when poetry's poetry

The poet Joseph Stroud read yesterday at the Poetry Center at SF State.

He read with deep feeling, embodiment of the words themselves, as if composing the poem as he was reading.

Listening to Stroud's poems, involving Antonio Machado, Robinson Jeffers and a car crash in Los Angeles in which a young boy loses his mother, among other things, I wondered why more people don't go to the readings of good poets, recalling what Lewis MacAdams said to me on the steps of Beyond Baroque after we'd listened to Anselm Hollo read: "Jeez, I needed that."

Stroud graduated from SF State in the early 60's when it was a 'college.' He remembers going to readings at the college in the old days, especially watching the poets--George Oppen, Robert Duncan, Linda Gregg, Jack Gilbert among them--and how intently they watched the poet who was reading.