Woodstock Poetry Society
Featured Reading and Open Mike
Saturday, June 13th, 2026 at 1pm (new time)
Woodstock Library

Leslie Gerber
William Seaton

HYBRID: in-person and virtually via Zoom

Poets Leslie Gerber and William Seaton will be the featured readers, along with an open mike when the Woodstock Poetry Society meets in person and streamed via Zoom (and www.facebook.com/phillip.levine/) on Saturday, June 13th, 2026 at 1pm(eastern).

WPS meetings are now held the 2nd Saturday (1pm) of every month. New time.

Woodstock Library
10 Dixon Ave, Woodstock, NY 12498
(845)679-2213
www.woodstock.org

The Zoom app can be downloaded here: Zoom Download Center

To attend virtually: contact phillip@woodstockpoetry.com to receive Zoom info
If attending via Zoom, 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:

Leslie Gerber - Leslie Gerber is a poet, critic, and essayist who was born in Brooklyn in 1943. He moved to Ulster County in 1970, where he began his classical music mail order business, Parnassus Records. It ran for 39 years, and an offshoot, the Parnassus Records CD label, is still running. Along the way he wrote thousands of classical music reviews and articles, about 4 decades’ worth for the Woodstock Times, and broadcast classical music over WDST from 1980-91. He began writing poetry in 1999 and has since published three books and individual poems in various magazines. His most recent book, “Losing Tara,” was a tribute to his late wife of 33 years. He now lives quietly in Woodstock, exchanging weekly visits with his companion Arda in Beacon.



Latvian Sprats

A small round can of tiny fish
with a transparent plastic top.
Sprats, it said in large type
but I had to search for the country: Latvia.

The fish were soft and tasty
with crunchy tails.
They came from Latvia, which has a city,
Riga, and nothing else I know

so I closed my eyes and looked hard
and saw a small girl in dirty clothes
lying awake on a cot in a dark room
shivering with hunger.

Outside the room a wild boar
paced impatiently on a threadbare rug
its eyes green fire
its jaws steaming.

I opened my eyes and saw
the girl had the face of my children.
I was about to rush to her
but she whispered,

Do not come. If you were here
you would see so many in the streets
you would shrivel into ugly dust.

Stay home and buy more fish
so that my father can have work
and give me bread.
Buy cans and leave them on the street.
When someone takes one
follow her home and give her your money.

Then the image faded
and I could not remember
where I had bought the fish.

-Leslie Gerber

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William Seaton - William Seaton is a poet, translator, and critic, author of Spoor of Desire, Planetary Motions, and Dada Poetry: An Introduction. He maintains a mostly literary blog at williamseaton.blogspot.com which includes over six hundred critical and scholarly essays as well as a miscellany of other content, but little poetry.



Like light from a door all but shut
at the far end of a dark hall,
a hint of what’s around the bend:
the fine-set gems, the husky breath,
body’s warm scent, a lightning flash,
a sudden silence.
The past day’s enigmatic as the next,
not to mention now: a random walk,
diorama of found objects, accumulating
meaning like dust of bookshelves
in the back archive of the cerebellum’s
castle keep.

-William Seaton

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WPS 2026 Schedule - now in-person at the Woodstock Library and via Zoom
All WPS Events: Events

01/January 10th - Ethan Sirotko; Janet Kaplan
02/February 14th - Tina Barry; Zelda aka Judith Z. Miller
03/March 14th - Michael Cohen; Rhonda Rosenheck
04/April 11th - Poetry Month Special Event - "Poetry as Resistance"
05/May 9th - Marianna Boncek; Richard Parisio
06/June 13th - Leslie Gerber; William Seaton
07/July 11th - Allen Shadow; Carol Graser
08/August 8th - Cheryl Rice; Judith Kerman
09/September 12th - Philip Pardi; Wendy Kagan
10/October 10th - Arden Levine; Raphael Moser
11/November 14th - Denise La Neve; Robyn Hager
12/December 12th - Kemp Battle; Marnie Andrews and Annual Business Meeting

Follow the WPS on Facebook: www.facebook.com/WoodstockPoetry and why not become a 2026 Member of the Woodstock Poetry Society?

Membership is a tax deductible $20 a year. (To join, send your check to the Woodstock Poetry Society, P.O. Box 531, Woodstock, NY 12498. Please include your email address. Or join online at: www.woodstockpoetry.com/become.html. Your membership helps pay for our upgraded Zoom account, post-office-box rental, the WPS website, and costs associated with publicizing the monthly events. Note that WPS is a registered 501c3 (and NYS Charity).

One benefit of membership is the opportunity to have a brief biography and several of your poems appear on this website. Numerous bios, poems, and pictures of past and present WPS members are available here: www.woodstockpoetry.com/members.html and here: www.woodstockpoetry.com/poems.html.

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