The Cornwall literary scene shows off its stuff

CORNWALL — “There are an incredible number of writers in Cornwall,” Marie Prentice said, a spring in her nimble voice and slight arch of the eyebrow, suggesting this fact was so well known there was something wry in stating it at all. 

“The Write Stuff” was organized by Prentice as part of a series of lectures and presentations coinciding with the Cornwall Historical Society’s Artists and Authors exhibit. 

“You’re having a very small sample,” she said with a suggestive pinch of her fingers, “but highly selective.”

The list of writers, authors and poets reading their own work for the event, held at Town Hall on Sunday, Sept. 18, had been previously undisclosed to the public. The mystery was upheld through the performance; there was no program and in fact no list of who would do what. Prentice offered a bowl of folded names to audience members, who selected one and revealed a writer’s name. 

John Perry read three poems.

“The first one takes into account the Equal Rights Amendment, which has not passed, unfortunately. The second one takes in account the situation in Latin American, and the third one is definitely family fun.”

If anyone in the audience thought Perry spoke ironically in regard to the third, it was both fun and family-themed, recalling his 8-year-old grandson’s baseball triumph. “An unassisted double play, you don’t see that one everyday!”

Tom Schiller, part of the original writing staff for Saturday Night Live, read from a diary he kept at age 13 as he traveled from his hometown of Los Angeles to New England for the first time. 

 Schiller’s wife, Jacque Lynn Schiller, also read, not from her diary, but an ode to her childhood basset hound, Bogart: “He can’t be bothered to bury bones.”

They weren’t the only husband-wife team at the reading. Author Alexander Neubauer, known to the community as Sandy, read a selection from his new manuscript. 

“It’s a book about guilt and remorse throughout history.” 

His wife, April (Stevens) Neubauer, explored similar themes in a story about a man riding the MetroNorth, unnerved by the possibility that his entire small town will soon realize he’s been having an illicit tryst in the city. 

Sally Cook read a selection from “Yankee Miracles: Life with the Boss and the Bronx Bombers,” which she co-wrote with Ray Negron. 

Bob Potter suggested with humor, “You know, there’s junk poetry and serious poetry, but there’s a lot of good stuff in junk poetry!” He spun narratives drawn exclusively from the names of horses listed at the racetrack in Saratoga, and stacked together song titles to create an account of walking under the moon.

Perhaps what stood out most, however, was Earl Brecher’s reading of a narrative poem entitled “Satanic Verses,” detailing a  demonically influenced Icelandic clan on a volcanic hill, and the “single son of a single son’s” attempts to produce an heir. In old age, he finally produces a son: a crippled, facially deformed prophet with a message from Heaven.

— Alexander Wilburn