Fwd: Poetry at the Monument Aug 6!

[Dan Wilcox]

if you can't be in Albany on August 6 for the annual reading of John Hersey's Hiroshima, here's something one can do in Saratoga Springs.

DWx

---------- Forwarded message ---------
From: Jay Rogoff <jro...@skidmore.edu>
Date: Wed, Jul 29, 2026 at 10:32 PM
Subject: Poetry at the Monument Aug 6!
To: Jay Rogoff <jro...@skidmore.edu>

“MONUMENTAL POETRY” TO CELEBRATE DECLARATION AT 250

 

        

            Readings from American poetry of the past 250 years will celebrate the Declaration of Independence at the Saratoga Monument in Victory, New York, on Thursday, August 6, at noon. The event, sponsored by the Saratoga National Historical Park, the Saratoga Town Historian, and the Saratoga Springs Poet Laureate, is free and open to the public.

            The Monument, at 1 Burgoyne Street, Schuylerville, NY 12871, commemorates the surrender of the British, under Lt. General John Burgoyne, to the Continental forces led by Major General Horatio Gates, and marks the site of the British camp. Parking is available at the Monument, and those attending should bring lawn chairs.

            “For centuries poetry has contributed to our collective memory of important historical events,” says Saratoga Town Historian Sean Kelleher. “Poetry offers a rare access point into how the war was lived, not just recorded. The Battles of Saratoga immediately inspired a series of ballads and other poems, collected over a century later by William L. Stone.” Singer and actor Cliff Thomas will read selections from Stone’s anthology.

            Garrett Cloer, the Saratoga National Historic Park’s Program Manager for Interpretation and Visitor Services, will read poems from the colonial period, including the work of Phillis Wheatley, an enslaved woman whose poetry earned international acclaim.

            Saratoga Springs poet laureate Jay Rogoff will introduce five other regional published poets who have written original works inspired by the Declaration. They include Joseph Bruchac, Lâle Davidson, Susan Kress, Kathleen McCoy, and performance poet emily xyz.

            “Jefferson and his colleagues wrote the Declaration mostly in abstract, eighteenth-century prose,” Rogoff says, “but its aspirations are the stuff of poetry. It also contains some startling specifics. The complaint that ‘swarms of Officers … harass our people, and eat out their substance,’ or the call for America to ‘dissolve the political bands’ with Britain introduces metaphors that bring the Founders unexpectedly close to poetry.”

Jay Rogoff

Saratoga Springs Poet Laureate, 2026-2027

jro...@skidmore.edu

Learn about my latest book, Becoming Poetry: Poets and Their Methods,

and my most recent poetry collection, Loving in Truth: New and Selected Poems