Recently, I was invited to a poetry reading. An amateur poetry reading. Visions of a room full of beret-wearing college kids filled my mind, all snapping after one word is spoken into a microphone on a sparse, poorly-lit stage. It could be any word, but it’s spoken artistically. If you don’t see the way ‘balustrade’ perfectly reflects the social situation of racial tensions in some faraway country, then you’re not artsy enough to be here.

Of course, that’s nothing close to what it was like.

A historical building converted into a coffee shop. Mismatched tables and chairs are crammed into any space available. A great, old, carved bar serves as the order counter. The smell of coffee and pot pies hangs in the air, and soft acoustic music allows for hushed conversation and the sound of scratching pencils against notebooks. Yeah, okay, the building itself passed the vibe check.

But the people? They were all sorts.

A traditional Goth sat in one corner with her drink. A couple on a date shared desserts off of fine china. My own soda bubbled, and my sister’s tea steamed. A raggedy man, a middle-aged businesswoman, and an artsy type share a table and some sort of card game. Peppered throughout the building are young adults dressed in black. Someone knits. Another crochets. A third is drawing with confident strokes in a sketchbook. A couple of people are reading.

This is the scene I joined, waiting to find out what kind of experience the event would offer.

The first poet stood with trembling hands and a downcast gaze. She read her words as she had rehearsed. Her voice was even, but it seemed as though a tremble waited for only the smallest opportunity to creep in. Her poetry was good, but at the end of her segment, I was left uninspired. Unmoved. But not uninterested. Hers were words to devour with your eyes, not the sort that called to your imagination as a siren calls to a sailor.

The second poet took the stage. Feet rooted as those of mountains are, she began with a bang. Or rather, a swear.

Now, I don’t typically enjoy things that use vulgarity for shock value, but somehow, this time, it was perfect.

Galaxies and bones stirred my mind. Heartbreak and betrayal, alien to me, haunted my fabricated memories. It was raw. It was uncomfortable. It was captivating. Yet if I had just read it, with the emotions it sought to evoke confined to a page, I doubt I would have liked it.

The third poet took the stage and compared life to peanut butter. He had stage presence and a nice voice. The pomp and absurdity of his words should have endeared me to him. It didn’t.

I’m currently in a period of my life that requires me to read aloud nearly daily. I had already noticed that things which were pleasant to read weren’t always pleasant to speak. I was trying to get my thoughts together for a post about it when I was invited to the poetry reading.

And I saw my point in three parts.

What is it about a good storyteller that enchants us? What is it about the voice that can draw us into something we may not relate to? How can a good orator transform mediocre words into ambrosia?

I hopped on Google. I searched for what makes a good storyteller. It provided me with some tips on how to connect with an audience and how to enhance my writing. I switched to Google Scholar. I searched for articles about the parts of the brain that activate when being told a story. That yielded articles on lying, body language, learning, and culture. I tried to reword it. I came away with some, honestly, really very good tips on presenting. What I didn’t find was a consensus on what a good speaker does to us in the context I was looking for. An interesting link between listening to stories and listening to music, though.

So, until science (or the internet) comes to prove me wrong, I’ll go with this:

Some people just have magic in their voice.