Poetry

Article updated September 15, 2019 by Dave Read

Two poems by Dave Conlin Read, Fall Vespers and Winter Reverie, will be published in the Fall/Winter 2019-2020 issue of the Aurorean, due out in late October.

Fall Vespers

Because summertime leaves
us limp with languor, trees
who cast only shadows
heretofore,
now also cast doubt.

They loosen the noose
of certitude –

their showy displays
present a deciduous
analogue to television,
tablets and smart things –

perhaps even lead some
to ogle the colorful leaves.

Winter Reverie

Weeks of cold days under granite skies
Trudging streets flanked by walls
Of drab snow, shaped by glacial snow plows,

Lead to a magical moment when I
Become John Muir, six thousand feet tall,
Striding across Yosemite Valley

Article updated September 12, 2019 by Dave Read

It was my good fortune to participate in a poetry workshop during the 2018 Sharon Springs Poetry Festival, along with nine other poets, which was run by festival-founder Paul Muldoon.

I was smart enough to ask colleagues in my weekly workshop in the Berkshires to help me decide between the two poems that I’d thought suitable to workshop with Muldoon, but then was too imperious to follow their decision!

My local group suggested that I bring “More Ways to Ponder” while I opted for “Cape Cod Post Card.” The group consensus was a two page poem that collects about a dozen epigrams loosely related to the topic of poetry; it has since been published in an anthology.

My choice, which I was very excited about, fell flat as a pancake at the workshop. It was a little mystifying that the regard of Muldoon and the others for the poem were so divergent from my own. But, aware that I must be ready to kill my darlings, I was over my disappointment by the time I was out of Schoharie county.

That poem was scrapped, but a new one was made around the aspect of the old one that had nothing whatsoever to do with Cape Cod. While it has yet to find acclaim out in the wild, nonetheless my poetry cohort agree it’s a worthy poem.

Article updated September 6, 2019 by Dave Read

Following the appearance in a January 2012 edition of the New Yorker of his now-famous essay “Out the Window,” I became acquainted with Donald Hall and had the pleasure of three visits at Eagle Pond Farm, with trips to a succession of area restraunts. Also, I attended his last reading and poetry talk in Nov. 2017 at the University of New Hampshire, as well as his funeral seven months later. This is an aggregation of links to useful, entertaining, and eluciadting items related to Donald Hall, who died on June 23, 2018.

• The Web of Stories, “an archive of stories from people who have influenced our world…” – recorded at Eagle Pond Farm, Jan. 2005; there are 111 video clips of 5.5 minutes duration – Web of Stories;
• Comprehensive, up-to-date, bibliogrphy and related info by the publisher of Poetry magzine – including 54 poems, several essays by and about him: Poetry Foundation;
• His 2001 essay, “Death to the Death of Poetry,” is among the material posted here: Academy of American Poets;
• In their own words: “This guide compiles links to resources on Donald Hall throughout the Library of Congress Web site, as well as links to external Web sites that include features on Hall’s life or selections of his work.” Includes White House video of President Obama presenting him the National Medal of Arts in 20120: Library of Congress;
• NPR interview, 2014;
• Interview by Peter A. Stitt, The Paris Review, The Art of Poetry, No. 43 (Issue 120, Fall 1991); The Paris Review;

Notice the pile of disused railroad ties above; Seamus Heaney collected a railroad spike here, then immortalized it in a poem, the monograph/broadside of which was one of Don’s prized possessions. When I learned that, after my visits to Wilmot, I looked up Heaney’s poem, and somehow wound up reading a different Heaney poem, which – if you’re not already exhausted, led me to make one of my own:

Machine Learning

The machine delivered
Seamus Heaney’s poem “May,”
where I found fontanel – a treat,
as if I’d been foraging morels,

but I’d asked for “Iron Spike,”
wherein he visits Eagle Pond,
home of Don Hall and Jane Kenyon,
poets he had a soft spot for.

– Dave Conlin Read

Porter Square Books in Cambridge hosted a reading for Except for Love, New England Poets Inspired by Donald Hall on Aug. 16 – there’s one scheduled for the Bookstore in Lenox on November 7th. It was great fun to meet several co-contributors, and to hear their various Don Hall stories. I knew that I wasn’t alone as a benefifiary of his correspondence, but it was fun to hear how important it was for so many fellow poets, too.

After introducing me, Cynthia Brackett-Vincent, the editor and publisher of the anthology, said that she considered the event a sort of afterparty for Hall, which is the title of my poem in the book. My pal Eddie O’Toole took time away from his Honduras project, for an old-school open-ended road trip; here is his cellphone videography of my four minute segment:

Once you start the video, you can fast-forward to my poems at around 1:10. Poem titles are:
1.Vice Versa
2.Big Apple Byte
3.Hold Still
4.In Loco Parentis, or Mark & Sheryl to the Rescue
5.It’s Not Up to Chuck & Nancy
6.Jared has Four Diamonds,* Every Kick begins with K

I made a mistake in It’s Not Up to Chuck & Nancy – Martin Luther called Henry VIII “pig, dolt and liar (not idiot).”

IWOW (In Words Out Words), June 4, 2019. Deb Koffman's Art Space, Housatonic, Massachusetts. from CTSB on Vimeo.

IWOW (In Words Out Words), June 4, 2019. Deb Koffman's Art Space, Housatonic, Massachusetts.

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