Wednesday, July 30, 2008
At the library
While I was at the small branch library tonight a man came in to give a talk on "Lighthouses of New Jersey." The flyer taped to the front door wasn't there late last week. He drew an audience of about two. I'm interested in Jersey lighthouses. Wish I was looking at one up close right now. But I was at the library to spread out paperwork on a table & make copies of stuff. I also wanted to scoot up to the Shoprite before I went home. All I would've asked him was if he had done the Lighthouse Challenge, the weekend when lighthouse fanatics rush to visit all the lighthouses in Jersey, & maybe some places where there used to be lighthouses. If he'd been a local author promoting a book I definitely would've found some time for him.
Ask any Jersey author who has done the circuit of libraries & bookstores with a book & they'll tell you about reading for librarians & a couple of people who wandered in, or turning a lectern bookstore appearance into chit chat over lattes. It happens even to fairly well-known writers & performers. Some years ago I went to hear composer Pauline Oliveros & her group at Essex County Community College in Newark. Around a dozen showed up in a large auditorium. A few miles away in New York City she draws hundreds of fans. It was a terrific performance anyway. A double bill of poets Allen Ginsberg & Newarker Amiri Baraka nearly sold out the same venue.
Crowds can work against you. In the strangest poetry reading I ever gave, at Rochester Institute of Technology, there was an audience of over 100. All but a small cadre of local poets were there as a required class assignment. I'm not a standup comic. It was the largest crowd I've ever had without sharing the stage with rock bands, & the only time I've ever felt flop sweat. It is very unnerving to hear chuckles & hmms & see nods of comprehension from a handful of people sitting together front right while everyone else is looking at their watches & thinking about going to the pub for beer as much as I was by the end of the reading.
The only sure draw for a library is a puppet workshop for children, all materials supplied, all kids guaranteed to leave with a puppet.
"If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be." Thomas Jefferson
Ask any Jersey author who has done the circuit of libraries & bookstores with a book & they'll tell you about reading for librarians & a couple of people who wandered in, or turning a lectern bookstore appearance into chit chat over lattes. It happens even to fairly well-known writers & performers. Some years ago I went to hear composer Pauline Oliveros & her group at Essex County Community College in Newark. Around a dozen showed up in a large auditorium. A few miles away in New York City she draws hundreds of fans. It was a terrific performance anyway. A double bill of poets Allen Ginsberg & Newarker Amiri Baraka nearly sold out the same venue.
Crowds can work against you. In the strangest poetry reading I ever gave, at Rochester Institute of Technology, there was an audience of over 100. All but a small cadre of local poets were there as a required class assignment. I'm not a standup comic. It was the largest crowd I've ever had without sharing the stage with rock bands, & the only time I've ever felt flop sweat. It is very unnerving to hear chuckles & hmms & see nods of comprehension from a handful of people sitting together front right while everyone else is looking at their watches & thinking about going to the pub for beer as much as I was by the end of the reading.
The only sure draw for a library is a puppet workshop for children, all materials supplied, all kids guaranteed to leave with a puppet.
