Community
by Jonathan Penton

It's 2:30 a.m., August the seventh. I'm late updating the site again, obviously. My son is in town for a couple of weeks, I'm happy to say, but that's not the reason I'm late updating the site; I'm just late.

I planned out an article for you a couple of weeks ago, and intended to write an article early for perhaps the first time, but that didn't happen. I now have a plan for an article, but I have no real desire to use it. I'm more in the mood to spew the random gibberish that floats to the top of my chaotic-yet-medicated brain. Yes, as I drink this Snapple "Elements" brand energy drink (no endorsement was received) I can't help but feel that I'd like to document my sunburn, my foot fungus, and my thoughts on the proper toasting of bread.

Still, I've tried such directionless article-writing before, and rarely, if ever, has it turned out well. So I'm going to instead try to stick to my original topic. A few weeks ago, I went to an open mic poetry read.

I've been to such things before, of course. In my early twenties, I went to the open mic nights at my then-girlfriend's coffee shop. I was horribly theatrical and horribly nervous, but the experience was a useful one, as I was later invited to read in conjunction with a small Atlanta literary magazine, now defunct. Much more recently, I went to a single open mic gathering in order to visit with some friends, then went to Rick Lupert's open mic for shits and giggles, but I've really done very little reading for audiences.

My poetry has probably suffered as a result. Open mic nights aren't the best place to explore one's literary depths, exactly; even those who try to avoid performance poetry can't help but favor those who perform. And profundity isn't in its most natural environment; after all, a poem read aloud is only read once. Layers of metaphor and meaning are likely to be missed.

But the imperfect feedback of the live performance is better than no feedback at all, or the tentative feedback of close friends, which is what I usually get. And, as Wendy Carlisle recently told me, poems are meant to be read aloud. I don't know if I believe that, but it sounds romantic and hip. And preparing poems for an open mic certainly forces you to consider how they sound when read aloud.

So a few weeks ago, I went to an open mic. It was at a coffee shop near Atlanta's biggest private university. As such, I was a little worried about being the oldest person there. When you're 45 and reading poetry to the 19-year-olds, you become a patriarch, wise and helpful, if lacking in a social life. When, like me, you're around 30 and reading to the 19-year-olds, you're simply a creep. I'm creepy enough without doing additional creepy things. So I had trepidation. Fortunately, I was not the oldest person there.

Our host was a young man of about 24, and at 8:30, when the read was scheduled to begin, he went around to everyone on the patio and asked them if they were there for the poetry read. Most said no. Two nineteen-year-old women, who were clearly writing poetry, didn't want to answer the question, and stalled him as best they could. Unfortunately, their best stalling tactic was, "Uh…. maybe," which he naturally took as an invitation to explain to them the rules of the open mic: there was no sign-up sheet, and everyone could take turns, coming back to the mic if they wanted to after everyone was done. The two young women attempted to wave him off, which is the normal human reaction to receiving information one really needs.

He asked me if I was there for the read, and I replied that I was. He explained the rules to me, got my name, and then went back to chatting with the middle-aged woman in the back corner. She appeared to be telling him about the literary industry, but I couldn't hear well enough to be sure.

At about 9:30, the regular crowd shuffled in; a variety of students and grad students with notebooks in hand. Lesbians were very well represented among the regulars. There were few males, besides the host and myself. There was much rhyming, but not as much as I feared. But now I've ceased to tell the story in a logical order.

The read started with the middle-aged woman from the back corner. I was predisposed to consider her the best writer of the bunch, and was mildly disappointed. She read poems of troublesome neighbors and her difficult mother. I don't find these subjects very interesting for poetics: although I love a character study, prose typically delivers character studies more efficiently than the terse writing of a poem. There are exceptions, but her poems were not among them. Still, she didn't rhyme, and she told her stories with some sense of drama and style. The middle-aged woman then went to the bathroom, and I read a few poems. I sat down. Everyone clapped politely for both of us.

Next, there was the fixture of every poetry read in Atlanta. No matter where you go for open mic in this city, you'll always find two black women, sitting together, reading rhyming poetry about God. Painful. Let's move on.

A young woman named Zoe appeared, with an acoustic guitar. She was surrounded by young men, as young women with acoustic guitars are wont to be. She played, and her very clearly inebriated friends would make requests of her, asking for unique and underplayed songs like "Another Brick in the Wall." Her friends were really getting into the music, even though she stopped playing frequently as she tried to remember how the songs went.

At this point, the regulars took turns reading. Like I say, most of them were women, and most appeared to be gay. Most knew each other from places other than the read, presumably school. And, like many open mic readers, they suffered from way too much sameness. Some rhymed, and some didn't, but all had the same reading cadence, the vaguely dark tone, and the theme of triumphing over adversity featured often. This insular quality is the problem with open mics, and it was certainly a problem here. But all was not lost.

The host read, and I must admit that he sounded exactly like the regulars, except less mature, style-wise. His rhymes were weak, although he read with energy. Among other pieces, he read a slobberingly sweet poem about Jamie, the young semi-butch woman with the shorn head who wrote poems about cuntlicking. It was her 22nd birthday, it seems, and he had written a long piece about how she inspired him and motivated him and was wonderful and brilliant and beautiful and sexy. She ate it up, as well she should have. I was grossed out, as well I should have been. No one really likes watching straight men fawn over lesbians; while it's fun to flirt in low-stake situations, it gets really unattractive when taken to extremes, and downright disgusting when made into bad birthday poetry.

The two young women who didn't want to admit they were there for the poetry read had acquired a young man, and the first of them stepped up to the mic, and said something like this:

"Hi, my name's something-or-another, and I'm not really a poet, but we've been doing a little exercise. We've been taking a list of twenty words, and writing poems with seventeen of them."

Hearing of this inane plan, I wondered if I could get away with a short nap, until she started reading. I was shocked at how good these poems were. They were tight, terse, visual poems telling short scenes from her childhood, in which she managed to paint a picture of her family and emotions far better than the wordy middle-aged woman. They involved far more than seventeen words, so I guess the rules of the exercise as she defined them were pretty loose, but she clearly had something going. Furthermore, so did her male friend, who was using the same exercise, and read poems of wit and philosophy.

Delighted, I stood up to read again, choosing two of my more popular pieces, one of which received some compliments. While I was being complimented, the middle-aged woman read again. She read two pieces about people who thought they were poets but weren't, staring at me smugly the whole time. That was kind of cool.

Closing out the evening was middle-aged man who read a six-page interview on the definition of art from a literary journal. I don't know what made him do this.

The three young poets and their "exercise" were the most instructive part of the evening. I've always snubbed exercises, but this was clearly a mistake: those three wrote some very good poems, sitting there at the coffee shop, on the fly. They are without question more talented than I, but one is tempted to suspect their methodology is valuable. I suppose if one has something to say, one will say it with any set of words.

Jonathan Penton is the overworked editor and publisher of Unlikely Stories. Check out his literary works at this site.