Poets Speak Loud!, March 26

Not quite to the so-called #National Poetry Month but then we’re always doing readings here, especially like tonight on the last Monday of the month, at McGeary’s in Albany. Mary Panza, vice-President of AlbanyPoets is our M/C. & the featured poet was the beloved Bob Sharkey.

The audience was slow to build & as often happens the #1 slot on the open mic list was available, so that was me; I read the very new “The 9 of Cups” & the much older “What Passover Has Taught Me.” I suspect that Sylvia Barnard would’ve signed up 1st if she had gotten there before me, she ended up as #2 & read a new work-in-progress quoting Psalm 31, combining the Biblical & the classical, then “Cat Print” based on a photo in an archeological magazine. Nick Bisanz is always here for the open mic (for some reason) & rarely reads, but tonight read the lyrics by a Bethlehem PA rocker named Andy Crack about some homeless folks there named Wild Rose Winnie & Out Side Lee.

Doug Holiday likes to share the work of poets we might not have heard of, poems he is fond on, & tonight read “I Like to Think of Harriet Tubman” by Susan Griffin from Poems from the Women’s Movement, then read one of his own, “The Apologia,” from his new book Kith & Kin; a Klannis Klownish Tragik Komedy (written as G. Douglas Davis, IV). Dawn Marar’s book Efflorescence is just out from Finishing Line Press & she read a piece about a souvenir from Jordan with a picture of Jesus “Baptism.”

It is interesting how poets once frequent on the open mic scene will re-surface after an absence, drawn back into the action as if by the force of a poetic vortex; tonight Rich Tomasulo re-joined us after a number of years & he read a poem titled “Assimilation” about being from a family of immigrants, with memories of childhood. Don Levy, who has never left the scene from the very beginning, read about taking on the Nation Rifle Association in “To the Students of Parkland” & then re-read the poem (rated “G” for “Gay”) “My Hardon for Adam Rippon” — which is as outrageously hilarious the 3rd time I’ve heard him read it as it was the first time, another in the long, long line of Don Levy’s “gay fantasy poems.”

Bob Sharkey is a quiet, unassuming poet in the local scene who attends many open mics regularly, has been featured in many, & who coordinates the world’s best poetry contest, the annual Stephan A. Dibiase Poetry Contest. He was tonight’s featured poet for a reading of what he called “walking around poems” (inspired by Frank O’Hara’s famous Lunch Poems). His poems included “After Ali Died” (NYC), “Sweet Heart” (Albany), “Return to Gold Meir Square” (NYC again), “Monument Square” (Porland, ME), “At Dunkin’ Donuts” (Albany), then from his chapbooks the title poem from The Yellow Fairy (self-published, 2004), & “While Caged Animals Arrive” from Surface at Sunrise (Benevolent Bird Press, 2012).

Joe Krausman, who is also a frequent attendee at open mics, read 2 poems submitted to recent poetry contests, the rhyming “Race Against Odds,” that he said he has never read out before, & the prize-winning “Deceptions” which won 1st prize in this year’s Raynes National Poetry Contest organized by Jewish Currents magazine; the prize is named for the family of the late Albany writer & teacher Helen Raynes Staley. Julie Lomoe read a story titled “Round Midnight on Troy Ave.” then a piece set in a doctor’s office “Terminal Beige.” Caroline Bardwell has been playing around with poetic forms, read us “A Pantoum About Paul” then a clever piece about bending a poem “Memoirs of a Ghazal.”

Noah Kucij is another local poet who hasn’t been able to make it out to many open mic of late but who had been a featured reader in the past; tonight he read “Route” a descriptive piece about commuters on a bus, then a poem for his 3-year old daughter “The Philologist’s Daughter.” Karen Fabiane ended out the night with 2 poems, “Cat Blinks” & “Collars & Cuffs” that she has been reading out recently, which is what we do at open mics to try poems out, in their various versions as we poets do what we do & work on them.

& Poets Speak Loud! is one place to do that, each last Monday of most months at McGeary’s on Sheridan Square in Albany, 7:30PM, your donations help pay the poets. For more information check out AlbanyPoets.com.