Wednesday, December 30, 2009

Congratulations to Donna Marbach

Congratulations to Donna Marbach for her recent publication in Redactions Poetry & Poetics. Check out issue 12, guest edited by Rob Carney, which also includes work by Christopher Kennedy and James Grabill.

Monday, December 21, 2009

Publication in 2009 Chaffin Journal

I just received my contributor's copy of the 2009 Chaffin Journal where my poem "Hide" appears. I am pleased to have my work published along side that of fellow Bennington grads David Scronce and especially my classmate Susan Howard Case who passed away earlier this year.

Tuesday, December 15, 2009

What do those puppies own?

Recently spotted in the village: Puppy's for sale. I'm wondering just what those puppies own that they are selling...

Monday, October 12, 2009

Genesee Reading Series

I will be reading tomorrow with Leah Ruekberg for the Genesee Reading Series at Writers & Books, 740 University Ave., Rochester, NY. The reading begins at 7:30 pm. If you're in the area, I'd love to see you there!

Friday, October 09, 2009

Duane Esposito to Read at FLCC

On Wednesday, October 14, poet Duane Esposito will be reading in Canandaigua at the FLCC Honors House at 7:00 pm as part of the FLCC Diversity Series. Esposito is also a literature and creative writing professor at Nassau Community College.

Wednesday, October 07, 2009

Cynthia Iannaccone to Read for Just Poets

Cynthia Iannaccone will be the featured reader Thursday, October 8 for the monthly Just Poets reading series and open mic. Just Poets members in good standing may sign up in advance by emailing claudiastanek@gmail.com.

Friday, September 18, 2009

Just Poets Retreat

I will be leading a workshop on How Does a Poem Mean at the Just Poets Retreat at the Gell Center of the Finger Lakes tomorrow. Thirty Just Poets members are attending this first ever event. Additional workshops will be led by Ron Bailey, Karla Linn Merrifield, and Dwain Wilder.

Monday, September 07, 2009

Sarah Freligh Reading

Sarah Freligh will be the featured reader Thursday, September 10 for the monthly Just Poets Reading Series and Open Mic. Join us at 7:00pm in the Community Room at Barnes & Noble, Pittsford. An open mic will follow. Just Poets members in good standing may sign up in advance by emailing claudiastanek@gmail.com.

Thursday, August 06, 2009

August Just Poets Reading

Dee Hogan will be the featured reader Thursday, August 13 for the Just Poets Reading Series and Open Mic. The reading begins at 7:00 pm in the Community Room. Just Poets members in good standing may sign up in advance by emailing claudiastanek@gmail.com.

Tuesday, July 07, 2009

Colleen Powderly to Read for Just Poets

Colleen Powderly will be the featured reader Thursday, July 9 for the monthly Just Poets Reading Series and Open Mic. The reading begins at 7:00pm in the Community Room at Barnes & Noble, Pittsford. An open mic will follow. Just Poets members in good standing may sign up in advance by emailing claudiastanek@gmail.com.

Monday, June 15, 2009

Language Abuse

Every writer has a list of particular annoyances when it comes to spelling and grammar mistakes. Below are two seen and heard in the Rochester, NY area this past week.

The first was offered by a female anchor during a live newscast: "has spreaded."

The second was seen on a sign along the road at a driving range/miniature golf course: "birthday partys."

Feel free to send me some that you've seen and/or heard.

Monday, June 08, 2009

Le Mot Juste Reading

The premier reading of Le Mot Juste 2009 is Thursday, June 11 at Barnes & Noble, Pittsford, 7:00pm in the Community Room. Le Mot Juste is the annual anthology of Just Poets which celebrates its fifth anniversary this year. An open mic will follow. For information on Just Poets visit www.justpoets.org.

Monday, June 01, 2009

Donna M. Marbach to Read Thursday

Poet and editor Donna M. Marbach will be reading from her work Thursday, June 4 at Writers & Books, 7:00pm. Marbach, who will be reading with chapbook contest winner Kathryn Howd Machan, is the owner and manager of Palettes & Quills (http://www.palettesnquills.com/), a small press based in Rochester, NY.

Marbach is a founding member and past president of Just Poets (http://www.justpoets.org/) and is the current editor of the organization's newsletter, Poet Talk. When not writing, editing or publishing, she paints and markets textbooks.

Monday, May 11, 2009

Iris Miller to Read for Just Poets

Iris Miller will be the featured reader Thursday, May 14 at the monthly Just Poets Reading Series at Barnes & Noble Pittsford. Join us at 7:00pm in the Community Room and bring your own work to read at the open mic which follows.

Iris Miller believes strongly in the power of the image to teach and to heal. After retiring from teaching art in the Rochester City School District, she became a certified art therapist, a trained shamanic practitioner, and a writer of poetry. Her poems have appeared in literary journals such as Nimrod, The South Carolina Review, and The Sow’s Ear Poetry Review, as well as various anthologies. Her chapbook, Angels Flying Backwards, will be available in 2010.

Tuesday, April 21, 2009

Cinquainicity: The Adelaide Crapsey Project

The chapbook Cinquainicity: The Adelaide Crapsey Project is on display all this month at Poets House in NYC. This chapbook, published by Palettes & Quills, features five series of linked cinquains as the form was defined by Adelaide Crapsey. M.J. Iuppa created and organized the project which includes 28 poets.

The form is syllabically driven: first line -2 syllables, second line -4 syllables, third line -6 syllables, fourth line -8 syllables, last line -2 syllables. Each poet began a cinquain with the last line of the cinquain written by the preceding poet.

I had the privilege of being the captain of the chain with poets Nici Knebel, Francis Bragan Richman, Jan Wenk Cedras, Cynthia Iannaconne, and John Roche.

For information on purchasing this chapbook visit www.palettesnquills.com.

Saturday, April 18, 2009

Publication in Blueline

My poem "Girl with Laurel" appears in the latest issue of Blueline, published by SUNY Potsdam. Joining me in issue XXX are fine poets M.J. Iuppa, Adam Wilcox, and Karla Linn Merrifield. As of this writing, the new issue is not listed on the Blueline web site. Check back with the site for ordering details.

Monday, April 06, 2009

Dwain Wilder Reading Thursday

Dwain Wilder will be the featured reader this Thursday, April 9 at the montlhy Just Poets reading series and open mic. Join us in the Community Room at the Pittsford location at 7:00pm and bring your own work to read during the open mic that follows.

Dwain's bio: Dwain, a native of a small town outside Dallas, has lived in Rochester, NY since 1970 and now lives with his wife and niece, and dogs, in a quaint, untidy old farmhouse. He makes his livelihood as a luthier (a builder of stringed musical instruments). Dwain’s Appalachian dulcimers are held in high regard, both here and abroad, where he regularly receives commissions from Europe, Great Britain and the Far East. Dwain also teaches dulcimer building classes at the Northeast Dulcimer Symposium in Blue Mountain Lake in the Adirondacks, as well as in his studio.

Dwain also writes poetry and essays on Zen. He has published poems in various small poetry periodicals and collections but not extensively -- due to having no taste for rejection slips and a lack of industry. He has published a chapbook, “Under the Only Moon,” under the Kinko/FedEx imprimatur. And he also composes and inscribes a short dedicatory verse in each dulcimer he sells (which, one might say, makes him the world’s highest paid poet, on a per line basis).

Thursday, March 26, 2009

World Premiere of "Housewife"

I am delighted by Dr. Judith Lang Zaimont's interpretation of my poem "Housewife" which served as the textual basis for her composition of the same name. The piece was performed at the Eastman School of Music yesterday as part of the Women in Music Festival, organized by Eastman faculty member Dr. Sylvie Beaudette. Susan Conkling directed the Eastman Women's Chorus in the performance which was written for piano and chorus.

I am also grateful to Dr. Beaudette for inviting me to send poetry for this commissioned project and to Dr. Conkling for her assistance in the choice of the poem but also for her superb direction of the premiere.

For more information about Dr. Zaimont, visit her web site www.jzaimont.com.

Saturday, March 21, 2009

"Housewife" Premieres Wednesday

Please join me Wednesday, March 25 at noon in the Grand Hallway at the Eastman School of Music for the world premiere of "Housewife," a libretto composed by Judith Zaimont for the Women in Music Festival. My poem "Housewife" was selected by Zaimont to serve as the textual basis for this segment of her larger work, "Life Cycle."

Saturday, March 07, 2009

Women in Music Festival

An interactive concert, two silent film shorts, readings by local poets of their works, premieres of new compositions, and performances in the community are just some of the events highlighting the fifth annual Women in Music Festival at the Eastman School of Music. Running from Monday, March 23, through Friday, March 27, the festival celebrates the many achievements and contributions of women in all aspects of music, including composition, performance, teaching, and scholarship.

The public is invited to attend these free performances and experience the amazing works by women that are becoming standards in the repertoire or are heard for the very first time. Judith Lang Zaimont will be this year's composer-in residence. Her music, which includes some 100 symphonic, chamber opera, voice, and solo instrumental compositions, is internationally acclaimed for its expressive strength and dynamism. Zaimont also has authored numerous articles and is the editor of the three-volume series The Musical Woman: An International Perspective. Her composition "Housewife," commissioned by Eastman's Hanson Institute for American Music and based on a text by local poet Claudia M. Stanek, will receive its premiere by the Eastman Women's Chorus during a concert of her work at noon on Wednesday, March 25, in the Eastman School's Main Hall. In addition, Zaimont's "Sacred Service for the Sabbath Evening" will be performed by singers from Eastman School and Temple B'rith Kodesh at 7 p.m. Friday, March 27, at the Temple.

The festival features five noontime concerts of works written by women in a broad range of musical styles, with each piece being introduced by a local woman poet reading from her work. Scheduled to appear are poets Donna Marbach, Karla Lynn Merrifield, Wanda Schubmehl, Kathleen Van Schaick, and Andrea Weinstein. The noontime concert on Thursday, March 26, in Eastman's Schmitt Organ Recital Hall will include two silent shorts by German filmmaker Lotte Reiniger, which will be screened to music written for a duet consisting of saxophone and vibraphone. The concert will end in Christ Church (Episcopal) where the work "Pent," written by Eastman composition student Elizabeth Kelly for the Craighead-Saunders organ, will receive its premiere.

Also on Thursday, March 26, pianist Kevin Nitsch and mixed media artist Kathleen Nicastro will present a concert at 3:30 p.m. in the Miller Center Atrium as part of their interactive "Labyrinth of Sound and Light" series. Titled "Water's Edge: 200 Years of Women Composers," the event also features soprano Amy Cochrane and pianist Beverley Smoker. Individuals will be able to wander into the Atrium to listen, watch, and move around the artists to enhance the participatory experience; writing and drawing materials will be available so that audience members can express their own thoughts or impressions.

Besides the performance of Zaimont's "Sacred Service for the Sabbath Evening," events on the evening of Friday, March 27, include a recital by Eastman alumna and flutist Jennifer Oh-Brown and the Chicago New Arts Trio at 7 p.m. at the University of Rochester's Interfaith Chapel.

A complete schedule of events, which are free and open to the public, can be found online at www.esm.rochester.edu/wmf/. In addition, the weekly mini-recitals on the Italian Baroque organ at the Memorial Art Gallery at 1 and 3 p.m. on Sunday, March 22, and Sunday March 29, will be devoted to women composers.

The Eastman School's Women in Music Festival was launched in 2005. Sylvie Beaudette, assistant professor of chamber music and accompanying is the founding director of the festival.The 2009 festival is sponsored by The Hanson Institute for American Music at the Eastman School; the Susan B. Anthony Institute for Gender & Women¹s Studies and the Department of Music in the College of the University of Rochester; the departments of Chamber Music, Composition, Humanities, Piano, Voice, Winds, Brass & Percussion and the Eastman All-Events Committee of the Eastman School of Music; and the Office of the Dean of the Eastman School of Music.

Zaimont's residency was funded in part through Meet the Composer's MetLife Creative Connections program.

Friday, March 06, 2009

Charlie Cote Reading for Just Poets

Poet Charlie Cote will be the featured reader for the Just Poets Reading series and open mic Thursday, March 12 at Barnes & Noble, Pittsford. Join us at 7pm in the Community Room. Just Poets members in good standing may sign up in advance by emailing claudiastanek@gmail.com.

In the late 90s, Charlie Coté was a faithful church attendee but found himself sitting more and more in the doubter’s pew. As weekly sermons were often, shall we say, less than inspiring, he took to doodling phrases scraps of paper. These morphed into the beginnings of early poems. From there, he found the most accomplished, devout agnostic poet he could find to help him complete these heresies. Said poet will remain unnamed but let’s say his name rhymed with bored, appropriately enough. When Charlie gets dry, he can still count on the doubter’s pew to be his triggering town...

Publication credits include: The Cortland Review, Upstreet, Boston Literary Magazine, ByLine, Connecticut River Review, and a recent chapbook, Flying for the Window (Finishing Line Press, 2008), elegies about his son’s illness and death.

Charlie is a clinical social worker in private practice and lives with his wife and two sons in Brighton.

Wednesday, February 11, 2009

A Change of Plans

I am not a believer of circumstance. I was supposed to be attending a mult-journal off-site AWP reading in Chicago this evening. Instead, my flight having been cancelled, I was pleased to attend Rochester native and 2008 Pulitzer prize winner Philip Schultz's reading at the University of Rochester. Schultz, whose work spans his youth growing up here in Living in the Past (Harcourt, 2004) and moves through multi-faceted Failures in his notable book of the same name (Harcourt, 2008) addresses recurring themes related to the imigrant experience and mind-set. His reading immediately connected several audience members to that past time and place so often now only found in foggy memory and vacant lots where the quaint but serviceable homes of families once stood. As the imigrant neighborhoods of his generation are re-shaped, a driving cultural amalgamation of the 20th. century in the United States diminishes and will all but disappear but for the efforts of artists such as Schultz.

Saturday, February 07, 2009

Remembering Faces Reading

Join guest host Donna Marbach (publisher/editor) for a reading by the poets from the anthology Remembering Faces (Palettes & Quills, 2008) sponsored by Just Poets. The reading is at 7:00 pm Thursday, February 12 at Barnes & Noble Pittsford in the Community Room. An open mic will follow. Just Poets members in good standing may sign up in advance via email: claudiastanek@yahoo.com.

Monday, February 02, 2009

Adam Wilcox Discusses the Poetry of Alan Dugan

Adam Wilcox will be discussing the poetry of Alan Dugan at the next Just Poets meeting, Saturday, February 7 at St. John Fisher College.

Adam is the president of WritWilcox, LLC. His poems have appeared in or are forthcoming in Poetry, The Colorado Review, Folio, Cairn, and Blueline, among others. He has been a featured reader for the Genesee Readers Series. For eight years, he wrote the "Gut Instincts" food column for Rochester City Newspaper. H.e plays in two original bands in addition to playing jazz as a volunteer with the ARC of Monroe County. He lives in Rochester, NY with his choreographer wife, Anne Harris Wilcox and their three homeschooled children.

Monday, January 05, 2009

Jan Wenk Cedras Reads for Just Poets

Jan Wenk Cedras will be the featured reader for the monthly Just Poets Reading Series and Open Mic at Barnes & Noble Thursday, January 8. The reading, which begins at 7pm, will be in the community room at the Pittsford location. Paulette Schwartzfager will be your emcee for this evening. Just Poets members in good standing may pre-register for the open mic by emailing me at claudiastanek@yahoo.com.