Poetry @ Tech Review: McDaniel, Sands, and Sharma

This was my first ever formal poetry reading. I didn't know exactly what to expect, but somehow I wasn't expecting so much humor. The majority of the session was lighthearted and humorous poetry.

The first poet, Sharma read two poems I really liked. The poem of his wife cooking had a clear rhyme scheme that made it enjoyable to listen to. It was also simply a cute message of how important his wife's cooking was to him. I like how he gave some real life context, admitting that it did motivate his wife to cook his favorite dish for a little while!
The  other poem of his, "Bottoms up Girl" was a humorous poem showing the vast contrast between the author himself and this girl he met at a bar. The line  "She's a bottoms-up girl and I drink in small sips", still sticks in my mind now, as I didn't have to write it down to remember it. He also preceded this reading with what made him write the poem in the first place--the experience at MIT.

The second poet, Sands, was much louder than sharma and at first the power in his voice took me by surprise. However, I really liked how loudly and clearly he projected his voice. It made it easy to comprehend and mull over the words he was saying. He was my favorite reader out of the three. Some of his commentary in between poems almost seemed like a stand-up comedy skit. His first poem was very relatable to teens, talking about the typical experience of partying on the weekends. He begins the poem comically but then turns serious addressing the dangers of drinking like that. It almost seemed a bit satirical.
His second poem was very personal to him. He explained how it was about his gay brother and his partner, and went into depth about their caring relationship.

The third poet Jeffery Mcdaniel had a more solemn tone, but still had humorous content in his poems. The seriousness of his voice in reading such outrageous lines is what made it comical. One line of his I wrote down was "complaining is like sex for old people". That line got shocked reactions and lots of laughs especially from his older audience.

I really enjoyed this poetry reading much more than I thought that I would. I love how each of these poems had a back story that inspired them to be written. It was also interesting to compare reading styles and writing content of the three poets.