Name: TAC Poetry Out Loud 2021 - Lydia Corcoran by Tioga Arts Council
Duration: 1 min 32 s
Description: One of TAC's youngest Artist and Patron, Lydia Corcoran, reads an original poem titled "Women" in honor of National Poetry Month.

Most excellent choice and beautifully written.

One of TAC's youngest Artist and Patron, Lydia Corcoran, reads an original poem titled "Women" in honor of National Poetry Month.

TAC Poetry Out Loud 2021 - Lydia Corcoran

Joanne Corey reads "Bereft" from the chapbook "Parking Meters into Mermaids" by Merrill Oliver Douglas. (Finishing Line Press, 2020.)

Bereft
by Merrill Oliver Douglas

I lost the silver pendant
Malka gave me when I was eight.
Lost my grandmother’s spoon
and great-grandfather’s teapot
and cracked Jane’s Japanese cup.

I lost Jon Cohen entirely—
eighth grade teacher,
sideburns, blue eyes, name
so common Google shrugs.

Mrs. B’s print cotton robe,
a Christmas gift, I cut for dust cloths.
Anne’s peasant blouse I’ve worn
down to patches and threads.
Now Anne’s gone.

Monkees albums, guide to the World’s Fair—
vanished. Also the ten or so chords
I learned on guitar.

I drop more Yiddish year by year,
and I must have misplaced my father,
my cat, the white dress,
the infant I nursed, the sticky toddler.

How many years till a swollen river
swallows the shoebox of mail,
the photos, cassette tapes, thumb drives,

and leaches the ink
from my twenty-three journals,
every loop and dot of this life
sipped off like so much vodka?

2022 National Poetry Month: Joanne Corey

In honor of National Poetry Month, Jessica Dubey reads Repentance by Natasha Trethewey. (New Yorker, 2017.)

Repentance
by Natasha Tretheway

After Vermeer’s “Maid Asleep”

To make it right   Vermeer painted   then painted over

this scene   a woman alone at a table   the cloth pushed back

rough folds at the edge    as if    someone   had risen

in haste   abandoning the chair   beside her    a wineglass

nearly empty   just   in her reach      Though she’s been called

idle and drunken   a woman drowsing    you might see

in her gesture    melancholia              Eyelids drawn

she rests   her head   in her hand    Beyond her    a still-life

white jug    bowl of fruit    a goblet overturned     Before this

a man stood    in the doorway     a dog lay  on the floor

Perhaps   to exchange    loyalty     for betrayal

Vermeer erased  the dog      and made   of the man

a mirror     framed    by the open door               Pentimento

the word       for a painter’s change     of heart    revision

on canvas     means the same    as remorse     after sin

Were she to rise        a mirror     behind her     the woman

might see    herself     as I did     turning    to rise

from my table   then back as if    into    Vermeer’s scene

It was after    the quarrel        after     you’d had   again

too much  to drink   after  the bottle     did not shatter   though

I’d brought it   down hard      on the table   and the dog

had crept       from the room  to hide         Later    I found

a trace    of what   I’d done     bruise  on the table        the size

of my thumb       Worrying it     I must have looked   as she does

eyes downcast    my head   on the heel   of my palm    In paint

a story can change      mistakes be     undone       Imagine

Still-Life    with Father    and Daughter             a moment so

far back    there’s still time      to take the glass   from your hand

or mine

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/11/20/repentance

2022 National Poetry Month: Jessica Dubey

In honor of National Poetry Month, Jordan Jardine reads "Untitled, No. 3" by Li Shang-yin. ("Poems of the Late T'ang." New York Review Books Classics. 2008.)

Bite back passion. Spring now sets.
Watch little by little the night turn around.
Echoes in the house; want to go up, dare not.
A glow behind the screen; wish to go through, cannot.
It would hurt too much, the swallow on a hairpin;
Truly shame me, the phoenix on a mirror.
On the road back, sunrise over Heng-t'ang.
The blossoming of the morning-star shines farewell on the jewelled saddle.

2022 National Poetry Month: Jordan Jardine

Diane R. Wiener reads "Bird Watch" by Joan Fallert.

2022 National Poetry Month: Diane Wiener

In honor of National Poetry Month, TAC Supporter & Poet, Jessica Dubey, reads Paisley Rekdal's poem "Flowers from a New Love after the Divorce."

Flowers from a New Love after the Divorce 
BY PAISLEY REKDAL
Cut back the stems an inch to keep in bloom.
So instructs the florist’s note
enclosed inside the flowers.
Who knew what was cut
could heal again, the green wounds close,
stitching themselves together?

It doesn’t matter. The flowers, red
and white, will bloom awhile, then wither.
You sit in an unlit room and watch
the vase throw crystal shadows through the dark.
The flowers’ colors are so lovely they’re painful.
In a week, you’ll have to throw them out.

It’s only hope that makes you take out scissors,
separate each bloom and cut
where you last measured. Did you know
Venus was said to turn into a virgin
each time she bathed? She did it
as a mark of love. She did it

so as to please her lovers. Perhaps,
overwhelmed by pain,
she eventually stopped bathing
altogether. It doesn’t matter. It’s a pleasure
to feel the green nubs stripped, watch the stems
refresh under your blade. They’re here

because they’re beautiful. They glow
inside your crystal vase. And yet
the flowers by themselves are nothing:
only a refraction of color that,
in a week or two, will be thrown out.
Day by day, the water lowers. The red-

and-white heads droop, blacken at the stems.
It doesn’t matter. Even cut stems heal.
But what is the point of pain if it heals?
Some things should last forever, instructs
the florist’s note. Pleasure,
says one god. Shame, says another.

Venus heads, they call these flowers.
In a week or two, you’ll lose the note,
have to call the florist up.
With sympathy, you’ll think he says.
Perhaps: With love. It doesn’t matter.
You’ve stopped bathing. Alone,

you sit before the crystal
vase refracting you in pieces
through the dark. You watch
the pale skin bloom inside it, wither.
You petal, inch by inch.
You turn red and white together.

Source: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/56264/flowers-from-a-new-love-after-the-divorce

Poetry Out Loud 2024: Jessica Dubey Reads "Flowers from a New Love after the Divorce."

TAC Poet & Supporter, Merrill Douglas, reads her new poem "I Want," which was recently published in the online journal, RockPaperPoem.

I Want
by Merrill Douglas

To sip vodka from an ice glass at the Ice Hotel.
To sleep in the southernmost house in Tierra del Fuego.

To sit with a friend, tearing bits of bread
from the same loaf, chewing, listening.

To swim as slowly as possible and let
the lane’s dark tile ribbon tow me toward the far end.

To see through the eyes of the fat bees
that feed all day on oregano flowers.

To ask the ass how he dared take up the lyre
with only hooves for hands.

Then to sit quietly adoring that music.

TAC Poetry Out Loud 2021 - Lydia Corcoran

Tioga Arts Council

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