Please, if you go to a poetry reading, pay attention to the poets. This is not difficult when the readers are well known and there is no open mic. However, the open mic can challenge your parents’ kindest intentions to teach you manners. I am put off and put out by self-centered attendees who blatantly show no interest in the work of others. They shuffle their own papers, flip through their books, go get latte/wine/beer or use the restroom while someone else is speaking. You know who you are. You want your three to five minutes and will stretch it if you don’t get the hook. I understand that some of the people in the audience are not poets, and I can almost forgive their rudeness, but poets should respect other poets. It’s enough pain that the rest of the world ignores us.

Fate gives you advance notice when you are going to a reading, so you can find twenty minutes in your exciting life to mark selections in your book or paper clip your two longish/three short poems together before you take your seat. Don’t make long introductions. We do not go to hear a lecture, a sermon or a memoir. Don’t take an axe to a gun fight. (My great-great grandfather did that and the result was unpleasant.)

If you must fidget while others speak, get back on your meds, carry worry beads, or doodle silently in a small notebook. Look interested even if you ache with disdain for the rest of the readers. Pretend that the one at the mic is Will Shakespeare back from the dead to entertain you. Fake it till it’s your turn, and for Pete’s sake don’t walk out before the readings end, unless A. Hitler strides to the mic and shouts racial or ethnic slurs. Even then you might keep your butt in the chair and hear something you’ve never heard before–a voice not your own.