Morris Stegosaurus
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Morris Stegosaurus (born Keith Morris Kurzman) is an American poet. He has released several chapbooks, including All These Things I Do, I Do For Love, The Profane Document, The Last Temptation of Cactus, and most recently Juvenilia. He also has released two CDs of his poetic performances, most recently an album entitled Swallow the Sky.
Stegosaurus first became popular in the New York City slam poetry scene in the late 1990s, performing with regularity at some of the city's most important slam venues, including the Nuyorican Poets Cafe and the Bowery Poetry Club. Since that time, he has performed across the United States (with frequent appearances in Chicago and Seattle, as well as return visits to New York). He recently taped two of his poems for an episode of HBO's Def Poetry Jam series. He placed 4th in a field of 252 poets at the 2001 National Poetry Slam, and was a member of the 4th place team at the 2002 National Slam.
Morris Stegosaurus is an absurdist poet (who often draws on elements of surrealism as well) whose work has been compared to that of Franklin Rosemont and Dr. Seuss. Much of his poetry aims at juxtaposing the sounds of words to create a mood in the listener, rather than relying on literal meaning. As a result, he is often seen as a writer of performance poetry, which is usually less effective in print than when animated by Morris's energetic reading style (described by an organizer of the Seattle Poetry Slam as "surprisingly surreal and speedy...[it] feels like running through broken glass in a dream").
External links
- E-Poets.net's page on Morris Stegosaurus (http://voices.e-poets.net/StegosaurusM/)
- "Squin(t): A Love Poem" by Morris Stegosaurus (http://www.fengi.com/morris.html)
- Morris Stegosaurus's Live Journal (http://www.livejournal.com/users/mstegosaurus/)