Woodstock Poetry Society
Featured Reading and Open Mike
Saturday, February 8th, 2020 at 2pm
Golden Notebook (Upstairs)

Andrea Mitchell
Bruce Weber

Poets Andrea Mitchell and Bruce Weber will be the featured readers, along with an open mike when the Woodstock Poetry Society meets at Golden Notebook (Upstairs), 29 Tinker Street on Saturday, February 8th, 2020 at 2pm.

Note: WPS 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.

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Features:

Andrea Mitchell - Andrea Mitchell is an upstate local. She lives in a wild forest, in the middle of a village, with her partner, their two boys, and two cats. She has been writing poetry for most of her life.



i don't believe any of the corinthians were ever in love

They say that love is patient and kind
but i have never seen that
I have seen love rushed
I have seen wild unrealistic expectation
i have seen love crossed with hatred in such a way that you don’t know if you should fight
or fuck
or leave
and they say it doesn't envy
thats its not proud
but when i see him plastering pictures of her all over the internet
and you can't even look at me across a crowded room
and she gets flowers while i get fights
across the kitchen table
then i know they were wrong
on both counts
and they say its not easily angered
but then they never had to love you
or me
they say it keeps no record of wrongdoing
and that's a lie
a straight up
no grey area
unapologetic
capital
l
i
e
they say it rejoices in truth
but the love i know is made up of white lies connected with half truths
that make up the whole of what i chose to tell you to protect our love from your fast judgement
and i'm not exactly sure if that's what they meant when they said love protects
but it's what i know
they say that love has hope
and i believe them
but i believe every situation has hope
and even when you tell me i’m unrealistic
i realize i'd rather be an optimist
and hold hope that someday
this will get better
they say love trusts
and i believe that too

because even when you let me down
i trust you
even when you straight up lie
i trust you
even when you break me down and make me cry
i trust you
they say that love perseveres
and i’ll come back to that
they say that love never fails, but i mess up every day
and for every moment that our love soars
it sinks
and for every time we triumph
it is countered
for every up
a down
because love is a crazy emotion
it is big
and wild
and i don’t know how to love you
without hating you sometimes
but love perseveres
in spite of our best efforts and worst tries
in spite of our snark and sarcasm
our back handed comments
and harsh criticism
in spite of us
love perseveres
and so i’m trashing corinthians
because i don't believe that any of them were ever in love
not really
so i’m taking the most quoted bible verses and i’m dismissing them
i’m taking that bit of the good book read at every wedding and rewriting it

love is wild
love is untamed and unpredictable
love is not always kind
or sweet
or comfortable
love is tricky
love is work
love has dark nights and low patches and bad times
love isn't just good times
its bad times too
because in the low in the dark
in the worst of it
that's where my true love lives

-Andrea Mitchell

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Bruce Weber - Bruce Weber is the author of six published books of poetry, These Poems are Not Pretty, How the Poem Died, Poetic Justice, The First Time I Had Sex with T. S. Eliot, The Break-up of My First Marriage, and the just published There Are Too Many Words In My House from Rogue Scholars Press, from which he will be performing. Bruce’s work has appeared in numerous magazines, as well as in several anthologies. including Up is Up, But So Is Down: Downtown Writings, 1978-1992 (New York: New York University, 2006), Riverine: An Anthology of Hudson Valley Writers (New Paltz, New York: Codhill Press, 2007). He has performed regularly in the tri-state area, both alone and for many years with his former performance group, Bruce Weber’s No Chance Ensemble, which produced the CD Let’s Dine Like Jack Johnson Tonight. He recently produced the six hour event Brain Storms: The Hudson Valley New Year’s Day Spoken Word/Performance Extraganza, held at The Beverly in Kingston on January 1st, 2020.



Findings

in
the
grip
of
the
spider
in the toehold of god
in the sightlines of serendipity
in the pursuit of sincerity
in the hasty chase after the blues
in the lucky range of your eyes
in the red hush of mars
in the beeping opinion of the creaky car
in the suddenly yelping throat of the dog
in the puzzling amorphousness of a puddle
in the great black umbrella that spits rain
in the assumption that breathes in deeply
in the conversation amidst stragglers and worms
i offer you a sniff and a cough
a bite and a kiss
a tremendous assumption
that leaps canyons
in all this
i will find you
yes i will find you
i
will
find
you

-Bruce Weber

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Developing WPS 2020 Schedule - all readings at Golden Notebook (Upstairs)
All of 2020 Events: Events

01/January 11th - Elizabeth J. Coleman; Lee Slonimsky
02/February 8th - Andrea Mitchell; Bruce Weber
03/March 14th - Guy Reed; Victoria Sullivan
04/April 11th - Brett Bevell; Rebecca Schumejda
05/May 9th - Judith Saunders; Raphael Kosek
06/June 13th - Elizabethanne Spiotta; William Seaton
07/July 11th - Barbara Ungar; Stuart Bartow
08/August 8th - Irene Sipos; Perry S. Nicholas
09/September 12th - Elizabeth Cohen; Lisa Rhoades
10/October 10th - Philip Pardi; Sparrow
11/November 14th - Anique Taylor; Mary Leonard
12/December 12th - TBA and Annual Business Meeting

Also, why not become a 2020 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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