Woodstock Poetry Society
Featured Reading and Open Mike
Saturday, May 9th, 2026 at 1pm (new time)
Woodstock Library
Marianna Boncek
Richard Parisio
HYBRID: in-person and virtually via Zoom
Poets Marianna Boncek and Richard
Parisio will be the featured readers, along with an open mike when
the Woodstock Poetry Society meets in person and streamed via Zoom (and www.facebook.com/phillip.levine/)
on Saturday, May 9th, 2026 at 2pm(eastern).
WPS meetings are now held the 2nd Saturday (1pm) of every month. New time.
Woodstock Library
10 Dixon Ave, Woodstock, NY 12498
(845)679-2213
www.woodstock.org
The Zoom app can be downloaded here: Zoom
Download Center
To attend virtually: contact phillip@woodstockpoetry.com
to receive Zoom info
If attending via Zoom, 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.
*
Features:
Marianna Boncek - Marianna Boncek is a writer and teacher.
Her two popular non-fiction books Gone Missing in New York and The
Spooky Hudson Valley are published by Schiffer Books. Her YA novel Ajar
is published by Mélange Books. Diamond City is published by
Atmosphere Press. Her poetry book, Still Life, is published by Wylde
Syde Press. Her poems and short stories have appeared in a variety of journals.
Her poem "Bittersweet" won the 2021 Stephen DiBiase prize for poetry.
She is also a playwright and two of her works have been featured in the Hudson
Valley Short Play Festival. Her current projects in progress include a novel,
a collection of short stories and a chapbook. She reads and writes Middle
Egyptian hieroglyphs. She lives with her partner, Dave, in Woodstock. She
is available for book coaching, workshops, master classes and speaking engagements.
For more information check out her website at mariannaboncek.com
or email her at Marianna.boncek@gmail.com.
Bon Bon Tere
Christmas
2025
I watch a video
on which a woman
explains how to make
Bon Bon Tere,
Dirt Cookies.
The cookies are made
with sanitized dirt,
some salt,
and margarine.
They have no nutritional value.
In Haiti, they are fed to hungry children
who have nothing else to eat.
Later that same day,
my partner and I
are walking on a winter sidewalk
which is liberally spread with salt.
A man walking his dog,
gently picks him up,
tucks him under his arm,
and walks across the salt littered sidewalk.
“It’ll hurt his paws,” the man explains.
How do I reconcile that I live in a world
where hungry children eat dirt
and well-fed dogs are carried to protect their paws.
-Marianna Boncek
*
Richard Parisio - Richard Parisio was DEC’s environmental
educator in the Catskills and Hudson Valley for 25 years. He has worked as
a naturalist for Everglades National Park, in the Pocono mountains, and at
Assateague National Seashore. For five years, Parisio wrote a nature column
for the New Paltz Times. He won the 2014 Slapering Hol Press Poetry Chapbook
Contest for The Owl Invites Your Silence, and he holds an MFA degree
in poetry from Cedar Crest College. Parisio’s full collection, Trailside
Register, was published in 2025 by Bushwhack Books.
Migraciones
I have rescued woolly bears
and snapping turtles. Spotted salamanders,
rain-wet, gleaming in the glare of streetlights.
Wrigglers on the asphalt, ferried
over roads. Where were they all headed,
migrants or refugees? What leads them on?
Maybe they mistake what looms
above them for a god. May we all find
whatever it is we need, even forgiveness
if it comes to that. I found a flying squirrel
beneath an oak, his tail like milkweed floss.
He was tawny-perfect, eyes squinched shut
as if playing dead. I don’t know his story,
but all I see these days are creatures
on the move. All seeking, in their ways,
the other side of somewhere. Fare-well,
viajeros. Crawl or slither, if you must.
But if you know how, glide.
-Richard Parisio
*
WPS 2026 Schedule - now in-person at the Woodstock Library and via
Zoom
All WPS Events: Events
01/January 10th - Ethan Sirotko;
Janet Kaplan
02/February 14th - Tina Barry; Zelda
aka Judith Z. Miller
03/March 14th - Michael Cohen; Rhonda
Rosenheck note: new time 1pm
04/April 11th - Poetry Month Special
Event - "Poetry as Resistance"
05/May 9th - Marianna
Boncek; Richard Parisio
06/June 13th - Judith Kerman; William
Seaton
07/July 11th - Allen Shadow; Carol
Graser
08/August 8th - Cheryl Rice; Leslie
Gerber
09/September 12th - Philip Pardi;
Wendy Kagan
10/October 10th - Darcy Smith; Raphael
Moser
11/November 14th - Denise La Neve;
Robyn Hager
12/December 12th - Kemp Battle; Marnie
Andrews and Annual Business Meeting
Follow the WPS on Facebook: www.facebook.com/WoodstockPoetry
and why not become a 2026 Member of the Woodstock Poetry Society?
Membership is a tax deductible $20 a year. (To join, send your check to the
Woodstock Poetry Society, P.O. Box 531, Woodstock, NY 12498. Please include
your email address. 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.
Note that WPS is a registered 501c3 (and NYS Charity).
One benefit of membership is the opportunity to have a brief biography and
several of your poems appear on this website. Numerous bios, poems, and pictures
of past and present WPS members are available here: www.woodstockpoetry.com/members.html
and here: www.woodstockpoetry.com/poems.html.
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