Third Thursday Poetry Night, March 21

Spring! & poetry once again at the Social Justice Center, with an enthusiastic list of poets on the sign-up sheet, one all the way from Bennington, VT. & speaking of Bennington, the Muse I invoked was the gone poet, Jill Hays, who had lived & run her used-book business out of there.  I had met Jill at the workshops run by the NYS Writers Institute & led by Irish poet (also gone) John Montague; I read Jill’s poem “At Phoenix Park” set at the Dublin Zoo.

Signed up first, with a flourish, was Sue Oringel, to read a memoir piece inspired by a recent hospital stay “Fruit Cocktail.” Joe Krausman used lines by Shakespeare to comment on Sue's poem, then read his old poem “Going to a Double Header Ending in a Tie Game” about a guy marrying a woman with 2-heads. Peter Boudreaux read a death poem titled “Tombstone” “ready to be found.” Tom Corrado read another of his famous screen dumps, a string of lines & images, even lines from 1960s pop tunes. D.A. Holiday read again from Ghost Fishing: an Eco-Justice Anthology this time the poem “Taking Root” by Tara Betts.

Tonight’s featured poet was Tom Bonville whom I have seen at open mics in the area over the years but tonight he had a chance to read more than 2 or 3 poems. He began with a cluster of poems about his family, “Meat” about his grandfather telling him about eating horse meat, “1946, in Europe” a tale of his mother escaping the ravages of Word War II finding her way to America in a pair of shoes taken from a corpse, then another about his mother “Christmas Morning” at 90 years old remembering swimming the Sava river in Europe before the war. The next couple of poems were about his children, “Trout Fishing on 10-Mile Creek,” with his young son, proud of his catch & his curiosity, & one about his daughter “To Be a Child” learning a life lesson when the cat is carried away by a coyote. Then on to a series of poems from issues of Up The River, 2 in the persona of a frustrated wife from the 2018 “Trouble Falling Asleep” & “What to Wear,” then one from the forth-coming UTR 2019 “What If Everyone Got Gold Stars” a childhood memoir of stealing colored stars from the nun’s desk. “The Smoke” was about his father with Parkinson’s hallucinating the house burning down, & he ended with a humorous conversation, recently published in Chronogram, “The Tests.” It was a sometimes funny, sometimes sad or grim, sometimes tender, but always moving mix of poems.

After a break we were back with the rest of the open mic sign-up sheet, & I started it off with a poem from my recent visit to Gloucester “Hey!”  Charlie Rossiter came over for the open mic & to spend the night, & read “If You See Something Say Something” (a poet’s motto). The sign-up pen was black ink but Mark W. O’Brien's magic Irish touch turned it green; he read from “Letters to his Granddaughter” short, weighty pronouncements.

I’ve seen Joel Best read in Troy on occasion but it was his first time here at the SJC & he read the philosophical “Make Circles of Ourselves.” This was not Anthony Bernini’s first time here; he read “A Mirror Fell” about an event in a room full of parents & children, a grand metaphor. Mr. Israel Moses slipped in at the last minute, made it on the list, & read a prophetic piece suitable for his name.

So if the weather continues to get warmer but the River doesn’t rise above its banks we will be back at the Social Justice Center, 33 Central Ave., Albany, NY, 7:30PM start, for more open mic poets, & a featured poet; your generous donations help pay the poet, supports poetry events in the area, & supports the work of the SJC.