Tag: poetry

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Boston Area Poetry Readings for May and Beyond

Light lights in air blossoms red
Like nothing on earth
Now the chains
Drag graves to lie in
This is May Day! May!
The poor’s armies are veining the earth!
— Louis Zukofsky

Here’s the latest listing of poetry readings in Boston and eastern Massachusetts, just in time for Beltane and May Day. The Mass Poetry Festival is also taking place this weekend in Salem. It’s a weekend smorgasborg of readings, workshops, events, and exhibits that takes over the downtown Salem area, all for the cost of a movie. And parking is plentiful and cheap. Schedule and information here: http://masspoetry.org/category/2014-festival/ 

I also recommend the readings taking place on both sides of the river Monday, May 5 at Newtonville Books and the Blacksmith House in Harvard Square.

Thanks as always to my friend at MIT Press for compiling this list. Leave a comment if you would like instructions on how to be added to his mailing list.

Thursday, May 1, 2:30 pm
Arthur Sze
McCormack Family Theater
70 Brown St.
Providence

Thursday, May 1, 4:30 pm
Jessica Bozek, Christina Davis, Jill McDonough, Anna Ross and Rodney Wittwer
The Bookstore @ The New England Institute of Art
10 Brookline Place West
Brookline

Thursday, May 1, 7 pm
Yermiyahu Ahron Taub
Calamus Bookstore
92 South Street #B
Boston

Thursday, May 1, 7 pm
Susan Rich, Ann Easter Smith, and Rhina Espiallat
The Tannery Series
Jabberwocky Books
50 Water Street
Newburyport, MA

Thursday, May 1, 7 pm
Carrie Etter and Jennifer Militello
Grolier Poetry Book Shop
6 Plympton Street
Cambridge

May 2-4
2014 Massachusetts Poetry Festival
Salem
This event has many superb poets and the schedule is too lengthy for this email. Please find it online by using a search-engine “Massachusetts Poetry Festival” for detailed schedule

Friday, May 2, 11 am
Yermiyahu Ahron Taub
Reading and discussion with a seniors group
Sponsored by the Greater Boston area Jewish Community Center
Center Communities of Brookline, Hebrew Senior Life
1550 Beacon Street
Brookline
Open to public

Friday, May 2,7:30 pm
Yermiyahu Ahron Taub
Reading at Temple Sinai
50 Sewall Avenue
Brookline
Open to public

Friday, May 2, 8 pm
D. Foy, Robin Stratton, and Christopher Reilley
Dire Literary Series
Out of the Blue Art Gallery
106 Prospect St.
Cambridge

Sunday, May 4, 12:45 pm
Faye George and Dimitris Lyacos
Poetry: The Art of Words/Mike Amado Memorial Series
The Plymouth Center for the Arts
11 North St
Plymouth

Monday, May 5, 5:30 pm
Jill Walker Rettberg
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
East wing of Building 14
Room 14E-310
Cambridge

Monday, May 5, 7 pm
Linda Lamenza, Margie Flanders, and Margot Wizansky
Newtonville Books
10 Langley Road
Newton

Monday, May 5, 8 pm
James Arthur and Tung-Hui Hu
Blacksmith House Poetry Series
56 Brattle Street
Cambridge
$3

Tuesday, May 6, 7 pm
Renaltta Arluk
An evening of words, prose, and melodies featuring local poets sharing their personal stories about climate change and mourning mother Earth. Inspired by Inuit spoken word artist Taqralik Patridge, whose words are at the heart of SILA.
Central Square Theater
450 Massachusetts Ave
Cambridge
Free and Open to the Public

Tuesday, May 6, 6:30 pm
Seán Ó Coistealbha & Tomás O’Leary
Cambridge Public Library
449 Broadway
Cambridge
(garage entrance is from Broadway, between playground and high school)

Tuesday, May 6, 7:30 pm
Lisa Starr and John Holgerson
For the Love of Words
Unity Church
13 Main Street
North Easton, MA

Thursday, May 8, 7 pm
Don Wellman and Tam Lin Neville
Cervena Barva Press Studio
At The Arts for the Armory
191 Highland Avenue
Somerville

Thursday, May 8, 7 pm
Mary Bonina
Flint Memorial Library
147 Park St.
North Reading

Friday, May 9, 7 pm
Frannie Lindsay, Barbara Crooker and Amy Hoffman
Chapter and Verse
Loring Greenough House
12 South Street
Jamaica Plain

Sunday, May 11, 3 pm
Cecily Parks
followed by Mothers’ Day Tea
Poetry at the Library Series
Concord Free Public Library
129 Main St.
Concord, MA

Monday, May 12, 8 pm
Peter Campion and Tomás Morin
Blacksmith House Poetry Series
56 Brattle Street
Cambridge
$3

Tuesday, May 13, 7 – 9 pm
DAY ONE: readings, remarks, and riffs in honor of Professor Emeritus Fred Marchant and to support The Suffolk University Poetry Project
C. Walsh Theatre
Suffolk University
55 Temple Street
Boston
$25

Wednesday, May 14, 6:30 pm
Louise Callaghan and Mairide Woods
Cambridge Public Library
449 Broadway
Cambridge
(garage entrance is from Broadway, between playground and high school)

Wednesday, May 14, 7 pm
Jan Schreiber & Wayne Clifford
Powow River Poets Reading Series
Jabberwocky Books
50 Water Street (in the Tannery Mall)
Newburyport, MA

Thursday, May 15, 7 – 9 pm
Ken Lee and Debora Pfeiffer
Rozzie Reads
Roslindale House
120 Poplar St.
Roslindale

Saturday, May 17, 10:30 am
Elizabeth Doran, Carla Schwartz and Tara Greenblatt
Wake up and Smell the Poetry
77 Main Street
Hopkinton, MA

Saturday, May 17, 3:45 pm
Mary Bonina
Tony Brown and the Duende Project
Brockton Arts
Fuller Craft Museum
45 Oak Street
Brockton, MA

Saturday, May 17, 6 pm
Peter Shippy, Rosebud Ben-Oni, and others
Mr. Hip Presents: Reading Series at the UFORGE Gallery
767 Centre Street
Jamaica Plain
$7

Sunday, May 18, 2 to 4 pm (note earlier start time)
James Arthur, Audrey Henderson, and Sheile Whitehouse
Calliope Poetry Readings at West Falmouth Library
575 West Falmouth Highway
Falmouth, MA
Donation: $5. Refreshments provided

Tuesday, May 20, 7 pm
Marguerite Guzman Bouvard, Preston Hood, Lamont B. Steptoe
Grolier Poetry Book Shop
6 Plympton Street
Cambridge

Thursday, May 22, 7 – 8:30 pm
Haiku Reading by members of the Alewife Brook Haiku Group
Community Room, Robbins Library
700 Massachusetts Avenue
Arlington

Monday, June 2, 7 pm
Margaux Novak, Robin Pelzman, and Lani Scozzari
Newtonville Books
10 Langley Road
Newton

Sunday, June 8, 12:45 pm
Jacquline Maloney and Molly Lynn Watt
Poetry: The Art of Words/Mike Amado Memorial Series
The Plymouth Center for the Arts
11 North St
Plymouth

Thursday, June 19, 7 pm
Hanna Andrews, Eryn Green, Stefania Heim
Small Animal Project
Lorem Ipsum Books (note new location)
1299 Cambridge St
Cambridge

Saturday, June 21, 10:30 am
Teresa Mei Chuc, Elijah Imlay and Ergo Canto
Wake up and Smell the Poetry
77 Main Street
Hopkinton, MA

 

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National Poetry Month in the Year of the Horse

crocus-yam-2014It’s national poetry month again. My website was briefly down because Gmail did such an amazing job of sorting my email for me, I never got the notices reminding me to renew the domain registration for Gardenofwords.com. That was a killer way to start off national poetry month.

I noticed the outage when I was pitching a website redesign to a poet whom I greatly admire. I’m fortunate to be able to pick and choose my clients in a way I wasn’t always able to in the past. As a result, my very short client roster is full of interesting, creative women. This latest client would probably point out that I am an interesting, creative woman myself, to which I respond “pshaw.” It’s nice to have friends who say complimentary things about you. In the Po-Biz, that’s how you get blurbs for the back of your book.

April has been surprisingly un-cruel in the past couple of days, especially given March, February, January, and December, all of whom I want to roll up into a big ball, flatten with a giant rolling pin, dry in the sun, and then fold into lots of sharp corners and stick up the posterior of  this past winter. It’s very easy to forget that things are exponentially better for me today than they were this time last month, and the month before. Just the other morning I forgot about it while packing my lunch. M. and I got into a lively discussion* about his tactical decision to forgo buying lettuce on Monday night rather than buying me non-organic lettuce which I might not eat. It wasn’t about lettuce, of course. It was about my own severe anxiety at having less than $10 in my checking account the day before I got paid. And the very uncomfortable dynamic that develops when two people fall in love and move in together, and then one of them takes a hefty pay cut.

On the plus side, we worked it out, as we always do. I’m continually amazed at M’s ability to handle situations that have baffled me for most of my life. Emotional intelligence comes in all kinds of packages — some of them former infantrymen. Also on the plus side, I’m steadily plugging back up the hill toward a full-time work schedule. Also also on the plus side, I took a walk yesterday afternoon and TOOK OFF MY COAT. And didn’t put it back on once. Which just goes to show you anything is possible.

Spring is late this year, but it’s here. The hills are still grey and brown with bare trees, but the moss has turned bright green and the grass won’t be far behind. Snowdrops have been out for weeks now, lingering in the cool spring air. Crocuses are here, and may even be gone in another week. The daffodils in my back garden have been poking their little green heads up. Ralph chases the squirrels until well past 6:00 pm.

Poetry-wise, I’m doing less and more than I’ve done in years past. Whereas in past years I’ve adhered to a strict regimen of a poem-a-day, I find myself moving more fluidly now. I’m making inroads into new techniques for revision, attempts to cut away the dross and find surprising turns of phrase. A sort of Orb-style remix, but with random poems instead of sound clips.

The bout of illness and the 40th anniversary of my birth made me stop and think about what I’m doing with my life, and if it’s what I want to be doing, and what I can do about all that. When I’m very ill, I will often decide that This One Big Change is what will fix all of my problems. Past experience has taught me that it usually just creates more instability and makes it harder to get back to a baseline. A cursory search of the Intartubes (“year of the horse” plus “horoscope” plus “2014” plus “water ox”) gives me highly scientific** evidence that this is not the year for me to make any sudden changes. In the Year of the Horse, things gallop along. You might find yourself miles from where you started, only to discover you’ve gotten on the wrong horse. For a person born in the year of the water ox (1973), it’s not a good year to be moving and changing. But it is a good year to send out hidden feelers under the earth, gathering information through the mycelium that binds us all together.

The seed inside unfurls with the longer days, reaching toward the light. I watch it, worry, pray it won’t be killed in an early frost. April is cruel in a different way every year. I am curious to know its cruelty this year, in the year of the horse. Maybe there will be a kindness to its cruelty, as I slog and toil and trudge into something warmer, something sunny, something else.

 

*which our neighbor could hear through the walls, no doubt

** and by “scientific,” I mean the opposite, of course

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14 Ways of Looking at an Icicle

  1. The icicle, left to its own devices, hates the luscious promiscuity of an ice cream cone
  2. An icicle deferred is still an icicle, but longer and more dangerous
  3. In December, the icicle is only a dream. In January, a blessing. In February, strange sculpture and the promise of spring. In March, an iron eye of suffering.
  4. Place your tongue on the icicle to know its secrets. Inside the icicle, trapped between the molecules of water, all the secrets of its passage from clouds into trees, through dirt, into streams, back into the vast cloaca of the ocean.
  5. The icicle always remembers the ocean.
  6. There on the sidewalk, on a tree trapped in a square of concrete, the icicle knows the dance of limitation. The back and forth of it. It grows down, but looks sideways.
  7. On a tree trapped in concrete, the icicle grows from the tip of a broken branch. Other branches show the blood-dark bark of new growth. The broken branch shows the icicle.
  8. The comma-clatter-clack of the woodpecker does not interrupt the icicle, but calls it back to its own silver song.
  9. Snow does not create the icicle. It would not exist without the forgiveness of the sun after a night of snow.
  10. The icicle does not believe in blankets.
  11. The icicle exists along the tongue of the eye’s gaze.
  12. This spring, the eaves melted onto a tree beside our neighbor’s door. Icicles grew sideways, the echo of their plastic bastard sisters.
  13. Within a week, gravity removed their rebellion.
  14. The snowman dreams of ice cream. The sandcastle dreams of the icicle.
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What Happens to a Dream Deferred?

Harlem

What happens to a dream deferred?

Does it dry up
like a raisin in the sun?
Or fester like a sore–
And then run?
Does it stink like rotten meat?
Or crust and sugar over–
like a syrupy sweet?

Maybe it just sags
like a heavy load.

Or does it explode?

Langston Hughes
From Collected Poems

There are many kinds of cages. Some of them are more comfortable than others. But they are all cages.

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I Met Berserk (After Wallace Stevens)

Through the rain
And the lights
I met myself
I met berserk
On the traffic island between fifth and main
“you have so much left to learn” he told me,
Taking hold of the scruff of my neck
And shaking
And shaking

[This is a stub. It echoes three poems: one that I wrote in high school, which was inspired  “Anecdote of the Prince of Peacocks,” by Wallace Stevens; and also The Great Figure, by William Carlos Williams]

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Rilke’s Advice to a Young Poet

You ask me whether your verses are any good. You ask me. You have asked others before this. You send them to magazines. You compare them with other poems, and you are upset when certain editors reject your work. Now (since you have said you want my advice) I beg you to stop doing that sort of thing. You are looking outside, and that is what you should most avoid right now. No one can advise or help you–no one. There is only one thing you should do. Go into yourself. Find out the reason that commands you to write; see whether it has spread its roots into the very depths of your heart; confess to yourself that you would have to die if you were forbidden to write. This most of all: ask yourself in the most silent hour of your night: must I write? Dig into yourself for a deep answer. And if this answer rings out in assent, if you meet this solemn question with a strong, simple “I must,” then build your life in accordance with this necessity; your whole life, even into its humblest and most indifferent hour, must become a sign and a witness to this impulse.

— Rainier Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet. (tr. Stephen Mitchell) Vintage Books, New York: 1984.

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Poetry to Get You Through the Holidays – in Boston, Anyway

First Night Ice Sculpture -- Boston Customs House
Last year’s First Night sculpture is still relevant for a few weeks or so

Here’s the latest list from my informant at MIT. Please comment or contact me if you’d like information on how to be added to his mailing list.

I’m a member of two workshops (three if you count Toni Amato”s Write Here Write Now in Somerville — I’m not often able to make the Wednesday workshops but Toni is one of my mentors and the two of us meet regularly). One of them I run. In the other, I have the luxury of being a student. And in that second one, the “host poem” of our closing session for this term was by Gary Whited, who headlines this Friday (tomorrow!) at the Chapter and Verse series in Jamaica Plain. I’ve never met the man but appreciate his work. Word on the street is that he incorporates poetry into his day job as a psychotherapist.

If you’ve already got plans on Friday, Mr. Whited makes an appearance at the Brookline Public Library’s monthly open mic in January — details below.

I’m also calling out the Small Animal Project, a regular reading series held in a space that’s near and dear to me. Until the mid 2000s, it was the back room of the New Words Bookstore and home to a feminist/queer monthly open mic. Perhaps someone in Camberville can tell me if Small Animal Project does justice to New Words’ legacy.

Friday, December 13, 7:30 pm
Gary Whited and Mary Bonina
Chapter and Verse Series
Loring-Greenough House
12 South St.
Jamaica Plain

Sunday, December 15, 2 – 4 pm
Afaa Michael Weaver and Larissa Pienkowski
Brookline Poetry Series
Brookline Public Library
Main Branch in Hunneman Hall
Brookline
Open mike sign-up: 1:45 pm

Monday, December 16, 8 pm
Tamiko Beyer, Jenny Browne, and Kate Greenstreet
Small Animal Project
Outpost 186
186 1/2 Hampshire St
Cambridge

Sunday, January 19, 2-4 pm
Susan Becker and Gary Whited
Brookline Poetry Series
Brookline Public Library
Main Branch in Hunneman Hall
Brookline
Open mike sign-up: 1:45 pm

February 13, 6 pm
Rowan Ricardo Phillips
Katzenberg Center, 3rd Floor
871 Commonwealth Avenue
Boston University

Sunday, February 16, 2-4 pm
Elaine Terranova and Justen Ahren
Brookline Poetry Series
Brookline Public Library
Main Branch in Hunneman Hall
Brookline
Open mike sign-up: 1:45 pm