three-drink minimum Before performing

I have had exactly One positive performance experience in my life. I was drunk and I had three hot, extroverted actresses who were eager to be my backup singers. I did a late-night karaoke performance of "Love Shack" (I didn't pick it). My success that night hinged upon a complete disintegration of restraint and an ability to channel blinding terror into one of the loudest, gayest Fred Schneider impersonations ever witnessed by humankind. It was a once-in-a-lifetime performance that I remember fondly. I am certain that such a feat couldn't be repeated for all the vodka in Russia.

This has been a week of perpetual anxiety as I acclimate myself to the reality of reading poems onstage. My presentation is lacking (nonexistent), but I'm feeling much better about the quality my poetry. For the last few years, the act of writing has been like watching a distant plane fly through a blue sky - impossible to to see how it's going without a backdrop to compare it. My poems have been sitting in notebooks and on computers for years and I never felt particularly good about them. My poetry is far more distilled that I'd previously thought. They have an uneasy relationship with performance because they aren't nimble on their feet (much like myself). It's an interesting challenge.

My first impression of performance poetry is that it's more theatrical than literary. That's not to say that poetry readings aren't poetic, but expressionistic theater productions of the mid-to-late 20th century are very similar in their structure and execution.

Why am I going on and on with this intellectual analysis? It's a good hiding place.