Posted on October 7, 2019
Friday was Doug’s second art show opening. The gallery where he is showing keeps a show up for two months, and October’s was the last first Friday Burien art walk of the year. November through February are cold enough to keep people more indoors, so the art walks will return, as always, in May.
There was a poetry reading in a room adjacent to the art gallery, (both rooms are in a tea shop), and I stopped in to listen and to recite some of my poetry.
I got to experience how an audience can change/enhance a poem. When I recited “Rita Hayworth’s Forehead”, and I came to the last verse, I picked up my can of Izze sparkling juice as I said, “Here’s to follicles….” Since the other four people in the room were holding glasses of wine, they held up their beverages as well, and we all clinked our drink containers together, as I continued, then finished the poem up, then drank the last glugs in the can.
Even when I’m watching the people listening to a poem I’m reciting, I can’t be sure what the full scope of their reaction is. Folks were encouraging, and one person even uttered a true and surprised laugh during my daisy poem (“The Lovely White Flowers that Smell of Poo”), but I still wonder about impact. I don’t trust positive gushing, though I surely like it better than harsh criticism. But it’s not my goal.
I would like to create a real reaction to my words. I pray that my words produce some kind of catalytic inner response that I may never know about, but which positively affects the reader or listener, changing a little something inside. Soul nutrition: I want my words to be active cultures – probiotics or enzymes, zinging up the digestive system.
And however my words transform through ingestion by another person, may they end up as fertilizer for something else to grow.