What is Poets Theater?

John K blogs about his experience as a participant in an evening of Poets Theater, organized by Patrick Durgin, who also published The Kenning Anthology of Poets Theater: 1945-1985, edited by Kevin Killian and David Brazil. The interesting part of this post is not simply the detail surrounding the preparation for such a production, but the distinction that’s made between Poets Theater and other kinds of theater. Poets Theater, K suggests, is not only poetic in the sense of being anti-narrative, but in the sense of being written and performed for poets:

One way of thinking about Poets Theater is as theater that follows poetic logic, and in which poetry, as the material and as the focus, is foregrounded. Another is anti-commercial, and, as participant Tim Yu and Patrick both pointed out, often created by and for close friends, staged in living rooms or other intimate settings, without any pretense of professionalism. To put that another way, as poet, curator and critic John Beer suggested in his panel comments that preceded our event, one might think of it as "embarrassed" and "inept," which is to say, artfully artless.