Albany Book Festival, September 17

Phew! 21 literary events spread out from 10:30AM through 4:40PM — panel discussions, conversations with authors, featured authors, “open mics,” even a “tribute,” including a local author marketplace & exhibitors filling 2 locations, even children’s literary activities spread throughout the Campus Center complex of the University at Albany Uptown Campus. How much can an aging, mortal bibliophile local poet attend? As much as I could, including schmoozing & wandering through the great hall of exhibitors, & generally hanging out.

This was the 5th annual event, & I’d missed a few, so I’d made a commitment to myself to be there throughout the day. Like I said, “Phew!”

I started off the morning with “Conversation with Robert Pinsky & Robert Boyers,” around Pinksy’s new book Jersey Breaks: Becoming an American Poet, a memoir of growing up in Long Branch New Jersey, a work which he described as about the anti-intellectualism of American culture. As a conversation it leapt & weaved between a variety of topics & themes. At one point Pinsky described improvisation as America’s great gift to the art world, starting with the improvisation inherent in jazz music, inspiring improvisation in writing & the visual arts. Touching on culture in general he said that culture is appropriation, that culture, citing James Baldwin, is every child’s birthright.

Asked about his teaching poetry, he said that 1 thing he asks students to do is to make their own anthology of poems they have liked, not to be graded, but to be used for discussions about poetry. He also suggests to his students (& others, like us) to look up literary journals for the year of your birth to see who the poets were that were being published then.

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I skipped the next round of panels to wander the vast Campus Center Ballroom filled with tables of authors & their books & the browsing public, & I couldn’t walk but 10 feet before talking to someone, either book sellers, or other browsers — it was like “Walmart on the weekend.” I came away with 4 books from writer friends, Across the River Jordan: The Journey to Bring My Son Home, a memoir by Holly Planells McKenna; Murder in the Gilded City, novel by Angela Kaufman; One Branch, Haiku by Stuart Bartow; & a lovingly hand-stitched Edge, eco-poems by Barbara Ungar.

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I spent the rest of afternoon interlude before the final panel at — surprise! — “Open Mic Readings,” both held at The Orb Stage on the ground level of the Campus Center.

Alex

First it was the Albany Student Open Mic Reading, featuring students from ARCH the undergrad online literary journal & from the Young Writer’s Project program. The co-hosts were Sarah Rucker & Eric Turner. I hung out with Jil Hanifan, much like we used to hang out at the QE2 when she was a student here herself, now Jil is a faculty advisor to these young writers. There were 15 readers, a variety of topics, but, of course, a number of love/relationship poems, descriptive pieces, even a sestina. Troy read a stunning introspective prose piece about being in the Army, built around a psychiatric interview. Juan’s piece “I Used to Believe” was a rap rant complete with stylized Slam gestures, & Alex’s tender piece “The Letter I Never Sent to my Mom” I remember hearing at a recent open mic in the community.

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Christy O’Callaghan-Leue, editor of Barzakh Magazine, introduced the Capital Region Poetry Workshop group that began with support of the NYS Writers Institute. Each of the readers introduced the next reader, beginning with Elizabeth Grisau who said she likes rhyme & meter, even included a Sestina in the poems she read, &, among others, a poem with a great title “A Guide to Parisian Elevators.

Caroline Grondahl began with a poem like a letter, & one on a topic familiar to lots of students, “A Poem About Credit Card Debt,” & a cluster of others. One of Melissa Hurt’s poems, “Dissonance in New York” was in the voice of a woman in a Hopper painting.

Jonathan Lloyd was the most animated performer of the lot, with a fairy tale of dragons, & the humor of “The Truth About My Underwear” & “The Man in the Saliva Suit.” Marilyn Paarlberg began with a sound poem composed of funny words, a couple poems on the sacred in the ordinary, & poems about things owned by her grandmother & by her mother.

Unlike others in this group, Ellen White Rook has been at the occasional open mic in the area; she also had a poem/letter, & a poem on Demeter, titled “After Harvest” & I was worried when she read her poem titled “Musica Humana” (the sounds of the human body), but it was a tender piece about her husband snoring — he was in the audience & seemed to take it well. 

Sue Whitaker’s poem “Dying in Pet Smart” was about going to the pet store with her mother before she died, also some descriptive nature poems, such as “Yoga Light” about a river & how things change (do I sense the influence of Mary Oliver among a number of these poets?). Gary Maggio, who was the original creator of this group, read just one poem, “Time Out” on the dead.

The group meets twice monthly & is now managed by Marilyn Paarlbert & Ellen White Rook.

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The final event of the night was the Hunter S. Thompson Tribute & it was quite a show. The panel consisted of Douglas Brinkley, a professor of history at Rice University, the Presidential Historian at CNN, &, as the literary executor of the Hunter S. Thompson estate, editor of two books of HST’s letters; William Kennedy, Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist & the founder & executive director of the NYS Writers Institute, Kennedy’s friendship with HST began in the 1950s when Kennedy was running a new English-language newspaper in Puerto Rico & HST applied for a job there (he didn’t get it); & Garry Trudeau, the creator of the comic strip Doonesbury, & one of his best-loved characters is “Uncle Duke,” an unauthorized caricature of Gonzo journalist HST. It was a spirited exchange among 3 literate raconteurs, moderated by Mark Koplik, NYSWI Assistant Director.

The conversation was full of anecdotes, some quite outrageous, particularly about what HST would've like to do to Garry Trudeau, for example HST once sent sent thru the mail a package containing used toilet paper to Trudeau, because of the cartoon character "Uncle Duke." Trudeau said that he first encountered HST’s work when he read HST's book on the Hells Angels for a college class, didn’t like it, but he became a huge fan later on, & later HST told an interviewer he had “made peace” with “Uncle Duke.

Douglas Brinkley commented on how well read HST was, on the popularity of his work now, & Brinkley compared the “acerbic wit” in HST’s work to the demeanor one sees frequently on social media today.

William Kennedy described HST as soft spoken in person, & very smart, & talked of his long friendship with him. There is an hysterical account by Kennedy, "A Box of Books: An Exchange, on Matters Literary and Postal, with Hunter S. Thompson" in Bootlegger of the Soul: The Literary Legacy of William Kennedy, edited by Suzanne Lance & Paul Grondahl (State University of New York Press, 2018). As part of the event they showed a brief clip of a conversation between HST & Kennedy from June 13, 2018, which one can find on YouTube. Kennedy said the whole Gonzo approach to writing & life was something new in the world. 

Someone pointed out that this was the first time these 3 writers were on the same stage together.

& I guess this is what this annual event has become, not just a gathering of community & academic poets & writers, but the celebration of everyone who loves literature, books or just a good tale. See you there next year.