Third Thursday Poetry Night, July 17

Pierre Joris, May 2000, backyard barbecue, Albany, NY

This was a rare Third Thursday Poetry Night with no scheduled feature reader. We lost the poet Pierre Joris earlier this year; he had lived for some years in Albany, with his wife the artist, painter & chef Nicole Peyrafitte when he taught poetry & poetics at the University at Albany. I wanted to find a way to honor him for his role in this poetry community, so I scheduled this night as close to his birthday, July 14 — I loved that he had been born on Bastille Day. So it was an open mic titled “Remembering Pierre Joris.” & how appropriate that  there was a huge demonstration against the Fascist regime of Donald Trump taking place right across the street in Townsend Park. Even so we had 9 of us on the open mic sheet.

First up was A.C. Everson who said she heard Pierre’s voice in her head & recalled seeing him & Nicole at their performance at the Melville House in Troy; she shared a brief poem of Pierre’s titled “Sudanese Saying” (“if we die all together, Death is a feast”). 

David Gonsalves began by reading 2 short poems of Pierre’s, “In Praise of Aging” (“… but don’t try to watch your ass…”), & “2 for the Cormorants;” then, his own poem, “On September 14th Dante’s Death Day."

Sally Rhoades shared memories of Pierre when she was a grad student at UAlbany, then read Pierre’s translation of a poem by Paul Celan (1920 - 1970), “I Heard It Said,” then from Pierre's Nomad Poetics (Wesleyan University Press, 2003) an interview by Don Byrd with a question about baseball, & Pierre’s answer how poet Robert Kelly had advised him to listen to baseball games on the radio to get the rhythm of American language.

Joe Krausman talked about his personal connections with Pierre & with Nicole & about the rival translators of Paul Celan. Joe is a Yiddish scholar & knowledgable about the history of the Holocaust in Eastern Europe.

John Allen said that he didn’t know Pierre but was familiar with the work of Paul Celan & talked a bit about Celan’s life (& his death), then read his own poem about ephemera from his chapbook Cemetery Tour “Zeno and the Games,” then another piece titled “Oregon Professor at Nuke Noon,” both in the Symbolist tradition with a dollop of Dada. 

I read Pierre's poem “In Think Cafe,” a poet’s notebook jotting dated 1/14/2020 from the larger piece, “Diaretics 2020 - 2021” in Interglacial Narrows (Contra Mundra Press, 2023).

Robb Smith said he had met Pierre once at one of my New Years Day parties & they had a memorable conversation about Jacques Derrida’s lecture at the NYS Writers Institute at which Derrida had talked about “deconstructing the English Department;" Robb read one of his own poems, this about the Dalai Lama pondering old age, then a trio of Haiku.

I read my “60 Lines for Pierre: in response to the lost poem of Dan Wilcox,” written for his birthday (60th) the same year as the "lost" poem that Pierre wrote as me for my 60th birthday, my poem riffing on lines in Pierre’s poems.

Elaine Kenyon said she did not know Pierre but has enjoyed hearing what we have been sharing; she explained how she has for sometime been writing poems inspired by the Word of the Day & while exploring Pierre’s poetry found a poem he wrote about the Word of the Day, for February 16 2020 (from the “Diaretics” cited above), the word being “soniferous,” then another of Pierre’s from the day before.

Ulysses Gueriuous was a new name/face here at the Third Thursday Poetry Night & he read a piece about his story of “peace & war,” as he called it, about him finding structure in the Marine, that he was  wounded in combat, & said he is proud now of his service to the community & that it was a privilege to stand before us here tonight. 

Sue Cerniglia, who frequently attends these events but doesn’t read came to the mic & recalled the performance collaborations between Pierre & Nicole, & said that she has in her home a hand-carved shelf that Nicole gave her when they moved to Brooklyn.

I capped off the night with another piece from Interglacial Narrows, a bus poem, “There Are No Options,” another of his quotidian, notebook jottings that stand in contrast to Pierre’s profound scholarly, academic work. He was a poet of many facets with his feet in academe as well as on the street. His memory, his poems, his translations are a blessing to always have with us. Thank you, Pierre.

Join us each third Thursday of the month at the Social Justice Center, 33 Central Ave., Albany, NY, 7:30PM for a poetry reading by a local or regional poet with an open mic for community writers. Your donation supports poetry events in Albany & the work of the Social Justice Center.