Poetry Reading

We had a poetry reading yesterday as a benefit for the Zen Center, which two poet friends of mine run. All the usual suspects read, but I am not particularly crazy about how people read their poems aloud. Nobody had the dreaded "poet voice," and one or two other readers were good, but generally I just don't like poetry readings. I got a good response because I have a sense of timing, of how to get a poem across rhythmically.  A little bit of comic timing.  My poem "dough, some bread, I'll spend on you / Ray, my cousin Raymond's name / MI, the state of Michigan / Fa, a nonsense syllable / Sol, the Spanish word for sun / Law, what we must all obey / Tee,  on which the golf ball sits" got some laughs.  I'm not saying all poetry has to be comic like mine, but...