Scissortail Creative Writing Festival, Thursday Afternoon, April 4

The afternoon sessions were an exercise in making a choice — 2 time slots, each with 2 sessions each, one in North Lounge, the other in Estep. For example, I read at 2:00PM in North Lounge, while my traveling companion Sally Rhoades read at the same time in Estep Auditorium. So you were always going to miss someone.

I was the first reader at 2:00 in North Lounge & read my series of 5 baseball poems, for which A.P.D. (Albany’s Poetic Disorder) published a brief chapbook, Baseball Poems, which you can still get when you see me at readings, or by mail (email me for information).

The next reader up, Sarah Webb, is from Burnet, Texas, & I recall seeing her read at previous Scissortails. Her poems were about the spiritual journey of following the imagination, as in her opening poem “Directions from Those That Follow the Thread" (i.e., that “leads to Jerusalem”). The poems “Obedient” & “Through Rain & Fog” (what she termed “a whiney one”) were more personal introspection. Others dealt with poetry, such as in “To Borges’ Dream Tigers” & “Why I Carry a Notebook.” And sometimes you have to make the magic happen, as she described in “Sweeping the Rooms” & “How to Catch a God.”

Bill Endres described himself as “a medievalist" who has worked digitizing the 8th century illuminated manuscript St. Chad Gospels, but he recently returned to poetry when he taught an Intro to Poetry course in the fall of 2018. He read a variety of poems, many with a touch of humor & irony. His first piece was a prose poem titled “Of All Things” in which he imagined a perfect job & included angels. Some of his poems were on things: a water bottle, a bowl, a pair of Levi’s; others were about animals: a hummingbird, a chocolate Labrador puppy. His poem “Super Blood Wolf Poem” expressed his disappointment at the actual experience while the name of the Moon was so spectacular.

Lyman Grant was filling-in for the writer on the printed schedule; he said he was reading from a published book of poems, from one to be published later this year, & from recent poems. From Old Men on Tuesday Morning (Alamo Bay Press, 2017) he read about an experience in a cafe “Open Carry.” From his forth-coming book 2018: Found Poems and Weather Reports he read “July 24.” His recent manuscript “Shards” is a collection of short golden shovels, using a range of poets for the lines: William Carlos Williams, Rossetti, Mathew Arnold, Etheridge Knight.

Back across the way to Estep Auditorium for the final afternoon session of the day for 4 more writers.

Paul Austin has become a friend over the years; now living in Oklahoma, he was a New Yorker for a good part of his life. He has a new book out, Notes on Hard Times (Village Books Press, 2019), from which he read a generous selection. He read the grim “Warsaw Ghetto, 1942;” a couple of portraits, “The Jazz Lover” & one for Richard Ray Whitman; poems responding to Samuel Beckett & Delmore Schwartz; & a litany beginning with a quote from Joy Harjo “If They Ask.”

One can always expect Michelle Hartman to be in-your-face, even when she is being humorous, or talking about death, like a poem titled “A Reason for Everything” from a series about folks’ 1st night dead. Most of her reading was from her recent book, Wanton Disarray (Hungry Buzzard Press, 2019), including the poems “Weddings & Death,” “Hope Has No Conscience,” “Behavior Waves” (a love poem), “The First Time” (i.e., a woman undresses a man), & “She Asked What You Are Like.” I bought the book so I could take a little bit of Michelle home with me.

Randy Prus & Cullen Whisenhunt  gave us a rare tandem reading, playing “poem tag” from a year-long collaborative project, much of it political, responding to media coverage, such as one piece titled “This is Now, for Tom Paine & Gil-Scott Heron.” There was also a section on dead dogs, & even a mention of the red bud tree, a sub-theme of the day it seems.

The second of the day’s fill-ins was Jeff Alfier who began with a couple of poems set in Louisiana. He described his poems as “semi-autobiographical at best,” though many were in the (apparent) voice of a persona, often in a work setting, like flash fiction stories of the working class, even a poem titled “Lap Dancer, for Holly who Danced the Longest.”

I love how the folks creating this festival pair up us writers, our themes, images, styles bumping up against each other, as on a crowded dance floor, different styles, over-lapping themes, but always about the human character, our own or that of others.

We broke for dinner, with the reading by US Poet Laureate Tracy K. Smith set for the evening.