Genesee Reading Series, April 11th

The impression taken away from Tuesday night’s Writers & Books Genesee Reading Series was a sense of stillness. Neither Andrea Weinstein nor Jennifer Grotz, the two featured poets, brought the rumble of dump trucks unloading personal issues. More measured, metered and self-reflective, each in turn, offered a glimpse of themselves through their work.

Weinstein offered the sentiment “silence gives the self a chance to replenish.” Her poem, I Hear bespoke that inner search: “…rhythms in blessed silence….” Using listing in several pieces, she asked in her poem, One Good Man to:  “…stand up… to yell loud and long…” in her humbled lament against man’s inhumanity to man. She touched upon elegies, one in particular Archaeology of Life about what others might find in the treasures left 'post  Weinstein,' listing a number of things accumulated including “neon strapped heels…”  and summed it up eloquently in her poem’s closing line “When I am not here what will be gleaned for these artifacts? I think not much.” Poetically, not true.

Jennifer Grotz read several poems from her books, but true to the night’s unofficial theme of quietude, her work was delivered in measured tone. Whether observations in her self-portrait, The Window with lines like “Eyes wide like an owl’s…anger hides in the jaw…” the window image was imaginative and superb.  Her reflections continued with poems that spoke of her writing times generated while in a French monastery. Grotz’s comment, “sight leads to insight” rang true throughout. Whether observing a Krakow nun riding across from her on public transportation or her lines from, The Mountain observed from the monastery: “No matter how long I looked I could not see it all… how to look at something too big to fit the frame…” or her delicate poem brushing fear, Scorpion, or concluding her reading with “Poppies” and the natural wonder around, which she summed up with “Love is letting the world be half tamed,” Grotz’s poems like Weinstein’s brought a stillness to the evening that was refreshing.

The Genesee Reading Series is in its 34th year at Writers & Books, held every month on the second Tuesday. 

David J. Delaney

The William and Hannelore Heyen Collection at the University of Rochester

Reading is an inseparable part of the writing process. It's a forever rewarding practice continually enriching our understanding of ourselves and our world, an inexhaustible source of connection, inspiration, release, and meaning.

So, if you’re a “writer” you've probably got a pretty substantial book collection. Perhaps, like me, a significant portion of your collection is precariously stacked on your nightstand. But, if you’re a world-renowned, award-winning poet, and a creative writing/literature professor for over 30 years, your collection of more than 10,000 items (including an unbelievable amount of signed first editions, manuscripts, and correspondence from major, modern American writers) is displayed in the University of Rochester's Hyam Plutzik Library for Contemporary Writing in the Rare Books and Special Collections wing of Rush Rhees Library at the University of Rochester.

While the official installment and dedication takes place until March 26th, William Heyen, a regular supporter and Honorary Member of the group, took Just Poets and its members on a tour of the collection a couple weeks ago.

Click the link below to see pictures from the event:

Just Poets Tour of The William and Hannelore Heyen Collections at U of R

Thanks to Bill Heyen, his family, and the U of R for a wonderful afternoon! And thanks to Roy Bent for the pictures!

January Featured Poet Robert McDonough & Open Mic

Here’s the thing about Robert McDonough: still waters run deep. Here’s this pedigreed poet (MA Boston College, PhD NYU, nearly 40 years teaching English) hitching up his suspenders, scratching his burly beard, engaging in the small stories between his poems that make his eyes sparkle. Then his tranquil delivery, the kind of dialogue you hope to have with a friend on a country stroll. His poems take you through his subtle insight, always an observer, always enough distance to pause and ponder at the small things that encapsulate the big (life, death, love, old friends…). His poem: The Playground from his book: No Other World (Cleveland State University Poetry Center) was a beautiful reflection on parenting and life offered in a child’s toss of a handful of dirt.

McDonough is an observer par excellence. His poems can be seemingly disarming. Not so. One just needs to let it soak in. And in “Humping the Muse,” McDonough’s run at writer’s block, and “Universal Rejection Note,” there’s plenty of wit for all. He is a serious learner, a damn good poet, and no doubt a pleasure to take a walk with.

The open mic portion brought out some new voices as well as some familiar work. JP member Jim Jordan offered a poem I especially liked named Horse on Vacation about a working pony on an island. Maril Nowak took a political bite with her poem Sizzle which was “bigly” witty. New member Jack Spula, read his very Whitmanesque nature observations. David Michael Nixon read two new ones: Let It Bleed Johnny and The Necessary Voice, and a longer piece centered on a relationship, entitled: Builders and Wreckers with the opening line: "Well there’s not much to say constructively…” Roy Bent read a striking piece: Riddle that sears the sometimes harsh father-son entanglements. Bart White, borrowing from poet Bill Heyen’s short 'poemlet' technique, offered two versions of Geraniums. David Delaney read a new piece called The Graveyard Shift. Newcomer Mitch Valente read his lovely poem The Empty Window, an optimistic reflection on time. Host David Yockel closed out with two: one untitled, and the other Beyond Survival which again proves why people should come out to hear poetry. 

Next Month (February 8th) Just Poets Featured Reader: Dwain Wilder.

David Delaney

October Genesee Reading Series at Writers & Books

Compliments to Wanda Schubmehl, host of Writers & Books’ Genesee Reading Series, for October’s pairing: St John Fisher Professor M.J. Iuppa and SUNY Geneseo Professor Lytton Smith. Damn it was good. You know that drag-your-feet-to-a-reading feeling that sometimes accompanies a long day?  These two poets washed it away in seconds.

M.J. set an easy tone, talking about each poem she read, engaging the audience, a truly warm reflection on and off the page. The title poem of her latest book, Small Worlds Floating, is so light filled, you’ll want to hear it again and again. Here’s the fourth stanza:                 

My desire-to lie down on the spine
of a green canoe that’s set adrift
on a pond full of water lilies
and golden carp and sunlight
tracing its transparent map.

This poem is controlled, subtly rhymed, gently grasps the passion she holds like a confident runner in the starting blocks. She is well-published for a reason.

M.J.Iuppa

Lytton Smith read mostly from his book The All-Purpose Magical Tent, the winner of the 2007 Nightboat Poetry Prize. Is he good? Poet Terrance Hayes says on the book’s back cover; “Whoa…” and in the book’s foreword, written by Hayes, he notes: “…Ultimately, I love this collection for its crafty displacements. As the opening line of the sequence Monster Theory suggests "It is always at the onset a displacement –."

Lytton Smith

Lytton read several poems basted in a sort of tangy truth: a mix of pun, wit, and play, with a discordant harshness that holds the listener. And I, too, found the book’s seven-poem series Monster Theory gripping. His look at us through the monsters we create—the monsters we need—could stop you from blinking. There’s a heart deep in that series that rises and falls as he leads us through this Frankensteinian, Beowulfian allusions. And his last line of the series tells you of the leash he has on his craft.

Wanda, nice work. Another great night for poets and fans of poetry.

David Delaney

Just Poets Annual Retreat at the Gell Center

29 poets gathered in the beautiful hills of Bristol, NY on Saturday, October 15th for conversation, presentations, meditation, writing and reading of poems. This year’s retreat to the amazing Gell Center was one of our most energized and well-attended ever!

The gloves came off!!! (In the best possible way...)

Thanks to Karla for her talk on the centuries-old tradition of protest poetry.

MCC English professor, and new Just Poets member Elizabeth Johnston explored two archetypes of patriarchal society: Medusa & Perseus and Adam & Eve.

The presentations inspired intense conversation AND...

... quiet composition! :)

Check out some of what we created!

We had such a great time this year! We hope that we see you at next year's event!

R-VOICES: Roc Bottom Slam at St. John Fisher

Bouncin’ Off the Walls

In the packed student lounge on the campus of St. John Fisher, Lu Highsmith and the Roc Bottom Slam Team delivered on a promise to “build community through poetry.” Those words are the heart of Just Poets’ mission and its R-Voices outreach program. Last night was yet another event that fulfilled that ideal.

Mark, one of nearly 100 in the crowd, noted the make-up of the audience: “You had rich people, poor people, older, younger, academia and street wise— people of all colors, all there— all giving sense of community; something we desperately need, each supporting the other.”       

Mark was referencing the total evening where Fisher students, Just Poets members, and people from the community took part in an open mic after a tremendous performance by slam poets: Chi, DieVerse, K-t, Ladii, Lyric, Marvelous Marvin, Anderson, Shaq, and Andrea Daszkiewicz.

Several St. John Fisher seniors responded to the Roc Bottom performance:

• “I was like tearing up, oh my God,” said one student of Roc Bottom member Andrea.
• “Amazing,” said another student. “I was quite surprised by how much I liked it, because I never really listened to poetry before.”
• Another senior said, “I liked the tone, the movement, it was so lively.”

Roc Bottom never missed a beat. This was performance art at its peak. Right from jump street, slam contest veteran Anderson brought Broadway-level performance with his poem “Marriage,” so gripping in gesture and beat, even the ping pong balls in the rec room next door stopped to listen. And that was just the beginning.  Each Roc poet reached inside and grabbed that gutsy place where pain and pleasure snap like stripped wires.

St. John Fisher professor M.J. Iuppa organized and emceed the evening, and basked in the night’s success: “I love it. I love the diversity of it,” she said.

Just Poets member Larry Berger did his improv poetry; JP’s Roy Hartwell Bent recited a couple of poignant pieces. Surrounding them were Fisher students: Miss Kat, Miss Kat-2, Jacob, and Dan. All read poems. Student Peggy H. read a poem about the horror of cancer with such passion and rage that even cancer got cancer. A pair of white rappers (I. O. N. and Chris) brought sway to the seats. Wrapping up an energetic, meaningful evening was Cel and his soon-to-be-a-hit-song-near-you, “Bouncin’ Off the Walls.”

Just Poets’ R-Voices is made possible with support from a New York State Council of the Arts Decentralization Grant awarded by the Genesee Valley Arts Council. A sincere thanks to our host St. John Fisher, and to Roc Bottom for packing and rocking the house with talent and heart.

David Delaney

End of Summer Review

What strikes me about three recent readings by Just Poets (Leah Zazulyer at our JP monthly meeting, M.J. Iuppa at Before Your Quiet Eyes bookstore, and Claudia Stanek, featured reader at Writers & Books’ Genesee Reading Series in August), is the range each showed. All are highly respected and at ease within the world of poetry, and each shares her work with care and preparation.

Leah Zazulyer’s talk/reading was on Poetry in Translation, specifically Yiddish poets, and one in particular, Israel Emiot. She read from her new book, “As Long As We Are Not Alone” selected poems by Israel Emiot. She was beautifully prepared: handouts, exercises, and an extensive bibliography for the attendees. When Leah read, her presence and delivery silenced the room, as did the lines of Emiot and others. 

M.J. Iuppa was the featured poet at our monthly JP open mic in September. I've listened to M.J. read before. Each time feels like a journey. Whether it’s to settle down under a tree, look on at an Ontario lakeside world, or explore a painting, these “trips” always lead to beautiful discoveries. In the poems she read (including “Yellow Rice,” "This Family Called Apple,” “Pontoon,” “Uncovering the Well” and others) there is that country warmth, an invitation in, a touch of canning jar (with an occasional bee inside), that pauses the reader/ listener to collect and connect with the heart.

Claudia Stanek, the W&B featured reader this last month, brought that glint to her work, an edge of honesty poetry deserves. I loved her poem “Well” with the lines; “A woman drinks from the well of adversity...thoughts so wet with weight, she buckles under…” And “I Grew up in a Dog Kennel” cuts as hard as the title. In “Cosmology” she ponders her passion for all things furry, and asks “How long is five minutes to a feral cat…” 

These women are poets among other things, Just Poets in particular. Each unique, each well worth your time and attention.

David Delaney

Photos taken by Bart White.

July Open Mic: Celebrating "Le Mot Juste 2016"

For twelve years Just Poets has published a collection of its members’ poems titled Le Mot Juste (The Right Word). The anthology represents the hard work and devotion that we give to our craft, and, maybe even more importantly, to each other. 

At July's open mic, a modest yet passionate audience, including over a dozen Just Poets members, came to Before Your Quiet Eyes to celebrate this year's edition, published by FootHills Publishing. 

Also, much thanks to the entire LMJ 2016 team: John Roche (Editor), Gretchen Schulz (Associate Editor & Designer), with Associate Editors Anita, Augesen, Nicolas Eckerson, & Bart White.

Here are two poems from LMJ 2016 that were read at July's Open Mic:

Out of Water David James Delaney

He drags through the heat of a brilliant
morning rising on an old pier,
two stories above a postcard sea,
a new rod in his wooden hands
his tackle box undented, he stops to catch
his breath, grasps at what the hell’s happening.

He reels, feels his thickness that dims the line.
The small fish ascends, spins silver
bayonet fins in straight razor shimmer.

Others lean along the pier, once earners,
wait in sports hats, new gear, killing
time on empty hooks below.

He drags this catch over splintered boards
until he stands before those and things he does not know.
The little mackerel gasps, slaps back the treble
hook and leader clinking like a bracelet on a bar.

The fish slowly dries, it too, left unblinking

Like Gregory Peck Roy Hartwell Bent

There’s a moment, in Twelve O’Clock High,
after General Savage’s arms refuse to lift him into a B-17,
he sits, catatonic, awaiting his bombers’ return.
Shadowed silver halide renders Peck’s hair the formless,
dark mass of Dad’s sandy thatch in black & white snaps;
no strand shines like those glowing behind on Gary Merrill. 

Peck wears a familiar, inward expression,
Dad’s battle-fatigue stare, sitting in rehab,
their bright hands tense, curled around armrests,
lips compressed, Savage’s set jaw shadowed,
sharp, like Dad’s when a slender, younger man.

His inner war Dad kept to himself,
as well as whatever he felt for the teenager
who’d maneuvered him into the chair.

The General relaxes at last when his planes come back,
shambles to sleep, perhaps in weeks, off-screen,
recovers strength to fight some more. The audience lauds
his well fought war: a hero any boy can believe in.

But for me, never having seen him again,
Dad’s still in the chair, looking—like Gregory Peck.

Healing Voices: an R-Voices Event

With husband Roger Weir, cancer survivor, sitting next to her, Just Poets’ Karla Linn Merrifield stood up. “We’ve been coming here for 18 years,” Karla said to the 25 or so Oncology staff volunteers and caregivers who came to share lunch and words at the R-Voices’ Healing Voices: Poetry at Wilmot reading. Not 18 times, 18 years. Imagine that. It was my first time in this Family Resource Center. It was the first time Strong held such an event.

Karla Linn Merrifield (on the left)

For more photos and a video of this event, please click here.

Karla read three strong poems: “At the Feet of Birds” “On Earth” and “Invitation in Maasai” from her chapbook The Urn. Then Just Poets members and cancer survivors Ruth Wright and Anita Augesen shared some cathartic poems of their own. Ruth read “The Salon,” her metaphor for the radiation room, and Anita read “Chemotherapy,” telling of losing her hair and finding so much more. They brought the poetic voice of “what’s-it-like being a patient.” Colleen Powderly, David Delaney, Precious Bedell, and Bart White also shared their work.

Several of staff and volunteers in attendance gave poetic voice to the warm and friendly gathering. Senior Social Worker Sandra Sabatka explained how she heard a poem on the radio coming into work one morning on WXXI’s“Writer’s Almanac.” She read that poem entitled “I Give Thanks” by Marie Reynolds.  Michele Allen, from the Oncology finance office read Mary Oliver’s “Summer Morning.” Caregiver Ellen Van Zandt read her poem “I Climbed a Mountain Today.” Hazel Pugh, assistant to Catherine Thomas, director of Patient Services, sang a beautiful rendition of “What a Piece Of Work is Man” from the musical Hair. Applause. Applause for all.

Dwight Hettler, the Wilmot Center’s Assistant Associate Director, and Catherine Thomas expressed their pleasure at this event. “This is the first time we have had poetry here” said Dwight, and enthusiastically welcomed a return next year. Catherine Thomas gave the poets and attendees a big thanks and a special thanks to Sandra Sabatka, Bart, and Karla for putting it all together.

But the last words came from Karla. 

“Cancer teaches us so much,” said Karla.

Imagine that.

David Delaney

Gail Hosking featured at Just Poets Open Mic in June

This month’s featured poet, RIT instructor Gail Hosking, churned through a number of turbulent and affecting poems about war, family, the “collision” of different points of view, as well as love and its devastating effects. Several stirred the audience to stillness as she recounted insanities played out as normalities. A clever reach was her grab at Marvin Gaye’s classic “What’s Goin’ On” threading it with impressive lines like “…rusted tanks left slow moving ghosts…” reflecting her “army brat” upbringing.  “Crossfire March 1967” brought back Vietnam; “Damn the Moon” put a new spin on the old standby in the sky with her lunar persona watching the wreckage below.  Her work was cadenced, her complex thematic weave played deceptively easy. 

A schooled and accomplished essayist, Gail also spoke of how she came to tackle poetry –“I just sat down and wrote 100 poems” a comment that speaks to a modified slogan: “just doing it”. Her poems and list of accomplishments indicate years of work have paid off.  

David White began the open mic  with short burst poems that brought laughter and contemplation to the audience. Kitty Jospe’s persona poem “Dear Piano” is right at the top of her game. Breven Bell rolled out an intimate and fierce, yet delicate, five section love poem with several gutsy lines gutsy including “I murdered your indifference…” Jim Jordan read his poem “They Say that Normans Enrich the Language”—a look at our origins and what could have linguistically changed had history been altered. Roy Bent recited “Poetry Died on Friday” with professional presence. Bart White brought out a new poem “Brutal Proof” that too stilled the audience. JP MC David Yockel started and concluded the evening with Gail Hosking’s poet of choice, Stephen Dunn.

You know, this little bookstore, Before Your Quiet Eyes, in the heart of the Monroe Avenue, is a pretty cool place for a reading (thanks to Ken the owner). And Just Poets is pretty cool for making poetry happen there. Monthly open mics are second Wednesdays of each month at 7 p.m. Enjoy the neighborhood, some good poetry, or better yet, come out and share one!

Review by David Delaney

Gail Hosking