Temple Poetry Reading

Hearing poems read has been a completely different experience from reading them. The music of the poems changes when they are read, and the reader controls the rhythms, and also sound emphasis. The way the readers pronounced certain sounds drastically changed some of the poems, or how I imagined I would read them myself. I was most impressed by the poem that contained the line about "your French egg-sex" because it was hilarious but also relevant, especially in the way it incorporated the collective consciousness/rhythm of the ADD generation. At least that is my opinion. Either way, I felt I could relate to it. I was also impressed by most of the readers and the way they animated their own poems in reading them. Some of the poems really surprised me, such as the one that started off "So, I'm a sex addcit." I thought this poem would have been interesting as a rap. It seemed more rhythm-based than word-based to me. And at the same time, some of the poems were totally about the words, and I found I could just listen--sort of be attacked by the words--rather than read and think about how they looked... hearing them changed the meanings. Hearing the poems gave them so much more urgency. Suddenly, all the words seemed current, and about this specific moment in time. They all seemed to clamour "live for the moment, because you're in it now" or something like that. Well, excpet the "I Remember" poems were about the past, but they still seemed pertinent, like the memory being described was very important in that moment. Hearing the poems was like being exposed to sensory creations manifesting themselves...and then suddenly ending, no longr existing in the present.