Third Thursday Poetry Night, January 16

First third Thursday of 2020 & we start off the New Year at the Social Justice Center. The featured poet was Susan E. Oringel, & I had invited folks attending to pay tribute to the recently-gone poet & Literary Legend Lyn Lifshin by reading one of her poems, in addition to their own. I started it with invoking Lyn as the night’s Muse. I read her poem “Going Back to Where” from a mimeographed locally produced zine in which I also had poems, The Old Woman (no date, but probably the late 1960s, edited by Sue Shafarzek).

The first reader was not only new here at the SJC, but new to Albany, found us on AlbanyPoets.com, Naeema, who read a “justice poem” for the elephants. D. Alexander Holiday again read from the anthology Poems from Black Africa, edited by Langston Hughes, 2 poems. Mark W. O’Brien once again signed up in green ink, read a true story about mixing up “Nielson” with “Sullivan.” Alan Casline talked about being a small press publisher in the 1970s, publishing Lyn Lifshin, even dating her for a while, then read a poem he wrote about her.

The night’s featured poet, Susan E. Oringel, began with a poem by Lyn Lifshin “You Understand the Requirements” then started out with a poem from her own book My Coney Island (Finishing Line Press, 2019), “Poor Everybody” a prayer, she said, then the first poem in the book “Song of Coney Island,” based on a Garcia Lorca poem. Then on to others, “My Father’s War,” “My Father’s Workshop,” “The Fact of After,” “Romance Alfómbrico” also patterned on a Lorca poem, “Last Responder,” & the title poem, last one in the book.  She finished with a new poem “Red Anemone” about a medical procedure, bringing back memories of the past.

After a break I returned to read a poem I wrote in the style of one of Lyn Lifshin’s older poems “Vegetarian Sex.” Jessica Rae joined us on her break from school, read the Lyn Lifshin poem “Lust Blowing Under the Door” then her own “coffee poem” (still without a title, still in progress). Karen Fabiane read Lyn’s “My Mother, the Demerol Wearing Off” then from her 1st book, Dancing Bears (Bright Hill Press, 2011) “Slay Me.”

Harvey Havel read an excerpt from his recent novel The Wild Gypsy of Arbor Hill, a bedroom conversation. Tom Bonville followed, with Lyn’s poem "92 Rapple" on page 13 from 92 Rapple Drive, every poem in the book with the same title, then his own about his mother “Keeping Warm” passing on the wisdom of life, of keeping warm. Joe Krausman was the final reader for the night, read a short poem by Lyn about Picasso on his painting “Guernica” then his own poem on artists living through their work “Is he dead?”

Just like in the past, we will continue to meet on the third Thursday of the month at 7:30PM here at the Social Justice Center, 33 Central Ave., Albany — a featured poet & an open mic for community poets.