What the Heck is a Table Slam?!?
Tonight's VLP reading will feature U. English Instructor Melanie Wood, who once sat across from a chain-smoking Joseph Brodsky in a non-smoking restaurant, and Cathleen Pierce. The two larger-than-life poets nearly came to blows when Brodsky claimed, "Women can't write intellectual poetry." Huh.
Melanie's reading will be followed by a "table slam." This isn't a means of showing audience approval or disgust, nor is it what happens to poets who don't pass muster. It means that tables at the Coffee shop Gallery will be covered with paper, and slam poets' first-round poem must be one they compose on-the-spot, written on their "tablecloth." I anticipate much gnashing of teeth...