I enjoyed going to this event even though I am not that into poetry. It was better than I had expected it to be. I found him to be pretty funny and since he was from New Jersey I was able to understand some of the references that he made. For example, he had a whole poem about how he had worked at Great Adventure on the Rolling Thunder ride and talked about this girl he met there who he was interested in. I grew up going to Great Adventure and have rode Rolling Thunder, so I liked being able to relate to that a little bit. He also had a few poems about fatherhood, he discussed his own childhood as well as his two daughters.
I also thought it was interesting how he had a poem about slaves. Gregory Pardlo had an interest in slave narratives, so he had read some of them and ended up making it into a poem. I never really thought about taking something that you were interested in reading and turning it into a poem. He also had other different ideas like this, such as his poem that was written as a description of a class which he thought would be interesting to teach. This idea came about from him having to write course descriptions. Overall, I was surprised that actually enjoyed it and it was a nice change to attend an event such as this.