Third Thursday Poetry Night, March 21

Back in June, 2006, the Lark St. Bookshop where I had been holding the Third Thursday Poetry Night since February, 2004 closed. I approached the Director of the Social Justice Center, Victorio Reyes Asili, to ask if the storefront space there was available for the monthly open mic. Interestingly enough, Victorio had been a featured reader at the Bookshop in April 2004; welcomed us to the Center’s space as the Third Thursday home & that continued to today, with the featured reader this night the very same Victorio Reyes Asili, Ph.D. 

But before we got into the open mic list, I invoked our Muse for the night, the gone American poet  Jayne Cortez (1934 - 2021) by reading her poem “Find Your Own Voice” from her book Jazz Fan Looks Back (Hanging Loose Press, 2002); Cortez was in Albany twice to read her work, first in February, 1989 at the NYS Writers Institute, then again in October, 2010 at the Sanctuary for Independent Media, in Troy.

The first open mic reader on the list was Mia Morosoff, who is Victorio’s mother; she read a sad, longing poem about a man waiting for a train, leaving. Sally Rhoades read her poem “I Can’t Hear You,” that she wrote at her first time the Scissortail Creative Festival in Ada, OK, about a native chief inviting her to find her own voice (included in her just-published poetry booklet Where Light Falls). 

Ray Drumsta, here for the 1st time, had been the 1st to arrive & helped me to set up; he read a piece titled “Another Plane,” a portrait of a combat veteran needing to go back. 

Out featured reader, Victorio Reyes Asili, read largely from an unpublished chapbook, beginning with a poem titled “Erasure Re-Mix 1994 After Biggie” based on the text of Juicy, a famous hip-hop piece by The Notorious B.I.G. (1972 - 1997), the poem preserving the last 2 syllables of each verse, the poet giving the classical prosodic names for the feet. A major he piece he read/performed was from an incomplete “Crown of Sonnets,” (see the footnote below) 9 sonnets, in the language, style, & content of hip hop, the lines short as in song lyrics. He concluded with 2 short sections from a verse novel, 2 Hispanic characters in dialogue, talking about brujas (witches/healers). Victorio’s performance was a compelling mix of hip-hop infused with the academic tradition of analysis. 

After a short break we returned to the open mic list, & I led off with my poem about an astronomical phenomenon (no, not an eclipse) but “The Transit of Venus.” David Gonsalves followed with a short piece, as are many of his poems about teenage grand kids.

Austin Houston read a tender poem titled “Pillar” about his father. Maria Sohn’s piece titled “Endless Summer” was about a relationship.

The final performer was Victorio’s sister, Taina Asili, singer/songwriter, she recited the lyrics of a song on economic democracy, with the line that “liberation is on the horizon.”

It isn’t always such a family affair here (although poets are perhaps family), but you can join us each month on the third Thursday for a featured poet & an open mic for community writers, at the Social Justice Center, 33 Central Ave., Albany, NY, 7:30PM (sign-up anytime after 7:00PM) — your donations support poetry events in Albany & the work of the Social Justice Center.

The footnote:

A Crown of Sonnets is a sequence of sonnets usually addressed to a person or concerned with a single theme; each successive sonnet uses as its first line the last line of the preceding sonnet. The final sonnet ends with the same line that begins the first sonnet, thus completing the circle. An advanced form is called a heroic crown made up of 15 sonnets, but the final binding sonnet is made up of all the first or last lines of the preceding 14 poems.