Woodstock Poetry Society
Featured Reading and Open Mike
Saturday, April 12, 2014 at 2pm
Golden Notebook (Upstairs)

Dennis Wayne Bressack
Donald Lev

Poets Donald Lev and Donald Lev will be the featured readers, along with the WPS Annual Business Meeting and an open mike when the Woodstock Poetry Society & Festival meets at Golden Notebook (Upstairs), 29 Tinker Street on Saturday, April 12, 2014 at 2pm. Note: WPS&F meetings are held the 2nd Saturday of every month at Golden Notebook (Upstairs).

Note the venue - we will be at Golden Notebook (Upstairs) for this reading and throughout 2014. Thanks Jacqueline, and all at Golden Notebook.

Golden Notebook (Upstairs)
29 Tinker Street
Woodstock, NY 12498
www.goldennotebook.com
845-679-8000

Woodstock Poetry Society & Festival as part of the Woodstock Arts Consortium is sponsoring this poetry event as part of the Woodstock "Second Saturdays" Art Events. For a full listing of "Second Saturday" events, see: www.artsinwoodstock.org.

The reading will be hosted by poet Phillip X Levine. All meetings are free, open to the public, and include an open mike.

*
Features:

Dennis Wayne Bressack
- Dennis Wayne Bressack is a retired dentist who lives in Woodstock, NY with his wife, Abby. They have two sons, Justin and Noah.

A writer for 50 years, he has been a featured reader at many venues in New Jersey, Manhattan and The Mid-Hudson Valley. His essays, short stories, poems and songs have appeared in a variety of publications including Sensations Magazine, Heyday Magazine, The Home Planet News, The Woodstock Journal, The New Paltz Times, Chronogram and Wildflowers.

His holistic dental articles can be found on his website, freedomfromdentalfears.com.

He has self-published seven books of poetry, and produced two CDs of music. His poetry website, www.denniswaynebressack.com, contains samples of his writing and music.

Dennis Wayne Bressack

Poets Live in Caves

Musicians buy mansions
on tops of mountains,
poets live in caves.

Painters are hung
in halls of museums,
poets scrawl on walls in caves.

Filmmakers throw parties
in penthouse apartments,
poets party in caves.

Even potters and sculptors
don’t work without pay,
poets read for free coffee in caves.

But, when humans search for answers,
they pay the $4 cover at the doors of
poets who live in caves.

-Dennis Wayne Bressack

***

Donald Lev - Donald Lev was born in New York City in 1936. He attended Hunter College, worked in the wire rooms of the Daily News and New York Times, and then drove a taxi cab for 20 years (with a 6-year hiatus in which he ran messages for, and contributed poetry to, The Village Voice and operated the Home Planet Bookshop on the Lower East Side). His earliest poems appeared in print in 1958 and he started his first small press magazine, HYN Anthology, in 1969. Among his honors have been a Madeline Sadin Award from New York Quarterly in 1973 and a Life Time Achievement Award from the Catskill Reading Society/Outloudbooks in 2003. In 2008 Outloudbooks brought out his The Darkness Above: Selected Poems 1968-2002 a sampling from the first four decades of his writing. A chapbook, Only Wings: 20 Poems of Devotion was published in 2010 by Presa Press in Michigan, and a new collection, A Very Funny Fellow, was brought out by NYQ Books in February, 2012. His brief underground film-acting career pinnacled with his portrayal (he wrote his own lines) of "The Poet" in Robert Downey Sr.'s 1969 classic Putney Swope. He lives in High Falls, NY, where he spends most of his time publishing the literary tabloid Home Planet News, which he and his late wife Enid Dame founded in 1979.

Donald Lev

Along the Side

Come along the side of the house
where there used to be a path.
Remember the Euphrates, as I dubbed
the stream of clear water that had originated
from a broken pipe so long ago.
You might find Enid's Lilith sitting sadly
between the jewelweed and the bee balm,
waiting for Messiah to come
drive her to a nursing home.

-Donald Lev
***

2014 Schedule

01/January 11th – Darcy Smith; Tim Dwyer & 2013 Annual Business Meeting
02/February 8th – Gary Siegel; Joanne Pagano Weber
03/March 8th – Marina Mati; Robert Milby
04/April 12th Dennis Wayne Bressack; Donald Lev
05/May 10th – Karen Schoemer; Timothy Brennan
06/June 14th – Rebecca Schumejda; Theodore Phelps
07/July 12th – Anique Taylor; Sparrow
08/August 9th – Alison Koffler; Jo Pitkin
09/September 13th – Lee Slonimsky; Sarah Van Arsdale
10/October 11th – Richard Loranger; Teresa Costa
11/November 8th – Lee Gould; Norma Bernstock
12/December 13th – Dennis Sullivan; Joe Krausman & 2014 Annual Business Meeting

Also, why not become a 2014 Member of the Woodstock Poetry Society & Festival?

Membership is a nominal $15 a year. (To join, send your check to the Woodstock Poetry Society, P.O. Box 531, Woodstock, NY 12498. Include your email address as well as your mailing address and phone number. Or join online at: www.woodstockpoetry.com/become.html). Your membership helps pay for meeting space rental, post-office-box rental, the WPS website, and costs associated with publicizing the monthly events. One benefit of membership is the opportunity to have a brief biography and several of your poems appear on this website.

(click here to close this window)