Woodstock
Poetry Society
Featured Reading and Open Mike
Saturday, April 9th, 2016 at 2pm
Golden Notebook (Upstairs)
Mary Leonard
Robert Milby
Poets Mary Leonard and Robert Milby will
be the featured readers, along with an open mike when the Woodstock Poetry Society
& Festival meets at Golden Notebook (Upstairs), 29 Tinker Street on Saturday,
April 9th, 2016 at 2pm.
Note: WPS&F meetings are held the 2nd Saturday (2pm) of every month at Golden
Notebook (Upstairs).
Golden Notebook (Upstairs)
29 Tinker Street
Woodstock, NY 12498
www.goldennotebook.com
845-679-8000
The reading will be hosted by poet Phillip X Levine. All meetings are free,
open to the public, and include an open mike.
*
Features:
Mary Leonard- Mary Leonard is an Associate of the Institute
for Writing and Thinking at Bard College where she leads workshops for teachers
and students. She has published four chapbooks of poetry at 2River, Pudding
House, Antrim House Press and most recently from RedOchreLit.
Her poems have appeared in many journals such as the Naugatuck Review, Earth's
Daughters, Hubbub and in the December 2014 Chronogram.
Meanwhile she loves to read poetry in the Hudson Valley because it puts her
in touch with other writers, artists and poets and of course anyone who loves
poetry.
I Always Knew This
One day before the Shabbat rush
I browse in an Indian shop on Sheinken,
confident about the language of color, of silk.
I want to weave an orange scarf in my hair
a signal to remember, the Hebrew, please
b’vakasha. I want the aqua, the mango,
bright markers, so I can see—
an upside down r with a dot is a v,
except sometimes there’s no dot.
Some strong color, no a brown, a russet
for that guttural h. My daughter demands
I lock myself in a room like she did at ten
and practice, ach, ach, ach, clearing my throat.
I say the name of her friend, Nahom, as if
it’s a sneeze. Hebrew is not my gift.
I try on b’vakasha, tohda rahba,
the citrus and the deep green.
I understand orange and cream
flavors from Vaniglia up the street,
something sweet to suck and take in.
The scarves are stacked
like the 48 in a Crayola box
but the clerk unfolds the liquid jewels
to see what works with my olive skin,
She lifts a soft nougat as if plucking
a pick-up-stick, doubles it,
places it around my neck and pulls the ends
to a neat stack. I look as if I always knew this.
My face is alive. I say, tohda rahba.
She says b’vakasha. We speak in shades
of color and silk.
-Mary Leonard
*
Robert Milby- Robert Milby, of Florida, NY has been reading
his poems, from the gutter to the garret, in the Hudson Valley and beyond since
March, 1995. He hosts 4 Hudson Valley poetry series and co-hosts a 5th series.
Milby is published in over 2 dozen magazines, 1 dozen websites, and 15 poetry
anthologies, in the Northeast, including Home Planet News, Chronogram, Waymark
(anthology, Beacon, NY 2014 and 2015), Other, the Albany Poets’ Magazine,
Riverine (anthology, Cod Hill Press, 2007) Waterwrites (anthology, Codhill Press,
2009), The Cliffhanger (Sarah Lawrence College, 2014) and Oddball Magazine (2015).
Books: Ophelia’s Offspring (Foothills Publishing, Kanona, NY,
2007) Crow Weather (Fierce Grace Press, Wilmington, DE, 2009) Dickens’
Pet Raven (Fierce Grace Press, Wilmington, DE, 2014) Victorian House:
Ghosts and Gothic Poems (Lion Autumn Music Publishing, NYC, 2015) CDs:
Revenant Echo (Sonotrope Recordings, High Falls, NY 2004) Underground
(APB Productions, Wallkill, NY, 2008)
Every October, Milby and performance Artist, Carl Welden haunt the Hudson Valley
as Theremin Ghosts! in the most unusual poetry and sound performance ever conducted
in the region.
Milby is a board member of Calling All Poets, in Beacon, NY and a member of
the Woodstock Poetry Society, in Woodstock, NY. He is a monthly contributor
to the Arts newspaper, The Delaware and Hudson CANVAS since
2004.
Past projects include: Founding member and instructor at The Northeast Center’s
College of Poetry workshop series, in Warwick, NY. He wrote the column: Poets
Comitatus, for Heyday Magazine, of Kingston, NY.
www.robertmilby.com.
Spring Light
Daffodils and Tulips caught bolts of Sun,
To weave late April silks of light.
Gossamer, grey wind kissed their young lips with raindrops.
Robins recited love poems, and told of listening parties
on lawns, greening in grass brushes and quills—
an impressionist canvas of milkmaid’s violets.
Yearning Maples, proffered buds from thin fingers,
Sculpting clouds on wheels of wind.
Rain tincture; rivulets on consternation’s flood plain—
Soil monarchs tomb exhumed by cloud jewel professors—
amidst new blossoms and meadow clover,
Transforming hillscape, under a cover crop of fog.
-Robert Milby
April 25, 2007
*
Developing WPS 2016 Schedule - all readings at Golden Notebook (Upstairs)
01/January 9th – Christina Lilian Turczyn; Thom
Francis
02/February 13th – Annie Christain; Melody Davis
03/March 12th – J. Camp Brown; Raphael Kosek
04/April 9th – Mary Leonard; Robert Milby
05/May 14th – Barbara Adams; Philip Fried
06/June 11th – Jeffrey Davis; Philip Pardi
07/July 9th – Anne Gorrick; George Wallace
08/August 13th – Christi Shannon Kline; Jane Ormerod
09/September 10th – Dennis & Justin Bressack;
Judith Saunders
10/October 8th – Katherine Burger; Rebecca Daniels
11/November 12th – Marilyn McCabe; Teresa Costa
12/December 10th – Sharon Israel Cucinotta; TBA
and Annual Business Meeting
Also, why not become a 2016 Member of the Woodstock Poetry Society &
Festival?
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.