Another great moment in the history of pre-emptive poetry reading censorship.

The story goes like this: A respected veteran poet I know (who now lives in Oregon) had a co-feature at a Florence, Oregon reading (inside a restaurant). He opened with an a cappella cover of John Prine's "Sam Stone" and read Charles Bukowski's famous poem about the act of writing. Then he read a poem of his own which condemned the murder of Dr. George Tiller last week. Then the plug was pulled on him by the restaurant owner, who pronounced his poetry as not being "uplifting."

And variations of this story will take place again whenever venue owners and/or poetry hosts let the angry words "IT'S MYYYYYYYYYY PLACE (or HOUSE or READING)!!!!!!" ring out instead of using their brains (an increasingly lost practice as this first decade of the 21st Century comes to a close) and realizing that poetry can and often must be something besides soothing platitudes and homilies meant to do nothing but keep diners undisturbed in the Great Pacific Northwest.