I’ve been avoiding it for years but last Saturday I went to poetry night at Tangible. It’s been a mainstay of the event calendar since the place opened, a holdover from Joe’s Myopic Books days. Everything he’s told me about it has made me stay away: the wrecked toilets, knocked-over bookshelves, the endless absurd requests, the complaints about changes in store policies that regular attendees can’t abide, the disaster-area left of the Poetry section after every first Saturday of the month. I’ve dealt with the aftermath a long time. It all sounds like a nightmare I don’t care to survive. Then Mallory asks me to go and I say yes.

I’ve been trying to get some handle on poetry the last few years. Writers like Denis Johnson, Philip Levine, Gwendolyn Brooks, Mark Turcotte, and Damian Rogers have helped but I still feel like a novice. But liking a thing and subjecting yourself to a roomful of people who make it are two very different things. I’ve dedicated most of my life to painting but more often than not I’d rather eat a gun than be trapped in a room of painters. And, as I said, this lot’s reputation precedes it. I suppose curiosity got the best of me.

We meet at the coffeeshop an hour before and I ask Mallory whether she’s planning to write up the reading for Zona. She says she is. I’m a little surprised as this will not be the typical scene she covers. It’s not in Logan Square and she’ll likely be the only millennial present. She says she’s tired of always writing about events at The Whistler and I assure her it will not resemble one of those. I share a few of the horror stories from what I’ve seen on Sundays following these Saturdays. Now she’s getting intrigued.

We get to the store early so Mallory and Bulent can buy some nonsense book for her family’s Secret Santa, then get seats in the back room. I encourage her to sign up to read and she does. Most of the seats are filled with aging disheveled types; I fit in better than I’d like to admit. They all know each other and gab together amiably, continuing through the host’s introduction and throughout the night. I’m glad I’ve got my sketchbook because otherwise I’d be telling this or that one to shut their pieholes over and over. I just don’t understand this type of rudeness. This lot, of all people, should know better, but they don’t.

The quantity and quality of the work oscillates wildly from overlong political screeds to witty limericks. It’s a real grab-bag. A couple old duffers have to be asked to cut it short, while a few run back to their seats before even finishing their last couplet. I’m surprised to enjoy a good amount of it for the chutzpah alone if not for any literary flair. It’s clear that most of them are lifers, engaged with wrestling their precious sentences, reaching for some transcendence the best they can. The effort and hope in it is touching if nothing else.

I don’t think I’ve ever knowingly committed a poem. I wouldn’t know where to start. I work at phrases and sentences with intention and sometimes come up with ones that ring, but to let them stand apart in the middle of a page, with all that blank space above, below, and between? I’m not ready yet.

Tangible no longer has a public bathroom and the bookshelves were all in their places when I left. The poetry section next day is a hellscape.

I wrote about a biography of Margaret Anderson and the maintenance of literary community in Chicago and elsewhere.

Listen to K tell Mallory things.

There’s a page for the paperback of Old Style in my store now. They love this one on Goodreads!