Poetry Month 2019- Part Two!

My last blog post, purporting to be about the first half of my National Poetry Month, seems to have skipped about from event to event, without rhyme or reason, so to speak. This entry will attempt to fill in some of the blanks, and restore some sense of chronological sensibility to the goings on.

Before there was Albany, there was Teresa Costa’s monthly Word of Mouth Poetry Series, held at the elegant ARTBAR on Broadway in Kingston. A combination art gallery and wine & beer bar, the show changes every month, and is skillfully curated by Allie Constant, and now her young assistant, Beckett Constant, born in March and already an important member of the Constant team. Dad Andrew has assumed many of the barista duties now, too.

Teresa’s features on April 11 were Alison Koffler-Wise and Dayl Wise, founders of Post Traumatic Press. Based in Woodstock, PTP was originally created by Dayl to provide a place for the writings of veterans he was encountering at Veterans for Peace and other activist events. The press has broadened its mission to include environmental and historically-based collections, and even the work of just plain poets like myself. Full Disclosure: Post Traumatic Press published My Minnesota Boyhood chapbook in 2012, and mine and Guy Reed’s Until the Words Came this past spring.

They are a terrific duo, in life as well as in poetry, and complement each other well when they co-feature. Alison specializes in poems about natural and animals. She’s recordings the goings on for years of the family’s two beautiful dogs, so much so that I feel I know them better than I do. Dayl’s work directly sprung out of his experiences in Vietnam, direct and honest recollections, but has evolved to include childhood and politics, too. I highly recommend reading their work, or better yet, hearing them read the next time you get a chance.

 The Starr Library in Rhinebeck decided to continue the Poetry Month recognition they started in 2018. thirty-four readers came on the evening of April 13 to read work the library had been displaying, framed on their walls, for the previous few weeks. About fifty in all attended, including my Handler, and I ran into an old acquaintance who, to my regret, remembered me far better from the old days of the Woodstock Poetry Society under Bob Wright's gentle whip than I her. But I hope to see Ann Braybrooks again soon. Refreshments were served, and considering the positive response, I'm sure that Nan Jackson and the rest of the crew will throw a similar bash in 2020. 

Stayed tuned for Part III, and the Woodstock Library event that there's no room for suddenly here!!

Hallmark- Curse or Blessing?

As well as being National Poetry Month, April is the birth month of the writer and poet Maya Angelou. Best known for the first of her many autobiographies, I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings, her poetry was equally celebrated, and in 1993, she became the first poet to read at a Presidential Inauguration since Robert Frost.

In 2001, however, Hallmark presented a decently designed line of greeting cards that featured Angelou’s words. Nicely done as they were, the idea of selling one’s poems, especially the poems of such a distinguished writer as Maya Angelou, really rubbed me the wrong way. It smacked of the kind of cheap self-exploitation that I would never have expected of her.

Maya Angelou documented in detail the many jobs she’d done to support herself during her life: dancer, fry cook, sex worker, actress, and activist. In the last few years of her life, in constant physical pain according to her son, she completed several additions to her ongoing memoir, including one about her relationship with her mother.

Why can’t I completely shake the idea that Hallmark cards were beneath her then? They were beautiful, a cut above the sentimental drivel that one expects from a greeting card, and are clearly still held in high regard by many. They sell on Ebay for a bit more than they retailed for fifteen years ago. No other poets to my knowledge have followed suit, and why would that be, since Hallmark has proven such a product can be done tastefully, and presumably sell well?

Maybe it’s just that so few of us send cards, or any kind of personal mail, anymore. I have to get my niece’s card in the mail tomorrow, for her Saturday birthday. Chances are whatever I find won’t be the equal of a Maya Angelou card. But, would I purchase one if it was in front of me? I still don’t know.  

National Poetry Month- Not Just For Poets!

Some of you non-poets out there (and if you’re a non-poet and reading this blog on a regular basis, you have my undying gratitude) might have the impression that National Poetry Month ranks right up there with “National Salami Sandwich Day,” or “Grandparents Day.” It may at first glance give the impression of being the Hallmarkiest of Hallmark Holidays, spread out over thirty of them. However, unlike those other gift grabs, National Poetry Month requires no sending of cards or expensive gifts (unless you’re so inclined… PM me for my address)!

National Poetry Month was started by the Academy of American Poets in 1996, but the need had existed for years. Remember all those little quaint schoolhouses you see in the movies where pupils painfully stumbled through poems they’d been forced to memorize? Well, those days are long gone. Even when I was in grade school, for the better part of the 1970s, poetry got short shrift in lesson plans. If it hadn’t been for my mother reading to us from a wonderful collection called The Big Golden Book of Poetry (long out of print, but much sought after), I may not have been exposed to much verse at all. And without trying, I committed long passages to memory about Little Orphant Annie and the Owl & the Pussycat that ring around my brain to this day.

Bullwinkle the Moose was a poetry supporter early on, too. His short segments on “Bullwinkle’s Corner,” introduced several new generations to the likes of Poe and Wordsworth. Without changing a word of the poems, he and Jay Ward created amusing visual interpretations that illuminated the work in a new way, as poetry should be enjoyed uniquely by each new reader or listener.

It’s probably still the case that outside of literary circles, not much is heard about National Poetry Month. Around my house, my Roommate is pretty sick of it already. I’ve got two short gigs booked already, including “Readings Against the End of the World,” sponsored by Albany Poets on April 21^st. I’ve signed up for 11:00am, and there’s still space on the open mic list if you’d like to join me. As Dan Wilcox reminds us, “In Albany, every day is Poetry Month!” Not every city is so lucky to have a wizard like Dan to make that true.

Here in New York’s Hudson Valley, live poetry is on the upswing once again, despite the apparent demise recently of two longtime readings. Check your local listings, or drop me a line. Better yet, I’m always up for a drink or dinner in April, if you’re craving a lengthy discussion on the merits of literature in the 21^st century. And, I’m always up for a free meal in April.