Woodstock
Poetry Society
Featured Reading and Open Mike
Saturday, September 13, 2014 at 2pm
Golden Notebook (Upstairs)
Lee Slonimsky
Sarah Van Arsdalez
Poets Lee Slonimsky and Sarah Van Arsdale will
be the featured readers, along with the WPS Annual Business Meeting and an open
mike when the Woodstock Poetry Society & Festival meets at Golden Notebook
(Upstairs), 29 Tinker Street on Saturday, September 13, 2014 at 2pm.
Note: WPS&F meetings are held the 2nd Saturday of every month at Golden Notebook
(Upstairs).
Note the venue - we will be at Golden Notebook (Upstairs) for this reading
and throughout 2014. Thanks Jacqueline, and all at Golden Notebook.
Golden Notebook (Upstairs)
29 Tinker Street
Woodstock, NY 12498
www.goldennotebook.com
845-679-8000
Woodstock Poetry Society & Festival as part of the Woodstock Arts Consortium
is sponsoring this poetry event as part of the Woodstock "Second Saturdays"
Art Events. For a full listing of "Second Saturday" events, see: www.artsinwoodstock.org.
The reading will be hosted by poet Phillip X Levine. All meetings are
free, open to the public, and include an open mike.
*
Features:
Lee Slonimsky - Lee Slonimsky is the author of four books of poems,
the most recent Logician of the Wind (2012) from Orchises Press in
Virginia. A fifth, Wandering Electron, is being published by Spuyten
Duyvil Press in New York City in the summer of 2014. Collaborating as a novelist
with his wife, Hammett Prize winning novelist Carol Goodman, he is co-author
of Lee Carroll’s Black Swan Rising trilogy. The most recent,
The Shape Stealer, appeared in 2013. Collaborating as a poet with Sonoma
County CA Poet Laureate and radio host Katherine Hastings, he is the co-author
of a chapbook, Slow Shadow/White Delirium, published in fall 2013 by
Word Temple Press of Santa Rosa CA. Lee’s poems and prose pieces have
also appeared in Best of Asheville Poetry Review, The Carolina Quarterly,
The Classical Outlook, Measure, New Ohio Review, The New York Times, North Dakota
Quarterly, Poetry Daily, 32 Poems, Valparaiso Poetry Review, and many other
journals.
Mid-Bronx, 8am
Who knows when "happy" first became a verb?
I do recall the first place that I heard
it used this way: a crowded subway car,
mid-Bronx, mid-May. A teen addressed his love,
"you happy me," caressing her red hair
at one of those mysterious long stops
in tunnel blackness. Braiding her hair in loops,
he kissed her then, as if to prove
his passion knew few bounds. Then lights went out --
a louder kiss -- the train rolled slightly back --
some PA static roared, wordless. No doubt,
a rush hour crowd like this, heading to work
was not about to panic. Then we heard
an older woman's voice, almost a shout:
"Train, happy us and move!" So language spreads.
-Lee Slonimsky
*
Sarah Van Arsdale - Sarah Van Arsdale is a novelist and poet. Her third novel, Grand Isle, was published by SUNY Press in April, 2012; her second, Blue, won the 2002 Peter Taylor Prize for the Novel, and was published by the University of Tennessee Press in 2003. Her first novel, Toward Amnesia, was published in 1996 by Riverhead Books. Since 1999 she has served on the board of the Ferro-Grumley Award. Miss Van Arsdale currently curates a monthly reading series, Bloom, in New York City, where she teaches at NYU, Sarah Lawrence College, and CUNY.
You Could Grieve
One morning you could wake beneath the slanted eave
and see your past has fallen off, dropped
from your shoulders and legs like the soft
skin of a snake. You could grieve
your past by shoving a spade deep
into spring’s soft dirt, or by letting your chest heave
with tears each morning as you wake.
What’s gone you can’t resurrect with belief
in spring’s streams squandering their banks, you can’t opt
for happiness, simplicity, or hope angels will drop
on wings like solid air and weave
light into the morning as you wake.
-Sarah Van Arsdale
***
2014 Schedule
01/January 11th – Darcy Smith; Tim Dwyer & 2013 Annual Business Meeting
02/February 8th – Gary Siegel; Joanne Pagano Weber
03/March 8th – Marina Mati; Robert Milby
04/April 12th – Dennis Wayne Bressack; Donald Lev
05/May 10th – Karen Schoemer; Timothy Brennan
06/June 14th – Rebecca Schumejda; Theodore Phelps
07/July 12th – Anique Taylor; Sparrow
08/August 9th – Alison Koffler; Jo Pitkin
09/September 13th – Lee Slonimsky;
Sarah Van Arsdale
10/October 11th – Richard Loranger; Teresa Costa
11/November 8th – Lee Gould; Norma Bernstock
12/December 13th – Dennis Sullivan;
Joe Krausman & 2014 Annual Business Meeting
Also, why not become a 2014 Member of the Woodstock Poetry Society & Festival?
Membership is a nominal $15 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.