Pittsburgh Poetry Exchange @ South Side Presbyterian Church

Ziggy Edwards, Barry Governor, and Stuart Shepphard read. These all of the Pittsburgh Poetry Exchange Workshop that meets first Monday's of the month at the Brentwood Library.

The atmosphere: a church meeting hall, real candles on the tables, diffused lighting from the stained glass windows. Natural and electronic acoustics. Michael Wurster hosted, and is evidently a great influence on everyone involved and is somehow involved with Uppagus Magazine.

I'll admit that I was severely sleep deprived when I attended this reading, so I was nodding off during the first two readers, Ziggy and Barry. I liked their poems, partly I think because their imagery would mix and conflict with my dream imagery. Ziggy in particular had a bunch of good and surprising poems, my favorite probably was "Men of Peanuts": "Lucy sneaks out in the dead of night and meets Charlie Brown in the park. Only then will he try for the football."

I got a soda during the break and was awake for the featured reader, Stuart Shepphard. I was pretty frustrated with the reading. This was because I met and liked Stuart on a previous occasion, plan on attending the workshop that he's at, and probably because Stuart reminds me of a future version of myself, with his middle-age semi-receding hairline, cool jokes (he made at least one joke per talk break), and modest publishing history. Stuart as I understand it is somewhat new to poetry, working on a manuscript, and has previously published a novel, which he read an excerpt of and I was also frustrated with. It's not that what he was saying didn't have nuggets of soul and meaning in it, it's that I was bored with the whole thing. His affect had a touch of human sarcasm, but it was never too surprising or subversive; the dominant tone was a kind of innocence I connected to The Harvey Boys. "Heroin burns down the house, whether you're in or not." "Someone once told me 'Never be sincere. Sincerity is the death of writing.' I thought about that , came to think it meant never to take yourself too seriously." (one of his jokes in the talk breaks.) He would turn his head and pose for emphasis during the reading, that I liked.

I feel kind of strange evincing frustration on this blog, at least I felt strange about it last night. Now I'm more inclined just to let my feelings be, but I'll add two caveats: I don't think Stuart should change what he's doing, in fact I plan on showing up to his workshop and possibly giving him a piece of my mind; what I mean is it's my prerogative and responsibility when I feel frustration with someone else's work and I can go ahead and do things about that if I want but it's not anyone's fault for making me frustrated. My second caveat is that I liked the poem I heard Stuart read at the Hemingway's Summer Reading open mic, so, I dunno, poetry is ephemeral and people's readings are too and so is frustration also. -- poetryburgh@gmail.com