Third Thursday Poetry Night, September 15

This was another night of wonderfully varied open mic poets & a fabulous featured poet, Sally Rhoades. As always, I invoked the Muse, a gone poet whom we miss, tonight the local writer Sharon Stenson, who left us in December, 2021; I read her poem “High-Heeled Blue Shoes.”

It was great to see Alan Catlin back here again, he always has new work to read, tonight a political piece “Yucatan Medusa,” the title poem of a forthcoming collection of poems. Tom Bonville read about an old character drawing trees in the forest who, perhaps becomes one. 

Sara Wiest was not scared away by last month’s crowd here & returned to read a sonnet, of which she has been writing many lately, “Tedi Makes Paper Shoes.” The next poet was certainly the youngest in the room, Joshua the Poet, to read a poem for all the poets, like the rest of us, on the power of poems. Tom Corrado read from his ongoing poetic series, “Screen Dumps,” this one #647(!), channeling John Ashbery. 

Sally Rhoades has been involved in the poetry scene here since its early days at the open mics at the QE2 rock club, just down the street from the Social Justice Center. She is also a dancer, performance artist & playwright. Her chapbook, Greeted by Wildflowers (A.P.D., 2022), was published in conjunction with her reading this past April at the annual Scissortail Creative Writing Festival at East Central University in Ada, Oklahoma. 

She started at her beginning with a note dated 9/2/77 from the 1st of her many journals, then talked about being inspired by Mark Nepo when he taught at the University at Albany, & by the poet Stanley Kunitz to whom she wrote a tribute titled “Non-Pareil;” other tributes she read were the praise poem “My Mother’s Daughter,” then “My Mother Was a Waitress” which was published in conjunction with the Woody Guthrie festival in Okemah, Oklahoma at which she read the poem, then a poem for her father, “My Father’s Slippers.” Her autobiographical poem “Letting Go a Little bit of My Youth” is in Greeted by Wildflowers, & “Riding Shotgun” is familiar to many of us who have heard it & others about Sally’s nonagenarian Aunt Polly. The next poem was about being molested as a youth & was written responding to the prompt “That is the End of my Happiness.”  “Death Hangs on our House Tonight” was for a relative in Cyprus who had died, & she ended on a triumphal note with “Don’t Put Plastic Flowers on my Grave.”

Back to the open mic I read a poem from my stack of “poem cards,” “A Prayer for Superheroes.” Joe Krausman was last month’s featured poet & tonight read the title poem from his next book “My Heart is an Onion.” Joan Goodman read the latest revision of a poem she started in April 2021 titled “Easy to Say No.”

Then the battery in my little recorder ran out & I did’t notice until I got home so I didn’t take any notes about the poems read by the rest of the poets. I apologize for this lacuna to the remaining 4 readers, & to the historian/Grad student of the future reviewing the archives.

For the record, those readers were Catherine Dickert, Sylvia Barnard, Valerie Temple (here for the first time), & Desmond Gonzalez who played his electric guitar 

We continue to be here at the Social Justice Center, 33 Central Ave., Albany, NY on the third Thursday of each month, starting at 7:30PM with a featured poet & an open mic for the rest of us — your $5.00 donation supports poetry events in the area, & the work of the Social Justice Center. Join us & bring a poem to read.