Helicon West

Taylor told us once long ago that there is a place in town where you can go listen to people read poetry. It is called Helicon West. It happens at the True Aggie Cafe on Main every second and fourth Thursday.

I asked dear Google to define Helicon for me, and it dispersed all my curiosities.

Helicon: A part of the Parnassus, a mountain range in Greece, which was the home of the Muses. The name is used as an allusion to poetic inspiration.

I highly recommend attending a poetry jam sometime in your life. Greatest. Thing. Ever. :)

Taylor and I drove around town and found the cafe, but realized that parking was best found behind the building. This led us to the backside of Main, a street I've only seen at night. I was instantly in love! In love!!! Taylor noticed that all the buildings were different sizes and heights and different brick colors, and as we stepped out of the car, I suddenly felt like I was about to run into the Jets and the Sharks from West Side Story. Who knew that our friendly, quiet, little Logan had New York like qualities?

So we walked to the backdoor of the cafe and popped our head inside. We felt completely awkward because walking in from the back would require us walking in front of the performers. So I pulled Taylor around and we walked through the back door of the Sportsman. Little did we know that they were closing! But the guy in the back told us to walk to the front and have the lady open the locked door for us. What an inconvenience we were! But the lady was kind and let us walk through the store to get to the front of the cafe next door.

We walked in on a lady reading a short story, that I'm assuming she wrote. Something about her racist father and her being out when she wasn't supposed to. She was nervous and read quickly. But after her reading (I'm sorry to say that we didn't snap, but clapped), the woman directing the readings of the night got up and explained that each reader is allowed seven minutes at the pulpit. I liked this lady - she was quick on her feet and bursting with quiet energy. We were trying to place her accent, but we still haven't a clue. :) She proceeded to announce the next three readers and provided us with bouts of trivia.

If you were wondering, Siddhartha Gautama was born this day many hundreds of years ago. She encouraged us to write poetry about Buddha. Yes.

The variety of people who got up to read were of all walks of life! We had a poetry professor with gray hair pulled into a pony-tail, a few of his students, an older man reading about growing old and two stanzas inspired by Lord of the Rings, a man with a speech impediment (but I loved listening to him spout off words about The Best is Yet to Come), a girl who is in charge of the new forth-coming poetry magazine, English nerds... :) And late comers who wished to read whatever it was that struck their fancy. I was shocked to see my Policitical Science S.I. instructor get up and utter words about late-blooming golden rods? But it was his alter ego! His other half. This man is brilliant at Political Science, and yet here he was in this cafe with a ball-cap placed backwards on his head. The contrast made me laugh! It was like living a life that you only see in movies!

The time had come for the readings to commence, and music began to play as we walked out the building. I turned to see an older woman dancing and loving life. I couldn't believe we had really been there. It was so fun!

So maybe I enjoy poetry and prose...and maybe it's over my head...but maybe even more I love people watching. It was cause for much fondness to swell in my heart.

Thank you Taylor for introducing my to Helicon West. It will forever be a spark of joy in my life. :)