Pine Hollow Arboretum Open Mic, July 18

Mark O’Brien is the able host for this series. This evening he started us off by reading a poem from January 1982 by David Gonsalves (who was also on the sign up list) titled “Pink Blanket,” then introduced the featured poets, Edie Abrams & Sarah Hacker.

For their opening they each read their responses from a workshop held by Susan Comninos to the poem by Gerald Stern, “Behaving Like a Jew,” which centered around a deep opossum; Edie’s response was a back-story about hunting & making a stew, while Sarah’s response was titled “Carpenter Ants.” Then they each read a set of poems.

Edie Abrams, who is frequently in attendance here, began, appropriately enough, with “It’s Too Damn Hot,” then an attack poem, “The Singular Man,” followed by a piece on a recent surgery, a poem about seeing a movie about penguins, & “Next Time” about wanting to be reborn as a cat.

Sarah Hacker’s work was new to me. She said she works as an editor for Conservationist Magazine, published by the NYS Department of Environmental Conservation, & that she has 2 children, both of which topics were reflected in her poetry. Her poems were short. She began with a poem about trout stocking in the Adirondacks, “Catch & Release,” then one on the imbalance in child-rearing “The Lioness,” others titled “Early Riser,” “Shape Shifter,” “Secret,” & she ended with an attempt at making an ordinary object sound exotic, “Kitchen Mop.” It’s always a good thing to add new voices to our poetic community.

A short break, then on to the open mic with a band of regulars. Paul Amidon led off with “Forty-Four Forth Street” from his latest book, Late in the Season (The Troy Book Makers, 2025), then a new poem recalling his time in Viet Nam “Tudor St. Shout Out.” I followed with an old poem that reflects how bad the political situation has always been, “I Thought I Saw Elvis.”

Mike Burke was back in town & he began with a poem by Charles Kingsley (1819 - 1875) “Young and Old” (that Paul Amidon recited along with from the audience), then Mike’s own “New Years Eve” about a character that was dead, not drunk. Tom Bonville followed with a similar-themed piece titled “Family History,” about his father listening to baseball at night & dead the next morning. David Gonsalves’ poem “Show & Tell” was about the things that he’s been reading about.

The handwriting for the names of the next 2 poets seemed to Mark to be the same as the distinctive handwriting for Dennis Sullivan, & indeed Dennis had signed up first as Arthur Willis & read a piece written by Willis in Moscow in 1989, then as Howard Kogan, Dennis read  Howard’s poem, “The Poet” as much about baseball & God in the streets as anything else.

Joe Krausman’s short piece was titled “Four.” Then Dennis returned as himself. Dennis Sullivan reappeared as himself & talked about Arthur Rimbaud & Allen Ginsberg writing poems on booze & drugs & read his own poem from February 2017 written on pot, “Le Bateau De Beuh” (otherwise known as the Weed Boat).

Julie Lomoe read again her recent poem “Forsaken Beach” where no one seems to go, & a poem about another place no one seems to go, Opus 40, conflating it with her well-documented subdural hematoma, “Death by Blue Stone.” Her husband, Robb Smith, followed with a Senryu on aging, quoting the Dalai Lama.

Co-founder of this reading series, & former host, Alan Casline, read a couple poems on Nature & aging, “View from Later” & “What Olden Rivers Said,” then reprised a poem from Trump’s first term, “Sammy the Squirrel Gives a Stump Speech.” Tom Corrado read “Screen Dump #825 on memory, bouncing images, re-winding tape, magic words & paper plates.

Our host, Mark O’Brien, brought the evening to a close with one of his re-written historical documents, this an obituary of Johnny “Nig” Grabowski, a catcher for the White Sox & for the Yankees in the 1920s, who died in a fire in 1946 at his home in Guilderland.

This series at the Pine Hollow Arboretum features a poet (or poets), with an open mic, on the third Friday of the month from May thru October, sign up at 6:00PM, start at 6:30PM. Pine Hollow Arboretum is located at 34 Pine Hollow Rd., Slingerlands, NY — ask your GPS Lady for directions.