Members have agreed on the following schedule for the coming year. We’ll fill in the program blanks at our September meeting, during which we will also have gentle critiques of one another’s poetry. The schedule will also be on the separate Meeting & Event page, with the updates.

Please join us!

And, because I want to be sure this blog is interesting, I am sharing one of my favorite Stanley Kunitz poems. It is called ….

Touch Me

Summer is late, my heart.
Words plucked out of the air
some forty years ago
when I was wild with love
and torn almost in two
scatter like leaves this night
of whistling wind and rain.
It is my heart that’s late,
it is my song that’s flown.
Outdoors all afternoon
under a gunmetal sky
staking my garden down,
I kneeled to the crickets trilling
underfoot as if about
to burst from their crusty shells;
and like a child again
marveled to hear so clear
and brave a music pour
from such a small machine.
What makes the engine go?
Desire, desire, desire.
The longing for the dance
stirs in the buried life.
One season only,
and it’s done.
So let the battered old willow
thrash against the windowpanes
and the house timbers creak.
Darling, do you remember
the man you married? Touch me,
remind me who I am.

Meetings are held at the Beverly Public Library unless otherwise noted. Members bring food to share, such as cookies, little sandwiches, etc.

Sept. 19: Members read their own poems for gentle critique and a back in the swing of things gathering

Oct. 24: (A week late, to accommodate the MSPS meeting on the 17^th)

Nov. 21: (Thanksgiving is the following Thursday)

Dec. 5: Holiday party with Mass State Poetry Society; most apt poem contest for Yankee Swap

March 20:

April 17: Poetry reading in celebration of National Poetry Month, featuring winners of the Naomi                                 Cherkofsky annual contest. (March 1 deadline, any form, any subject, 40 lines, over 18)

May 15

July: summer outing, to be announced. Read your poems – or any you like – and bring food to share.