June 14, 2007

Live from the Living Room, June 13

In the cozy living room of the Capital District Gay & Lesbian Community Center, with our host, Don Levy --

The feature, who always reads first, before the open mic, was Shaun Baxter who, while minimizing his skill as a poet, perhaps because he writes mainly very short poems, gave a wonderful reading of his mainly very short poems (I was hoping for a reading of his pastiche of Ginsberg's "A Supermarket in California", about Border's, but he said later he couldn't find his copy -- uh oh). His poems ranged from "Carpe Beer" to a "Wedding on the Town Hall Lawn", with stops in between for "Beautiful Blondes," "Woody Allen Films," a cut-up, the juke-boxes at the Palais Royale, his classic "Advice," among others. Shaun is the host of the 3rd Wednesday reading/open mic at the NightSky Cafe in Schenectady that you've read about here & that you must go to.

As usual, there was just a handful (perhaps 2 hands full) of poets for the open mic, but a warm, friendly group. Jim Masters continued his saga of "the Clock" that he began last month with a concrete poem. In "Clock 3" the clock is fixed & is ticking tocking again, then stops again in "Clock 4," is wound & ticks again. Sort of like those movie serials from my childhood where I had to come back next week to find out how Batman got out of that bottomless pit.

I read "Tee-shirt Poems" & for the first time my poem for Marilyn & Bill Day's "Recommitment" ceremony at Still Point.

Grandma A.C. Everson read d.a. levy & Andy Clausen from the Outlaw Bible.

Carol Graser has been attending Bernadette Mayer's workshop so I bet "Pregnant Meeting on Enclosed Land" was from that; she also read about "Listening to Joe Krausman" at the Behind the Egg reading at Point 5 (see my Blog entry dated April 27).

Don inserted himself next & read about being "morbidly obese," got lots of fat laughs; then read poems by Brian Paton & Roger McGough from the '60s era Penguin Modern Poets series (I have #13 that groups Charles Bukowski with Philip Lamantia & Harold Norse, a treasure).

Bob Sharkey went from a meditation on "The Overturned Leaf" to the St. Patrick's Day Parade in NYC ("City 2").

P.R. Dyjak quoted Stanley Kunitz's line, "a little blossom of a beast" then read a "Jasmine" (a former dog) & then a tiny poem about a tic (the very-short-poem theme of the night). We're going to miss her.

And it was quite proper that Tim Verhaegen read "In My Own Way" about going to a gay bar in Maine to end the night.

Always the second Wednesday & always "straight friendly".

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Don Levy is a wonderful, warm host. I love that livingroom and the intimacy I feel there. Live in the Livingroom really inspires me to write with more honesty and clarity about the gay experience.

Anonymous said...

Thanks Tim! Maybe more queer poets will follow your lead! Don Levy