Little Grill: June 21, 2007

The regular Thursday night open mic at the Little Grill in Harrisonburg, Virginia easily met the crowd's anticipation.

Actually you had to make it to the end to catch the good stuff. "The American Gentleman", a troupe of comedians, were a special treat (though one looked more like a gentlelady to me). Then a poet whose name I don't recall did a sort of five-in-one slam thing that was commendable.

Brandon got up there with his baritone ukulele and did three exceptional pieces. I was particularly impressed with 'My Happy Folk Song', an original as far as I can tell. He says he likes to do songs you'd never expect to hear on the uke.

I came on long before this slew of talent and donated two books to the back shelves. Another collection of verse and Non Campus Mentis by Anders Henriksson, after reading a short section of it just to scare everyone.

Since I've been complaining so much lately about the plight of English poets (so few words rhyme with 'love'!) I proclaimed my new language: Latin. They had 16 million ways of conjugating the verb, besides using it as a main example of conjugation (any Latin scholar will tell you), so I figure I'm home. I'll have 3.7 trillion new rhyming options open to me if I just write my love poems in Latin (especially considering word order in a sentence is entirely up to the user).

I then read 'Hold the World Together' (2002) and 'Up a Tree' (2002), two of my 'Beat' poems. My third slot I ceded to the next poet who got up there.