Woodstock Poetry Society
Featured Reading and Open Mike
Saturday, January 8, 2022 at 2pm (eastern)

via Zoom

Bruce Weber
Jerrice J. Baptiste

Poets Bruce Weber and Jerrice J. Baptiste will be the featured readers, followed by an open mike when the Woodstock Poetry Society meets virtually via Zoom on Saturday, January 8, 2022 at 2pm (eastern).

WPS meetings are held the 2nd Saturday (2pm) of every month.

Due to the ongoing pandemic - for now, all meetings will be held virtually via Zoom
The Zoom app can be downloaded here: Zoom Download Center

To attend: contact phillip@woodstockpoetry.com to receive Zoom info
If attending, please indicate if you would like to be on the open mike. Thank you.

The reading will be hosted by poet Phillip X Levine. All meetings are free, open to the public, and include an open mike.

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Features:

Bruce Weber - Bruce Weber is a poet and historian of American art, with a specialty in the historic Woodstock art colony. His most recent book is There Are Too Many Words In My House, published in the autumn of 2019 by Rogue Scholars Press. This past January 1st he produced WHIPLASH: THE 3RD ANNUAL HUDSON VALLEY NEW YEAR'S DAY SPOKEN WORD/PERFORMANCE EXTRAVAGANZA, organized in conjunction with Green Kill in Kingston. Bruce also writes the blog learningwoodstockartcolony.com.



You’re Vulnerable

You’re vulnerable.
A provocateur on dark nights
Behind the iron curtain
With barely a shirt on.
Tender as the blossoming flowers
In a hard as nails rain
Or strapped to a bullet proof vest
In a tumultuous wind
Sure to topple the apple cart.
You take things too roughly
Like a bad scrape of chalk
Sabotaging the hearing challenged girl
Standing at the blackboard
Minding her p’s and q’s.
You’re soft around the edges
So you float on a cloud out to sea
And drop ominously into the ocean
Without a raft to rescue you
From the circle of sharks
Laughing and telling off color jokes
At the border of rhyme and reason.
You’re a sad testimony
To the way things work
In a shoddy corporation
Hiding behind a litany
Of peter-principled failures
Without a top
Covering the screaming kettle.
Here’s a dangling rope
For you to tie around your waist
Pulling you out of tangles
With misplaced modifiers
And fraudulent misfits
Feeding coal into backfiring engines.
Here’s to your escape
From idiots running the asylum
Into rack and ruin and obliteration
As you duck
As you crawl
As you slither
Away from two bit jokesters
Watching the river rise
Without a clue they’re drowning.
Freeing yourself
From the testimony of fools
Sinking deeper into obfuscation.
A successful autocrat
Of escapes into the ethereality
Of perfect afternoons
Clinging to a blanket of comfort
While the provocateurs march on
Like Nazis on judgement day
In a liberated Paris
Smelling the roses in the Tuileries
Among children skipping rope
And counting the days
Till their grown up enough
To cloak themselves
In a cape of magic
Sure to turn the head
Of the Marquis de Sade
Looking both ways
In the Age of Enlightenment
So he falls headlong
Into the burning pyre.
Kissing it all goodbye
Without any chance of apologizing
For his bad swordsmanship
On a beautiful day
In the startling light of springtime.

-Bruce Weber

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Jerrice J. Baptiste - Jerrice J. Baptiste is author of seven children’s books and one adult book of poems titled Wintry Mix. She’s poet in residence at the Prattsville Art Center. Jerrice was also chosen as the recipient of a residency at the Omega Institute’s for the Women’s Leadership program in June of 2019. She has been extensively published in journals and magazines such as The Yale Review; Kosmos Journal; The Caribbean Writer; Mantis; Penumbra Literary & Art Journal ; Breathe Free Press; Autism Parenting Magazine; Eco Theo Review; The Minetta Review; So Spoke the Earth: Anthology of Women Writers of Haitian Descent; Chronogram; Hudson Valley Riverine Anthology and many others. She has also been the producer and host of Women of Note since 2006. Jerrice is a resident of New York's Hudson Valley where she joyfully teaches poetry.



Why We Don’t Sleep

We hide under our beds.
Flat back like the dead.

Our soft golden silk dolls
sewn with godmother
rest across our sternums.

They search the yard
for Only Human.
yelling, “Aller, Aller.”

Each human caught,
encouraged to run.
A chance to shoot him

in the back.
Before dawn
slowly creeps in.

-Jerrice J. Baptiste

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WPS 2022 Schedule - all readings are now HYBRID: in-person & streamed via Zoom
All of 2022 Events: Events

Due to the ongoing pandemic - for now, all meetings will be held virtually via Zoom
The Zoom app can be downloaded here: Zoom Download Center

To attend: contact phillip@woodstockpoetry.com to receive Zoom info
If attending, please indicate if you would like to be on the open mike following the featured readers. Thank you.

01/January 8th - Bruce Weber; Jerrice J. Baptiste via Zoom
02/February 12th - Leigh Ann Christain; Mike Jurkovic via Zoom
03/March 12th - Alison Koffler; Ken Holland via Zoom
04/April 9th - The Hudson Valley Women's Writing Group via Zoom
05/May 14th - Roger Hecht; Saida Agostini via Zoom
06/June 11th - James Reitter; Jessica Cuello via Zoom
07/July 9th - Alison Woods; Matthew Burns via Zoom
08/August 13th - Arden Levine; Marjorie Maddox via Zoom
09/September 10th - Dennis Rush; Robert Charles Basner HYBRID: in-person & streamed via Zoom
10/October 8th - Joann Deiudicibus; Thomas Festa HYBRID: in-person & streamed via Zoom
11/November 12th - Cheryl Rice; Teresa Costa HYBRID: in-person & streamed via Zoom
12/December 10th - Anique Sara Taylor; Cate McNider and Annual Business Meeting HYBRID: in-person & streamed via Zoom

Also, why not become a 2022 Member or donate to the Woodstock Poetry Society?

Membership is $20 a year. (To join or donate, send your check to the Woodstock Poetry Society, P.O. Box 531, Woodstock, NY 12498. Include your email address as well as your mailing address and phone number. Or join online at: www.woodstockpoetry.com/become.html). Your membership helps pay for our upgraded Zoom account, post-office-box rental, the WPS website, and costs associated with publicizing the monthly events. One benefit of membership is the opportunity to have a brief biography and several of your poems appear on this website.

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