Anyone who was not here...

for Potluck Poetry Day missed out on the best poetry event in my experience, anytime, anywhere.

The pot luck worked out great - some eggs, some sausage, some fruit, donuts, puff pastry, sweet rolls, kuchen, quiche, juices, desserts. (Thanks go to Darcy and the Library Friends for the fruit platter.) More instruction was necessary with the coffee machine - can't you people remember anything?

Mimi and husband Dan were the first ot arrive and about the last to leave. Dan and Beach Boy Burke set up tables and chairs and Mimi got started on the food layout. Mike also nuked sausage and the aroma was inspiring. As usual, people were dragging in and the eating started late, but the conversation was good and no one seemed to be in a hurry.

It was good to meet and chat with Carmen Hall who brought her family from Albany for her first public reading. Carmen has her own book of poetry and will be signing at Book House on May 24th. She assured me at the end of the day that she had had a great time, in spite or because of our craziness. (I don't know about her patient husband and daughters.)

Performances are what made the day remarkable for me. I considered Larry to be at the top of his game as he wow-wed me with his animated rants. I was grinning for the whole thing and thought that surely it would be the best performance of the day until...Ron wow-wed me with his trumpet riffs and casual rolling-off-his-tongue dialogue. Then, wow again, Tom was harmonica-ing like Bob Dylan and I was cursing myself that I didn't have the video camera running.

Obeedude iced the cake with his pirate poem, complete with skull and crossbones sweater knitted by Sarah, swashbuckling hat, eye patch and dead PARROT! We all sang along with his chorus to wind up the afternoon on a very high note.

Ladies, although we had some great poems, we were definitely outclassed in the presentation department this time. The room was bursting with energy.

Many, many thanks go to Dan Wilcox whose poet photos are in our display case. Dan dug out pics of some of us from the early days of V'ville poetry. They will be in the case through the end of April.

Some of you told me you didn't have a chance to look at the scrapbook and photo album I put out on the back table. They are now in my office if you still want to look.

Mimi and Cathy and Edie stayed for clean-up, and have my eternal gratitude.

Dennis announced an exciting development in Poetryville. He has initiated a monthly open mic called Sunday Four at the Old Songs location on Main Street. His co-osts will be Mike Burke and Edie Abrams. Every fourth Sunday will offer a featured poet and open mic between 3 - 5 p.m. This sounds good....

The Happy Blog Goddess

A short recap on a full house

Love in its varying incarnations seemed to be the theme on the 10th.
There was a dimpled love poem from Dennis that surprised us with its charming simplicity.
Mimi said that Joyce "upped the bar" with artwork that accompanied her dragonfly love.
Dan Lawlor dedicated his rose-laden ode to mother's love to his sister; good rhyming, good rhythm.
Tim's lament for a dead lover made my heart ache. An ultimate love poem with a very effective reading. He should have been on stage with a spotlight. He wants me to say he was awesome.
Philomena's They said there would be cake garnered kudos for the perfect title.
Paul's piece was a descriptive sketch of Barn Cats.
Mimi was awesome in the classic good vs evil battle over the gambling tables in Vegas.
We all agreed that a tense change and pruning some connectors would benefit Stacey's tender Journey Home.
Everyone laughed at Edie's successful language experiment aboutbeing unable to sleep. Good one. Uh-------------m.
Art needed to enlightened most of us as to the identity of Jacques Derrida (a French deconstructionist philosopher, in case you didn't know either).
Ally wrote down all of our feelings about the "dying in our sleep" prayer parents make small children say.
Controversy of the evening was over Alan's "snow stick, no stick, snow no stick, snow stick" which I STILL don't get.
Stacie remarked that Tom's AARP Guide to Mating in Captivity (another great title) portrayed "the essence of a woman's again with wonderful sweetness."
Obee practiced his performance piece on us and I had nothing except an appetite which I assuaged with a Smittyburger

I'm baaaack

tHom did a great post for the last meeting. I would like you all to bring me copies of the wonderful poems I missed.

I will see you on Thursday. We'll talk (briefly) about brunch - this Saturday!

bv

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

We all go smash to the floor

Happy Birthday, Mr. WIllis...Art got birthday pecks from all the ladies, and then Dan chimed in to say he was having a birthday on Saturday, so he collected some, too.

"Smash to the floor..." is a line from Duma Key by Steven King, which I just finished reading and really got into. Plebian tho my taste may be, I love Steven. My poem reverberated with King images, being naked and pursued by monsters from the ocean who want to devour our tasty, salty morsels.

Tom had spitoonias in his poem (basically about Cate Blanchett in various incarnations) The guys all talked about the dreamlike quality of it, bringing dreams to the page and other interpretations. I just thought it was Cate as Harry Potter. Silly me.

Alan (now found although I didn't realize that he had been lost) steadfastly refused to change anything in his poem after everyone made suggestions and we debated about the capitalization of Arctic (arctic?).

Bless Joyce. She vented about Eliott Spitzer (Tom said that his poem was about Switzer, too), but did it so cleverly that no one knew what she was talking about. Narcisscism disguised as a "Traffic Violation" - "(sex) traffic", get it?

I learned a lot from Dennis. I did not know that the "Celtic Tiger" was the economic and technological boom which brought Ireland into the modern ages, but benefitted so few. The moral was that money corrupts, at least it didn't help the Irish. As the reader, Edie had a bit of a problem deciphering his elegant handwriting.

I will be away for the next meeting and see you all on April 10, which is two days before our brunch. Bring spouses and friends, bring juice, donuts, quiche, bagels, egg dishes, store-bought or home-cooked...whatever your imagination inspires. I have ordered a fruit platter and will have coffee, tea, cocoa, etc. It starts at 11, so I can use set-up help around 10:30 if anyone can come early. I am inviting anyone with a talent to bring a musical instrument for a (short) performance or just background music.

Passed on from Alan (not his): "I didn't know if I was a man dreaming I was a butterfly or a butterfly dreaming I was a man." I like that.

BTW, Tom and I were at Dan Wilcox's house on Sunday, visiting with Charlie Rossiter who was here from Chicago. Charlie was instrumental in starting the V'ville poetry revival back in the early 90's and it was good to see him.

Dan is bringing some of his thousands of poet photos for our display case in April.

I am hoping to see Larry and Susan and Ron and other old friends at brunch. I have been reminiscing and remembering what a great writing thing we've got going here.

There follow

...a few photos from the Perfect Blend. Art is with his grandson Abe, Dennis is exiting the Ladies Latrine, the unfamiliar face is Larry the Great Rapant.

Just a note to tell you that people are here and not here for the next few weeks. Philomena, the Beach Boy, the Glebe Homie, Ally Cat and Olliesmom are all having vacations. I will be in Florida on March 27th, am hoping Tom will take charge. The April 10 meeting is only two days before our brunch, so we need to go over the arrangements next week.

See you on the 13th.

at the Perfect Blend

Yesterday I Was A Clam on A Half Shell...

Mimi was glad that Dennis didn't "dump his whole brain on the page". Good opening gambit for the evening. I don't do clams myself, but really liked the image of being gobbled up with a salty Margarita. Alan said Dennis' ideas didn't mesh and Tom went on about the "scaffolding", but most of us seemed happy with it.

Dan's opera "Scena in 9 acts, a prologue and an epilogue" were fun and clever, with good rhymes and extremely funny. Bev wrote a universal experience - attending an uncle's funeral and observing the relatives. We all had suggestions for tightening it up. Alan rather stridently called down the lightening with some great lines, including "I stand indifferently on the earth". After I got past the part about the golf course, you know "the masters", I liked it.

Mimi was great with a poem pointedly not about her father (of course it was) but Alfred T. Bascomb, a dead drunk, a really dead drunk, I mean. We talked about a title change. Stacey wrote The Empty Poem, in verse, a modern rhyme that was gentle and simple. She called it an academic rhyming exercise and explained why she taps her fingers. Catherine did some nice repetition, we discussed line breaks and rhyme. Isn't it funny how rhyme has been intruding its head lately?

Tim was back in the elevator overhearing conversations. This was a real drama and ended hilariously with a multiple choice question about motherhood. "It's all in the reading." Edie was totally, totally obscene and deserves to be punished. She did make a political statement. Seven dirty words to outrage the reader.

I was glad to see Joyce, although I misinterpreted her poem which turned out to be a straightforward description of Deception not a commentary on Christmas with her family. Sorry. I insulted Tom mightily, I'm afraid by offering the consideration that he end his poem after the third line, meaning that I liked the dumpster lines a lot and didn't follow the rest too well. There was some hysteria in the crowd. I had no poem so maybe I shouldn't criticize at all. I may be on hiatus again.

Announcements included Three Guys from Albany in town this week, please come to artist reception here on March 9 (I will attempt to link to flyer), Alan handed out postcards for an appearance in Maine. Pot Luck Poetry Brunch is on April 12. We will discuss.

Joyce went home and got Steve to join us at Smit's. Obama talk ensued at my end of the table.

I just had a nice chat with Susan Riback and BBBurke dropped off my Girl Scout cookies.

Maybe not perfect, but good

Sunshine, blue sky
Coffee smells
Fur collars
Tie dyed socks
Irish sweaters
Dangly earrings
Bev's little feet
Siver braids (like my Aunt Kate's)
Abe on a stool (Mr. W.'s grandson)...
all things that stick in my mind from the Sunday reading.

We performed in a beautiful sunlit room to a SRO crowd, peppered with familiar faces.
Beach Boy Burke appeared in company with Larry "the ape"Rapant. Larry is sporting a head of lovely grey curls and it was a happy thing to see him. Also happy to see Susan Riback, smiling and glowing, and former EOTNP Jill Crammond who has moved on to her own successful pursuits. Also there was Mimi's friend Marion Menna who comes to our special events, and Jan Tramentano (a former VPL employee) was passing out flyers for her guest appearance at Cafe Lena in March.

We got to meet Art's son and grandson (who was very patient to sit through all our adult nonsense). Art read his brief, moving piece that accompanied the National Geographic photo he brought to a meeting. Dr. Pierce (Jennifer) arrived to prop up Alan, who did a great organizing job, thank you, Alan. The line for refreshments was a little slow, but the coffee was worth waiting for and the desserts looked good, altho I managed to restrain myself.

Stacey and Bev were there, and some spouses. Dennis led off with Irish poems, naturally, then Mimi read tributes about her dad, and I ranted about Darfur and Iraq and Hillary (who has incensed me to new levels). O'beeduid a good poem from a little book that he and Alan have been working on.

Tom entertained mightily with another little publication titled Searching for Bobby Fischer that was the most popular piece of the afternoon. Corrado is quite a showman. Also to note that he is continuing to exhibit at the Lark Street gallery, this time several of his latex sculptures. Check with him for details.

Benevolent Bird and his hat read his Christman takeoff and took more time than the rest of us, but seeing that he was the supervisor, I guess that was okay. Edie, in her braids, passed out print copies of her three poems and wrapped things up.

Oh, yeah, because Dan Wilcox was otherwise engaged, I brought my little red camera and took the liberty of photographing - not the poets who I am tired of photographing, but the audience, which was more interesting. I captured a photo of Dennis emerging from the ladies room (he was good - we heard him wash his hands).

Six of us chowed on pizza and burgers on the way home. We talked movies and Oscars and New Scotland zoning (Edie is warning of a Target). Tom and I left before the conversation disintegrated into a political exchange; I am feeling very fiesty about politics at the moment.

I started passing out flyers for the Pot Luck Poetry Brunch in April. We will discuss this Thursday, this week, meeting. See you all, I hope.

Short Stuff

Two small things to report.
Post card came from Dennis the day after the meeting speaking of stubbed toes and the broken vows of saddened monks.
I also have an announcement of the Rip Van Winkle Poetry Competition that BBBurke won a pile of cash in two years ago. It is local, the deadline is March 31 and I have details.

See you Sunday.