Local Poetry Night with Elaine Cohen, Susan Hunter, Catherine Marenghi & Brett Warren

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Titcomb’s Bookshop presents a Local Poetry Night with poets Elaine Cohen, Susan Hunter, Catherine Marenghi, & Brett Warren on Tuesday April 9th at 6:30pm at Titcomb’s Bookshop. Each poet will share readings from their books and afterwards folks can mingle with the poets, get their books signed, and enjoy some light refreshments.

This is a free event, but registration is required and space is limited. Registration can be completed on Titcomb’s Bookshop’s website or by calling the store at 508-888-2331.

Books will be for sale at the event, the authors will sign them after her presentation. Those who are unable to attend the event may order signed copies on Titcomb’s Bookshop’s website or by calling 508-888-2331.

ABOUT THE BOOK: Midnight Bus to Oaxaca

“Elaine Cohen creates strong and enticing poems, at once precise in detail and wide ranging in subject. She writes vividly about places from Oaxaca, Mexico to Hyde Park in Chicago, New York, Berlin, and Paris.” – Marge Percy, author of On the Way Out, Turn Off the Light

“I thoroughly enjoyed Elaine Cohen’s pitch-perfect renderings, her words-eye view of the life of a restless Jewess cast adrift in a country not her own, how she has kneaded her vulnerability into art. The poems recombine phrases in the fresh manner of an accomplished improviser who adds layers of licks as life adds new experiences. The sojourn in Oaxaca pulsates with life (and death)… Cohen is such an an active listener and keen observer of people and place, Midnight Bus to Oaxaca takes you right on board.” – Richard Simon, Los Angeles musician, journalist, educator

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Elaine Cohen

Elaine Cohen, originally from Gloversville, NY, lived in Chicago, Brooklyn, the SF Bay Area and northern California before moving to Cape Cod in 2003.  Her early poems received recognition from Hollins College, the University of Chicago, Academy of American Poets, and San Francisco State Poetry Series.  A jazz journalist for several decades, she co-authored Unfinished Dream: The Musical World of Red Callender (Quartet Books, London), wrote reviews and interviews for several magazines, and for the New York State Council on the Arts. Recent awards include a residency fellowship at Atlantic Center for the Arts, Regional Winner of the 2020 Joe Gouveia Outermost Poetry Contest, and an Editor’s Choice in the 2022 Allen Ginsberg Poetry Awards.  In 2023 she published the chapbook Midnight Bus to Oaxaca.  Cohen is also a visual artist.  Visit www.ElaineCohenGallery.com for more information.

ABOUT THE BOOK: Unfinished Spaces

To read Unfinished Spaces is to catch glimpses of a woman’s life, seen through memories that are not always “stubborn puzzle pieces” refusing to fit together, but often full recollections of “mist painting hills on the river’s far bank” or “the white birch scraping its branches across the wood.” The book makes mention of such present-day events as the visit of Comet Neowise or the war in Ukraine, but usually sticks to the universal and the personal. The poems capture the author’s interpretation of life’s moments, and the reader may be sure to identify with Susan Hunter’s depiction of children who grow and leave empty rooms behind . . . of grandchildren making sense of the world . . . of losses that carry their own poignant memories . . . of dreams that carry memory to another realm.

Reading Hunter’s book is like viewing the globe of the Earth from a distance and traveling toward the planet, with its landscape coming into sharper and sharper focus. We see a birds-eye view of “the thread of a road tied taut to a knob of land” and hear “the foghorn moaning out into the night ocean.” But it’s the smaller spaces that are just as meaningful — A grandparent’s bedroom, a room emptied of furniture after a move, a childhood home still filled with memories of a father’s pipe smoke. As some doors close in anger and heartbreak, others open to views of a Caribbean sunrise and “a clear view of blue sky down to the harbor.” The doors of memory are always open to creativity and imagination and to the phrase that can be pulled through the eye of a needle.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Susan Hunter

Susan Hunter’s poetry has been published in Southern Humanities Review, Saranac Review, The Chaffin Journal, Poem and Illya’s Honey. Her poem “Cape Cod Bay” was a winning entry in the Plymouth (MA) Poetry contest in 2020. Her verse has been featured on Cape and Islands NPR radio and on local televisions arts shows in Plymouth, MA. Her chapbook, “Unfinished Spaces” was published by Finishing Line Press in January 2024. Susan is a freelance journalist for area newspapers in Massachusetts and was formerly a newspaper editor in Connecticut. She received a B.A. in English from Middlebury College and an M.A. in English literature from New York University. She and her husband Bill live in Plymouth and are the parents of three grown daughters and have two grandchildren.

ABOUT THE BOOK: Unfurled: Love Poems

Award-winning poet Catherine Marenghi brings us a profoundly visceral collection of love poems ranging from sensual to playful, ecstatic to mournful, provocative to plain-speaking, all written from the perspective of what Dante calls “halfway through the walk of life.” The author of Glad Farm: A Memoir, Breaking Bread: Poems, and the historical novel Our Good Name has returned to her first love, poetry, with this moving new collection. Catherine’s works have been published in literary journals worldwide.

“Here is poetry that comes from the exquisite perspective of a woman of a certain age.” -Sandra Cisneros, author of The House on Mango Street and Woman Without Shame: Poems

“Marenghi’s poems are a powerful narrative of modern mature love. Not the Hollywood kind, not teenage romance, but a lyrical rendering of the ‘playlist of her life.’ Poems about Match.com profiles, email banter, unrequited love, first kiss-modern love that is both sensual and sexual. It reads like a dictionary of desire.” -Meg Weston, poet, author of Letters From the White Queen

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Catherine Marenghi

The granddaughter of immigrants, Catherine was born and raised in Milford, Massachusetts, a town where she has deep roots and a lifelong connection. She is an active member of the vibrant literary community of San Miguel de Allende, Mexico, where she has served on the board of the San Miguel Poetry Cafe and, with poet Judyth Hill, co-founded the Poetry Mesa, an international community serving poets and poetry. She divides her time between Mexico and Cape Cod, Massachusetts.

ABOUT THE BOOK: The Map of Unseen Things

“Each poem in The Map of Unseen Things is a gem. Brett Warren captures so precisely, in lyrical language, her hard-earned meditations on grief, loss, gratitude, and joy – all observed with unflinching honesty and grace.” – Patty Enrado, author of A Village in the Fields

“Brett Warren’s beautiful collection is steeped in wisdom, honesty, and empathy. I felt as if I were looking into both a window and a mirror as I read, immersed in both compassion and solace. An expansive experience.” – Lauren Wolk, author of Wolf Hollow, Beyond the Bright Sea, Echo Mountain, and My Own Lightning

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Brett Warren

Brett Warren is the author of The Map of Unseen Things (Pine Row Press, 2023). Cape residents and visitors may know her from the Cape Cod Chat House, a contemporary art gallery, coffeehouse, and cultural venue she owned from 2011–2015 in Dennis Village. Brett’s poetry has been published in Canary, Cape Cod Poetry Review, Halfway Down the Stairs, Harbor Review, ONE ART, Rise Up Review, and many other literary publications. One of her poems was etched into a wooden plaque and permanently installed at Eagle Pond Sanctuary in Cotuit as part of Barnstable Land Trust’s “Words in the Wild” project. Brett is a member of the Academy of American Poets and a triple nominee for Best of the Net (in Poetry) 2024. Her website is brettwarrenpoetry.com.