Around the Island

‘An irresistable solstice’ by Shelter Island Poetry Project

COURTESY PHOTO Mike Zisser’s artwork from the Shelter Island Poetry Project’s ‘Goldengrove Unleaving: Poems for Fall and Beyond.’
COURTESY PHOTO
Mike Zisser’s artwork from the Shelter Island Poetry Project’s ‘Goldengrove Unleaving: Poems for Fall and Beyond.’

Six veterans of the Shelter Island Poetry Project — Forrest Compton, Carol Galligan, Stephen Gessner, Georgia Griffis, Kathleen Minder and Maryann Moderelli — will be at the Shelter Island Library on Friday, November 21 at 7 p.m. with readings that usher out the Project’s sixth season: “Goldengrove Unleaving: Poems for Fall … and Beyond.”

The program borrows its name from Gerard Manley Hopkins’ “Spring and Fall” and includes this beloved Hopkins poem, as well as poems by Amy Lowell, Stanley Kunitz, Thomas Hardy, Charles Baudelaire, Robert Frost, Robert Hass, Louise Glück, Rita Dove, Charles Simic and many more.

“Goldengrove Unleaving” is curated by Bliss Morehead, founder of the Shelter Island Poetry Project. It is, she says, “an homage to that spectral, wildly emotionally complicated arc of the year straddling late fall and early winter, when we are whipped between golden gingkoes and iron winds, lashed with ambivalence, snow, holidays and, eventually, a new year that looks just like the old one. Moody, unstable, unpredictable, it is a poet’s dream.”

And the poets of “Goldengrove” take full advantage of it, she adds, “with humor, argument, gloom and celebration; crankiness, drunkenness, rue, blasé snowmen, Chinese ghosts, crazy dogs, burning peach trees, a cargo of zithers, nations of birds. What more could one ask as the days draw down?” Indeed, it is “an irresistible solstice drive-by to wind up the year.”

The Shelter Island Poetry Project, now entering its seventh year, was founded by Ms. Morehead with the goal of presenting great poetry year-round, read by Shelter Islanders. Readings have celebrated holidays, seasons and a variety of diverse themes, including “All You Need Is Love” (Valentine’s Day); “Cartas Apasionadas” (Spanish-language poetry in translation); “A Soldier’s Heart” (Memorial Day); “Beast” (animal poetry); “Answer Me, Earth” (agrarian poetry); “Muse to Muse” (poets on painting); “Friends of Frank” (Frank O’Hara and the poets of the New York School) and many more.

The readings, as well as the perennially popular “Favorite Poem Project,” a tribute to Poetry Month in April, celebrate poetry out loud for an ever-growing audience of Island listeners and fans.

The Friday Night Dialogues series is free with donations welcome.

Coming Up: On November 28, “Walking the Camino de Santiago Compostela” with P.A.T. Hunt, Susannah and Christina Cahill and Neil Carragher; and “The Servant’s Last Serve: A Comedy” by John and Karl Kaasik on December 5.

— Phyllis Gates