Senior Center Open Mic, October 11

This open mic, held at the Saratoga Springs Senior Center, has become a regular event for me. Always an excellent local or regional poet as the feature & a stimulating array of poem mic poets.

On this day, our host, poet Rachel Baum, started us off by reading a poem for a dead pet by the equally dead poet Jim Harrison, “Missy 1966 - 1971.” Then on to today’s featured poet.

Judith Prest is a poet, photographer, mixed media artist who has about half a dozen books to her credit, & continues as a co-host of the monthly Poetry Circle at the Schenectady Public Library. She read selections from 5 of her books as well as a bouquet of recent poems. The books were the self-published poetry/photo book Elemental Connections; Late Day Light (Spirit Wind Books, 2011); After (Finishing Line Press, 2019); Geography of Loss (Finishing Line Press, 2021); & Grafted Tree: Family Poems (Kelsay Books, 2023). The new poems included a couple from a poetry workshop with June Gould, the strident piece of history “Under the Sign of the Rusty Coat Hanger,” & “When an Old Woman Dies;” as well as a piece written at a retreat at Pyramid Lake this July “Lake Magic.” A retrospective reading bringing us right up to date with this active local poet.

Then on to the open mic, with our host, Rachel Baum, taking us back to the Jim Harrison poem that she opened with, her own piece for a gone pet, “The Last Adirondack Fire Tower.” Lin Murphy followed with a bold, risky list of things to do “Dance Me to the End of Time.” David Graham read “My Father Put Out” about his father’s dementia.

Marilyn McCabe read a poem from her 1st chapbook, the poem titled “The Leaf Girl’s Song.” I read a couple of seasonal poems, the Halloween bar poem “Zombie Gourd,” & “Baseball October.” Pat Curtis read an effusive celebratory poem “Wildflowers.”

Leslie Neustadt read a poem from her recent book The Sustenance of Stars (Kelsay Books, 2024), “Self as Teeming Mass,” & a recent poem “Elegy” mixing memory, Hebrew, & the concept of eretz Israel. David Gonsalves also had a poem on a Hebrew language theme, “Homeless Mishpacha” about a wedding photo & what happened to each of the family members in the photo. Janice continued the cultural theme with “Buba Wurlitzer 1953” inspired by the jukebox in her father’s bar that she sang with, on the changes in music over time up to the 1980s. That kind of linked themes of these last 3 poets could not have been planned except in the mind of a Jungian poetry Muse schooled in the principles of Synchronicity.

The open mic at the Saratoga Senior Center takes place on the 2nd Friday of each month, 1:00PM, with a featured poet & an up to 2 poems per open mic reader. The Saratoga Senior Center is located at 290 West Ave., Saratoga Springs, NY.