Salon Salvage, September 30

Apparently this was #13 (!) in this monthly series in Troy at Weathered Wood on Second Street. It is coordinated & hosted by Matthew Klane & Amie Zimmerman, who split the duties for the intros. This night, 3 poets & a filmmaker. 

The first reader was Jennifer Nelson who read from her book Harm Eden (Ugly Duckling Presse, 2021), with poems mostly on political themes, “Disband the Police” complete with quotes & attributions, followed by “I Hope to Be an Unsettler” noting that today in Canada is “National Day of Reconciliation” with first peoples. Other poems were titled “Don’t Kill Yourself,” “The Belief” & “Laws” (for a friend, an academic & singer).

Stephanie Cawley, from Philadelphia, read just one poem titled “To the Lighthouse” (& yes there was a reference somewhere along the line to Virginia Woolf), like a letter to a friend (“you”) about their infatuation, feelings, desires, & plenty of sex, the lines sounding stacked up, like the way she read it. If I still smoked I would have needed a cigarette afterwards.

Alina Pleskova, who was also from Philadelphia, but was born in Russia, has read in Albany in August at The Linda (see my Blog). As at that earlier reading, she read from her recent book from Deep Vellum Press Toska. Many of her poems are long, discursive, grammatical. “Take Care” mixed robots, immigration, eco-issues, with “take care” as a sign-off. Her poem “Meanwhile,” according to her, had been referenced in Stephanie Cawley’s poem (I guess I missed it), but the similarities are the obsessive talking about themselves in both of their poems. The other poems she read were “Sacred Bath Bomb” &, as she said, the only love poem in the book, “Elusive Black Hole Pair.” 

The final piece of the night was film titled Decantation, by Kalpana Subramanian, a melange of sounds of water flowing, the sea, wind, images of the sea, hands under water, even of a box of film leader, as well as old film clips, images of military operations, hands, the sound of a sitar. Somewhat like a poem built on a string of images that the reader is tasked with finding the links, if one is looking for what we used to call “meaning.”

This series continues on the last Saturday of the month at Weathered Wood, 13 Second Street, Troy, NY — find Salon Salvage on Facebook — come for the poetry, get ideas for unique home & garden decor. 

2nd Tuesday All-Genre Open Mic out of Bennington, June 14

Our host, Charlie Rossiter, who had started this open mic in Bennington at a brew pub pre-pandemic, never got 13 poets showing up to read, but tonight, on Zoom, that’s the number he got. As much as some people see Zoom as limiting “human contact,” or whatever, tonight he drew in poets from 4 states to share their creative work. I love the in-person open mics & readings, I love the hugs, but I also love hearing the work from poets too far away for me to get to their town, or for them to get to mine.

Charlie likes to do 2 rounds, generally 1 poem each round but you know how unruly some performers can be. I raised my hand first so I was first on the list with a new poem about my friend the Albany poet Joe Krausman & a piece about him (not an obituary) in the Albany Times Union. Bridget Elder, from Vermont, was right behind me with a poem about her cat from a new series she is writing “Out of the Corner of My Eye.” Sheryll Bedinfield was “here” from Connecticut with a piece about walking along a pond path, about her father, orchids & other plants.

Representing Western Pennsylvania (but not really representative of that area from my understanding), Bill Thwing sang a song, a hymn written 40 years ago “My Rest is in You Oh Lord.” New Yorker, Mark O’Brien, but just as rural as Bill, read a piece based on a piece in the Altamont Enterprise from 1882 about a horse startled by a steam engine (I guess there were no mass shootings to write about, thankfully). Linda Eagleton was here for the first time & her 1st round piece was a prayer titled “The Song for Everyone.” Kenn Ash is a regular here, lives close by, read a long  string of Haiku, about walking in the woods. 

Charlie Rossiter (not in Bennington)

Our Bennington, Vermont host, Charlie Rossiter read an old piece titled “Performance Art” with a woman in a cage giving art a bad name. Tom Nicotera, like Sherry Bedinfield, was in Connecticut, he read “A Fragmented Life” from a prompt at a workshop to write something with with a train in it, & worked that into nightmare poem about just making the train to work. Naomi Bindman is nearby in Vermont, read her essay accepted for the Friends (Quakers) Journal “Journeys End,” a chapter from her memoir, about where she went as a child every Summer, later as a counselor.

Laura Ellzey is also in Vermont, she read a memoir of her father, “The Swing." Elaina Barrett just moved yesterday to a place not far from Bennington, but still in New York State, & read the colorful “Green Defined in Websters.” Julie Lomoe frequently talks, & writes, about a sub dural hematoma she had a couple years ago, read an anaphoric piece about an X-ray of “My Mother’s Head.”

Back around for the 2nd time, I recited my original “Joe Krausman” poem dating from about 1990. Bridget Elder did a similar cat poem to the one she did in the 1st round. Bill Thwing sang a song he wrote from the lyrics written by Kenn Ash, “Getting too Old to be Young.” Mark O’Brien returned to an old newspaper article with the headline “The PostOffice Cat Was Dead” with sonnet he wrote based on it.

Linda Eagleton read about her work as a therapist in a piece title “Attention.” Kenn Ash added some variety by improvising on his muted pocket trumpet. Charlie Rossiter dug into the archives to read a revised older piece about going to the bird sanctuary in Grafton, New York “A Day at the Bird Farm.” Tom Nicotera was back with a quieter piece, a bird poem titled “Heron Mind.” 

Naomi Bindman in her 2nd round read a new poem on aging titled “Senescence” that I heard her read Sunday in Troy, good to hear good work again. Laura’s 2nd round poem was a quick drive by titled “Annihilation.” Julie Lomoe closed out the night with another sub-dural hematoma piece a linked series of “Thanksgiving Haiku.” 

If you want to join this multi-state, eclectic group on the 2nd Tuesday of each month you don’t have to drive, put on shoes, or pants, just get the Zoom link from Charlie by asking for it in an email to  charliemrossiter@gmail.com — hope to see you “there”

Compass: A Chapbook in Film, October 23

This was the premier screening of a collaborative project between poet Mary Kathryn Jablonski & filmmaker Laura Frare, at the Saratoga Arts Center. The project was funded by the New York State Council on the Arts, & had originally been scheduled to be screened at the Saratoga Springs Public Library, but has been cancelled three times due to the COVID-19 pandemic restrictions, until Saratoga Arts opened up their space for this event.

I have known both these artists for many years. Laura Frare did the cover art for my 1st book, Meditations of a Survivor (A.P.D., 1991), & I published Mary Kathryn Jablonski’s book of poems To the Husband I Have Not Yet Met (A.P.D., 2008). I have also seen some of their prior video poems at the Hyde Collection, & at the University at Albany Art Gallery.

Compass: A Chapbook in Film consists of 9 short pieces, poems read (or sung) by Jablonski, at times accompanied by traditional &/or original music. Local musicians Mark Tolstrup & Dan Hubbs provided some of the musical backing. The run time is about 35 minutes, but viewing it seemed outside time. As one audience members commented, “it was a transcendental experience.” The combination of the often dreamy videos, bending & twisting images of birds in trees, or wandering in a cemetery, the tide washing over sand, with the words of the poet spoken quietly, & the music, sometimes familiar, sometimes new, had me drifting. While I’m glad to not have the text of the poems to distract me, the experience begs to be repeated. There is in the piece titled “So Many Mothers” an almost abstract image of a close-up of a sewing machine (this filmed by Jablonski) that I realized with a shock was actually run in reverse, the machine un-sewing, so to speak. In “Two Roads/One Road” the image is of driving on a deserted country road, but without seeing the vehicle, so that it was like what we see sometimes in a dream, an empty road twisting & turning, going where? We don’t know.

The theme of Compass is, in the broadest terms, death, the reminder of mortality, as some of the titles suggest (“Flowers named for our dead,” “All Souls,” “Death in Winter”) but more specifically that of a close relative, a brother. One could say that death is all around us until it touches us directly. Five of the poems in the film have been published in Tupelo Quarterly or Atticus Review. But reading them, as masterful as they are in print, is not the experience of seeing the film, where all the elements — words, images, music, sound effects — blend & circle around each other, evoking that “transcendence.”

One can hope that Compass, A Chapbook in Film, will be shown in other venues, perhaps even at the Saratoga Springs Public Library as originally planned, in other libraries in the Region, or other arts/entertainment venues. I certainly would love to see it again.