Danny's Tavern [nicole]

On February 23rd I attended Daniel Khalastchi, Dora Malech, and Srikanth Reddy

’s

poetry reading at Danny’s Tavern. It was hailing that night, and I biked over before the storm began. I attend the bar frequently for soul night so I thought it would be to see the bar with a different ambiance.

I walked into the pub completely soaked and 15 minutes late. I didn’t know what to expect. It was very dark and extremely quiet, the readings had not begun though. I rushed to the back room where I could tuck myself in a corner. I stood over a candle and peeked my ahead around a wall to watch the reader begin. There are three rooms at Danny’s the front area where the bar is located, the middle where there is usually dancing (tonight was the stage for poets), and the far back area for lounging. The room was extremely dark only being lit by candles and the light for the readers.

A man came to the stage to announce the first poet. Srikanth Reddy is a Chicagoan and professor at the University of Chicago. He is the author of two books of poetry, "Facts for Visitors" (2004) and "Voyager" (2011), both published by the University of California Press. Reddy had a dark, soothing voice, and read slowly with long dramatic pauses. He read 12 versus from his new book. Reddy mostly read about political issues but the parts I enjoy most were about his family. What I really appreciated was how he incorporated his process into his poem. There would be moments of him feeding his child, hearing the birds outside, and a telemarketer calling, “take me off your list”. “I like stairs, I like fork, I like carrot”, his daughter would say, the crowd would chuckle. At the moment I truly couldn’t understand the reasons for his poems, however I enjoying just being in this space hearing a new type of performance.

The second reader was Dora from Iowa City and is the Executive Director of the Iowa Youth Writing Project. Malech is the author of two books of poems, Say So (Cleveland State University Poetry Center, 2011) and Shore Ordered Ocean (Waywiser Press, 2009). I really enjoyed her work. She sat up on stage with two books in her lap both marked with pink post it notes. I enjoyed her piece of valentines day, humorous in a I hate this holiday sort of way. She had this harshness to her reading style, a little cynical. I liked how she would open up the poem with a brief introduction. For example, she talked about her fascination with accents, roof vs. roof and Root vs root. Even though she pointed out this is probably the least important idea of the poem it was nice hear some context.

I had to leave right after Dora. However, I enjoyed my time there very much so. I definitely will be heading back to Danny’s for poetry night.