A Living Community

I'm noticing that in the conversations over at C. Dale Young's and Seth Abramson's and Barbara Reyes's blogs (among others) just about everybody is bypassing the issue I raised of open mics. I don't mean this comment to be snarky or suggest that the defenders of MFAs or museums aren't also defending valuable institutions. But really, you want to find a place where people get together and find poetry relevant, you want to find a place where it's not just about this or that type of poetry, you go to an open mic.

I realize that all open mics are going to differ. That's a good thing as far as I'm concerned, because a good open mic should reflect its locality. I'm going to take this post to reveal a few things about Mic Check, however, that might shed light on why I'm such a supporter of the open mic format.

There are two rules of Mic Check, voiced at the beginning of each show. One: Audience, respect the poets. That means being reasonably quiet during a reading or recital or performance, but reaction is encouraged. Clap, stamp, snap, give an amen, whatever. If you don't like a poem, write something and come back next week. Two: Poets, respect the audience. Over the course of the years, that message has come with a single addendum: No poems about sex with your zombie grandmother. This is partly tongue-in-cheek, a way of saying that even though you should know better than to berate the audience or say something so taboo as to warrant arrest for it, you will not be censored. It's also real - the grossest poem ever read at Mic Check was about a guy having sex with his grandmother's corpse. More importantly, it wasn't even good.

The type and quality of poems at Mic Check varies wildly from week to week, and even over the course of an evening. You'll hear poems that draw their rhythms from hip-hop, from Victorian poetry, from storytelling. Some of the poets study. Some come off the street. There's at least one guy who, when off his meds, talks like Christine Hume writes. That's not meant to denigrate either - it's damn impressive. I've heard performances that were less poetry than evangelism, less verse than essay on the value of Marx. I've heard poetry to which I responded viscerally and immediately. I've even heard poetry such that I went up to the poet and suggested journals to which it should be submitted.

We play games. Paper will get passed out to the crowd, and during a break between poets random members of the audience will have to write a haiku or limerick or quatrain. Sometimes the games will involve multiple people writing a single poem. This is a huge part of Mic Check, there from the beginning. It's not just about listening to the poetry, but participating in it. Bringing the community into the verse, which in turn helps to ensure the poets work with, not at, the community.

The final game each night is adlib. Anyone who wants to can come to the stage. The host or hosts get four to five words from the audience, and everybody improvs. Some will freestyle, some will create surreal stories, some will try to incorporate the words into dirty jokes. But everything wraps up with the line between audience and poets blurred, symbiotic.

That's a living community of poetry.