On May 15th, 2016 I attended the “Corners of the Mouth” Poetry reading featuring Michael McLaughlin. This paper describes my experience at this reading and analyzes the styles and characteristics of the poetry displayed here. The overall setting of the reading was very welcoming and relaxed as I entered the small room towards the back of Linnea’s coffee shop. There was artwork all over the walls and fold up chairs facing a small stage along the back wall. As I chose a seat and sat down, I began to notice all of the different people within the room. The couple next to me were older and throughout the reading were passing notes back and forth between each other. I later noticed that they were passing lines of poetry they were creating for each …show more content…
It was about an experience he had here in Edna valley when living in a triple wide. This time, while he pulls from the memories of the experience as before, he then takes it a step deeper to look more into the story. Using his free-flowing form he looks into the mind of the cougar and puts aside his current feelings. The cougar becomes a metaphor for his work and for moving through everyday life, which took me a moment to realize. The poem is very short, like many of those that he read but easily caught the crowd’s attention and received much applause when he finished. Michael is a middle-aged man with short hair and fairly casual dress, but with a voice that easily captured his audience. It was very interesting to hear him read and finding where the emphasis would land in his work. He was able to use his tone to set the emotion of the poem and if I was ever lost I still knew the feeling that he was trying to get across to his audience. Many of his pieces were rather short and to the point, while some grew to be a bit longer. His work takes a very free form, at times using rhythm and rhyme but not …show more content…
He occasionally uses straight forward and simple language, but more consistently writes with more complexity and less direct, similar to Dickinson. His work does not always convey a direct message but was more often filled with similes and metaphors to get his messages across. This made it hard to follow at times, since at a reading things move along pretty fast. This was the part that I liked least about this reading since I felt like I wasn’t getting all the information to really see the meaning of some of the poems read. What I really liked was his passion for his work. It was truly interesting how he used his tone lure in his listeners and readers. He is very effective with using imagery and metaphors, listening to him I could often see and sense the scene that he was painting. He has a way of pulling his readers in and it made his reading truly enjoyable. The audience seemed to enjoy his work and someone even requested him to go back up during the open mic portion of the night. Another poet that stood out to me that night was during the open mic portion and called herself Mona Lisa. I am not sure what her real name was but it was obvious that she had been there before. Her reading was striking, leaving everyone in the room in silence and awe. It was extremely moving and the passion that came through was vivid and I truly enjoyed her execution. I thought she gave one of