Why do I only like live poetry?

Good point. I don't know.

Maybe it's the personality that the physical people bring?
Maybe it's the crowd which tolerates it?
Maybe it's the sound? And the reading?

Better yet, the question, what makes written poetry so intolerable (to me)?
Ed Orchester had a poem about this:
"I hate it too...
The arch writing
The endless self reference
The obscure meanings"
(heavily, heavily paraphrased)
I think he was referring to all poetry,
even the spoken stuff. He mentioned
"open mics":
"imagine the longest most intolerable open mic you've ever been to"
(this in comparison to the artistic work of the emperor Niro)

I think the things I like about spoken poetry,
the ability to challenge me, the kind of terrifying, outspoken, original work,
is not what I look for in written work.
Like with all media, I need it to be absorbing,
or I stop reading/watching/looking.
I only trust that which has an immediate appeal.
When I'm at someone's live reading, I can't leave.
I can stop listening, with my immediate attention, and I can think about something else, like my ex-girlfriends.
But some part of me is always listening. And there are often moments where I'm not listening and I'm
pulled back in.
"Hooks."
Like when Ed Orchester said the quote above about Open Mics. I had to start listening.
Sometimes, the whole set is unignorable,
like with Jimmy Cvetic on Tuesday, who used a bizarre range of
multimedia and messages within his work,
spoke with such a heightened conviction that for me,
who knew Jimmy, a relatively calm guy I thought at all times,
I had to watch. When a poet has "hooks"
I have to pay attention. I suppose,
that's the trouble with written work...
it might have "hooks", but because I'm not actually there,
no part of me has to keep on listening when there's no "hook" and so I climb out of the pond altogether.
--poetryburgh@gmail.com