Caffè Lena Poetry Open Mic, October 1

The Featured poet this night was the venerable Bertha Rogers, co-founder of the Bright Hills Literary Center in Treadwell, NY, as well as Bright Hills Press. Since her reading was live-streamed then posted on Caffè Lena’s YouTube channel one can experience it in its entirety, so I will only share with you a summary & some highlights. She read exclusively from her recent book from Salmon Poetry, the Cliffs of Moher, Ireland, What Want Brings: New & Selected Poems. Although the book has selections from her books dating back to 1987, the poems she read were either newer poems, or poems from 2019. Even that covered a lot of ground in 25 or 30 minutes.

Early on she paid tribute to the memory of her friend the gone New York poet Colette Inez (1931 - 2018) in the poem “Mezzo and Dead Colette.” I urge you to watch Bertha’s actual reading at the Caffè Lena YouTube channel. The reading starts with the introduction by Carol Graser about 5 minutes in.

Then on to a full sign-up sheet of community readers (not recorded). First up was Mary Cay with a tearful “Sadness Reigns,” a quote & poem about hope, & then “Take a Breath.” David Graham read a piece titled “All the Citizens,” important in this time of Constitutional crises. I followed with a baseball poem, “October Land,” & another seasonal piece, “Yom Kippur.” Pauline read OPP (i.e., other people’s poems), namely, Emily Dickinson (“Parting”?) & Wendall Barry (“The Peace of Wild Things”).

Leslie Sittner, who is a regular at Saratoga open mics said she was reading October hunting poems for the "Full Hunter Moon", “Father Says” about her brother at 13, & another about the full Moon itself. In contrast Pat’s poem, “No Fucks,” responded to social media posts. Our host, Carol Graser, the host for the event, read the title poem from her new book of poems “Prayer for the Sorrowful Brain.” Melissa Anderson who had been the featured reader here back in June read poems titled “Still Life with Gnashing Teeth” & “Weights and Measures.” Elaine Kenyon is also a frequent reader here, tonight read a meditation “On Sylvia Plath” & a September Haiku.

Jay Rogoff, who has been selected as the next Poet Laureate of Saratoga Springs, & who is no stranger to this popular open mic, read a poem about donuts & his mother, “Holes,” then a villanelle about apples “At First Bite.” Jeanine Laverty read a couple poems by one of my favorite poets, Kenneth Patchen (1911 - 1972), from his grand Collected Poems (New Directions, 1968), “The Great Birds” & “Wide Wide in the Rose’s Side” (the last poem in the book). Jackie Craven is the host of the Zoom open mic Writers Mic & her poems are no strangers to the surreal, so her comment that what she was reading was “weird, nostalgic, seasonal” was an obvious introduction to her piece from 1962, “Post Card I Wish I’d Sent to Elizabeth When She Was Sent Away” with lines in Pig Latin.

Richard Levine has a foot in Brooklyn, another in Upstate New York; he read his poem “Pulse” published in an online journal, & “Once Upon a Grimm Time” with images from a dream which can be found in his Selected Poems (Futurecycle Press, 2019). Andy Fogle read a poem about driving (& drinking) from Virginia with his cousin, then another poem about working with his Dad. Another regular here, Rodney Parrott, read a couple of excerpts from his revised memoir A Perspective of Movement, & another piece from “The Wanderer.”

Andrew improvised a random list of words & dates he called “Mirror Images,” then what he said was a poem written on acid, disconnected phrases, which sure sounded like a poem on acid. Lucyna Prostko read a poem about her experience being an immigrant, “The Art of Leaving.” Gripp read a poem in the Slam style, written about a film class. & that was it for this night.

Caffè Lena Poetry Open Mic takes place on the first Wednesday of each month at the historical Caffè Lena on Phila St. in Saratoga Springs, NY — a featured poet at 7:00PM, which is live-streamed & recorded for YouTube, followed by an open mic for community poets, sign-up starts at 6:30PM when the doors open, $5.00, free for students.