Woodstock Poetry Society
Featured Reading and Open Mike
Saturday, February 8th, 2025 at 2pm
Woodstock Library

HYBRID: in-person and virtually via Zoom

Alison Koffler
Dayl Wise

Poets Alison Koffler and Dayl Wise 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, February 8th, 2025 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:


Dayl Wise & Alison Koffler

Alison Koffler - Alison Koffler finds that she often writes about the connection between humans and the rest of the natural world. 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 been published in numerous publications and are included in A Slant of Light: Contemporary Women Writers of the Hudson Valley, SUNY Press, 2013, Like Light: 25 Years of Poetry & Prose by Bright Hill Poets and Writers, Bright Hill Press, 2017, and CAPS Poetry 2020, CAPS Press, 2020. She lives in Woodstock, NY with her husband, the poet Dayl Wise, and their dogs, Cole and Leif. She and Dayl are the co-founders of Post Traumatic Press.



Before the Eclipse

As yesterday’s storms
shift away
blue gray clouds
rimmed with salmon and gold
rise over the mountain’s shoulder.
It’s three days before the eclipse
and highways north and west
will soon be jammed with tourists
jostling for a view.
They say it’s pretty much
my last chance to see it in this lifetime.
I’m thinking I’m half-sorry not to go,
half-grateful to avoid the crowds.

The dog is thinking
whatever he thinks
as he pokes his muzzle
into the barberry thicket.
A roiling sky above us.
This moment of silence
netted into the weave
of our world.

The dog lifts his head
and I follow his gaze,
scanning the tall dead grass
by the vernal pond.
Together we see the fox
flickering in and out of vision,
its floating boa of a tail
a flash of russet
among the waving stems.
The dog stares intently.
I can’t tell if he recognizes
a distant cousin or if he wants
to chase and kill.

The fox ambles
into a clearing,
pauses, ignoring us,
then begins to jump high,
arcing like a dolphin,
landing stiff-pawed,
trying to nail smaller beings
hidden in the grass.
We can’t see if he’s successful,
only watch this leaping
ballet of predation
that looks to me
suspiciously like joy.

-Alison Koffler

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Dayl Wise - Dayl Wise was once a soldier. He returned to Vietnam with a different mission in 1993, 1995, and 1997, delivering medical supplies in the form of reconciliation. His poems have appeared in numerous publications, and he is the author of Poems and Other Stuff (PTP, 2004) and Basic Load (PTP, 2009). Dayl lives Woodstock, NY with his wife, the poet Alison Koffler, and is co-founder of Post Traumatic Press. Currently he facilities two writing groups for veterans and family members of veterans and hosts the monthly Veterans Reading Series and Open Mic in Saugerties NY.



My Ride

I carry my Schwinn down the stairs,
out the front door onto 16th Street.
The day is sunny, bright, and clear,
surprisingly warm for a late fall day.
The plan, bike to the Park Slope Food Co-op,
work my member-labor shift and buy groceries.

Mounting my bike, I ride up 16th,
shift gears taking a left onto 7th Avenue.
Riding past the corner bodega, the laundromat,
I hear that familiar rhythmic thumping sound.
That thwup-thwup-thwup of a police chopper.
It banks left.

Wilson pops a banana yellow smoke grenade.
The smoke snakes through the high grass,
like fingers beckoning the slick in.
The rest of the team waits in the woodline.
It’s been a long four days outside the wire.

Dismounting, I crouch between two parked cars,
waiting for the chopper to leave.
Scanning my perimeter, cars pass on my right,
pedestrians walking by on the sidewalk to my left.
Some enter the 7th Avenue Diner, a place I frequent.

As the slick lands, Wilson rushes forward,
encouraging us to hurry up to board.
Once onboard we lift off and head east.
Looking down, I see an older me looking up,
crouched between two parked cars.

With the chopper noise fading, I rise up,
swing my leg over my bike and continue down 7th,
toward the Co-op pedaling toward safety.

Coasting to a stop I scan the roof line once,
and chain my Schwinn to the bicycle rack.

-Dayl Wise

www.posttraumaticpress.co
veteranartsshowcase.org

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Developing WPS 2025 Schedule - now in-person at the Woodstock Library and via Zoom
All WPS Events: Events

01/January 11th - Guy Reed; Will Nixon
02/February 8th - Alison Koffler; Dayl Wise
03/March 8th - Charlie Cody; Mike Jurkovic
04/April 12th - Poetry Month Special Event (TBA)
05/May 10th - Roberta Gould; Vivi Hlavsa
06/June 14th - Irene Sipos; Perry S. Nicholas
07/July 12th - Lee Slonimsky; Robert Charles Basner
08/August 9th - Matthew J. Spireng; Suzanne Cleary
09/September 13th - Jennifer Franklin; Lucia Cherciu
10/October 11th - Raphael Kosek; Raphael Moser
11/November 8th - Bruce Weber; Linda McCauley Freeman
12/December 13th - Cheryl A. Rice; Tom Bonville and Annual Business Meeting

Follow the WPS on Facebook: www.facebook.com/WoodstockPoetry/ and why not become a 2025 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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