Fun doesn’t quite become adventure until you try something new! Jennifer had never been to a poetry reading before and I, having been to several, knew it was a must-do for word lovers such as ourselves. So for our April Fresh Figs outing we attended Poetry on Brick Street, a poetry reading held on the first Thursday of every month at the Sullivan Munce Cultural Center in Zionsville. Indiana’s current Poet Laureate, George Kalamaras, was our reader that night. We thoroughly enjoyed his exuberant performance and skillful poems, most of which included hound dogs.
Imaginative wordplay—beautiful or bizarre, whimsical or profound—is essential to making a poem fresh and interesting to the reader. But in poetry not just the ideas or images behind the words are important; there is also the sound of the word. In this way, all poetry is meant to be read out loud, so you can hear how the poet crafted the sounds together. You take it one step further when you listen to a poet read out loud his or her own poem—you get to hear their inflections and stress in every line, how they see the poem. It is a unique and revealing experience.
Next Fresh Figs outing—TBA!
