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MARK ZDECHLIK: The fame of Mayslack's Polka Lounge in Northeast Minneapolis rests on its mountainous, homemade roast beef sandwiches, smothered with onions and garlic, and the largely Polish clientele that the neighborhood bar serves. It's a smoke-filled workingman's hangout that's been taking on a dramatically different makeup at least once a month. That's when the stools that line the long, dark, battered wooden bar and clusters of chairs at tables in the front and backrooms are taken over by what looked to be poetry-reading beatniks of the 1990s.

SPEAKER: Taker of pain. I am a taker of pain. I accept it as my responsibility. I am drawn to those in pain. I exchange love and relief for it. I am a taker of pain. I reach out with my soul.

MARK ZDECHLIK: On this evening, about 30 people, ranging in age from their early 20s to their 50s and perhaps beyond, filled the backroom of the bar. Some who signed up to read poetry took turns at the stage, mostly to recite their own compositions.

SPEAKER: This is called the Late Month. I remember the windows. November days walked by them holding hands with elderly acrobats, warm, loose, and gray. I spent so many hours under glass. I felt safe there, looking out at the world. I believed the world was looking out for me and all my potted plants. I believed in November 2. I spent Thanksgiving in a cemetery. The dead followed me home. And when I didn't invite them in, they broke my windows and crawled through with December and the snow.

[APPLAUSE]

MARK ZDECHLIK: Tom Moss manages Mayslack's Polka Lounge. Last October, a group of what he referred to as kids that had been showing up at Mayslack's for the food approached him, asking if they could rent the backroom of his bar for poetry readings.

TOM MOSS: I just expected 20 people to come and listen to some people read poetry. And when they got here, there was about 120 people. And they had two bands playing. And I didn't even know they were going to have a band. And then it just kept growing from there. They don't smoke pot or do any of that stuff in here. They just drink and eat and listen to music, and the poetry people. It's pretty nice.

[MUSIC PLAYING] Down the park where we sit on the rocks

MARK ZDECHLIK: Lynn Collier Fancher, a 21-year-old Studio Art major at the University of Minnesota, was one of the people listening to poetry and music at Mayslack's the other evening. She wasn't alive in the late '50s when Ginsberg and Burroughs, following beatniks, hung out to contemplate life through abstract poetry. But she imagines that what goes on at Mayslack's is similar to ongoings at long gone gatherings of beat poets and their listeners.

LYNN COLLIER FANCHER: I don't think this is quite as maybe-- I don't know. I don't want to say it, but maybe pretentious as that-- because this tends to be a little more low key. But I think some of the sentiment is the same-- just trying to get what's true and what's real for the people who are reading and writing here.

MARK ZDECHLIK: Some Of the regulars at Mayslack's dismiss the poetry readings as gatherings of homeless hippies who don't wash their hair, but others seem to the new blood. Joe Kaczmarek nursed his beer at the bar as the readings continued on the stage.

JO KACZMAREK: I'm 68 years old, retired from the government for 15 years, did my 36 months in the Pacific, carried mail for 32 years? I've been coming to this bar for 45 years, and I stood here a couple of nights to watch them. It's a younger group. And if that's what they love, let them have it. This is a different generation. If that's what they want to do, let them enjoy their life.

MARK ZDECHLIK: A self-described apprentice hobo, who goes by the name of Iowa Blackie, read some of his work that centered around his fascination with railways. The 42-year-old said he's been hopping trains since he was just a boy of 15.

IOWA BLACKIE: This is called the hobo romance, and this is one reason why I'm still single to this day. A source of sadness in my youth for girls who sometimes caused me pain. He's testing me to tell the truth. And then I chance to ride a train. The cause was to forget my pain. But what I found was better yet a feeling new I soon would gain. And from it would have no regret.

MARK ZDECHLIK: Iowa Blackie likes the open-mic program at Mayslack's because it offers beginners and pros alike an outlet for their work.

IOWA BLACKIE: I think it's about time we got something like this again. It gives some of us who are struggling to make it a forum, to read our poetry, however good or bad it might be.

MARK ZDECHLIK: Iowa Blackie, one of several who've been making a habit of hanging out at Mayslack's Polka Lounge in Northeast Minneapolis once a month to read and listen to poetry. This is Mark Zdechlik.