I am participating in the American Cancer Society Read Every Day challenge. This is an easy one for me, as I read every day anyway! So I am blogging my reading this month in the hopes that you might enjoy my literary journeys, and that you might consider supporting my fundraiser to fight cancer and support cancer patients through Relay for Life. Go to main.acsevents.org/goto/elizabethdonald to read my essay and donate.
Feb. 7
Today’s “reading” was in the form of two (2) open mic poetry slams. The first was a regular open mic hosted by the English honor society of which I was previously president, and I’ve tried to stay involved and support them after I graduated. The second was a farewell event for a local bookstore and coffeehouse of the bohemian social justice variety, a lovely place that was kind enough to carry my books for the past few years. It is closing as the owner searches for a new location, and I am more than a little saddened by its potential demise.
I love open mics. I like to sit in a comfortable chair, close my eyes and float on the words. Of course, then it looks like I’m sleeping, so I try not to be rude. But I always come away from a poetry reading reinvigorated with my love of words, and dying to grab a notebook and get some down before they have a chance to escape. Sometimes I have even stood to read my own work, though I consider my poetry far inferior to my prose and generally bury it at sea before it can get lose and hurt someone.
There were poets, and political rants, and musical acts, and comedians (which is usually when I bolt for the door). It is sometimes lovely to be in the midst of radicals even more radical than I, so for a little time you don’t have to step carefully with your words, and can say what you think.
One poet in particular caught my attention. Her poems were an appealing mix of lyricism and anger, a woman’s voice well-rendered and delivered with a clear, expressive tone. Some of the subjects ranged dark, uncomfortable even, and that’s as it should be. Women’s poetry is not light couplets about the garden and joys of motherhood, not anymore, I was moved enough to buy her book, after promising myself I would behave. She was kind enough to sign it for me, thanking me for buying it. As I checked out, the owner told me her book was the top seller in the store.
As her little tome of verse takes the top spot on the nightstand for a time, I remember the heavy stack of poetry I brought back from AWP in Kansas City, swimming in words. And the long printed “receipts” of random poems I found mixed in with the restaurants and gift shops from my trip to Chicago, where the American Writers Museum has actual poetry machines spitting out poems (by real humans, not AI bot garbage) on demand.
It gives me hope, that all beauty and word-magic may not be lost in this anti-intellectual dystopian nightmare in which we are drowning.