I don’t know about you, but going to poetry reading is work for me. It’s the good kind of work—observe and steal. The style, I mean, not word for word. It may be the surprise twist at the very end of a poem. It may be the use of a repeated rhythm. It may be the concept of a slice of pizza topped with “tiny little white men” *. It may be an imagery of a bucket of herb blood. Whatever it may be, when I see a gem I snatch it and put it in my memory bank.
Luke Warm Water came to Sacred Grounds last night and he was the rich guy I hung onto. Out of his mouth tumbled all kinds of goodies. It was better than Christmas. When I got home I had to cook down his humor, metaphors, language, moves, even the beer he sipped during the reading. And the end result was I wrote a poem of my own without a trace of LWW.
* from Luke’s poem “Are You Hungry For Pizza?”
