Woodstock Poetry Society
Featured Reading and Open Mike
Saturday, October 11th, 2025 at 2pm
Woodstock Library

HYBRID: in-person and virtually via Zoom

Raphael Kosek
Raphael Moser

Poets Raphael Kosek and Raphael Moser 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, October 11th, 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.

*
Features:

Raphael Kosek - Raphael Kosek is the author of American Mythology (Brick Road Poetry Press) and two prize-winning chapbooks, Harmless Encounters (2022) and Rough Grace (2014). Her worked received 4 Pushcart nominations and was featured on The Writer’s Almanac and Verse Daily. She has a new chapbook in the works. She served as the 2019-2020 Dutchess County, NY Poet Laureate where she teaches at Dutchess Community College. www.raphaelkosek.com



A Calm Madness
       “ . . . I sought wisdom . . . in poems and also a certain calm madness.”
        -Adam Zagajewski

Mozart surely felt it and tried to annihilate
that stolid fervor in his Requiem

and the birds churn it when dawn’s pallor
sieves the trees. It’s there when enlightenment

baptizes the confused brow of the seeker.
If you weep at the wood thrush’s song,

you are stung by it. And it simmers in
the horse’s eye, though the breath is soft

with sun and hay. For some it is the blue of far
mountains and the sea’s restless grieving.

Caravaggio found it in the violent
light emboldening human flesh for all

to behold. For such beauty, you have
to be mad. Or it would kill you.

-Raphael Kosek

*

Raphael Moser - Raphael Moser’s poetry has appeared in Salonika, BigCityLit.com, Madhatter’s Review, Far out, Further Out, Out of Sight, Catskill Mountain Region Guide, Chronogram, and swifts & slows and she was a regular contributor to the poetry blog October Babies from 2009-2013. She has participated in readings at Bowery Poetry Club, Bluestockings and the Ear Inn and has performed original music and poetry in various venues on Long Island and NYC. She has received residency grants from SLS Concordia College and the Vermont Studio Center.




Litchfield

One hundred eighty acres in a circle
lost in the dark
sweltering fear strips composure

The two women lay down

Rain falls, like the memory
of breathing licking the
vulnerability from the body

A bed of raincoats
separates skin from soil
A water woven reservoir
of wonder and repose

Leaves like seals drink
deep from the mist

In the loamy cove, lungs
of the forest
A cry strikes unseen

complicit
roots gnaw a path

Ravenous earth consumes
that which sleeps too long
in its embrace

-Raphael Moser

*

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.

(click here to close this window)