Poems -- & musings on the Albany (NY) poetry scene.
"It's not the Truth, but it's pretty darn close."
October 5, 2017
Poets Speak Loud!, September 25
This is one of the more high-energy open mics with host Mary Panza keeping order with her verbal horse-whip.
Sylvia Barnard was up first, as she likes to be, with a work-in-progress still in cursive she said, then a cluster of haiku from June, graduations & Schroon Lake. I followed with my recent poem on the “great American eclipse” then an earlier piece on aging, for my friend Sylvain Nagler, “September Song.” Bob Sharkey read a couple of memoir poems, “Long Ago” from the Viet Nam war era, then “St. Patrick’s Day.” Nancy Dunlop read 2 more pieces from her series about patients in 4 Winds, “The Knock Out” & “A Whiter Shade of Pale.”
Tonight’s featured reader was poet Karen Schoemer in a Moby Dick tee-shirt. Her poems are built on rich, vivid images, flowing one to another, such as “Close Watching is a Form of Being” which begins with the burning of a henhouse; in “Park Event 6/10/17” the images are from a catering gig, another piece referenced the writer Italo Calvino. Other poems were “Former Location of the C.H. Evans Brewery,” the 2nd person “Carrying Crumbs to the Nest,” then a piece about a confrontation in a tavern. There was sex in the background of the poem titled “Old Mortality,” & she ended with a recent piece “Nostrom.” McGeary’s was great setting for these poems.
Back to the open mic, Don Levy read “#CoffeeHouseReads” about Bookstagram the book community on Instagram, then a poem in which 2 men, one young, the other old, talk about gay history. Brooke Kolcow was the featured reader here back in June, tonight she performed “Prayer” about imperfections, then read an excerpt from a manuscript “Take My Bones to Make Your Bread.” Joe Krausman’s first poem “All Trumped Up” was in the form of a monologue by a liar, & “Panacea” looked at the everyday as the end of the world. Karen Fabiane was the last reader & began with “Editorial” an old piece like a fractured conversation on a first date, & then “Begone” from her chapbook Seeing You Again.
It’s always a show at Poets Speak Loud!, with food, drink, great service, even the sound of the flushing toilet like an obbligato to the words of the poets -- each last Monday of the month, at McGeary’s on Sheridan Square in Albany, NY, 7:30PM, $5.00 or whatever.
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