A Night (of Poetry) To Remember

Our fearsome leader and blog mistress, Barb, vacationing in Florida, missed an evening of superb poetry with lines that will linger in memory for months! Top-notch stuff! Paul kicked it off with a well-wrought sepia’d portrait of his immigrant grandfather who knew how to keep his mouth shut, and whose cellar reeked of homemade wine. Excellent! Then Dennis stepped up to the plate with a dedication to Pablo Neruda, and images of a Mexican girl scorched in the desert and an arm hacked by machete that took me at least to the set of a Coen brothers’ film. Mike, influenced no doubt by the recent flurry over Six-Word Memoirs, presented a spare yet highly effective dissection of the dissolution of a relationship. Titled Over Done Gone, it had many of us oohing and ahhing. Mimi’s incredibly powerful reminiscence of her mother, Hymn of the Moth, ended with the marvelous Crushed powder from the moth’s wings. Bravo! This was followed by a fun romp with Stacie’s Cat Militia, and Dan’s Rewards, an ironic and highly successful departure from rhyme, pinpointing the consequences that Christ suffered at the hands of a troubled world. The suggestion to change Dan’s They to We was trumped by Edie who reminded us that the drama portrayed in the poem was not universally applicable. Art then took the floor with his meditative Query, yet another fine example of a lot from little. Cryptic, it left many of us puzzling over its simple elegance. Magnificent! Obeeduid’s the truth about quitting (the Director’s Cut) transported us into a dream state with his kids / swinging on trapeze / juggling chainsaws, induced by none other than a Smoker’s Patch! Delightful enough to make some of us reconsider lighting up! Well, not really! My Dark Horse, according to Art, made noticeable the richness of Everyman. Golly! Thanks, Art, I couldn’t have said it better! Tim’s untitled self-described experiment with a different style had us gushing over its success, a gushing that spilled over into the 19th hole at Smitty’s. A poem about friendship in which the poet saw pajamas with feet / big bunny ears / pulling you in my little red wagon / from Sydney to Halifax, a few of us thought the first line, I Wish We Had Shared A Womb, would work very well as the title. The title of Philomena’s submission Kill Them and Take Their Stuff was her son Andrew’s one sentence world history of video games and the virtual world of flowing manes and burning hoofs in which he perfects his maniacal laugh. The pronunciation of maniacal split the group, casting Dennis against the rest of us. He got into a huff, left the room, and returned with Mr. Webster in tow. We quickly overpowered him (and his associate) with our own maniacal laughter! Edie’s bittersweet Legacy, spoke to her ineptitude as Great Auntie Edie the Dessert Chef, with a dollop of jam on her nose / Flour in her hair, but / No grandkids of her own, and was hailed by many as her best effort to date. Indeed, it was a tribute to her evolving unique voice. After an hiatus of far too many months, Ron returned with Holy Week, a tight, shimmering, painterly evocation of another form of legacy, with its women / standing in house dresses, fish slipping / between their ankles, the men dozing in / wavy seaweed. Wonderful! It was truly a Night To Remember, as we closed the library and cruised on down the road to Smitty’s for refreshments and more poetically-tinged chatter!

Respectfully submitted,
tHom