This chapter was written for an audience, but that audience comprises individual readers rather than a gathered crowd ready for aural pleasure. The chapter presents open readings and their more highly orchestrated cousin poetry and continues a tradition of a public poetics oriented more towards direct intervention in and commentary on public affairs than toward the relatively inner-directed lyric tradition. In the 1950s, “open-mike readings”, which are sometimes spelled as “mic,” a contraction of “microphone”, have been a familiar genre in American literary bohemian circles. Contemporary...

This chapter was written for an audience, but that audience comprises individual readers rather than a gathered crowd ready for aural pleasure. The chapter presents open readings and their more highly orchestrated cousin poetry and continues a tradition of a public poetics oriented more towards direct intervention in and commentary on public affairs than toward the relatively inner-directed lyric tradition. In the 1950s, “open-mike readings”, which are sometimes spelled as “mic,” a contraction of “microphone”, have been a familiar genre in American literary bohemian circles. Contemporary open-mike readings take place in bars, nightclubs, coffeehouses, high school gyms, college lounges, auditoriums, and other public spaces traditionally designated for combinations of entertainment and informal, relatively unstructured community formation.