Himalayan Poet to Visit Cleveland; Ray McNiece Leads Poem for Cleveland Project

From Cleveland Heights Poet Laureate Ray McNiece:

Poet Friends, two events upcoming:

One, this Sunday at the Millard Fillmore on Waterloo, world-traveling Himalayan poet Yuyutsu Sharma will perform with the Tongue in Groove Jam band and you can too, bring a poem of gratitude or gray, or gratitude for gray, the palette of Cleveland from November until May for the open mic. [Side note: Yuyutsu will also be leading a workshop, to be followed by open mic, on Monday at G.A.R. Hall in Peninsula.]

On that note, those of you who would like to participate in the Poem for Cleveland Project (and that includes Northeast Ohio) can come to any free workshops listed below.  This Saturday's workshop at the MLK branch of CPL on Stokes Avenue is being covered by a reporter from the Plain Dealer.  It happens, as do all the workshops, from 10:30 till Noon.

Cleveland: A Premier Literary Destination

Poets from all over hear (or already know) about the lively Cleveland area literary scene and look forward to coming (and coming back) as soon and as often as possible.  This week is no exception, as several well-regarded out-of-state poets will be here to share their literary wares. Two of the more notable events will happen Saturday 2/27 at Mac's Backs and Sunday 2/28 at Guide to Kulchur.  So whether you're an east-sider, a west-sider, or the more adventurous sort who enjoys the best of both, you have something to look forward to. It won't be the same reading twice, but it will be supremely worth your while both times.  The visiting poets will include: 

Jason Ryberg is the author of nine books of poetry, six screenplays, a few short stories, a box full of folders, notebooks and scraps of paper that could one day be (loosely) construed as a novel, and, a couple of angry letters to various magazine and newspaper editors. He is currently an artist-in residence at The Prospero Institute of Disquieted P/o/e/t/i/c/s and an aspiring b-movie actor. His latest collections of poems are Motel, Diner, Liquor (co-authored with John Dorsey, Jason Hardung and Seth Elkins, Spartan Press, 2014) and Beauty Parlors,Train Yards and Everything In Between (co-authored with George Wallace, David Smith and Charly Fasano, Spartan Press, 2014). He lives in Kansas City, Missouri with a rooster named Little Red and a billy goat named Giuseppe.

Shawn Pavey has delivered newspapers, mowed lawns, bagged groceries, cut meat, laid sewer pipe, bussed tables, washed dishes, roofed houses, crunched numbers, rented cars, worked in hotels, worn an apron at Kinko's, and been paid to write everything from résumés to music reviews. Currently, he earns a living as a Technical Recruiter in Mission, KS where he lives with his fiancée and three worthless but adorable cats. He is the author of Talking to Shadows (Main Street Rag Press, 2008) and Nobody Steals the Towels From a Motel 6 (2015, Spartan Press), Co-founder and former Associate Editor of The Main Street Rag Literary Journal, and a former board member and officer of The Writers Place, a Kansas City-based literary non-profit. His poems, essays, and journalism appear in a variety of national and regional publications. He's hosted poetry readings in bars, coffee shops, haunted houses, bookstores, libraries, front porches, and abandoned warehouses. A graduate of the University of North Carolina's Undergraduate Honors Creative Writing Program, he likes his Tom Waits loud, his bourbon single barrel, and his basketball Carolina Blue.

Jameson Bayles: A side effect of the military industrial complex, Jameson Bayles was born at the hospital at Forbes Field AFB just south of Topeka, KS. By the age of eighteen, Jameson had participated in a refueling mission with F-16s over the skies in South Dakota, stood atop of an active missle silo, and was the bait in a counter terrorism exercise with Air Force Special Forces at Whiteman AFB. After watching Krist Novoselic obtaining a head injury at the 1992 MTV music awards, Jameson decided to pursue the path of becoming a poet and eventually crawled into a dimly lit coffeeshop in dowtown Topeka in 1997 participating in his first open mic. Jameson Bayles is the senior editor of Asinimali Publications based in Kansas City, MO and the curator of The Cellar Poetry Series at the Weston Wine Company in Weston, MO. Jameson has been published in numerous literary journals and magazines and currently, his work can be found in three books. “The Cataman Years”, published by Mistop Publications, “The Artistic Muses” published by True Color Press and the collaborative reader "A Case For Ascension" by Asinimali Publications. Jameson resides in Kansas City, Missouri and can be reached at jamesonbayles@gmail.com.

And they will be joined by two Cleveland favorites:

Dianne Borsenik is active in the northern Ohio poetry scene and regional reading circuit. Her poems have appeared in Great Lakes Review, Slipstream, Rosebud, and many others; upcoming publications include Pittsburgh Poetry Review, Dirty Chai, and The Stars Look Very Different Today: A David Bowie Tribute (Poems-For-All). Her poem "Disco" was chosen to be printed on the 2015 Youngstown Summer Festival of the Arts tote bags and on Lit Youngstown tee shirts. In 2011 she founded NightBallet Press, and in September 2015 produced BeatStreet Cleveland as part of the International Beat Poetry Festival. She lives in Elyria with husband James and dog-sons Bodhisattva and Michel-Angelo. Find her at www.dianneborsenik.com.

John Burroughs was born in West Virginia, raised in Elyria, Ohio, and now lives and works in Cleveland. Along the way, he won the first poetry competition he entered as a high school student, served for several years as playwright-in-residence at Marion Correctional Institution, became a number one blogger on MySpace, won his first-ever poetry slam in his 40s, has hosted several esteemed reading series, and co-founded the annual Snoetry: A Winter Wordfest. John's poetry volumes include Beat Attitude [2015, NightBallet Press], It Takes More Than Chance to Make Change [2013, The Poet's Haven], The Eater of the Absurd [2012, NightBallet], Barry Merry Baloney [2012, Spare Change Press] and the collaborative book Oct Tongue -1 (with Weems, Swain, Smith, Lady, Chernin and Brightman). Since 2008, Burroughs has run Crisis Chronicles Press, publishing fine indie writers from around the world.

So please join us this weekend and give our visiting artists a warm Cleveland welcome!

February 27th at 7 pm - KC & CLE: A Case for Ascension at Mac's Backs
Mac's Backs - Books on Coventry
1820 Coventry Road
Cleveland, Heights, Ohio
(216) 321-2665

February 28th at 7 pm - Guide to Kulchur Red Room Reading Series
Guide to Kulchur: Text, Art & News
5900 Detroit Avenue
Cleveland, Ohio
(216) 314-4644

Kay Ryan reads "Miners' Canaries" at CPL

Here's a second clip of U.S. Poet Laureate Kay Ryan reading in Cleveland this year. To see the first, "Is It Modest?," click here.



Kay Ryan's reading occurred during the Cleveland Public Library's Writers & Readers Series at the Louis Stokes Wing auditorium on Sunday 18 April 2010 in Cleveland, Ohio — amateur video by John Burroughs, a.k.a. Jesus Crisis, posted for educational purposes only. "Miners' Canaries" comes from Kay Ryan's 2010 book The Best of It: New and Selected Poems (published by Grove Press).

For a schedule of upcoming Writers & Readers events hosted by the Cleveland Public Library, please visit http://writersandreaders.cpl.org.

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Kay Ryan reads "Is It Modest?" in Cleveland

U.S. Poet Laureate Kay Ryan reads her poem "Is It Modest?" during the Cleveland Public Library's Writers & Readers Series at the Louis Stokes Wing auditorium on Sunday 18 April 2010 in Cleveland, Ohio. This amateur video by John Burroughs, a.k.a. Jesus Crisis, is posted for educational purposes only. "Is It Modest?" comes from Kay Ryan's 2010 book The Best of It: New and Selected Poems (published by Grove Press).

For a schedule of upcoming Writers & Readers events hosted by the Cleveland Public Library, please visit http://writersandreaders.cpl.org.

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CSU 4-1-10 – McDaniel and Dougherty

michael dumanis, director of the csu poetry center introduces jeffrey mcdaniel and sean thomas dougherty

Okay – so even the academic readings don’t start on time in Cleveland. The McDaniel – Dougherty reading was advertised as starting @7:30 and true to Poetic Standard Time things got rolling with Dumanis introducing the readers at around ten ‘til eight. Dougherty kicked things off launching into a rustbelt cinched treatise. Paisley flowered shirt rolled to his elbows showing tattooed forearms a cap that looks like it was plucked from a black and white photo of Ellis Island immigration line dwellers he reminded me more of an eastern bloc uncle than a professor from Case.

His work carried the same sort of unapologetic sensibility as his wardrobe. He himself later said that the pieces he was reading (from a forthcoming manuscript) were an attempt to just say things. “Sometimes things just need to be, said.” Dougherty’s reading style falls somewhere between a beat jazz sing song reminiscent of kinescopes of Kerouac on the Steve Allen show and the hip hop influenced delivery of contemporary slammers.

“this is going to be one of those readings where i really f*** myself up”

Dougherty finished his twenty-five minute set with a couple list poems – one titles Ex and finally a love poem with the refrain “you are…” I enjoyed his set and hope to see more of this  local writer.

McDaniel began his set with an excerpt from a longer piece of fiction, possibly a novel – something he has been working on for a couple years and not quite sure what to do with yet. He clutched the lectern and lowered his head looking as if he was reading in a wind tunnel and there was no warning when the fan might be turned on.

The five minute excerpt  started out with a hilarious rendering of a family cat in heat  swerved into a road trip to Niagra Falls with his father and brothers engaged in close quarter conflict and ending with a drug dependant mom vegetating back at home. McDaniel's work borders on the absurd at times and he uses humor like a knitting needle at a birthday party popping  balloons. I’ve always liked his work and was somewhat disappointed when he confessed that he has probably only written four new poems in the last couple years.  Let’s hope he rectifies this situation.

Poet Laureate in Cleveland

Kay Ryan will speak at Cleveland Public Library as part of the Writers and Readers author series on Sunday, April 18, at 2:00 p.m. in the Louis Stokes Wing Auditorium, East Sixth and Superior Avenue.

Kay Ryan is the 16th Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry appointed by the Library of Congress and just the fourth woman to hold that position. Appointed by Librarian of Congress James H. Billington in July, 2008, she succeeds a long line of distinguished poets including Charles Simic, Donald Hall, Rita Dove, Robert Pinsky, Louise Gluck, and Ted Kooser.

The author of several books of poems, Kay Ryan has won the 2004 Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize from The Poetry Foundation, a National Endowment for the Arts and a Guggenheim Fellowship, and the Union League Poetry Prize, as well as four Pushcart Prizes. Her poems have appeared in all the major literary magazines including The New Yorker, The Atlantic, Poetry, and The Paris Review. Several of them been selected for the annual editions of the Best American Poetry and have been anthologized in collections around the world.

Her works include The Niagara River (2005), Say Uncle (2000), Elephant Rocks (1996), Flamingo Watching (1994), Strangely Marked Metal (1985) and Dragon Acts to Dragon Ends (1983). Her most recent book, The Best of It: New and Selected Poems (Grove), gathers poems from several of those volumes.

Poet J.D. McClatchy noted that her “poems are compact, exhilarating,  strange affairs, like Erik Satie miniatures or Joseph Cornell boxes.” He also said that her work is “as intense and elliptical as Dickinson, as buoyant and rueful as Frost.”

Kay Ryan has been a Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets since 2006 and has taught at the College of Marin in Kentfield, California, for more than 30 years.

All programs are FREE and open to the public. The doors of the library open at 1:00 p.m. For more information, please call (216) 623-2955 or visit Writers and Readers at www.cpl.org

On the Verge of Expression…

Here’s a dozen pics from the Black Poetic Thursday 7pm series On the Verge of Expression at JOVELLE BREWERS 12204 Larchmere. This edition featuring Cleveland to New Orleans transplant Kelly Harris. Enthusiastically hosted by Clevelandpoetics the Blog’s own Kisha Foster.

View Full Album

KELLY HARRIS RETURNS TO CLEVELAND

Black Poetic
Presents "On the Verge of Expression" Thursdays

Return of the Queen! Kelly Harris MFA
OPEN MIC AND FEATURE
JOVELLE BREWERS 12204 Larchmere
Hosted by Kisha Nicole Foster
$3 Cover :: Doors open at 6:45pm

The Cleveland native returns home to read her poetry and share her

New Orleans experiences. Her poems have most recently been published in

Yale's Cadecus Journal and Southern Women's Review. Her dynamic

performances and poetic insight are what made her one of Cleveland's

cherished talents. The Cave Canem Fellow and MFA grad will surely warm

us again.

Nepalese Poet Yuyutsu RD Sharma

Nepalese Poet
Yuyutsu RD Sharma

Wednesday, November 18, 7:00 p.m.
@ Visible Voice Books

Thursday, November 19, 7:00 p.m.
@ Mac’s Backs

Yuyutsu RD Sharma is a distinguished poet and translator. He has published eight poetry collections including Space Cake, Amsterdam, & Other Poems from Europe and America (Howling Dog Press, Colorado, 2009). He has even launched a literary movement, Kathya Kayakalpa (Content Metamorphosis) in Nepali poetry.

Sharma has read at many prestigious venues including Poetry Café, London, Bowery Poetry Place, New York, The Guardian Newsroom, London, and the Gunter Grass House in Bremen. His works have appeared in Poetry Review, Chanrdrabhaga, Sodobnost, Amsterdam Weekly, Indian Literature, Irish Pages, Delo, Omega, Howling Dog Press, Exiled Ink, Iton77, Little Magazine, The Telegraph, Indian Express and Asiaweek. The Library of Congress has nominated his recent book of Nepali translations entitled Roaring Recitals; Five Nepali Poets as Best Book of the Year 2001 from Asia. Yuyutsu’s work has been translated into German, French, Italian, Slovenian, Hebrew, Spanish and Dutch.

http://www.yuyutsu.de

- - -

Space Cake appeared in The City:

SPACE CAKE, AMSTERDAM

“Don’t panic,” they said,
remain cool like your Krishna ,
meditate maybe like Buddha,
uttering ‘Om Mani Padme,’ jewel in the lotus,
or lie down and relax
like Vishnu on the python bed
to float on the ocean’s currents,
buoyant on the invisible thread
of your breath in slow motion…

Millions of cats prowled around me.
Smoke from shared sex
and hashish joints stung my eyes.
Unsettling tongue
of an awkward fire fed my stomach.
I skidded queasily towards
towards the formidable edge,
unknown ominous frontiers of human life…

They laughed a secret laugh
behind my back – “Isn’t it crazy that
this man from Kathmandu should get stoned
from a piece of space cake in Amsterdam ?”

“Don’t be serious, laugh,
celebrate the flame of life!” a woman’s voice said.
“Hold my hand; I can imagine
you are alone on this trail.
I’v been there once,” she whispered.
Her tongue curled like a dry leaf in my ear
and crackled “How much did you take,
just a piece? I took thirty-eight grams once,
It can be crazy if you don’t know it’s coming.
Just don’t worry too much.
Don’t lose your control over things.
You can kiss me if you like,
You can pat my back,
tickle my belly or stroke my breasts
for a while, if it comforts you.
Sometimes it can be heavenly,
this licking the rim of the forbidden frontiers of human life.”

“That’s what he wants, that’s exactly
what he’s looking for,” a voice leered far off.
“But I have to go ultimately,
I’ve a man waiting at home for me.”

“Maybe read a poem of yours,”
someone said. My heart raced wild
and I heard some girls gossip in the next room—
What if he gets sick in Europe?
Don’t we get sick in Asia?
“Just take it easy,” another voice echoed
“You won’t go psychotic. Remember one thing,
whatever happens, you can always make a comeback.”
Faces of my dear ones veered past my face.
I felt delicate thread of my life
slipping through my fingers
“Hey man, it’s fine. Don’t worry too much.”
My host shouted. “Drink lots of water.”
“Drink black tea or coffee,” a guest suggested.
“Or take lots of orange juice.”
“Maybe sing your favorite song,” a woman said.
“Or recite one of your Hindu mantras.”
“Maybe stick your finger into your throat,”
another voice came sheepishly, “and throw up.
You probably haven’t digested everything yet.”

Questions came like wind slaps.
“Can you tell me what they call boredom
in your mother tongue? Do you remember
your email account and password?
Discuss your children, if you have any.
Shall I bring my little daughter before you?
Maybe you’d feel better then,
seeing her brilliant eyes.”

I imagined a child’s face and clung to it,
like a penitent would hold onto
a sacred cow’s tail in his afterlife,
and slept on it, all through the river of blood…

Hours passed by
and then I heard someone say—
“What if he had freaked out?
What if Death had stalked our house tonight?”

Hearing these words, I woke up
knowing I’d come back, stepped on
the familiar shores of life
where Death’s feared, a distant distrustful thing.
My drowse burst like a glacial that cracks
from rumble of a seed of fire
that explodes somewhere in earth’s deep sleep.

Yuyutsu RD Sharma

Ashland University Visiting Fellow

Ashland University the Provost’s Office and the Master of Fine Arts Program Welcome

Lynne Sharon Schwartz

Woodrow Wilson Visiting Fellow

October 26-30, 2009

Reading by Lynne Sharon Schwartz

Monday, October 26, 7:00 p.m.                            
Ridenour Room, Dauch College of Business

Truth Under Pressure: Strategies for Writing Poetry, Fiction & Nonfiction

Tuesday, October 27, 7:00 p.m.                                  
Ronk Lecture Hall, Schar College of Education

Keynote Address

Writing on the Wall: Public and Private Language in the Wake of 9/11

Thursday, October 29, 7:00 p.m.                          
Trustees Room, Myers Convocation Center

Lynne Sharon Schwartz’s most recent book is the memoir, Not Now, Voyager.   Among her 21 books are the novels The Writing on the Wall; In the Family Way, Disturbances in the Field; Leaving Brooklyn (nominated for a PEN/Faulkner Award) and Rough Strife (nominated for a National Book Award).. She is also the author of three story collections; the poetry collection, In Solitary; the memoir, Ruined by Reading, and the editor of The Emergence of Memory: Conversations with W.G. Sebald, a collection of essays and interviews.

Her work has been reprinted in The Best American Short Stories, The O. Henry Prize Stories, The Best American Essays, and many other anthologies, and her reviews have appeared in leading magazines and newspapers.  Ms. Schwartz has translated several books from Italian, including A Place to Live: Selected Essays of Natalia Ginzburg, and Smoke Over Birkenau, by Liana Millu.

For more info:
Ashland University
Bixler Center for the Humanities
401 College Avenue
Ashland, OH 44805
swells@ashland.edu
(419)289-5957
Fax: (419)289-5255

great er cleveland poetry take two

if Cleveland

wants to pull together for an area-wide poetry festival (i am a fan of the name Dick Goddard suggested, “Lake Effect”), here is an unhoned vision of how it could go.

two days, probably a Saturday and Sunday, preferable when warm outside.

schedule readings all over the place: bookstores, parks, libraries, taverns. some of the readings would have bands behind the poets. some could be round robin, or as the Bukowski hosted by Suzanne of Mac’s this October went: a poet reads from where they are, when the poet before them finishes. essentially, we would need several people to volunteer to host or MC an event. that volunteer chooses a venue, and works out a time with that venue. Then, rather than choosing familiar poets, the bill for each venue can be chosen not so much at random, but with an eye to diversity.

i.e. so at CSU it would not be all CSU poets, but a couple CSUs and say, a Lit Cafe goer, with a Sandusky poet. this way poets meet poets they may not have brushed arms with, you get the gist.

these hosts would then give their time slot to me, and i would put it on the “official” schedule. as slots are filled, the remaining hosts would need to work around that schedule.

i propose having TOO MANY readings for anyone to feasibly attend all of them. and to have them in SEVERAL areas of town. imagine too much poesy! i think we can count on the likes of John Burroughs and Jim Lang to take candid shots and write up the events they make it to, so we all get a gist of what we missed.

i volunteer to coordinate with the hosts/MCs, create the weekend schedule, write a press release and get it to the appropriate people in the media. i can also craft a flyer and delegate folks to get a copy to various libraries, coffee shops and bookstores.

think about it---i can list several “schools” of poetry to feature, but cannot think of all of them. there is the Cleveland Poetry Scenes book to promote, along with the new Peace Poems book by Bottom Dog, in which are several local poets. Cleveland Black Poetics puts on a moving show. a haiku—a “true haiku” reading certainly is in order! there’s Deep Cleveland Poets, JCU poets, CSU poets. someone could have a walking reading through University Circle, stopping at the various Hart Crane memorials. i have my …uncouth and yet so full of sweet irony class clown poets in my ‘independent’ arena. there are hipsters, and old schools, natures and slammers and hip hops. but it would be up to each poet to get themselves and the poets they commune with on-board so this can be as all-inclusive as possible.

Ok, so, who doesn’t like Lake Effect? (i do i do i do)

great er cleveland poetry

LOOKIN FOR NAMES

so it was suggested to me there be a Greater Cleveland Area Poets Festival...
a fairly inclusive gathering of all walks of verse. now typical of this town is to name a 'fest' after a dead poet, giving us all an excuse to party like rockstars.

but i don't think honoring the dead is the only way to go. (in fact, peers of mine sorta laugh it up because they want to know what dead guy we are currently upholding with our own relevant voices).

in May Green Panda has up its sleeve three days of poetry and music...
but many (most?) on the bill are coming here from faraway. and certainly, the poets who will read their work do not cover the Great lake of us. in fact they are mainly indy poets who deal in (very) small presses.

is there a "reason" or theme for gathering the wildly diverse voices which does not point to the deceased, albeit desrving all our honor?

is it possible to throw a few days party that would not exclude a well-tuned voice?

it would be pretty awesome if Cleveland got it together for say a semi-annual shindig with a really cool name. sure some folks from out of town could be featured, so they could brag to their cronies, i read in CLEVELAND for their semi-anny.

i am beginning to think if there's a Name there's a way...

Sarah Vowell

When

was the last time you had to worry about the Fire Marshall at a literary event due to crowd size?

I recently attended an appearance by Sarah Vowell in conjunction with the Cleveland Public Library’s Writers and Readers Series and there was an overflow crowd in the Lois Stokes Wing Auditorium. Now fans of Ira Glass’ This American Life would recognize Ms. Vowell’s voice – as Ron Antonucci mentioned in his introduction of the author voice is taken in both classifications here, writing and spoken. The humorist is a bestselling author, contributing editor to the NPR program This American Life as well as the voice of Violet Parr, the teenage super hero daughter in Pixar’s academy award winning animated feature The Incredibles.

Before she took the stage the standing room portion of the crowd (itself a hundred strong) had to be reseated outside the auditorium where they viewed her very entertaining presentation via closed circuit television. It was nice to be a part a large gathering of such literary intent. It’s not often you hear Marge Piercy’s name dropped in conversation by the folks sitting behind you (even if it was in error – the couple were actually trying to recall Margaret Atwood’s name – she an earlier speaker in this series.)

Vowell took to the stage first reading from her latest work The Wordy Shipmates a book about the Puritans and their trials and tribulations in a new world. She’s short with cropped straight dark hair, almost anti fashionably dressed in that artsy too cerebral to worry about it kind of way and speaks with the deadpan voice of an extremely precocious little girl with perfect enunciation.

Now, one might not think that Puritans, the assassinations of US Presidents, U.S. election history or radio are the usual subjects of humor, but Vowell succeeds. The selections she read were clinically precise in language and description. In fact, her humor is derived from the almost over exactness and factuality of her prose. Delivered with a pokerfaced self effacing affect she had the audience busting a gut over subjects as diverse as the Magna Carter, the King James Bible and President James A. Garfield’s tomb.

She kept her set list of excerpts to read scrawled on the palm of her right hand which she glanced at occasionally as she moved through her set confidently while never appearing smug or too “smarty pants” as can happen when the subjects are research heavy. Vowell then took questions from the audience. When asked what she went as for Halloween, she replied an author on book tour – rings under eyes, wrinkled clothes, suspect odor…

There were no bad smells associated with this event though.

Kudos to Cleveland Public Library for this series, earlier this year I saw national Book Award winner Sherman Alexie and I am looking forward to more events at The People’s University. Oh yeah, this and the rest of the Writers and Readers Series is absolutely free.

Review - Gary Gildner @ JCU

George Bilgere brings some pretty great poets to John Carroll (Billy Collins, Ted Kooser) and I do my best to get over there when I can.

This past September 30 Gary Gildner graced the podium in Rodman hall. I’ve got to admit, I am not all that well versed on a lot of the academic poetry folks around but I had heard of this guy before. His work is accessible yet technically tight. I can really appreciate a piece that transcends narrative without feeling the need to stab it in the back.

Gildner looks more like a retired cowboy than a poet. Tall and split rail thin, blue jeans, a striped long sleeved button shirt grizzled salt and pepper stubble. One could easily imagine him pulling up thistles in the corner of a pasture (part of a story he told in introducing one of his poems about coming face to face with a puma.) His demeanor was relaxed and somewhat soft-spoken with the comfort and sense of humor of a man who has achieved success in a field he loves. Having sold the movie rights to a novel he had written and subsequently buying a piece of a mountain with the aforementioned thistle bearing pasture he exuded the air of humility reserved for the truly accomplished.

To borrow an overused performance poetry term, Gildner’s “signature piece” is a short poem called First Practice. Gildner began his reading stepping away from the lectern with an explanation of the moment that inspired this piece – the first meeting of a newly formed 8th grade parochial school football team – and the genesis of the poem itself. Being a fiction writer he had made several attempts at capturing the moment in prose – each to no avail. Finally he made a list of all the most important images from the event. Looking at this list he realized he had written his first and arguably most celebrated poem of his career. I was heartened to hear this approach as it is a technique I use with students when teaching poetry writing – we start with lists all the time.

The relaying of this story though, took over twenty minutes and I was happy to hear him recite his first poem of the evening. I figured we were about to get into the meat of the reading but after the quick appetizer he began spinning another story explaining how a writers job was to translate feelings into words. In fact in over an hour of reading Mr. Gildner recited only six short poems. Mind that each was a wonderful piece with some of the best flowing of imagery I have heard this side of James Wright, but still at the end I felt a bit cheated. He weaved his poems into his monologue so that when they did arise they caught you a bit by surprise one or two lines into the piece like a trout taking a fly.

Like watching Michael Jordan playing minor league baseball, Gildner’s stories were better than everyone’s in the stands and maybe half the folks on the diamond but I couldn't help wanting him to air out another poetry dunk. His piece about a roofer watching a woman walk to her mailbox especially captured and magnified an instant into a revelation. And because of this I felt less than full after the reading. Not in the leave them wanting more way as much as the - is that all there is? - fashion.

Now, I did buy one of Gary Gildner’s collections in order to get to know more of his work, and having been to the reading I can hear his voice as I read the poems. But, it is just not the same as hearing the words from the author’s mouth. Perhaps this was his goal – though I doubt it. He did not strike me as one of those mercenary poets trying to push product – I think he just really liked to tell stories. To which I would reply, “Mr. Gildner, more poetry please.”