Professor Java's Wide Open Mic, October 8

Sad to say this was the last in this series that has run on the 2nd Monday for the last few years, an open mic for both poets & for musicians under the auspices of AlbanyPoets.com. The original host was Keith Spencer, with Kevin Peterson taking it on the last few months. Tonight, there were only poets to perform -- "only poets," did I just say that? There were a few regulars & even a new voice, & part of the night spent trying out names for Thom & Carissa's expected baby (with the last name of "Job" I think you can guess what some of the more snarky suggestions were).

I was up first (since #1 was still open after most folks had signed up) with a couple from a new series of poems based on a break-up letter from a few years past, "Opinions" & "different tastes in music." Harvey Havel, a prose fiction writer who has been here before without reading, read a short story, playing on the concept of "skeletons in the closet." Two of Joe Krausman's "3 poems of Death" involved famous people, "Is he Dead?" (Yehuda Amichai) & "Ted William's Head," the other was his "Salad Days" with images of onions & tomatoes. Our pleasant host, Kevin Peterson, regaled us with a recitation of the Gilbert & Sullivan piece from HMS Pinafore, "I Am the Very Model of a Modern Major-General," always much better sung, but a tour de force in breath control.

The new voice, Misana, who said she has read at Caffe Lena & here previously, enchanted the poets here tonight with 3 poems, the first an intense saga of serial incest & brutality, then the sexy love poem "Unclothed Love, the Chosen" & the self-affirming "How Do I Love Me While Loving You," all delivered with a relaxed use of rhyme & bright, vivid images. It was only fitting that AlbanyPoets' el presidente Thom Francis would be the last poet to read, beginning with the new piece, "To the Darkness of the Night," a brilliant collage of lines of poems culled from an internet poetry site, then a piece he dubbed "the worst poem ever," about a night of drinking & smoking at the neighborhood bar (was this any different from the poems he pulled the lines from for his first poem?).

Venues come, venues go, that's the nature of the poetry scene. Check out the calendar on AlbanyPoets.com for many more open mics each month.

Nitty Gritty Slam #27, October 2

A packed house because St. Rose cancelled classes & the poetry professors sent their students to Valentines (wish they would do that on a Third Thursday sometime). There was a long list of open mic poets so I signed up for the shorter Slam list, which got more takers too.

Mojavi played host for the open mic & mercifully kept his stand-up comic routine under wraps so we could get through the night before he had to report for class tomorrow. First up was the only sitter for the night, John Kohl, who tried to get the audience to clap along with his Tom Waits impersonation. Matt Alegretti & Monica Mitsakas did a collaborative piece with alternating lines. Sadie "E." Hickman read "LOL Do you Love Me." Sarah Sherman used the basement to explain the hidden in her piece "Deep Down."

Brett Petersen began with breakfast & images from childhood. Juliet Barney's notebook piece was filled with teenage angst. Jackie Kirkpatrick read what amounted to an autobiography & love poem, about what happened to her at 17. Lauren Darman, who had never read before, read a piece by Carl Sandburg. Jess Listen to My Words got us warmed up for "Cuddle Season." Ashley gave us more teenage angst, this in rhyme. PV, or Poetyc Vyzonz, was his positive self with his "you are a miracle" anatomy lesson. Tasha read an endless list poem to her little sister, "I'm Sorry Is So Fucking Cliché." Laura's piece (unititled?) was pleasantly dirty. & I missed Drew's poem, the last of the open mic, as I was in the men's room (sorry).

An added feature for the night was a performance by traveling Slam poet, John Survivor Blake. Of course, one advantage of a Slam poet being a feature is that they are not bound by the 3-minute rule & can stretch out & go on & on. Blake took full advantage of this tonight. Most of his pieces fell more into the epic story-telling end of the oral tradition, but he was able to keep the audience engaged by the force of his style & his vivid images. His subject was himself, his addiction (his brother introduced him to heroin), visiting his mother in prison, his sister protecting him in the schoolyard, teaching in a youth detention center, hardknocks that were exotic & foreign to most, if not all, in the audience. He did read one haiku, & a brief, short real poem about a woman/anaconda. He has travelled the country performing his poetry (as well as performing in Slam championships) so I found it perplexing that he had not kept track of his time or knew by the pieces he'd done how long he had performed & had to ask "how many more?" like a first-timer on the stage.

Then on to Slam #27 with el presidente Thom Francis as the Slam Master. Mojavi was the sacrificial poet with a hot sex poem. It was a fat field of 9, with Avery starting off with a burn the books performance, followed by Kevin Peterson with his parking poem, then the always positive PV.

Alyssa Niman performed her 1st Slam with a real poem of love with actual metaphors, "I Am a Stripper" -- naturally she didn't do well. I followed with my "Slam Poem" & got a respectable 27.5. Rain Dan's poem "Stumble Upon" had him finding his forgotten poems. Jackie "K" did an anti-slam slam poem, while Alex Sherman-Cross (who did well in Slam #26) read a passionate, positive love poem. Daniella Watson had the sexiest accent of the night & did a metaphysical piece that ended on the right line but way too late & was penalized for going over time.

So when the dust settled the 4 left were me (!), PV, Kevin & Avery. My piece "27 Things to Do with an MFA" got a lot of (embarrassed) laughs but not enough points to make the final round, so it was Avery in 3rd place, Kevin (who ended up in second place) & the winner (positively) Poetyc Vyzonz. As they say in baseball, "one more for the record books."

Nitty Gritty Slam is the 1st & 3rd Tuesdays of the month at Valentines on New Scotland Ave. in Albany, 7:30PM, $5.00, or less with a student I.D.

Poets Speak Loud!, September 24

at McGeary’s Tavern on Clinton Square, especially when we are roasting el presidente of AlbanyPoets.com, Thom Francis, we are not only LOUD but out-fucking-rageous. Of course, led on by our host Mary Panza. But first she had to clear out the room of the open mic poets.

Thom Francis works his own roast, photographing
open mic poet Julie Lomoe

 First up was Julie Lomoe with the wonderfully cranky “A Meditation on Meditation,” in which she confronts the twin demons of pain & boredom. Don Levy explored the urban mystery of “Sneakers on Telephone Lines” & taxi drivers (“Cabbie”). The changing of the seasons is a favorite topic for the poems of Tess Lecuyer & she read “Autumn Equinox 2010,” experiencing the sounds & feel of the woods, & “Fall Equinox 1997.” Ed Rinaldi, dressed for the “hunt,” read us a long piece about talking to his daughter in a dream, ”Dreaming a Hallowed Ween,” once again proving that nobody’s dreams are as interesting as our own.

The newly appointed Secretary of AlbanyPoets.com, Avery, was up next with “Pondering the Silence of a Sunday Morning,” then “Confused,” mixing up the emotions with the reactions he is describing, like a Mime with words. RM Engelhardt has started a new project, The Literary Rogue, now a website, soon to be a journal.  His first poem tonight was a modern re-write of “Hamlet” as a satire on “poor rich kids” while his second piece, “Hipster,” takes on the same dead horse (I guess he’s not a fan of Mitt Romney either), both pieces with negative references to Starbucks as hangout for the well-to-do. Mojavi finished off the open mic with a religious piece, written yesterday, for his son, then tried out a portion of a mix-tape, a love poem, with music played off his phone, the poem better off without the barely heard sounds.

Then on to the Roast of Thom Francis. Of course, “Vodka Mary” had already gotten in the swing of things with her introductions, the Roast simply the institionalisation of her usual style, which means if you interrupt her with something witty (or not) to say you’ll be cut down with a “Shut the Fuck up!” & if your comment is something she wished she had thought of first, it will be, “Ooh, that’s cruel.” Anyhow, she let the old guy go first & I pondered just who is this “Thom Gendron/Thom Francis/Thom Job” who has been popping up in the poetry scene for years & whose pictures are in my files -- I brought copies for show & tell. Kevin Peterson observed (correctly) that everyone in the room who had been married has also been divorced & proceeds to roast everyone. His next best comment was that Thom’s pancreas is more useless than Dale (who was not here). Mojavi’s tribute, “I Thought You Were Taller,” was tender & funny, filled with references to their recent car trip to North Carolina to the Slam Nationals, check it out on FaceBook.

All night long there had been references to Thom’s partner in the poetry/music group Murrow, Keith Spencer, as a serial killer/rapist (or worse, a Republican), & his flowing beard as everything from ..., well you can guess. So Keith had his chance to also take on everyone in true roast style. Ed Rinaldi was back up, briefly this time, with his 2 cents (as my Grandmother would say), then el presidente hisself had his chance to bring the night to a close, graciously recognizing our acknowledgments of what he, Thom, has brought to our community with his poetry, his organizing skills, computer savvy, energy, humor, & killer good looks.

It’s not always a Roast (about once a year) but always fun & usually on the last Monday of the month (we were here first) at McGeary’s on Clinton Square in Albany, NY -- check the AlbanyPoets.com website/calendar for info. You too can be the subject of Vodka Mary’s withering attacks.

Sunday Four Poetry!, September 23

is back, after the Summer off, the season thru June fully booked. & good it was to be back with a glistening string of open mic poets (including a “virgin”) & Suzanne Cleary as the featured poet.

Edie Abrams was the host for the open mic, & began with me in the #1 slot. I read 2 new poems, the political-piece-in-progress “Tuesdays” (about 9/11 2001 & 1973) & the slightly outrageous “Opinions.” Paul Amidon tends to write wry, philosophical meditations dusted with ironic humor & began pondering how he missed the most recent “End of the World,” then considered “Unemployment” & “Theologians.”

Sean Heather was a first timer here & read a couple of animal poems, one about an old woman feeding strays, & “Bird Again,” then a love poem to the “Honey Dew Mellon.” Co-host Dennis Sullivan also tends to the philosophical/discursive & read about imagining meeting himself as a 17-year-old, “No Oar to Measure By,” then the meditation on Death, “Elegy in a Country Farmhouse, for Arthur.” Obeeduid also confronted Death in the figure of his great-grandfather, “Conversations with Dead People.” Joe Krausman left us nervously laughing over a couple poems about a string of disasters, the first about being robbed by a blind man & his guide dog, the 2nd “Imagine Someone on a Highwire” (oh, boy!). Our host Edie Abrams was next & she celebrated both her old (“a New York City girl”) self & her new self, “The New Me.”

Rick Harrienger writes in rhyme & began with reciting the philosophical “Walls” then a poem about real the walls of being in jail, & read the Civil War tale, “The Ballad of Sean Maguire” (more death). Philomena Moriarty’s first poem, “Liberation,” kept to the theme of Death (& the self), then considered the boundaries of self, & settled down somewhat with “Outside on a Summer’s Night.”

 The 1st Poet Laureate of Smith’s Tavern, Barbara Vink, is saying goodbye to this area & moving down to Florida & her poem today was about being up late in her new house there, “Here I Am.” Barb is one of the folks who helped create the varied poetry scene we continue to enjoy in this area, initiating the “Every Other Thursday Night Poets” series at the Vooheesville Public Library as well as many other poetry events there; one could say that this series, Sunday Four Poetry, is the grandchild of the programs she started in this (former) hick town.

Bob Sharkey repeated one of the poems he read the other night (always good to hear good poems over again), “Bear,” then a poem about the homeless in New York City & the St. Patrick’s Day Parade. Howard Kogan, another NYC transplant, has been collecting stories in his rural town & read 2 poems based on them, “Ben’s Thumb” & “They Took the Wife.”

Dennis Sullivan introduced the afternoon’s featured poet, Suzanne Cleary, who gave an entertaining, well-planned reading from her published poems as well as work from a forth-coming collection. She began with the improbable “Sausage Candle” then on to the breezy narrative on her hometown expression, “Anyways.” “Polka” was like instructions for the dance, while the new poem “Edward Hopper’s Paint Box” was an exercise in seeing. “Italian Made Simple” was a love story played off 2 characters in a language instruction book, & she returned us to the afternoon’s inadvertent theme of talking to the dead with an elegy for a friend, “Into the Night.” She ended with 2 poems from a new book Beauty Mark, the dream poem “Swimming with Miss Peggy Lee” & “Cheese of the Month Club.” Her poems were discursive, conversational, often funny & deep too, but suffered in a different way from some of the same weakness of Jared Paul’s performance Friday night: that of “everything but the kitchen sink” (& sometimes the sink too), exploring a topic by including every possible variant rather than poetically focusing on the 2 or 3 images that best do the job. But, like Jared Paul, again in a different way, very entertaining.

So, thru June, check out the poetry, & bring your own poems to read, on the 4th Sunday of each month at the Old Songs Community Center in Voorheesville, at 3PM.

Occupy Albany/Jared Paul Reading, September 22

Occupy Albany teamed up with AlbanyPoets.com & touring performance poet Jared Paul to present a high-spirited evening of performance & politics at the Social Justice Center in Albany, NY.

To start off the night & to represent to the gathered crowd (part of) the range of poets here in Albany, Thom Francis, el presidente of AlbanyPoets introduced a handful of us to read, beginning with his own new poem composed of lines from poems on the Web that actually worked as a poem itself. Kevin Peterson from the Nitty Gritty Slam Team began with a poem/lyric by Ani Defranco, then on to one of his signature pieces, what I call “the hangover/diner poem.” I followed with my piece written after visiting the Occupy DC & Occupy Philly sites last October, “One Day Longer,” then a poem read recently at a meeting of the Albany County Legislature, “If Peace Broke Out Tomorrow...” Another member of Albany’s Slam team, ILLiptical did his “Dark Knight” poem, often performed as a group piece, for the victims of the Aurora, CO shooting, then a new piece combining a homage to the wrestling star The Rock with his own role as a Slam Poet.

Jared Paul is a slam poet from Providence, currently on tour. His performance was high-energy, political & often filled with the cliches of Slam, though most of his pieces were extended performances beyond the bounds of the competition limit of 3 minutes. His ABCDerian piece on white immigration from Canada combined some of the best elements of his politics, energy & spit. And speaking of spit, he entertained us with a vigorous “bicycle vengeance” poem, landing a hawker on a cabbie’s windshield. He could quiet down as needed with a gentle love poem, & sing a bit as in a re-mix of a capella & hip-hop, a touring litany. But the rambling meditation on a train from Chicago to Salt Lake City was just too much as he threw in just about every thought he had on that long trip. But it was nice to end with a “victory story” about a police bus-load of arrested protestors singing the national anthem, & a chant right off the street. A energetic performance that the crowd loved.

I was pleased to see the Occupy Albany folks mixing it up with the AlbanyPoets who have occupied the scene for years.

One interesting aside: during Jared’s performance a guy wandered in from the street, thought it looked like a political meeting & wanted to talk about the environment. He was soon ushered outside, but explaining his urgency he said, “I always find out the next day about what’s going on.” Ain’t that the truth...

Third Thursday Poetry Night, September 20

at the Social Justice Center, competing with a couple other poetry events in Academe the same night, we still had 5 poets in the open mic & a number of non-readers who came to hear the featured poet, Cara Benson. But first I invoked the Muse, the Gloucester poet, Vincent Ferrini & also played Willie Loco Alexander's settings of Ferrini's words.

First up was Schenectady's (& the World's) Alan Catlin, to read a poem in 2 parts, referencing Leonora Carringon, Dorothea Tanning, & Max Ernest, "Dopplegangers."  Chad Lowther was back out at the open mics with a couple experimental pieces recently written in a workshop, "Love Song 28" (not sure who it is for), & "A Karaoke Bop," a procedural poem based on a song lyric played through a voice-to-text program, a favorite technique of the workshop leader Tomas Noel. Bob Sharkey also brought a couple poems, first reading about an encounter with "Bear," then a re-worked piece about St. Patrick's Day in NYC, "Curtains," cops & a chocolate shop. Matthew Klane also does experimental pieces, read 7 small "word investigations," strung together as if 1 poem. I tried out a new piece, still being worked on, about September 11, 1973, "Tuesdays."

It was a night of experimental writing from not just the open mic poets, but from our featured poet, Cara Benson. She read a new piece from a long work, "How the End Will Come," with the section titled "Cara Benson." It was a dream (right?) about doing a reading unprepared, & trying to fix the dream. Slowly the reading, her actual reading of the text, begins to break down, dramatizing what is happening (vomiting) on stage in the dream, but the audience (in the dream/poem) doesn't seem to notice. It was a compelling & at the same time uncomfortable performance. Then, strangely seamless, into a piece about a discussion with her boyfriend about Abraham Lincoln, & Teddy Roosevelt, then another piece (or part of the same one?) & a list of names of famous people, a list without Teddy Roosevelt & another (?) piece like a post-something sci-fi story. Or was it all part of the same dream of a reading & an audience (that doesn't seem to notice)? It really didn't matter, the audience (this real audience at the SJC) sat in rapt attention.

We gather here, no matter how many other events are going on in town, at the Social Justice Center, 33 Central Ave., Albany, NY on the third Thursday of each month, $3.00 (or more) donation supports poetry & the Social Justice Center.

Live from the Living Room, September 12

but the living room of the Pride Center without the comfy couch & over-stuffed chairs, a bit more Spartan, one would say. But then our host, Don Levy, made it pleasant enough.

Kristen Day photographs her Mom, Marilyn Day

The featured poet(s) was the mother/daughter team of Marilyn & Kristen Day who did a tag-team style reading, often linking their poems to each others. One cluster was about children & growing up, including Marilyn's "Chiaroscuro," Kristen's funny account of dueling remotes, then back to a poem about the son/brother, "Offspring." Marilyn included poems to/for/about her husband, Bill, such as "Safari" & "Provincetown Honeymoon Florida Vacation." Another of my favorites of Marilyn's was an exercise on color, the roller coaster poem, "While Watching the Film on Black Holes…" (paired with Kristen's "Phobic").  Kristen included some of her more humorous pieces, such as the outrageous "Pick A Poem" & the work poem, "Summary of a Meeting." But the highlight of the night for me was her reading once again the dream-within-a-dream poem, "The 6:20 & the 2:45," one of the best "9/11 poems" I've heard. If the night had ended there I would've gone home on clouds.

But the night continued with a string of open mic poets, including me with a new, old-relationship poem "Adirondack Life" & a love poem "The Meaning of Roses."

A new face/voice Josh Handley began with an untitled piece about reading, then into wide-ranging random philosophical jottings. Joe Krausman read a bit of personal history as a "registered pauper" in Boston looking for a rich woman, "45," then a meditation on who aren't "Experts." Sally Rhoades read an old poem "A Trip Home," then the wonderfully domestic sexy "A Naked Swim." Julie Lomoe read an old poem from 2002, another 9/11 poem "In Memoriam Windows on the World." To bring us all home, our host, Don Levy read another in his series of high school poem, "Nerd Is The Word," & the gay-fantasy from the Food Network, "Poem for Cowboy Josh."

One of the more relaxed & informal reading/open mic series, held at the Price Center of the Capital Region on Hudson Ave. in Albany, NY, on the 2nd Wednesday of each month, 7:30PM, & always straight-friendly.