Djelloul Marbrook

Barbara Ungar

There are many places in which to read poetry—cafes, bookstores, auditoriums, picnics—the list is long, but nothing is quite as satisfying as reading poems in art galleries. This was certainly the case Saturday evening in Hudson, New York, in the Albert Shahinian Fire Art Gallery where Barbara Louise Ungar, Will Nixon and I read and chatted with listeners.

We were surrounded by an adytum of hieroglyphic paintings by Yale Epstein, a Woodstock, New York, artist whose enigmatic calligraphies comprise the quintessential environment for listening to poetry because they themselves explore the relationship of word and vision. We read as lightning lit Warren Street outside and flashed across the faces of listeners.

Will Nixon

Whether our reading was as electrifying as the Hudson Valley’s operatic summer storms we must leave to the listeners, but the interaction of Epstein’s profound paintings, the readers and their audience was tangible, affirming the long affinity between poet and painter.

I think there will be more such occasions, for during the evening Barbara and Albert spoke of a series of poetry readings.—DM