Reading Poems Again

Last night, I participated in Tuesday Funk, joining several other readers at Hopleaf. As an added bonus, Bob and Julie were able to attend – stopping in town, after returning from a weekend away. Yesterday was their 20th wedding anniversary, and it was kind of them to spend part of their day at my event.

While they’ve seen me perform at 20×2 before, they’d never seen me read my poems. So it was nice to be able to show off a little.

I don’t do readings all that often – and the last time was around a year ago. While I have a collection of poems, many of them are quite old – and date back to my time in grad school, back when I was more of a writer.

The analogy I have with these older poems is that it feels like putting on a Letterman jacket from high school. While I’m still happy and proud of the poems I wrote way back when, it also feels a bit like reaching too far back in one’s past.

On the plus side, being asked to participate in a reading definitely prompted me to write again. And some of the newer poems I’ve done lately, I’ve been really pleased with.

Last year, I finished a poem about Heavy Metal drummers that I’ve carried around, half-finished, for years. And for this latest reading, I wrote a poem about the Winchester Mansion that I’ve had bubbling around in my head, also for many years.

Thanks to Liz for this photo. There should be video of the event available in the future, so I’ll post that up once it’s online.

Related:
Felix Jung: Reading Poems at Tuesday Funk
Felix Jung: Poetry