UUSIS To Host PoemAlley's "Café Night: One-Night Stand for the Arts" This Saturday Evening

Revel in an authentic mix of live music and poetry, presented on the front steps of the Unitarian Universalist Society in Stamford!

Chris Belden

Open to all and free of charge, Café Night: One-Night Stand for the Arts represents a distinctly casual option from customary summertime entertainment, showcasing the live music of multi-instrumentalist Chris Cortigiano and screenwriter/novelist Chris Belden (2012’s Carry-On is his well-received second title; Songs About Anything and Camouflage are two albums of original songs). 

Regional poets Faith Vicinanza, Mar Walker, "Professor” Arturo Pfister and Linsey Morse provide engaging and varied spoken-word counterpoints.

Faith Vicinanza

Founder of Bethel’s popular Wednesday Night Poetry Series, Faith has penned several collections, including Husband (2008) and In the Thick of It (1996), both from Hanover Press, her own Newtown-based publishing house.

Touching plays an elegant dual role, both in the tactile and emotional sense, in “Confession”, which is used as a case study of Faith’s creative methodology in this interview with Poetry Liner Notes’ Robin Elizabeth Sampson:

Confession

When I would lie jumbled across the length of you –
all that was lost between us a little more or less
each day, or pushed aside – always arching
over the not-lost, the not-pushed-aside –
I pretended not to lean to the curve of sorrow's belly,
your hand on my knee, your tongue in my mouth
and then we would stumble, or is it that I stumbled
and nothing ever changed, black always claiming
to be something paler, cherry blossom pink perhaps
or simple yellow. I do not miss holding myself apart,
a defense against your pointed intellect. Oh, but I miss
your wicked sense of humor. I don't miss wanting
something more, or thinking there was something
more to be wanted. I miss my head on your shoulder.
Please forgive me. For this, it is too late to make amends.
For the rest of everything that faltered between us,
I forgive us both.

Copyright 2008, Faith Vicinanza

Faith’s friend, poet/painter/songwriter Mar Walker was editor of the Bent Pin Quarterly from 2007-2009, which is archived here.

Mar took part in the 2011 National Poetry Slam in Cambridge, Massachusetts and is a member emeritus of the Shijin Poetry Troupe (Undone Poems by Shijin appeared in 2008 via Hanover). A devout agnostic, Mar considers matters of dogma and disbelief in her latest chapbook from 2011, Tabernacle of Bees. Enjoy this reading of “What Is”, originally written for PA's April 2012 Mysteries of Light presentation (also at the UUSIS), where Mar butts the evanescent trials of human pro-/regress against the abidance of Nature and time with a forthright, yet reassuring intimacy:

Besides producing several collections, Mar has placed individual pieces in Common Ground Review, Connecticut River Review and Fairfield Review, among other publications.

“Professor” Arturo Pfister embodies the humor, pathos and unique spice of the Big Easy in his collection My Name Is New Orleans: 40 Years of Poetry and Other Jazz (Margaret Media, 2009), as well as in this representative performance from 2007:

Learn more about Arturo and his storied hometown at his blog.

Linsey Jayne Morse

A former Poetry Editor on Mason’s Road, the Fairfield University online literary journal, and Founding Editor of Spry Literary Journal, Linsey Jayne Morse contributes her own brand of sympathetic, psychologically acute material to Café Night like the sample below:

Girls

learn at very young ages
that outer beauty is the water-
oasis in the desert they crave.

They are taught
to smile in plaster of Paris,
hypocrites behind closed doors.
They cut themselves in secret, starve
for passion.

Each young lady
feigning optimism
and poise, accepts her place
below male fantasies,

above the unsightly.
They learn to heave aside the weak, to shun the strong
and not to trust anyone,
in a world of facades,
mascara
and hair spray.

Copyright 2009, Linsey Morse

Funded through a CAPP grant from the City of Stamford, Café Night is co-sponsored by The Center for Sexual Assault Crisis Counseling and Education. Donations welcome.

Where:

UUSIS, 20 Forest Street (directly across from the Avon Theatre)

When:

6-8 PM, Saturday, August 10, 2013

Contact:

Nick Miele at 203-504-1027; nmiele@aircastle.com

Managing Coolness And The Echoes Of Old Applause

For followers of Connecticut Public Radio or Hartford Courant columnist Colin McEnroe, listeners to the Thursday, May 31 broadcast of his self-titled program were treated to guest co-host PoemAlley’s Ralph Nazareth as part of the CMS 2012 Poetry Show (click here to listen to it in the CPR archives).

Reading from his 2005 collection Ferrying Secrets, Ralph and Colin touched on everything from the tempting possibilities of Homeland Security’s new list of terrorist watch words and Connecticut's leading poetry events, to the ties between creativity and mortality and the re-emergence of poetry’s relevance since the late 1980s.

So wide in his appeal that even farmers would stop working their fields to gather and listen to Pablo Neruda read, Ralph observed how poetry, once consigned to the static critiques of academia, is "changing lives” anew by addressing social issues via slams, multimedia performances and other dramatic outlets.

As PoemAlley moderator for many years, Ralph talked of witnessing how the form’s inviting capacity for personal expression has blossomed into a renewed yearning for exercising one’s voice both for oneself and on behalf of those who have none (not to mention the spontaneous capacity to do so through the compositional capabilities afforded by cell phone technology).

Nick Flynn

Richard Wilbur

Calling into the show from near the end and the prime of their respective careers, guest poets Richard Wilbur and popular memoirist Nick Flynn shared their complementary drives as students, readers, writers and performers.


First published in 1947, Wilbur as poet (The Beautiful Changes and Other Poems; Things of This World, 1956), children’s book author, prolific translator and collection editor, could not overemphasize the power of outspoken, unabashed delivery, reminding writers that “poetry began as song.” Perhaps a natural sensitivity, given the National Book and T.S. Eliot Awards-winner's work as French translator and librettist on the Leonard Bernstein 1963 musical production of Tartuffe, which yielded numerous actors’ interpretations of his interpretation of Moliere’s comedy--an experience he found uniformly enjoyable, as opposed to the translation process, which Richard found both “slavish and lively”. For a taste of the Nobel Laureate’s own work, enjoy Wilbur’s reading from the 1994 Riverwood Poetry Festival:

Part of a generation of longer-lived writers like the recently-passed Adrienne Rich, Wilbur, now 91, is philosophical about his remaining output, referring to his latest collection, Anterooms (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2010) and his June 2 appearance at this summer’s Sunken Garden Poetry Festival probably his last. Wilbur prefers to pull back before giving a disappointing showing, either in print or before the microphone. The video below adapts Canadian rock trio Rush's affecting lamentation on the inevitable transition from virtuosity to the Void:

Interestingly, Ralph and Colin observed how, of all forms of writing, poetry’s intellectually and physically compact character confers a rare and intimate immortality.


For instance, Ralph confessed to often keeping small pieces in his wallet to re-read when in need of support. Of continued utility is Wilbur's "A Wedding Toast," which Ralph has had many opportunities to share with nervous fathers-of-the-bride (Ralph closes the program with a reading of his similarly-themed "Lightning Bugs" from Ferrying). McEnroe attested to his own obsessive muttering of the line “fresh linen for the backs of thieves” from “Love Calls Us To Things of This World” (1963’s The Poems of Richard Wilbur).

The line’s paradoxical generosity is mirrored in the work of Indian poet Reddy Shankreti, who challenges the reader in his 2011 collection Voyager (University of California Press) by using the figure of Kurt Waldheim--one-time UN Secretary General and former Nazi--to highlight the moral complexity of being human.

A poetry instructor at Green Haven Prison for many years, Ralph believes similar exercises, such as Colin's and other's gleefully defiant competitions to write poetry based on Homeland Security’s newly-released list of terrorism “trigger” words (scroll here for the complete list) are further ways where poetry can serve to examine ethical issues by divorcing them from emotionally-controlling contexts.

Context regarding the craft of poetry, itself, is a different matter for Nick Flynn, whom, while informally serving as an “ambassador” for poetry to the mainstream due to the success, in particular, of his memoirs The Ticking is the Bomb and Another Bullshit Night in Suck City (2010, 2004, Norton, respectively) spoke on learning not just how to write it, but about its history and feeling privileged to have studied with older practitioners like Allen Dugan as an aid to “finding your tribe” within the field. The PEN/Joyce Osterweil Award-winning author of three poetry collections, including The Captain Asks For a Show of Hands and Some Ether (Graywolf, 2011, 2000, respectively) will be reading this evening from 7 to 9 pm at the Asylum Hill Congregational Church in Hartford as part of the Riverwood Poetry Festival. If you can't make it, here's his reading of "Haiku (failed)" from The Captain Asks:

Wary of his perceived “coolness” by mainstream culture, given that the majority of poets work in obscurity, Flynn expressed a mild disorientation--in contrast to Wilbur’s delight--regarding seeing his efforts filtered through others' performances. Previewing re-enactments of episodes from his life in the forthcoming Julianne Moore/Robert DeNiro feature adapted from Another Bullshit Night “can be an eerie experience.” See how faithful the production of Being Flynn is for yourself here:

The Sunken Garden Poetry Festival began June 1-3 at the Hill-Stead Museum in Farmington and continues on Wednesdays through August 1. Graced in past seasons with readings by Billy Collins, Maxine Lumin, Grace Paley and other celebrated poets, Sunken Garden has been regaling audiences with verse and music among the garden's fragrant blooms for twenty years and offers workshops and opportunities for one-to-one discussions with poets. Learn about Theodata, Sunken Garden's new online journal here. Here's a sampling from the current season:

Ralph joins Antoinette Brim, Randal Horton and Doug Anderson this Sunday, June 24, from 2 to 4 pm in reading poetry of social justice at the Harriet Beecher Stowe Center as part of the Riverwood Poetry Festival, a four-day celebration which began June 21, now in its fourth year, taking place in several sites throughout the Hartford area. Other participants, including Maggie Kearney, Sonya Huber, Walter Butts, Janet Bowdan and Tony Fusco, round out a program incorporating readings by up-and-comers, live music and a panel discussion with poetry journal editors. Click here for full details; email: riverwoodpoetry@yahoo.com.

Sunken Garden Poetry Festival

Hill-Stead Museum

35 Mountain Road

Farmington, CT 06032

860-677-4787 ext.134

poetry@hillstead.org

Riverwood Poetry Festival (six venues)

Asylum Hill Congregational Church

814 Asylum Avenue

Hartford, CT 06105

860-525-5696

http://www.ahcc.org/

Harriet Beecher Stowe Center

77 Forest Street

Hartford, CT 06105

860-522-9258

City Steam Brewery

942 Main Street

Hartford, CT 06103

860-525-1600

http://www.citysteambrewerycafe.com

Connecticut Science Center

250 Columbus Boulevard

Hartford, CT

860-724-3623

http://www.ctsciencecenter.org/

Connecticut Science Center

250 Columbus Boulevard

Hartford, CT

860-724-3623

http://www.ctsciencecenter.org/

The Wadsworth Atheneum

600 Main Street

Hartford, CT 06103

860-278-2670

http://www.thewadsworth.org/

A Call To Be A Bodhisattva: Poetry As The Art Of Healing

Marianela Medrano-Marra and Reggie Marra, both individually and as a team of literary healers, bring to Curley's this Tuesday their enthusiasm for poetry and writing as a means of inner growth, reconciliation and social development.

Born and raised in the Dominican Republic, Marianela has lived in Connecticut since 1990, where she works as a licensed psychotherapist and certified poetry therapist. With numerous individual poems placed in journals and anthologies in the United States, Latin America and Europe, Marianela also has several collections to her credit, including Curada de Espantos/One Who Has Seen It All (2002, Ediciones Torremozas, Madrid), Los Alegres Ojos de la Tristeza/Happy Eyes of Sadness (1987, Editorial Buho, Santo Domingo) and Regando Esencias/The Scent of Waiting (1998, Alcance, New York).  


Through the Palabra Training Center, she offers on-site and remote programs for individuals and groups in poetry and bibliotherapy, applying literature and psychology to help participants forge their own paths to wholeness. Frequently focusing on women's issues and feminist spirituality (read "The Ciguapa Speaks: Dominican Women in the 21st Century," a detailed essay on Taino culture and mythology, Marianela's work has been heard at venues in New York, Connecticut and throughout the country. Keep up with her latest poetry, thoughts and activities at http://marianelamedrano.com/. Below is her reading from The Buttonwood Tree in Middletown as part of last year's Riverwood Poetry Festival:

An educator since 1975, her spouse, Reggie, is a Teaching Artist and Integral Coach™  (http://www.integraljourneys.com/), who has worked with people of all ages. Reggie has presented his poetry and workshops at the annual conference of the National Association for Poetry Therapy, the Spirituality Institute (Iona College) and Goddard College’s Power of Words conference.

Among his published work is the collection Who Lives Better Than We Do? (2001, From the Heart Press) and Living Poems, Living Lives: Spirit, Self and the Art of Poetry (2004, Xlibris). The latter title touches on many of the themes tackled in Reggie's own workshops, such as the quality of creative/personal effort, conscious living (and dying) and who we think we are at the most fundamental level.

With "Bump," Reggie shares a fun reminiscence of his sister, Anne Marie, to which everyone who has shared their childhood with siblings can relate:

To read about his observations, appearances, or to find out about creative/life coaching opportunities, access his site at http://www.reggiemarra.com/. For the latest details on his workshops, email Reggie at rmarra@paradoxedge.com.

Information and resources that similarly embody the Buddhist concept of Bodhisattva--Sanskrit for higher awareness and the ardent commitment to helping others achieve it, click on this previous blog entry on recent PA member, Gerald J. Gargiulo.