This is a report from Breaking Bagels with the Bards by poet Irene Koronas. Bagels with the Bards meets every Saturday at 9AM in the basement of Finagle a Bagel in Harvard Square. Come join us....

there were four women and two men at our meeting thismorning and that is the first time our gender has outnumbered the men. ellen steinbaum columnist for theglobe graced us with her intelligent, gentle presence.elizabeth dornan joined harris gardner, phillipburnham and me for a four-way discussion of greatimportance. that great important subject momentarilyevades me. (not really)(more later) the last womancame ten minutes before we left and by then i put mypen to rest and was too lazy to retrieve it or toremember her name. please forgive me. hopefully shewill return next week and tell us about her recentmove here from california. i do remember she islooking to join a group of poets who workshop. if youknow of any free writing workshops around bostonplease let me know.words caught:byzantiumwriting communitiesbeing and non-beingwhich doctor "i think continually of those who were great." stevenspenderpersimmonswhole languagesea glass (again or the continuation of the seaglass)(phillip brought me a small bag full from hisvacation)being whatever in america"boston streets are like drunken spiders." said by newwomantaking care of or remedies for writing andconversationinitially, we conversed about writing grants, whoreceives them, how much monetary gain, and what somepoets do with their grants. of course, we coveted thewinnings, winners, wing-its. for myself, i feel content with being 'almost' virtually unknown. whatdoes 'almost' mean? ya got me. it sounds good, so islipped it in, hoping to keep the door open to gloryseeking poetic availability; the poems that peoplelike to give money for, even though i've been toldmany times my poetry can be inaccessible(inexcusable?). i'm ambiguous today so (bare) with me.after we took all the poet laureates to task, rankingthem according to our perfection meter, we began toreminisce about poets we knew, know, not know. wetalked about jack powers and the stone soup venue; thedifferent locations, when we read there, and some ofour experiences with jack. we have concern for hiswriting and what might or might not be done with hispoetry. we have great respect for him and his ongoinghelp to the little poets, and the street poets. welove you jack through good times and not so goodtimes. we discussed, or some of us discussed, (ilistened) about writing workshops with prominentwriters in distant lands like maine, vermont, newhampshire and boston. there was much more conversationbut being the lazy slouch that i am today, i'll signoff with phillips two paintings. the first one is ofsea shells, he and his wife bought when they firstmet(married) and the second one is of the sea,purchased before his wife passed on. being andnon-being, the qi gong movement of energy, the tidecoming in and going out, shells brought in by oceanwaves, their inner luster like the byzantine empire'sinner beauty surrounded by the craggy wall of protection.