2025 Saturday Poetry Book Club

Artwork: “Still Life” by Suri Oru

Dear Friends,

Section friend and member George Reitnour in Pennsylvania shares this information about a monthly Saturday Poetry Book Club. New participants are welcome!

“The Saturday Poetry Book Club occurs in-person and on Zoom one Saturday each month from 8AM-9:30AM Pacific time.

 

“To receive monthly notification of Saturdays Monthly Poetry Book Club live and zoom gatherings, featuring reviews of books of poetry by poets influenced by anthroposophy (book suggestions welcome) and writing exercises from Paul Matthews’ Sing Me the Creation, email George at reitnour@reitnour.com”

 

Here’s the current schedule and book list shared by George. Contact George directly for updates. Reitnour@reitnour.com

Poetry Book Club meets 12/28 at 11AM-12:30PM EST. Grey Klein will review Owen Barfield’s The Tower. Barfield, a philosopher & poet, together with J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, Charles Williams and some others at Oxford were known as The Inklings.

Come in-person to 151 Saylors Mill Rd, Pottstown, PA (please email reitnour@reitnour.com to let us know if coming in person) or attend via Zoom by clicking below link (no reservation needed):

Contact George for the Zoom Link. Email George at reitnour@reitnour.com

We currently send meeting announcements to 46 interested people as well as placing more general announcements on a few local Facebook and Neighborhood groups. Poets and poetry lovers from Vancouver and Edmonton, Canada, Washington State, New York, Switzerland, and elsewhere have participated via Zoom. We warm up with writing exercises from Sing Me the Creation by Paul Matthews, and then review the poetry book(s) of the month (you need not acquire any book until it is your turn to lead a review). There is still time to sign up to select your favorites from our attached reading list of 29 poets. Here is our schedule for 2025:

1/18: Dagmar Holl reviews Nicholas Morrow’s Misty Mountain Chronicles & Songs to the Beloved.

2/22: Nicholas Morrow reviews Arvia MacKaye Ege’s The Secret Iron of the Heart (1982) in the context of the MacKaye family (father, Percy and sister, Christy).

3/22: 2 Volunteers needed to review Richard Steel’s Beneath the Knowing Stars (2024) & Lori Widmer Hess’s When Fragments Make a Whole (2024).

4/19: Megan Collins reviews Philip Thatcher’s Good Time (2022) & Fine Matter (2020).

5/31: 2 Volunteers needed to review Andrew Hoy’s Poems for Several Voices (1986) & Gregory Sass’s Shadows (2024) & Growing Toward the Light (2023)

06/28/2025 at 11AM-12:30PM EST.  We’ll review Monica Gold’s A Spiritual Poem Collection (2024) & Rowan Middleton’s (Stars & Shadows, 2025 and earlier, The Stolen Herd).  As a welcome to Summer, we’ll also read an excerpt from Bruce Donehower’s translation of Novalis’s Hymns to the Night 

7/26  2 volunteers needed to review Caryl Johnston’s Indulge Me Once (2008), Instead of Eyes & Storyteller in Times Square (2023), & Una Kobrin’s Words Between Darkness & Light (2023)

8/30  2 volunteers needed to review David Donaldson’s The Twelve Senses (2022) (note:  see Living Anthroposophy curriculum for 9/20) & Richard Steel’s Beneath the Knowing Stars (2024).

9/27  2 volunteers needed to review will review Gabriel Bradford Millar’s Crackle of Almonds (2012) and Jakob Ziguras’s Chains of Snow (Pitt Street Poetry)(2013) and/or Venetian Mirrors (2024).

Later 2025 dates:  10/25; 11/29; 12/27.  At one of these sessions, Gillian Schoemaker plans to review Paul Matthews’s The Ground that Love Seeks (1996) +/or Touching Bedrock (2023), +/or This Naked Light (2018).

2026 dates: 1/24; 2/28; 3/21; 4/18; 5/30; 6/27 (final meeting completes 2-year study group).