CANCELED
Please Stay Well

Woodstock Poetry Society
Featured Reading and Open Mike
Saturday, September 12th, 2020 at 2pm
Golden Notebook (Upstairs)

CANCELED
Please Stay Well

Elizabeth Cohen
Lisa Rhoades

To be rescheduled.

Poets Elizabeth Cohen and Lisa Rhoades 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, September 12th, 2020 at 2pm. Elizabeth Cohen and Lisa Rhoades will be rescheduled at a later date.

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:

Elizabeth Cohen - Elizabeth Cohen is associate professor of creative writing/English at the State University of New York at Plattsburgh. She is co-editor of Saranac Review and author of The Family on Beartown Road, a memoir; The Hypothetical Girl, a book of short stories, and six books of poetry, including most recently, The Patron Saint of Cauliflower.



if rabbits had hands

 the children of aleppo
are eating grass

handfuls of grass
which they pry from the ground

with little hands
their eyes dart as they feed

like small meticulous rabbits
if rabbits had hands

they have learned how to pretend
they do not hear the distant booming

of barrel bombs
and have trained themselves

to hear the sound of sunshine
on broken glass

the brave sound of raindrops
on asphalt

the sound of trucks moving around
in the night

which is the sound of maybe
the dream of bread

the children of aleppo
still play

you can see them in photographs
on their Big Wheels

and scooters and holding their dolls
and stuffed lions and dogs

one doll had bandages
on its arm

another was missing a leg

-Elizabeth Cohen

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Lisa Rhoades - Lisa Rhoades grew up in the Midwest and moved to New York City in 1987. She holds an MFA in Writing from Columbia University and was a Poetry Fellow at the Wisconsin Institute for Creative Writing. She is the author of Strange Gravity, selected by Elaine Terranova for the Bright Hill Press Poetry Award Series and published in 2004. A chapbook, Into Grace, was published by Riverstone Press in 2003.

Her work has been published in such journals as The Bellingham Review, Chelsea, Pleiades, Poet Lore, Poetry East, Saranac Review, and Smartish Pace. Before becoming a nurse, she taught at CUNY College of Staten Island, Rutgers University, and as Visiting Poet through Poets and Writers Poetry in the Branches and the Geraldine R. Dodge Foundation. She lives on Staten Island with her spouse and their two children.

Visit her Amazon author page at: amazon.com/author/lisarhoades and meet her at www.lisarhoades.com.



The Long Grass

The long grass is mown.
The long grass is mown but not yet raked.
The cut stalks interlace and dry in a net
above the green.

Everything is green.
Everything is green and slightly sour.
The girls gallop and gallop, pretending
they have horses.

The girls gallop. They are horses.
They run the field of red clover
and rye—inflorescence
above; a sweetness within.

Everything is sweet
Everything is sweet and slightly green.
At the bottom of the trough, pale algae waves.
They run the pump to fill the tank. They dip their faces in the cold.

By summer’s end they are bored and tan.
By summer’s end they are young women.
Right now they wander to Salem Free Church
to weave graveyard flowers into their manes.

-Lisa Rhoades

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

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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