Some years ago I stumbled upon a café in Prague’s Zizkov district where expats would meet each week for poetry readings.

I’ve never been much of a poet myself, but I went because it was a nice café, with good cheap Staropramen on tap, and because there were worse ways to spend a Sunday evening. Who knew? Perhaps there was an alarming poet, a supersoul – a Whitman, a Bukowski, a Thomas, waiting to blow me away. Plus, there was always the possibility of meeting and networking with other writers.

In those days, my own work had crawled to a grinding halt; there was an abortive first novel sitting on my desk at the flat, awaiting a rewrite. There were a few paltry missives published in Provokator, a start-up ‘zine that of course didn’t pay anything. Actually that evening when I arrived at the café, I saw Marika, Provokator instigator-in-chief, among the crowd, and so I chatted with her for a bit, and ended up with an assignment to interview a Russian-American couple who were staging a joint exhibition of their paintings. But that’s another story.

The readings went – well, OK, it wasn’t exactly North Beach, circa 1958. Most of the works read that evening by the collection of expats were overly bookish, affected, indoorsy. One fellow had the audacity to wear a purple velvet coat, complete with the puffy poet’s shirt that matched his clichéd long-flowing locks. He even clutched a bottle of red wine in one hand (how original) and his poem in the other, reading in a lilting, faux-British accent, glancing up whimsically from time to time, as though we all knew his words reeked of the immortal ages. He did reek all right:

Fie! Oh fie!
Though my heart doth reach for the sky,
There is, By and By
Only You and I
You and I!

Other would-be poets had few illusions about their talents, and instead related anecdotes, delivered in a light style, about their drunken expat experiences, their Prague days and nights. Those stories at least put everyone at ease. A safe bet: After all, it’s better than putting everyone to sleep.

One by one, they read their works, and received polite applause. Meanwhile, you looked around at the mostly full café, and it was fun (wait – fun? It was nerve-racking, excruciating!) to watch the poets who were waiting in the wings; anxiously clutching their papers or notebooks, straining to listen to whoever was on stage at the moment but all their thoughts relentlessly focused on their upcoming performance.

As you listened, you realized what a tough road poetry was. You thought of people like Bukowski, or Dylan Thomas, who were able to draw sell-out crowds back in the day. They were like rock stars. Listening to some of their scratchy old recordings, the imbibed poet and the riveted crowds, it was easy to be lured to that path. What a life! To be the poet, soaring toward the heavens, while the rest of us have our measly nine to fives. And yet, watching and listening to those who read that evening at the café in Zizkov, you were haunted by the mediocre display. Poetry: many are called, but few are chosen.

OK, that’s harsh. The works that were read that evening were without a doubt carefully and thoughtfully written, and many of them were undeniably true connoisseurs of the art. Without a doubt there was some painstaking effort involved. They could probably cite poets that you or I have never even heard of.

And they weren’t all bad either. Some actually went on to achieve a measure of recognition and success. For example, one of the evening’s hosts, a charming, personable Scotsman, eventually became one of the founders of B O D Y, an online poetry journal that publishes works from well-known poets all around the world. His own work has also achieved a share of recognition.

And also, you had to tip your hat to the DIY nature of the evening, something that readers back home in Humboldt County can understand. It takes a certain amount of dedication …

In this spirit, I took to attending the readings fairly regularly. I even gave a few readings myself. Knowing that I wasn’t a poet, I took the safe road that most did, and just found a funny story or two that would be short and that would go down easily with the beer. I called them “Conversations” rather than poems, because often I would develop it in a haphazard way, often just jotting down a bit of conversation overheard in a café or on the metro sometime during the week. They were hardly brilliant, but at least they had a randomness – like flipping through pages of a magazine – that piqued interest. It was counterfeit poetry of the purest kind, and people clapped the way they would if they saw a guy brazenly stealing a six-pack of beer from a convenience store and getting away with it.

One evening, I invited along a friend, Karel. He was a university student who I’d gotten to know in my local pub. We liked to get really drunk and toss the universe about on many late nights. He was fond of writing what he called “sad jokes.” If you laughed at the end, he would be crushed, disappointed in himself. “If it’s funny, it’s not a sad joke,” he’d say, tossing his long hair out of his face and taking another sip of beer.

That evening, Karel hadn’t planned to read anything. He was just curious, and thought it would be interesting to see what we foreigners had to say. So we got pints of Staropramen, sat together in a gloomy corner near the back of the café and listened. One woman, a sloshy, fifty-something American, delivered her rendition of “Lydia, The Tatoo-ed Lady,” in the manner of Groucho Marx. She did it at every reading, and it wasn’t even funny the first time.

There was the Purple Velvet Coat-wearing Jim Morrison clone, who went into his sly, clichéd bit of mannerisms with the bottle of red wine. A few others, again telling safe, funny stories that made the beer go down easy and the hours pass.

All this time, Karel had listened intently, quietly sipping his beer and not saying a word. Near the end of the evening, he suddenly approached the stage, with his modest, mousy way. He spoke briefly to the Scottish host, who amiably let him have the stage. Everyone sat up curiously at this new arrival.

“Hello, I am Karel,” he said, introducing himself. He sat down on the stool, his shoulders slumped nervously. “I am Czech. I think maybe I am the only Czech person here tonight.”

The expat crowd all laughed appreciatively, feeling self-aware. Right away, you sensed that they were on Karel’s side.

Karel, feeling a bit encouraged, went on in his careful English. He explained that he wrote “sad jokes,” and that he wanted to share one of them. He began:

“A man and his wife are having dinner at a fine restaurant. The man holds the door for the wife when they go in. He holds the chair for her before she sits down. He sees she is warm, so he quickly gets up and opens the window to let in some air. She licks her lips, so he barks at the waiter to bring a bottle of the finest wine. Suddenly at a nearby table a fat woman begins to laugh at something in a shrill, high-pitched laugh. The man sees his wife’s discomfort at this annoyance. The man rises, goes to the next table, takes hold of the fat woman and yanks her outside. Outside he proceeds to beat the woman. He finishes and grabs the expensive necklace from the woman’s neck. He returns to the table and presents it to his wife.

Why did you do that?” the startled wife asks.

“For you darling,” the man says. “It was in your eyes.”

“But why did you act so violently?”

“It was in your eyes. Everything I do it is in your eyes.”

The audience seemed to love the reading, responding with bursts of appreciative laughter, especially at the part when the man began to beat his wife. They saw it as the kind of black humor that is such a vital part of Czech art and literature. Karel finished, and the crowd applauded loudly. There were even a few whistles.

But as Karel returned to his seat, I could see he was disappointed.

“I delivered it badly,” he said, sitting down.

“Come on, you were great,” I said.

“No,” Karel said. “They were laughing. As I told you before, if it’s funny then it’s not a sad joke.”

After the show, at least a half dozen people came over with compliments. Presently a well-dressed young man came over and sat down.

“Yes, I have a feeling for the Czech humor,” he said, introducing himself as Simon. He was from Denmark . “You jokes are good Czech humor. And your English was very simple and clear. Most of the others, they speak in very slangy English. One cannot understand them.”

“But it’s not supposed to be funny,” Karel said. He explained to Simon the concept of the sad joke. The Dane listened closely, his eyes searching and sympathetic.

“Maybe something was lost in the translation,” he offered.

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James Tressler is the author of “Conversations in Prague” and “Letters from Istanbul, Vol. 1.” He lives in Istanbul.