Sunday Four Poetry, March 27

Or, Part 2 of the Carolee Sherwood Poetry Weekend, since she was the featured poet. A good turnout of local poets & audience, about 20 folks, to hear poetry on a Sunday afternoon. Co-host Dennis Sullivan introduced some history of poetry competitions (getting ready for next month's Smith's Tavern Poet Laureate Contest) by citing the ancient Greek texts about the mythic contest between Hesiod & Homer.

Then Edie Abrams introduced the open mic poets, Philomena Moriarty the first up with 3 meditative poems, "Place" in the woods with snow, "Inadequacy" on a power failure, & the more interior "What is the Boundary of Self." I read next, 2 new poems, "The Pussy Pantoum" & "Chatham Peace Vigil."

Obeeduid (Mark O'Brien) read a poem about gloves, "Why I Was Never a Surgeon" dedicated to Joe Krausman, then the quotidian "Grateful for the Small Acts of Morning" and invoked Spring with the poem "Landscapes of This & That" & with his frog tie. Dennis Sullivan's philosophical meditation "Reflections on the Given Day" imagined an after-life he doesn't believe in. Therese Broderick read a poem, "What Is," from her new series on Watervliet, then "Mother Consults the Shovel" from her book At April's End: poems for a daughter.

Lloyd Barnhart came back with more of what he described as "good ole boy stuff", a story about hunting a snowshoe hare, "The Dingman Dodger," then the amusing memoir of dancing with a cousin at a wedding, "Mother of the Bride." Mimi Moriarty began with "A Retrospective," then on to 2 "recipe" poems, "Tears & Raspberries En Croute" & "How I Would Decorate the Elephant in the Living Room." Howard Kogan said he had 2 silly poems in honor of April Fools' Day, the whimsical meditation on life & death, "Solitaire" & the funny, & tender, "Proof" of the existence of god. Edie Abrams' 2 poems were untitled & each one stanza, one on doing the dishes, the other about a lingerie store. I missed the title to Alan Casline's first poem, filled with candles & candleabra, then he read the "Song of a Woman of White Swans." Referencing a lunch-time conversation Joe Krausman discussed the difficulties in defining "The Golden Mean." Marilyn Paarlberg did her first poem from memory, "I Have Her Rolling Pin" then read a Spring poem written after the death of her father, "Harbinger."

Jim Williams played a little blues guitar behind his poem about the Jungian Shadow Poet.

Even though I had heard Carolee Sherwood read Friday night at the UAG Gallery, the number & quality of her fine poems insured that I would hear something different, while enjoying repeated favorites -- & she didn't disappoint. She began with 2 poems she said she has never read at readings, beginning with an excerpt from a found poem built out of Tweets, then the older prose poem "Why Mourning is an Ocean of Red Confetti" mixing in a friend's stories & the death of her mother, & a bathtub full of tomatoes.

Her next poem "Flying Over Snowy Mountains in the Morning Sun" is one of her characteristic "relationship poems," as is "Because She Can't Help It." Then a cluster of single-word titled poems, "Boudoir" (a new room & alligators), "Salvage" (having dinner alone, & her mother again), & "Vestige". Winter had already made an appearance as a setting for some of her poems, moreso in "The Kind of Clever Darkness We Are Up Against" where Winter is a cruel character. But Spring is coming as in the next 3 poems she read, "At Starbucks Waiting for Spring," "Low Clouds Cold Rain" (from last spring, & her mother's death again), & "Spring". She ended with her new "favorite" poem, the urban "Apiary." Many of these poems can be found on her Blog.

Then the poets dispersed & regathered at Smitty's, like flocks of sparrows around my birdfeeder, except that the conversations were better over beer & sandwiches. The 4th Sunday of most months of the year, 3PM, Old Songs Community Center, Voorheesville, NY.