Calling All Poets!, October 6

CAPS is the long-running series, formerly in Beacon, currently in New Paltz at the Roost Studios on Main St. This night the featured poets were Bertha Rogers & me, Dan Wilcox, plus an open mic. Our MC & host was Mike Jurkovic.

Bertha Rogers, the doyen of the Bright Hills Literary Center in Treadwell, NY, flanked by her dogs, began with sections from her marvelous translation of Beowulf (Birch Brook Press, 2000) — even if you’ve read Beowulf before, this is a translation that makes more sense of the story. Then to selections from her collection Heart Turned Back (Salmon Poetry, 2010), “Black Rock Forest,” the high school memoir of sex in a car “Rhomboid,” “The Cat in the Diner,” & “To the Starling in the Winter Raspberry Patch.” Then to newer poems, “Fisher Cat in the Maple” (in the fisher’s words), “Hawk’s Reason,” & “The Old Dog’s Lament.” A well put-together reading by a professional.

Photo by Christopher Wheeling

I read mostly newer poems, but began with “The Lesson” from my 2011 chapbook Poeming the Prompt, then alternated poems from my series of true stories from the Trump era, “What Makes America Great,” with some pieces from Inauguration Raga (A.P.D., 2017), & “At the Silarian Cafe,” “The Day God Invented Wine,” “Spathe is the Plathe,” & “Amitabha.”

After a break, we were on to the open mic, with Greg Correll reading a memoir about his daughter at age 2. Kate Reese Hurd performed John Keats’ “Ode to Autumn” with her own sound exercises, accented by traffic sounds from the street.

Kate Hymes read 2 poems about buses, the first about growing up in the segregated South “Back of the Bus.” Ken Holland began with a political piece “Hard Left Hard Right,” then one on climate change “Water & Wine.” Jeffrey Seitz’s poem “Escaping the Sting” was an abecedarian, & on to the architectural “To a Steeple in Poughkeepsie.” Tim Brennan read a couple of intricate poems “Manifest” on the patterns in Life, & “Is Landing.” Our host, Mike Jurkovic, read a poem about firearms on the Wallkill Rail Trail “No Discharge,” then a “Trumpian” piece “Scholars Hence.”

Jim Eve, also one of the CAPS organizers, read about still another cop shooting “Where Is the Outrage?” then a jazz poem work-in-progress “Blues Speak.”

Calling All Poets! is worth a trip from anywhere, on the 1st Friday of the month at Roost Studios, 69 Main St., New Paltz, NY, 8:00PM, featured poets, open mic for $5.00, discount for CAPS members, Roost members, students & seniors.