Poetry in Science,, January 22

This is (I think) the 3rd in a series of readings by local poets on the theme of science, any science, organized by Dr. Kate Gillespie, a research scientist & self-described “demented doctoral student” who started us off with one of her own poems, “Panspermia” which can be found online here.  The featured readers were all well-known poets in the local open mic scene.

Sally Rhoades took a broad approach to the idea of “poetry in science,” as did all the readers to one degree or another, demonstrating that everything is poetry/everything is science. She began with a poem titled “Finding My Twin” (at which point a twin of a member in the audience walked in!), then an urban portrait “The Solitary Man,” another beginning “I have lived my life a loaded gun…,” one titled “My Mother Janet,” & one about being picked up at the airport in Oklahoma by her friend Katie.

Tom Corrado has been writing for years now what he terms “screen dumps,” self-publishing them in home-made chapbooks. They are typically a page or 2 in length, numbered sequentially. Tonight he read from the latest chapbook, then, memes II, which is one long continuous poem, though in the style of his past work composed of short phrases, sentences separated by gnomic ellipses. He connected the work to “science” by saying that the screen dumps are “the experience of experience.” Think of John Asbery without the stuffiness, writing about the everyday, & nowhere near as boring.

Tess Lecuyer’s poems were more closely allied to the topic of science, in all its varieties, beginning with a cluster of Haiku composed of stolen scientific words from applications she had reviewed, then a couple of older poems, “Hard Science” & “Bob Dylan on Mars.” She likes to spend time in the woods as reflected in the poems “Eclipse,” “Mis-remembering” (with trees & dinosaurs), & “Post Winter Solstice.” But her last piece was an urban take on the “Summer Solstice.”

There is an old saying among performance poets, “When in doubt, pull out the dick-poem.” Mark O’Brien began with a favorite, “Peedy My Best Friend,” a tale of childhood mis-information. The poem “Taxonomy of Me” was his ars poetica, on the necessity of listening to the Muse, then read a DNA poem “Old School” & ended with one titled “On the Anniversary of the Moon Landing” combining his personal memory of that event 50 years ago, with the memories of others gathered by his daughter.

The audience this night, jammed into a small back room of Nine Pine Cider on Broadway in Albany, NY was composed of, it seemed, more scientists than poets, which is actually a poet’s dream, to be reading to folks who have never experienced their work previously.

You find out about the Cap-Sci programs, which include lectures & presentations on scientific topics, as well as the occasional poetry reading through their Facebook page which will also lead you to their website.