Saratoga Senior Center Poetry Open Mic, June 13

With our Saratoga host Rachel Baum. Poets & artists helped to arrange/re-arrange/re-re-arrange the chairs.

The featured poet was Barbara Ungar, announcing “a special Issac reading” for this the birthday of her son, inspiration for so many poems, from her books. She began with poems from The Origin of the Milky Way (Gival Press, 2007), “Embryology,” “Matryoshka,” “Isaac Laughing,” & “Mine.” From Immortal Medusa (The Word Works, 2015) the poem “Brigadoon.”  Then on to poems from Save our Ship (Ashland Poetry Press, 2019) “She Drives Home After Viewing the Drown Quilt," “On the Scale of from 1 to 10,” & “Now We Are 15.” She finished up with poems from her most recent book, After Naming the Animals (The Word Works, 2024), “Luck,” “How to Age Gracefully,” & “AP Physics.” Of course the poems, even when inspired by her son, are not the gushings of a proud Mom, but respond to current ecological & political crises, as well as to cultural trends, often with humor, & of course, with grace.

Then on to a substantial list of poets for the open mic, beginning with our host Rachel Baum who read Dorothy Parker’s “One Perfect Rose,” then her own “If There is a Museum of Broken Relationships” riffing on variations/extensions of that. I followed with 2 poems about lady poets, “Sylvia Plath Slept Here,” & “for Marina Tsvetaeva.”

Apparently there had been a suggested theme of “luck” for the open mic, something I had missed, but others did notice. David Graham read 2 poems on that theme, “Self-Portrait As a Lucky Man,” & “Upstairs Downstairs.” Marilyn McCabe read a poem titled “Notre Dame” about being being in Paris at the time of the fire.

David Gonsalves read a piece on the theme titled “Luck,” then a recent poem written just last week “Ramble.” Leslie Sittner read a letter she wrote on November 5, 1963 when she was a literary volunteer in the prison system, to an incarcerated person who coincidentally knew her brother Lance.

Susan Kress read a poem with the word “luck” in it, “Wishlist,” then one titled “Waved Albatros.” Elaine Handley’s poem “Wedding of Heaven & Earth” was a Solstice poem.

Jackie Craven read 2 fantasy poems filled with lush details (like most of her work), the first a description of an apartment, “Zillow 3D,” then “My Unborn Child Lives in a Halfway House.” Joe Bruchac, Saratoga Springs' current Poet Laureate read a series of Haiku on birds, flowers & a willow tree.

This rare daytime poetry reading takes place on the 2nd Friday of each month, at 1:00PM, at the Saratoga Springs Senior Center, 290 West Avenue — you don’t have to be a “Senior” to get in, but it helps.