2nd Sunday @ 2, September 12

We (Nancy Klepsch, the open mic poets & I) were back at Collar City Mushrooms, in Troy, for this Sunday open mic that had started out at the Arts Center further downtown.

1st on the open mic list was Kelly who was here for the 1st time last month, I guess we didn’t scare her off, with an untitled confrontational piece complete with a musical soundtrack, then to a lighter piece with funny rhymes titled “Back to School.” Avery Stempel, who as the proprietor of Collar City Mushrooms is our host here, read a couple pieces written, he said last year, “Drifting,” & one from his experience as a landlord, “What Do You Leave Behind?”

Only 1 day off the 20th anniversary of the attacks on September 11, 2001, I read a commissioned poem titled “Another Tuesday” that recalled another September 11 — that of 1973 — when the democratically elected government of Chile was violently overthrown by a USA-supported coup, then read a brief piece titled “At EMPAC.”  My co-host, Nancy Klepsch, brought her guitar today & began with a piece about words colliding that channeled the protest songs of Patti Smith, then the lighter piece “Why Is The World So Beautiful?”

John Teevan read for the 1st time in public from what he described as a sequel to his previously published spy thriller Deception, Love and Espionage, a dialogue between the 2 main characters Valentina & Diego, a sequence titled “Revenge.” He was followed by Brenda whose 1st piece began “Just think how…” then a play on words beginning “Cut on the dotted lines…”

Julie Lomoe also debuted a piece reading “Ghazal for the Earth” for the 1st time, then the provocative (& frightening imagined) “Dance Nude in the Backyard.” Our last reader, Rhonda Rosenheck, read for the 1st time at the 2nd Sunday @ 2, the list poem “Things I Used to Have,” another for the New Year, & from a series of “crime poems” a sestina titled “The Woman.”

Our 2nd Sunday @ 2 Open Mic has a pleasant, hospitable new home at Collar City Mushrooms, 333 2nd Ave., Troy, NY, with even some new readers joining us — there’s always room for more.

The Poetry of Oklahoma

The Scissortail Creative Writing Festival happens each year at East Central University in Ada, OK. I have attended every-other year or so since 2011. This year’s festival, scheduled for April 2 thru 4, was, of course, cancelled. However, just in time, a book arrived in the mail, Bull Buffalo and Indian Paintbrush, The Poetry of Oklahoma, edited by Oklahoma poet Ron Wallace of Durant, OK.

By my rough count, nearly half of the poets in the anthology I have see & heard at Scissortail at one time or another. There are some names with national reputations, such as our current Poet Laureate Joy Harjo, the novelist Louis L’Amour, N. Scott Momaday & Rilla Askew. & many I count proudly as my friends, including Ken Hada the director of the festival, Jeanetta Calhoun Mish who 1st introduced me to Oklahoma in 2010 when Charlie Rossiter & I made a trip to Albany, OK, Jim Spurr (sadly no longer with us), feisty Dorothy Alexander, Rilla Askew, former New Yorker Paul Austin, & the editor himself Yankee fan Ron Wallace. Others whose books I have on my shelf of Oklahoma writers, or with whom I’ve shared dinner & drinks & conversation.

Jeanetta Calhoun Mish, Oklahoma Poet Laureate 2017 - 2019, once lived in Albany, where her son Michael was born, & on visits back to the East she has stayed at “The Poetry Motel.” It was Jeanetta who made it possible for Charlie & I to visit Oklahoma & even be part of the Oklahoma Labor Fest when we were there. Ken Hada has also made trips to the East & also been a guest at “The Poetry Motel.”  Both have read at poetry venues in the area, such as at Caffè Lena in Saratoga Springs.

It’s a marvelous group of writers & I look forward to seeing them again, maybe next year. But this anthology brought these, & other writers I haven’t met (yet) into my home in Albany, NY.

You can order Bull Buffalo and Indian Paintbrush directly from Ron at his website www.ronwallace.com — tell him Dan Wilcox sent you.

Crafted (Poetry Showcase & Book-Signing), May 1

Crafted is the title of Daniel Summerhill’s new book of poetry (Genesis Press) & this event, held at the Steamer 10 Theater in Albany, NY was a reading to launch the book. Just because “National Poetry Month” is over doesn’t mean there aren’t plenty of more poetry readings around, I mean, In Albany, Ever Day is Poetry Month, right?

Daniel also served as a host for a brief reading by 4 female poets, 2 of whom share his first name, such as Daniela Toosie Watson, who performed a poem about her experience as a young girl learning to speak English, “Linguistics of Broken English,” then a piece on confronting anxiety & depression “Love Found Me.”

Daniel introduced Tenesha Smith as an older mentor who, when she left Oakland, CA before him, left behind a scrapbook of poems that was one of his earliest poetic influences. She began with a piece about a friend’s “secret” (her abuse), then a celebratory piece on women’s glory as Eve, complete with an appearance of an “Adam” sending mixed messages; then a piece from her days in Oakland, “A Letter to the Brother at the Corner Store,” with M.C. Graffiti doing sounds.

Amani O performed a couple of motivational-type poems, the first titled “Get Free,” the second with the refrain that we are all made of star dust (or as Tom Nattell said, “Star dust is us”).

D. (Danielle) Colin did a piece in English & Creole for a cousin in Haiti who died, then a self-assertive piece about an answer she wished she had given to someone who had said (& this is the title of the poem) “I Remember You You Are So & So’s Ex-Girl Friend.”

It was their turn, Danielle & Daniela, to introduce Daniel. He began with poems from Crafted, starting with what sounded like his ars poetica “Life Support.” He paid tribute to his hometown with 2 poems, “Grid” & “Oakland,” part description, part commentary on racist violence, then to a piece to his daughter “13 Letters to Genesis.” The short poem “Cliffhanger” is about black mothers fearing for the lives of their sons, while “When We Shall Live” is a hymn to hope. Each time Daniel said “this is my last poem” the audience cried for more.  He turned to his first chapbook, Brown Boys on Stoops (2 Pens & Lint, 2015), for “Ode to Existing (‘Cuz Daddy Said So),” then “Stereotype Unknown,” the wonderfully assertive “Ode to Elijah,” & returned to Crafted for his last poem “Ain’t We Fly” (check it out on YouTube). Daniel Summerhill’s poems are in-your-face with intellect & style, &, well, craft, just like the book says. Oakland’s loss is our gain.

Where I Sit by Donald Lev — August 22

Donald Lev is a poetic treasure not only here in the Hudson River Valley, but also in New York State, indeed the entire Nation of Poetry & otherwise. His (& his late wife Enid Dame’s) work publishing the poetry tabloid Home Planet News brought many poets, established & neophytes, together since 1979.

He gave a reading & book-signing this day from his new book Where I Sit (Presa Press, 2015) at The Golden Notebook, independent bookstore, in Woodstock, NY. A Saturday afternoon in August in Woodstock is quite a, shall we say, trip, but the upstairs reading room of the bookstore was peaceful, with a number of local poets there to sit & listen. All of the poems in his new book are no more than a page long, with many only a few, gnomic, lines, such as “Jazz Lyric:”

I’m at the end of my rope and I’m
Swingin’

These poems are seasoned with the melancholic humor of old age & being alone, but finding solace in words. He read about a dozen poems, commenting briefly on their setting or origins, many of which I suspect are retellings of dreams. Perusing the book later I was pleased to see one, “Washington Park, Albany” commenting on his own reading in the Poets in the Park series in 2012.

If your poetry library is lacking a volume by Donald Lev this is a good place to start, then work backwards to some of his earlier books. It will make you smile, & maybe pick up your own pen.

Books of the Dead: A Memoir with Poetry by Alan Catlin

If you’ve ever been to poetry readings in the Capital District, particularly to my Third Thursday reading at the Social Justice Center, or have read much of the small press zines in the last 25 years or so you would have heard or read poems by Alan Catlin. He is one of the most-published poets in America, & keeps cranking them out, telling his stories in the language even the barflies at the Washington Tavern can understand. &, full disclosure, Alan is a personal friend who has over the years steered innumerable poetry zines & many of his own books my way, & a colleague & former board member on the Hudson Valley Writers Guild.

Again, if you’ve heard Alan’s poems over the years you are bound to have heard about his late mother, a schizophrenic former patient at Pilgrim State Hospital (like Allen Ginsberg’s mom, Naomi). Books of the Dead: A Memoir with Poetry (Pure Heart Press, Main Street Rag) brings all that together under one cover. Actually, it is 2 memoirs, one centered around cleaning out his mother’s hotel room after her death, “The New York City Book of the Dead,” the other about taking care of his father’s & step-mother’s estate after their deaths in Florida, “The Central Florida Book of the Dead.” Both are a combination of prose sections & poems, like a twisted, claustrophobic 21st Century Basho haibun.

His story of cleaning out his mother's things from room 641 of the Martha Washington Hotel for Women in New York City is voyeuristic & chilling. Alan includes some of his mother’s own writings as a Fun-House mirror/window into her world, including letters she wrote to him & her musings on health from her compulsive reading. Her writings are upsetting as we witness the line fracturing between the “normal” world of a mother’s advice & the schizophrenic’s short-circuited delusional world. Equally frightening is the tale of a grandma letting her 3-year old grandson steer the car, or her attacking her son’s wife, prompting an angry banishment. These are the impossible decisions family members must make to deal with someone they love but who poses a danger to themselves & others.  It is a sad, mind-wrentching story of an embattled son in a role-reversal with his troubled, impossible mother.

“The Central Florida Book of the Dead” takes up the final 3rd of the volume & has the surrealistic feel of Kafka’s The Castle, with the poet & his family trying to make their way through the insensitive bureauacracy of hospitals & the bizarre Dali-like landscape & characters of Florida. A political commentator would make it a cry for a National Health Care system, one that doesn’t enrich the insurance industry, one that covers working people & poets too. Alan’s book is a example of how a sensitive, engaged poet, can turn a personal memoir into both poetry & a commentary on pressing social issues of the times.

Pine Hills Review Launch, September 5

We’ve got a lot of spoken word venues here in the ur-Albany, but until recently not many print/online sources for writers. Earlier this year The Pine Hills Review  joined locally Up the River & Misfit Magazine as a more permanent record for our work than the ephemeral utterances at open mics (I've had poems accepted at all 3 venues). Postings have been appearing online at Pine Hill Review since early July so I’m not sure what was being “launched” this night, but it it was great fun just the same. The event was timed to correspond with Albany’s First Friday Art Walk & held at the Massry Gallery of the College of St. Rose for the 2014 Faculty Show Art + Design. All the Editors, Senior Editors, Managing Editor, even the Editor-in-Chief were there, as well as a generous selection of the somebodies & nobodies of the area art scene.

The center piece of the evening was a reading by fiction writer Elisa Albert & poet Greg Pardlo. It was standing-room-only, mainly because there were no chairs. & first we had to have the introductions: Jeanne Flanagan, director of the gallery, introduced Editor-in-Chief Prof. Daniel Nester, who introduced Senior Editor Jennifer Austin, who introduced the first reader Elisa Albert.  Later, Senior Editor & poet Samson Dikeman introduced Greg Pardlo.

Elisa Albert read from her new, forthcoming novel After Birth (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, February 2015). As the blurb online says, “A widely acclaimed young writer’s fierce new novel, in which childbirth and new motherhood are as high stakes a proving ground as any combat zone.” The sections she read had to do with mothers & babies & dissertations, birth stories told in groups, etc., the kind of stuff that always made me glad not to have to hang around with these middle-class mommies, it was bad enough being at parties with them.

Greg Pardlo was a visiting poet last semester in the College of St. Rose MFA program in creative writing. He began with a crowd-pleaser, “Double Dutch,” from his 2007 Copper Canyon Press book Totem. Then on to a cluster of poems from his new book Digest (Four Way Books, 2014), beginning with a meditation on violence in the supermarket, then another on raising kids beginning with his asking for a tattoo at 13. “Copenhagen 1991” was a “kind of ghazal” about Led Zeppelin, dedicated to his student Albany-poet Carol Jewell. Race is often a theme/issue in his poems & “Wishing Well” was about an encounter with a street person at the Metropolitan Museum, & “Written by Himself” was a collage of lines taken from slave narratives.  I'm looking forward to more from the new book.

Check out Pine Hills Review online & send them some poems — keep them busy. & check out the College of St. Rose website for upcoming readings in Daniel Nester’s Frequency North series. It’s free.

Pine Hills Review Reading, July 13

This was the 2nd reading in this series, starting just as the World Cup was starting. The reading was at The Low Beat, on a Sunday afternoon, & following the time-honored rule that if you want to have a good crowd for a poetry reading schedule lots of readers — this afternoon there was a 6-pack of writers, what one could say was “an invitation-only open mic.” Pine Hills Review is the literary magazine of The College of St. Rose’s MFA in Creative Writing Program.

To start us off Editor-in-Chief, Prof. Daniel Nester introduced the host of the reading, Senior Editor & Albany Slam star Samson Dikeman. The theme of the reading was “Smallbany,” poetry & prose about living & working in Albany. Ironically, the first reader, Elizabeth K. Gordon (aka Elizag) read a trio from her recent book of poems, Love Cohoes (Crandall, Dostie & Douglass Books) -- close enough.

Katie Vermilyea (who also lives in Cohoes) read a memoir piece in short segments about being single & back in Albany, ranging from meeting “Brad” in the train station & a break-up, celebrity watching, to meeting “Graham” from Albany in Chicago. (Do guys really have names like that these days? Did their parents name them after TV characters?)

James Belflower was the most experimental of the afternoon readers. His poems (?) ranged from a take on punk music & the “No Pepper” sign at Valentines (now here at The Low Beat), to a commentary about a friend’s humorous use of “fuck you”, to a piece that started by talking about W.S. Merwin writing without punctuation then morphed into a take on “virtual reality” & reading the punctuation as part of the text.

Miriam Axel-Lute was more traditional in her poems, each referencing places & events in Albany, from the river (“Wednesday Hudson”), to “Tilting at Roosts” & Albany’s “crow wars,” to a piece about old trolley tracks on Delaware Ave., “A Winter Melting” where the highway & a public housing tower being torn down were both characters.

Frances Cortez O’Conner read a personal memoir about apartments she had lived in from New York City, to Albany, to having a baby & moving out to the ‘burbs in East Greenbush — a take on the classic American Dream success story.

The final reader, Elisa Albert, read from a personal essay in progress, a memoir that took us from working at the Honest Weight Food Co-op in Albany, to a family history of Jews in Pennsylvania, & ultimately a commentary on the act of writing.


There is another reading scheduled in this series for Sunday August 10, 3PM, again at The Low Beat (335 Central Ave., Albany, NY) & a launch reception & reading on September 5 at The College of St. Rose. Check the St. Rose/Pine Hills Review website for complete information. & send them some stuff, they accept submissions year round (just like an S&M chick I knew in NYC years ago).

Love Cohoes by Elizabeth K. Gordon

I admit to a penchant for “poems of place”: William Carlos Williams’ Paterson, Charles Olson’s Maximus, Hart Crane’s “The Bridge,” Walt Whitman’s poems of America, C.P Cavafy’s Alexandria, Charles Baudelaire & Paris. So how could I not like this attractive little book, especially since I enjoy so much the energy & engagement of the performances of this poet also know in the Slam world as Elizag.

Half the book is “The Clotheslines of Cohoes,” poems about the people & the place where she lives, under the mist of the Cohoes Falls; the other half of the book, titled “What Grace is For” is a (welcomed) collection of her other work, largely Slam/performance pieces, many of which I’ve seen her perform, some more than once, but never had before the pleasure of a text, a script.

The Cohoes Falls (& the adjacent housing, once for the mill workers) is an attraction to which I often drag out-of-town visitors. It’s a spectacular vista, especially in the Spring with the run-off from from the rivers & streams but still stunning in the Winter & peaceful in the Summer & Fall. Visitors are always impressed by the Falls, but also by the working-class housing sitting right there over-looking the next-best-thing to Niagara Falls.

Elizag’s poems capture this place, and the details of the everyday working-class existence in a dead mill town. I remember the first time I heard her read “The Cats of Cohoes” with its mix of characters both human & feline, how the few lines made the place real. & in the true spirit of poems of place, there is the back-story, from the native people who gathered right there to make peace (“The Great Peacemaker”), to the Irish fleeing the Great Famine, to the more recent racist segregation in whose shadows she still lives. The tour-de-force “The Clotheslines of Cohoes” is an eco-poem riffing off Allen Ginsberg’s “America.”

I am glad to have the texts collected in “What Grace is For” as well, not just for the performance pieces such as “First Date” & “Are You Really Working Class? Test Yourself,” but also for the wonderful surprise of “Sketch for a Hummingbird.”

As I add this marvelous book to my shelf I realize that my “poets of place” list doesn’t include any women, forgive me. But now the list does, with “Love Cohoes.” Thanks Elizag, & keep at it.

Love Cohoes is published by Crandell, Dostie & Douglass Books, www.cddbooks.com, who also published in 2007 Elizag’s tender & moving memoir Walk With Us: Triplet Boys, their Teen Parents and Two White Women Who Tagged Along, both available at Amazon.com & from the author at readings.

Cold Mountain 2000: Han Shan in the City by Charles Rossiter

Charlie Rossiter, my poetry buddy & fellow member of 3 Guys from Albany, has just had his labor of poetic love, Cold Mountain 2000: Han Shan in the City, published by FootHills Publishing. Charlie & I both discovered the poet Han Shan (died 850?) (literally “Cold Mountain” for those who want a lesson in Chinese) thru the translations by Gary Snyder of 24 of Han Shan’s poems, first published in 1958 in Evergreen Review #6. There have been a number of translations into English of Han Shan’s poems over the years, notably by Arthur Waley in 1954 of “Twenty-seven Poems by Han-shan” & Burton Watson’s Cold Mountain: 100 Poems by the T’ang Poet Han-shan (Grove Press, 1962). But the definitive edition, to my taste, is the 2000 Copper Canyon Press The Collected Songs of Cold Mountain, translated by “Red Pine” (Bill Porter) that not only includes the 307 poems of Han Shan but also the poems of "Big Stick" (Feng-kan) and of "Pickup" (Shih-te), monks in the Kuoching Temple at the foot of Mount Tientai where Han Shan would stay, the poems in both English & Chinese. A true desert island book.

But back to Charlie. In the 1990’s Charlie sent me some of his own poems inspired by Snyder’s versions of Han Shan. They were good. So good that they inspired me to try to my hand at it too. Charlie riffed off the themes & images of Han Shan. I returned to the versions I had (before the Copper Canyon Press edition) & wrote “variations” in which I imagined Han Shan as a modern, urban poet living & writing in Albany. I wrote back to Charlie suggesting this approach & this book is the result, or, as he states in his preface “These Cold Mountain 2000 poems are written imagining what Han Shan might say if he lived in a contemporary urban setting …”

This attractive, hand-sewn chapbook of 51 poems in the style of Han Shan also contains a dozen of Charlie’s other poems, some previously published (&/or performed with 3 Guys from Albany). My one beef with this edition is that Rossiter’s poems are numbered consecutively (as did Snyder) & don’t relate to the specific original poems of Han Shan. One of the great things about the Copper Canyon Press edition is a concordance, or “Findings List,” that correlates 7 different translations of Han Shan so one can compare each translator’s versions.

Beyond that quibble, it’s a great read. Actually, Charlie is not writing new versions of individual Han Shan poems, but (mostly) new poems in the spirit of that ancient Chinese poet. Han Shan/Rossiter writes about poetry readings, the role of poets in the world, hiding out/alienation from the world, the honies on the street, growing old, conflict with the “academics,” a veritable post-Beat, punk melange of urban & (sometimes) Nature-nostalgic themes. I imagined my Han Shan in an apartment near the top floor of the building on the corner of Henry Johnson Blvd. & Central Ave. in Albany, Charlie’s version seems more suburban.

 Here is #33:

A poet friend was in
from out of town
for a visit
so we lit some candles
on the back porch
to talk and drink.
In a few minutes
three or four hours went by.

Could’ve been written anywhere, anytime — that’s Cold Mountain & that’s Charlie Rossiter.

[I note that FootHills Publishing in 2012 also published In the Spirit of T’ao Ch’ien with poems by Sam Hamill, Michael Czarnecki, David Budbill, Charles Rossiter, & Antler, edited by Charles Rossiter.]

After Hours Release Party, February 16

After Hours: a Journal of Chicago Writing and Art has been around for about 14 years, & this was a reading to celebrate Issue #28, Winter 2014. Edited by Albert DeGenova & P. Hertel, it represents the eclectic mix of Chicago poets, photographers & painters. The reading was held at Calles y Sueños, a store front performance space, gallery, community center at 1900 Carpenter St., Chicago, in the heart of Pilsen. The readers were those published in the current issue, or in the past.

Al DeGenova, who served as the host, read first, with “At the Ancient Pond” & “The Tides,” both in the the zine. David Matthews was next with his entry, the Chicago descriptive “Polish Bus Stop,” & another piece read from his phone, “Katzenjammers.” Jamie Wendt read about “Things You Saved For When I Got Older,” then a poem about a pigeon, “What a Refugee Leaves Behind.”

Melissa Walker’s piece in After Hours, “The Fall,” was an intense & tender meditation on Death, then the compelling “Rough Guide to Sacramento” & “Rough Guide to the Rain Forest.” My buddy Charlie Rossiter was up next with his poem from the mag, “Is It Love or Lies,” then a couple of pieces he has performed with the 3 Guys from Albany, his “cheap motel” poem & the sexy “I’m Yours.” Larry Janowski left us to read his published poem ourselves, instead read “24 Hours in the ER” & “Cane Mutiny.” Wilda Morris read “Mnemonic” (reconstructing memory), then the funny/sexy “The Bed,” & “50 Years After.”

Cherie Caswell Dost’s poems were Chicago tales, “For Vivian Maier, Dammit” & one about a polish house-painter. Robert Lawrence read the so-seasonal “Naked Trees in Winter” then an amusing poem about exchanging is body for a better one, as if it were “The Gift.” Tom Cosgrove wasn’t here, but his wife read his poem “Children Catching Fireflies.” Jennifer Finstrom’s poem from After Hours, “Obituary” was a compelling family tale about her grandfather, then read “Ariadne” & recited “Minotaur” from a series on the Cretan myths. Andrew Byrne read 3 memoirs from his childhood, “On Going to Mass to Serve Mass Winter Early Mornings,” “Geography” & “Paradise.”

A couple readers were not in the current issue but had been published in past issues of After Hours. Joe Weintraub read the hopeful “Sparrows in Early Spring.” Tom Roby read a cluster of poems in foreign settings such as the Italian Alps, the Cote d’Azur & Japan. The last of the open mic-ers, Dina Elenbogen is in the current issue, read her travel poem “On the Road” & some poems from a new poetry manuscript that she is working on.

The featured poet Jenene Ravesloot began her set with her poem from After Hours, “Alone.” The rest of her poems were an interesting variety of topics & style, many from a new manuscript on which she is working. For example, “It’s like…” was an imaginative list poem, while a bunch of other poems were what she termed her “noir poems,” such as “Elegy for a Roach,” “Flash,” “The Defectives,” & a poem as a made-up police blotter item. Others played with poetic forms: “Winter Ghazal Variation,” “River Sestina Variation” “Sonnet for a Winter Morning,” & “The Phone Rings Sestina Variation” (that sounded like a blending of a sestina with a phantoum). In between were a few Nature poems, such as “A Gift” & “Etude.” A touching childhood memoir poem, “Off to the George Diamond Steak House” was about having dinner there with her father.

It was quite an afternoon of poetry, veggies & chips & dip, & wine. If you want more information about this fine poetry & art journal from the mid-West, visit their website.  More pictures of the poets from the reading at my Flickr! site.

A Very Funny Fellow, a Review of the book by Donald Lev

Back when I lived in NYC, skulking on the fringes of the downtown poetry scene, before I ever thought of photographing the poets, I heard Donald Lev read as part a marathon reading in a loft on Lafayette St. Others I recall reading that night were Enid Dame, June Jordan, & Kathy Acker.

And after I had moved to Albany & taken over the poetry interview video series started by Charlie Rossiter, "The Poetry Motel," I brought Donald & his wife Enid Dame up to Albany to tape interviews with them & feature them at a reading at Cafe Web. Donald has remained a fixture of the mid-Hudson poetry scene, reading at all the great venues, & continuing to periodically crank out his tabloid poetry zine, Home Planet News.

That said, this then is less a review than an appreciation of Donald's latest book of poems from NYQ Books, A Very Funny Fellow. I like him & his work too much to be an objective critic. And any one who has been to one of Donald's readings, even before this book was published, will read familiar poems & hear his distinctive, laconic Brooklyn intonations coming off the printed page.

The poems are mostly short, never more than a page & often less than half a page. I have heard Donald read from a series of movie poems & some pop up here, such as "East of Eden," "Art -Deco Blues" & "Homage to the Playwright." These are sometimes combined with his dream poems, as in the just mentioned "East of Eden." Once in a while (as in "In this Dream…") a poem is identified specifically as a dream poem, but often I can only guess, pencilling "dream?" in the margin of my copy of the book. Donald walks in the long tradition of poets who turn real dreams into poems & writes poems that turn the everyday into dream-like scenes & narratives. Two of my favorites are "I Kept Missing" & "Breakfast with Prufrock."

Another poetic tradition that Donald successfully exploits is the poet writing about the role of poetry, what it means to be a poet. This includes making fun of poetry, as in "Titanic" or "A Wind Was Blowing" or the tiny apocalyptic "Untitled." At the end of the longest poem in the book, "When I Seek an Image," the poet concludes, "All that ever was for me is here,/ sitting in my chair, seeking images."

And of course, while "Lines in Winter" is explicitly dedicated "for Enid," her ghost hovers behind many of the poems, indeed throughout the entire work, like that movement in the shadows we catch out of the corner of our eye while reading late at night.

Like the nearly bookend poems "A Window" & "This Big Window" these poems are windows into the days & dreams & memories of this poet known as Donald Lev.

[Donald Lev will be reading in the Poets in the Park series in Albany, NY on July 14, 2012, 7PM with Albany poet Don Levy.]

Jared Smith: Looking into the Machinery

I first heard Jared Smith read his poetry at the riverrun bookshop in Hastings-on-the-Hudson before I moved back to Albany in 1986. Then, in May 2009 he hosted Charlie Rossiter & me in his home in Colorado & accompanied us on our 3 Guys from Albany journey to Albany, Wyoming.

Looking Into The Machinery: The Selected Long Poems Of Jared Smith has just been released by Allen Hoey's Tamarack Editions, which has also published local area writers George Drew & Nancy White.  The book is available from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Baker & Taylor, Ingram, and other booksellers.  Locally, call the Book House of Stuyvesant Plaza to order your copy.

Jared Smith will be reading at Books & Writers in Rochester on April 29th; at the May Day rally in Albany on May 1st (1 to 4PM, West Capitol Park); and will be the featured poet at Caffè Lena in Saratoga Springs on May 5th at the 1st Wednesday open mic. Catch him as he flies by.

Yes, Reading, November 7

Another in the continuing series, tonight solo-host Colie Collen introduced the 2 poets who both have new chapbooks out from Brave Men Press.

Chris Tonelli read from No Theater, which played on images from Japanese Noh Theater with images of masks, short poems (one page each) with one-word titles.

Janaka Stucky's Your Name is the Only Freedom, again, has mostly short, one page poems (but his titles are longer). He gets his images from the Nag Hammadi texts, vodka & the Hindu goddess Kali coming in at the end.

The chapbooks from Brave Men Press (variously Northampton & Boston) are very nicely produced with letterpress covers, crisp text, about 5 1/2" X roughly 6 3/4". Worth looking for.

At the Social Justice Center in Albany, NY.  Check out the series at http://yesreading.wordpress.com/

Guanyin and other poems, by Gene Damm

Gene Damm has been around the poetry scene here in Albany as long as I remember, in fact I remember him as a fellow student at SUNY-Albany (as it was called back then) in the late 1960s. He has now published a book of his poems, Guanyin and other poems (The Troy Book Makers, 2009). Recently he did a reading/book-signing at the Book House in Stuyvesant Plaza to promote it.

He has gathered together about 80 poems, only 1 more than a page, in various voices & personas, including his own. As expected from a book with the title the name of a Chinese province some of the poems are versions or imitations of Chinese poetry. I was pleasantly surprised to find a variation on a famous poem by Wang Wei ("A Mountain" in Gene's version). There is even a poem in Chinese which strangely doesn't seem to be translated. But he also plays with French settings & I even noted wistful nostalgia as in the poems of C.P. Cavafy in "Nocturne" & "The Nude Maja."

Guanyin and other poems is available at The Book House & at Market Block Books in Troy, or ask Gene about it the next time you see him out & about at a poetry reading. Support Your Local Poet.

The Good, the Bad & the Ugly -- Local Chapbook Review

I've got a stack of poetry chapbooks sitting on my table, among other lit journals, books, magazines, newsletters. Here, in an attempt to clear the decks, is a review of a handful of the chapbooks by local poets that have risen to the top of the heap. In a number of ways these 5 represent the spectrum of publishing styles that I've seen lately at area readings (as well as the recent small press bookfair at the the UAG Gallery in January). They range from the "quick & dirty" Kinko jobs to the slick, glossy print-on-demand that emulate the major publishers & university presses.

It used to be that if you wanted to self-publish your poems, after years of publishers' rejections, you had to really do-it-yourself: typeset & layout the pages, design the cover, find a printer you can afford, pick up the boxes of books, then schlep them around to bookstores & to readings. With the prevalence of computers the typesetting & layout became easier, but still some of the software that printers would accept is expensive. Now the frustrated poet, or impatient novice, can email a manuscript to one of many "print-on-demand" sources that can be found on the internet & they will do it all -- for a hefty fee, of course. The finished product looks like all the other poetry books on the shelves of Borders or Barnes & Noble: perfect bound, 4-color covers, crisp typeface on good stock, complete with an ISBN & bar-coding. And you don't have to store boxes of the unsold books in your attic because the technology permits the printing of copies as needed.

But more than ever the old cliche (but it's an old cliche) is true: "you can't judge a book by its cover;" or to quote another cliche, "freedom of the press is for the person that owns one." There is something to be said for the old days of the poets shopping their poems around, workshoping, either formally or just around the kitchen table with other beat-down poets, trying their poems out at open mics, getting a sought-after featured reading, continuously working through the whole process. Now, "if you can pay, you can play."

Dominick Rizzo is a young poet who has been showing up at open mics recently, reading from his book, The Spiral Staircase of My Life: a Selection of Poetry Defining My Thirty Years. This is a professionally produced volume of 88 pages published in December 2008 by AuthorHouse (www.authorhouse.com). Obviously Rizzo has been writing for a few years, but the poems collected here all seem to be pulled from the same early notebooks, where he writes about "beauty" or "emptiness" or "desires." I hope that his involvement in the writing community can help him develop & polish his work, finding images & metaphors & rhythms. He apparently has the writing bug, now he needs to work this into art & find his voice. He is contributing a portion of his sales to suicide prevention programs, so I hope he sells a lot.

Another attractive volume of poems from an internet printing service is W.D. Clarke's Soldier Ballads and Other Tales (2009) from Infinity Publishing.com (www.buybooksontheweb.com). Those of you who read this Blog regularly, or attend open mics in Albany or at the Caffe Lena, are familiar with Clarke's work. I included him in the Poets in the Park in July 2008. His rhyming narratives of soldiers & rough life in the West, from his own life & from stories other soldiers have told him, are written in the tradition of Robert Service & Rudyard Kipling. I am glad to have in my hands so many of the poems I have enjoyed hearing him read over the last couple years. The book itself is also perfect-bound with a glossy 4-color cover, crisply printed & attractive. My only criticism of the production is that the poems & the introductory notes are all centered on the page. They would look better with the traditional flush left margin. Such a layout always reminds me of collections of inspirational verse by minister wives. But, hey, I can't tell where the lines begin when he reads them.

On the other end of the spectrum is a saddle-stapled, untrimmed photocopy job by R.M. Engelhardt (as the author note on the last page states Engelhardt "was the host of Albany's most former well-known poetry open mic...", I kid you not). The cover says "Poems Versus" so I guess this is the title -- there's no title page. The pages are numbered unnecessarily (& in Roman numerals no less!) since there is no table of contents anyway. And worst of all except for the poems themselves, the text is printed in tiny type, laid out in 2 columns. If he was trying to squeeze all the poems into one chapbook, he still could have done it with a normal layout & readable font size if he eliminated the huge, inexplicable spaces between sections of the poems. If I hadn't seen all of Engelhardt's other self-published books I would say that this was a rush job thrown together precipitously in order to have a new chapbook out for some reading he was giving. If you want a copy you will have to track down Engelhardt since there is no publisher information (no title page, remember?), except a URL for a blog: http://albanypoetrm.blogspot.com.

The final 2 chapbooks in this review, from Benevolent Bird Press (P.O. Box 522, Delmar, NY 12054), are also in the DIY tradition but show what you can do with a little bit of attention to detail & loving care of the work. Alan Casline is the publisher as well as the director of the Rootdrinker Institute (same P.O. Box address) does some of the production work himself by hand. Interestingly enough for this review, there is no websites, email addresses or other evidence of the internet listed anywhere in these 2 books.

Tom Corrado's three is just that: 3 poems, printed on 8 1/2 X 11 stock, folded vertically to create a 4 1/4 X 11 chapbook, saddle-stapled, an attractive cover with reproductions of 3 of Corrado's paintings, even yellow endpapers (which never occur in the print-on-demand books). The poems themselves are good-humored ramblings in a wry tone, a mix of Frank O'Hara & John Ashbery, filled with images & things, real stuff, nary a big concept of "Truth" or of what "poetry must be" to be found on these slim pages.

Harvesting Silence by Dennis Sullivan looks more like a traditional poetry chapbook, its 52 pages perfect-bound, a simple, attractive readable design & simple wood-block cover, with end-papers of heavier stock than the cover itself. Sullivan is the kind of poet who starts with a simple, everyday image (a pen on the floor, the weather, a cookie jar) & takes you to places you didn't know you wanted to go, deep within memory & the meaning of existence. His poems are contemplative, in the broadest & most monkish meaning of the term. He has an interesting habit of not only dating his poems to the day, not just a month & year, but also noting the time (when he ended the poem? or started it? or just happened to look at his watch?).

There is a great variety of work out there being written & published by local poets. Unfortunately, as a publisher of poetry myself, I know that woefully few people, even poets, buy other's books. So get out there, buy the books, find out for yourself what other poets are writing, & keep on writing.

Albany WordFest 2008, Part 1Other:Nine

Before I get into the parade of readers who filled the weekend of April 18 & 19, I wanted to draw your attention to the latest in the continuing series that is Other:____, currently edited by AlbanyPoets el presidente, Thom Francis.

Other:Nine contains the work of 16 poets, mostly local, with such familiar open mic names such as Nicole Karas, Shaun Baxter, Chris Brabham, & me. Some, like Hollice Danielle Wiles & Tom Harmon I wish I could hear more of. & others apparently are just hiding out writing poems -- yeh!

But most I was thrilled to see the return of Miss Mona (I didn't know her last name was Ferret, in fact I didn't know she had a last name). Glad to see her back from her world travels as personal secretary to Paris Hilton (or was that Justin Kimberlake?) & hope to read more of her musings in Other:Ten.

Check it out at www.albanypoets.com & find out how to get a copy.

Yesterday's Machine: The Poetry and Musings of J. L'Autre and other people who are J. Dalaba, Dead Man's Press, Inc. (?)

I bought a copy of this chapbook from Jason at the NightSky Cafe & it turns out it's a good thing I did, which I'll get to in a minute. I like to be able to read some of the poems that I've been hearing from poets at open mics so I try to get their chapbooks when they have them. As a small press publisher myself I'm well aware how few poets actually buy chapbooks of other poets & I know that selling one at a reading is a thrill. I've heard Jason read a number of the poems in the book, like "Blend," "Sex & Math" (which has little of either), "Wonder Woman," & "COSM" (which I thought was called Chosen when he read it -- still don't get the title). In fact, in an earlier Blog on the WordFest I cited Jason as the first poet that night that Mary Panza had to cut off; but it turns out he actually finished the poem ("The Secret Utopia of Mole-Man Jack"), though rushed by Mary's looming presence. You can check it out at on the podcast at www.albanypoets.com.

Ultimately I'm glad to have his poems (& photos -- which are provocative, if somewhat murkily reproduced, but then this is what I guess is called "goth poetry"). Although I must admit to being put off by one of his idiocyncrasies of using ellipses (you know, those ...s) in fully half the poems in the book. Grammatically, an ellipsis is used to show an omission in a text & is indicated by ... (3 dots). In some creative work it is used to show a pause, a hesitation, or an incomplete statement in conversation. Here, their use seems inexplicable.

In poetry, such pauses or breaks are often indicated by line breaks, stanza breaks or simply space. In some of these poems the dots go on & on, up to 13 dots, & they even occur at the beginning of lines. Granted, a poet can display his or her poems on the page as they want (as, for example, Charles Olson), but there is usually a discernible pattern &/or justification for their indiocyncrasies. I can't figure it out. But then, perhaps the random use of ellipses is a characteristic of "goth poetry," since I've seen a similar use of these dots in the work of another notable goth poet on the scene.

Again, I'm glad to have Jason's poems in hand. But now I'm at a loss to tell you how to get your copy. Usually books, even cheaply produced chapbooks, have a title page, or someplace in the book, with the name & address of the publisher; I mean, they want you to know how to get a copy of the book. Apparently, the publisher is "Dead Man's Press" from a logo & (probably invalid) copyright notice on the back cover. There is no title page. The first page is really an acknowledgment & "Warning!" (the title & author only appear on the cover). But the "warning page" page does list 3 internet addresses, 2 of which are MySpace sites. The first website (www.Schoolofnight.com) contains no information about the press or the book, but does link you to the other 2 MySpace sites. One of these is supposedly Dead Man Press & the other is Jason's MySpace site. The publisher's site contains no information about ordering the book or where it can bought, but does link you (from a blog entry) to Jason's site (phew!). So if you want to buy the book, go to Jason's site (www.myspace.com/theinterestedparties) & send Jason a message to ask where you can get it (but you need to be a registered MySpace user to do that). By the way, the MySpace internet addresses listed in the book are incorrect.

Poets deserve to get their work out there (even if few will eventually buy it), but this alleged publisher is doing a disservice to Jason by making the book impossible to find.

[Shaun writes that "Yesterdays Machine is availible in the local section of Borders on Wolf Rd. As are works by other local poets." So there.]