Woodstock Poetry Society
Featured Reading and Open Mike
Saturday, August 11th, 2018 at 2pm
Golden Notebook (Upstairs)

Alison Koffler
Perry S. Nicholas

Poets Alison Koffler and Perry S. Nicholas will be the featured readers, along with an open mike when the Woodstock Poetry Society meets at Golden Notebook (Upstairs), 29 Tinker Street on Saturday, August 11th, 2018 at 2pm.

Note: WPS meetings are held the 2nd Saturday (2pm) of every month at Golden Notebook (Upstairs).

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

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

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Features:

Alison Koffler - Alison Koffler’s poems often arise from where the human world and the wilderness intersect. She was the recipient of the Green Heron Poetry Award in 2011 and was the 2016 winner of the Bronx Council on the Arts’ BRIO Award for poetry, having won it as well as in 1993, 2000, and 2006. Her poems have appeared in such publications as Iris: A Journal for Women, Heliotrope, and Home Planet News, and were included in the anthologies lifeblood: the woodstock poetry society anthology, Chickaree Press, 2011, A Slant of Light: Contemporary Women Writers of the Hudson Valley, SUNY Press, 2013 and Like Light: 25 Years of Poetry & Prose by Bright Hill Poets and Writers, Bright Hill Press, 2017. She lives in the Bronx and Woodstock, NY with her husband, the poet Dayl Wise, and their dog, Cole. A retired educator, she works part-time for the New York City Writing Project at Lehman College.



Beast of Bronx Park

Young beast squats to pee in the thicket,
buries small stones between horse chestnut roots,

paws through scattered garbage looking for
something to chew. In rutted woods, a glitter

of broken glass, burnt cars driven into blackened
stands of knotweed, old sycamore and oak. She stops,

crouching low. Granite-pillared gates of the park:
a barrier she cannot pass. Beyond are the projects,

dry cleaners, supermarket, trucks and parked cars,
a rising clamor of machinery and human voices.

She turns away, lopes downhill on cracked asphalt,
shouldering through thick tangles of jewelweed

to duck into the cooler woods by the river.
A rat watches from a culvert, red-tailed hawk

screams a warning from a broken lamppost.
There’s enough wild here for her to thrive.

-Alison Koffler

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Perry S. Nicholas - Perry S. Nicholas is an English Professor at Erie Community College North in Buffalo, N.Y. He has published one textbook of poetry prompts, three full-length and five chapbooks of original poetry, and one CD of poetry. He has hosted four poetry venues in the WNY area. You can see his work at perrynicholas.com.



In the Shadow of David

I study your photograph
in front of David’s statue,
wonder how much of a shadow
I cast on you. On you, before

you placed yourself behind
bullet-proof glass to deal
with your disappointment in me.
Your figure like paper covering rock.

You seem amazed how marble might be
smoother than real people. You smile
your nervous grin when he doesn’t at all.
Men create dark shades, you see.

I recognize your high school pose.
Still, I marvel at your adult face,
just as I interpret David’s glance,
his presence much slighter than mine.

-Perry S. Nicholas

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Developing WPS 2018 Schedule - all readings at Golden Notebook (Upstairs)
All of 2018 Events: Events

01/January 13th - Philip Pardi; Sparrow
02/February 10th - Frank Boyer; Philip Fried
03/March 10th - Cheryl Rice; Guy Reed
04/April 14th - Donald Lev; Mary Leonard
05/May 12th - Judith Saunders; Lucia Cherciu
06/June 9th - Dennis & Justin Bressack
07/July 14th - Marcia Slatkin; Therese L. Broderick
08/August 11th - Alison Koffler; Perry S. Nicholas
09/September 8th - Catherine Arra; Matthew J. Spireng
10/October 13th - Barbara Elovic; Carl Rosenstock; Richard Levine
11/November 10th - Janet Hamill; Teresa Costa
12/December 8th - TBA and Annual Business Meeting

Also, why not become a 2018 Member of the Woodstock Poetry Society?

Membership is $20 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.

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