Upon arriving at the Macaulay  honors college for Thursday night's common event, I was surprised to see that it was a reading of poetry, not of literature or of any other more scholarly subject. I was quite happy to find that Macaulay common events were not as conservative as I previously thought. It was refreshing to see and hear a young group of people express themselves through poetry, and it was an event that was very contrasting to any other Macaulay event we've ever been to. Overall, the experience was good. However, because of the fact that I arrived late and I did not find a aplace to sit, so I had to remain outside of the actual reading room and listen to the presentation without being able to see the speaker's faces, I was not pleased. Furthermore, a lot of the poetry in the presentation didn't really speak to me at all. I thought many of the poetry was a bit cliche and too "inside the box". There was nothing that really struck me out of anything that any of the speakers wrote. At times I felt like I was at a Poetry Slam back in high school. I felt like the poetry itself was somewhat strong, but it lacked the power of being able to blow me away. Nothing was profound enough to be categorized as "deep" in my perspective. At times I felt that certain poets just wanted to let out anger and decided to write something that didn't convey as much as the poets claimed. Certainly, I think that poetry has a lot to do with the performance of it. The voice of the poet can either ad or detract to the poetry, and in many instances during the presentation, I felt like it detracted so much from the works of art being presented. Particularly the last poet held true to this idea. The way she spoke was very irritating to me and distracted me from what she was actually saying. I thought it was inexpressive and monotonous. She did not sound like a human, and because of the way she was speaking, I was no longer interested in what she was saying. I think that poetry is best when its presented in a somewhat moderate way. The artists' voice cannot be more aggressive than the poetry itself because it makes it seem like the poet is pushing for their words to be more powerful than what they really are. The words should be able to stand on their own and still blow me away, regardless of their presentation.