St. Lawrence Area Poets

Yes, indeed, the reading at the Fields coffeehouse in Potsdam did come off without a hitch last Friday night.  Janice Brabaw was up from Brooklyn promoting her new poetry collection, Tongue For Folie.  We attracted a decent crowd, roughly 15 people altogether, not bad for a Friday night when college is between semesters.  Janice started off w/ seven or eight poems from the new book, most of which express a confused chaos that so often seems to be Janice's inner life.  I then mounted the little stage & read a couple favorites from Balancing Act.   I then read a few random poems, some of which were SLAP assignments that turned out well, & concluded w/ a few from the unpublished San Diego poems of the fictitious Myrna.  Janice came back up for an encore & read a lengthy poem, "Letting Go of Crazy," a fierce dramatic declamation.  I've never experienced anything this passionate before at any poetry event. 

There was a table of six or seven young people right beside us.  They were really getting into the mood.  After Janice's encore, one of the young guys went up to the mike.  This was a poem, he explained, written jointly by everyone at his table.  He read something fairly incomprehensible from a tiny scrap of paper.  He received a good round of applause for the effort.  Janice sold a few of her books to the Fields' patrons.  It was a good time, w/ lots of creative energy generated.  And the open-mike is not imaginary: it is real & quite helpful projecting one's voice over the kitchen noises. 

I've got to get ready for Christmas.  Heading down to Virginia for nearly a week.  I understand there's lots of snow down there.  But it's got to be warmer than northern New York.  Bye, until next time.  Oh, & work on those Resolutions.  This is the annual opportunity to straighten out everything, finally, until the next year. 

Music listened to while writing this blog: various artists

Beverage: hot coffee, hazelnut

Weather: cold up here in my office

Miscellaneous: green light

Contact John at ataraxia1114@aim.com for whatever