Remembering Tim Daynard

Continuing my National Poetry Month thread, I recently popped in on a Writers' Circle gathering at the Gloversville senior center. There I spoke with Joan Dyer, a member of the group who writes poetry and worked with the late Tim Daynard to get a collection of his work published in book form.

Most people who spent any amount of time in downtown Gloversville in the 1990s and early 2000s will remember Mr. Daynard — the man I used to call the "Poet Laureate of Gloversville." Until his death a couple of years ago, Tim was a regular at the local open mic nights, where he shared his prolific talent for stringing words together in a thoughtful manner.

He sometimes went farther from home to find new audiences. I recall running into Tim on one winter night at the venerable Caffe Lena in Saratoga Springs. I knew he didn't drive (perhaps because of the disability that also kept him out of the work force), so I was suprised to see him there. It turned out that he had hired a cab, for a considerable chunk of change, to bring him all the way from Gloversville to Saratoga so he could read a couple of new poems to a new audience.

I remember thinking, "That's dedication."

Afterward, since I was headed in roughly the same direction, I was happy to give him a lift back home and save him a second considerable chunk of change. On the drive back to Fulton County, we talked about music, books, restaurants, movies — his interests were many, but poetry was his vocation.

I asked how he found the motivation to pursue such an esoteric calling in small, blue-collar Gloversville. (For all I knew at that time, he might have been the only active poet in Fulton County; I realize now that was not likely the case.) He said  "as long as there are things left to figure out and things left to say," he'd keep writing.

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