Open Mic f/ Tom Roby @ the Cafe- 3/22/11

On a Tuesday night, especially during your spring break, the last thing you think you would go and enjoy would be a poetry reading. And that's exactly what happened on March 22nd, at the Cafe, located at 5115 N. Lincoln Ave. Jumping on the Brown line and heading to the Cafe, I didn't know what to expect from this place. Walking down Lincoln ave in the dark is kind of off setting, but then out of nowhere you see these blue lights from under a big black canopy that reads, " The Cafe." Stepping into the place was also quite an experience, hookah smoke was faintly drifting thought the cafe/ bar area, and the blue lights that were hanging from the ceiling loved to flicker and dim when you least expected them to. The back room/ Performance area was small, and I heard one of the poets say as I stepped through the curtain to watch, "that's the third one!" And as I found out later two of the last open mic poets showed up late, and they assumed I was a third one.

I ordered a beer and sat back and watched up coming and professional poets alike read their works for a small audience of only themselves, I was the only outsider watching the show. The poets ran in this order:

1. Janet Kuypers
2. Bob Lawrence
3. Bob Rashkow
4. Martin Altman
5. Jenene Ravesloot
6. Ned Haggard
7. Maxwell Baumbach
8. Charlie Newman
9. Raul Nino
10. Michael Hoag

And the events main Poet, Tom Roby.
He read through about twelve of his works that he has published over his career. A few pieces which he called "riff" poems where the ones that stuck with me the most, "Jump" had the biggest affect on me I think. Tom was very soft spoken, so you really had to pay attention to what he was saying, and he had a way of creating images in his poems, that were closer to stories, about what sounded to me like his fathers record collection. I've never heard a poem like that, it sounded very conversational and that's how most of pieces sounded through out his half an hour set. This particular reading was close to where I live so I figured this would be something I needed to go to. And I'm very surprised that I enjoyed this experience, I know nothing about poetry, but from what I could tell all of the poets were very experienced and their works all had different styles from the poems we look at in class. The only thing I think would have made this experience better for myself would have been if they poets were using a P.A. system instead of a 10 watt guitar amplifier for the sound. But that aside, this was a great place to see a reading and a cool place to have a drink. The other cool thing about the Cafe, is that they record and Podcast all of their readings and put them onto http://www.chaoticarts.org/thecafe/ so if you liked a particular reading you can go back and download the podcast and listen anytime you want.

Colin