Albany Poets Present! September 2

At Valentine's -- no competition from a band tonight, just a handful of poets at the bar, Thom Francis with the clipboard.

Sylvia Barnard, Albany poet, is also a long-time professor of classics at the University at Albany. She read a poem about the new students coming in to her class; also, a tender poem about her daughter getting her mother's bookcase. I read a new poem, "The Cardinal," & "Painter's Eyes."

Julie Lomoe had stopped by for the reading here a couple months ago but that was when we were displaced by a loud band, so she was back tonight to promote & read from her new murder-mystery, Eldercide (Virtualbookworm.com Publishers).

Joe Hollander only likes to read one poem at open mics, which tonight was "The Captain" (about "someone who is missing from the poetry scene" -- hmm?), but was coerced to read something else, & found a random page from a medical experiment manual he found on his way here. And Ed Rinaldi was buying beers too at the bar & read "Outside my Beliefs," "Consumerist Rising," & some prosey meanderings "At the Kitchen Table at Midnight..."

Then we hung out & talked for a while before ambling home. Poetry & beer, what could be better?

First Tuesdays, Valentines near the beginning of New Scotland Ave., in Albany, NY (just to differentiate from the 18 other Albanys in the USA).