Three professional poets held a crowded audience’s rapt attention with a myriad of twisted words during a Poetry Revival Professional Cat Cab on Dec. 9 in the Fred Meyer Lounge.
Poets of The Ultimate Spoken Word Theater Experience the Night Kite Revival, Derrick Brown, Anis Mojgani and Buddy Wakefield, stopped at Linfield after finishing their fall tour.
“I thought it was fabulous,” senior Caitlin Halvorson said. “It was a real treat.”
The performance began with an introduction by the poets expressing warnings about how audience members might react to the show. One warning was about the loss of feeling in their extremities. The laughable warnings were coupled with Mojgani and Brown performing an acrobatic stunt on Wakefield’s shoulders.
From there, all three poets took turns sharing their own poetry about love, sex and political and cultural issues. Almost all of the poems hinted at serious issues around the world, but did so in a comical light throughout the show.
In between poems, the poets told knock-knock jokes, and Wakefield poked fun at “homophobes.”
Upon Brown’s performance, he noted the fact that the audience did not clap immediately, and when they did, he said it was too late and cracked a joke:
“Now it’s like orgasming while having cigarettes; it’s weird.”
Brown, who was fired from his job as a weatherman, said he fell in love with poetry and its impact on him.
He wrote a poem about the experience.
“Here’s to punching holes in the ceiling and waiting for the stars to suck,” he recited.
Mojgani recited a poem about how he stumbled around for two years like a bundle of knots until he met a special woman who helped him smooth them out.
“This is how she makes me feel, like honey and trombones,” Mojgani said.
After each poet shared several of their poems, they took turns telling short poems over one another.
“Poetry solidifies exactly what you mean,” Brown said.
Brown concluded the show with a poem incorporated with a song performed to a melody off of his iPod. Mojgani and Wakefield acted as back-up singers.
After the show, the poets jokingly listed several inspirations for their poetry, while unbuttoning their shirts to show off their hairy chests.
Some of the inspirations that each took turn in sharing included girls, whiskey, soft rock, pressed shirts, the instrumentals on Mötley Crüe’s album, the rodeo, anything that lasts 8 seconds and others.
“If you weren’t here, you missed the show of your life,” Mojgani said.
Brown, a former paratrooper for the 82nd Airborne, has opened for Cold War Kids and The Flaming Lips and has also performed on “The Tonight Show.”
Mojgani, who is a two-time National Poetry Slam winner, has performed in shows on National Public Radio. Wakefield, a two-time Individual World Poetry Slam Champion, has also appeared on NPR as well as the British Broadcasting Corporation.
Jessica Prokop/Culture editor
Jessica Prokop can be reached at [email protected].
