Third Thursday Poetry Night at the Social Justice Center, May 17

I've realized that in reporting on my own event I've forgotten to mention "the Muse". Each month I like to envoke the Muse (I studied ancient Greek as an undergraduate), some gone poet who could not be here with us. In honor of my feature who had read from Text for Nothing last month at Zounds!, I read from Samuel Beckett's "Sanies II" from Collected Poems in English & French.

We had a small, intense crowd, but our feature, John Raymond did his homework & made sure his friends were there. His work is sexy, with a strong narrative bent, anecdotes from everyday with attention to the kind of language that makes it real for the rest of us voyeurs. I hope someday we will have to pay booksellers to have his work in our homes.

I like to surround my feature poet with open mic poets, a scam I learned in NYC to keep an audience for the feature. But here, in this kind city, poets stay to listen to each other & it's not really necessary to trick them. They don't seem to mind.

Alan Catlin started off the open mic with a letter of sorts, "Dear Whoever whatever...", then Tim Verhaegen described a familiar scene with "Echoes of a Poetry Anonymous Meeting on a Sleepless Night." Oh yeah.

Marty (Mulenex, he just signed up with his first name) was "In La La Land." Don Levy's doctor apparently told someone he knew "Try Not To Be So Morbidly Obese" so Don entertained us with his (food) reactions. Joe Krausman wrote a letter to God, don't know if he got the response yet, maybe that's a good thing.

After the feature & the break there was Bob Sharkey with "Arms & the Man". Karin Maag-Tanchak was back (we missed her), fashionably arriving in the "Beijing taxi" & read about her return to Germany with "Autobahn." And Sally Rhoades read images from dance, & the moon.

Ahem, I'll mention Miriam Herrera without the bolding because she (who rarely goes to open mics) didn't bring a poem to read & I was disappointed to not hear her fine work (we were in a workshop some years back & I've always liked her poems -- see the link to her website at the bottom of this Blog).

Third Thursday, at the Social Justice Center, 7:30.