Woodstock Poetry Society
Featured Reading and Open Mike
Saturday, October 9th, 2021 at 2pm

via Zoom

Jacqueline Renee Ahl
Philip Pardi

Poets Jacqueline Renee Ahl and Philip Pardi will be the featured readers, followed by an open mike when the Woodstock Poetry Society meets virtually via Zoom on Saturday, October 9th, 2021 at 2pm.

WPS meetings are held the 2nd Saturday (2pm) of every month.

Due to the ongoing pandemic - for now, all meetings will be held virtually via Zoom
The Zoom app can be downloaded here: Zoom Download Center

To attend: contact phillip@woodstockpoetry.com to receive Zoom info
If attending, please indicate if you would like to be on the open mike. Thank you.

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:

Jacqueline Renee Ahl - Jacqueline Renee Ahl is a writer, presenter, and educator; she has served at SUNY New Paltz, SUNY Dutchess Community College, the Summer Institute for the Gifted at Vassar College, and the Culinary Institute of America. At SUNY New Paltz, Jacqueline served as visiting poet for Understanding Poetry, Director of the Creative Writing Mentoring Program, and member of the William Vasse Poetry Board. A former grant writer/performer for Arts for Peace, Jacqueline’s publication credits include A Slant of Light: Contemporary Women Writers of the Hudson Valley, Haunted Waters Press, Wawayanda Review, The Sun magazine, and Riverine: An Anthology of Hudson Valley Writers (2007). Previous features include Celebration of the Arts (C.O.T.A) and The Woodstock Roundtable on WDST. Jacqueline’s absurdist one-acts have been produced in NY, NC, and MO, receiving national and international awards.



The Fox's Lover Returns

Consider the months’ half-moon of loss
a fingernail scaling nights of wasted space.
Listen to him describe his own fractured sky.
Accept his pain as being bright as your own.
Consider his departure
a fox’s self-inflicted tango with a speeding car,
a trail of drops leading into forest, a curl of hair and teeth.
A sunken carpet of fur
discovered months later, as another set of eyes
emerges from the underbrush and studies you,
steady this time, black-tipped tail flashing into trees.
Follow.

Sit beside him in tall grass and relearn the language of together.
Accept other voices channeled into his,
whispered in the white snail of your ear.
Still, maintain a wildness that frightens even you.

When he leaves, remember the singular purpose of survival.
Contemplate sanity as a fever of constant motion,
an endless preparation for winter,
well-placed flames licking logs.
Cover white space with the remains,
charcoal to the elbows in wide, feathered strokes.
Blend with fingers, knees, until hair and skin ashes to black.
Leave a message for your future self:

Castaways survive for days, months, even years alone.
Rescued, they always remember.

They resume civilities:
ironing,
the grist of a pepper grinder,
the angle of a kissing chin,
the flick of a nail under the eyelid of an envelope,
avoiding
the aboriginal spear of an elbow in sleep.
But they are always attuned:
When rain?
Where shelter?
What sound of leaving or approach?
Never back turned to dark.
Always a hand on the axe.
The heart’s hovering, dreaming with ears open.

The first art, objects of survival:
a palm for water, a halved coconut.
The second, beauty’s ornament:
white spirals curling from a metal point,
war-paint on the body’s open bowl.
Handle careful.
What is fierce and feral rarely comes when called.

This is the art that remains:
recasting ash, something alive from what has died.
If you wish her human,
nightly, wash it from her body,
carry her to clean sheets,
call her back from the trees
where the bones of your old bodies lie.

-Jacqueline Renee Ahl

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Philip Pardi - Philip Pardi is the author of Meditations on Rising and Falling (University of Wisconsin Press), which won the Brittingham Poetry Prize and the Writers’ League of Texas Award for Poetry. His poems, essays, and translations have appeared widely in journals and anthologies. He teaches at Bard College.



Poem Without Birds

Yes, there is a blue sky above,
beneath which

the diviners

look up. Oncology
of clouds,

disgust

in the wind, twigs
and wrappers

waiting, waiting.

A student sleeps in the grass
as a squirrel absconds
one by one with her peanut M&Ms.

So many ways to avoid the central fact.

At bus stops, lacing boots,
beneath spotless statues,

the posing

above which we find ourselves
looking down

for proof the clouds have passed.

-Philip Pardi

Developing WPS 2021 Schedule - all readings held via Zoom
All of 2021 Events: Events

Due to the ongoing pandemic - for now, all meetings will be held virtually via Zoom
The Zoom app can be downloaded here: Zoom Download Center

To attend: contact phillip@woodstockpoetry.com to receive Zoom info
If attending, please indicate if you would like to be on the open mike following the featured readers. Thank you.

01/January 9th - Canceled
02/February 13th - Canceled
03/March 13th - Guy Reed; Victoria Sullivan via Zoom
04/April 10th - Judith Kerman; Leslie Gerber via Zoom
05/May 8th - Judith Saunders; Raphael Kosek via Zoom
06/June 12th - Elizabethanne Spiotta; William Seaton via Zoom
07/July 10th - Barbara Ungar; Lucia Cherciu via Zoom
08/August 14th - Irene Sipos; Perry S. Nicholas via Zoom
09/September 11th - Nine-Eleven 20 years later via Zoom
                             To present during this event - email: phillip@woodstockpoetry.com
10/October 9th - Jacqueline Ahl; Philip Pardi via Zoom
11/November 13th - Elizabeth Cohen; Mary Leonard via Zoom
12/December 11th - Amy Ouzoonian; Anique Taylor and Annual Business Meeting via Zoom

Also, why not become a 2021 Member or donate to the Woodstock Poetry Society?

Membership is $20 a year. (To join or donate, 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 our upgraded Zoom account, 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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