Behold. The first print edition of Rundelania.

Posted by [email protected] | Aug 9, 2019 | Cultural Life | 0 |

David Kramer, Central Library Bookstore. Photo: Ron Freitag, library staff. 8/6/19

In RUNDELANIA publishes “A Phone Call to Manhattan”, we were pleased to publicize Rundelania.com The Digital Literary Journal at the Rochester Public Library.

In an age when print publications are disappearing, we have good news. Under the management of Andrew Coyle, Literature Librarian at the Central Branch, this month Rundelania launched its first print edition (in which appears one of my poems, below).

[Photo: David Kramer]

Many of the authors are well known within the Rochester artistic community. At the same time, a striking feature is the number of high quality pieces from people in a wide variety of fields: a pastor, a Toastmaster, a microbiologist, two attorneys and a PhD in Electrical Engineering. The eclectic mixture of backgrounds reminds us how surrounded we are by rich and varied poetic and literary activity.

Rundelania is available in the library bookstore. The bookstore is located on the 1st floor of the Bausch and Lomb building of the Rochester Public Library, 115 South Avenue, Rochester. The hours differ from the library. Their website : Bookstore and their number: 585-428-8181. The issue is currently $2.00 and funds go to the Library Foundation, helping with outreach, programming, material budget and many other things.

Rundelania 2019 [Held at and scanned courtesy of the Central Branch of the Rochester Public Library.]

Note: Actually, I am an adjunct English professor at Keuka.

A Phone Call to Manhattan: The Pictorialized Version

We had made love in a Narragansett beach house as the Beavertail Lighthouse

Sent continual beacons of light through the window whose rhythm matched our own.

The beach house, Narragansett, Rhode Island circa 1998, my sister Leslie to right

And the call was never made.

Beavertail Lighthouse, Jamestown RI

At three in the morning, pushing me down into wood chips

Scattered about the Children’s Garden

In Peace Dale.

And the call was never made.

Poetic License: the “Children’s Garden in Peace Dale” is actually the Gladys Potter Garden near Wayland Square on the East Side of Providence.

A red sweater on a cool Fall evening in Providence

In whose cuteness I saw

Grandchildren at my feet at eighty.

Statue of Roger Williams in Prospect Park overlooking Providence

And the single phone call to Manhattan

That it would have taken

Was never made.

SEE ALSO ON RUNDEL

RUNDELANIA publishes “A Phone Call to Manhattan”

Literary and artistic impressions at Rundel

Boxes upon boxes of Rochester newspaper history

A periodical lover’s dream at the Rundel Memorial Building

Art of the Book and Nighan’s “The Accordion Book of Short Stories” in Harold Hacker Hall

Not letting the Vietnam War be forgotten at the Vietnam Learning Center with Central librarian Steve Nash

Kitty Jospé provides noon nourishment for the mind at Rundel.

Providing hope for the homeless in the back alcove of Rundel Library

On a Cal Ripken signed 1989 glove, prized possessions, and the Rundel Library

About The Author

[email protected]

Welcome to Talker of the Town! My name is David Kramer. I have a Ph.D in English and teach at Keuka College. I am a former and still active Fellow at the Nazareth College Center for Public History and a Storyteller in Residence at the SmallMatters Institute. Over the years, I have taught at Monroe Community College, the Rochester Institute of Technology and St. John Fisher College. I have published numerous Guest Essays, Letters, Book Reviews and Opinion pieces in The New York Times, Rochester Democrat and Chronicle, the Buffalo News, the Rochester Patriot, the Providence Journal, the Providence Business News, the Brown Alumni Magazine, the New London Day, the Boston Herald, the Messenger Post Newspapers, the Wedge, the Empty Closet, the CITY, Lake Affect Magazine and Brighton Connections. My poetry appears in The Criterion: An International Journal in English and Rundenalia and my academic writing in War, Literature and the Arts and Twentieth Century Literary Criticism. Starting in February 2013, I wrote for three Democratic and Chronicle blogs, "Make City Schools Better," "Unite Rochester," and the "Editorial Board." When my tenure at the D & C ended, I wanted to continue conversations first begun there. And start new ones. So we created this new space, Talker of the Town, where all are invited to join. I don’t like to say these posts are “mine.” Very few of them are the sole product of my sometimes overheated imagination. Instead, I call them partnerships and collaborations. Or as they say in education, “peer group work.” Talker of the Town might better be Talkers of the Town. The blog won’t thrive without your leads, text, pictures, ideas, facebook shares, tweets, comments and criticisms.