**ME & GLENN WERNER - WPS Reading**

"Poets CHERYL A. RICE and GLENN WERNER will be the featured readers, along with an open mike, when the WOODSTOCK POETRY SOCIETY & FESTIVAL meets at Golden Notebook (Upstairs), 29 Tinker Street on Saturday, February 14th at 2pm.


The readings are hosted by Woodstock area poet Phillip X Levine. All meetings are free and open to the public.

CHERYL A. RICE'S work has appeared in Baltimore Review, Chronogram, Florida Review, Home Planet News, Metroland, Poughkeepsie Journal, The Temple, Up The River, and Woodstock Times, and in the anthologies, Wildflowers, Vol. II (2002: Shivastan Publishing), Riverine (2007: Codhill Press) and For Enid, With Love (2010: NYQuarterly). Recent publications include Kingston Is Burning (2013: Flying Monkey Press) and My Minnesota Boyhood (2012: Post Traumatic Press), and the CDs Nobody Slept Last Night (2003, Another Poor Bastard Productions), and Girl Poet (2007, Flying Monkey Productions). She has presented her Random Writing poetry workshops for over a decade. Rice, founder and host of the notorious Sylvia Plath Bake-Off, is a Long Island native, but has spent the last 35 years in New York's Hudson Valley. Her poetry blog, Flying Monkey Productions, is at: http://flyingmonkeyprods.blogspot.com/.

GLENN WERNER has been part of the Hudson Valley poetry community for a little over 15 years. His work has been published in Chronogram, The Waywayanda Review, The River Reporter’s Literary Gazette, Up The River, A Clean, Well Lighted Place, 4th Street, Snow Monkey, and Home Planet News, where his poem "Anfortas Waiting" was nominated for a Pushcart Prize. He is a member of the board for the Calling All Poets Series in Beacon, NY."

*Writer's Block & Therapy*

I've been seeing a therapist for about a month and a half now, due to some issues that I was no longer comfortable boring my friends with. And trust me, I did enough of that this year. So, in that time, and maybe for a while before that, I haven't written one poem. Now, there are times that I say that and go back into my files and find one or two that have somehow leaked out and avoided my conscious memory, almost like they don't count as poems. But that's not

the case now.

            As usual, I had a flood of ideas after the Dodge, and two or three of those became poems, but after that-- just silence. I don't really let these silent times bother me much, because I have learned from experience that I will come around to writing again. I am, however, contemplating the connection between therapy and writing. Is it a drain on my creative resources? Is the break my Muse is taking related more to the holidays than the biweekly sessions with a loving,

receptive sounding board who validates my essential sanity and instincts? Or is it that, because most of my poems are of such a personal nature (hopefully personal in a way that is universally recognizable and accessible), I am afraid that the therapist is my only audience right now, and my best "material" is going to her and not the page?

            There is no doubt that I was in need of an objective ear. I have been fighting depression on and off all year, the kind that won't just go away with a little yoga or Budweiser. And I don't anticipate that this round of therapy will go on forever. But I am a teeny bit anxious about writing. Anxious now to get back on the literary "horse" I rode into this blog on, and so much else in my life that's worthwhile.

            I still trust I will, but for now, I am doing the mechanical work of being a poet. I have sorted through twenty years worth of poetry, cleaned out files and thrown away multiple copies of no use. I managed to complete the application for the New York Foundation for the Arts fellowship in poetry, offered only once every two years. I read a few old Christmas poems at a party yesterday (invited to, incidently, NOT forcing myself on an otherwise jolly affair!). I went to a terrific reading on Saturday night hosted by my friend Rebecca Schumejda and featuring three talented Hudson Valley writers: Guy Reed, Glenn Werner,

and Will Nixon. I am still going through the motions.

            I have made some notes for a drawing that I'd like to begin. A sort of expression of my anxiety this year. For the many who don't know, art and writing were neck and neck in my life for many years, before I chose the language route in college. I even earned my Regents diploma in art. I still keep drawing supplies around, but rarely use them. Perhaps this quiet time is the time

to go back to that nonverbal express. Or, a time to restore visual art to my creative options.

            I do trust that I'll be writing again soon. I have projects planned. But this time of year, everything seems to be planned for "after the holidays". I am coasting now. It's OK. I'm still breathing, therapy is going very, very well, and I look forward to seeing more friends over the course of the season. All is well today.