Features Editor:
John Liebhardt
johnliebhardt@dailyemerald. com
Thursday, April 25,2002
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language is a
connecting factor’
for Open Poetry
Night founder
Nathan Langston,
who steps up to
the microphone
every Monday
night at The Buzz
Coffeehouse.
Open Poetry Mic nights, which take place every Monday at The Buzz,
let campus poets take their inner selves to the people
i
Story by John liebhardt Photos by Thomas Patterson
It’s 9:10 p.m. Monday and somebody
ripped off the microphone cord from
the Buzz Coffeehouse. No micro
phone cord, no microphone. No micro
phone, no Open Poetry Mic, which
runs 9 to 11:30 p.m. every Monday.
But open poetry mic founder and
master of ceremonies Nathan Langston
isn’t worried.
We can just read poems outside, he
tells the band of poets and their afi
cionados.
Out they go, to camp on the cement
outside the Buzz, shiver in April’s cold
night, smoke cigarettes (Langston’s lure
to get them outside) and read poetry.
The poets begin to read, their hands
shaking from the cold and their poems
flapping in the wind. Undeterred by the
skateboarders, the gawking students and
the bikers whizzing through, they con
tinue the reading like this for 30 minutes
before the microphone cord is located.
“Everybody give it up for the mic
cord,” Langston cries as he lifted his
fist in the air. The crowd roars with
approval.
The impromptu reading is an em
blem of how dedicated this group of po
ets and their audience are, as they shiv
er outside, smoking cigarettes, cheering
their fellow bards. As National Poetry
Month winds down with events
throughout the nation’s libraries, read
ing rooms and quaint bookstores, these
do-it-yourself poets celebrate the signif
icance of poetry every Monday night.
Turn to Poetry, page 11
In Amerika’s
twinkleless eyes
she loses herself
and asks that
overwhelming
question
“where do you
find love?”
striking down his
grand designs on
the evening
Sam Rutledge
I miss my past,
curling away
from me in
tired(tireless)
spirals
onion skinned
innocence,
bittersweet,
savory and love
going away
with it,
like the string on
a kite or the chain
on a dry anchor
of trust and old
letters
slept upon
(unresponsive).
and unyielding
turn driven under
the starry yellow
freeway lights
existence on
salty road
smelling of
gasoline perfume
cigarettes
and fools yowls
Chris Birke