Emily Dickinson Attends a Poetry Slam

Max Hinterland had just finished reading his scatalogical magnus opus "Ode to a Grecian Urinal" to a roomful of applause, raucous cheers and two scores of "10" and a "9 and a half" when a demure-looking thin-faced woman, her hair tied back in a bun, hesitantly stepped up to the podium.

"Oh My GOD," whispered a fashion conscious Amherst freshman. "What kind of look is SHE trying to achieve. If she's going for the sixties look she's got it all wrong. She needs to be wearing tie-dye and color like the hippies used to, not crinoline and lace."

The brown haired young woman examined the microphone dubiously, as though it was the neck of a hostile creature, perhaps a serpent rearing its head, getting ready to strike at her.

"Come on. Let's get reading," groused a bellicose voice from the rear of the audience. "We've got a lot of people who've come here to perform this evening if you're too afraid to."

Her dark brown eyes, her most impressive feature, gazed out at the audience fearfully. It was a good crowd for a Friday night poetry slam, and a few members of the audience were already showing signs of having hammered the beer a little too heavily. She steadied herself by taking a deep breath, then lifted up the sheet of paper that she'd been clutching like a rosary and resolutely began to read.

"A narrow fellow in the grass
Occasionally rides--
You might have met him--did you not
His notice sudden is--"......

"Louder!" demanded one of the Goths who was sitting along the wall at a table that was shrouded in cigarette smoke. His complaint was echoed by a quartet of tittering young ladies who were sitting closer to the stage. The poetry slam's Master of Ceremonies, "Dee Massa," a young black graduate student who was doing his doctoral dissertation on the revolutionary polemics of Eldridge Cleaver, was dressed to attract notice in a long brown leather coat topped with a red beret. As he sauntered up to the microphone and motioned for the crowd to quiet down his two gold chains glittered in the spotlight.. "Dee Massa's" real name was DeShaun Massey, but as he was so often called upon to and anxious to explain, "when it comes to poetry slams, I is "Dee Massa" here." Dee Massa draped an arm around the shy young woman in an overly-familiar manner, and whispered "you move this switch "up" to turn the microphone "on."" He stroked his hand reassuringly down her shoulder, and as he did so, stroked her breast slightly just before he stepped back. As if not realizing what he'd done, he stepped back, folded his arms across his chest and commanded her to begin again.

The diminuitive young lady glared back at him for an instant, then evidently figured that the confrontation wasn't worth it, so she turned her attention back to the microphone. She hesitantly moved the switch as she'd been instructed to. She gave out a relieved sigh which was amplified, much to the amusement of the young audience. Ignoring their immature reaction, she looked down at her sheet and began to read her poem again.

Seldon Magneson, an aspiring poet whose serious work garnered much less respect than that of the poets who presented humorous, or "in your face" poetry, looked at the young woman with astonished admiration. No, it couldn't be. Still, the young woman looked like an identical twin to the oil portrait of Emily Dickinson that hung in the lounge in the English Department. Seldon continued to study the young woman with increasing curiousity. Whoever she was, she had done her homework. Even her hair style was identical to that of the woman in the painting.

The listeners still had to strain to hear the intense young woman's voice, even though to Seldon it seemed like she was making an effort to speak louder. As she finished the first four lines again, Magneson observed that much of the audience had given up the effort to listen to her, finding it too difficult to pick up her words. There was a noticeable increase in the noise level at the tables, as couples began speaking softly and young women rummaged through their purses for their cigarettes or lipstick. There were attempts from several tables at the same time to flag down the waitress, and some of the young men, not wishing to wait for the busy young girl to come to their table, got up from their tables to go to the bar.

"The Grass divides as with a comb--
A spotted shaft is seen--
And then it closes at your feet
And opens further on--"

Lighters were flickering their tiny bursts of flame about the room, acting as tiny torches of illumination. One of the pale Goths stood up, his trenchcoat trailing down around his ankles as he put on a show of cupping his hand to his ear, but the table of children of darkness that he was sitting with ignored his pantomine, and instead put on airs of studied contempt to show their disdain for his pathetic attempt to play to the crowd.

Meanwhile the poetess droned on in a pleasant, but soft and expressionless voice, her lack of inflection and hesitation testifying that she had had little experience speaking in public.

"He likes a boggy acre
A floor too cool for corn--
Yet when a boy and barefoot--
I more than once at noon"

"What the hell is she writing about?" grumbled one of the freshmen from Mrs. O'Leary's Comp class. Although he was vociferous in touting his own genius, he had no attention span for poems longer than a haiku. "Compression," he'd explain haughtily. "Compression is the key to immortal poetry. The Japanese, having to learn to cope with living on a crowded island, have long realized that beauty is in minimalism, and they've developed the haiku into a Faberge miniature in verse." He also was heard to boast that he could knock off a dozen or so passable haikus in an hour.

"I don't get this gender-bending bullshit," his spike-haired female companion groused. "She's a woman. How the hell can she be a "boy and barefoot?"

Reading faster now, as if her only goal now was to get the ordeal of reading her poem in front of an audience over with, the young poetess gamely continued to read her poem, seemingly oblivious to her audience's disparaging reaction to it.

"Having passed, I thought, a Whiplash
Unbraiding in the Sun
When stooping to secure it
It wrinkled, and was gone--"

Deidre Meyerhoff, one of the event's three judges, like Dee Massey was a graduate student. She was almost finished with her doctoral dissertation which explored the career of Joni Mitchell as a songwriter and performer. Deidre, or "Dee Dee," as she was more apt to be addressed as by her friends, was sitting at the judge's table chain-smoking Winstons, sucking the flavor out of them as if they were candy canes. Her blonde hair bore the ravages of too many dye jobs, and her discontent with her life at this juncture had molded her expression into an intimidating frown.
She was a hard-looking woman, an impression accentuated by her Harley T-Shirt. She felt pity for the young woman though; pity that had mingled with smouldering rage when she watched Dee Massey cop a cheap feel while he was helping her with the microphone. Deidre was still seething. She knew by experience that that asshole Dee Massey hit on every woman that he encountered. It was just his nature. When he hit on her when he first met her, she went out with him, just to prove to both him and herself that she wasn't prejudiced after he'd thrown that accusation at her. She discovered that she was. At least when it came to DeShaun Massey. She never went into any details about her evening with him to any of her friends, but from that night onward, whenever the subject of Dee Massey came up, she'd refer to him as "that pig," "that asshole," or worse. She had to admit that she really wasn't sure where the poem the shy, pale-complexioned young poetess was reading was going, but she had a vague suspicion that she had read it before somewhere. She continued to listen closely as the young woman hesitated, looked out at her audience for a moment, then down again at her paper as she began to read again.

"Several of Nature's People
I know, and they know me--
I feel for them a transport
Of cordiality--"

Deidre let a rare smile banish her frown as she suddenly connected with the poem. Yeah, It was a snake. She knew where she'd encountered the poem now. It had been in one of her American Lit books. She was rather disappointed that the young lady was passing someone else's work off as her own. She debated whether she should call her on it or not. Given the abysmal performance she'd made of delivering it and Massey's piggish conduct though, she figured that the poor girl had had to endure enough embarrassment.

Seldon Magneson continued to watch the young woman intently as well. He was familiar with the Emily Dickinson poem that she was reading. He'd puzzled over its imagery when he first encountered it. By now though he'd learned enough to realize that the Belle of Amherst's poems were shy individuals, like their author. It takes a reader awhile to draw them out, to get to know them.

He watched as the young woman took a deep sigh, then plunged into the delivery of what he knew would be the last stanza. She had first looked out at the audience one more time, still somewhat intimidated by it, but this time with a trace of defiance, an air of imperious indifference, as she'd obviously accepted the fact that she hadn't reached the roomful of restless youth, and that it was their loss, not hers.

"But never met this fellow--
Attended or alone
Without a tighter breathing
And Zero at the Bone--"

She stood motionless for a moment, as if hoping still for a positive reaction from the audience. Her shoulders stooped slightly as she realized that the only response that her effort had elicited was indifference.
She took a couple of steps away from the podium.

"Hold on, honey," cooed Dr. Reynaud Hindman, the third of the judges, in his lilting feminine voice. "We've got to rate you first." Reynaud flaunted his homosexuality flamboyantly. wearing it like a medal, even going to the extent of wearing rouge on his otherwise pallid features. Students referred to him as "Doctor Rey," or in less repectful moments as "the Gay Tripper." Reynaud's pink, yellow or blazing orange shirts and white ruffed collars were as legendary in the English Department where he taught Victorian Literature and a course on Lewis Carroll, as were his constant efforts to speak in rhyme. "I'm just trying to recapture some of the beauty of our language," he would explain in that soft, musical voice of his to anyone so insensitive as to suggest that he might just be doing it to call attention to himself.

"I'll guess for a poetry slam, this was your first,
But your bubble, I fear, I've just got to burst.
Honey, I know its your first time at the dance,
But child, I don't think you'll get picked to advance.
You know, girl, you can't just stand there reading all shaky and shivery.
The secret to a good slam rating is a "knock em dead" deee-livery.
But it was your first time. You did the best you could do.
For that you'll get a "six" from me, instead of a two."

Having finished his little spiel, he smirked and gave a little flutter of a wave to the audience.

The young woman gazed at him with a puzzled expression. She looked as if she could sense his kindness, yet she looked as if she wasn't sure whether he was making fun of her or not. Or maybe she was just taken aback by his gender-bending femininity. Seldon Magneson couldn't tell for sure what was going through her mind.

Deidre Myerhoff took a long drag from her cigarette, exhaled slowly, then held up a "5."

"What is your name?" she asked the young poetess kindly.

"Emily," the young lady replied softly.

"Well Emily, if our MC here wasn't so busy being a pig, he would've explained that you should introduce yourself before you begin to read."

Dee Massa turned to respond to her insult, but Reynaud spotted the possible explosion and jumped in quickly to diffuse the situation.

"Ahh, Dee Dee and Dee, they just couldn't be," he sang gaily, taking pains to take some time straightening the gardenia in his hair once he'd gotten everyone's attention.

"Emily," Deidre continued. "Who wrote the poem that you just read to us?" Deidre didn't know why she asked the question after she had decided not to. She had just felt compelled to. She was bothered by this aspect of her personality that she had noticed emerge during the past few months. It was a restlessness and inability to focus that she realized probably reflected her discontent with herself.

"I did," Emily responded.

Deidre's eyes narrowed. Seldon surmised where Deidre was going with her line of questioning and felt that he'd better speak up and clarify the situation as he saw it.

"Emily Dickinson wrote it, Deidre," Seldon explained after catching her attention. "Emily here is into role-playing as well as poetry, I suspect."

Deidre's frown transformed into a self-deprecating smile. "Thank you, Seldon. I should have realized that. It just never clicked for me," she admitted, a little chagrined at her failure to recognize the poem and its author. She turned her attention to Emily again. "I know that it was your first reading, and you obviously put a lot of work into your preparation for playing Miss Dickinson. Don't go away discouraged. Why don't you just sit down and watch and listen to how some of the other readers present their work. Pay attention to the command they have of and the feeling that they put into their material. You've got to work on your delivery. You've got to use it to grab the audience's attention and hold it."

"Yeah man, grab it and hold it," Dee Massa interjected crudely. "Deidre baby, you really know how to pleasure a man."

Deidre glared at him as if he was a cigarette machine out of her favorite brand. He grinned back at her. It was a "What you gonna do about it?" kind of grin; disarming, yet a little menacing as well. Deidre averted her gaze from his. Finding no entertainment left to pursue in that direction, Dee Massa turned back to face Emily and launched into a critique of the young woman's poem.
"You know honey, I didn't have a clue as to what your poem was about." He shot he what he undoubtedly hoped would come across as a disarming smile.

"It was about a snake, Dee," Deidre said loudly from her seat at the judge's table. "You should have been able to identify with it."

"Sheee-it, woman. You lost this brother on that one," he said, continuing to address Emily after choosing to ignore Deidre's last comment. "I couldn't make squat about what you meant by "zero to the bone." He paused, for dramatic effect, then grinned knavishly and addressed the issue of her score. "A zero with a bone in front of it is a ten. Sheee-it, woman. Your poem wasn't worth that, so I'll just give you da bone." He held up a "1," punctuating it with a pelvic thrust to emphasize the double entendre. The crowded room exploded in raucous laughter.

The poetess with the thin face and penetrating brown eyes flushed momentarily, but then her self-control triumphed, her eyes blazed and she spoke firmly and with a great deal of feeling."I feel nothing but contempt for you, and nothing but sorrow and pity for the noble martyrs such as John Brown and the Reverend Lovejoy and the legions of Union dead who sacrificed their lives laboring to win you your freedom."

"My God," marvelled Seldon Magneson aloud. The young woman has really gotten into her role. Too bad she couldn't have delivered her poem with the same force of expression. Still, he was impressed with the effort she put into becoming Emily Dickinson and with her attention to detail. He hoped he'd get the chance to tell her so. Maybe even ask her out if she seemed at all friendly. Her face was pretty and her eyes were downright captivating.

Dee Massa meanwhile had been momentarily taken aback by Emily's strange response. He knew it was a "put-down" though. Marshalling his rage and molding it into a rejoinder, he turned toward her and launched a tense and angry verbal assault. "What did you mean by that, beee-atch? What kind of racist bullshit are you trying to shovel at me now?"

Deidre Meyerhoff had seen enough. She wasn't going to sit and watch Dee Massa turn on and humiliate the young girl in public any more than she already had been. She angrily stubbed out her cigarette, stood up, and with a voice edgy with hostility announced, "everyone in this room knows that you're a pig, DeShaun. You don't have to keep striving so mightily to impress that fact upon us. Don't lay your line of ghetto bullshit on her. We've all had enough of your oinking, and of YOU."

Surprised by her vicious verbal attack, and sensing in her hostile stance and barely controlled fury a formidable challenge, Dee Massa turned his back on Emily to confront Deidre.

'I've watched you hit on and attempt to grope every woman who comes up here to read," Deidre continued, "and I've had enough of it. "i'm going to..."

"Yeah, so you jealous now, beee-atch?" Dee Massa demanded, going on the attack. "You want another opportunity to dance the dance with Dee Massa, you just tell me so. Meanwhile, I'll just see if this little lady here," he said, indicating Emily, "needs a little after-hours tuu-tor-ring.'

"What's she going to learn from someone who only thinks with his prick?" Deidre shot back.

"Hey, back off beee-atch." De Massa said, trying to trump her hostility with a look of disdain. "My grade point average is higher than yours." Then, in case that comeback hadn't been smugly devastating enough, he struck one more punch, spitting out "you ign'ant Ho."

Deidre picked up her plastic ashtry and threw it and its contents at Dee Massa,. hitting him full in the face. Too stunned to respond, Dee Massa brushed the ash off his leather coat and looked down at the litter of cigarette butts and the upside down ashtry at his feet. Meanwhile, Dr. Hindman stepped in between him and the table where Deidre was sitting. She had a shocked look on her face, she was obviously mortified by her momentary loss of self-control.

"That's enough. Both of you!" Reynaud Hindman shrieked, nervously flitting between the two of them. "I want you both to begin to act like mature students in our graduate program. I want you both to grow up! Please!" he pleaded in a quivering voice that had lost any pretense toward rhyme and any of its music. Realizing that the ruckus had caused him to slip out of his personna, he made a conscious effort to slip back into it. He began to stroke the black man's shoulder as if he was trying to settle down an agitated pet. "Let me get a washcloth, De Shaun," he cooed solicitously. " We'll clean that nasty cigarette ash off your coat."

While the audience's attention was riveted on the blow-up between Dee Dee and Dee and Dr. Hindman's damage control attempts, Emily slipped unobtrusively away from the podium and the center of attention, disappearing into the audience. Pausing at Seldon Magneson's table, she placed a hand on it and whispered "thank you for listening." Seldon looked at her hand, then shyly reached for it. He held it for an instant, too embarrassed to look up at what he knew would be those soul-snaring brown eyes. Suddenly he felt a strange sensation as if her hand was melting slowly away from his grasp. He looked up at her and was shocked to see the corporeal form of Emily Dickinson fading into nothingness, like she'd entered one of those transporter beams you see on old Star Trek episodes. After a few moments, all that remained was a slight but unmistakeable scent of lavender. The scent lingered only briefly, like a chaste kiss, before the delicate fragrance was banished to his memory, driven away by the odors of cigarettes and beer.