2nd Sunday @ 2: Poetry + Prose, July 12

A 2nd Sunday open mic that wasn’t supposed to happen — Back 11 years ago when Nancy Klepsch & I began this partnership hosting a monthly open mic (for poetry & prose) at the Arts Center in Troy, Nancy proposed that we take July & August off (she teaches in a public school system so this pattern is hard-wired for her), I had no objection & that’s the way it was. Until this June at our Zoom gathering Nancy proposed doing the open mic in July; again, I had no objection. Then a week or so later she called to say that she & her partner Lauren were going camping & would I mind hosting the event. Again I had no objection, indeed that’s the great thing about having co-hosts, we can fill in for each other as the need arises. So here we were — & a good thing too: a third of the readers who dialed in were from out-of-state.

& the first of those was Charlie Rossiter from Bennington, Vermont who read “One Chilly August Morning Something Happened” (at Mimi’s Minnesota cottage), & “Ode to the Old TV” & the old TV shows from back then. Charlie hosts a Zoom gathering on the 2nd Tuesday of each month that pre-COVID he did from The Tap House in Bennington.

Sally Rhoades began with a political piece “White Men Walking,” then an excerpt from her memoir written for a class about her father “Planting Beans.”

Howard Kogan was a beloved regular when we used to gather at the Arts Center but tonight dialed in from Ashland, Massachuesett & began with “Slip Rock” about out cowboys out west, & “My Mother’s Pandemic” her germophobia vindicated by the current pandemic.

Jil Hanifan’s short, surreal poem “Nimble Finger Peg” was drawn from the Irish tradition of songs like “the Bonnie Swan” where ghostly harpers use body parts of the dead to make a harp, then read the less-macabre but related “In the Beginning String.”

Ken Hada was online from Oklahoma but has read in Albany & Saratoga in the past on visits to the East; “Woodpecker” took us from the sound & image of the bird on a path to the metaphysical & philosophical, & “Living with Gravity” was equally philosophical about living graciously. Ken directs the Scissortail Creative Writing Festival each year at East Central University in Ada, OK, & has a weekly podcast The Sunday Poems with Ken Hada.

Dan Curley read “The Free Sale” a touching family tale from his book 2019 book Conditional Future Perfect (Wolfson Press).

I read 2 poems from the exhibit of the work of Ruby Silvious pre-shutdown at the Albany Institute of History & Art “The Tone of Ruby’s Images” (from a workshop run by Therese Broderick) & “Museum Goers” otherwise known as “The Wrist-Band Poem.”

Joel Best commented on Jil’s poem saying his own work tends to be surrealistic, read “Blind Love” with its free flowing random connections, a good example.

Julie Lomoe read from her work in progress “Sub-Dural,” a combination of prose & poems, this excerpt titled “Celebrating Life & Death the Unitarian Way” a descriptive essay from February when we could still attend wakes & funerals.

2nd Sunday @ 2: Poetry + Prose formerly (& perhaps in the future) at the Arts Center of the Capital Region in Troy, 10 months of the year, not usually in July & August, but who knows. Find it on Facebook.