An Evening of Poetry Featuring Tim Mayo & Vermont Book Award Winner Carlene Kucharczyk

About Muscle Memories of Love and Disaster by Tim Mayo: Muscle Memories of Love and Disaster explores the arc of a life shaped by loss and renewed by love. The poems intertwine to explore grief from the loss of loved ones (a lover, a daughter and close friends), early memories of growing up in an immigrant foster home, later memories of working in a mental hospital, the poet's own recovery from addiction, the emotional and spiritual impact of a near death and life-changing accident with its lasting, crippling effects, and an acceptance of a life nearing its own chronological end. Although there is a darkness in these poems, they belie the empathy and subtle humor in the poems and the joy of finding love in later life after so much loss.

About Strange Hymn by Carlene Kucharczyk: Strange Hymn is a meticulously crafted lyrical journey exploring morality and humanity. The poems here grapple with understanding physical loss. They also engage with the more abstract slipping away of memory and time. Kucharczyk's insightful poems blur the lines between history and myth, love and grief, song and silence, often caught between lamenting the passage of time and rejoicing in small beauties. Each moment reflects on our ephemeral lives from musings on art and nature to reflections on the self. As readers traverse this collection, they learn how the body sings, the many iterations of Mary, what sirens truly think of Odysseus, how a Morning Glory unfurls, and lessons in orthodontics, but most importantly, how to live with absence. Kucharczyk is a master of manipulating time and space through her dynamic use of form, creating a narrative that begs, 'After I'm gone, don't bury my body- / Burn it, and turn it into song'"