Sonoma State University students enjoyed themselves Tuesday when slam poet and author Buddy Wakefield graced an intimate audience with incredible poetry and humor. 

Wakefield is a three-time world champion spoken word artist traveling the country to share his art. 

It was clear the small audience in Ives 76 wasn’t what Wakefield was used to. The audience of people in a small room with black floors and a single spotlight on a microphone made for an intimate setting.

It seemed as if the audience threw Wakefield off his game, because it took him about 10 minutes to even begin his first poem. That’s not to say the time spent before the poetry wasn’t entertaining. On the contrary, Wakefield had a sense of humor that can make even the most conservative person in the audience grin. 

He specifically picked on conservatives when he began to talk about homophobes, while simultaneously stroking his microphone, resembling a sexual gesture. 

Unless having heard his poetry prior to this show, there was no way of knowing what to expect at this point. Wakefield took extremely long pauses between sentences, creating an awkward silence in the room. 

He joked about how his sparkling water was making him burp and how everyone liked his random sweater before giving an anecdote on when he and the director of the HUB, Mark Fabionar, first met. 

Wakefield kept mentioning how the atmosphere was making him nervous. After a while, it seemed as if he was never actually going to begin reciting a poem. Luckily, his sarcastic humor kept the audience entertained. 

His sharp puns and whit poked fun at everything. 

“Rohnert Park, where I’ve wanted to perform since my whole life,” he said, “and where I gained almost 20 times the following than I had in Greenland.” 

With little introduction to his first poem, he slid into the fast rhythm so seamlessly it took a moment to realize he had begun the poem. 

Throughout the rest of the show he went in and out of the poetry to add side notes and conversations. Although his sense of humor was quite dry and his pauses were long, his poetry was pure magic. 

While his choreographed hands and fingers moved with each word and breath, Wakefield’s words came out as a pure masterpiece. 

He had a way of pointing out everyday occurrences, and changing the way they’re looked at, exposing how they are ruining our society.  

“Stop congregating in the valley,” Wakefield said, “just because an echo sounds good when it agrees with itself.”

Although all of his poems were very different, they all covered similar ideals. The main focuses of Wakefield’s poems advocated the ideas of present, individual and honest.