Poets Speak Loud!, July 29

New table top memorializing
Mother Judge & Sarge Blotto

Back to the back room at McGeary’s once again with our host Mary Panza, with the night’s featured poet, Danielle Pouliot, waiting in the wings. But first a few open mic poets to start the night off.

Sylvia Barnard was first up with a revised version of her poem about the historic St. Bene’t’s in Cambridge, UK, mixing memoir & history, then a poem about why she is not interested in going to a “Writers Colony.”  Francesca Sidoti made a most rare appearance at an open mic with an Italian sonnet about her daughter, then an English sonnet “Deities' Child” for a friend’s son who committed suicide. D. Alexander Holiday continued our education with 2 poems from The Collected Poems of June Jordan, “Richard Wright Was Wrong” & “The Bombing of Baghdad.”

I had missed Danielle Pouliot when she read at WordFest 2019, but had previously caught her reading at the same event in 2018, & looked forward to tonight’s reading. Her first poem about her suburban neighbors, “Picket Fence Finger Prick” was a good introduction to her style - vivid images & wordplay. She said her poem “Voting Booth,” written after the last election was a rare political poem, while “What I Was Taught as a Girl Growing Up” returned to the playful use of language, & her prominent use of “I” as the character/focus of the the poem. Likewise a poem with “Punctuation…” in the title & rapid fire word connections, & “Bare Handed Bee Keeping” with its graphic images of organs & body parts. She ended with an “eco-poem” with war images of damage to the biosphere “After Shock.” She seemed to have had a lot of fun writing these poems.

Tom Bonville’s wry poem “Immigration Policy” was a funny tale of trying to rid his house of stink bugs. Don Levy repeated, welcomely, recent poems he’s read out before, “I Heard the Black Mermaid Singing” & “Me & My Cane.” I shared a couple of brand-new pieces, “Purple Prose Poem” & “Prussian Blue,” then added the short ditty “Alcoholism.”

Jessica Rae was back in town for a brief visit with a poem inspired by Gwendolyn Brooks “For the People” (for AOC), then a revised version of “Real Free Men at Some Back Road Bar,” then “Muse Next Morning” (one of those “uh-oh” moments after the night before), another Brooks’ inspired piece “Poetical Child,” & descriptive memory of her grandfather “Tobacco Pipe.” Avery managed to slip in before the end of the open mic with 3 poems, “Sunday Morning Warriors” (at Home Depot), one of his new-age chants “Because You Have Opened,” & “Sawmill Dreams” about the trials & tribulations of running a business, that he did in an imitation of Tom Waits.

A rich Summer-time session of Poets Speak Loud! which takes place most last Mondays of the year at McGeary’s on Sheridan Square in Albany, 7:30PM, a featured poet & an open mic.