Third Thursday Poetry Night, May 17

I like to say, “if your friends & relatives don’t come to your readings, who will?” & tonight’s featured poet, Katrinka Moore, certainly followed that axiom packing the house with acquaintances, including one whom signed up to read for the first time here, in addition to some of the regular open mic-ers. But first I invoked our Muse, the gone poet Joanne Kyger (1934 - 2017), & read her poem “It’s Been a Long Time.” Then on to the open mic.

First up was Alan Catlin with a grim litany of war wounds, “Walt Whitman’s Bitter Angel,” culled from his Civil War poems. Tom Bonville was here for the 1st time with a descriptive poem titled “Mother’s Day,” his mother at 74. Self-styled "country-girl" Dianne Sefcik read from her recent book Red Ochre, “Pipe,” also her first time here, a poem of social justice.

Joshua RA Dundas said his mission was “to bring light to people’s minds” & did his poem “Dark Glimpses,” as dark as its title. Don Levy is certainly not here for the first time, read a new poem, a FaceBook warning, “Do Not Feed the Trolls!” Carol H. Jewell’s pantoum is titled “Pre-Occupied or, How the Princess of Pantoums Passes Her Time.” I messed up the next poet’s name while announcing him, then G. Douglas Davis IV struggled with an Arabic word in his new poem for Palestine, delving into history.

Katrinka Moore had many fans in the audience & perhaps made more. She read from her new book Wayfarers (Pelekinesis, 2018). She explained that each of the poems in the book is a different tale by a different speaker. She began, appropriately enough, with the Big Bang, “Cosmogony,” then on to “Remnants,” “The Rolling World,” & a poem apparently not in the book “Visiting the Hermit Finding No One Home.” The poem titled “Parting” is actually the first poem in the book, & “Luna Lura,” a short poem, she described as a postcard from a butterfly visiting the Moon (& perhaps my favorite in the book).  The second section of her book, “A Crossing,” is about her grandparents migration in a model T from Texas to California, from which she read “Crow,” "The isle is full of noises” (which comes from Shakespeare’s “The Tempest”), the lushly descriptive “Sea Road,” & “Wind Road.” She ended with 2 poems about her mother’s death, “Falling Sometimes” & “Scatter.” Wayfarers not only contains these & other fine poems, but also a number of nearly abstract black & white photos.

After a break we returned to the open mic, with me reading my new poem, “Buttons Not Bombs.”

A special treat was a reading of a poem for 2 voices, “Fusion Approach to Gathering,” by Dawn & Hani Marar from Dawn’s new book Efflorescence (Finishing Line Press, 2018). Howard Kogan announced that he had sold his house & would be moving to Massachusetts, but said the poem he read was not about him, titled “Over.” Betty Zerbst’s poem is titled “Looking Back” memories about her family in rhyme. Tom Corrado moved out of his comfort zone to read the grim “Notes from the Belly of the Beast” — he has published his “Screen Dumps” in a collection of 365 A Dump a Day. Philomena Moriarty read the first in a series of poems, written from notes of what comes up from sitting in a present moment, “Snapshot.”

Joe Krausman read a humorous, social commentary “The Magic of the Answering Machine,” a message that someone left behind before he died. Clarese Portofino read a poem, like a series of notes, describing a shameless party & its aftermath “The Last Brazier.” Brianna Kehrer’s poem, “Peter Paul & Amy,” describes a sad cook in a restaurant in Schenectady & finding a moment of compassion.

The final reader was also a first timer here, Jeannette Rice, has read other people’s poetry, read her own poem from 1956, from elementary school bomb drills, imaging the bombs had exploded & the Earth is dead.

But with any luck the Earth will not be dead on future Third Thursdays so we can gather at the Social Justice Center, 33 Central Ave., Albany, NY, 7:30PM, for a featured reader & an open mic for the rest of us to read a poem too.