Salon Salvage, August 26

Turns out that this being the first one of this series that I’ve been able to get to was also their 1st anniversary -- I've missed so much. There was a string of readers on tour from Durham, NC, along with featured features, Devin King & Joanna Furhman. The poetry hosts for the series are Matthew Klane & Amy Zimmerman, & venue host/owner Danny Killion.

The evening started with short readings from the traveling band of poets on a tour of the Northeast. Susannah Simpson was bubbly, in a Summer outfit, recited her poems from memory, “Ocean” based on a lithograph, “Magic,” & one based on a prompt from Bernadette Mayer to write in questions.

Marta Nuñez Pouzols read “Up that Hill” based on a horror short story, & a short piece about grief.

Aimee Harrison read a short prose piece titled “Box Chains,” & another titled “Mira’s Party.

Matthew Klane introduced Devin King as being from Oxford, UK, but his accent was clearly North American, so there’s a story there we didn’t hear. What he read was compelling, a selection from his book Gathering (Kenning Editions, 2023), a fractured tale of a woman at at party in Chicago. The text was like a series of notes not yet fleshed out into a narrative, the story disintegrating into vague philosophical pondering. 

Co-host Amy Zimmerman introduced the poet Joanna Fuhrman. I remember seeing her in March of 2006 back when there was a regular reading series at the College of St. Rose, she has continued to publish poetry books. She started with poems from To A New Era (Hanging Loose Press, 2021) that she said was from a book that came out during the pandemic, including the title poem,  history as a circle; also a funny poem about her husband’s beard as a cat, another titled “Love Poem in a Failed State.” Then on to prose poems about the internet, with titles like “The Algorithm Ate My Lunch” & “These 6 Emojis Explain Yourself Right Now,” with vivid, almost comic images. She concluded with a poem titled “When My Mother Returns from the Dead She is No Longer Afraid of Rodents” from a new book in progress, sort of Brooklyn hipster wisecracks which make for entertaining reading.

Salon Salvage apparently takes place on the last Saturday of the month at the Weathered Wood Shop in Troy at 13 Second St. Interesting stuff you won’t find elsewhere around here. You can find them on social media, but also check out the listing on the Hudson Valley Writers Guild website calendar.