Bluebird,
I think it's a fabulous idea. And if I ever get to Pagosa Springs again, I will come by for coffee. (I once went through there on an unexpected motor cycle trip and bought jeans and a shirt off someone's clothesline to replace the business suit I was wearing--long story)

Back to coffee shop poetry, my church recently published a book of religious poetry and we had a poetry reading at the coffee shop in the church. It was fun. We also had music. Maybe you could have poetry readings as well as music in your coffee shop. (Poets are cheaper to hire than musicians--as in FREE)

I decided to reseasrch poetry and songs for our poetry reading and I found out that before the written language, history was passed along by story tellers who performed before crowds. But it was also passed along in poetry and song. When the stories were retold they were changed and accuracy was lost so story telling was not a very accurate way to pass history along. However, the words of poems and songs were so beautifully woven together with rhythm, rhyme, and melody that people remembered them verbatim. Thus history passed along in songs or poetry, was more accurate that history passed in story form.
We have poets and songwriters to thank for many of the stories of the Bible and much of history before the written language.

Another bit of trivia--Does anyone remember the finger snapping that people used to do at coffee shop poetry readings back in the hippie days? Well, I found some info on that too. It seems that finger snapping started because many of the coffe shops started in basements of apartment buildings and poetry readings went late into the night so they had to snap rahter than clap which would awaken the tenants upstairs.

Well, that's all I know about poetry and coffee shops. I would love to come to your coffee house. It sounds fun.

smile