Sunday Four Poetry, February 23

Voorheesville on a Sunday for poetry is a trip home. Our host for the open mic was Edie Abrams.

& I was the 1st up on the sign-up, read 2 new poems, “Peacocks in the Driveway” & Birthday Poem 2014.” Joe Krausman had a cluster of small philosophical poems, “Race Against the Odds,” “Swallows are Smarter than People,” & an odd-couple poem, “Bagels & Yaks.” Our bearded eminence, Dennis Sullivan, began with a quote from Jack Kerouac then read a poem about the act of reading as hitchhiking, another on fireflies & light & “My Room” for his son. Edie Abrams read about the purpose of poetry “Saturday With Nothing on the Calendar,” then “My First Day at Hebrew School.” A self-described “new poet, I guess,” Peter B. read a couple of untitled pieces, the first so short he had to read it twice.

I’ve known Dawn Marar in the local writing scene for a number of years, met her at a Writers Institute poetry workshop led by the Irish poet John Montague & have seen her at many readings, but was amazed when she said this was her first open mic; “Monitor” was a short descriptive piece while “No Mad Woman” was about a stalking incident in traffic. Howard Kogan on the other hand reads at lots of open mics, today with 2 poems about families, the 1st, “Happy Families,” the second, “A Close Family,” at the cemetary. Tom Corrado has been writing (& reading out) poems he calls “screen dumps,” i.e., word plays, non-sequiturs, & random juxtapositions & today read 3. In a different stream, Alan Casline read an historical piece going back to 1637, “The Norman’s Mill,” then a litany “Place of Corn.”


Featured poet Linda Sonia Miller’s book Something Worth Diving For was published by Finishing Line Press in 2012. But today’s reading was of other poems, mostly prompted by the natural world around here, often with birds & frequently meditating on the nature of poetry. “Missing Out” while not Haiku, was inspired by Haiku, as was “Thanksgiving, or Less is Sometimes More” with its references to Japanese poets Basho & Issa. Another poem was inspired by a painting of irises by Peter McCaffrey. The descriptive “November” & “Limitations” were characterized as “cabin fever poems.” Her longest piece, the ironically titled “Digging for Gold,” was an “investigative” poem about a community anti-fracking activist. She ended with a couple of weather-hopeful poems, “Thaw” & “Poem” (about Summer).

Most months of the year Sunday Four Poetry takes place on the 4th Sunday of the month at 3PM at the Old Songs Community Center in Voorheesville, NY, with a featured poet & time for an open mic.