The Savoring Of Words and Wine: Remembering Jane Weston

Jane  with PA member Cora Santaguida

Following a protracted illness, venerated PoemAlley member Jane Weston passed away last Tuesday at the age of 92. She will be greatly missed.

Usually from the favorite vantage of a corner booth shared with her friend Norm Heller, Jane was known to the group meeting weekly at Curley's Diner and returning guest poets for her sprightly smile and well-observed feedback, imparted over a glass of wine. 

While not a poet, herself, Jane was especially valued as an island of serenity when the stream of conversation got occasionally heated in response to themes raised by a particular piece of writing.

Jane was also active in the Green Party, having run for public office in Fairfield County several times, including Registrar of Voters in Weston and as Judge of Probate in Stamford (winning 11 percent of the vote). In addition, she served two terms as Co-Chair of the Green Party of Connecticut.

Services are tentatively planned for this coming Saturday or Sunday at Lacerenza Funeral Home at 8 Schuyler Avenue in Stamford; Zoom access will be provided online for those unable to attend. Friend and fellow PA member Richard Duffee, who is Jane's conservator, can be reached at 203-278-4013 for further details.

Facing The Branch-Points Of Life

Sharon Charde, retired psycho-therapist and highly-accoladed poet, reads this Tuesday at Curley’s Diner from numerous chapbooks and publications reflective of the economical and sensitive style for which she is known.

Sharon most recently earned first prizes both in the Arcadia Press 2014 Ruby Irene Chapbook Contest (deadline for the next round is November 15) and the Broad River Review’s Rash Awards competition. Her work has appeared more than sixty-five times in Calyx, The Paterson Literary Review, Ping-Pong (literary organ of the Henry Miller Memorial Library), Poet Lore and many other journals and anthologies. In addition, she has seven Pushcart nominations to her name. 

Sharon has edited and published I Am Not A Juvenile Delinquent, containing the work of the adjudicated teens she has volunteered with since 1999 through the creative writing program at Touchstone, a residential treatment center in Litchfield, Connecticut for girls ages 12 through 18. A devoted writing teacher for twenty-three years, Sharon has been awarded fellowships from the Vermont Studio Center, the Virginia Center For The Creative Arts and The MacDowell Colony.  

Yaddo Gardens entrance

She has released several prize-winning chapbooks, such as Bad Girl At The Altar Rail (Flume, 2005), Four Trees Down From Ponte Sisto, (Dallas Poets Community Press, 2006) as well as 2008’s Branch In His Hand, a full-length collection from Backwaters Press, later adapted for radio by the BBC in 2012. Described as a requeim in poetry, Branch recalls with sparse but unflinching eloquence the death of Sharon's son in 1987 during a trip to Italy and the transformative effect the freak event had on herself and her family.       
      
After Blue, for which she won honorable mention in Finishing Line Press’s 2013 chapbook contest, was published in September 2014. She’ll be at Yaddo, the famous artists’ retreat in Sarasota Springs, New York, this spring. 

A Night With Three Downtown Muses Of Contact, Caring And Community

Cherished experiences as both beneficiaries and devotees of writing, interlaced with a continuing zeal for reaching out, support and belonging unify the work of the three featured PoemAlley speakers sharing the podium next Monday evening as part of a special Barnes & Noble Open Mic reading.

Adriana's the one in the white coat...

While formally hailing from Norwalk, Adriana Rexon confesses her Tuesday nights at Curley’s have made Stamford feel like home. She has studied poetry at Princeton with such acclaimed names as Tracy K.Smith and James Richardson. But her first and best teacher has always been her father, who used to read poetry aloud to her at bedtime instead of Good Night Moon. As a result, she has come to trust the sound of words more than their meanings--which exist both as an inspiration and an approach to her work.

Adriana continues to sate her phonic fascination by learning foreign languages, so far having tackled Russian, Arabic, Hebrew, Spanish, French and Persian—a few of which she might even be pretty good at now!  

Rona D. Schenkerman, earliest of the trio to join PoemAlley, is a social worker who believes that everyone has a gift, though some just haven't found theirs yet. Besides the teens with whom she works, her numerous passions are dancing, poetry, animals and nature.

Herb Davison (1931-2009)

Her mother taught her how to read and she's been playing with poetry for as long as she can remember. Much like Adriana, upon first discovering Curley's she hasn't left “home" since. Rona is indebted to her friend and beloved PA alumnus Herb Davison (now writing poetry in the clouds) for introducing her to the diner’s Tuesday night family, of whom she remains thankful and awed. Some of Rona’s favorite contributions are reproduced in PoemAlley collections such as Wednesdays at Curley’s (Yuganta Press, 2006); most recently, she has placed poetry in And Then, Robert Roth’s literary magazine.

A Brooklyn girl at heart, Roberta Strom resides in Stamford, where she's still on the hunt for a decent slice of pizza. She speaks a little Chinese, is a free spirit, loves dancing and greyhounds. An enthusiastic Curley’s regular, Roberta lights up the place every Tuesday with her direct and heartfelt, all-stops-pulled-out pieces.

Hosted by Frank Chambers, Barnes & Noble’s Open Mic Poetry program meets the second Monday of each month in the cookbook section on the main floor of the bookstore (located in the Stamford Town Center), beginning at 7:15 p.m.

 

For more information, contact:

Barnes & Noble

100 Greyrock Place, Suite H009

Stamford, CT 06906

203-323-1248

Gene Glickman & Nancy Hoch Featured Poets At Curley's This Tuesday

Gene Glickman and Nancy Hoch will be sharing their work and the experiences informing it at Curley's Diner in downtown Stamford on Tuesday, August 30, 2011, beginning at 7:30 pm.

Gene Glickman is a retired professor of music. He taught at Nassau Community College from 1963 to 1999. During the academic year 1969-70 he spent a sabbatical year in Sarajevo, Yugoslavia, teaching at its Music Academy. He returned to Sarajevo for visits several times thereafter. His last trip there was for three weeks in 1997, after Yugoslavia had split into fragments and Sarajevo had undergone a prolonged siege conducted by Bosnian Serbs. During that three-week period he kept a journal; he will read from that journal.

Nancy Hoch teaches writing and literature at the City University of New York. Many of her students are teachers’ aids in the New York City public schools. She is completing a dissertation on the figure of the father in recent U.S. literature who positions himself on the periphery of the family. In particular, she is interested in the way economics shapes the father into an absent presence. She will read from her poetry, including some poems based on historical incidents and some of a more personal nature.