Salon Salvage, September 30

Apparently this was #13 (!) in this monthly series in Troy at Weathered Wood on Second Street. It is coordinated & hosted by Matthew Klane & Amie Zimmerman, who split the duties for the intros. This night, 3 poets & a filmmaker. 

The first reader was Jennifer Nelson who read from her book Harm Eden (Ugly Duckling Presse, 2021), with poems mostly on political themes, “Disband the Police” complete with quotes & attributions, followed by “I Hope to Be an Unsettler” noting that today in Canada is “National Day of Reconciliation” with first peoples. Other poems were titled “Don’t Kill Yourself,” “The Belief” & “Laws” (for a friend, an academic & singer).

Stephanie Cawley, from Philadelphia, read just one poem titled “To the Lighthouse” (& yes there was a reference somewhere along the line to Virginia Woolf), like a letter to a friend (“you”) about their infatuation, feelings, desires, & plenty of sex, the lines sounding stacked up, like the way she read it. If I still smoked I would have needed a cigarette afterwards.

Alina Pleskova, who was also from Philadelphia, but was born in Russia, has read in Albany in August at The Linda (see my Blog). As at that earlier reading, she read from her recent book from Deep Vellum Press Toska. Many of her poems are long, discursive, grammatical. “Take Care” mixed robots, immigration, eco-issues, with “take care” as a sign-off. Her poem “Meanwhile,” according to her, had been referenced in Stephanie Cawley’s poem (I guess I missed it), but the similarities are the obsessive talking about themselves in both of their poems. The other poems she read were “Sacred Bath Bomb” &, as she said, the only love poem in the book, “Elusive Black Hole Pair.” 

The final piece of the night was film titled Decantation, by Kalpana Subramanian, a melange of sounds of water flowing, the sea, wind, images of the sea, hands under water, even of a box of film leader, as well as old film clips, images of military operations, hands, the sound of a sitar. Somewhat like a poem built on a string of images that the reader is tasked with finding the links, if one is looking for what we used to call “meaning.”

This series continues on the last Saturday of the month at Weathered Wood, 13 Second Street, Troy, NY — find Salon Salvage on Facebook — come for the poetry, get ideas for unique home & garden decor.