A community reading of Carmen (aka Meg) Megeath’s poetry hosted by Robert Feldman at Central School Project, in the theater with reception on Sunday, November 17, 1-3 pm
Robert Feldman, a poet, painter, and musician and longtime friend of Carmen Megeath, has edited with her help, a splendid collection of poems titled Cantata. Robert and Betsy Breault have gathered poets to read these poems on Sunday, November 17th at CSP. This is a celebration of Carmen and her lifelong commitment to the power of poetry, music, and the arts of Bisbee.
The following artists and poets will be reading selected poems from Cantata: Betsy Breault, Colleen Crowley, Justin Friedman, Robert Feldman, Rita Verri, Mary Alice Budge, and Matt McClellan and Angelika Johnson.
. The book, Cantata, will be available for purchase.
Carmen was a steadfast supporter of Central School Project, and often participated in readings held here. We are humbled to have this event in her honor.
The following excerpt from Robert Feldman's Foreward in the book Cantata sheds perfect light on this poetry and Carmen's life.
"About a week before she passed on, I worked with Meg at the Philadelphia Hotel on this collection of 22 of her more recent poems which we agreed to call Cantata. At that point, she could only lay in her bed, unable to use her fingers to write, yet we reviewed and occasionally edited each poem until she was satisfied. This experience would prove to be her final act as a poet.
Carmen possessed the ability to take in the energy and essence of all that was going on around her during her life. Yet perhaps what made her so unique were those creative gifts she nurtured and passed on, whether to family or friends, along with her genuine kindness and friendship not only toward the longtime Bisbee residents, but also us “new people”, who collectively transformed a stricken mining town into one of the Southwest’s cultural and artistic centers.
In her poem “Alchemical (The Improbable),” a memoriam to her dear friend and outstanding cowboy poet Drummond Hadley, she prophetically writes:
“Foreordained and Unforeseen is the moment of our passing, then, as a bell tolls the silver hour and the river gleams golden, and the Bird who mounts the Winds Of Ire soars, its gaze fixed upon a blue and vanishing world, a world then lost to sight, or even the memory thereof”
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