A-

The snow, mixed with rain, flew violent and sideways. While I sat in the upper room of Minas in Hampden at a poetry reading that featured every crackpot, would be laureate in the city, or so it seemed, the December sky tore open. I was so sad to see my old enemy back in town so soon. It vexed me last year, robbed me of sure footing. It was impossible to get arms around anything, everything a trial of slush and ice.

Of the billed readers, Only Moira Egan (in this week's Featured Poet section of my links) is a poet. One woman read from her book, a long short story. I'm sorry but a short story has no business being read aloud at a poetry reading. Wrong venue, wrong type of literature. The third woman, whose name I don't even remember, was complete rubbish. Let's just say part of her "presentation" involved singing. A crackpot's crackpot. She belongs to the Diva Squad. Apparently being a member of this squad entitles you to write crap poetry and give lectures to a captive audience about your particular brand of politics. I'll admit freely that I'm not into the "slam" element of poetry. Not so into the rhythmic, singing mishmash. She and her cohorts were all about that.

I'm also not a fan of the "open mic" scene, but after the monthly readings at Minas, there is a free for all. This is the event that my Poetry Workshop Instructor encouraged us all to participate in (after I told them about it from attending last month's reading). So most of the women from my class came out and did just that--including the instructor as she promised she would. And we read, indistinguishable from a few lunatics and one woman who read a page from her nonfiction book!!! I'm sorry, but it all made me remember why I hate the idea of open mics. No dignity. No discretion. And the crowd is all wrong--you're not getting people who know what it's all about--just people who want to belong to something and think of poetry as something easy, a way to be a local nuisance who comes for the free wine and cheese.

During Moira's reading there were people talking! Talking... I am always torn, internally, about how accessible poetry readings should be. There is something to be said for being exclusive.

After it was over (more than 2 painstaking hours of that nonsense, and I only stayed till the end because I agreed to sack up and participate in the open mic where I knew my poem was going to get lost in the shuffle of chairs, dying before it reached the ears of tired, worn out people, and I stood there feeling like a joke, feeling like it was all very very stupid after all), the Instructor gave us back our portfolios and our final grades.

I stood there feeling like I'd been kicked in the chest. I met every requirement, participated in every class, even revised in a way that it is not intuitive to me in an effort to consider the possibility that I'd simply been undisciplined all this time--and it yielded an A-. I was under the impression that for something like a Poetry Workshop, where grading a work is entirely subjective, that what can be quantified is the showing up, the putting forth an effort, the meeting of outside obligations... No solid A, but an A that was nearly a B. I guess I didn't remove a line somewhere that she deemed superfluous. I guess it came down to that.