This weekend, I had the pleasure of reading at the Honesdale Festival of the Arts with two of my poet friends- Dawn Leas and Alexis Czencz Belluzzi. This event is held every year and features a variety of vender tables, art, crafts, music, and poetry.

Though I only live about 45 minutes or so from Honesdale, I’ve never actually been there. I especially enjoyed the ride up Route 6 and  passing all of the bucolic farm land and mom and pop diners and antique shops. Once we arrived in the actual town, we encountered a slew of other mom and pop stores. The only chain store I saw was CVS.  There’s something special about small towns in America that don’t have a Subway, McDonald’s, or Starbucks on every street corner.

Throughout the day, I manned the table with Dawn, Alexis, and my girlfriend, Jenna. We all agreed that Honesdale has something pretty rad going on in the sense that it has a fairly vibrant art community and a lot of folks quite supportive of starving artists. I base this off of the amount of people that came to our table to talk to us about our poetry chapbooks. Of course, Honesdale is not Manhattan, but what they do have in terms of the arts is supported and preserved by the townspeople. Sometimes I like reading at these smaller locations more than bigger venues in places like Boston and New York because people in towns like Honesdale have a hunger for the arts, to some extent.

Here’s a little picture of our table, though I do feel bad that poor Dawn’s head was cut off!