Third Thursday Poetry Night: Melissa Anderson, April 17

Our featured poet, Melissa Anderson, did what all good poets do, brought her friends & relatives to her reading, with a mix of familiar faces & new faces for the open mic. Perhaps it was the first time Melissa read at the open mic here that she said her that her grandmother, Cathy Anderson, was a poet — & many of us remembered Cathy fondly as one of the “Voorheesville poets.” So, I celebrated the memory of Cathy Anderson as our Muse tonight by reading her poem “Lover” with its mention of April & violets from the 2006 collection Poetry Don’t Pump Gas from “The Every Other Thursday Night Poets.”

Starting off the open mic list was the ever-performative poet A.C. Everson with a recitation of Leonard Cohen’s “Everybody Knows,” -- could’ve been a sing-along. Leslie Gerber hasn’t been here in quite some time & read “Praise the Broken Promise of America” by Alison Luterman that has been getting quite a bit of “air time” lately, appropriately enough. Rhonda Rosenheck  was back here with a 2 part poem “How Do We Teach Men…” consisting of a sonnet & a Haiku written at a retreat in the woods.

Diana Steenburg was a new name to me, a virgin reader, with a seasonal poem “Daffodils,” a memoir from her childhood stealing flowers. David Gonsalves has been here many times, read an intricate prose poem titled “A Man Admonished,” perhaps autobiographical.

Melissa Anderson first read here at the open mic many months ago, but I didn’t know then that I had seen her read in the open mic at Caffe Lena back in August 2012, when she was just starting out her career as a poet; I only learned that when I went looking through my files for a photo of her to use in the publicity & discovered the shot from 2012. Tonight she read from her book Dogstar Poems (Main St. Rag Publishing, 2024) (full disclosure: I had read the manuscript in order to give her a blurb for the back cover). She started off with a poem from her day job making furniture for Chipotle restaurants, “Work Song,” inspired by a mountain of road salt outside the window on the docks, them to a pandemic poem, “Bedroom Window Lockdown.” She explained that “Dogstar” was another name for what is commonly known as “Polaris” or the North Star, & that many of the poems are about looking for direction, as in the poems “Reflexivity” & “Better.” Melissa is a key member of the Cafe Euphoria slam team & so ended with a semi-humorous slam poem set in NYC talking to her younger self about breakups, “Four Years Later, I Return to the Scene of the Crime.” A good sampler with more gems to be found in the book.

After a short break we continued on with the open mic. I read a seasonal poem, “What Passover Has Taught Me.” Another new name on the list, Amanda Pelletier, read “Beach Glass,” in the persona of a bottle tumbled by the surf. Austin Houston has been featured here in the past, tonight read “Hello” a gentle poem inspired by his job transporting patients in a hosptial. Tom Bonville read “Getting Closer,” a descriptive tale of the night, awake with his thoughts.

S.L. (Sam) Maurice has been working on revising a previously published collection of poems, Vibrant Sounds Colors & Motions, read one of the poems, the swirling memoir “Schoharie Rorschach.” Elaine Kenyon brought the night to a close, not with one of her own fine poems, but with a poem by Naomi Shiab Nye, “Famous.” 

We gather each third Thursday of the month at 7:30PM here at the Social Justice Center, 33 Central Ave., Albany, NY for an open mic with a featured reader — your donation supports poetry events in Albany & the work of the Social Justice Center. Join us!