DOES SIZE MATTER?- POETRY, PERFORMANCE & AUDIENCES

I’ve always felt that an important part of being a poet is putting your stuff out there in the world. With the unique exception of Emily Dickinson (and even in her case we can’t be sure of how many others she shared her work with), poets write to express an opinion or emotion. They write to be heard. Otherwise it’s just so much scribbling.

The two main ways of sharing these days are either by sending work out to a publication, online or print, and reading it aloud at an open mic or featured event. I send things out in spurts, and then lag behind for months. With the Interwebs, gone are the days of typing out fresh copies of poems, searching for targets in the Poets Market (always outdated by the time the annual edition reached the bookshelves in the fall), stamping SASEs, and tossing it all into the corner mailbox, fingers crossed. I honestly feel there is a place for every poem now, more so than ever before. Several Facebook pages even specialize in sharing information on where to send your work. Most times poems can be emailed, and response times are often in hours, not the weeks or months (or never) of old. 

Connecting with a crowd face to face offers a unique satisfaction that no publication, no matter how exclusive or venerable, can match. It’s a kind of performance, yes, but I made the choice long ago to only strive to read my poems as I hear them in my head, and no more. The more I can let my own personality come thru, either in my words or my asides, all the better. No copies are required, response is immediate, and I can even jot down a few revisions after I sit back down. Hearing the poems is a great way to really find out if you’re getting your ideas across the way you intended.

Does the size of the audience matter? I was recently a featured reader at a Hudson Valley venue where attendance has been uneven at best. I was surprised to see a few of the regulars missing, although the crowd there of about a dozen was very receptive to my work. Am I a creep because of that little nagging disappointment that was hoping for a few more bodies? 

There is the Facebook Invite illusion, where creating an Event Page lets you tally up dozens of Yeses or Interesteds, when in fact they’re mostly being supportive. I try to only share information about readings with people I think will be interested. I surely know poetry isn’t everybody’s thing. But even so, when those inflated Facebook numbers don’t manifest into even a fraction of attendees, it’s a bit of a downer. 

And the weather was bitterly cold that night as well. It was a weeknight, and even at my age most of us work full-time. I hardly attend any readings myself these days. But, I can honestly say I read as I almost always read. I was in the groove, and got the words out in a close approximation of what I heard in my head before I put them on paper. And yes, the first draft is always on paper. That much of my writing habits will probably never change. The second draft is created in my laptop. 

How do you feel reading to crowds smaller than you might have expected? How do you feel reading aloud at all? Do you prefer online writing communities, for convenience or comfort? Am I an egotistical pig for feeling the way I did? I can’t be sure.

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*Poem: "Six More Weeks"

Six More Weeks

It takes him three tries to get to the story,

his odyssey, 500 miles to forecast the rest of the winter.

Cold and dark, deprivation of sound

and the angled stimulus he is accustomed to.

I hear the sink and splash in the background.

We are both Sunday dish-doers,

lives lived in the rush of singles

scampering across any available floor,

any outing to avoid the solitude.

He tells it like it was, abbreviating the hours

I would have lost hope in,

endless drive across the flat highways,

the boxy hills of Pennsylvania where

many of my ancestors dug,

and still dig in their quiet blooming.

He describes the one-eyed pioneer,

getting her fix from a private flask,

at her station at a hometown dive,

and I picture short-haired discouragement,

flailing at air for the tourist cameras,

her weekend routine disturbed by the groundhog's carousing.

He melts by the bonfire,

counts the teeth of the locals with one mittened hand,

air a solid mass of cold and beer and silk high hats,

and I laugh, and the futon beneath me

slides from its slick pine frame.

My day is for paperwork, poetry,

sorting socks and cotton panties.

We have six more weeks, according to Phil,

before we are obligated to move

our homemaking efforts to the outside.

I have only seconds, odd surrenders of faith

to make it mean something.

I have only the hint of a shadow

to drive me on.

CAR  2/3/02 

Speechless: A Month Without Sound

I thought it was just a momentary hoarseness, the after effects of a particularly good New Year’s Day gathering. By the third day, though, as the roughness lingered, I began to worry. The last and only time I lost my voice was shortly before I resigned from Cosmodemonic Communications, back in the late 2000s. My body pulled all sort of imploding tricks then. I had rashes under my arms that responded only to a cream prescribed by a doctor who’d treated victims of Hiroshima’s atomic aftereffects. I vomited violently one morning, so hard that my face was purple with burst blood vessels. And, my voice left me, a final sign that it was time to go.

I am under no such stress now. There is still promise for 2019, artistically at least, and the other aspects of life are under the usual illusion of control and serenity. I stayed home from work, hoping a full day of two of rest would fix things, but they did not. I began to worry that I’d done some actual damage to my vocal cords. I held back tears frequently, afraid that sobs would do more harm. I checked my neck for swellings or lumps, the common American paranoia that all too often becomes reality. I finally called my doctor, and with forceful croaks, made an appointment.

She found nothing wrong, and prescribed vocal rest, and an appointment with an ENT if there was no improvement. My day job is on the phone, so vocal rest was difficult. My employers were kind, and found work for me to do, but even so, I took two more sick days, hoping physical rest would speed my recovery. I finally called the ENT my Beloved went to a few months ago for a definitive opinion.

Dr. K’s office was neat and calming, but the diplomas on the wall revealed a career of over fifty years, older by far than the ‘80s pastels in the waiting room wallpaper. His receptionist, a pleasant, efficient woman, handed me a form to fill out that had been created on a typewriter. As I waited, she worked on her IBM Selectric, the satisfying clicks a comfort in my muteness. The doctor looked down my throat, and needing to get closer, told me he wanted to send a scope down. I’d been afraid this was what he’d want. He tried to comfort me, saying, “I do this with little children all the time.” “They’re not old enough to be scared,” I replied in my raspy squeak.

Three sprays of Novocain down my right nostril later, Dr. K gently snaked the camera down to my larynx. I felt a tiny movement, nothing more. He saw no infection, damage, or any of my other worst fears. The diagnosis was the same as the others had guessed, “mild” laryngitis, and again I was told to rest my voice.  

During all this silence, because this is what I do, I made plans to live the rest of my life without a voice. There was poetry, which could always be read by others, or just given up altogether. There was looking for another job, because clearly I couldn’t continue where I was. I wondered how much I would make on Disability, and how long it would take to get during a long-term government shut-down. I wondered how I’d manage visiting my parents, who worry about everything, and how I would hide my own worry to comfort their fears.

I worked on a little chapbook to take my mind off things. No new poems, but an old manuscript that had been rejected several times. I did some trimming, and started laying it out in my primitive way. I spent a week on a collage for the cover that I’ve since ditched in favor of a totally different concept. My Beloved and I watched TV, as we always do, flipping through all the YouTube vids from Disneyland fanatics. We’ll be totally prepared, if we ever bother.

And of course my voice came back, little by little. I’d test it every morning before I got out of bed. The high notes are still out of reach, but I can get by. I’m back on the phones at work. There are a couple poetry readings to get to next week. I’m featuring in late February, and hope to have that crazy chapbook put together by then, under my own wobbly Flying Monkey imprint. And, as long as the TSA folks stay on the job, the Florida trip is back on.