Poets in the Park, July 2024

This ongoing annual series has its origin in 1988 with a series of poetry readings in Albany’s parks organized by Tom Nattell, poet & social justice/environmental activist, with regular scheduled programs in July/August sine 1990. With Tom’s passing in 2005, & at his request, I have carried on the programs. This year there were 3 evenings in the Park.

July 13

When I asked Joseph Bruchac to be one of the featured poets in Poets in the Park, I knew he would be the person to also deliver the Land Acknowledgment honoring the native people who lived on this land before the European settlers arrived. Joe is the Poet Laureate of Saratoga Springs, & has written extensively on the culture & language of native peoples. He delivered the greeting & played the wooden flute.

For the last few years I’ve invited the winners of the Tom Nattell Peace Poetry Prize from Albany High School to read their winning poem. There were 2 winners this year & one of them Rose Madden was able to attend. She read her winning poem “The Whispering Wind,” as well as another written recently, “Heart Untouched.” The other winner, Kaylah Richards, could not attend so I read her winning poem “If My Joy Could Persist.”

I had just seen Joe Bruchac read his work the day before at the poetry/story telling open mic at the Saratoga Senior Center, & today he read from the same books he had read from yesterday, but different poems. He started with a traditional greeting for the day, again with the sound of the flute, which he explained had been give to us by the trees. From a book he did with his son Jesse, Nisnol Siboal/2 Rivers, he read a poem first in the Abenaki language, then in English, & read from an anthology, The Wonder of Small Things: Poems of Peace and Renewal, edited by James Crews. Then from his own books, From Above the Line (West End Press), a poem about the flute; from From Four Directions (Mongrel Empire Press), 2 poems based on stories from Elders; & from Ndakinna (Our Land) (West End Press), “Digging,” & a narrative poem that ended up as a sonnet. He ended with “The Mayor & the Mohican,” about Albany’s first mayor, Peter Schuyler. A good start for the 2004 Poets in the Park.

July 20

The reading this reading included 2 poets who are both military veterans. Richard Levine served in the Army in Viet Nam, Gail Nixon in more recent time spent 4 years in the Air Force.

I first heard Gail Nixon read at Caffe Lena last September (“first time on stage,” she said), & since then have seen her read at other open mic venues, including at the Social Justice Center. She has only come to writing poetry since the COVID pandemic, through writing programs at the Veterans Administration facilities. She read a selection of poems that in effect introduced her to the audience, including the pandemic poem “Chaos,” “The Recipe for Diversity” which described a “stew,” & “Who Am I?”

Richard Levine & I have read a few times together, often with other poets who are military veterans. He read a representative selection from his latest book, Now in Contest (Fernwood Press, 2003). The title of the book comes from the opening “Cover Letter” addressed to “Dear Reader: … trying to tell some small self-evident truths about what is now in contest.” There are poems that reflect upon his experience in Viet Nam, such as “Memorial Day 2021,” but his thoughts probe far & deep, with a cluster of pandemic poems, poems to his children, his wife, even one on holding his granddaughter for the first time, playing on “Light.” It was touching to know his family was there in the Park to hear these poems.

July 27

The final reading in the 2024 Poets in the Park included local poets Tom Bonville & Jackie Craven, a pairing that contrasted 2 very different approaches to writing poetry. 

For about 10 years now Tom Bonville has been writing poems, attending poetry peer groups, & reading his work at open mics. His poems are richly descriptive pieces of the everyday, the mundane, often tinged with humor, on being old, or imagining being young again, many are philosophical musings, sometimes humorous, sometimes about death, with simple titles (“Together,” “Walmart,” “What Matters,” etc.). He read an amusing narrative set in a doctor’s office during the pandemic “Getting a Shot.” His concluding piece, titled “Fish, River, Troy 1959,” was a glorious rhapsodic memoir of his grandparents, & of catching, cooking & eating fish.

Jackie Craven’s poems took us to an entirely different place, although set not far from Troy, in Schenectady, NY. Most of what she read were from Whish (Press 53, 2024), although not entirely. She described the poems as “Time goes amok, where seconds, minutes, hours become characters who mess with our lives.” Reading her book later I realized that indeed the poet “messes with our lives” with poems with similar — even the same — 1st lines (which are the titles of the poems) occurring in the book. She also said that the poems in the book are “made up” except for “I escape to Captiva Island…” which is about hearing from the woman who stole her husband years ago, & wants to apologize. She also read poems from Secret Formulas & Techniques of the Masters (Brick Road Poetry Press, 2018), poems based on her mother’s paintings. Check her website for more information (jackiecraven.com).

Poets in the Park is supported by the Hudson Valley Writers Guild & the Poetry Motel Foundation, which are both supported by the generosity of our great community of writers here in New York's Capital District.