"In The Land Of the (Willfully) Blind": Poets In Conversation With Ralph Nazareth And Duane Esposito

Ralph Nazareth

Duane Esposito

In addition to reading their own work, Ralph Nazareth and Duane Esposito, Thursday night's guests of the Norwalk Poet Laureate’s Poets In Conversation series, will also discuss favorite subjects, respective approaches to the craft and their ideas as to its purpose and necessity—especially in today’s unsettling times.

Ralph’s 2017 follow-up to 2005’s Ferrying Secrets, Between Us the Long Road (released by Owlfeather Collective as a fundraising vehicle for a non-profit he co-founded [see below]), while featuring pieces of phantasmagoric satire, outrage, desire, mourning and more penned before the current administration, nevertheless maintains a well-timed propulsive inevitability in its critique of everything from the simplistic allure of parochial political thinking (“Oil Change”), intercultural contact/assimilation (“The Song Of the Plumber”) and unexpected exultation and hope (“The Eyes Of Gaza").

In particular, the Ozymandean spectre of unconscionable destruction (“The Long Oar”) versus the sensitive demands of the child (“Listening To the Radio On the Way To the Nursery”, "After Night Prayers"), whose logic we dismiss for some mad definition of the “practical”, challenges the reader to consider just who the real grown-up is.

The urgency of this juxtaposition is matched with uncomfortable fidelity by Rush’s authoritative performance of their thirty-three-year-old song “Distant Early Warning”, released at the height of the last period of threatened nuclear conflagration:

Duane’s own writing wrestles on similar ground to his friend Ralph’s (especially as to the ultimate indifference of time and Nature to our comparatively ephemeral concerns), constellating about suffering, the burden of knowing (both for the individual and the society) and, as the following video of his “In the Whitecaps Of Pain” suggests, the alienation associated with both:

A professor of English at Nassau Community College, from where Ralph retired in the same capacity, Duane spoke at Curley’s Diner in 2012 and has appeared in numerous literary publications. He has three collections, including Cadillac Battleship (Broken Tribe Press, 2005) and Declaration For Your Bones (Yuganta, 2012). A Long Island resident, he received an MFA from the University of Arizona; in 1994 his writing was selected by Diane Glancy for an Academy of American Poets Award. You can find out about Duane’s latest writing and appearances on Facebook here.

When:
Thursday, December 7, 2017
7-8:15 pm

Where:
Norwalk Public Library
(Main Library Reading Area)

1 Belden Avenue

Norwalk, CT 06850

Contact:
Cynde Bloom Lahey
Director of Library Information Services
203-899-2780

Poets In Conversation is a free program of the Norwalk Public Library, organized by Pushcart Prize-nominated Laurel Peterson, Norwalk Poet Laureate; learn more about the participants and the series by contacting Laurel directly at laurelpeterson@att.net.

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Proceeds from the sale of each copy of Between Us the Long Road will be donated to GraceWorks International, a charitable organization based in India, co-founded by Ralph (a Mangalore native), providing humanitarian outreach to countries in the developing world. Structured on a less intermediated basis than most other non-profits, 100 percent of donations go directly to people in need.

The Returning And The Cherished

Opening with Kaaren Whitney reading tomorrow evening at 7:15 at Barnes & Noble's Open Mic program in the Stamford Town Center, this week features two consecutive events recognizing seasonal and foundational members of the local poetry community.

Following on two prior autumnal appearances to the area (click here and here), Kaaren, a UK resident originally from  Connecticut, practices homeopathy and is active in the English contemporary universalist community. She will be reading selections from The Turning Of the Year: A Book for 8 Seasons (Solstice-Equinox Press, 2016), a chapbook collaboration with Jim Nind of forty-four new pieces, accompanied by full-color photographs.

Among her credits as part of a body of work honoring the natural world, the environment and the urgency of our better stewardship of it, Kaaren has contributed to  Voicing Visions, a 2009 DVD/booklet release featuring assorted artists and poets, England's 2006 National Poetry Anthology and Moonwise Diary (2007 through 2009).

Kaaren has also appeared at the Halesworth Fringe Festival and open mic programs in England, the United States and Australia. Below is her reading from Aldeburgh Beach in UK’s Suffolk County of “The Coming of Light” by the late Mark Strand as part of the 2015 National Poetry Day:

Hosted by Frank Chambers, Barnes & Noble Open Mic meets the second Monday, each month in the cooking section on the main floor of the Stamford bookstore. For more information and directions, contact:

Barnes & Noble
100 Greyrock Place, Suite H009
Stamford, Ct 06901

203-323-1248

A retired professor of literature and peace activist at Nassau Community College, Ralph Nazareth has generously extended his academic chops as moderator/facilitator and creative nurturer to PoemAlley's eclectic assortment of poets and other artists for well over ten years, now, consistently introducing members to new expressive perspectives spanning art, foreign affairs, family, travel, illness and other topics through his energetic organizing of special public readings and frequent appearances of guest readers and performers at Curley's Diner.

In appreciation, the Tuesdays At Curley's group has decided to return the favor by asking Ralph to be this week's featured poet, reading work from his new collection Between Us The Long Road (Owlfeather Collective, 2017).

Ralph is managing editor of of Stamford-based Yuganta Press and president of Grace Works International, a charitable foundation involved in outreach in the developing world (proceeds from the sales of Between Us will be donated to GWI). Ralph has participated in poetry festivals in India, the Middle East, and in Latin America and has placed work in numerous books and magazines both in the United States and abroad, including Indivisible: An Anthology of Contemporary South Asian American Poetry (University of Arkansas Press, 2010) and Multilingual Anthology: The Americas Poetry Festival of New York 2014. His collection Glass: Selected Poems, was published by El Quirófano Ediciones in Ecuador in 2015.

He uses the title poem from the latter to examine the multi-layered role of metaphor in this clip from a 2009 discussion for the Bent Pin (http://BentPin.net):

All are welcome to hear this patient, inquisitive and dedicated advocate for the importance of engaging in, and being engaged by,  the written and spoken word in upholding the human in human affairs.

An Unapologetic Pride In The Face Of Time

Tonight’s featured speaker, Robert Roth is based in New York and was born in Jackson Heights, Queens in 1943. A past participant in PA events in the Stamford area, Robert is the author of Health Proxy (Yuganta Press, 2007) and is co-editor with Arnold Sachar of And Then, an annual magazine of poetry, short prose narratives, art and photos, which has published the work of several Curley’s poets over the years.

In addition to sharing selections from his book, Robert will also discuss the evolution and continuing mission of his magazine, which, after 26 years of publication, is being recognized in literary circles for its radical inclusiveness and focus on the connection between the personal and the political—a prospect that once seemed elusive in “On the Ever Increasing Difficulty of Selling And Then”, Robert’s 1998 essay on the threatened supplanting of physical periodical media by the Internet.

Covering several decades over the course of a creative life beginning in the sixth grade, fueled by everyday experiences and thoughts on managing life, work and conscience before the ever-heavier awareness of one’s finiteness, Health Proxy embodies a quiet but brave impatience for the Easter Bunny-like pretenses that shield us from the challenges implicit in direct awareness of how things really are and the uncertainty of where we are heading. J. Stefan-Cole, in his 2008 review for Free Williamsburg, sees Robert as “…Not a tepid salesman of the self, but one to expose the good, the bad and the not so pretty.”

Good examples of his easy-going stoicism are this commentary he makes in an interview about how stronger community ties of past decades made it easier to live “decently poor”, compared with today’s more unforgiving social/economic climate and a glib description in the 2007 reading below from Health Proxy of his tenacious cat’s frail but claw-deployed final days, wherein her owner agrees with the veterinarian to “let her be killed” (as opposed to be being “put to sleep”):

“Time Stand Still”, by the 2015 Allan Waters Humanitarian Award-winning prog-rock trio, Rush (now into their fourth decade), makes for a sympathetically frank and affecting meditation on the regrets and joys of life’s passage:

The Everyday Glory Of Finding More Questions Than Answers

Chicago native David Lieberman, tomorrow night’s featured PoemAlley speaker at Curley’s, has worked as a teacher, reporter, editor, ghost writer and, through it all, a poet. Among Tuesday’s selections he will read pieces from Simulacra, his latest collection, due for release later this year.

Holding degrees in English from the University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana and the State University of New York at Stony Brook, David hopped several centuries professionally, going from an academic specializing in medieval English literature to writing for the electronics trade press, and has taught poetry at SUNY Stony Brook, the C. W. Post Center of Long Island University and a number of high schools in suburban Chicago and on Long Island.

Of his first collection, The Task, The Hoard & The Long Walk Home (Yuganta Press, 2004; available below under "Collections and Anthologies"), PoemAlley co-founder Ann Yarmal admires how, through his seemingly effortless wordcraft and questing enthusiasm for our tapping the full potential in all our lives, David “shares with us the feelings of inconsequence and the struggle to discover our worth and our joy, with purpose and an insistent instinct for survival.” Jean Mellichamp Milliken, Editor of The Lyric is likewise drawn to his writing’s enobling reminder “that lives are adventures of mythic proportions where questions come more readily than answers.”

These themes of indomitable perseverance, self-discovery and eager curiosity find comparable expression in the acclaimed 1955 novel by Patrick Dennis (inspired by his real-life aunt, Marion Tanner) and subsequent stage and film comedy Auntie Mame. Below is a clip with the heroine’s signature “Life is a banquet!” rejoinder, delivered by Rosalind Russell in the 1958 film version, distributed by Warner Brothers: 

 

David currently lives with his wife in Chapel Hill, North Carolina where he watches hummingbirds by the hour and yearly plans to make a Japanese garden in his wild backyard.

Direction For A Wind That Has Nowhere To Go

Declaration For Your Bones, the latest release from Yuganta Press, collects the poetry of Duane Esposito, wherein he shares decades of grappling with loss, memory, grief and mortality, both as personal and unavoidable universal experiences.

In a culture often all-but-frantic in its dedication to keeping pain at bay, Duane's guest reading of poetry from Declaration, held at Curley's earlier this month--and the discussion it inspired, proved an uncompromising reminder that the things that happen to each of us over the course of our lives, for better or for worse, become an indelible part of us, no matter what we might have in mind. In particular, the introductory correspondence between Yuganta publisher (and academic colleague) Ralph Nazareth and the poet, which led up to this collection, speaks to the honesty and searching courage of Duane's observations.

You can watch Duane reading "Here Are The Days", "Spring" and three other pieces below:

One of the scheduled participants in next month's "Mysteries of Light" reading at the Unitarian Universalist Society in Stamford (see Upcoming Events on the left), Duane Esposito is an Associate Professor of English at Nassau Community College in Garden City, New York and holds an MA from SUNY Brockport, as well as an MFA from the University of Arizona. Duane's writing was selected in 1994 by Diane Glancy for an Academy of American Poets Award and twice earned him a nomination for a Pushcart Prize (2003, 2009). Besides Declaration, Duane has published two other collections: The Book of Bubba (Brown Dog Press,1998) and Cadillac Battleship (Broken Tribe Press, 2005).

Find Duane is in conversation with three other poets on Bill Buschel's Just My Eyes blog here, or comment on his work and contact Duane directly on facebook at http://www.facebook.com/duane.esposito.