When a classmate and I found ourselves at a poetry reading on Cherokee Street recently (one of my classes requires me to attend an off-campus poetry reading), it was nothing at all like what we were expecting. I imagined poetry readings as more of a hoity-toity, finger-sandwich-eating situation and less of a smoking-weed-in-your-parent’s-basement vibe. I was in for a surprise.

At first, I was hesitant about going to Cherokee Street. I am sure it is a great place, but I’d had a bad experience there before, so I was a little wary. I went once before with a group of friends, and we received so many unwelcome catcalls as soon as we got out of the car that we just ran for the Hill. That wasn’t meant as a cliche. We literally left and went to the Hill for lunch instead. There’s a great sandwich place there; I highly recommend it.

Anyway, when we arrived to the venue for the poetry reading, I immediately felt out of place. A group of hipsters gathered around the door, smoking cigarettes and chatting about life. As measly Poetry Writing 1 students, we were in the class more for fun than because we had a passion for the written art. We did not feel intense enough to be a part of this crowd. They all seemed to know each other—poetry was their lives, after all—and they were there for fun, not for credit. The venue itself was small and dark, with a strange smell. Where was this snap-plause I had been promised?

The reading was called “Significant Others.” Each poet would share their work, along with a piece that inspired them to write what they did. One poet was a graduate student from Washington University who worked as a translator. He read his poetry alongside pieces by Emily Dickinson that he had translated. Another reader read a few pages from a book alongside her work. These readings were both pleasant, but we left as soon as there was a break because we had been so startled by the first reading that we could not concentrate.

The first reader was inspired by a video he had stumbled across. He decided to have it projected on the wall while he read his piece, maybe hoping it would give the audience the same feeling of inspiration that he had. He read for what was probably 15 minutes, but felt like hours, while pornography depicting two men having very rough sex played on the wall.

I do not consider myself to be a prude, and in all fairness, we were given a brief warning before the reading that there would be some pornographic images, but I was expecting it to just be a picture to look at before the reading. Instead, we were shown a burly man quite brutally having sex with a very small, very young guy. I tried my best to ignore the video and focus on the poetry, but I just could not look away. I felt like the man was being very severe. I couldn’t help but cringe and worry the younger man was not quite appreciating the experience. I looked around and saw that everyone else in the crowd was unphased by it; they were just nodding in agreement with the words being spoken. I glanced at my classmate and saw he had stopped watching the screen and was just staring at the floor while shifting uncomfortably in his chair. I do not mean to say the poet was wrong for being inspired by porn. He can find inspiration wherever he likes, and that would make for some interesting and unique poetry. Many other people seemed unphased by the porn, making me feel out of place, since I was so distracted by it. I just felt uncomfortable seeing something so graphic, especially while sitting in a room of strangers.

I later discovered that we had studied this particular poet’s work in class, and my teacher thought he was genius. I was so distracted by what was projected on the wall that I could not actually appreciate the man’s words. When I tried, it inevitably brought me back to the porn, and I became utterly lost in it.

In the car on the way home, my friend and I just sat in mild shock for a while, before my classmate said he was also not so certain the younger man’s experience was pleasurable. The men’s faces were covered to protect their identities, and there was no sound played, so we were just left watching a series of hits and brutality without anything acknowledging this was welcomed. This somehow just made the experience stranger and more engrossing.

I do believe that everyone has a right to like what they want without the judgment of others. It was just new and strange for me to see pornography used as art. The setting in which I was receiving it also enforced my adverse reaction. I was in a new place, with a bunch of people I didn’t know watching something very graphic. This all just left me feeling startled and overwhelmed.

No matter how good of a writer you are, pornography may not be the best thing to show while you present your work. While people could argue for the performance art aspect of the piece, the nature of the video made it difficult to appreciate either part. Not everyone has the widest attention span, and many can’t appreciate two things at once. For me, maybe showing the porn and then the poetry might have been better. Or maybe just a still of the porn. Or maybe no porn. No porn would have been good too.