: An Evening of Music & Poetry for Peace & Justice, March 20

With poems & songs of peace & social justice at the Friends Meeting House on Madison Ave., Albany NY, organized by the Upper Hudson Peace Action, & co-sponsorship by the Hudson Valley Writers Guild & the Poetry Motel Foundation. 

The house was packed by long time & loyal members & friends of Upper Hudson Peace Action & I was honored to have been asked to be the MC for the evening. The celebration started & ended as well it should with music from the Solidarity Singers who have been performing rousing songs of social protest for decades throughout the Capital District. Tonight was no different, with the obligatory songs by Woody Guthrie, but also with an eclectic mix of songs from still-living musician activists. Although the ensemble has changed somewhat over the years, the Singers are still motivated by the belief that good social movements, like good lives, need good music.

The featured poet for the night was a great treasure of the poetry & arts scene in the Capital District, D. Colin, a multidisciplinary artist of Haitian descent whose creative practice spans poetry, visual art & theater. She has a background in English & Africana Studies & is a teaching artist & curator who creates & facilitates spaces for creativity, storytelling & healing. She is the author of Dreaming in Kreyol, a poetry collection, & two plays, as well as a number of publications & performances at venues both nationally & abroad. Her performance this night included readings from her book & other poems, even singing in her ancestral Kreyol.

After a break for light refreshments, the evening continued with an open mic of music & poetry performances  from the riches of the local art & activist community. The musicians included Chrys Ballurano, Mary Baker with Sheree Cammer (who also performed together with poetry), Mark Shaeffer (with Tom Lehrer’s humorous piece on Huntly/Brinkley), Melanie Pores (with Terri Roben, who also performed solo).

The poets included Sylvia Barnard, Tom Ellis, Edie Abrams (with John Lennon’s “Imagine”), Lex Bhagat, David Gonsalves, Fred Pfeiffer, Charlie Lapinski, Mike McGlynn & Elaine Klein.

These are tough times (some would say it has always been tough times) but, with the seasonal increase of light, we also need each other’s light carried by music & words. 

Keep at it.

Brushes & Pens, January 9

At Mojo’s Cafe & Gallery in Troy. As it says on their website, “Brushes n’ Pens, an evening rooted in community and creative expression. Through spoken word, music, and advocacy, we gather to listen, share, and explore the stories that connect us.”

Interestingly enough all 3 of the poets reading this night had been at the Third Thursday Poetry Night at the Social Justice Center in Albany in December & I, personally, am glad they were there.

First up was Mena Brazinski, who set the tone for her reading with her first piece, “It’s Been 3 Days Since I Thought About Having Sex,” personal, conversational pieces like telling stories over coffee. While musings about sex were a large part of what she read, there was a poem about her grandmother (“Joan”), one based on the movie “The Princess Bride,” one about a friend from school the title poem from her chapbook Other Things That Burn. Then there was the piece titled “Everyone is Fucking Each Other But Nobody Loves Me,” as well as excerpts she read from a longer ramble, “Pussy.” Very entertaining self-absorption.

Juni introduced themself as “I write poems about being queer & hating the government,” & read a string of longer, discursive pieces, but a bit more in-your-face than the first reader. The first piece they read was titled “Pomegranates Are Concrete,” which is an acrostic poem the poet announced after reading it. Other pieces were titled “Pill Bottle Pavement,” the anaphoric “Ode to Dykes,” “Parrot Among Penguins” (about living & Autistic in DC), “Sonnet for Charlie” (a rhyming piece, a screed against Charlie Kirk, “I can read this, I don’t think the FBI is in the room”), “Royalty Free” (a fascinating prompt to imagine all your past Halloween costumes as tattoos on your body), & a piece from a workshop on manifestos, another poem repeating the line “Our dreams …” Quite a tour of the life & feelings of the poet Juni.

The final poet was Mary Panza whom I’ve been listening to for as long as the poetry scene has taken over Albany, & she included some familiar favorites — she has developed “in-your-face” to a science, starting off with “Kiss My Fat White Ass.” “Fuck the Giving Tree” is a take-down of the Shel Silverstein tale. I’m never sure if this poem has a title, but it begins dramatically enough, “I am dreaming of Vim Vender's London …” stacking up images from film noir black & white, on to a portrait of a neighbor “Free-Balling in Work Pants,” & ending with a piece on the lies we were told titled “Painful Religion.” A great lineup of poets with attitude.

Wavy Cunningham rounded out the night with his rap pieces, backed by his own mix tape, I don’t think there were titles, or if there were they were imbedded in the stream of rhymes & alliterations.

Check out the website of Mojo’s Cafe & Gallery for a schedule of their events, donations accepted — at 147 4th St., Troy, NY  

Jazz + Poetry Reading, April 10

at the Opalka Gallery at Russell Sage College, Albany, NY, in conjunction with National Poetry Month & Jazz Appreciation Month (&, I also note, that April 10 this year is “Poem in Your Pocket Day”), with the back drop of the current exhibit, Osi Audu: The Self in African Art.

The evening began with an hour of jazz by vocalist Jeanne O’Connor & Azzaam Hameed on the keyboard, to an enthusiastic, appreciative audience. I like jazz & I like poetry so it was a perfect evening for me.

Local poet Carol Durant was the emcee for the poetry reading, organized in 2 sets, with 5 poets, plus an add-on student in the first set. 

Suzanne Rancourt read first & in her first set read a poem each from her books Songs of Archilochus (Unsolicited Press, 2023) & Old Stones, New Roads (Main Street Rag Press, 2021), & a new piece about AI, “Long Haul.” In the second set she read a brutal, upsetting poem from Songs of Archilochus, then another (not from the book) titled “Tunneling with My Friend Mole.”

It was obvious from the start that Shana Gourdine is a motivational speaker as she read from her book The Mask Behind the Mask a poem in the form of a lecture, “You Matter,” as was the next piece titled with the repeating refrain “Power, Position, Positively.” She continued in the same vein in the second set with 2 pieces about continuing to struggle against hurdles including medical issues, one piece even titled “Overcomer 2.3.”

Josh Herter was introduced as being on the faculty here at Russell Sage College & he read just one short poem in each set, the first titled “The Scent” about the way Autumn smells.

Reading only in the first set was Emma, who is a student at the College. She read a piece about self-image titled “Pretty, Ugly” that cleverly flipped the language in the first part of the piece from negative to positive in the second half, that the audience seemed to like.

Lani Larson began each of the pieces she read with quotes from her own writing; in the first set she read only one piece, “Tortured Poets.” In the second set she read a new version of the well-known “Irish Blessing,” then a meditation on why she writes.

In her first set Carol Durant read from her phone, the first piece a reflection on creativity & community at Eden Cafe coffee shop & performance space, the next was a defiant rant, “In My Hair.” In her second set she read 3 poems from her 2020 collection Cold Pressed and Just Brewed Poetry & had the audience call out random numbers to correspond to the pages of the poems on the book, the audience creating her set list.

Check out the current exhibit at the Opalka Gallery, 140 New Scotland Ave., Albany, NY & check their website for other activities & events there.  

Brushes & Pens, January 3

This is a new reading series (started last month) run by folks from Hell Yeah Lit & held at Stacks Espresso Bar in Troy. It was billed as “a mixed media word showcase” due to an informal group of musicians who jammed after the poets were done reading. The MC/host was apparently named Eric.

Poet Anna Boughtwood was first to read; I’d seen her read last year at the Word Fest Open Mic held at the Sand Lake Center for the Arts. She started with “Have You Tried Yoga?” (a poem of pain), “Hunger,” “Good Veins” (having one), a love poem “The Press of the Compass,” then a couple about real estate, one a dream of house as a hell house for revenge. I liked her edgy, quirky poems.

The second reader was introduced by simply the letter “L” who said she had not read any of these poems out before tonight, beginning with one on procrastination. Her poem “Chunky” was about a character in the video game Minecraft (she said); then a memory of a meeting in a dive bar years ago; one titled “Life & Death by Popcorn;” the short poem in rhyme “Canine Dreaming;” & one about her complicated love of Winter.

In contrast to L, the next poet, Michelle Améliore Polacinski, had the longest name on the program, which was too much for the host who introduced her just by her first name. She read her poems from her phone, said many were “unhinged,” beginning with “Somebody Loves the Culligan Water Man,” then to a love poem of sorts, “Follow Me on Social.” “Poem About My Neighbor” was about a well-known Troy street cat; “Climate in September” was in the category of eco-poems. Set in the Mall “100 Fucking Dollars” was a commentary on consumerism, then she ended with what she said was her most “unhinged” poem, the ironic “Everything is Fine.” 

The last 2 readers, Ian Ross Singleton & Natalya Sukhonos, were actually given top-billing on the program so I guess one could say that they were the "featured readers." 

Ian read from his translation-in-progress from a novel by an early 20th Century Ukrainian poet & novelist, Yuri Ivanovych Yanovksy (1914 - 1961), about the sea & hanging out in Odessa. Ian is hoping to have the novel translated & published in English in 2026. Ian’s published novel, Two Big Differences (2021) is also set in Odessa (as well as in Detroit), a gritty, urban, “punk” tale set against the Maidan uprising in 2014 in Ukraine. It’s a work I’ve enjoyed very tremendously, as much about language as it is about the main characters, Valentine from Detroit & Zina, an Odessitka. Tonight he read the roiling section from the end of the novel where Zina drowns in the Black Sea (which is very much a character as well). 

I have heard Natalya read her fine poetry a few times in recent years, including when we read together at the behest of the NYS Writers Institute during last year's solar eclipse. She is author of A Stranger Home (Moon Pie Press, 2020). This night she read unpublished poems, starting with one titled “Ars Poetica with Spider & Keychain” the prefatory poem to a new collection she is working on, then a poem about her great grandmother from Odessa, a dream of apples; on to a piece from a translation project of stories/testimony by Ukrainians. “The Beast” was a poem for her mother, the “beast” is cancer; then a poem about migrants dying in the desert trying to get to a safer, better place, “Over the Border & Then Nowhere.” Her next poem, “Ode to Guatemala” was a happier piece, from a family trip; she ended with a seasonal poem, a reaction to the Winter, “Dear January.”

Although the flyer had advertised “The Musical Stylings of The Freedom Jazz Dancers,” the musicians that were individually introduced were a more informal group that provided an eclectic backdrop to the scattered discussions about the poems we had heard.

All in all, a stimulating variety of poets & poems, in a pleasant cafe setting, not just coffee, but also local & New York State spirits; Stacks Espresso Bar in Troy is at 13 3rd St.

All Genre Open Mic Out of Bennington, June 11

Back in Bennington — not really, this is a Zoom event — again for poetry. Our host, Charlie Rossiter got us off & running with his signature open mic intro rap — 2 rounds, 1 poem each round.

I’d Zoomed in early & ended up 1st on the list. I’d been going back into my poem vault & pulled up a couple from the past, the 1st, “Noble Truth;” in the 2nd round a take on my favorite poem to recite when I’m at the beach, “Not the 'Walrus & the Carpenter'.”

Tim Verhaegen’s 1st round poem was titled “Almost Gay,” gazing at a younger man,  pondering what his future might be; in the 2nd round he read “I Want It to Be Over” about going to an open mic that was not his cup of tea & went on & on.

In her 1st round Sharon Smith read some advice about what one should do today, titled “If;” later in the 2nd round she read a poem from a poetry workshop, a work still in progress, perhaps titled “21,” with a recurring line beginning “not sure…”

Sherri Bedingfield began with a Nature poem,”Impressions of Flanders,” in the early Spring, “the trees are waiting…” published in an anthology from Orenaug Mountain Publishing; in the 2nd round she read a poem of tender affirmation, “The Field,” for her son.

Our host, Charlie Rossiter, in his 1st round, read a group of Haiku with comments on a variety of topics: on nature trails, a friend in hospice, a cemetery; in the 2nd round read “Lovers Night” that used an evocative line (“I enter her garden”) from a Chinese poem.

Ginny Folger’s 1st round poem, “Deferred,” was a mediation on love & sex, on time & aging; her 2nd round poem was titled “I Remember Being An Aerialist,” with an epigraph from Edgar Allen Poe. 

Both of Tom Nicotera’s poems were from a poetry workshop, the same workshop that Sharon Smith had been in; the 1st round based on a prompt about trading places, “Trading Places with Donald Trump;” the 2nd round poem was from a different prompt, the poem ‘The Dream,” about a street corner preacher. 

Bill Thwing brought out his guitar for both rounds, thus fulfilling the “All Genre…” in the title of this Zoom, in the 1st round, a sad, wistful song that can be found on Soundcloud.com, “Gaza;” in his 2nd round he sang “Foggy Days & Foggy Nights,” a song based on a poem written by his wife. 

Jim Madigan dialed in from the mid-West with a poem about a town after a tornado, “Beauty & Heat in the Ruins;” during his 2nd round he mentioned that he has had a full-length book accepted by Broadstone Books, read a poem set in the West Bank “Olive Grove,” about settlers attacking an old man celebrating the budding of trees. 

Julie Lomoe read a poem in her 1st round written today, “The Old Crone Blues,” in the classic blues form, perhaps proving why some say white women can’t sing the blues; then in her 2nd round brought the evening to a close with “The Terrors of Motherhood” a poem about her daughter, from her Proof of Process book being revised. 

You don’t have to be in Bennington, VT to attend this open mic, I’m not. It happens on the 2nd Tuesday of each month at 7:00PM EDT. If you are not already on Charlie’s email list, email him at charliemrossiter@gmail.com & ask for the Zoom link. Poets/writers/musicians sharing writing & music.

Book Launch: Ephemera by Sierra DeMulder, July 27

This was a rare trip for me to Caffè Lena twice in a month, both times for poetry, & a rare event here as well: a book launch. However, this being Caffè Lena, the opening act was a singer-songwriter (the mother-in-law of the feature performer, poet, Sierra DeMulder) Peggy Lynn, who was clearly a veteran of this stage.

Peggy Lynn’s set was what most think of what Caffè Lena is all about, a performer on the famous stage with a guitar, or banjo, singing songs of social import, or about going on down the road, or rebellion. Such as her opening “Color Outside the Lines.” Actually, Ms. Lynn played both the guitar & the banjo (not at the same time, of course), her banjo piece was a funny song about god. There was also the obligatory “new song,” hers about being on St. Regis Mountain. It was fun, the songs left you feeling good about yourself.

You can find a recording of her performance, as well as that of Sierra DeMulder, on the Caffè Lena Youtube channel. 

I first saw Sierra DeMulder read at "Invocation of the Muse" at Lark Hall in Albany in December 2022, but prior to that she had published 4 books of poetry. Tonight was the launch of her 5th book, Ephemera (button poetry, 2023), which she described as “about the peaks & valleys of life” & she offered up a generous selection of over half the poems in the book. There were poems about the death of her grandmother, about her ectopic pregnancy (more death), as well as poems about her daughter’s birth, & some tender love poems for her partner, with the ghost of poet Mary Oliver hovering over.

DeMulder has a professional, well-honed reading style & stage-presence, as you can see on the Youtube segment, undoubtedly from coaching & her time spent on the Slam poetry circuit. She was twice a runner-up for Slam Champion at the Women of the World Poetry Slam (WoWPS): in 2010 in Columbus, Ohio she was the 11th runner-up, & in Minneapolis, Minnesota in 2013 she was in a 3-way tie for 8th place. In her reading tonight she avoided the ubiquitous stylized Slam gestures & clichés, while using her best stage voice to present her work.

If you are into poetry, the Caffè Lena Poetry Night, now in its 21st year, happens each 1st Wednesday of the month with a featured poet & an open mic for the rest of us, sign-up at 6:30PM, the featured reader at 7:00PM. The rest of the month you can find jazz, & more folk singers than you ever thought existed. Worth the trip from anywhere.

2nd Tuesday All-Genre Open Mic Out of Bennington, December 14

This reading remains on Zoom because it makes it possible for performers from Illinois, Pennsylvania, Connecticut, even from relatively nearby New York to attend. The host is Charlie Rossiter who keeps us here by having 2 rounds of 1 piece each.

I was first in both rounds, began with poem from a visit to University of California at Berkeley that looks back to a poem by Allen Ginsberg, my poem titled “My Sather Gate Illumination,” then in Round 2 on to a philosophical response to a comment in a bar, “My Lucky Hat.”

Kenn Ash reprised the piece he read in Troy last Sunday (see my Blog) “A Xmas Farewell” in rhyme, a character wallowing in his memories, then a suicide. In his 2nd round read an anaphoric list of the big & small “I Am From.” 

Jim Madigan said his first poem “echoes Kenn’s,” with sad images from everywhere, titled “Unhearing Universe.” Later in the 2nd round he read a descriptive piece titled “On Spittle Beach,” on the West coast of Ireland, knocked down by the breeze.

Sally Rhoades read a pandemic poem, “I Haven’t Had to Change Time Zones,” looking back, a meditative review of finding herself, & memories of her mother. The 2nd time around she read from a poem-a-day project written to a prompt: “little known during her life,” a family memory triggered by a postcard about Aunt Grace, & her siblings, including  Aunt Polly, who has appeared in lots of Sally’s writing.

Our host, Charlie Rossiter, said he was going back through old stuff & found poems in WordPerfect, read one about being with his grandmother on a bus sitting with a black lady (& also started a discussion of WordPerfect & the changing world of word processing). His 2nd round poem was written in Bennington, “One Chilly August Morning Something Happened” a memory of Minnesota, loons, bacon, Scrabble, … don’t let the details get in the way of the poem.

Bill Thwing read about the Halloween onslaught in a suburban neighborhood, “Luzerne Street Never Rests.” In the 2nd round he played his guitar & sang his song “Riding on a Hurricane” written last year, on political themes & news stories.

Last month Tom Nicotera read a poem titled “Thanksgiving Poem at Great Pond” & today he read “Thanksgiving at Great Pond Revisited at Sunset,“ a descriptive piece & ultimately a meditation on God. For the 2nd round he read Robert Bly’s “Starting a Poem” with its metaphor of words as relatives invading your life. 

Tim Verhaegen also read a piece he had read this past Sunday in Troy at the 2nd Sunday @ 2 open mic, “A Boy Walks on the Train Tracks Alone as a Freshman in College.” Then in the 2nd round a gay relationship poem, 2 men on a date, “It’s a Miracle,” that they got past sex, actually exchanged names & went on a date.

Ah, the great variety of a poetry open mic. This one happens of Zoom on the 2nd Tuesday of the month at 7:00 PM EST, if you are already on Charlie’s list he will send the Zoom link a few days prior; if you’re not his list, send him an email & tell him you want to read, charliemrossiter@gmail.com.

How I Spent New Year’s Eve, Day, 2020 - 2021

New Year’s celebrations are alway problematic for me — New Year’s Eve is “amateur night” while New Year’s Day is my traditional Open House. But this year, in the Year of COVID-19, my problems were solved: nothing was happening anywhere, nothing was "normal", I stayed home all evening & day. It was odd, quiet, but I stayed negative. I immersed myself in 3 over-lapping events, Highlight House Party out of Vermont, the Poetry Project 47th Marathon in NYC, & Perfect Pitch Extravaganza from Kingston, NY, playing in the background while I made dinners, breakfasts, shaved, changed clothes, etc.

Highlight House Party

I was invited to this event, which ran Thursday (December 31, 220) 1:00PM to Friday (January 1, 2021) 1:00AM, by 3 Guys from Albany co-member Charlie Rossiter, who got me a friend-of-the-band discount ticket. Highlight is Burlington’s new virtual New Year’s Eve celebration, produced by Signal Kitchen & Burlington City Arts. The festival brings "Vermont’s leading artists, doers, and thinkers together to showcase our community’s creativity through lively festivities for all to enjoy," thus says the promotional material. Charlie & his son Jack Rossiter-Munley performed as Big Roads at 7PM — more on that below. I put on the program(s) as background to my New Year’s Eve.

The event was on a platform called “Run the World” which is an all-in-one platform to host interactive online events, workshops, masterclasses, shows, and conferences. There were a confusing array of overlapping acts, shows, etc. at once that you could toggle between, music, of course, but also circus acts, cooking shows, yoga, folk music from places suck as Tibet & Madagascar, each lasting 45 minutes to an hour. There was plenty of bad singing & dreamy plaid flannel shirt guitar songs from performers bedrooms & living rooms, sort of like “Wayne’s World” come alive, some folks just doing stupid shit. Many, if not most, of the programs were spoiled by bad or sub-optimum video quality which looked like the bad copies of TV shows my kids used to record on VHS tapes.

Charlie & Jack’s energetic performance as Big Roads was one of the more polished, due largely to Jack’s skilled & practiced guitar-picking, & Charlie’s deep knowledge of the Blues. The tunes they covered were Blues songs made known to the pop music audience by having been covered by bands such as the Rolling Stones, but also an obscure hit from the late 1950’s by Lieber & Stoler about “the terror of Highway 101,” as well as their own “paranoia rock” version of Bob Dylan.

Another refreshing performer was singer-song writer Julia Rose who performed with a variety of stringed instruments & a skilled use of the loop machine; her mother is another poet with an Albany connection, Susan Riback.

One program I enjoyed with my New Year’s Ever Happy Hour martini & spring rolls was a reading from a new book The Essential Ruth Stone (Copper Canyon Press), edited by her granddaughter, the poet Bianca Stone. She was joined by poets Didi Jackson & Gary Margolis, reading Ruth Stone's (1915 - 2011) grim poems of grieving & of Winter, which is to be expected, I guess, from this long-time resident of Vermont.

 

47th Annual Poetry Project New Year’s Day Marathon

At 11:00PM Thursday night I switched over the the Poetry Project’s Marathon in New York City, which ran for 25 hours to Midnight, January 1/2. In the last hour of 2020 the prosecco was already gone & the music was like “Gloomy Sunday,” that legendary “suicide song,” but at least the quality of the videos was mostly better than that from Vermont. As the name dropping performance of Penny Arcade & others took us into 2021, I was already anticipating that, just like in most New Year’s Eves in the past when I put on corporate TV shows, I was already heading into a string of tedious performances, just in a different way.

At midnight I blew out the candle, my wish is that it’s got to be better, just get the racists out, get Trump into prison. Already I’m going to sleep in 2021 & will wake up in 2021, just like it was in 2020 — more peace vigils, more poetry, & sometime, I hope, more hugs & our words out in the air instead of a corona virus.

Lewis Warsh reading at home of Pierre Joris & Nicole Peyrafitte, May 2000

Tuned back in at 9:30AM, while I made coffee, breakfast (I missed online breakfast crêpes with Nicole Peyrafitte & Pierre Joris), to Rosemary Waldrop, then Don Yorty who said “words are birds” & my parakeets, Uccellini & Aria, agree, on through the day with the words in the background —Sophie Robinson dressed like a Puritan reading “Fucking Up the Rocks,” Edmund Berrigan in a fancy party mask, Rachael Wilson’s quotidian poems, Onotara James & Ricardo Maldonado’s “diptych” of sonnets on 2020/2021 that I really liked. A black & white film from 1978 of Bernadette Mayer reading dream poems, (later during a tribute to Lewis Warsh, he reading from the same event), also home movies of them Bernadette & Lewis, their kids, when Greg Masters read from his memoir It Wasn’t Supposed to be Like This (which is going on my to-read list).

At 2:00 PM I left the Poetry Project for the mid-Hudson Extravaganza (which is described below) & was back to NYC at 8:00 PM, until the end at midnight.

A number of poets shared works by others (often as memorials for those gone this year), which was a respite from the over-arching egos of so much that I’d heard/seen, & evidenced by so much self-conscious costuming. & even though it was from NYC, the home base of so many “famous poets” the work was just like any other open mic running from the sublime to the inane. There was bad singing of bad songs here too, & tedious performance art like listening to other people’s boring, self-indulgent conversations. But ultimately I was glad to actually not be at St. Mark’s for an in-person event, to be at home playing it in the background, actually hear more of it as I move around my house, make breakfast, lunch, dinner, have drinks, go to the bathroom.

There was Anselm Berrigan reading a long poem-in-progress tribute to Lewis Warsh, & later Lydia Cortés’ tribute as well. Others afflicted with “the Bernadette Mayer curse” — writing down every thought that enters your head, everything that you see, or hear, or do, watching a recording of an Alice Notley lecture/poem from 1988 (which was actually one of the gems of the event for me), in which she says “the poetry of everyday life is basically people talking to each other,” & I realize so much of what I was hearing was also “the Alice Notley curse,” that even when a good poet does it even they can sound tedious & frivolous. The day sort of petered out, as most marathon events tend to do, but I was glad I made to the last hour to hear Anna Kreienberg again, who had once lived outside Albany & attended some of the open mics here.

“Perfect Pitch” The Hudson Valley New Years Spoken Word & Performance Extravaganza

At 2:00 PM, Friday, I tuned in to this event streamed in from Green Kill Gallery in Kingston, from 2:00PM to 8:00PM, put together by Bruce Weber, Joanne Pagano Weber & Therese Costa. Apparently it was pre-recorded at the gallery in October & November which made it possible to bring in lots of production values the “live” performances could not. It was also enhanced by the cut-out mobiles, decorative background of the gallery installed by Joanne. Each hour of the 6 there were 6 10 minute segments, individual readers, with a musician or musical duo each hour, & each hour introduced by a mid-Hudson poet, including Bruce Weber, Mikhail Horowitz, Teresa Costa, Sam Truitt, Phillip Levine, & Joanne Pagano Weber.

It was a pleasant mix of poets I’m familiar with, have even featured at the Third Thursday Poetry Night &/or Poets in the Park, & heard at open mics in Woodstock & Kingston, others I was not familiar with, but was to glad to hear. One issue I had was that each hour’s listing of the performers was in alphabetical order, but that was not the order they read in so I had to be careful if I tuned away from a performer I would have to check back in the next few minutes to see who was next.

During the 2:00 to 4:00 segment I heard a short story from Suzanne Bennett, Celia Bland reading from Cherokee Road Kill, poems by Fred Dugan who was new to me, Anne Gorrick read a poem based on Facebook comments, Ken Holland’s fine poems, the humor of Mikhail Horowitz on press release hyperbole (he was the host of the 3:00 - 4:00 hour), Paul McMahon on guitar a better singer than most I’d heard all day, a bass guitar improvisation Abby Travis, Matthew J. Spireng reading poems from his recent book Good Work, poems by Tamas Panitz, Pamela Twining, & Bruce Weber (who was the host of the 2:00 - 3:00 hour).

Teresa Costa, at Albany SJC, August 2017

In the middle segment from 4:00 to 6:00, Teresa Costa hosted the first half & read “The Art of Handwashing,” while Sam Truitt hosted the second half with a hobo jungle chant & drumming, there was Michael Bisio all over his stand-up bass, the quiet, descriptive poems of Robert C. Basher, the rhyming fables of Jennifer Bennett, Andy Clausen’s effusive, ranting catalogs, Guy Reed on sex & love, the humor of Sparrow (who also on Poetry Project), as well as poems by Lily Dunlap, Cate McNider & Sarah Vogill. 

In the final 6:00 to 8:00 segment host Phillip Levine included some of his short poems written on playing cards, the duo of Sylvie Degiez & Wayne Lopes provided music in the first hour, while the music in the 2nd hour was by another duo Karen Whitman & Rick Pantell, I enjoyed the folksy poems of Richard Comerford about being a farmer & making wine, Laura Hinton read from a book-in-progress The Little Book of Human Violence that I would love to read, Mike Jurkovic reading some favorites from other readings, Allison Koffler on the soul of her dog Cole, Dayl Wise’s poems colored by his experience in Viet Nam, Michael Ruby read his political poems while his niece Abby Travis (see above) accompanied him on electric bass, Joanne Pagano Weber hosted the last hour read a memoir of childhood, there was as well as the poetry of Josepha Gutelius, & Vladimir Nahitchevansky. & a charming piece by Jeffrey Cyphers Wright with puppets for his granddaughter.

Perhaps because this was all pre-recorded, but also certainly because the quality of the work was less ego-driven, more genuine from the heart words & music, this was for me the most consistently pleasant, even inspiring event of the 3 events in this day & a half, moving into the New Year, celebrating creativity, in words & music & community. 

Happy New Year!