Arriving at a Poetry Reading Fashionably Late
We arrive an hour and forty minutes into the two-hour set. Fashionably late. Outside the venue stands an ironic smoker and two halfway tipsy women debating left door or right. We dust the pavement off our shoes and enter with an air of pretentiousness that lets the room know: yes, we’ve been to a reading before.
The room squirms to accommodate us, and we fold into the back corner next to the half-finished wine bottles and solo cups. The poet who had been reading finishes her set and we snap with the collective as if we’d been here long enough to listen. But it doesn’t matter much what she’s said anyway, we knew before we came that the first poet was the only one worth listening to, and the last was the only one worth seeing.
The door opens behind us, a gust of cold air shepherding the tipsy women and the ironic smoker between us and the bottles. A hush falls over the crowd, echoed by the new-latest-comers, as the final poet takes the “stage.”
I use “stage” loosely— there was no platform to speak of, no curtain, no lights (save the fluorescents that highlighted the high school insecurities of everyone in the room). No, there was no stage, but there was a clearing in the sea of heads and a microphone that passed from hand to hand.
Another breeze from the open door carries in an old man who looked like he must’ve haunted this SoHo space back when it was a bar, a factory, or whatever strange empty box it had been in a past life—and now was earnestly searching for whatever he’d lost there. He was ignored by the rainbow-haired leather goddess and the tweed-clad poetry student, both of whom somehow managed to look entirely comfortable in the space while entirely uncomfortable with each other. He took his place in the back with the bottles and solo cups and turned his attention, with the rest of us, to the night’s final act.
He was short. Too short for me to see him through the sea of heads ,although it could be argued that it was less his fault for being too short to be seen but rather my fault for being too short to see him. Either way, my only impression of him that night came from his voice, his words, and the pre-reading gossip courtesy of my worldly friend.
As it happens, this poet seemed to be worth seeing only for the fact that he had been seen by many and judged poorly. Famous by bad behavior and the spite of women he’s set himself against, his only skill seemed to be staying abreast in a river he’d shat himself in. “He was the one who was referenced in the reference of the poet at last week’s reading,” my worldly friend had explained in the brief moment we had shared outside the venue, with just enough severity to cue my manicured gasp.
The door opens again. The cool wind stiffens the nipples of the sheer-tank-top-in-winter-clad woman beside me. Sunglasses-after-7-pm ducks their head as they shuffle along the back of the crowd, as if trying not to draw attention to themselves in a room full of people that fully do not give a shit about them— save the cold air they’re letting into the room.
My worldly friend, sardined next to me in the white SoHo box, was tall enough to see the mop of hair atop the poet’s head, and I wondered for a moment if her great knowledge came not from her travels, but simply as a virtue of her being able to see over most everyone’s bullshit. She nudged me with an angular elbow as the poet took the microphone, the warning rendered mute when the small man tapped loudly on the mic, sending a collective flinch through the crowd.
As I mentioned before, this was not my first poetry reading, but rather my third, so I considered myself a pretty old hat at this point. The first had been at a rooftop with copious liquor, the second in a loft with copious liquor, and this— well, to be honest, I should’ve known it wouldn’t be quite up to par when I saw the half-full bottles of wine. Of course, we had missed 5/6ths of the poets, but no one in New York should be expected to show up to any event of real repute on time.
The poet begins speaking with a flat kind of defiance, as most poets do. He mentions something about the air, which made me realize just how little of it the room had. Which in turn makes me resent him for using so much of it as he describes to us in that lifeless drone, the act of squeezing the life-giving flesh of a virgin; a sentence that practically ties my tubes from across the room.
The door opens again, and we are all pressed a little tighter together, still listening to what’s-his-fuck talk about a girlfriend he must’ve loved before he hated. I assume someone very important must’ve just entered because there’s absolutely no other reason to condense the crowd any further.
The poet is now talking about his father, but abstractly, because I’m sure he never learned how to access his vulnerability past weaponizing in his art to prove his sensitivity. He’s referencing something biblical, the creation of Adam? No, it’s Adam and Eve— no, he’s talking about virgins again. I look up at my worldly friend and find her face twisted in some expression between disgust and glee as she simultaneously realizes just how low the bar is and how high she is above it.
The lesbian power couple to our left shares our disgust and is already working out how to channel their emotions into their ceramics podcast, while the tall men to our right have long abandoned the poetry in favor of the skirt hem in front of them.
I try to remember the last time I heard good poetry. I’ve read much of it, usually through recommendation as I have no real talent for searching. I’ve seen many exceptional pieces of writing in the past months, but hearing it? No. Nothing memorable. For all the readings I’ve gone to so far, none of the poets have stood out enough to merit a memory. Only a line or two. Something about California. Something about a mother.
I imagine that should’ve been the reason for coming out tonight— to find something memorable— when really this only served as a precursor to going somewhere loud where I wouldn’t have to think. I would’ve preferred being proven wrong, in this instance at least. It would’ve been nice to be pleasantly surprised.
Maybe it’s a lack of presentation. The one-note drone that lets the words do all the work, like the poems are good enough to be detached from the people who would write, or read, or hear them. Everything is one note, one speed. There’s more life in an airplane boarding video—and those are really just there to show you how to die.
The door opens one last time, and we are all crushed within an inch of our lives. The poet himself is struggling to breathe— or wait— no, he’s only feigning tears to appeal to the leggy blonde that’s been thrown against him in the shuffle. I throw my glance to the back of the room and see that the Pope has come to bless the last half bottle of wine. Even he knows that showing up to a New York event less than two hours late is beyond pointless.
