This open mic with featured readers held in a house among the trees is back, it seems. This night there were 2 featured poets, Philip Good & the host/coordinator of the series, Alan Casline, but more on that in a few paragraphs.
First up on the open mic list was Philomena Moriarty who read her latest work, a list poem, “What Is In the Blood,” then an Irish tale “Shape Shifter.”
There is a type, or category, or genre of poems that are introduced by the poet by saying, “I wrote this poem in a workshop run by Bernadette Mayer…” I read one of my entries in that category, “Saturday Hawk,” the a recent poem carved on the street in Philadelphia, based on a poem with the same title by William Carlos Williams, “The Great Figure.”
Frank Robinson began with a rhyming piece on metaphor, then a poem on death, “Fearing Nothing.”
The first of the feature poets was Philip Good, who began with a poem from a short-lived zine, Tsatsawassa, then on to a cluster of “untitled” poems (except for the numeric designation) he did in collaboration with the recently gone poet Bernadette Mayer from the 2010 collection The New Decade Poems. Then on to new work from an East Nassau writers group, with a list poem titled “More Things to Do in East Nassau” (if you ever want to know), followed by other poems all with titles, unlike the ones he began with, titles like “Harmony,” “Punctuation,” “In the Corner,” but the titles don’t tell you much, they just go on from there. Philip has read in the past in many of the local venues, including as a feature at the Third Thursday Poetry Night.
The second featured poet, our host Alan Casline, continued the Bernadette connection with a poem written for the assignment “Imagine a Poem by Bernadette Mayer” for which Alan wrote “Why I Live in the Country” (for a further take on this exercise see the recent collection by Mayer from New Directions (2022) Milkweed Smithereens with a poem by Mayer, “Imagine a Poem by Alan Casline”). The rest of his reading were “newer poems” — “Song for Road of Dreams,” “Casual Nightmare,” “Black Helicopters Fly Fast & Low,” “How the War Goes,” & “The Beauty Wait.”
Joe Krausman led off the rest of the open mic list with another poem on mortality “You Can’t Take it With You” with the requisite dose of humor, & one that sounds like a love poem on "Comfort.”
I haven’t seen John Mason read his poetry out in years, tonight he started off with a poem he said was dated June 5 “Who Put the U in Guilt?,” then, appropriately enough for the Arboretum, “A Week in Trees.” Tom Corrado, known for his hundreds of “Scream Dumps” read what he called “a proto-dump” titled “That Was Then … This is Now” a multi-play ramble with an undefined “you” which you (the person reading this) can find on his Blog dated June 16, 2023.
Francesca Sidoti read a family poem, referencing the up-coming Fathers Day, titled “Consanguineal 2”; then a beach description with word-play “Niche.”
Kathy Smith read 2 poems from her recently published book Let the Stones Grow Soft (The Troy Book Makers, 2023), “When I Was Four and a Half” & “Three Ex-boyfriends.”
Mark O’Brien mentioned the late Cormac McCarthy, then read a meditative piece on aging & death, McCarthy’s favorite topics, then, after mentioning another dead celebrity, Treat Williams, read a memoir of riding bikes as a kid “And I Dreamed I Was Flying.” Tom Bonville read the family memoir piece I believe he read at the Melville reading in Troy last year, “Fish the River Troy 1959.”
Paul Amidon began with a re-telling of the Biblical prophecy from the New Testament “Four Horsemen,” then a personal tale of trying to fall asleep “Pastrami on Rye.” Mimi Moriarty was the final reader with the meditation on aging “I Understand,” then a philosophical pondering, “Instructions on Flying.”
I’m not sure of the frequency of this series, but right now it seems to be monthly on the third Friday, apparently a featured poet (or 2) with an open mic for the rest of us, out among the trees at the Pine Hollow Arboretum in Slingerlands, NY.
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