Staycation: Days 2 - 4

Day 2: Cantab Lounge Poetry Slam

On Wednesday night, day 2 of Josh and I’s staycation, we attended a poetry slam at The Cantab Lounge. As with improv, I was a slam virgin. I’ve been to poetry readings, of course, but no official open mic marathon of poetic goodness. I figured it would be good. The lounge website was so non-informational and ugly that even I, the only person under 60 who hasn’t yet learned to use Photoshop, recognized its wretched, non-mainstream design – evidence of a hipster hot spot. And hipsters write the best poetry.

I was not disappointed, in the locale or the poets. The poetry slam was held in the Cantab’s basement. It was dim, the walls’ paint was scratched and blotchy, and there was an itty bitty baby bar crammed into the back of the room. The place was full of people – there wasn’t even space for everyone to be there. (For example, we got there only 10 minutes after it started and had to sit in the doorway of the men’s bathroom.) And people had traveled to get there too. The host announced there were “slam teams” (I had no idea such a thing existed.) in attendance from Portland, ME and NH. Talk about commitment to your art. Best of all, everyone seemed to know each other. As people would arrive, half the room would wave at whoever had just entered, and inevitably, a girl would skip up to the new arrival, squealing, and throw her arms around him/her/them – an unusual display of affection for hipsters. Cantab holds these slams almost every Wednesday, and these people must be faithful attendees. We stuck out like the lame, non-plaid-wearers we are.

The poems were quality. There was a heavily-tattooed woman with rib-length frizzy hair who compared her mother to Medusa and every other mythological female no mother would ever want to be compared with; a hairy skinny guy who wrote a sensual double-entendre poem entitled “Where Mommy Can’t See”; and, my favorite, a woman in boots and a filmy floral dress who argued that, since children can be entertained by the same puzzles and toys and books over and over, perhaps they should be the ones working at most of our jobs. Solid stuff.

Favorite line of the night: “A fish needs a bicycle like a poet needs a girlfriend/I just don’t see it happening”

Day 3: I panicked that we would never be ready to move and stayed home. Not that I did any packing. But I hyperventilated about it. And then I got over it and we hung out with friends.

Day 4: Breakwater Reading Series @ Brookline Booksmith

The Breakwater Reading Series is put on by the awesome bookstore Brookline Booksmith, at which MFA candidates from Boston’s universities read what they have been working on. This event wasn’t great. I liked the first reader, with her fictional short story about a girl’s fling with her tattoo artist, and the last reader’s poetry had an intriguing choppy style. But the other two readers weren’t well-prepared, which led to awkward reading sessions full of pauses and paper shuffling and stutters, and, frankly, most high school students’ material is more original.

Maybe MFA programs should recruit hipsters.