Woodstock Poetry Society
Featured Reading and Open Mike
Saturday, July 8th, 2023 at 2pm
Woodstock Library

HYBRID: in-person and virtually via Zoom

Kateri Kosek
Raphael Kosek

Poets Kateri Kosek and Raphael Kosek will be the featured readers, along with an open mike when the Woodstock Poetry Society meets in person and via Zoom (and streamed live on Facebook: www.facebook.com/WoodstockPoetry) on Saturday, July 8th, 2023 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

*** We ask all people who wish to attend in person to self-test for Covid within 24 hours prior to the event. Self-test kits are reasonably priced and available at nearly every pharmacy. ***

The Zoom app can be downloaded here: Zoom Download Center

To attend virtually: 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:

Kateri Kosek - Kateri Kosek is the author of American Eclipse, winner of the 3 Mile Harbor Press Poetry Book Award, as well as a chapbook, Vernal, a winner of the Split Rock Press Poetry Chapbook Series (both forthcoming). Her poetry and essays have appeared in such places as Orion, Terrain, Catamaran, Rosebud, and Northern Woodlands Magazine, and have won prizes at Creative Nonfiction and Briar Cliff Review. She teaches college English and mentors in the MFA program at Western CT State University, where she earned an MFA. She has been a resident at the Kimmel Harding Nelson Center for the Arts, and the Tallgrass Artist Residency in Kansas. She lives in the Berkshires. katerikosek.com



Boy with Crows

What does it mean when
a curly-haired child of four, bent over
in the dirt with plastic John Deeres and dinosaurs,
whips his face to the sky when the crows swoop in
and answers them in their own tongue?
Caw, caw, caw! he cries, and the crows
wheel above, repeat it in their trained
and harsher voices. Over and over
he mimics the raucous cries—
he’s forgotten about playing in the dirt with
toy tractors that make him feel big
and for a moment there is nothing else,
he is suspended in the pureness of crow,
seeing, perhaps, that what skims
the boundaries of his world of
trucks and bulldozers is
also the world.

He is still calling when the crows fly off,
but two-syllabled now: CAW-caw,
CAW-caw, the intensity waning like
raindrops after steady rain, as he slips back
into the little blond machine
of himself, hard at work and
utterly engaged in being human.

-Kateri Kosek

*

Raphael Kosek - Raphael Kosek’s latest book of poetry, HARMLESS ENCOUNTERS, won the 2021 Jesse Bryce Niles Chapbook Contest. AMERICAN MYTHOLOGY, a finalist at Brick Road Poetry Press, was released in 2019. ROUGH GRACE won the 2014 Concrete Wolf Chapbook Contest. Poems are forthcoming in Laurel Review and have appeared in numerous journals such as Southern Humanities Review and Poetry East. Her poems and CNF have been nominated for 3 Pushcart Prizes and she is an editor at The Comstock Review. She served as the 2019-2020 Dutchess County, NY Poet Laureate where she teaches at Dutchess Community College. www.raphaelkosek.com



Wild West Dirge
                   For America

“Shoot me,” she said,
           “before they come over the hill.”
With her last whiskey breath she said,
           “Nice guitar!”
In fact she had gotten caught
           in the strings of his guitar
just as she had always wished
           and the notes were
food and love and everything
           with many o sounds
the way mournful was beautiful
           and tears were cowboys
crying down her cheeks
           and America was no kind
of song but every major chord
           gone minor
with blackbirds heavy
           in the branches
and freight trains lunging across
           prairies silent with snow.

Such a stunning funeral! She was
           waked by buffalo
and little Annie Oakley’s ghost
           grown thick in the waist,
but her trigger finger shone silver
           in the light of the corn moon
hung down from heaven,
           and some cowboy’s horse
nickered in the dry streambed
           when they found her body—
the rose of her mouth
           amen-ing such a gospel
the Lord couldn’t ignore.

-Raphael Kosek

*

Developing WPS 2023 Schedule - February-December readings Hybrid: in-person and now at the Woodstock Library and via Zoom (and streamed live on Facebook: www.facebook.com/WoodstockPoetry)
All WPS Events: Events

01/January 14th - Danielle Woerner; Virginia Konchan (via Zoom only)
02/February 11th - Alison Koffler; Dayl Wise
03/March 11th - Allison Argueta; Brianna Heller
04/April 8th - Darcy Smith; Dennis Wayne Bressack
05/May 13th - Jerrice J. Baptiste; Mary K O'Melveny
06/June 10th - Irene Sipos; Perry S. Nicholas
07/July 8th - Kateri Kosek; Raphael Kosek
08/August 12th - David Messineo; Will Nixon
09/September 9th - Barbara Ungar; Lucia Cherciu
10/October 14th - Bracha Nechama Bomze; Reagan Upshaw
11/November 18th - George Quasha; Sam Truitt 3rd Saturday
12/December 9th - Lisa St. John; Lissa Kiernan and Annual Business Meeting

Also, why not become a 2023 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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