Several times in a few weeks I did not wish to rip my own ears off nor duck to the washroom and bolt from the building at a full run.
Perhaps that shouldn’t be a marked state, but these days any discomfort seems to cascade to whole body muscular-skeletal mass scream-in.
I’ve attended too much poetry so finding poetry sharing that I enjoy comes as a surprise.
For poetry and life to balance, the ratio of poetry in poetry: life has to come down.
Perhaps it’s like Marco said at the Haiku Canada Weekend. He’s been thru these poetry conferences enough time that a pattern is obvious. Day 1, haiku can save the world! He listens to every syllable attentively. By day 2, he’s getting enough poetry and wonders why we’re all inside. By day 3, he’d overdosed on it and wonders why anyone does this at all. By day 4 he’s skipping sessions.
But then, poets also need to push themselves more to bring up their game.
If you hold yourself in a starving state you’re grateful for morsels. That skews enjoyment. Appetite is the best seasoning. But if the diet is regular and you’re never truly hungry then you become a more picky eater, less tolerant of mush and raw and badly balanced flavours and just sloppy line-cook fare.
This problem of encouraging mediocrity with polite applause, is it a problem? It sure makes hands sore since my joints don’t take much impact to get bothered. But culturally does it make for sloppy thinking and poor work?
People don’t stomp and whistle for nothing. Pallid applause is pretty distinct. An acknowledgement that someone is leaving the stage. The problem is when people applaud and hear applause and think it is a positive evaluation of a good poem.
What would a positive evaluation of a poem look like? If it is internalized as something culturally useful perhaps, losing authorship but gaining currency. Or a palpable whallop from bodily reaction(s). It would make no sense to expect that quality all the time. It would flatten things.
Some crowds are harsh. It is a room of unhappy people getting more awkward and unhappy. Some are warm rooms where they don’t care what happens. Anything is cream on top of being out and about in hope of seeing people or poems they like.
Sometimes it seems like readings are full of internetz-weighted responses. Like rotfl to externalize something amusing, to distinguish it from lol of mildly amusing. Something that’s got legs to begin is called great and if it is not sucking as much? Give it an encouraging chuckle.
That’s different from a real chuckle the way a child cries differently when no one’s watching or a parent is near and will give attention. Maybe that means it isn’t disingenuous. We know it’s about one person encouraging another not about the work, but the community-building and reaching out to connect.