There's no escaping the upstairs room where Writers & Books holds its readings. Show up on time, or else you'll be caught crossing the room in front of the audience. And once it starts, there's no back door to sneak out of if things get too lengthy. These were my thoughts when I showed up on Thursday night for a National Poetry Month reading by Anne Coon and Karen Swenson, both dressed in colors as bright as their poems.

I shouldn't have worried. Both poets read for what felt like the perfect amount of time, and it was pleasant to hear them read their own carefully crafted words the way they were meant to be spoken.

Coon opened with a poem about love and celebration. It had an appealing line about ridding ourselves of calendars and living for the moment. Many of her poems were clever and even funny; she got several chuckles and some outright laughter from the audience of about 20. Coon also read a short piece about smells, and more than the piece itself, I liked her description of how it came to be: her mother used to make "pennies" out of leftover bits of pie crust dough, flattening them and adding cinnamon or sugar, making little treats from scraps that would otherwise be tossed aside. In a similar way, Coon takes "leftover" bits of poems and makes something out of them, not necessarily for publication, but more for her own pleasure and satisfaction.

Karen Swenson had some clever lines too, and some very affecting poems about her travels to the Mother Teresa house and Tibet. She spoke about being a teacher - Coon was one too, now retired - and a proud moment on the subway in New York City, when two young adults recited lines of Shakespeare into the crowd. Swenson soon joined the game, before getting off at Union Square, and it gave her hope that the things she teaches do, sometimes, seep through.