Woodstock Poetry Society
Featured Reading and Open Mike
Saturday, December 13th, 2025 at 2pm
Woodstock Library

HYBRID: in-person and virtually via Zoom

Bruce Weber
Tom Bonville
and Annual Business Meeting

Poets Bruce Weber and Tom Bonville will be the featured readers, along with the Annual Business Meeting, followed by an open mike when the Woodstock Poetry Society when the Woodstock Poetry Society meets in person and streamed via Zoom on Saturday, December 13th, 2025 at 2pm(eastern).

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

Woodstock Library
5 Library Lane, Woodstock, NY 12498
(845)679-2213
www.woodstock.org

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 (focusing in recent years on the historic Woodstock art colony). He is the author of seven books of poetry, the most recent of which is THERE ARE TOO MANY WORDS IN MY HOUSE (Rogue Scholars Press). Bruce also co-curates the Saugerties monthly series DIALOGUES FOR THE EAR & EYE with his wife Joanne Pagano Weber, and produces the annual Hudson Valley New Year' Day Spoken Word/Performance
Extravaganza.



I Like Being A Poet

I like being a poet.
No canvases and paints to carry to the sea.
No standing bass to lug on the crowded subway.
No stage required to anchor my theatrical sense & sensibility.
I can write under an open parasol
Gazing at a woodcut of a big wave by Hiroshigi
Or scribble nonsense rhymes in a tumult of broken memories.
I’m free to linger on an apostrophe
Or dangle in the air like a paper plane
Caught in a crossfire of wind and humidity.
I can dance across the page like Fred Astaire
My shoes never touching solid earth
My mind racing past the lifeguards of truth and honesty
Like an adventurer on the high seas
Or a blind cane tapper begging for coins on the 7th Avenue local.
I can do all of this with barely a chagrin
Or a riddled sphinx-like-stare in the heart of the jungle.
You can find me any day of the year
Before a smorgasbord of letters and scents and colors
Shifting back and forth on a perilous walk across the gangplank
A poet of high c’s and tremulous swims in rough waters
Rowing my way home with a pen and paper open to all things.

-Bruce Weber

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Tom Bonville - Tom Bonville lives in Catskill, NY, retired from public school teaching after 36 years, thought he would try writing "The Great American Novel," instead, started writing poetry. Lots and lots of poems have been written, satisfying in its own right, however no books have been published. Locally, you can find some of his poems in Chromogram, over the years.

Tom also, recently, became a grandfather for the first time. "It's better than being a poet!" has been said, many times.



Paint

I think
love is layered,

like paint
on a house,

only to fade,
flake off over time.

So I paint and repaint,
with a color a shade different,

the house, looking
new and fresh again,

just the way
I want it to be.

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Pleasure

Like good sex,
poetry should not
be explained,

just enjoyed,
and done
again and again.

-Tom Bonville

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Developing WPS 2025 Schedule - now in-person at the Woodstock Library and via Zoom
All WPS Events: Events

01/January 11th - Guy Reed; Will Nixon
02/February 8th - Alison Koffler; Dayl Wise
03/March 8th - Charlie Cody; Mike Jurkovic
04/April 12th - Poetry Month-"Remembering Poets Passed"
05/May 10th - Roberta Gould; Vivi Hlavsa
06/June 14th - Irene Sipos; Perry S. Nicholas
07/July 12th - Lee Slonimsky; Robert Charles Basner
08/August 9th - Matthew J. Spireng; Suzanne Cleary
09/September 13th - Jennifer Franklin; Lucia Cherciu
10/October 11th - Raphael Kosek; Raphael Moser
11/November 8th - Cheryl A. Rice; Linda McCauley Freeman
12/December 13th - Bruce Weber; Tom Bonville and Annual Business Meeting

Follow the WPS on Facebook: www.facebook.com/WoodstockPoetry/ and why not become a 2025 Member of the Woodstock Poetry Society?

Membership is $20 a year. (To join, 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 meeting space rental, 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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