Phillip Levine (Chronogram Poetry Editor) has sent in the lineup of featured poets and performers for September 2007 at the Colony Café Monday Night Open Mic in Woodstock. There is an open mic for poetry, prose, and performance in addition to the “special guests”. Start time of the Monday Night Open Mic is 7:00PM. Features read for approximately 20 – 25mins each, beginning around 8:00PM.
Monday, September 3rd, 2007 – Max Schwartz (poet, photographer)
Monday, September 10th, 2007 – Donald Lev (poet) and Richard Boes (from The Last Dead Soldier Left Alive)
Donald Lev was born in New York City in 1936. He attended Hunter College, worked in the wire rooms of the Daily News and New York Times, and then drove a taxi cab for 20 years (with a 6-year hiatus in which he ran messages for, and contributed poetry to, The Village Voice and operated the Home Planet Bookshop on the Lower East Side). His earliest poems appeared in print in 1958 and he started his first small press magazine, HYN Anthology, in 1969. The most recent of the fourteen collections of his poetry is Grief, a chapbook published in 2006 by Bard Press/Ten Penny Players in Staten Island. A volume of his Selected Poems will be brought out soon by Red Hill Outloudbooks in Claryville, NY. His brief underground film-acting career pinnacled with his portrayal (he wrote his own lines) of “The Poet” in Robert Downey Sr.’s 1969 classic Putney Swope. He and his reclusive cat Kit Smart live in High Falls, NY, where he spends most of his time publishing the literary tabloid Home Planet News, which he and his late wife Enid Dame founded in 1979.
“Richard Boes has written a ripped-from-the-heart memoir of the years of struggle, substance abuse, and failed relationships that followed his combat experience. It’s painful, yet richly rewarding. Imagine sitting down in a pub next to a slightly scary-looking fellow who buys you a round and then begins to talk, his words spilling out in a heated rush, things bottled up within him all flooding to the surface. And although some of what he is saying is hard to hear, it’s made compelling by his wry, ironic perspective and stream-of-consciousness style, which is akin to that of Henry Miller or Jack Kerouac. At closing time, you’d be inviting him home for a nightcap to hear the rest—even if it disturbed your sleep for weeks to come.” – Anne Pyburn (Chronogram, June 2007)
Monday, September 17th, 2007 – Post Traumatic Press 2007 (profits to Veterans for Peace) with Dayl Wise (editor) War Vets Poetry Anthology followed by Leslie Halpert, Singer/Songwriter, at 10:00PM
Readings from the new book, Post Traumatic Press 2007. This book tells the stories of veterans with direct experience of the military. For some, the intense experience of war can only be expressed in poetry, while others are driven by the need to say something openly political. The book includes veterans from World War II, the Cold War, the Vietnam War, peace time and the current wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Contributors: Camillo “Mac” Bica, Richard Boes, Thomas Brinson, Michael Embrich, Michael Gillen, Marc Levy, Bob Lusk, Gerald McCarthy, Jim Murphy, Fred Nagel, Ron Thompson, Robert “Tack” Trostle, Jose Vasquez, Jay Wenk, Dan Wilcox, Sam Weinreb and Larry Winters. Some of these US veterans are seasoned writers, who have been published before. For others, this is their first time writing, their first time out crossing that line in public.
Reading their own work are Richard Boes, Thomas Brinson, Marc Levy, Bob Lusk, Jim Murphy, Jay Wenk, Dan Wilcox, Larry Winters and Dayl Wise.
Monday, September 24th, 2007 – Steve Cleaver (poet) and Brett Bevell (poet, from his new book My America Needs A Woman President, Monkfish Publishing)
The Colony Café is located at 22 Rock City Road in Woodstock, NY and has full bar and cafe menu. Admission for the open mic is $4.00.
For further information about the Monday Night Open Mic or possible bookings contact Phillip Levine at pprod@mindspring.com.
