Street Poet

If you were guiding a young person and making a list of things not to plan on doing for a livelihood, writing poetry would be somewhere near the top. So, poets must think out of the box and, in doing so, take it to the streets. There are many benefits to taking your writing to the sidewalks of New York City: no persuading agents of the merit of your work, you receive 100% of the proceeds, and payment is immediate.

And often, skills and arts honed on the streets, for an audience of passersby who are cynical and jaded, will fare well in a more conventional venue. Many well-known performers worked the streets early in their careers. Their material is the product of sifting out the unsuccessful material, leaving that which grabs and holds an audience, frequently with many other options.

Allan Andre hails from New York City. Online searches, however, find him plying his trade in other locales, including San Francisco. See his website here. I met him in Washington Square Park and offered the subject "indecision." Only some minutes later, typing away on a manual typewriter with a carbon copy, he offered me his poem. I made a contribution. See the text of my poem here.

As novel as this enterprise may sound, Allan is not the first or only to try his hand at Poetry While You Wait. Only a few blocks away, on University Place near Union Square, is the Poem Shop of Anayvelyse. German poet William Chrome was also found on the streets of New York City.

Outside of New York, Typing Explosion was a Los Angeles team of three who wrote poetry with the audience choosing titles. They worked regularly from 1998 to 2004. Zach Houston worked in San Francisco and inspired William Chrome to do the same in New York.

I recall reading a quote by a former French President that he could not imagine going to bed at night without reading some Verlaine. Difficult to imagine this as de rigueur for many of our former White House residents. But perhaps the proliferation of street poets is a harbinger of times to come...

Interesting Note: If you type "Verlaine" into Wikipedia, the search only returns Verlaine, the municipality in Belgium. To get the poet, you must enter Paul Verlaine. Is this the result of a poor search engine or commentary of the importance of poetry? :)