Usually Monday evenings this winter have found me in Columbus State’s Communication Center, helping students prepare for graded speeches. But with the college on spring break, I spent Monday, the 12th, at Bossy Girl’s Pin-Up Joint on North High Street near the OSU campus. Steve Abbott, a former English professor at Columbus State, alerted me to the poetry readings that are regularly held there. I arrived at Bossy Girl’s at 7 p.m. and proceeded to go on a self-guided tour. With its “burlesque” theme, the bar featured posters and kitsch art with scantily clad women in seductive poses. Perhaps the most-amusing item was a headless mannequin clad in black panties and a “Bossy Girl” t-shirt. A small rectangular stage and microphone toward the entrance provided the platform for the featured poet, Darren Demaree from Mt. Vernon.

Darren has not had an easy life. He has struggled with alcoholism while many of his friends have fallen prey to other addictions. In his first series of poems, he addressed these struggles in grim free verses that spoke of pain, darkness, sadness, death, and frustration.  Often, he presented vivid. sweeping panoramas filled with stark images that were nonetheless difficult to understand. A couple of poems spoke of a girl or woman named Emily, whose relationship to the poet was never clarified. After awhile, it occurred to me that understanding the specific content of Darren’s poems was less important than sensing the feelings — especially the angry feelings — that gave rise to them.

After a break, Darren launched into a second round of poetry reading. These poems were gentler and more prone to be humorous. One dealt with his five-year-old son’s fondness for being naked. Another seemed to focus on the bewilderment he sometimes experiences as a parent. A third centered on Darren’s efforts to prepare his children for a difficult world that neither he nor they would ever fully understand. Many of Darren’s poems were quite short, just a few lines, that gave listeners a quick punch in the gut or nudged them into silent thought. By and large, his poems were not intended to be enjoyed or bring happiness. Rather, they shed light on his individual struggles and on his perceptions of a world that is often harsh, unfair, and unforgiving.

Darren’s audience was relatively small — perhaps a dozen or so — and a bit cliquish. The friendliest person was the bartender, Marla, who was kind enough to make a special trip to her wine closet to fetch me a bottle of perseco. I don’t see myself as a regular at these poetry readings, but I may try to make the one on April 9, when Terry Hermsen, my Otterbein creative-writing instructor is the featured poet. (See “Thoughts on English 1160: Writing Across the Genres” May 15, 2016.)