Poets in Port, March 28, 2008

Poets in Port will feature Michelle Whittaker & Kempton Van Hoff at 7:30 pm on Friday, March 28, 2008 at Caffé Portofino, 249 Main St., Northport, opposite the theatre. There will also be an Open Reading — the audience is encouraged to bring their poems and participate. For more information, contact Steven Schmidt.

Michelle Whittaker creates poetry on a few sorted highways, and at her computer early mornings while eating clementines. Her poetry, she says, is "old school," listing Octavio Paz, Pablo Neruda, Ai, Lucille Clifton, Mary Oliver and Sharon Olds as influences. Co-founder of the Northport Opera Company, she holds a Bachelor of Music in composition and piano from SUNY Fredonia. She was a scholarship winner for her collection of poems Building a Backbone. She currently enjoys reading at various Long Island venues, and teaching music.

LEGACY

what was left was
advice for me
to have two children
to keep around the house
like two Bibles
in case one goes missing
and what was left were six
and a set of pearls
and cherry bushes
broken faces
into a late moment of August
stamping a tongue bitter
as if slipping off a pointed chin
of an air mail envelope
to someone thought forgotten
in a Freeport casket,
behind wailers,
on a Sunday walk
dropping a garden of stone
into a coffin now dented
as how a hunter bows
and finalizes a deer
from its lost grave

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Kempton Boone Van Hoff is a member of the human race who earned a BFA in Writing from Green Mountain College in 2002. Since then, he's brought his interdisciplinary approach to life to various fields and cities, though he'd always rather be in, on or near the ocean. He is currently a teacher, writing assistant and student at C.W. Post, among other things, which you may come to know through conversation.

Legacy (beginnings [part 1: mathematics of religion])

Smoke and mist above crests craning
These the work of fisherman thorn

Texture-coat held close with leather
Remember life like old wooden

Pachyderm peers his one challenge
What human will you leave behind

Within hulls and gardens well kept
Secret son weaves crimson carpet

Kings craft paths as only kings can
Son of one son threading daughters

Needle learners through these thought seas
Dropping rain nimbly through the eye

And eye of one god was alive
Vanishing in a trail of smoke

Like philosophy on the breeze
With the equation that must fail.