The Writers Institute just wrapped up its fall Advanced Poetry Community Workshop led by Institute Fellow and Fence editor, poet Rebecca Wolff. Over the course of the next few weeks, we'll be sharing the words of some of the participating poets to highlight the talented and diverse community of writers in the Capital Region with which the Insitute is proud to work.
Today's poet: Kathryn Poppino
"What I enjoyed about Rebecca Wolff's poetry workshop was that each of the paricipants was invited to submit several poems in a group for comments and suggestions, instead of just one poem at a time, which helped us each to gain perspective on the direction our work is taking. One of our workshop exercises was to write 15 lines of unrhymed iambic pentameter with variations. I include mine here, altered somewhat from the original."
Sale
A bright and steamy foam covers the lake
that could be deep with refuse after all.
We must go mining, trolling, netting the debris
unless the time is right to let it go
to be aluminum stones, lake things, shipwrecks
of households confused with abundance and grab.
In years to come wet suits will find
the artifacts of us, trinketed in weeds
and auction relics local to the scene.
"What do you give, give me, give me for this?"
The money gone, the bartering begins.
"My shirt for the relics, my shirt" is cried.
"Sold! On a cold day" is yelled to man confused
by rustless beauty shining then
by rustless beauty shining then and there.
Kathryn Poppino's work has been seen in Peer Glass Anthology, Chicago Review and Hanging Loose, among others and her chapbook Ferns of Salt, is hand type-set by Swamp Press. She is a member of the writing group the Stockade Washout Poets and serves on the board of the Hudson Valley Writers Institute. In her other life she is a play director and a Licensed Massage Therapist.
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