There were about 30 people attending in a late arriving crowd. Losse was OK, good and enjoyable, but her presentation was quiet and it was hard to tell when she had finished reading a poem. In fact applause was sporadic and faltering because we wern't sure if we should applaud yet. After Losse read there was an intermission.
I almost left at that point because I felt like I had intruded into a closed group. No one had welcomed me or even talked with me except for one person whom I later found was not even a member himself. The regular attendees seemed to be ignoring me, or any newcomers including the guy running the meeting. No one even spoke to me or responded to my own comments. Talk about a closed clique! Very unimpressive and sub-marginal. Then the one person who did talk with me turned out to be the second reader of the evening, John Amen.
Amen was good - even spectacular. Talk about knowing how to present poetry - here was a master at work. He used body postures, facial expressions and accent changes. He also had a guitar and proved that he knows how to use it well. His presentation left me wondering what kind of a life he has lead and how he would learn so damn much about life. But then, that's where the good poets fly - way out yonder - not so much living, really as it is in sensing, feeling, using intuition, and just plain awareness. The art of poetry is the art of describing what eyes can't really see and hearing what ears always fail to notice - the art of feeling beyond what is presented to you. We all understand it when we encounter it from a master, and we always walk through a slightly different world for the next several days. That is why we need to encounter really good poets like John Amen on a constant basis.
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