While Main Street is notorious among college students for its weekend club and bar scene, once a month, Stimulance coffee house brings a little variety to the pool of entertainment in University Heights.
On the third Thursday of every month at 8:30 p.m., the coffee house - located at 3160 Main St. - hosts "Saucebox," a presentation of Buffalo's up-and-coming women poets.
According to Eric Gelsinger, a UB alumnus, it is no coincidence that groups like Saucebox are formed in Buffalo.
"Buffalo is a really good poetry town," Gelsinger said. "After New York and San Francisco, you're hard pressed to find a town that produces more active poets."
While Saucebox at the Stimulance coffeehouse serves as a venue for local female poets to showcase their talent, Rebecca Stanievich, a Canisius graduate and co-founder of Saucebox, said a positive audience response is most highly valued among performers.
"First and foremost, we want (the audience) to feel invigorated or identify with what was said," said Stanievich.
Other core members of Saucebox include Robin Brox, a graduate student, Lauren Shufran, a senior English major, Shatika Milan, a senior English and theater major, and Lorna Perez, an English doctoral candidate.
At the opening of their most recent show, the poets blended into the audience until it was their turn to pick up the microphone. One by one, they approached the spotlight and the audience gathered around the stage, waiting for the show to begin.
Sarah Birnie, a junior management major with a minor in women's studies, said Milan stole the show.
"She's just so powerful when she speaks," Birnie said. "It just escalates into something I can't describe."
Brox's reading of "Ma Papa's Waltz" was also well received. Shufran said she preferred Brox's work because "she has a musicality to most of her stuff."
Stanievich stirred the audience with her reading of selected poems by other authors.
"Her own stuff is good," Shufran said "I don't know why she never reads it."
Shufran made her ripples in the quiet of the audience with her own reading and said she is working on perfecting her style.
"Lately, I've been working more in a prose form," Shufran said. "I'm not so worried about line breaks, which isn't to say that line breaks aren't important."
Gelsinger said he favored Shufran's work.
"Lauren's work is the best and it stands alone on paper," said Gelsinger.
Brox said Robert Creeley, Capen professor of poetry and the humanities, whose accomplishments include a Bollingen Prize for his poetry compilation "Selected Poems", has influenced her.
"(I've learned a lot from) Professor Creeley definitely," Brox said. "The way he uses line breaks. He's very rhythmic."
The audience members at Saucebox ranged from high school students new to the world of poetry to college graduates who run their own poetry groups.
"It was the first time I went to this type of thing," said Julia Rummel, an East Aurora high school student. "I could watch this every night."
Although all the Saucebox poets are women, Stanievich said Saucebox does not exclude the work of male writers.
"We don't always (read poems by women), but we like to feature women," Stanievich said. "The whole reason for starting was to create a forum for women poets."
