Poets Speak Loud!, June 24

This monthly series was back, with the force of Mary Panza as the host, in McGeary’s back room where the force of food, beer & other adult beverages prevailed.

Sylvia Barnard was back with a poem about a visit last December to a church she used to attend in Cambridge, UK, the historic St. Bene’t’s, then read a revised version of a poem she has read previously, memories of riding the school bus, in rhyme. Joe Krausman was fascinated by a couple making out while texting “Seen in the Subway,” then a poem about death “The Great Chain of Being.” D.Alexander Holiday continued our education with poems by others, one by Frank X. Walker, & then Harriet Mueller’s “We Are Not Responsible.”

Christopher Burton read a impassioned, unfettered rant on nearly everything, that also urged us to read the Declaration of Independence, The Merchant of Venice, etc. My 2 poems were the quite old “The Simplest Surrealist Act,” & the very new “Argus String Quartet.”

Tonight’s featured poet was Dan Vollweiler, whom I’ve heard read in the open mic at Caffè Lena. Mary Panza read his hilarious bio, which was a perfect intro to the poems he read — playful, humorous, but with a (political) bite, & inventive use of rhyme. The first poem he read “Summer is Gross” was a good example, with twisted rhymes & wordplay about memories of high school, then he delved into rap, of sorts, with a commentary on “Generation X” & the aptly titled “Just Me, My Bro, Wings & Beer.” “When Catholics Cut You Like Meat on Friday” told the tale of being laid off, a bearded, Jewish teacher, from his job at a Catholic school. The poems “The Best Words,” & “Oh Con Man My Con Man,” were comments on the Trump Presidency, & were linked up with another piece that took its lead from Langston Hughes’ “Let America Be America Again.” His life as a poet were taken on in “Beware the Bard Beetle” (afflicted with “rhyme disease”) & “My Dangerous Early Life as a Poet” both, again, with funny wordplay. He ended with another rap piece, this about the life of a nerd. A most enjoyable feature.

Back to the open mic, Don Levy read a new piece, “Me & My Cane,” about his brand new cane. Since R.M. Engelhardt’s monthly open mic at Elixir Cafe in Troy is taking a break for the Summer, he had time to come to someone else’s open mic; he read a poem about his cat, “Anachronism” (I’m don’t know if this is the name of his cat, or not), then “Resume of a Dead White Poet” trying to be ironic. Julie Lomoe began by saying she took a class on the prose poems, which she described somewhat simplistically as “a poem without line breaks”; she then read selections from a long, prosy memoir “Typewriters” that really didn’t sound like a “prose poem” & was way over the 2-poem open mic limit.

Tom Reilly came out of the woods, a welcome sight, to read a couple of recent poems, the first about cleaning out stuff from his parents’ house “An Emergency Kit for the Soul,” then “Butterfly & I.” Tim Verhaegen has been writing — & reading to us — about his family, particularly his mother, entertainingly for years, tonight read the latest installment “What Shall I Do When Mother Comes Back?”

One learns so much at Poets Speak Loud! held on most last Monday’s of the year, 7:30PM at McGeary’s on Sheridan Square, Albany, NY — good food, good drinks, good service, good (mostly) poems.