2nd Sunday @ 2: Poetry + Prose, December 15

Well, this was actually the 3rd Sunday — Nancy & I decided we didn’t want to compete with the Holiday Hordes for Troy’s Victorian Stroll last week — & we still ended up with a full house of poets including new voices & some long-absent voices.

First up was “poetry virgin” Katt Losee with a long, harrowing chronology about being caught in a hurricane. I followed with a reading of Enid Dame’s moving & perceptive “Holiday Poem,” a seasonal tradition with me. Bob Sharkey’s poem “Roomy” was a dream about ghosts at a party, while “Wedded Poem” was about the beauty & contradictions of marriage. Dave DeVries read his eco-poem honoring Greta Thunberg “Turn Back the Clock.” Carol Jewell read the recently-gone Lyn Lifshin’s poem “Like a Dark Lantern” then another of her own shining pantoum’s “Buddha 3.” Joel Best read a poem about an old photo from his collection “Oklahoma 33” then “Distant Thunder” a dream of the ocean.

The most colorful outfit of the day was worn by Peggy LeGee — or as she preferred to be called this day, Traney Clause — who channeled Jim Morrison & the Doors with her poem “The End of the End.” Co-host Nancy Klepsch read an intricate prose/poem hybrid, a music memoir, about having faith in a dream. She was followed by another Nancy, Nancy Dunlop, whose piece was also a memoir, titled “Florida,” about learning about death through the death of one of aunt’s horses. Jil Hanifan read the quietly philosophical poem “Turning a Wheel,” then from her book their agonizing speed (The Troy Book Makers, 2011) the Wintery “Snow Whales.

Harvey Havel read an excerpt from his latest novel The Wild Gypsy of Arbor Hill. Karen Fabiane read 2 new poems “Hey All You People Standing Around” & the perhaps hopeful “Good News is Coming.” Sally Rhoades read the elegy “My Mother” then an amusing piece about looking for her glasses while on a plane to Oklahoma “I Put It in a Place So I Wouldn’t Forget It.” Kate Gillespie ended the day (& this year at the Arts Center) with a childhood memoir about driving around looking at Xmas lights, “It’s Xmas Time in New Jersey.”

This was the last 2nd Sunday @ 2: Poetry + Prose of the year & of the decade — we are in the midst of our 10th year doing this. We hope to see you back at the Arts Center of the Capital Region, 265 River St., Troy, NY in 2020, the Year of Seeing Clearly.