Third Thursday Poetry Night, December 21

It was a good showing of poets, regulars & first-timers, &, of course, the annual holiday visit from Sanity Clause with gifts of poetry for all the readers, even our featured poet, Suzanne R. Rancourt. Another holiday tradition was our Muse for the night, as always in December it was Enid Dame, with a reading of her moving, emotional “Holiday Poem,” sent out as a holiday card in 1996 from her & her husband, Donald Lev.

First up on the open mic list, as she prefers to be, was Sylvia Barnard, who said she recently attended a poetry workshop & read what she wrote, remembering a dear friend lost to COVID, & she was the first to get a holiday gift of poetry, as did each poet who followed to the mic tonight.

Josh the Poet read a new, self-inspired poem, “Unexpected Poet,” a personal essay on becoming a poet. Tom Bonville read the 1st of 17 poems he (he said) brought, one titled  “Christmas Morning” a description of that morning with his mother in her hospital bed downstairs, she remembering being a girl during World War II, swimming in the River. 

Sally Rhoades followed with a poem titled “When Katie Picks Me up in Her Buick,” about a 2019 trip to Oklahoma, with a flashback to her youth & her father’s Cadillac. Gail Nixon was new here & also new to reading her work in public, tonight she read a poem, “Chaos,” about the pandemic, wondering about the future, & slipped in another, “The Recipe for Diversity,” like a stew.

I have had the privilege in the past to read with tonight’s featured poet, Suzanne R. Rancourt, who had also read at the legendary Readings Against the End of the World here in the late 1980s. She read “a little bit from everything,” 12 poems from her 4 books, but mostly neglected to give the titles of the books from which the poems came. 

She began her reading with a poem titled “Soft,” & the chilling, descriptive  “Mediterranean Blues” reacting to seeing a news photo of a body of a Syrian baby on the beach, said “these are my happy poems." Then a poem for her mother, dying, packing things to take with her “Singing Across the River,” others, “Fabric,” “Voyage.” The rest of her reading was an array of poems from her most recent book, Songs of Archilochus (Unsolicited Press, 2023) asking members of the audience to call out numbers to find pages. The poems included, among others another poem for her mother, “As My Mother Died She Became a Bird,” some poems of place, & ended with “Armistice” for peace, images of leafs & wings, the wind. Her poems are vividly descriptive, read distinctly, slowly, with dramatic emphasis & righteous indignation at injustice, where needed. The audience was attentive, if was somewhat a bit rambunctious, she was not to be ignored nor slept through.

After a break, for book sales, conversations, & whatever else happens at that time, including the largess of the audience to support poetry events & the work of the Social Justice Center, we returned to the open mic list. I started off the list with my traditional Xmas piece, a love poem to my mother, “Christmas Eve, 1945.”

David Gonsalves, former editor & publisher of the poetry zine Tin Wreath read “Broad Stripes” a brief assault on the powerful in defense of the weak. Avery Stempel, proprietor of Collar City Mushrooms in Troy & the January feature here, read “Impressions of Light,” as he said, impressions, in swirling musical words sometimes with no meaning.

Lee, who hadn’t been here in a while, read “For Once,” reacting to all that is going on in the world, wanting to see the decency & kindness, “for once…” 

Toyin was a last-minute signup, a first timer, read a lush love poem, “Dear Valentine,” about the kind of love she wants, hmm um.

Jason wasn’t going to read but was having too much fun not to join in, read “One Hundred Words,” which was exactly 100 words, started with a quote from Mother Teresa. Nisaa was an extra add-on, 1s time reader, read a poem “The Threat of Pleasure” from one of the poetry chapbooks that Sanity Clause had given out earlier.

A fabulous night of surprises, old readers, new readers, & everyone having fun with words, a great way to end 2023 & sail on into whatever 2024 has in store for us. Join u at the Social Justice Center, 33 Central Ave., Albany, NY on the third Thursday of the month for a featured reader & an open mic for the rest of us — your $5.00 donation supports poetry events in Albany & environs, & the work of the Social Justice Center.

[A Note on the photos in this edition of the Blog: the photo of Suzanne Rancourt is by me, the rest were taken by audience member & poet, Sally Rhoades.]