Woodstock Poetry Society
Featured Reading and Open Mike
Saturday, December 13th, 2025 at 2pm
Woodstock Library

HYBRID: in-person and virtually via Zoom

Cheryl A. Rice
Tom Bonville
and Annual Business Meeting

Poets Cheryl A. Rice and Tom Bonville will be the featured readers, along with the Annual Business Meeting, followed by an open mike when the Woodstock Poetry Society when the Woodstock Poetry Society meets in person and streamed via Zoom on Saturday, December 13th, 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.

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Features:

Cheryl A. Rice - Long Islander by birth, Cheryl A. Rice has lived in New York’s Hudson Valley for over forty years. A featured reader at the Bowery Poetry Club in New York City, Caffe Lena in Saratoga Springs, and venues in between, her work has been appeared in Chronogram, Home Planet News, Florida Review, Misfit Magazine, Trailer Park Quarterly, Ragged Lion Journal, and Long Island Quarterly, among others. Books include Love’s Compass (Kung Fu Treachery Press), Until The Words Came (Post Traumatic Press, with Guy Reed), and Moses Parts the Tulips (APD Press. Rice is a member of Calling All Poets, Poetry Society of Woodstock, Albany Poets, and the Hudson Valley Writers Guild. She is the founder/host of the now-defunct Sylvia Plath Bake-Off, held from 1993 to 2002. RANDOM WRITING, Rice’s workshop “for new and used poets,” has been offered for over twenty years at such venues as the Poetry Barn in Hurley and the AIR Studio Gallery in Kingston. She earned a BS at SUNY New Paltz, and half of an MA at the University at Albany.



Spinach

It was a mistake for sure,
but that one night, a day or two after we married,
just a couple nights later we went to dinner
in town, took a taxi because of the snow, a good idea
consider my husband’s lousy driving, the ride
a roller coaster anyway down to Main Street,
to the only restaurant open, our only visit, and in an
effort to turn over a new leaf, I ordered spinach salad,
which came out in a family-size bowl, big enough for
whomever else had braved the weather to be there that
night. Another mistake. Did I misread the menu, or
was I intended to consume it all? I tried, brought the
rest home like I would continue to do until recently,
when I finally realized that salads don’t keep, that
there is no perfection to be had when it comes to left-
overs, or marriage. I tried that night, several nights,
huddled up with him in the snow of our little
college apartment, sliding glass doors allowing a
steady breeze that January, admitting the cold,
eventually the chill that stalled our marriage,
icy clarity that despite our best efforts, for love,
for family, nothing could be saved.

-Cheryl A. Rice

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Tom Bonville - Tom Bonville _bio



Tom Bonville_poemtitle

Tom Bonville_poem

-Tom Bonville

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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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