Life & Death in the Open Section - the art of the poetry reading

Now I run the hazard of appearing to advance the idea of method. But what I am talking about is not a formula so much as the simple common sense of a survivor of "the poetry wars", and the knowledge that - at least at readings - poets are very often their own worst enemies. The purpose of a poetry reading, after all, is to interest and entertain. To involve the audience in the experiences performed by language which is the body poetic. There is also nothing terribly prescriptive in what I am suggesting. Every reading has its own genius which is either successfully exposed or more likely repressed under the pressure of egos at ten paces.

Even the most experienced and dynamic poets run the risk of boring their listeners if they are unmindful of the audience's capacity to absorb their poetry. For this reason, there should also be time constraints on the featured poets. Twenty to twenty-five minutes is optimal. After that, it is usually a good idea to change voices (i.e.: present another poet), or take a break. There is nothing worse than being turned-on by a poet's poetry only to have him/her read to the point where you can no longer take in the words and wish they'd just shut-up. What starts out as inspiration should never end in desperation.

A good way of maintaining audience interest in a reading is by employing what might be called the "round-robin-style", where the invited poets read one poem each in rotation. This works well with any number of poets, from two to ten or more. The interaction of voices and ideas can be highly dramatic, and has the potential for creating in the mind of the audience the sense of a conversation, even when no conversation is intended. I have participated in numerous round-robin readings and they are the ones I have always enjoyed the most, and the ones to which audiences seem most responsive. There is a cautionary note, however... for this type of reading to work, there can be no dead weight. Throwing a weak poet into a round-robin with three or four good poets is like running a four-cylinder car on three cylinders. The entire vehicle loses power. Each poet must be able to hold

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