Woodstock Poetry Society
Featured Reading and Open Mike
Saturday, May 11th, 2024 at 2pm
Woodstock Library

HYBRID: in-person and virtually via Zoom

Roger Mitchell
Steve Clorfeine

Poets Roger Mitchell and Steve Clorfeine will be the featured readers, along with an open mike when the Woodstock Poetry Society when the Woodstock Poetry Society meets in person and streamed via Zoom on Saturday, May 11th, 2024 at 2pm(eastern).

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

Woodstock Library
5 Library Lane, Woodstock, NY 12498
(845)679-2213
www.woodstock.org

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:

Roger Mitchell - Roger Mitchell is the author of thirteen books of poetry, most recently As Water Moves. His new and selected poems, Lemon Peeled the Moment Before, was published by Ausable Press in 2008. It won the Adirondack Center for Writing's "Readers' Choice Award" the following year. The University of Akron Press published his two previous books, Half/Mask, in 2007 and Delicate Bait, which Charles Simic chose for the Akron Prize, in 2003. Prior to that, he published two books at The Figures, Braid in 1997 and Savage Baggage in 2001. Mitchell spent the largest part of his working life at Indiana University and for a time held its Ruth Lilly Chair of Poetry. Other recognition for his writing includes the Midland Poetry Award, the John Ben Snow Award for Clear Pond, a work of non-fiction, two fellowships each from the Indiana Arts Commission and the National Endowment for the Arts, and other awards. Currently, he is writing a biography of the poet, Jean Garrigue. He and his wife, the fiction writer, Dorian Gossy, live in Jay, New York.



An Old Image

Two boys in leggings, the kind wrapped
around the calves of soldiers in the first war.
Officers had leather boots in that war,
privates and non-coms, cloth leggings instead.

Facing each other at ease in a foxhole,
their helmets on the ground beside them, one foot
bared, its big toe stuck in the trigger guard
of the rifle each had been trained to fire,

the working ends of which rested under their chins.
They were Nisei, Japanese-American boys,
who volunteered to fight Japan, anything
to escape the relocation camp they’d been thrown into.

A photo taken on Guadalcanal in 1942
and printed (no comment) in every American paper,
which every boy in America could stare at
and see the point of, that it wouldn’t matter

that the mothers of these boys might also
one day see their sons dead in a hole,
caught going AWOL forever, squeezed
between two world orders neither could abide.

-Roger Mitchell

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Steve Clorfeine - I’ve been making work with movement, theater, film, words, my hands in clay and collage, for most of my life. About words/writing, I’ve just published a new collection of poems/short prose - Seeing You Again, my sixth collection. I’m working on a collection of travel pieces that encompass many of the journeys I’ve had. Also a revised Sourcebook of workshop exercises, interviews, and performance stories. Fortunate to have Buddhist teachers; to have the opportunity to present my work in many countries; to create gallery installations calling together a wide network of art-makers; and to host a local writing group that’s been meeting for 16 years.


photo credit: Christine Alicino

May

white gloves
pink azalea
dogwoods &
church on Sunday

it’s Spring and
ice-cream trucks

it’s Spring &
how to say it all before I forget

it’s Spring & everywhere you turn
a feast appears to eyes &
words scatter

it’s Spring & we recite the names:
jasper, poppies
wild viburnum
early blue violets
& wish forever

hallelujah spring

its twitters
its rise
display
arise

hallelujah spring
when even the disasters of my thoughts
roll over dead.

-Steve Clorfeine

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Developing WPS 2024 Schedule - now in-person at the Woodstock Library and via Zoom
All WPS Events: Events

01/January 13th - Patrick Hammer, Jr.; Robert Langdon
02/February 10th - Lissa Kiernan; Mary K O'Melveny
03/March 9th - Ethan Sirotko; Janet Kaplan
04/April 13th - Poetry Month Special Event ("Unbroken Circle")
05/May 11th - Roger Mitchell; Steve Clorfeine
06/June 8th - Barry Wallenstein; Richard Levine
07/July 13th - Karen Schoemer; Martin Steingesser
08/August 10th - Craig Hancock; Marnie Andrews
09/September 14th - Christopher Heffernan; Jerrice J. Baptiste
10/October 12th - Joann Deiudicibus; Thomas Festa
11/November 9th - Judy Lechner; Teresa Costa
12/December 14th - H.R. Webster; Ken Holland and Annual Business Meeting

Also, why not become a 2024 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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