Gloucester Writers Center, May 25

Sometimes when I go over to Gloucester, MA for my periodic rest & inspiration, I get lucky & there is a program at the Gloucester Writers Center. This was one such trip, a reading by poets Jim Dunn & Dick Lourie, on my last night in town.

Jim Dunn read first, beginning with comments on the late Gerrit Lansing (1928 - 2018), poet & long-time Gloucester resident, then on to a poem just written today, “Dogtown Bull Blues.” Then a sad piece, “The Wanting Mare,” about a woman film maker who drowned in a reservoir in Gloucester in 2020, later read “The Day Before the Drowning Girl,” circling around again to the story at the end of his reading. Other pieces he read included one about his birthday, “2/2/22,” a couple of pieces on Trump, a loving poem “Lunar Delight,” a poem for the poet & essayist Bill Corbett (1942 - 2018), & of course poems about his beloved Gloucester, “Glos Star” & “Fishing at the Mouth of the Chasm,” his poems are effusive rants flowing from, I surmise, a poet’s ever-present pocket notebook, some from his 2022 book This Silence is a Junkyard. After the applause he tossed in another, of course titled “Gloucester, MA.”

Dick Lourie’s performance was a combination of poems & music, he had brought along his sax. He is a founding editor of the long-running, legendary zine Hanging Loose, that when I submitted poems to them years ago (none accepted) was a loose, unbound stack of half-page sheets stuffed into an appropriate sized envelope. It eventually transitioned to a more conventional bound format. At the end of the night I picked up a copy of Hanging Loose #109 (2018) . He began with a humorous take on “Object Permanence,” then on to 4 poems listening to music: “Blues in the Night,” “Piece of My Heart,” “Gymnopédie” (& played one of Erik Satie’s versions), & “Night Train” about dreams. He has a book out titled Jam Session, from which he read pieces; also read nostalgic name-dropping poems from a book-length poem about radio, & read one of his “Letters to the Dead,” this one to the sax man Clarence Clemons, letters more painter-like than musical.

It was a fittingly poet way to end my short, Spring retreat on Cape Ann. If you don’t know about the Gloucester Writers Center, check out their website — & while you are at it, make a donation!