Tag Team Poetry at the Hammes Bookstore 4/20/2010

When I entered the Hammes Bookstore and saw the chairs, podium, microphone and trendy grad students sitting with their legs crossed, I was upset. When they said tag team, I figured there was going to be a tag team wrestling match like the ones my older brother and I used to sneakily watch on Sunday mornings unbeknownst to my mom. Kidding. I didn’t really think that. I will try to limit the amount of cheesy jokes I include in this blog, but I can’t promise anything.

The grad students, English majors, and I were there at the Bookstore for the 2nd Annual Tag Team Poetry. The event is in celebration of National Poetry Month and its goal is to increase appreciation for poetry in the United States. I think that’s a pretty cool idea since poetry, even though honestly it isn’t exactly “my thing,” it sort of gets tossed to the wayside. As a society, we laud authors and make people like Dan Brown and J.K. Rowling into household names. However, I’m not so sure that many people would know about Pablo Neruda or Seamus Heaney, for example. Alas, I digress.

The Tag Team poetry name inaccurately describes the venue, in my opinion. Or, I guess since this is a blog I should say, IMO. I imagined two of the MFA poets reading poems that they had written collaboratively. The tag team, I am pretty sure, was the reader’s own poetry and someone else’s that they really enjoyed or thought would fit in with their poetry. The readers tonight (4/20/10) were: Sonia, Alba, Iris, CJ, Monika, Jen, Kristin and Kim.
When I saw the first reader approach the podium, I must admit that I was a little shocked. Her name was Sonia and she was much older (no offense) than what I had expected! Regardless of her age, the poetry that she read/wrote was awesome. Another aspect of Sonia’s reading that I liked was that she explained what kind of poetry she was reading. For example, she explained which of her poems were sonnets, which were written in iambic pentameter, which were villanelles, and so on and so forth. The one poem she read was by R.S. Gwynn and was entitled “Body Bags” and was about stories of the young men who fought and died in the Vietnam War. Some died in combat, some died by their own hand once they returned home.

The second reader that I will touch upon was Alba. Alba, with her Irish brogue, dove into her poetry and didn’t come up for air until she was done. She read with such speed and intensity that it was often heard to interpret just exactly what she was saying. Her poetry, highlighted by “Duck Shoes,” touched upon issues such as poverty, war and sex in a unique and creative way.

I finally got my tag team fix when CJ teamed up with Monika after they had both read individually. CJ’s poetry was funny, random, and out there. Monika’s poetry, to be honest, was a little hard to hear with her accent. When the two teamed up it sounded really cool. They read simultaneously and intermittently, CJ interjecting numbers and mathematical equations while Monika read about Jack and Jill. They described it as a “math poem.” All in all, I am glad to see that there was some tag team action going on. I mean, at least I didn’t get completely hoodwinked by the venue’s title.

The rest of the poetry was, in a way, what one would expect from a poetry reading minus the finger snaps. There were random poems about banana tits and carrot dicks (I’m not making this up) juxtaposed with love poetry about mouths, teeth and incisors. All things considered, I am glad that I attended a poetry event. Poetry is something that I know very little about. But when I went to the Tag Team Poetry event tonight, I did actually like a lot of what I heard and I also learned a lot. Some of the poetry was too out there (read: banana tits, carrot dicks) and some of it was boring. But I was surprised at how much of it I actually enjoyed. It was a bit of a refresher from all the short stories we have been studying in class. In sum, I think the 2nd Annual Tag Team Poetry event delivered on its message of increasing appreciation for poetry.