Appearing

Posted on April 30, 2005 in Poetry

I attended a poetry reading last night, the first since February, where I read a single poem and listened to two of the three featured poets. The first poet, Marj Hahne, struck me with her cadences and splendid combinations of imagery. The second, Carine Topal — a local woman — did not move me so much. We got fidgety after her performance. The powers of Tebot Bach skipped a much-needed break, so we had to slink out before Michael Paul declaimed.

Oh, all the types were there. There was the woman who came up to me and asked “Where is your wife”, smirking as she did because she knew it annoyed me. There were those who were high on their own hubris, such as the fellow who loved to shout his poetry so it could be heard at the hamburger stand across the parking lot and the four lane street. There was the Vietnamese poet who wrote about Nature while studiously avoiding any contact with it. There was the woman who decided that my poem would be a splendid opportunity to noisily pick up her chair and move it to another spot. When she got up to read the poem she had written at a workshop in Paris, I just stared at the recesses in the ceiling as if she were the most unimportant person in the world — and she was.

Good people also attended, ones who inquired after my health. The facilitator smiled and nodded as I finished declaiming my poem and the audience clapped more than politely I think. I am not much of a performer when I declaim: I am much more comfortable reading in a small circle such as that I keep at the Orange Poetry Salon.

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The first feature said something that was a little hurtful. She announced a workshop series for women that she put on back east. “Guys,” she said, “if you want to do something nice for your lady, drop her a little money to attend one of these.” I thought of how little I contributed to the household, what with my increasing burden of diseases. Most of what I learned about poetry, I thought, I learned by myself. Even though my wife had a comfortable income as a software engineer, thanks to my occasionally manic spending habits, we didn’t have free income. No one ever dropped cash for me to attend a workshop. I was male and expected to attract money like a magnet.

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In most of the groups I attend, most of the women are housewives or professionals. Most of the men in these groups work marginal jobs. Where did this idea come from that women who write poetry need the money while the men don’t?