Pine Hollow Arboretum Poetry Open Mic, June 20

A gathering of many familiar faces for the open mic & for tonight’s featured poet, Tim Wiles. Our host now is poet/local-historian Mark O’Brien.

Tim Wiles began & ended his reading by talking about his performance role as Casey At the Bat when he worked for the National Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, NY. He has since moved on. His reading alternated poems about baseball with other topics of human existence; these included “Watching the Trees,” “She is Not a Chinaberry Tree,” (written in college), a poem about his mother “Toilet Paper Considerations,” one about the murder of George Floyd, “Dunes” (an old love poem), “The Break Up,” &, since we were at the Arboretum, a poem titled “Tree at My Window.”

As for the baseball poems, there were of course a couple about his time when he worked at Doubleday Field (Cooperstown, NY), “Doubleday Field Late Afternoon” (proofreading in the grandstand), & another about a strange conversation he overheard there one day; there was the dizzying poem stringing together the names of players that are actually sentences (e.g., Davey Lopes [around the bases], Ernie Banks [downtown], etc.), “Death then Heaven,” “Dear Mr. Buckner” (i.e., Bill Buckner, of the Red Sox, his tenth-inning error in Game 6 of the 1986 World Series against the New York Mets remains one of the more memorable plays in baseball history), “12 Short Poems on Baseball,” & “Pony League” from his pov in right field. Then he ended with a story of being taken down by the Secret Service in 2003 as Casey in the presence of former President George H.W. Bush.

A brief break then on to the open mic list. I was up first with 2 poems, “The Cardinal” & “Vamos Gatos” from my baseball chapbook. David Gonsalves read a rambling, meandering piece titled simply “Poem.” Edie Abrams read “Jewish Marriage Vows” about how a husband is supposed to satisfy & make happy his wife, then “My Cat” that she read last night at the SJC.

Mimi Moriarty began with a Cento, “Lines Stolen from Lucille Clifton’s ‘Mercy’,” then a memory poem, “Mother-in-Law” about their first meeting. Kathy Smith read a cleansing rant about her relationship with her ex-, “How to Bake Your Ex A Cake, the Bastard.” The former host of this series at the Arboretum, Alan Casline, read a couple of baseball poems, first a string of historical facts, “Take the Pope Off the Front Page, Yogi Berra Died,” then a piece of wordplay, “Baseball Blues 2024.”

Joe Krausman recited his poem from memory, on Death beginning “A poem walked by…” Tom Corrado continued his magnum opus, Screen Dumps, of random associations with #819, from this to that & back again. Tom Bonville read a piece about a regular column in the Troy Record he read as a youth, “Tell Me Why,” & missing the truth.

Paul Amidon read a poem about an abandoned church & the irony of the surviving sign, “All Are Welcome.” Our host Mark O’Brien began with a memoir of a childhood prank, “Chainsaw Pranksters," then a piece from his continuing series of sonnets, “Correspondence Sonnet.”

Generally held on the third Friday of the month, May through October, at the Pine Hollow Arboretum, Slingerlands, NY, the reading includes an open mic & a featured poet (or 2), 6:00PM sign up, 6:30PM start. Your donation supports the work of the Arboretum.