Chateau Eclectic

Last Sunday afternoon, under wood beam ceilings and arched windows looking out to a courtyard at the Chateau Marmont in West Hollywood, the 100 seats and sofas in the main lobby were filled.

Michael Ontkean (in his other life, the sheriff on “Twin Peaks”) read a selection of poems by Sharon Olds, Amy Gerstler and Dylan Thomas, then read his own work, much of which focuses on his Canadian childhood. This reading opened the third season of the New York-based Poetry Society of America’s L.A. chapter, where actors such as Tim Curry, Joe Spano and John Lithgow have read their work and the work of such well-known poets as Galway Kinnell and David St. John.

After 45 minutes, Sherod Santos stepped to the podium. He began with two poems meant to symbolize good and evil, the second of which is a stirring account of a rabbi and the rabbi’s friend, held in a Nazi concentration camp. The prose-like poem details the demands put upon these men to jump over a pit filled with corpses, where failure to clear the precipice will result in certain execution.

Santos then read from his latest collection, “The City of Women,” pointing out the Parisian, Algerian and Midwest landscapes from which the book evolves. He read calmly, carefully. The lobby was silent. “At first,” Santos explains, “I thought the forum of this sort of reading was intimidating. But the actors are a good medium for expanding poetry and injecting it into the community.”

Which is true. A poetry reading has the power to make one sketch down free verse or iambic pentameter. That’s good enough entertainment for poets. But whom do the actors draw in? According to Elena Byrne, regional director of PSALA: “Everyone else.”

For information on the series, contact Elena Byrne at (310) 377-1635.