How to Be Inappropriate Book Party, October 23

Just a quick note about this event (& the book, by local prof Daniel Nester) at Valentines. Since there was pizza, lots of drinking & Karaoke that night, my notes dissolved in beer -- but I did get a few pictures. Noteworthy stage performances, in addition to Nester reading mercifully short segments from the book (we all were impatient to sing), were Tony-the-Intern doing "I Am the Walrus," & Katie Vermilyea giving it her best shot in Pat Benatar boots -- with lace stockings! Of course, I was fantastic doing "Wild Thing" & "I Wanna Be Sedated," both with key lyric changes -- hey, you had to be there, & you missed it.

I read How to Be Inappropriate (from Soft Skull Press & currently available at the Book House) mostly during commercials while watching the baseball league championship series. The book has the expected inappropriate topics like farting & a "study" of ExtenZe (if you don't know, Google it), but is really a clever marketing device to get undergraduates to buy the book for the 2 really fine, thoughtful (& largely appropriate) memoirs clustered towards the end of the book. "Goodbye to All Them" is the story of the author's leaving New York & the poetry scene & finding a home in Albany. "Garden Path Paragraphs" takes us through the complex issues involving him & his wife trying to conceive a child (NO, he did not need instructions on how to do it), the eventual birth of their daughter & the beginning of finding what "Fathering" means. In fact, Miriam was there this night at Valentine's briefly but we never did find out what song she would've performed if she had the chance. Perhaps the theme song from "Sponge Bob Square Pants"?

Wize Wordz, October 22

Bless had just been the featured poet at the Third Thursday Poetry Night at the Social Justice Center last week & handed out flyers for this event, at Ballinger's on Howard St., so I just had to check it out. There was a slow start as folks found their way in, but we eventually go going, doing a couple rounds before taking a break.

Bless started us off, pointing out the "soapbox" stage, & wondering, "Sometimes I ask myself why I do what I do... why do you speak?" I realized the audience needed something hot, so I did "Phone Sex" (the poem, not actually calling someone up) from memory. Passion Poet followed me with "Alter" (or it could be "Altar") about her need to perform, to be on stage. Sam Perkins was being autobiographic, looking back, "that's alright" (which is the audience response to each poet who performs, when Bless calls to us after the poem).

Suddenly I was back, & did my love poem to "The Lilacs." Then Sam Perkins sang about "traveling this road of mine" which became a hymn to girls in turtle necks. And Passion Poet continued her story about her history, her love of poetry in "Ego."

After Bless did "Jazz" he started something with a guy-poem about not apologizing, which got Passion Poet's ire up & she responded by telling us what's a real man. Tanesha brought us back to the real world of police murder in "Almost a Will."

Sam Perkins gave us the 2 sides of love with a loud cry that "you're gonna love me" then a fabulous poem on love dying, how "we really don't dance anymore..." Nickey Black came in on the tail-end of the love debate with the bitter "Fuck Love." And Bless tried to redeem himself with a deep love poem.

The night continued, I'm sure, but I had to leave, & I will be back, hopefully, on the next 4th Thursday at Ballingers (in the downstairs/basement bar), 7:30 it says, but it's on "CP-Time" (as folks say) so plan on starting late. Worth waiting for.

Bowery Poetry Club, October 18

I was privileged to read at this hotspot of NYC poetry in the 4th Sunday poetry slot, with open mic, hosted by George Wallace. Once before, a number of years ago, the 3 Guys from Albany had performed on this stage. I was just a few blocks from where I once lived many years ago, & if memory serves me right, this space was some sort of industrial supply store. Where have the bums gone?

Susan Maurer was the first feature, reading from her new book Perfect Dark, available online from ungovernable press. Her topics ranged across the globe, from swan Boats in Boston, to being on Amtrak, to "Mozambique," to a zinc mine in New Jersey with day-glo rocks, to hanging out "With the Unbearables." It was refreshing to hear her say about one poem that she wasn't sure what it meant.

I paid tribute to my NYC past with "Matins & Lauds" from Meditations of a Survivor (A.P.D., 1991), then read last year's "The Cardinal." I was thrilled to have some of my children there & so read for them "Jack Sketching" & "To Madeleine" (thanks, kids). I returned to Albany with "The Wall." The dreaded audience-particiption piece was "Labels & Names" & I ended with "Peace Marchers at the Viet Nam Memorial."

I had seen Linda Lerner, the third featured poet, read a while back at the Colony Cafe in Woodstock. Her poems are generally short, urban, often taking down those stuck on themselves, like professors lecturing on the blues, or performance poets, or "Mr. avant-garde Comes to a Brooklyn Diner." Her city images came through best in "The City Feeds Me Hungry," or the ordinary day of 9/11 in "The Scream," & "Riding on Amtrak to NYC from Philadelphia."

I didn't see a sign-up sheet, George just scanned the audience for the poets & asked them if they wanted to read. As a result, I'm not sure I got all the names correct (& sometimes George didn't say the last names), so feel free to send me any corrections if necessary & I'll make them as I get them. After a poem describing the Lower East Side, Miriam Stanley had a cluster of love/sex poems, including sex in a pool & in Central Park. Loren O'Brien considered the dilemma of going "Back to Him." Patricia Carragon read poems on a tapestry, & about subways among others, later traded books (Journey to the Center of My Mind, Rogue Scholars Press).

Roxanne Hoffman's poems fluttered around birds, "A Red Feather Song" & "Space as Poor Sparrows" in Autumn. Andrea wondered "Are You Getting this All Down?" as broccoli & her self disappeared in her poem. Russ contrasted Vermont ("Green Mountain Meditation" on the elections) with NYC & Cornell West. Then the great thrill of seeing our Albany friend Nicole Peyrafitte (now living in Bay Ridge) come to the stage to sing, just like she was back at Justin's on Lark St.

What a great day -- friends & family in the audience, new poetry friends, some even eager to come to the mytho-poetic land of Albany, who would've thunk? As I was leaving, the next poetry act was setting up, none other than Anne Waldman, but I was tired & hungry & we had to leave. Maybe one can rent a room over the Club & just live there?

Third Thursday Poetry Night, October 15

I invoked the muse of César Vallejo (1892 - 1938) with a reading from his Trilce (in translation by Clayton Eshleman), then on to the open mic for a while. Alan Catlin started us off with a Halloween-related poem, "Mechanical Lazarus." Tim Verhaegen was back & read "What If I Said" deconstructing conversation, effective even when read only once. W.D. Clarke was anxious to get on the road to get to Canada but stopped by to read his short poem about "Taps" ("Butterfield's Lullabye" is the original title of that tune). The birthday-boy Don Levy read his poem about the Duggar family with 19 kids, poor Mom.

Bless, our featured poet, is an experienced spoken word poet who came out of the NYC slam scene. But his work is real poems recited with feeling & honesty & without unnecessary theatrics or a lot of explaining. He began with "sweet jazz sounds" that are his influences, saying he doesn't need the poisons of smoke & alcohol to write or perform. Then one about a conversation with a homeless guy, who picked his pocket. Then his take on "The Perfect Life": do we really want it? "Traffic" was a tale of being stuck in the madness & rush "to get there" but then realizing the delay was due to a child being hit by a car. He is now hosting Wize Wordz open mic at Ballingers, 42 Howard St., on the 4th Thursdays, that I will get to next week & report back.  Tonight, he left the audience wanting more, the best compliment.

I followed the break with my poem from the summer, "Respect." Moses Kash III followed me with "Gee, Thanks for the Party." The appropriately acting Matt Galletta read, again, his poem "Shooting Cats." Sylvia Barnard read "To Harry Patch," the last British World War I veteran who died last year, anti-war in his later years.

Anthony Bernini had his driveway sealed & "The Scent of the Earth" was the poem that followed. The venerable Ted Adams is often in the audience at community readings, but tonight was the first time he was signed up to read, & he recited a love poem to a tree. Shirley Brewer was back again visiting from Baltimore with advice on "How To Kill Time."

We do this each third Thursday at the Social Justice Center in Albany (on Central Ave. between Henry Johnson Blvd. & Lark St., starting about 7:30 PM.  Your donation helps support poetry programs by the Poetry Motel Foundation, & helps the Social Justice Center.

Live from the Living Room, October 14

Our straight-friendly host, Don Levy, began with reading "Buffalo Bill" by e.e. cummings, whose birthday is today, & "90 North" by Randall Jarrell who died on this date in 1965.

The featured poet was Jason Crane, whose poems, he said, had been rejected by all the best poetry journals (sounds familiar). His poems are simply stated, straight-forward accounts of events in his life, like the neighbor's new baby coming home, or meeting family he hadn't know, or watching the election returns, even about his bookshelves. He read a long work in progress based in New Orleans that described the approach of hurricane Katrina; "Robbie Burns' Hat" on the annual "beret-toss" memorial ritual in Albany; & "Luxury Hotel" from his experience as a labor organizer. He also shared his love-poet side with "The Menagerie," a poem about meeting his wife, & the gentle narrative of love & sex, "The Soft Friction of Sliding Glass." Jason is also the master of The Jazz Session website, interviews with jazz players, reviews & musings.

I lead off the open mic with 2 jazz themed poems in Jason's honor, "The bass player's thoughts..." & "Acrostic Jazz," for Thelonious Monk. Bob Sharkey shared his thoughts on the first sight of his daughter & the fear of all that can wrong, then read "For Herself & her Soul" with images of autumn animals, geese & the war. Sally Rhoades was just back from a trip to Cyprus & included a poem about dressing up in words, being fashionable with books.

Thérèse Broderick's poem "Smile" was a word game using as many combinations of the letters in her title as she could come up with. Matt Galletta knows how much I like animal poems & so did his ironic "Shooting Cats." Don Levy, on the eve of his 49th birthday, read "Old Man Levy He Just Keeps Rolling Along," the poem he read recently at the UAG Gallery, but with a new title.

This is a cozy, intimate event each month, with a handful of poets gathered around, informally chatting, listening to poems, gossiping. I recommend it (on the 2nd Wednesday of each month at the Gay & Lesbian Community Center on Hudson Ave. in Albany, NY) knowing all too well that if everyone came to it, its character would change -- but then that's not necessarily a bad thing either, as Heraclitus once said.

David Chorlton, October 13

Alan Catlin had alerted me that David Chorlton would be passing through the Albany area so I invited him to come & read at a "salon" at my house, in an intimate setting with select Albany poets. David Chorlton has lived in Phoenix since 1978 but he was born in Austria & grew up in Manchester, close to rain and the northern English industrial zone. He is the winner of Slipstream's 22nd Annual Poetry Chapbook Competition for his chapbook From the Age of Miracles.

David is lean, grey-haired & craggy, with just the right touch of an accent to complete the image of the poet. But it is his work that proves he is a poet. This night he gave a brief, well-planned reading from work in his chapbook & other poems. He has found a way to combine political statements with images in poetry without the abstract big words (you know, "Justice," "Beauty," "Truth," "Soul," etc.).  See his "Letter to Pasolini" ("...how a communist could fit inside a sports car..."), "The Invisible Demonstrator" or "Letter to Puccini." He loves the desert ("Nothing") & referred frequently to the writings of Edward Abbey. Contemporatry poets writing philosophical musings or political cant can learn how to turn their scribblings into poems by reading what David Chorlton has written.

In "Postcards from the Time of Waiting" he writes,

While we wait
we read anything we don't need
to remember. Printed words
have become grains
of sand in an hourglass.

Not these.

Albany Poets Presents: No Gimmick Open Mic, October 9

I'd missed the first of this new series last month so made a point of getting here to check this out, in one of my favorite venues, the UAG Gallery on Lark St. The host, of course, was Mary Panza.

I signed up first & read with a nod to Halloween, "Zombie Gourd," then the sexy "The Beach" & "In the Oval Mirror." Cynthia Solywoda did a poem in her made-up language, followed by the translation; then "Sweet Jane's Descent" a song for a prostitute with the great line, "it's never easy being easy;" & ended with a piece for an Iranian girl killed by mistake.

"Murrow" is Keith Spencer on guitar backing up Thom Francis' poems. Thom faced a new day, a new blank page, then a poem to an angel with her wings tucked away. Don Levy had a new poem written last night for this new series, "You Have to Have a Gimmick," addressed to politicians & poets; "Getting Older by the Minute" on his up-coming birthday, & the Partridge Family tribute(?), "If the School Bus is a Rockin' Don't Come a-Knockin'." Chris Borzek has come to a few open mics & his poems are plagued by awkward meters, goofy rhymes ("clarity/parity"), & forced metaphors (a rose in a desert in the Winter?). But he is bold in trying his work out & just needs to read some poets writing in the last 50 years or so, & listen to what others at the open mics are reading -- & his own inner voice which I'm sure doesn't talk like that.

Michael Purcell likes to confront political & social themes in his meanderings, like his "Alternative Reality TV" with made up sponsors, or "Heroes," with the occasional appearance of God in a Mother's Day card. Bob Sharkey is one of the local poets that younger scribes need to listen to; tonight he tried out flash-fiction in "Greatest Miser Ever Was," then read again "All for the Masses," which improves with each hearing, & one about visiting an old friend in the country, "Going Up."

This is a relaxed, casual new series, a good way to start your 2nd Friday evening each month, still plenty of time to catch some music elsewhere or lurk the pick-up scene, at the UAG Gallery, Lark St., Albany, NY.