Bar Poets

I read my poetry for the first time in a bar. In one of those dive-y bars, which are just about the only ones that allowed our particular trick pony poetry circus to perform.


My debut had been scheduled, a reading with a few others for a small local journal that had published our poems, and the posters announcing this minor event a month hence were up in the local store windows.


The problem was that I'd had terrible stage fright my whole life. I was terrified of any sort of public speaking, and I was sure that I would chicken out. My dear friend Steve would hear none of my “I don’t think I can do its” and set out to help me overcome it. A musician who had performed for almost 40 years, he had a tough time convincing me that I could ever be on a stage unafraid and natural.


He started his crash course on, of all things, the New York City subway system. One afternoon on a very crowded train, he started singing “You Don’t Know Me,” in his beautiful voice, and motioned to me to join in knowing that I knew all the words. I shook my head, mortified, but he kept nodding and smiling until I tentatively began. “From your diaphragm !” he said during a breath, “louder!” The train shot through the tunnel with 40 strap hanging strangers listening as I let my voice get a little stronger, my shaking disguised by my swaying to keep my footing. I didn’t faint, some of our fellow travelers applauded, and he insisted we repeat the entertainment for every ride thereafter.


Then he rehearsed me for weeks reading my scheduled repertoire…”project, slow down, project”… until I was sick of my poems and myself. He was sure I’d be able to fly. I privately thought I’d keep my belly to the ground and plead illness.


The night of the reading arrived. It was in a bar on Somerset St. in North Plainfield, three blocks from my house, where they washed the glasses in the bathroom sink and had "none of that fancy new beer... this is what we got on tap and you'll drink it." Aside from our little group trying to transform a small corner into a coffee house with no coffee, it was full of tired men on a Friday night. Nobody came looking for poetry at the Sky Lounge. They wanted cold beer and the ball game.


While I waited to begin, I was shaking so hard I still thought I'd have to give up. I was convinced that if I managed to get through part of the first poem, the bar patrons would considerately boo me off the wobbly stool that was the stage and I could leave.


Sitting up there gave a different perspective. They were watching the game, shooting pool, and largely ignoring us. Steve was standing in the back of the room directly in my vision after telling me to just read to him and forget about everyone else, but I was too nervous to look anywhere except at the vibrating pages in my hands when I took a gulp and began.


One line into the first poem, I heard the loud "break" of a pool game beginning, the sports commentators droning, and the conversation around the bar. I relaxed a little, thinking that no one was going to listen anyway.


I suppose all the rehearsing and reassurance had taken root without me knowing it. I was muddling through slowly, projecting at my blessedly inattentive audience, when suddenly I realized that the room had gotten quiet. The pool game had stopped and they’d muted the TVs. When I looked up they were looking back. Steve was grinning. When I looked down, I could hear them listening.


They applauded when I finished. A man at the end of the bar called out and asked if I had any more. Afterwards when I walked over for a drink, they reached out to shake my hand with their rough working man's clasps and told me how much they had enjoyed it.


I have a poster from that reading, blue and fading, hanging on the wall next to my desk. It fills me up every time I look at it. My paralyzing old stage fright never came back. My sweet friend is gone, but I see him standing in the back of the room every time I take the stage.