For Poetry Month, Staff Recitations at Gramercy Tavern Before Lunch and Dinner "Enlightened hospitality," the restaurateur Danny Meyer's catchphrase for success, takes on new meaning during National Poetry Month. All April long, before each lunch and dinner shift at Gramercy Tavern, his three-star Flatiron district restaurant, the employees take turns reciting poems for one another before they hit the floor. The audience can number up to 50, a mingling of managers, kitchen workers in white and servers and runners dressed in identical blue shirts, tangerine ties and charcoal vests. Just before the dinner shift on Thursday, the servers gathered in the back dining room after they had finished folding napkins and prepping butter and salt. They helped themselves to a staff meal and gathered around tables covered in white linen to listen to a list of V.I.P.s in the reservation book that evening, the menu changes and specials. While they ate nachos, salad, barbecued pork and cole slaw, they learned that the oxtail terrine would have a little bit of pickled turnip and house-made mustard, the lobster salad would come with raw endive instead of cucumber, and monkfish was being substituted for snakehead. It was now time for the poetry reading. Judson Morrow, 29, an outgoing server with dark, curly hair, took the stage, a cleared-out area in between tables, and announced that he would be reading a poem he had written during Wednesday's lunch shift. "The proof that I wrote it during service is the fact that it's on a dupe," he said, flashing a sheet of paper normally used for taking orders. The poem, "I Never Look Up Anymore," was an ode to "Draw Something," a social drawing and guessing game app that occupies much of Mr. Morrow's time. It read, in part: Mermaid, bowtie, tears Simon, rapture, gears Candle, rainbow, fleur de lis Robot, button, pedigree Some of these I have guessed Others I have made with zest Mr. Morrow said he never wrote a poem about his job, which he has held for nearly four years. "I think I chose my subject because it's very far removed from what I was doing, slash, supposed to be doing," he said, adding that he had not received any complaints from guests about his thoughts being elsewhere. Next up was David Shaw, 28, a tall, classically handsome server and sometime actor (he is doing Caliban in "The Tempest" in the Hamptons this summer), bearing an iPhone from which he'd be reading "Jabberwocky," Lewis Carroll's nonsense poem that served as the inspiration for Terry Gilliam's 1977 movie. He explained its significance as "something my dad and I shared when I was very young because the movie scared the bejesus out of me and he recited this poem to calm me down." He gave an impassioned reading - "Beware the Jubjub bird!" he shouted gruffly - in part, he said, to honor his father, who died last year. It drew enthusiastic applause. "I did "Othello" yesterday," Mr. Shaw said. "I have a lot of Shakespeare memorized for auditions, so when no one has anything to read they point to me and say, "You, you're up."" Kevin Mahan, Gramercy Tavern's managing partner and general manager, cited Sylvia Plath, Charles Bukowski and Pablo Neruda as other staff favorites. "The month starts off slow and for new employees it's strange, but by the end of the month they get up and read something that's touching to them," he said. Reflecting the staff's diverse backgrounds, poems have been presented in Turkish, Spanish and Bengali, written on order pads, a piece of cardboard box and a coaster. "But coasters are not encouraged; they cost money," Mr. Mahan said. He estimated that less than 10 percent of the poems the workers read are original compositions. "One or two have been written about me but I can't remember them, probably because I've tried to block them out," he said. At 5:20, it was time to reset the tables and light the candles, readying the dining room for its first guests at 5:30. The servers, perhaps more enlightened than 20 minutes before, prepared to recite the specials.