If you happen to wander into Revolution Cafe and Bar on a Sunday night, you may see her – or better yet, hear her. The indoor and outdoor cafe in downtown Bryan hosts a weekly open-mic poetry reading. It is here that Logen Cure shares her poetry with others.
With a microphone in hand and a crowd before her, she articulates the thoughts and emotions she has put down on paper, transforming written words into oral expressions that extend to a wider audience.
“My writing style is like a series of heightened moments,” Cure said.
Cure says her formations of words and ideas are a constant process, undergoing alterations all the time. The author doesn’t think, she narrates. At the age of 19, Cure has already begun her literary career. Last year, Cure self-published her first book through an online publishing company.
According her publisher’s Web site (http://lulu.com/somethingofamess), Cure’s “Something of a Mess” describes “the turmoil of high school to the personal revolution of college, from the fictional to the heartbreakingly real, from rage and disappointment to fulfillment and joy – this collection of poetry and prose depicts the life of one passionate and eternally blundering girl as it is: tragic, triumphant, poignant, magnificent and, as always, something of a mess.”
Writing is not just a hobby or passion – it’s a lifestyle for Cure.
“Everybody I meet, every situation I’m in – it’s all poetry to me,” Cure said.
Her published book contains mostly poetry, and the prose pieces are even “poetry-ish,” but poetical expression is not limited to paper for her. She spends much of her weekends with a mic in hand.
“I do open-mic poetry and poetry slams,” Cure said. “Open-mic poetry is every Sunday, and a bunch of people show up. The difference between the two is that a poetry slam is a competition – you read poetry and judges hold up signs with your score on it, like in the Olympics.”
Cure said she hopes her book will evoke a reaction – any reaction – from readers.
“It’s so personal that it’s hard to expect people will react to it at all,” she said. “I just hope they will be able to feel something, whether that’s positive or negative, to make them think in some perspective.”
Cure plans to write a novella once she finishes redoing her book and hopes to become a professor, a career that will allow her to continue her writing. She admits that right now her writing style is undergoing many changes, especially in light of her oral poetic performances and the prose creative writing workshop she is in.
“If my style stopped changing, I would be worried,” she said.
Jess Stumpo, an English graduate student at A&M, said he is impressed with Cure’s ability to take on hard subject matter that explores a trying personal experience.
“She tries to write around an experience rather than put that experience on a page, by exploring different angles and going beyond the experience, leaving the reader thinking,” Stumpo said.
Stumpo said Cure writes as “someone who has their own voice.”
“She has a sense of where she’s going and a lot of promise in getting there,” Stumpo said. “A lot of young poets are ripping off Edgar Allen Poe, but she is experimenting with poetry, playing with different styles – a mature viewpoint for such a young writer.”
“Something of a Mess” is being reworked for a second edition. Al Brilliant, an English professor who has run a small poetry publishing company for many years, teaches an independent study course, which gives students the opportunity to publish books of poetry. After coming across Cure at an open-mic reading and judging her performance at a poetry slam competition, Brilliant became interested in her work.
“Her poetry is characterized by the acceptance of ambiguities that mixes opposites at the same moment,” Brilliant said. “Her poetry resembles little novels – all the qualities of a long complicated story – but they’re placed very simply and quickly. It’s like a game for an author and makes it a delightful experience for the reader. The book is more than 100 pages, packed with wonderful poetry, but I can’t think of a single poem that isn’t first rate. I predict that one day the book will be a collector’s item – priceless. She only printed 50 copies of it, and I got one.”
To Cure, writing is a basic necessity of life.
“Being a writer is an extraordinary state of existence,” she said. “It’s having the ability to express, create, innovate and identify with others. It is a form of connection and continuity. Writing is an exquisite sense of self.”