Serious!
Everyone knows that poetry is very serious. Yes, those readers of poems at those oft-reviled gatherings known as open mics are a bunch of serious, introverted creatures full of many words that only manage to escape during infrequent bouts of soliloquy in front of audiences filled with tortured-poet-types. On top of lacking senses of humor, poets are self-centered, solipsistic weirdos who like to hear the ring of our own voices.
I happen to be one of these people. I must be careful who I uncloset myself to, because poets are socially dangerous. We can ruin any party. My neighbor hates poets. She thinks they are frivolous. She doesn't know that she lives across the hall from one.
The fact that I mask my lack of social life by going to underground literary happenings is a tell-tale sign that I will have very little to say when it comes to chit-chatting and mingling with sophisticated young urbanites who attend dinner parties. But as long as the poets stick together, the outside world will be safe from the threat of atrophied conversation. We create and inhabit our own little islands. They are physically located inside cafes and bookstores and libraries, but they are highly portable islands. We are poets wherever we go. So the threat never really diminishes.
Last night I attended one of these highly dangerous gatherings of poetic persons. It was a very small gathering. Only two such feared writers brought their work out into the light filtering into the bookstore through a large square window above the shelves. I was one of the two readers of verse. We all sat in folding chairs wearing our most serious expressions and sipping coffee or red wine out of small, disposeable cups. Because of course, we were poets. Then we stood up against a backdrop of bookcases and soliloquized.
After reading, we pronounced our serious gathering to a close, with much seriousness.
I happen to be one of these people. I must be careful who I uncloset myself to, because poets are socially dangerous. We can ruin any party. My neighbor hates poets. She thinks they are frivolous. She doesn't know that she lives across the hall from one.
The fact that I mask my lack of social life by going to underground literary happenings is a tell-tale sign that I will have very little to say when it comes to chit-chatting and mingling with sophisticated young urbanites who attend dinner parties. But as long as the poets stick together, the outside world will be safe from the threat of atrophied conversation. We create and inhabit our own little islands. They are physically located inside cafes and bookstores and libraries, but they are highly portable islands. We are poets wherever we go. So the threat never really diminishes.
Last night I attended one of these highly dangerous gatherings of poetic persons. It was a very small gathering. Only two such feared writers brought their work out into the light filtering into the bookstore through a large square window above the shelves. I was one of the two readers of verse. We all sat in folding chairs wearing our most serious expressions and sipping coffee or red wine out of small, disposeable cups. Because of course, we were poets. Then we stood up against a backdrop of bookcases and soliloquized.
After reading, we pronounced our serious gathering to a close, with much seriousness.
posted by sf blog at 11:25 AM
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