Writers Mic, February 8

Our host, Jackie Craven, has returned to the Schenectady area from Florida, which doesn’t mean much if you are on Zoom & can be anywhere on Earth (or elsewhere?) — which is also a good thing. Although online, there is a lot of warm interaction among & between the poets.

First up on the list was Sue Oringel starting with 2 “tiny,” as she said, Valentines poems starting with a 1958 childhood memory of her parents arguing, & a limerick from 2015 by her boyfriend then/husband now. & a poem inspired both by her family history & the romance movie Dr. Zhivago, “The Cold Reminds Me.”

David Graham began with a meditation on aging as he turns 70 this month, “Nearing 70” a conversation with his doctor post stroke & learning to speak; then some tiny poems, funny, linking nature & politics.

I was next with an old poem brought to mind by the recent “green comet,” a poem about the 2017 American eclipse, “Spathe is the Plathe,” then my annual “Birthday Poem” subtitled “Magic in Gloucester.”

Ellen White Rook’s first poem responded to an XJ Kennedy poem on Duchamp's “Nude Descending the Staircase,” then a more personal one titled “Tender at 2 Am” about a conversation with a “mad brother,” as she put it. 

Scot Morehouse usually reads hilarious/outrageous prose stories, tonight he read a couple of Valentines poems, “When You Care Enough To Send the Very Best” where love comes from, & “Another Valentines Day Without a Card From You” in which he talks to the ashes of a past lover.

Beth B said she was dialing in from outside Woodstock, NY, that she had found this even "by mistake" but hung around to read some poems, in rhyme, “For Teddy” a sad poem to one who had died, then a more cheerful piece, & another about looking for the happy life “Waiting for Life.”

Alan Catlin read from Altered States an old file that had been corrupted & now restored by his wife, the poems “The State of New York,” & “The State of Massachusetts” about an old new Bedford whalers, then a new one “The Naked Room,” about his early years, & visiting an old hospital.

Alexander Perez read from a poetry magazine his work had be published in, short pieces from others, then one of his own, an elegy for the past “Touch My Fingers with Fire as if They Were Candles” trying to capture the heat of the past of lovers. 

The 1st three poems that Naomi Bindman read can be found on the Hudson Valley Writers Guild website “Lament,” “Why Write when it’s All Been Done Before,” “Found Poem: Texting with My Brother,” then she read a longer piece she has worked on for a year “The Shape of the Wind” with images of hawks flying, a piling up of sounds & visions of the wind.

Francine Farina was here for the 1st time with a couple of descriptive poems “The Final Visit” at a gravesite, & “Northeast Winter.”

Jackie Craven read a surrealistic prose poem, “Surveillance Video Shows Suitcases Resisting Arrest” just out in Pleiades.

Whether you know how to get “here” or just stumble in it by accident, you can get the Zoom link from the Writers Mic Facebook page  so you can join us each 2nd Wednesday of the month at 7:30PM. Have some poems handy to read.