Two days of poetry (part 1): Avon, NY

What could be better than a day full of poetry? How about two days full of poetry?

I traveled to the Rochester, NY, area this week for a series of poetry events. On Wednesday, May 5, I made my first stop in Avon, NY, about 30 minutes from Rochester. I joined Alan Casline, John Roche, Paulette Swartzfager, Stephen Lewandowski, Dwain Wilder and Ken Warren for an afternoon of poetry beside the cannons in the park. The park is in the middle of a traffic circle in downtown Avon, so our reading was accompanied by the slow circling of cars and trucks and the occasional, slightly confused pedestrian.

Alan Casline [pictured at left] brought ambrosia with mead to share with the group. It was a gorgeous afternoon, so we sprawled out on the grass to listen and to soak up the sun. Alan read several poems, including one about a hike he and Steve Lewandowski went on that included a line about Steve sliding down a snow-covered bank “like a third grader on a lunch tray.”

Ken Warren [pictured at top] was visiting from Ohio. [Correction, via John Roche: “Ken Warren spent decades in Ohio, but recently moved to a town near Lake Ontario northeast of Buffalo.”] He read a few poems and then a longer prose piece remembering the killings at Kent State, the 40th anniversary of which had passed the day before. It was a very powerful essay, well researched and full of moving quotes from people who had been on the campus that day.

John Roche [pictured at left] paid homage to the location of the reading will several poems about Avon, the town where he makes his home. One of his pieces was a protest poem about the closing of a local watering hole. I enjoyed John’s intensely specific words of protest — it’s important to be reminded that protest poems can be very, very local.

I went next, reading a new poem, “The Last Piece Of Ice Under The Sky” along with “I Am Not An Indian.”

Stephen Lewandowski, [pictured at left] a longtime chronicler of — and advocate for — the Finger Lakes region, ended his set of poems with one that took me completely by surprise. It was a poem about the increase of the signal strength of Jazz90.1 (WGMC) and Steve’s resulting ability to hear Oscar Peterson and other jazz greats at his Finger Lakes home. What made this poem so surprising for me is that boosting the station’s power was a project I oversaw as station manager of Jazz90.1 from 2002-2004. What was even more surprising was that it was a complete coincidence that Steve read the piece — he didn’t realize my connection to the station. I was very moved to hear someone who so appreciated the results of all those thousands of hours of fundraising and advocacy.

Unfortunately, I had to leave right before Dwain Wilder [pictured at left] and — I assume — Paulette Swartzfager read (sorry!), so that I could make it to my own reading that night at St. John Fisher. But I thoroughly enjoyed spending an afternoon in the company of such insightful people. I hope the “poetry at the cannons” reading will be just the first in a long series of such events in Avon.

Coming up in part 2: My “book tour” continues at St. John Fisher with fellow poet Matt Smythe. Read part 2.

Thanks to Paulette for the photos in this story.