Woodstock Poetry Society
Featured Reading and Open Mike
Saturday, August 9th, 2025 at 2pm
Woodstock Library
HYBRID: in-person and virtually via Zoom
Matthew J. Spireng
Suzanne Cleary
Poets Matthew J. Spireng and Suzanne
Cleary will be the featured readers, along with an open mike when
the Woodstock Poetry Society when the Woodstock Poetry Society meets in person
and streamed via Zoom on Saturday, August 9th, 2025 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
The Zoom app can be downloaded here: Zoom
Download Center
To attend: 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:
Matthew J. Spireng - Matthew J. Spireng, known more familiarly
as “Matt,” is a widely published award-winning poet. His most
recent full-length poetry book Good Work won the 2019 Sinclair Poetry
Prize and was published in 2020 by Evening Street Press. His other full-length
books are What Focus Is and Out of Body, winner of the 2004
Bluestem Poetry Award from Bluestem Press at Emporia State University. His
published chapbooks are: Clear Cut; Young Farmer; Encounters; Inspiration
Point, winner of the 2000 Bright Hill Press Poetry Chapbook Competition;
and Just This. Since 1990, his poems have appeared in publications
across the United States including such places as North American Review,
Southern Poetry Review, Rattle, Blueline and Chronogram. He
is a lifelong Ulster County resident. His website is www.matthewjspireng.com.
Annabelle Birdsall Kroft
If you’ve lived your whole life,
as I have, without knowing your birth mother,
only her name, disembodied, rootless,
long untraceable, and learn, at age 67,
she died 21 years ago and is buried
in a cemetery 53 miles from your home,
will you wonder, as I do, what
you will feel when you first visit
her grave, what you will say, remembering
she heard your first voice long ago,
and for the rest of her life your silence,
and will you wonder, as I do, whether she will
somehow hear you again, grown now and old,
whether she spoke to you before she gave you away,
and whether now, though long dead, she will speak again?
-Matthew J. Spireng
*
Suzanne Cleary - Suzanne Cleary’s The Odds (New
York Quarterly Books 2025) was selected by Jan Beatty as winner of the 2024
Laura Boss Narrative Poetry Award. Her previous books are Beauty Mark
and Crude Angel (BkMk Press) and Keeping Time and Trick
Pear (Carnegie Mellon UP). Her awards include a Pushcart Prize, the John
Ciardi Prize, and the Cecil Hemley Memorial Award of the Poetry Society of
America. She is grateful for fellowships from the NY Foundation for the Arts,
Yaddo, and MacDowell. Her publication credits include PBSNewshour.org, PoetryDaily,
Best American Poetry, The Atlantic, Southern Review, and Poetry
London. Core Faculty in Converse University’s MFA in Creative Writing
Program, her website is www.suzanneclearypoet.com
For The Poet Who Writes To Me While Standing
In Line At CVS, Waiting For His Mother’s Prescription
for
Russell Jackson
It’s nothing that you flat out say, Russell, but your email
reminds me that six months into pandemic, five months
into quarantine, CVS remains open 24 hours, its harsh
blue-white light steady, as nothing in nature is steady,
those long florescent bulbs still dive-bombing lumens
so that midnight is bright as 8 a.m., or 4 a.m., or 2 p.m.,
or 7:30 p.m. You can see that I struggle to carry
one thought to the next, these long days. I spend hours
on the Internet, becoming expert on the height of actors
from Hollywood’s Golden Age, on the 25 Cutest Photos
of four-year-old Princess Charlotte. I now know
that Elizabeth Bishop was a bit taller than I am,
a bit heavier. Her clothes would be too big for me,
as no doubt her shoes. Russell, what is it that supposedly
concentrates the mind wonderfully? Samuel Johnson said it,
in Boswell’s biography, which I have never read and never
will. I know my limits. Lately, I think that I know little else
worth knowing. My only advice for your poems, Russell:
wash your hands for as long as it takes to sing Happy Birthday.
Did you know that song is no longer copyrighted? Five years ago,
U. S. District Court Judge George H. King ruled
Happy Birthday is Public Domain, the 1935 patent applied
only to the melody and specific arrangements of the tune,
but not to the actual song itself. When Judge King writes
actual song, he means lyrics, but I hear him saying
song is something beyond the reach of law, beyond reach
of language. Song is like a kernel of light, inside of things,
steady. Russell, be like CVS. I don’t know what this means,
be like CVS. Russell, dare to say what doesn’t make sense,
then wait patiently to see the sense inside of it. Be like CVS.
Be like the bewildering variety of toothpastes, decongestants,
hair conditioners. Be like orange Velcro knee braces,
like spools of pastel ribbon that hums, pulled across a scissor.
Be like the aisle of bare shelves where the cleaning products stood,
where the white metal shelves now display only how each shelf,
with a simple ingenious hook, fits into the frame.
I’m telling you nothing that you don’t already know, Russell.
Be like whatever accepts the horrid light, and shines in it.
Be like the 8-ounce can of lightly salted cashews, for which
you are newly willing to pay $12.99, as you stand in line
waiting for the blue-gloved hands to hold out to you
the small white bag, which is not for you,
except in that you are the one
who will carry it where it must go.
-Suzanne Cleary
*
Developing WPS 2025 Schedule - now in-person at the Woodstock Library
and via Zoom
All WPS Events: Events
01/January 11th - Guy Reed; Will
Nixon
02/February 8th - Alison Koffler;
Dayl Wise
03/March 8th - Charlie Cody; Mike
Jurkovic
04/April 12th - Poetry Month Special
Event (TBA)
05/May 10th - Roberta Gould; Vivi
Hlavsa
06/June 14th - Irene Sipos; Perry
S. Nicholas
07/July 12th - Lee Slonimsky; Robert
Charles Basner
08/August 9th - Matthew
J. Spireng; Suzanne Cleary
09/September 13th - Jennifer Franklin;
Lucia Cherciu
10/October 11th - Raphael Kosek;
Raphael Moser
11/November 8th - Bruce Weber; Linda
McCauley Freeman
12/December 13th - Cheryl A. Rice;
Tom Bonville and Annual Business Meeting
Follow the WPS on Facebook: www.facebook.com/WoodstockPoetry/
and why not become a 2025 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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