Anatomy of a Poetry Reading

Like parties, every poetry reading is its own beast. But they have some elements in common. For me, a common element is that as I am driving to one, or sitting outside under some tree beforehand, I berate myself for agreeing to it. Why do I do these? I lament to myself. Nobody will come. People will come but they will be bored. This is the last time I'm doing this. Then the reading goes really well, some stranger tells me I touched them deeply, and I feel on top of the world.

Today I read in the tiny sweet Village Books of Los Gatos. Village Books is so small I wondered where on earth there would be space for people to sit. Then I remembered that it was noon on a Saturday and I don't know anyone in Los Gatos, so there would probably be plenty of room. In the end, about 15 people came. Most of them were South Bay relatives scared up by my sister-in-law Jan, but as a rule of thumb poets are happy if they do not outnumber their audience, so all was well.

As I got up to read, I noticed a small yellow paperback on the shelf behind the podium titled How to Lose Weight Before, During, and After Sex. I told the audience if they didn't fancy my poetry, they could always purchase the diminutive yellow book and their time would not have been wasted.

Another common element of readings, and I've been reading since I was 16, is that once I get up there all nervousness leaves me. I always prepare. I think about the order of poems to read, and general things I want to say about them. I make a set list with page numbers so I'm not leafing through the book under scrutiny. Poems have a way of leaving the book during a reading if you don't write down their page numbers. Sometimes I deviate from my set list because I catch sight of a poem in the table of contents that I suddenly want to read. Invariably, it's not where I left it and I have to flip through the book a couple of times to find it.

I try to make a lot of eye contact during a reading. I want people to feel I'm talking and reading to them. And I try to avoid the specially serious singsong sort of voice that some poets adopt to read their poetry aloud. I take the temperature of the audience periodically to gauge how many more poems I should read. Sometimes I have understudy poems that I substitute for the ones on the set list. Sometimes I skip a couple if it feels like it's going too long. Occasionally it goes faster than I thought and I add a couple. I have one poem I can recite from memory. I'd like to have more.

After today's reading, with money in my pocket from book sales, I started feeling optimistic about my next reading on January 13th at Open Secret, San Rafael. It won't be until about ten to seven that night that I start to seriously regret having agreed to it.