Poetry & Wine

for Grownups

Read the poems. Come and discuss. We are a very non-pretentious group of poetry enthusiasts who gather monthly. This is an open group; there is no need to sign-up ahead of time -- just read the selection and show up. Bring a bottle of wine (or bourbon or whatever), or a dessert of some sort to share if you wish. (Hint: Chocolate always works.) Folks read their favorite poems and provide their own insights, and we have truly interesting and wonderful discussions. Send a note to Dave at dave@littleshopofstories.com if you would like more information or to get on the email list!

We primarily read contemporary American poets, but -- as you'll see as you peruse the list below -- we sometimes mix it up. Dave is ALWAYS open to recommendations.

We’re meeting next on Wednesday, March 20th at 7 pm. at Little Shop to discuss Common Grace: Poems, edited by Aaron Caycedo-Kimura.

From the publisher:

About Common Grace

The first major poetry collection from an award-winning student of Robert Pinsky, exploring the inherited trauma within his Japanese American family, his life as an artist, and his bond with his wife

In 65 lyric poems organized into a triptych, Common Grace offers an important new lens into Asian American life, art, and love.

 

Part 1, “Soul Sauce,” describes the poet’s life as a practicing visual artist, taking us from an early encounter with an inkwell at Roseland Elementary in 1969 to his professional outdoor easel perched on Long Island Sound.

Part 2, ‘Ubasute,” is named after the mythical Japanese practice wherein “a grown son lifts / his aged mother on his back, / delivers her to a mountain, / leaves her to die.” This concept frames a wrenching portrayal of his parents’ decline and death, reaching back to his father’s time in the American internment camps of WWII and his mother’s memories of the firebombing of Tokyo. It also anchors the 2 outer parts in the racial trauma and joys passed down from his parents.

Part 3, “Gutter Trees,” gives us affecting love poems to his wife and the creative lives they’ve built together.

Ranging in scope from private moments to the sweep of familial heritage, Caycedo-Kimura’s poems are artful, subtle, but never quiet.


It was requested that a list be compiled of all the works that we have read for Poetry & Wine. Here it is!

2024

March - Common Grace: Poems by Aaron Caycedo-Kimura

February - Little Poems, edited by Michael Hennessy

January - 100 Selected Poems by Robert Frost

2023

December - Potluck and ekphrasitic poems

November - Apocrifa by Amber Flame

October - The Great Fires: poems 1982-1992 by Jack Gilbert

September - Dubious Breath by Jennifer Davis Michael (including a discussion with Jennifer Davis Michael via Zoom)

August - Prognosis by Jim Moore

July - Human Chain: Poems by Seamus Heaney

JuneThe Anxiety Workbook by Christina Olson

May - Unusually Grand Ideas by James Davis May

April Dear Outsiders by Jenny Sadre-Orafai (including a discussion with Jenny Sadre-Orafa)

March - Guillotine: Poems by Eduardo C. Corral

February - Love Poems

January - Musical Tables by Billy Collins

2022

December - Potluck and memorial poems

November - Turn Up the Ocean by Tony Hoagland

OctoberMeditations in an Emergency by Frank O'Hara

July and September - The Hurting Kind by Ada Limón

June - Hail, The Invisible Watchman by Alexandra Oliver

May - Time is a Mother by Ocean Veoung

April - Crush by Richard Siken

March - Magnificent Errors by Sheryl Luna

February - Reparations Now! by Ashley M. Jones

2021

December - Potluck and Haikus

November - The Gold Cell by Sharon Old

October - Red Clay Suite by Honorée Fanonne Jeffers

September - Poetry Pot Luck: poems submitted by the group

August - The Wild Iris by Louise Glück

2020

March - Nightshade by Andrea Cohen (canceled due to the pandemic)

February - Fieldnotes on Ordinary Love by Keith S. Wilson

January - Hey Marfa: Poems by Jeffery Yang

2019

December - Potluck, poetry, and music

November - The Café of Unintelligible Desire by Julia Knowlton (including a discussion with Julia Knowlton)

September - The Flame by Leonard Cohen

August - Still Life with Mother and Knife by Chelsea Rathburn

July - How to Love a Country by Ricahrd Blanco

June - A Thousand Mornings by Mary Oliver

May - The Tradition by Jericho Brown (including a discussion with Jericho Brown)

April - Power Politics by Margaret Atwood

March - Coney Island of the Mind by Lawrence Ferlinghetti

February - Enough Rope by Dorothy Parker

January - Years, Months, and Days by Amanda Jernigan

2018

DecemberSong of Myself by Walt Whitman (part two)

NovemberHold by Bob Hicok

OctoberNative Guard by Natasha Trethewey

September - feeld by Jos Charles

August - Oceanic by Aimee Nezhukmatathil

July - Otherworld, Underworld, Prayer Porch by David Bottoms

June - The Way Under the Way: The Place of True Meaning by Mark Nepo

May - Felicity by Mary Oliver

April - American Purgatory by Rebecca Gayle Howell

March - Good Bones by Maggie Smith

February - The Rain in Portugal by Billy Collins

January - canceled due to a one heck of a nasty ice storm

2017

December - Good Poems, selected and introduced by Garrison Keillor

November - Song of Myself (1891 deathbed edition) by Walt Whitman

October - The Princess Saves Herself In This One by Amanda Lovelace

SeptemberScald by Denise Duhamel

August - Lessons on Expulsion by Erika Sánchez

July - Map of the Stars by Adrian Matejka

June - Said Not Said: Poems by Fred Marchant

May - The Trouble with Poetry by Billy Collins

April - Madwoman by Shara McCallum

March - Best American Poetry 2016 edited by David Lehman and Edward Hirsch (part 2)

January - Best American Poetry 2016 edited by David Lehman and Edward Hirsch (part 1)

2016

November - The Poetry of Bob Dylan as selected by the group in honor of Dylan's Nobel Prize in Literature

OctoberUnquiet Things by James Davis May

SeptemberDog Songs by Mary Oliver

August - Get Up, Please by David Kirby

July - the do over by Kathleen Ossip

June19 Varieties of Gazelle: Poems of the Middle East by Naomi Shibab Nye

May - Dead Man's Float by Jim Harrison

AprilThe Best American Poetry edited by Sherman Alexie (the inaugural meeting)

Common Grace: Poems (Raised Voices #3) By Aaron Caycedo-Kimura Cover Image
$16.00
ISBN: 9780807015889
Availability: On Our Shelves Now
Published: Beacon Press - October 4th, 2022

The first major poetry collection from an award-winning student of Robert Pinsky, exploring the inherited trauma within his Japanese American family, his life as an artist, and his bond with his wife

In 65 lyric poems organized into a triptych, Common Grace offers an important new lens into Asian American life, art, and love.