Saratoga Senior Center Poetry Open Mic, September 12

Nice to drive up to Saratoga Springs in my new (pre-owned) car, nervous about finding it again after I parked it. Poet Rhonda Rosenheck was filling in for the usual host Rachel Baum, with a room of community writers, & a featured reader who had read here last year.

Margaret Greaves is an Associate Professor of English at Skidmore College in Saratoga Springs & author of the book Lyric Poetry & Space Exploration: from Einstein to the Present (OUP Oxford, 2023). But her poetry ranges far & wide, not just science, from imagined characters, to funny family tales, to experiments with forms. She began with a couple pieces she said were in the “confessional mode” of imagined characters in imagined lives, then on to a hilarious piece (that I fondly remember from when she read here last year), “Things My Daughter Said During the Wild Fires.” then one titled “Outer Space is the Suburbs,” & another outrageously funny piece based on the Berenstein Bears series of books, “Bedtime Stories.” Her foray into poetic forms included a villanelle (“villanelles are good for obsessives” she said), “Hypochondria,” & a pantoum about a plane crash into the Alia Marsh Harbor in 2002. She ended hopefully enough with “Everlasting Life.”

Jay Rogoff is a frequent member of this group &, while well-known in the poetry community here, is about to become even more well-known having been named as the next Poet Laureate of Saratoga Springs; villanelles seem to popping up like weeds, as he read one he wrote about apples, “At First Bite.”

Leslie Sittner, another frequent reader here, read a poem from a series she wrote on Full Moons, this poem titled “September Full Corn Moon 2020.” In honor of Margaret’s reading I read 2 poems also on astronomical themes, “The Transit of Venus,” & “Star Maps.”

David Gonsalves, also a frequent flyer here, read a cluster of short poems, “Little by Little,” “Cattail Talk,” an untitled piece at the river side, & “Slipknot.”

Elaine Klein was here for the 1st time to read a humorous piece about dolls, “On Another RFK Jr. Morning.”

Our host today, Rhonda Rosenheck, a character piece (not her) titled “Cider Dreams,” & an ekphrastic poem from a photo of a concrete banana.

This open mic takes place each 2nd Friday of the month at the Saratoga Senior Center, 1:00PM, with a  featured poet from the community, & an open mic for the rest of us — Free!