In light of federal, state, and local efforts to flatten the Covid-19 infection curve and protect public health, we need to cancel this month’s reading. We’re sorry to miss you, but hope you’re taking good care. 

Please join us Thursday, April 2, 2020 at 7:00 pm, when poets Michael Favala Goldman and Jeffrey Thomson will continue the thirteenth season of the Collected Poets Series! Mocha Maya’s Coffee House, 47 Bridge St, Shelburne Falls, MA. ($2-5 suggested donation)

Michael Favala Goldman

Michael Favala Goldman is a widely-published translator of Danish literature, a poet and a jazz clarinetist. Over 130 of Michael’s translations and poems have appeared in journals such as The Harvard Review, World Literature Today, The International Poetry Review, and The Columbia Journal. He has translated 15 books of Danish poetry and prose, including Selected Poems of Benny Andersen and The Water Farm Trilogy. He will be reading from his new work and his first book of poetry, Who has time for this? He lives in Florence, Massachusetts. http://www.hammerandhorn.net

Jeffrey Thomson

Jeffrey Thomson is a poet, memoirist, translator, and editor, and the author of nine books including: Half/Life: New and Selected Poems from Alice James Books (October 2019), the memoir fragile, The Belfast Notebooks, The Complete Poems of Catullus, and the edited collection From the Fishouse. He has been an NEA Fellow, the Fulbright Distinguished Scholar in Creative Writing at the Seamus Heaney Poetry Centre at Queen’s University Belfast, and the Hodson Trust-John Carter Brown Fellow at Brown University.  He is currently professor of creative writing at the University of Maine Farmington.

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LOW TECHNICALS / Michael Favala Goldman

When you turn to me
from the pairs
ice skating video
and press
several parts
of your body
against
several parts of mine
no one
is judging
not even us
as my arm snakes
around you
and we slide
half-off the cushions
executing a perfect
double-klutz
and I catch you
your head back
laughing
our somewhat
fit bodies
rolling
panting
flowers and medals
completely
superfluous

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WHAT IS POETRY? PART 2 / Jeffrey Thomson

The light
that points
the way

in the fog.
The light
in the fog

that thickens
and reveals
the fog’s

cold breath.
The fog
as well.

From Half/Life: New and Selected Poems

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