Featuring, George Wallas.

The poetry reading which I attended was hosted by Cliff Bleidner. He wasn't onl the host but he read a few of his own poems as well, most of which I believe were haiku's.

The first poet up to read was George Wallas. Before George went up there we were given a lot of information about him and several of the awards he has received. The first poem he had read was called "I Wanna Go Where The Garbageman Go." It was interesting hearing the poem aloud, you could hear what words the speaker was trying to emphasize. If I were to be reading this poem on paper I don't really think I'd be reading it like the speaker intended, he read it very fast paced I think I would have been reading it slower. The main idea I believe of this poem is to not let little things stress you out, and he compares it to a garbageman and how they don't let things like razors and newspapers bother them.

"Stuck On The BQE Thinking About Jimmy Skyler," was the next poem that Wallas had read, and I hard a hard time understanding this poem because I don't know who Jimmy Skyler is.

The next poem, "That Girls a Chevrolet," was a humorous and easy to understand. The speaker was trying go compare a classic car, to a woman who he believed to be so great that you "can't touch a thing like that."

"This is for the Night Shift Guy," was a very hard poem for me to understand, it was so fast paced I felt lost while trying to keep up with what the speaker was saying.

The last poem he had read, "Then I Kissed Her," didn't even feel like a poem to me, it basically felt like a short story because there were no pauses, no breaks, no rhythm or anything.

Another poet which went up to read, was Carol Bergmann, and her poems were my favorite. She wrote sonnets, beautiful ones about life and love that were just so great to hear.

Another interesting that I heard while I was there, was a man, Robert Windoph, who was translating poems from another language, Slavic I believe, but before he translated the poems he read them in their original language, and the just sounded so beautiful.

Overall I enjoyed going to this poetry reading, but I'm confused with what I like more, hearing the people read them or reading the poems myself. Sometimes it's hard to follow along with the reading, and since I'm so use to reading the poem myself and then listening to it on youTube, I'd most of the time have the poem up on the screen as well just to follow along. I liked the reading a lot though, and the people there were very friendly, it was great to see the actual writers of the poems performing them aloud, because then you're really getting the poem how the speaker wants you to.