a point to not look at what each customer pays, tallying up his day’s earnings only when the workday has finished. Knode says he has earned as much as $120 for a poem and as little as “half of a banana.”
“They offered me the full banana,” he explains, “but then asked if I could share, so … ”
Knode works as a project manager in such fields as event management and also does layout and graphic design, and says poetry-writing can earn him anywhere from a hunded bucks a day or so at a smaller festival or a few hundred dollars at a larger one.
“Every city is different. Every event is different,” he says.
Knode can’t pinpoint the oddest topic request he has received. But he says the “most awkward” one came from a drunken man who was in lust with the woman bartender at a bar across the street and “wanted me to write, sort of, his drunken idea of what a romantic poem would have been.”
Knode delivered a poem that was more subtle and respectful than the man wanted. “I could tell by his face that he was disappointed,” he says. “He wanted this, like, lurid thing, and it just wasn’t going to happen.”
But Knode can’t recall a request that he’s turned down, either, mostly because “I have this sense of this being, also, a service.”
Read more from John Przybys at reviewjournal.com. Contact him at jprzybys@reviewjournal.com and follow @JJPrzybys on Twitter.