The New Yorker Goes to a Spoken-Word Event

The New Yorker's Michele Moses reports back from a sold-out Brooklyn spoken-word poetry performance by Sarah Kay and Phil Kaye (no relation): "They have a poem, 'An Origin Story,' about their remarkable friendship: 'It didn’t start with us. / It started with Lennon and McCartney. / It started with Thelma and Louise. / It started with Winnie-the-Pooh and Christopher Robin. / Bert and Ernie!' It’s been viewed on YouTube more than two million times," writes Moses. More:

...Kay and Kaye spend most of the year on tour, teaching poetry workshops and performing. (Their biggest show so far was in the Philippines.) When they’re not travelling, they live in Manhattan, Kay on the Upper West Side and Kaye on the Lower East Side. The Bell House show was a kind of homecoming.

Facing away from each other, they changed clothes—Kaye into a black shirt from Zara and Kay into a tweedy gray suit. With a high heel on one foot and a Nike Air Jordan on the other, she asked, “Should I go femme-y or sneaker?” Kaye picked the high heel.

The lights dimmed, and the duo took the stage. “My name is Phil Kaye,” Kaye said. “And my name is Sarah Kay,” Kay said. “And, if you didn’t know those two things, you might be lost!”

They performed two poems together, and alternated performing individually. Kaye spoke about tree-climbing, his childhood stutter, and his parents’ divorce; Kay discussed whale hearts, the Civil War, and a long-distance relationship. Kaye did an impression of the Geico gecko, and Kay recited an open letter to the person who, while breaking into her car, stole her vibrator. The audience laughed and cheered.

Read on at the New Yorker.