by Lisa D'Acquisto

When Andy Warhol arrived on the scene in the mid-'60s with his framed Campell's soup can, rubbing elbows with rock icons The Velvet Underground, for the first time art merged with pop culture.

When beat poet William S. Burroughs went so far as to release a spoken word CD featuring rock band Sonic Youth and make a cameo apppearance in the unsettling film Drugstore Cowboy, poets took it a step farther as pop culture entertainers.

And when Milwaukee poets T.J. Richter and Dan Hanrahan decided to share the stage with local rock bands, blatant showbiz was added to poetry here and finally made relevant to local entertainment.

Formally termed "performance poetry," this art form has been developing nationally over the past four years. Larger cities like New York, Los Angeles, and Chicago led the way with Poetry competitions called "slams" in smaller taverns and coffee houses. The new form dictates that poets no longer have to recite their work in traditional literary fashion. They use music and visual tactics to transform poetry readings into a dramatic experience.

"When I say the documentary Poetry in Motion, which was put out in the late '80s, a lot of the poets were still reading from the paper and not putting any energy into it. But when I went to the national poetry slam in Chicago recently, maybe one or two people were reading from the paper, but everyone else was kicking out total live energy. It was spontaneous," says the 30-year-old Richter, a Brooklyn, New York native who relocated here in December 1990.

Poetry slams stared filtering into the Milwaukee scene about two years ago when the Y-Not II Tavern, 706 E. Lyon St., began scheduling the open mike competitions on a weekly basis. Local poet Geo Kiesow eventually adopted the responsibility of scheduling, and shortly after brought open mike poetry events to the Coffee House on 19th and Wisconsin. Another local poet, Sheila Spargur, also initiated a weekly open mike event called "Poets' Monday" at Cafe Melange a year ago.

One of the majority of poets who pursue these live readings, Richter and Hanrahan are two of the few who actually approach them professionally as performance art. They've taken it even further by scheduling themselves on bills with local rock bands, courting the interest of non-poetry connoisseurs.

"I did a show at Harpo's once and it was definitely a challenge because the stage was too small, I didn't get to move around the way I wanted to, and there were a bunch of dudes watching a Packer game at the bar," says Hanrahan, a 24-year-old who has been performning for a little over a year.

"I realize it's a new art form. There are no poets on Letterman. They're not doing the bar circuit the way rock 'n' rollers are. It's still kind of a small, esoteric field so when you get in a bar environment it's a foreign thing. This just makes me work that much harder because I have to make Joe Blow like something that he would normally think is crap. I would perform at McDonald's and Pizza Huts if I could get gigs there because I'd have to work to get people's attention, and I prefer this because it's a bigger challenge."

Hence the reason for the heavily adrenally-induced, action-packed physical motion; the vocal exaggerations; the speed and rhythm. Richter and Hanrahan are not academic cautionaries. They've got balls. And they tend to be abrasive when busting a line.

"Poetry seems to be a private art. When I started doing poetry, I saw a bunch of heads on stage reading into the paper. That's not what it's supposed to be about. It shouldn't even be performing; it's more like living at piece -- living it the way your wrote it and living it onstage," says Richter ("Rick-tah" in Brooklyn lingo), who likes to refer to himself as a multmedia poet, "a dagger of the mind."

"Poetry may have been a soft, contemplative thing earlier in the century, but as it is in the late 20th century, it's got to come from the gut and be pretty extreme. The attention that poets used to capture is now taken over by mass media and groups like the CNN and PLO. Our competition is that territory. It's got to be extreme to keep up with Rambo IV and that type of stuff," adds Hanrahan, self-described as "the guerilla poet."

Combining several art forms with the directness of technical problem solving has created the unique approach of each poet. The poets say their "problem solving" approach to poetry stems from the fact that they've studied logical sciences more that they've studied art; Richter as an engineer and Hanrahan as a graduate of political science.

Richter has been doing poetry performances since 1986 and has work published in such publications as London's Rad Magazine, San Francisco's Thrasher Magazine, The New Press, National Examiner, and Street News.

Like Richter, Hanrahan didn't major in English. He has a political science degree and played guitar in bands for about six years. In 1989, he wrote and starred in the one-act play Underarm Deodorant Sentimentality with a Vengeance. After attending college in Maine, he moved back to Milwaukee and has been doing poetry performances for a year and a half. An acoustic guitarist, he will release the cassette Re-Bicycle in the near future.

Richter has become widely known for his multimedia performances utilizing self-designed cartoons through a slid projector, sound effects, background music, and occasional "helium" vocal effects.

"My poems come out as visual images and then I convert them to words, so it was only natural for me to draw the images as well, so I stared converting my poems ot comic strips," he said.

Hanrahan faces a more difficult challenge as he relies solely on the rhythm of his voice and the actdion of his hand gestures.

"The writing comes straight from the gut and I've got certain rhythms in my ear and I want these thoughts to conform to these rhythms and create something beautiful. Performance is like putting up a sail for the wind to catch so it's a matter of me getting down deep enough to a place where I know I can react to the words. I like to pick movement that looks funny but is serious at the same time. I'm trying for a clash," explained Hanrahan.

Both poets say it's a must to do push-ups and sprint around the block a few times prior to performances.

"I'm thinking like a derailed locomotive when I hit the stage," says Hanrahan. "I have to have as much strength as possible to tackle the challenge. But I never do drugs or alcohol because I wouldn't want to disturb the focus."

Hanrahan also adopted a lot of his moves from watching actors like Eric Bogosian, Dennis Hopper, and Crispin Glover, who can make their audiences laugh but think of serious matters at the same time. The gestures of actors and performance poets, he says, reach the audience in much the same way.

Poems such as Richter's "In the City," about skateboarding on the streets; and "Alright," about accepting death; as well as Hanrahan's "The Place," about industrial landscape overpowering nature; and "Christjob: Like Punching a Timeclock Formed in Garden Stone," about the absurd comparison of Christ to a blue collar worker; captures abrasiveness with a "street" point of view. There is a humorous, sarcastic slant in both poets' work that replaces overindulgent fluff with harsh realism.

"With a lot of the pieces that we do, there's certainly a pattern of taking the blows but then finding some sort of redemption," comments Hanrahan.

"It's a Charles Dickens type of thing," Richter interjects." "He's a realist. He takes the worst possible conditions an ends on a positive note, always resolving things to be positive. The worst thing can happen but we always try to make people feel there's a way to get by it."

"My attitude toward poetry is actually a life attitude. You know, life isn't easy. Things are bad, but you can't let it get you down. You've got to think of a clever way to deal with it."

He sees the world through rational eyes. "I used to go the the Metropolitan Museum of Modern Art and all I'd see is negative. Negative, negative everywhere. When I go to the museum I see no hope. All I see on the walls is other people's insanity. I say it's time to lick the wounds and move on. To be an artist you have to fall into some sort of cliche of negativity and self-pity. That's why I'm an engineer kicking but with poetry," he said.

As the more dramatic of the two, Richter comments, "Charles Bukowski said, 'Poetry itself contains as much energy as a Hollywood industry, as much energy as a stage play on Broadway. The reason it's not appreciated is because it hasn't shown any guts, it hasn't shown any dance, it hasn't shown any moxie.' Well, now we're here to show some guts, some dance, and some moxie."