Cats in a blender
And traffic jams.
The aurora borealis
And wandering
Mongols
In Lapland.
Broken hearts,
Tortured souls
And misguided love.
Wauconda, O Wauconda, little did we know your poet’s heart beat so strong.
But beat it does. And in an outpost far from the urbanity that spawned it, the poetry slam arrived in rodeo country.
The scene was a century-old saloon more accustomed to hosting football parties than the musings of amateur bards. And the subjects-from a feline’s ill-fated ride in an Osterizer to a dreary travelog of the Great White North-more than once traipsed into the range of the bizarre.
But under the direction of Mr. Poetry Slam, Chicago poet Marc Smith, Wauconda’s inaugural slam emerged as a mix of vaudevillian comedy and subterranean coffeehouse kitsch.
“I hope they get it,” Smith muttered shortly before showtime Wednesday night. “But this is a long way from the city.”
It was there, at the legendary Green Mill Lounge in Uptown, where the poetic free-for-alls were born more than six years ago. They consist of round-robin readings on Sunday nights by anyone with the guts to stand up and take the abuse of the crowd-which is encouraged to heckle, stomp and hiss.
Since then, Smith has dragged his show on the road, and the weekly events have become staples in half a dozen cities across the country, as well as in west suburban Berwyn.
But Wauconda, a Lake County hamlet known for its summer rodeo and autumn apple picking, was something different.
“When they called and said they wanted to try this out here, I said, `We’re going to need some help,’ ” said Smith.
That help came from librarian Leslie Geist, who contacted Smith after seeing a slam at the Green Mill this year.
“I didn’t want people to come to the library to read poetry because that’s boring,” said Geist, director of programming at the Wauconda Library. “And I knew I couldn’t get people to get on a bus to the city to see this.
“They’ll go to a Cubs game. But this? Forget it.”
The pair scouted sites across town and settled on O’Traina’s Lakeside Pizzeria and Tavern, a 150-year-old saloon that once doubled as a hotel before the turn of the century. Its rustic charm, close quarters and Chase Bros. upright piano were just right, Smith said.
The countrified jukebox had to be tucked under a stairwell to make room for a makeshift stage, and Smith had to bring his own piano player and small cast of players. But those were the least of their problems.
The real question was would anybody show up.
“We thought we’d be talking to ourselves,” Smith said.
But by Wednesday night, word had spread, and more than 75 people packed the two-story bar.
For the record, it was the young poet laureate of Round Lake who made the historic first public reading. Twenty-nine-year-old Geoff Akins took the stage reluctantly, his voice low and eyes cast downward at the tattered spiral notebook in which he had recorded his poems.
He read “Reflections,” a short yet sweet verse, and the companion pieces “Intensity” and “Direction” with nary an interruption.
“I’ve never read anything I’ve written publicly,” said Akins, a student at Columbia College. “I was nervous, but it was great.”
He was followed to the stage by his wife, Carrie, who spouted a nearly X-rated limerick about her boss’ anatomy.
“I’ve got dozens of ’em,” she said proudly.
With few others willing to stake their egos on a public exhibition of their innermost thoughts, Smith turned to the ringers-Dirk Perfect (a.k.a. Douglas Mumaw) and Guido Crescendo (a.k.a. David Woolley)-a pair of swashbuckling poets who mixed swordplay and wordplay alike.
The professional actors, whom Smith met at a North Side Chicago tavern one night, were the runaway hits of the night.
They were followed by the main event, a one-on-one competition between poets who usually ply their trade at the Green Mill. Their punches were pulled, perhaps in deference to the uninitiated.
“This is a different crowd,” said Smith. “You can’t lay that angry urban stuff on them too soon. It scares them. They’ll grow into it.”
