An enthusiastic crowd of poetry fans packed the Cake Shop bar last night, bringing back a bit of Lower East Side's bohemian spirit that the recently departed stock market boom had almost smothered--the basement poets versus the encroaching condominiums, if you will.

The monthly reading series Mixer featured poets Martha Collins, Nathaniel Bellows, and Susan DeFord, while Chris Moore rounded out the night with a musical set.

During intermission, GalleyCat caught up with Mixer's co-founder, Melissa Febos--getting the scoop on the reading series and how she sold her memoir about spending four years as a dominatrix.