The Poetry Reading
The Poetry Reading - context Summary
At a Small College Reading
Set during a public poetry reading, the poem follows a nervous, self-aware speaker who equates performing with "blood money"—work done for bread, beer, and rent. He experiences humiliation: audience disapproval, a woman leaving, his failing voice, and retreat to alcohol. The closing lines accept a diminished destiny of scraping by in small venues, revealing bitter irony as the speaker recalls once judging men who did lowly or violent jobs.
Read Complete Analysesat high noon at a small college near the beach sober the sweat running down my arms a spot of sweat on the table I flatten it with my finger blood money blood money my god they must think I love this like the others but it's for bread and beer and rent blood money I'm tense lousy feel bad poor people I'm failing I'm failing a woman gets up walks out slams the door a dirty poem somebody told me not to read dirty poems here it's too late. my eyes can't see some lines I read it out- desperate trembling lousy they can't hear my voice and I say, I quit, that's it, I'm finished. and later in my room there's scotch and beer: the blood of a coward. this then will be my destiny: scrabbling for pennies in tiny dark halls reading poems I have long since become tired of. and I used to think that men who drove buses or cleaned out latrines or murdered men in alleys were fools.
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