Third Thursday Poetry Night, August 18

The weekend before our scheduled open mic at the Social Justice Center, the writer Salman Rushdie was brutally attacked on stage at a reading in Chautauqua Institution in Western New York State. On the following Monday, Paul Grondahl, Director of the NYS Writers Institute called me. Paul had interviewed Rushdie back in December, 2019 at a W.I. event that I had attended. You can read about the history of the W.I. with Rushdie in Paul’s article in the Albany Times Union dated August 17, 2022.

Salman Rushdie (left), Paul Grondahl, December 2019

Paul called to say that they wanted to do something as a tribute to Rushdie who was recuperating in the hospital, he said that the only day that would fit the W.I. schedule was Thursday, August 18. They were aware that that was the night of the Third Thursday Poetry Night, moreover at which Joe Krausman would be the featured reader, & they didn’t want to conflict with us, particularly with Joe as the featured reader. He asked if we could combine the events & have the tribute to Salman Rushdie as part of the open mic on the Third Thursday. I enthusiastically embraced the idea, touched by the consideration of the W.I. for our community reading & open mic.

So with only a few days to put out the word, the W.I., with the support of Casey Seiler, Editor & Vice-President of the Times Union, including the aforementioned article by Paul, as well as my own network of email lists & social media, we put out the word that in addition to open mic at the SJC the night would include a tribute to Salman Rushdie. I anticipated a huge crowd & put out every chair available (I usually put out 15 - 20 chairs, which is enough). We had Standing Room Only, & my sign-up sheet had 20 names on it, while it is usually half that number.

It was fitting that the first few readers were folks who were familiar faces/voices to this open mic. Readers could either read their own work or something from Rushdie’s great body of writing. A.C. Everson led off with her characteristically enthusiastic rhymes done from memory. Sylvia Barnard rarely misses a third Thursday here, began by expressing her horror at the attack on Rushdie, & drawing a comparison to the decimation of the Classics Department at SUNY back in 2011 to a form of “cultural book-burning,” then read her poem “Pont du Gard” about seeing recently the old Roman ruins in the South of France. 

Julie Lomoe paraphrased a piece she had left at home & read/sang/rambled “I can hear clearly now…” about getting hearing aids, instigated by wanting to go to a women writers conference. Marylou Streznewski spelled out her name phonetically on the signup sheet, talked about Rushdie’s book for his sons Haroun & the Sea of Stories, read her own poem “Saving Strawberries.” Z. Johnson was a new name to me, was here for the 1st time, talked about Love then read from an anthology of inspirational verse. Kathy O’Brien read a poem about aging & the joy of awakening to the sounds of the morning.

William Kennedy, whose gift many years ago created the NYS Writers Institute, talked about meeting Salman Rushdie in 1988 in London, & invited him to come to Albany. But that visit was delayed by the fatwa, & it wasn't until years later that he was able to make it to Albany. Kennedy quoted Rushdie about story telling, then read the opening chapter from Rushdie’s novel Midnight’s Children (Random House, 2006). 

Joe Krausman on Bill Kennedy's Cellphone

Tonight’s featured reader, Joe Krausman, has no trouble following an esteemed author, Joe has his own special appeal. He began with a poem for Salman Rushdie, “The Medicine of Words,” then on to an reading based on the theme of “shall I rhyme or shall I not rhyme,” with many of his popular pieces, such a “Houdini on the Death of his Mother,” the related “Deceptions,” the award-winning “The Passionate Accountant to His Love,” & a tale about a man who marries a woman with 2 heads. 

But I like how Casey Seiler captured Joe’s reading in one paragraph in a piece published in the Albany Times Union Sunday, August 21, 2022:

“If Rusdie symbolizes the modern global writer, the 86-year-old Krausman is as New York as the Bowery Boys. A former legislative staffer, he reads a clutch of his wry, frequently laugh-out-loud poems (“I dreamed I had the popcorn concession at Houdini’s grave” was an opening line that made me bark). I would say Krausman’s verbal footnotes to his work were priceless, except that he seemed to have a photographic memory for how much he had been paid for every piece that found a home. He was like a flinty elf.”  

To which I will only add that at the end of his reading when Joe mentioned he had left out a poem that he had intended to read the audience asked him, like a rock-star being called back for an encore (think Leonard Cohen), to read it (titled “Shipwreck”), which this “flinty elf” indeed did.

After a brief break during which I passed “the hat,” generously filled by the lively audience, we returned to the open mic. I invoked the droit de seigneur to read next, or rather recite, my old poem from 1991, “Joe Krausman,” the first of 2 with that title that I have written. Next up was a once-&-future feature here at the SJC, Jan Tramontano who read a brief section from Haroun & the Sea of Stories. 

Casey Seiler referenced a documentary about Bill Kennedy that he had worked on & Kennedy’s concept of “writers in communion” such as here tonight, then read from the Prologue to Salman Rushdie’s non-fiction Joseph Anton: A Memoir (Random House, 2013), about the immediate days after the fatwa was declared. Paul Grondahl acknowledged the “defenders of free speech & expression” in the audience, described Rushdie as “a gentle, wonderful person,” & read from Quichotte: A Novel (Random House, 2019), a funny take on Don Quixote woven with Rushdie's autobiographical details. Josh the Poet has been coming regularly to open mics of late, read a new, short poem titled “Sinful.” Anthony Bernini goes back to the earliest days of Albany’s poetry scene, tonight joined us to read his poem “The Birds of America, John James Audubon, 1937,” of “the skill of knowing with no need to kill.”

Joan Goodman was back here again, read her poem “Alive,” hearing a bird song as she awakens, the sounds of birds worked into her poem, & “stay alive” their message. Frank Robinson is out & about in Albany's lit scene, read “Sardine” written after seeing a nature documentary on PBS, birds again, this time eating sardines, only part of the “meat chain.” Alexandra Peraza was here for the 1st time, saw the notice about the event on the Writers Institute website, read a recent, moving poem “The Letter I Never Sent to My Mom.” 

While not usually as crowded here as it was this night, we gather each Third Thursday at the Social Justice Center, 33 Central Ave., Albany at 7:30 PM for a featured poet & an open mic for the rest of us — your donation supports poetry events & the work of the Social Justice Center, as it did so generously tonight. Join us & help make it more crowded here & share your words.