Caffè Lena: A Look Back 20 Years (& Beyond)

Carol Graser, July 23, 2003

"It was 20 years ago today that Sgt. Pepper taught the band to play …"

On September 23, 2023 Caffè Lena, the venerable, historic music venue (opened in 1960) in Saratoga Spring, NY will celebrate 20 years of its poetry open mic. The organizer & host for all those years is poet Carol Graser. You can read more about history of Caffè Lena on its website, but my interest & focus for this Blog is on the history of the Poetry Open Mic.

This Blog that you are reading on now was started in January 2007, after a brief time on MySpace. But even before the advent of Blogs I was documenting the poetry/open mic scene in, & around, Albany, NY with my camera (well before the current scene where everyone has a camera in their pocket), & the attendant notes I kept. The hastily recorded, often illegible, notes that I scribbled in dark bars & coffee houses in my pocket notebooks were later transcribed into larger spiral notebooks, while the photos were developed from film, printed as black & white (mostly) 4x6 prints, annotated on the back, & stored alphabetically in 4x6 archive boxes. Thus the record of poetry events at that time, at least in my archives, consists of photos, i.e. prints, & my hand-written notebook entries; it does not exist online -- at least until now that I have added the record of this historic event to my Blog.

Carol Graser had been coming to some of the poetry events in & about Albany & when she announced that she would be starting a poetry open mic at Caffè Lena there was a collective consensus among the rest of us, hosts & participants, that we had to pack the house that first night so that the folks at Caffè Lena would realize that there were a lot of poets in the area who would even drive the 45 minutes or so up to Saratoga Springs to attend an open mic there.

I've attached here photos of my notebook entry for July 23, 2003 & you can see there 30 readers, with about 16 from Albany. In addition, one can clearly see in the photo of the crowd outside Caffè Lena Albany poets Mary Panza, Tess Lecuyer, Emily Gonzalez & Leo! Carol Graser was the host of that first open mic experiment, & the featured poet that night was Franklin Whitney as well as a strong showing from poets in & around Saratoga Springs.

This test was apparently a success, convincing the Caffè Lena board to continue with the open mic on a regular basis; the next Caffè Lena Poetry Open Mic was held a few weeks later on September 3, 2003, establishing itself in the 1st Wednesday slot where it has been ever since.

It should be noted that there had been a previous poetry open mics on the stage of Caffè Lena, but the only one I have documentation for was held on March 11, 1992, hosted by Franklin Whitney, who can be seen in the photo in the back row on the far left.

Caffè Lena will be celebrating the 20th anniversary of the Poetry Open Mic on Saturday, September 23, 2023 with a 4 hour open mic, hosted by Mary Panza, from 2:00PM to 6:00PM, followed by a reading later at 8:00PM with poets Martin Espada, Regan Good & Roger Wizen Smith. You can find out more about these events on the website.  Come celebrate Caffè Lena & celebrate Carol Graser for her long-run stewardship of the poetry open mic.

& the monthly open mic continues on the 1st Wednesday of each month at Caffè Lena, 47 Phila Street, Saratoga Springs, NY. Doors open at 6:30PM for open mic sign-up, a featured poet goes on at 7:00PM, which is live streamed, followed by the open mic. $5.00 donation.