Poems -- & musings on the Albany (NY) poetry scene.
"It's not the Truth, but it's pretty darn close."
September 20, 2016
Harmony Cafe, September 12
Once again Michael Platsky, the host of this weekly event, invited me back to be a featured poet here among the poets & players of Woodstock. Michael began the night with a reading of his poem “Ashes Not Dust” to Woodstock habitué Roxie Dawn.
Alison Koffler, one of the fine Woodstock poets, tonight read a poem based on the seasonal tale of Persephone “Koré Yet Again.” Cheryl Rice’s moving poem about 9/11 & what we can do to make the world better, “Morning Prayers,” can be found on her FaceBook page. Donald Lev is the patriarch of the poetry scene, former editor & publisher (with the late Enid Dame) of Home Planet News, & has a regular spot here on the open mic list as #4, but tonight no one signed up to be #1. His poems were characteristically wry, short & quotidian, “What It Is” (a nose), “Listening to Old Music,” “Conundrum” (what day is it?), “Accessibility” about the NY Daily News,” “On the Destruction of the World Trade Center,” & “Wheels.”
So that is what I had to follow as the featured poet. I began & ended with political poems (respectively “When Donald Trump Farts” & “If Peace Broke Out Tomorrow”) with “Another Tuesday” about the coup against Salvatore Allende & the aftermath of the destruction of the WTC thrown in, & lighter poems in between, such as the recent “Finding Pokémon” & poems from Gloucester Notes (FootHills Publishing, 2015).
Leslie Gerber followed with a piece about elks in heat (“Definitive”) then a series in some sort of a Korean form on “freestate love” & a poem by the dead Polish poet Wislawa Szymborska. Lenny Brown read some historical poems, “Stephan the Dissenter,” “Tsunami Fukushima” & one on Robin Hood. Quintessentially Woodstock Pamela Twining invoked football for a poem on death (“Touchdown”) then a childhood memoir poem titled “Tom Boy” about learning about sex.
Post Traumatic Press publisher Dayl Wise began with a political poem about drones, then on to “Savanna Georgia” in the persona of a person in the slave market, & ended with a poem titled “A Father’s Responsibility.” Rich Rhinehart did a piece in hip hop rhyme wondering who he is… Philip Gurrieri struck a shaman pose speaking into his stick for a free-style rant with biblical references that turned 2 audience members into toads (by mistake, I'm sure). Woodstock icon Andy Clausen bounced off one of my themes with a piece on the coup in Chile “A Be-Bop Bill," & a Burroughs-style routine.
The last reader was the very tentative Laurel Manley with the wonderfully tender “Exodus” & “Light Year Time.”
I don’t know how Michael Platsky does this Monday after Monday at the Harmony Cafe (at the Wok’n’Roll on Mill Hill Rd.) in Woodstock at 8PM — a featured poet & a spirited Woodstock-style open mic — please be generous to support the featured reader.
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