Evening of Poetry featuring Roberta Gould
Poetry reading by Roberta Gould at Adriance Library, Poughkeepsie, NY in 2023.
Interview with Planet Poet
LISTEN to the May 11th, 2021 WIOX Radio conversation with the original and exuberant poet Roberta Gould on her latest collection Woven Lightning (Spuyten Duyvil, 2019) and other works.
“The tension between the lyrical and the practical, the soaring and the quotidian give her poetry its arresting and archetypical energy. A procession of gongs and silences, powerful and affecting. A poet to the bone. – Stanley Nelson, winner of the Thomas Wolfe Poetry Award.
“Roberta Gould is a poet who brings all her senses to her work …the focus is beautifully and lovingly on the familiar…poems that are full of spirit and inventiveness.”
–Donald Lev
An Evening of Poetry featuring Roberta Gould
by Poughkeepsie Public Library District
Windows
They extend the days
Our ancestors lacked them
Behind walls of wattle or mud
They slept long
Not prodded by the sun
and stepped out
to dawn’s silhouette of trees
They praised their walls rightly
unable to equal the power of winter
or the blaze of the summer sun
Confined briefly behind walls now
in clothes of our choosing
our modern floors keep the earth out
worms we pretend don’t exist
and the infinite creatures soaring above
invisible to us
Published in Trolley, SUNY Writer’s Institute, 2020
Improving Nature?
Nature has a way of insisting
You can’t fool her, it’s true
You open up the sky for a quarter
But find the water is gone
You dig to hell for proof
But nothing is there
Where are can you go
Your new mode of movement does nothing
Though you walk on your nose to the stage
And a bundle of money is awarded
Though you primp in the mirror for hours
Next morning you’re nowhere again
So you read how to eat
And read how to breathe
Ignoring the rain and the children
Skating paved rivers and gardens of chrome
guffawing with guts made of plaster
Published in Waymark 2021
Kandinsky, Revisited
Midway up
the sandy hill
a whale lies grounded
green in the haze of hot
November
It wants to swim
to the peak
but can’t
The houses tilt
with the tawny terrain
A pink stream
flows past
They start to quake
Then each flies off
The whale stays solid on the hill
The blue road reaching its tail
hold no ox or wagon
The pale sky receives it all
Published in Waymark, 2019
Readings in 2020
FLORIDA LIBRARY
LOEB LEHMAN MUSEUM
NOBLE COFFEE ROASTERS
GREENKILL GALLERY
COMMUNITY RADIO PALENVILLE
MONTGOMERY BOOK EXCHANGE
Poems recently published
“Ghosts,” What History Trammels, 2011
“New July” Durable Goods 2013
“About,” Waymark, 2016
“Victory,” Waymark, 2016
“The Old Ones Foretold This,” Hudson Valley Transmitter, 2016
“The Neighbor,” Hudson Valley Transmitter, 2016
“Roman General,” Waymark, 2016
“Out of Here,” Hudson Valley Transmitter, 2017
“Seventeen Ropes,” Home Planet News, 2017
“Solstice Light,” Poetry Journal in Print, Viet Nam 2017
“Spam,” Home Planet News, 2017
“Stolen,” Loss Lit UK, 2017
“The Step,” Waymark, 2017
“Thieves,” Cod Hill Press, Anthology, 2017
“Tom,” Naugatuck River Review,2017
“Another Dog Day,” Like Light: 25 Years Word Thursday Anthology, 2017
“Archeology,” Magnolia Review, 2017
“Balloon Buddha,” Magnolia Review, 2017
“Both Ways,” Voices from Here, 2017
“Floating Off,” Home Planet News, 2017
“Word Craft,” Like Light: 25 Years Word Thursday Anthology, 2017
“Kingston Point,” Presa, 2018
“Cyber Food,” Deadly Sins Vol. I. Gluttony, 2018
“Country,” Deadly Sins Vol. 2. Wrath, 2018
“Self Appreciation,” Artemis, 2018
“Arrival,” Magnum Opu, 2019
“Kandinsky Revisited,” Waymark, 2019
“Stay Away,” Waymark 2019
“George Floyd,” Chronogram 2020
“My Land,” Progressive Poetics 2020
“Birth of Flowers,” Waterways Vol 41 #3, 2020
“Chatte,” Waterways Vol 41 #4, 2020
“In A Time of Fear,” Waterways Vol 41 #5, 2020
“Death Doll,” Vastarien, 2020
“Stay Away,” Waymar, 2018
“Windows,” Trolley….SUNY Wriiter’s Institute, 2020
“April,” Chester Library Writer’s Project, 2020
“Reply to Letter 18 Years Later,” Chester Writer’s Project, 2020
“Kandinsky Revisited,” Waymark, 2020
“The Year,” Waymark, 2020
“Improving Nature,” Waymark, 2021
“We Are Approaching,” Mightier: Poets for Social Justice, 2021
“Advice In a Time of Fear,” Mightier: Poets for Social Justice, 2021
“Leisure,” Chester Writer’s Project Sunlight, 2021
Talk When You Can, Tell the Truth
“We like the way your use of personalized grammar encourages an associative leaping response in the reader. You put the “free” in “free verse” and we are happy to publish Talk When You Can, Tell the Truth in our Contemporary Poetry Series”
Roseanne Ritzema, Presa Press