2nd Sunday @ 2 - Poetry + Prose, November 10

Among the mushrooms again, with co-host Nancy Klepsch, it was the exhilarating mix of frequent readers here & new voices/faces.

I had signed up 2nd on the hallowed sign-up sheet but the person who signed up first preferred to go later (you will hear more about that later). I read the piece I started off this busy poetry weekend with on Friday in Saratoga with my anti-war poem for the Armistice Day weekend titled “John Lees” a fellow Army trainee who did not survive the Viet Nam war.

Avery Stempel, who makes this space available to us each month, gave a brief summary of a panel discussion held yesterday on psilocybin & efforts to decriminalize it for therapeutic use, then read an emotional poem, “Putting in the Work,” on the very recent death of a dear friend long-time friend.

Joel Best said that the poem he read, “Anointed,” written this week (not on the election) was “maybe a love poem” — sounded like one to me.

My co-host, Nancy Klepsch, began with a piece titled “I Made Pizza,” then read one by Bernadette Mayer, “To a Politician,” an insult poem once published as a broadside by Alan Casline.

It was good to see Bob Sharkey back again; he read a poem about craving a kiss, “The Meadow,” then his annual Cento based on poems he likes in the year’s Best American Poetry, this one based on 6 poems & titled “Urban Vision Quest.”

Gary was here for the 1st time, visiting friends in Troy, he had signed up #1, then regretted what he had done; he managed to squeeze in 3 poems, “In the Waffle House” (a conversation, it seemed to me), “The Way It Happened,” & “The Green Man.”

The final trio of poets had first names that all started with “A,” 2 of which were “Anne.”

Anne (no last name) read “Grilling My Thoughts,” an angry letter to someone named Dan (not me!)

Amanda read a couple of emotional poems, adding to the heightened emotions of the day; “Blue Bell Sweetness” (a break-up poem), then what she described as her response to a hard year, “I Come to the Water to Cry” the water as mother.

The last reader was Anne Hohenstein, who has joined us here a number of times previously, also with intense poems, “I Am Not a Ghost” (with an epigram by W.S. Merwin), & “Deceit in the Wake of Death.”

Avery announced that he was moving Collar City Mushrooms out of Troy (the Collar City) due to his landlord having sold the building; he is moving up to space at Indian Ladder Farms. But Nancy Klepsch & I hope to continue this monthly event somewhere else in Troy. Our last gathering here at 333 2nd Ave. will be the 2nd Sunday in December. Stay tuned for announcements as to where we will be in 2025, information will be available on the 2nd Sunday @ 2 Facebook page, & listed on the Events page of the website of the Hudson Valley Writers Guild. I hope to see you there, wherever “there” may be.