Get Your Word's Worth

Contributed

X-Pressions poetry-sharing events at Werner Books, organized by Mabel Howard, draw both experienced and novice writers to share their work.

On a blustery January morning, a yellow tape is snipped, doors open, and I step into Café 7-10 to savor the aromas and enjoy the ambience after a year-long renovation of the business. Two weeks following the grand reopening, I'm back, eating an espresso chocolate chip cookie as Mabel Howard explains why her shop does more than sell baked goods; it's also a focal point for Erie's often unseen poetry scene.

I first interviewed Mabel and her mother, Thelma Howard, for an Erie Reader story six years ago, just after their café at 7 W. 10th St. opened on July 10, 2019 (Thelma's birthday). Since then, I've followed their dreams and admired their business instincts — opening Thelma's Tasty Temptations, a snack bar outside Blasco Library; delivering goodies, gratis, to Erie firefighters; collaborating with the Revs. Curtis and Vickie Jones to start the Historical Institute of Culture and the African American Experience at 315 E. Ninth St., in a former church rectory.

At the café, Mabel and her mom are "the sweets team," she explained. "Mom's the maker and I'm the marketer." But as her mother is baking signature desserts, including peanut butter banana chocolate chip bread and the new espresso cookies, Mabel is lining up community programming for the café, including poetry events that attract a diverse group of young and old, writers and readers, wordsmiths and novices.

Mabel first fell in love with poetry in 2012 when she heard Keith Moses at an open mic night at the Erie Bookstore, located then at Lovell Place on East 13th Street. Now an educator in New York City, Moses was "ahead of his time," she said. "He was at a skill level I had never seen" in how he practiced and delivered his poetry.

In 2015, Mabel came up with the concept of blending poetry with soul food at Thelma's Place, her mother's restaurant and banquet hall in the former Danish Club on West Eighth Street. Mabel knew from her own experience that you could have a passion for poetry but be too intimidated to share it. "The goal was not to have all eyes on you," she said, so at Thelma's Place, poets could speak while patrons ate, taking some of the pressure off performing.

Mabel said that it's a unique experience to hear poetry being spoken, especially when someone shares their work for the first time. "It's beautiful," she said. "You watch someone blossom before your eyes. It touches everyone's hearts differently. Poets are word artists."

Mabel and others wonder why Erie people don't realize that we have a vibrant poetry community here, even as we extol musicians, stage performances, and visual artists. Poetry might seem too esoteric for everyday tastes, but that's not true, according to those who tout Erie's well-deserved reputation for embracing this art form.

For starters, between 2009 and 2022, Erie County Council funded the Erie County Laureate program, championed by the late Erie County Councilman Joe Giles. All four universities were members of the Poet Laureate committee and for 10 years, Mercyhurst University English Professor Greg Brown, Ph.D., represented his school.

"I thought it was a tremendous program. It rewarded local poets, gave them something to be proud of and maybe leverage for a further career, and money for a public project," he said. "And it gave people an outlet for publishing."

Mabel Howard (left) with her mother Thelma Blanks, is delighted to feature poetry events at their Café 7-10 — but she has also shared her poetry in a wide variety of other venues, including at Eerie Horror Fest. (Photo: Contributed)

Award-winning literary writer Berwyn Moore Booker, now retired but still an adjunct at Gannon University where she had taught English, published Dwelling in Possibility: Voices of Erie County as her project when she was the first Poet Laureate in 2009-2010, he said.

The other laureates were Thomas Forsthoefel, Ron Hayes, Cee Williams, Marisa Moks-Unger, Chuck Joy, and Sean Dougherty.

Williams hosted Poets Hall on East Sixth Street for many years, Brown recalled. "In this little storefront, we'd have 35 people packed in there and they began to learn from each other," he said. "There was a very broad mix, from all over the city, all walks of life."

Williams and Brown now publish Poets Hall Press, a monthly magazine with a featured poet and between four and seven contributions from "open mic" poets. The new edition, featuring poet Luke Kuzmish, should be for sale soon, including at Werner Books, he said.

Chuck Joy, M.D., who pitched the idea of a poet laureate to Councilman Giles, served as the laureate from 2018-2021 but his love of poetry goes way back to his time at Cathedral Prep, class of 1969, when he received the Gold Key in English award.

His sense of "urgency" to write emerged when he was editing a journal in med school at the University of Pittsburgh and took a tutorial about medicine and literature from a favorite teacher, Dr. Jack Dwyer. When he did his residency in psychiatry, he also edited a publication for the doctors in residence. The first place he shared a poem was during a reading at Penn State Behrend. He remains impressed that all four colleges have "deep commitments and a history of commitments" to poetry.

Another poet with a voice and a devoted following is Thasia Anne Lunger, who founded Women of Word (WOW) at Edinboro University and organized spoken word poetry and conversations about important social justice issues. WOW later moved to the Erie County Library and the Performing Artists Collective Alliance.

Blane Dessy was awed by Erie's poetry scene after he became executive director of the Erie County Library in 2019. "I'm convinced Erie poets need to have a bigger presence in the Erie arts scene," said Dessy. "Poetry is everywhere in Erie but it's almost invisible." He calls Joy the "OG" of Erie's poetry community. "He has been so vital in keeping the Erie poetry scene alive," he said.

Now retired from the library, Dessy's role in what he teases might be called the Erie "poetry league" is to compile a bibliography of all the small-press chapbooks (inexpensive booklets collecting poems and other short-form works) with an Erie connection. His list has grown to 24 pages.

You won't find a chapbook by Dessy on his list. "I am a lover of poetry but I don't put pen to paper," he said. "I don't even attempt to write poetry. When I have tried, it's such doggerel."

But you don't have to write poetry to love it. Like Dessy, Mary Ellen Dahlkemper fell in love with poetry as a college English major. At Mercyhurst, she had the "marvelous" Sister of Mercy Eustace Taylor, who nudged her to read Chaucer in Olde English.

"She said something to me when I was getting ready to graduate. 'You should read poetry every day and read poetry to your children,'" recalled Dahlkemper, a friend since we were student journalists in high school. Sure enough, after she married and had children, she'd read Shel Silverstein's Where the Sidewalk Ends and other "wonderful" books of kids' poetry. "Not just the kids, but you laugh," she said.

"People get afraid of poetry. They think it's beyond them or too lofty or whatever. It's not true. It is a way to hear what other people are thinking about, in different kinds of words," she said. She and her husband, Ed Lesser, often went to poetry readings in Erie but she didn't attempt to write her own poetry until she began to lose Ed — to dementia, then death in 2023.

"There is something quite healing about going and listening to and hearing poetry," she said. She found it cathartic to write poetry — and they aren't all "weepy," she said. "One is even kind of funny," she said. It's called "I Now Live With Vinyl," and the first line refers to the 5,000-album record collection Ed left behind, with no instructions on what to do with them.

Chuck Joy, Mary Ellen's friend since high school, encouraged her to share her work. "Just come to Mabel's. Have a coffee and a dessert," he suggested. And she did.

Working on her Master Gardener certification, she's also interested in doing a garden project near Poetry Park, 636 E. 22nd St. The late Benedictine Sister Mary Lou Kownacki, also a poet, started the park to create beauty and peace in her neighborhood marred by gun violence.

There's a "magic" associated with poetry, Erie's poets say, with Mabel's name usually said in the same breath. "That's a little magical, what Mabel maintains, in Erie's tradition of a weekly poetry site," said Dr. Joy, retired from his psychiatry practice.

"Poetry is the way we test the magic of words and make sense of the world," said Dr. Brown, from Mercyhurst.

"Poetry is a place for healing, where we release words and there's someone in the audience who is supposed to catch the words," said Mabel.

"Poetry opens doors," she added. That's not just figuratively. It's literally at Café 7-10.

Liz Allen tries to read poetry daily but hasn't yet written any. You can reach her at lizerie@aol.com.

Learn more

To find poetry events at Café 7-10, visit Mabel Howard's Instagram page, Mabeline The Artist. The café features poetry for various audiences, including teens and college students, and an open mic night on Tuesdays at 6 p.m. Call 814-572-0985 to learn more or just drop in at 7 W. 10th Street.

At Thelma's Tasty Temptations, the snack bar run by Thelma Blanks outside Blasco Library, she and her daughter Mabel Howard will distribute pocket poetry inspired by Black creators and poets during February for Black History Month.

Greg Brown, Ph.D., Mercyhurst professor, runs a poetry workshop at 6 p.m. on the 2nd Wednesday of the month in the Alumni Board Room (Room 203 in Old Main), on the south side of the second floor. The workshop is free and open to the public. It will alternate between instruction on the poetic art forms and time for participants to share their work. The next one is Feb. 12.

Poetry Park, at 636 E. 22nd St., across from Holy Trinity Catholic Church, is well-maintained and worth a visit, even in winter, to view the metal sculptures with lines from famous poets. The late Benedictine Sister Mary Lou Kownacki led the effort to create the park, which is supported by the Trinity Square Foundation.

Thasia Anne Lunger hosts a monthly live open mic poetry event on Community Access Media. The poetry is "family friendly" and is recorded, so it can be viewed anytime on CAM.

Blane Dessy and other members of Erie's poetry community plan to launch a website soon. In the meantime, if you know of a local chapbook that should be included in Dessy's bibliography of Erie poetic works, e-mail him at bdessy@gmail.com.