Poetry at Albany Library: A Spectrum of Diverse Words

"Each time is so different — I love it!" said during the break at this month’s reading. He hit the nail on the head; there’s always something fresh (unlike the nail cliche above) making you think of unexpected things, as good poetry should.

Berkeley poet Susan Cohen, the first featured reader, has often been an open-mic participant over the years, which was no doubt an inspiration to the many open-mic-ers in the audience. At this reading, she concentrated on new work, so even frequent attendees hadn't heard the poems before.

Cohen presented a striking poem called "The Year I Read Anne Frank’s Diary," which, as she reveals in the poem, she did at age 13 — the same age Frank herself was in her last photograph. This was the only poem of the evening that dealt with Cohen's Jewish heritage, though several of her published works do. Describing how her friend’s mother states that Cohen is "the only Jew that she can bear," the poem ends with "That year, a new girl sits with me in class. She is my shadow."

Cohen’s poems have a knack for contextualizing the moments of drama we all remember, but so rarely articulate well. In "Rogue Wave," Cohen and her husband watch a couple venture out dangerously on a rocky point in heavy surf; standing safely onshore, they are loathe to admit their envy.

In "The Punishment," a young father is distraught as he searches for his temporarily lost child in a supermarket, and Cohen reminds us that "that thump against your chest is the extra heart that parents grow."

In the only semi-Valentine poem of the evening, "Spousely Held," Cohen plays with a real estate term for jointly owned property: "When I no longer need to be arousely held, I’ll still need to be spousely held."

The second featured poet, Rebecca Foust, described how her mother’s death in 1999 brought her out of the 30-year haitus she had taken from writing (during which time she practiced law in San Francisco).

There was a poem for her mother, an avid canoeist; in "Mom’s Canoe," the poet writes, "I still see you rising from water to sky/paddle held high....you, birdsong, watersong, slanting light/following river bend, swallowed from sight."

There was also a poem for her father — both parents, she told the audience, died of lung cancer, a possible result of living in the western Pennsylvania coal-country town where Foust was raised.

Indeed, the Allegheny terrain and culture loomed large in many of the poems, such as "Altoona to Anywhere" (formerly titled “Altoona to Marin"), where Foust describes how her Pennsylvania roots threaten to emerge at any moment: "You’ll slip and reach for the Velveeta/instead of the Brie."

In "Allegheny Mountain Bowl," the topography is the focus, as Foust describes how "you can turn round and round and round/and always see mountains." This poem, being a longer one, was read by Foust’s friend, Marin poet Roy Nash, to relieve her voice, as she had recently battled bronchitis. Besides, she told us, Nash had been something of a mentor to her in performance and reading presentation skills.

The audience got a taste of Nash’s performing qualities again during the open mic, which featured nine poets whose works covered broad ground. They ranged from Albany poet piece "Mermaid," about telling your mother you are going to change your gender, to a nature poem from a young biologist who had never read her poems in front of any audience before.

, Albany’s poet laureate, prefaced her open mic poem with a quote from Elizabeth Bishop, in tribute of her centennial, which was celebrated around the country last Tuesday.

One of Rebecca Foust’s poems, about fishing, had also been a tribute to Bishop, echoing her famous poem "The Fish," and recalling Bishop’s "everything was rainbow, rainbow, rainbow!"

Last week at the , everything certainly was.

See more photographs from the poetry event on the Albany Library Blog. 

Everybody makes mistakes ... ! If there's something in this article you think should be corrected, or if something else is amiss, give editor Emilie Raguso a call at 510-459-8325 or shoot her an e-mail at emilier@patch.com.