Poet Afaa Michael Weaver Visits Littleton’s “Wilderness House Literary Retreat.”



November arrived at “The Wilderness House Literary Retreat” and brought brightly colored foliage to its scenic surroundings, as well as poet and playwright Afaa Michael Weaver for an informal lunch and conversation for retreat members.

Afaa Michael Weaver is a tenured professor of English at Simmons College in Boston, and is a former NEA fellow, a Fulbright Scholar, a PEW Fellow, and the founder of the “Simmons International Chinese Poetry Conference.” He has penned 9 Collections of poetry, including: “Multitudes,” and a full length play: “Rosa,” which was produced at the Venture Theatre in Philadelphia.

Weaver, 54, hails from a working-class section of Baltimore, and worked in factories for much of his early adult years. But even during this time, he was a freelance writer for “The Baltimore Sun,” and started a small literary press: “Seven Sun Press,” that published a broadside of his, as well as work by such poets as: Lucille Clifton, Frank Marshal Davis (A Harlem Renaissance writer) and the surrealist Andre Codrescu. While at “The Baltimore Sun,” he wrote reviews of books by: James Baldwin, Allen Ginsberg’s (first poetry collection), and Alice Walker, whose book he panned.

In 1985, a lot happened for the budding poet. He released his first poetry collection “Water Song,” he got a NEA grant as a result of the book, and got accepted in Brown University’s MFA program. Leaving Baltimore and a good factory job, he was thrown into the elite world of Brown University.

Still, amidst a student body with all these privileged “children,” Weaver, a grown man in his mid-30’s, thrived. He studied with the noted playwright Paula Vogel, and actually graduated with an advanced degree in Playwriting.

Weaver, told the group at the retreat that he once met the late, celebrated Afro-American playwright August Wilson on a train to New Haven. Wilson, who wrote “Gem of the Ocean,” “Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom,” and other works, was a role-model for Weaver. Like Weaver, Wilson started out as a poet. On that fateful train ride, Wilson asked Weaver if he could sit with him, after Weaver casually complimented him on his work. As Weaver described it they immediately hit it off and talked and laughed all the way from Newark to New Haven. He gave Wilson “Water Song,” and Wilson confided to him that he really had wanted to be a poet, if the truth be known.

Weaver has known his share of hardship. He has survived three marriages, the death of a young son, and a near fatal heart condition. After being a nomad adjunct professor in NYC, and later on the faculty of Rutgers University, he took the advice of poet Michael Brown of “Cantab Lounge Slam Poetry” fame, and approached Simmons College about a job. He secured a teaching position, and now is a tenured professor. He founded the “Simmons International Poetry Conference,” which is the largest such gathering outside of mainland China. Weaver, has had a long love affair with the Chinese language and poetry ever since he was given a book: “Dao De Jing,” translated by Laozi from a friend in the factory he worked in. Weaver, a low-key presence, finds the Chinese sensibility compatible with his own modest approach to life.

Weaver told the audience that a Harvard scholar of some note came to his Chinese conference and told him “Harvard should have done this!” But you have to move fast to keep up with Weaver. Throughout his life, this accomplished artist has worked outside the box, and decidedly ahead of the pack.

Doug Holder

The Charms of Vaudeville Meet The Charms of the Writers Festival.

The charms of an old Vaudeville-era theatre are never lost on me. There is always the haunting tapping presence of the "song and dance men," the proverbial echo of "the fat lady," who closed the show with a smile and a torch song, the well-appointed banana peel that made the most puffed-up of men fall to the ground in spastic indignity. So I felt a welcoming aura when the "Somerville News Writers Festival," commenced at the old "Somerville Theatre," on a mild night in November. And like any Vaudeville variety show we had an infinite variety of talent. Jennifer Matthews’ beautiful, lilting voice wafted to the rafters, and punctuated the particular energy of each of the readers. 80 years ago BARATUNDE, the host for the event, might have affected a straw bowler and a dandy of a cane, as he sprayed the audience with a steady stream of jokes, and comic asides. Much of the reading was laced with humor. From Steve Almond’s riff on being "ugly," to Robert Olen Butler’s strange obsession with severed heads, the audience never
had to wait long to laugh.

I was thinking at the reception in our modest editorial offices at 21A College Ave., how amazing it was to have such world-class writers like: Sue Miller, Franz Wright, Afaa Michael Weaver, Lan Samantha Chang, and all the others, milling around our story board, that housed a simple spread of cheese and crackers. And equally amazing was how willingly they accepted the offer to read at our festival, and for the most part for little or no monetary compensation.

Most importantly however, the festival met the approval of my mother’s critical eagle eye. She told me after: "Great show. Fascinating people." I think that’s the kind of seal of approval both Tim Gager and I were looking for.

--Doug Holder

Interview with Naomi Chase: A poet in search of the messiah


Naomi Feigelson Chase is a poet, journalist, fiction writer and a former resident of Somerville, who has written three books of poetry including: “The Messiah Comes to Somerville,” and most recently: “Gittel: The Would be Messiah.” She has written for the “New York Times,” the “Village Voice,” and other publications. She has penned numerous short stories and her poetry has appeared in such journals as: “Sojourner,” “Ploughshares,” and the “Cream City Review.”



Doug Holder: What was going on in your life when you penned the collection: “Waiting For The Messiah in Somerville.”

Naomi Chase: I moved to Somerville after my husband died. So I was in a very depressed state. With the poem “”Waiting For The Messiah in Somerville,” I worked on it for years until I finally got it right. I was struck by the whole feeling in Somerville. I don’t know if it is the same today. I bought a two family house in Somerville with another woman and I think everyone felt we were whores. No one had ever seen this before. Somerville, in the 70’s, had no condominiums. People were very unfriendly. If you hadn’t lived there forever then you just didn’t fit in. It was not a creative time. I could barely get out of bed. It eventually spurred me to write a lot of things about it, like this title poem. It was sort of a “coming back to life poem.”

DH: The concept of the “Messiah” comes up in your work a lot. Can you talk about your interest with this concept?

NC: I really don’t know where this interest came from. The title of my new book is “Gittel: The-Would -Be Messiah” It is about a young woman who is told by God that she is going to be the Messiah. She eventually turns him down. She feels he has caused evil in the world by giving man power over all creatures and other men. I am very taken by the idea that people are sitting around waiting for the Messiah. This seems to be a constant recurring theme not only in Judaism, but in other religions. I grew up not as a religious Jew. My grandfather was a Hebrew teacher. He was a compelling person. But I don’t think he believed in God. For me, my writing has been one way that I dealt with what all this meant to me.

DH: Do you think the Messiah will actually come?

NC: No. I don’t think so. I think he would have come already and knocked out George Bush. (laughs)

DH: You were involved with the Cambridge, Mass. small press “Garden Street.”
Can you talk about your involvement with the press and how it got its start?

NC: I started the press with Jean Flanagan and Marilyn Zuckerman.. I really didn’t start writing poetry until I was an adult in my 40’s. I had a book of poems, as did Jean. I met Jean at MIT, as well as Marilyn Zuckerman. The three of us decided to start a press. We thought this was the only way to get published. The press is no longer around. After we published a book by each of us, I moved to the Cape, and Marilyn moved to Seattle. It was hard to stay in touch. Running a small press is a money-loser, and requires a tremendous amount of work. After awhile I wanted to concentrate on my own work. The press produced about ten titles. Each of us had two books we published, plus about 3 or 4 other titles from other poets.

DH: In your collection “One Blue Thread,” you have a character named: “Gittel,” a Jewish girl, living in the “pale of settlement,” who has an ongoing conversation with God.
Where did you get the idea for this?

NC: I was taking a train from Boston, and passing through Connecticut, when I noticed a church spire. I thought: ‘What would happen if the Messiah landed on a church spire?” And that’s the way it started. Once this idea captured me I started writing about this young woman who was constantly asking questions of God about the meaning of life. I started reading a lot about mysticism, and I discovered that all religions have this mystic bent. So I tried to sort it out.

DH: Do you think God is a feminist?

NC: Gittel is a feminist, and she is angry with God. She tells him that the myth of “Adam and Eve,” has done terrible things to the idea of woman. So God is not a feminist. No male God is.

DH: Can you tell me about your experience writing for “The Village Voice/’

NC: I started in the 70’s. I started writing for them because I was living in a building with Jules Feiffer. I ran into him in the elevator. I had written for the “Herald Tribune,” and he said if I wrote for them I could write for the “Voice.” He had me call Dan Wilson, and soon after I was writing about politics, and also children’s issues. I was paid $25 an article, which I used to pay for 25 copies of the “Voice,” so I could see my name in print. But it was really something to write from the ‘Voice.’

DH: Can you make a living as a writer or poet?

NC: It is very hard to make a living as a writer. I always worked in PR and Journalism. You compromise your work if you depend on your writing as your living. You usually live on nothing. I didn’t want to do that.

Doug Holder. “Gittle” The Would-Be Messiah” can be purchased at the “Grolier Book Shop” in Harvard Square, or through AMAZON.COM

Saturday, November 12, 2005


"The poetic look"
by Steve Glines

When I'm in my car or other places where I can't write a thought down I get a constant stream of good ideas. Most of the ideas are only good for a paragraph or so but some of them are really food for thought and some are just fleeting fragments that only leave me the feeling that I may have had a good idea . But the idea itself is far, far gone. Some ideas start out as a germ of a thought, embed themselves under a particularly sensitive piece of very thin skin and gnaw at you.I had one of those thoughts driving home from the bagel-bards meeting last Saturday morning. Someone said to me that I didn't look like a poet. It took an hour to realize that I didn't know if I should take offence or not. The idea had embedded itself. That thought struck me as odd. What does a poet look like? I remember hanging out at the Grolier book shop when I was in my late teens and early twenties (in the early 1970's), there were lots of people who made sure they looked like poets, complete with a poetic swagger, tortured soul all.A "poet" of the middle Grolier period (1968-1975) wore black, black pants, a black turtleneck, a black beret and posed, whenever possible, in public, as if struck that very moment by the muses arrow, a black thought. Somehow poetry turned very dark in the 1970's. That was, I suppose, a natural evolution from the beat stuff I loved, which was both profound and real. The 1970's stuff was dark for the sake of being dark. I used to think the "poets" that hung around the Grolier in the 1970's confused darkness with profundity.I arrived in Cambridge Massachusetts in September 1970 with everything I owned strapped on the back of a Yamaha 250 motorcycle. I was 18 years old, an orphan, unemployed and without a home. I should have been in college but only Oberlin College way out in noplace would take me but only if I could find $3,000. I couldn't. Scholarships, if you can call them that, went to jocks. So I rode my bike to Boston where I thought there might be a literary life. I found the Grolier before I found a place to live.If you were an unknown 18 year old in a place like the Grolier Bookshop in 1970 you would have been made to feel if not completely unwelcome, then certainly way out of place. There were the real poets posing and want-to-be thought of as poets posing. Robert Bly would routinely make a grand entrance with his multi-colored poncho (and for weeks ponchos were in) then Robert Creeley would arrive with a pack of fawning grad students plucked from the sanctified halls of Harvard. The ever-present Else Dorfman would be photographing the scene. You were in if she made a point of shooting you.I was out and so would have been Gordon Carnie, except that the crusty old man owned the Grolier. Most of the fawning and posing went on about the grand old man of letters without his acknowledgement or so much as nod to anyone but his select few. I couldn't afford to buy books so I, like a lot of other people, treated the Grolier like a library. I could sit in a corner for hours, so long as there wasn't a reception or some other event that filled the place, and read to my hearts content.Every few weeks I'd buy a chapbook or some other cheap item to pacify my conscience. I honestly don't think Gordon cared one way or the other if he ever sold a book. If Gordon never noticed me sitting in the corner reading most afternoons he eventually noticed my habit of buying older poets. I think the first thing he said to me was that he liked my taste and that he didn't like any poets after e. e. cummings. A few days later we had a long chat. It turns out that he used to summer about a mile or so from my mothers house in Nova Scotia and he knew all the neighbors and characters of Poplar Hill. That started a friendship that lasted until his death a few years later.Once I counted Gordon as a friend I made it a point of saying hello when I walked in and he would grunt something back that I took for a hello. The posers didn't bother me after that. Gordon made me feel welcome even if I wasn't a "know poet." I came to realize that much of the posing was for my benefit. If I was a friend of Gordon's then I was in the inner-circle. How did that happen? How did he do that? Even Elsa Dorfman has a picture of me someplace that used to hang way up on the upper right side as you walk into the Grolier. When Louisa Solano bought the Grolier after Gordon died she took down all the photos and replaced them with even higher bookracks. I can't blame her but it's not been the same since.What happened? I'm not sure. I didn't like the academic poets, the "Yale younger poets," that hung around the Grolier and neither did Gordon. He told me to visit the Stone Soup poets run by Jack Powers. I did and have visited that venue off and on over the years. I dropped out of the Grolier scene and indeed haven't been inside the store in a decade. I dropped out of the poetry scene for almost 20 years to raise a family and earn a living.So what does a poet look like? What was meant by "not looking like a poet." The answer was something like . "well poets are . thinkers, you know deep . profound .." Apparently a poet does not look fat, middle aged, reasonably well dressed (although I'm wearing a ripped, hooded sweatshirt and sneakers today) and not subject many deep thoughts . at least not in public. I guess I'll have to stop keeping my thoughts to myself.

Steve Glines-- Steve Glines is the founder of the "Wilderness House Literary Retreat" http://wildernesshouse.org and a member of the "Breaking Bagels With The Bards" group that meets in the basement of "Finagle-A-Bagel" in Harvard Square--every Saturday at 9AM. (All Welcome!)

The front and back covers were by my long-time friend Gene Smith. Gene is a self-taught artist and has exhibited his work at the "Out of the Blue Gallery" in Cambridge. Born and raised in Somerville, Gene is also an actor who has performed at the A.R.T., Molasses Tank Productions at the Piano Factory (Boston), and regional and community theatres in the region. Gene has also has been an extra in "Spenser for Hire," and numerous independent, student, and major studio films.
Many thanks to Richard Wilhelm our art director for working with Gene to format these pictures for the magazine. Doug Holder * I am told now that the magazine will be out Friday.

To contact Gene: smithsparky6@aol.com




http://www.ibbetsonpress.com/ copies are available for $5 make checks payable to Ibbetson Street 25 School St. Somerville, Ma. 02143

Dec. 6 2005 5:30 PM to 7:45 PM

Fundraiser For "the new renaissance" literary magazine:


" the new renaissance" http://www.tnrlitmag.net/


"the new renaissance" magazine is having a fundraising reading and reception at the Pucker Gallery 171 Newbury St. Boston, Mass. Food and wine
$40 donation suggestion. Readers: Marc Widershien ( author of "The Life of All Worlds"), Doug Holder ( founder "Ibbetson Street Press")

about tnr page two page three

Kudos from the literary, library,and alternative presses...
"the new renaissance is one of the best literary magazines around. It publishes known and unknown writers from India to Indiana and has only one criterion: excellence. tnr has a unique and vital approach to literature and the arts."-Bill KatzLibrary Journal

"tnr is for a thought-provoking blend of opinions and ideas, consistently fine fiction and poetry and a staunch commitment to the visual arts."The Christian Science Monitor

"Combine the journals of Foreign Affairs, Artforum, TriQuarterly," and Poetry and what do you have? -a multifaceted publication of arts, literature and thought called the new renaissance."-
Small Press Review

"tnris always a wonderful surprise. No library interested in the range of international literature should be without it"-David LyonNew England Foundation for the Arts

"the new renaissance may be based in the Boston area but it has a mailing list with addresses from around the world. With the October 1986 issue tnr continues an 18-year old tradition - - the acceptance and nurturing of writers and artists of disparate styles in order to attain both quality and breadth of vision. The next issue of the new renaissance (#21) will contain not only the usual photographs with the non-fiction lead article (...a piece on toxic wastes in the U.S....witten by Greenpeace program director) and the featured artwork, but alos photos accompanying an essay on the history of the first racially integrated [Broadway] musical, Beggars Holiday."-Matthew F. WittenThe Tab

IBBETSON STREET 18 Reading. Dec 10, 2005 McIntyre and Moore Books. 255 Elm St. Davis Square, Somerville, Mass. 3 PM Free.
Featured Readers: Philip E. Burnham, Ann Carhart, and Doug Holder. Open mic to follow--all past and current contributors invited to read.


The Ibbetson Street Press is Somerville’s independent poetry press. Since 1998 the press has published the journal “Ibbetson Street,” and books and chapbooks from a variety of local and national poets and writers. Our books are archived at Harvard, Buffalo, and Brown University libraries, as well as other libraries around the country.
Our reading Dec. 10, will feature three Ibbetson poets with recently published books: Anne Carhart, ( Sanctus! Sanctus! Sanctus!) Doug Holder ( “Wrestling With My Father“), Philip Burnham Jr. ( “Housekeeping”).

Surfings: Selected Poems of Will Inman. Edited by David Ray and Michael Rattee. ( www.howlingdogpress.com ) writingdangerouesly@msn.com

First off, "Surfings..." is a beautiful looking book. It is perfect bound, with a wonderful cover painting by David Chorlton. The paper is of fine stock, and the font is condusive to an easy-on-the-eyes read. Inman himself is a fascinating story. William Inman was born in Wilmington, North Carolina on May 4, 1923. He graduated from Duke University, worked in a shipyard in World War ll, was a trade union member, a member of the "War Resisters League," and a one time member of the Communist Party. He was apponied Poet-In-Residence at American University, and he was very much a part of the Lower East Side (NYC) poetry scene in the late 50's and 60's.

We are what we eat, and Inman makes use of all the wide and eclectic experiences he digested. For those with a taste for "compassionate social engagement," this book will be of great interest. Inman was a man of his times, and his poetry brings his era alive again. Any man or woman who lives to his eighties is a survivor. He survives lovers, friends, love, lust, etc...In his poem: " living at 2551 west mossman," Inman paints a finely detailed portrait of the artist as an old man,with one of the things that has not deserted him...his writing life:
to sit in a large chair, yellow lined pad
against my decades-old writing board,
single lamp burning, ceiling crouched twilight, i
found old and new worlds in me
stirrring in the dust of the place-- two large rooms
built onto a trailer, thousands of pages
typed and photocopied, hundreds of copies
small magazines, chapbooks, i did not own them, they
filled my years owning
me.

Like many, I have always been interested in the Beat-era poetry scene, especially in NYC. Inman spent many years in the Lower East Side, and the poem: " lower east side poets," captures that Bohemian atmosphere for those of us too young to be there: " in those days poetry was in ferment, hardware poets/ read at les deux megots and, later, at/ le metro and st. marks, and others of us,/lesser names, read with them/ but also in our small east side/ tenement flats, teaching roaches/yet more arcane tongues."

The Howling Dog Press has a whole bunch of interesting titles, so I would advise you to check out their website, and sample their fare.
Doug Holder/ Ibbetson Update/ Somerville, Mass./ Nov. 2005

We Need A Night Out. Tim Gager. ( http://www.cyberwit.net/ ) $15.

I first became familiar with Tim Gager’s poetry when he sent me his manuscript: “From The Same Corner of the Bar,” that Ibbetson wound up publishing in 2003. Gager’s poetry is a potent mix of humor, love, lust, self-flagellation, and hard drinking. Gager shows his range with work that speaks to the doting father, the down-at-the-heels barfly, and the both distanced and the attentive lover. In the end we are all an enigma to each other, and Gager explores this mystique through his own quirky persona. In his poem: “H.G.Wells,” Gager adds a needed dose of levity to the inevitable path of a May/December romance: “ So I fall in love, I mean younger/ as in/ perhaps twenty years./ Then I wonder why she freaks/ and has a ton of emotion/ Sexually it’s great, I’m teaching, she’s learning/ I reach for my inhaler to keep up./ I think it is going to be over soon/ I’ve finally wasted someone else’s youth…”

In “Perfect Kid,” Gager conveys a studied tenderness towards his children, and makes a nod to the passage of time: “Walking through the park/ wondering how he stays complete/ this boy of mine/ running ahead laughing with his sister/ perfectly loving her and/ I smile knowing/the leaves will begin to turn soon/ falling, flashing of color,/ swept up in a spin/ that happens each year…

“ We Needed A Night Out” can be considered a signature Gager work. It holds the sinewy meat that makes the man, and we meet him at a most human level.”
Doug Holder/ Ibbetson Update/ Somerville, Mass.

Interview with Philosopher/Poet Ifeanyi Menkiti



Ifeanyi Menkiti came to this country from Nigeria to study in the 1960’s. Years after he earned a PhD. in Philosophy from Harvard University and since has taught at Wellesley College for more than thirty years. He has penned three books of poetry: “Affirmations,” “The Jubilation of Falling Bodies,” and most recently “Of Altair: The Bright Light.’ His poetry has appeared in journals like “Ploughshares,” “New Directions,” and the “Massachusetts Review.” Menkiti is a recipient of an award by the “National Endowment of the Arts,” and his poetry has been aired on NPR, and other radio stations. I talked with Menkiti on my Somerville Community Access TV show ‘Poet to Poet/Writer to Writer.”

Doug Holder: You are trained as a philosopher. Is there poetry in philosophy and is there philosophy in poetry? Are they a good fit?

Ifeanyi Menkiti: I don’t think we have to make such a rigorous separation between the two. I think there is a connection between the two. There was an interesting observation by this poet who taught physics . He said: “I teach physics to make a living, I write poetry to live.” I don’t know if I would quite put it that way, but it is a sort of a philosophy of mine. Poetry deals with the meaning of life, the meaning of meaning, just like philosophy.



DH: In a press release that concerns your work as a poet, it reads: “… the poet looks deeply into the psyche of individuals, and urges us to look for references beyond our local prejudices, and thereby discover a sense of our shared humanity. Did your experience coming from Nigeria to the United States have a role in developing this goal in your work?

IM: Being born in Africa I had a very strong sense of my own being. I felt comfortable taking on the world. When I came to this country I was with kids from Asia, Sweden, all over, and it was good. I enjoyed it. I like the Global community. We tend to think we can only do the “local thing.” If you really want to protect the local state, you really have to look what’s going on in the rest of the world.

It’s not only American’s trying to open their own minds, it’s other people trying to see behind what’s at the surface. Americans are real human beings struggling to make sense of their lives, they have a lot of sorrow, and yet they keep on moving. In the book: “ Altair…” I am trying to bring this sense of mutuality together.

DH: In your poem from “Altair…” “They Will Rise,” you write: “… the body of Europe,/ but an elongation/ of the body of Africa…. Some deep mystery sprung/ from the soil of this Africa/ & the mystery is not done.” Do you believe Africa will rise from a third world continent to a major player in world affairs? What’s its mystery?

IM: I believe Africa has ancient wisdom. It’s an elder continent. I don’t see the buffoonery of Idi Amin, but I see the Africa of Mandela. There is another side of the continent that has to do with its rich culture, not just its suffering. There is a sense that we all carry that DNA from Eve who walked the grounds of Africa. The body of Europe is then an elongation of Africa.

DH: You like to play with words. In your poem “Hubble…” you describe neutrinos like they are funnily shaped pasta in alphabet soup, or the fact that “white instruments,” often search for “Black Holes”

IM: I am fascinated by the immensity of the night sky. All these wars, they are little, petty battles, like little chickens battling in the backyard, in comparison. I am fascinated by the mystery of the universe—the mystery of matter. Nature is so strange and mysterious that it becomes an inspiration for my work.

DH: In any good work there is a musicality, a particular cadence, inherent in it. Where does yours come from?

IM: My mother used to sing to me as a child. I think as you grow up, you pick these things up. The music of the African languages comes through. Each language has its own music. It is the sound of humanity. It is good to know music in language is not encased in locality, but has huge world wide content.

DH: In your own experience have you experienced poetry as a cohesive or healing force in society?

IM: I believe it has the power to do that. Poetry should not be used to beat up on the other guy, but to explore our common humanity. It comes from our common connection.

I sent my 6 nominations in for the Pushcart Prize from Issue 17 of "Ibbetson Street" So feel free to say in your bios you were nominated for a Pushcart! Best--Doug Holder

"Michelangelo" Doug Worth
"A Cup of Time" Harris Gardner
" Notes From Years of Journal Entries" Robert K. Johnson
"Rosary" Marc Goldfinger
"Professional Man" Mid Walsh
" Hearing Voices" Linda Haviland Conte

Please join us Saturdays at 9AM at "Finagle-A-Bagel" basement in Harvard Sq and talk, kvetch, joke with fellow poets. Come early, late...we usually hang around till 10:30 or 11.. bring a poem, a newspaper, a significant other, someone you just picked up last night or this morning, a current or ex, an academic or a street urchin...just come! Best-Doug Holder To contact Irene: ikoronas@yahoo.com
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with drizzle, constant wet footprints, and the regattaon the charles river; people stumble over each otherto get to where they need to be. my usual morningbagel, had to be postponed for forty-five minutesuntil the crowd waiting in line for coffee and eggbagels, got smaller or thinned out, or just went abouttheir business of watching a bunch of college guys rowin long thin boats on polluted waters. while poorschmucks, like us poets huddle together trying to figureout how to get published. this then is the beginningof an autumn dilemma and the on going soap opera offinding ways to get poems printed, so the public canread our wondrous juxtaposition of thoughts. i tooknotes on how and what to send to where and who. first,it was suggested to send out to at least fortydifferent places, poems in three or four sets of thesame poems. second, don't worry about simultaneoussubmissions. i question this but i probably won't dowhat i'm told or take any of the suggestions since ino longer care if the new yorker or whatever big namemagazine who publishes dribble, (excuse me, i meangreat poetry.) third, make sure you hand write theaddress on the envelope. i like the intimate smallpress releases and they are getting so inundated withsubmissions that its harder to get an acceptance slip.so catch the new presses when they first start out,they are more willing to print poems by people they donot know. there are the on line zines, poetry blogs,poetry venues, poetry mugs, shirts, those oblong padsfor your mouse, hats, and next, poetry will be flashedon all dvd discs at the beginning of a movie. maybe wearen't poor schmucks, but the overlooked green poets whofeel certain about their principles. what are a poetsprinciples? that question needs to be answered by youthe writers. i get my bagel; catch words, phrases andmeditate on whether to have cream cheese or butterslabbed on top. (is slabbed with one b or two?)words caught:cranky poetsmove your poetic feet aroundher 20 yr old voiceread this text backwardthe woes and correctness of submitting poemsshe slushed through the slush pilesometimes getting inspiration is as hard as jumpingthrough hoop earrings

Interview with Judah LeBlang: A Storyteller with a Universal Tale to Tell.

Judah LeBlang is a writer, teacher, storyteller, and a former Somerville resident. In fact he used to have a column with that “other” paper in out fair burg. His stories have been published in “Northern Ohio Live Magazine,” and have been featured on radio. His most recent CD of stories is “Snapshots,” that takes place in his native Cleveland Ohio, and the Boston area where he now resides. His stories explore universal themes: the meaning of names, the trails and travails of being a Jewish gay man, and his mercurial love affair with the Cleveland Indians. He currently works at Lesley University and performs in the area.


Doug Holder: Why have you chosen to work in the medium of storytelling as opposed to poetry?

Judah LeBlang: I don’t differentiate from being a writer and being a storyteller. I think writing, the writing I like, tells a story, has a lot of sensory images and details. It also has a strong sense of place. I have written short fiction that takes place in Cleveland. I feel like when I am thinking of specifics from my life that connect with other people, then I am writing well. I feel that the memoir and the personal essay have the strongest voice. I usually talk about something I experienced, but it usually is something other people can relate to. Even if you are not a Cleveland Indian fan, as a Red Sox fan you know what it is like to suffer. One of the ideas that interests me is the idea that we all have multiple identities. I carry the identity of a Midwesterner even though I have lived here for eighteen years. I have other identities as well. Everyone has a mix. This all informs our voice.

Doug Holder: You do have a good voice. Have you been told this?

Judah LeBlang: I have been told that I have a good voice for radio. Better than being told you have a good face for radio. I have been working on getting some pieces on NPR. There is something to be said about a distinctive voice, and having something to say.

Doug Holder: Most of your stories are about your life. What makes you interesting?

Judah LeBlang: The feedback I am getting from my readings is that people are relating to my specifics. If I was just getting up there and venting about my life, I don’t think that would be interesting. To me great writing is about specifics.

Doug Holder: You talk a lot about getting older in your work.

Judah LeBlang: In my CD “Finding My Place,” I talk about my last name ’Le Blang.” In the old country it means “live long.” It is a little bit of a joke... My father died at 61. Seeing what my father went through with his heart condition I know there are no guarantees. As I grow older I become aware of the preciousness of time, and I want to use it. For me, the writing and storytelling are ways to leave something behind, and impact some people. I think that is a human desire. I think we are wired for storytelling. I want to touch some people through this life.

Doug Holder: Why did you change your name from Bruce to Judah?

Judah LeBlang: Bruce is a Scottish name and there is no Scottish blood in my family. It was an interesting process for me. “Bruce,” carried the story that I carried for 40 plus years, and “Judah,” felt to me like a marker. I didn’t run into a lot of resistance. It wasn’t an intellectual decision, it came from my gut. I feel the name suits me more.

Doug Holder: You had a lot of transitions in your life. You left a good job at Boston University, you left your hometown of Cleveland. Were these transition worthwhile?

Judah LeBlang: When I was in Ohio, I was working in Columbus at the Ohio School for the Deaf. If I knew how hard it would be to adjust to Boston ( it took me 10 years), I might not have had the gumption to do it. But now I have a good life here. I probably wouldn’t be the person I am now if I hadn’t made the move.

When I was at Boston University I was teaching, and I was a career counselor. When I left I spent a year working at a Yoga center. It wasn’t a vacation--it was hard--but I learned a lot. It gave me a broader frame of reference. As you get older you have more material to work with. Up until the time I was 35, other than being gay, I had lived a fairly conventional life. I didn’t realize how many choices were out there. After living “outside of the box,’ my frame of reference became broader. This has helped my writing life. Looking back I am glad I did it. At the time I wasn’t so sure.

Doug Holder: Is it hard to keep an audience’s attention?

Judah LeBlang: I don’t have a lot of formal training. You need material that is engaging. Sometimes I will employ a call and response with the audience. I invite the audience in. Often at the readings I know people in the audience. So it is almost like I have plants, which helps. It’s a matter of putting some energy into that connection. I use my voice and movement.

Doug Holder: You worked with Robert Smyth of Somerville’s “Yellow Moon Press,” a publishing house that specializes in storytelling books. Can you talk a bit about this.

Judah LeBlang: Robert recorded my first CD: “ Finding My Place.” I went into his store, and asked him how I can get my work on the radio. Robert explained to me how the process works. He got me well-prepared.

Doug Holder: Are your stories as good on paper as they are spoken?

Judah LeBlang: I don’t write with the idea of how it sounds. I focus more on the writing. Sometimes I will massage things to get maybe a little more alliteration or rhythm. I want my stories to be as strong on the page as it is vocally.


Doug Holder for more info on Judah go to: http://www.judahleblang.com

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Hymns and rants
By Clara Silverstein, Globe Correspondent October 19, 2005
If you think poets tramp around with their noses pointed up toward their black berets, then you haven’t read ‘‘Formaggio,’’ by Louise Gluck. The Pulitzer Prize winner and former national poet laureate found inspiration ‘‘in the flats of cherries, clementines’’ at Formaggio Kitchen in Cambridge. The poem, originally published in The New Yorker, is still posted at the store.

From produce displays to elegant parlors at Harvard, poetry cuts a wide swath through Greater Boston. On any given night, you can find a slam at a café, a reading at a bookstore, or any number of adult-ed poetry workshops. ‘‘There is a great need for people to go out and express themselves,’’ says Doug Holder, a Somerville poet who runs the Ibbetson Street Press and organizes readings at the Newton Free Library and other venues. ‘‘There is a free market in poetry here, with a vibrant community on both sides of the river.’’


That free market offers poetry consumers a lot of choices in the coming days and weeks, starting Friday night with a reading by Waltham resident and Pulitzer Prize winner Franz Wright, sponsored by the Grolier Poetry Book Shop in Cambridge. A longtime gathering spot for poets in Boston, the Grolier is the area’s sole poetry-only bookstore; proprietor Louisa Solano stocks nearly 15,000 volumes. Among them is Wright’s book ‘‘Walking to Martha’s Vineyard,’’ wherein he ponders a variety of existential matters, using an ocean that ‘‘smells like lilacs’’ as a catalyst for the collection’s title poem.

On Sunday, a trio of Boston-area poets share the stage at the Concord Library’s Evening of Poetry. The three address an unusual array of subjects in their recent books: Kevin Young explores the art of Jean-Michel Basquiat in ‘‘To Repel Ghosts,’’ MIT lecturer Erica Funkhouser uses moments of domestic life to reach larger truths in ‘‘Pursuit,’’ and work by Pliny the Elder inspires Dan Chiasson’s ‘‘Natural History.’’ (Chiasson also has a poem called ‘‘Mosaic of a Hare, Corinium’’ in the current New Yorker magazine.) Young reads again Oct. 24 at the Blacksmith House Poetry Series at the Cambridge Center for Adult Education, accompanied by Jacquelyn Pope reading from her first collection of poems, ‘‘Watermark.’’

Fans of Allen Ginsberg will want to draw a big pink circle around Nov. 14 on their calendars, which is when Frank Bidart, William Corbett, Gail Mazur, Maureen McLane, David Rivard, Lloyd Schwartz, and Joseph Torra read as part of ‘‘The Poems of Allen Ginsberg’’ at the Cambridge Center for Adult Education, another Blacksmith series event.

Ongoing reading series in Boston give other award-winning poets, up-and-comers, and wannabes a chance to be heard. Chapter and Verse, founded 12 years ago by rector and poet Anne Fowler at St. John’s Church in Jamaica Plain, features a mix of neighborhood poets and prose writers, as well as more well-known readers, at its monthly readings; the next event is Nov. 2. The monthly Tapestry of Voices series at Borders bookstore in Boston usually features three to four readers, followed by a freewheeling open mic. (Tapestry of Voices also sponsors the two-day Boston National Poetry Festival each April.) A relative newcomer to the literary scene, the Concord Poetry Center pairs established and emerging poets (often students at local schools and universities) at its occasional Sunday readings. Its next event, slated for Nov. 13, features Steven Cramer and Susan Edwards Richmond, and will introduce Diane Randolph, a graduate of the writing program at Lesley University. !

POETS READ
!Oct. 21 Franz Wright
Harvard University, Adams House, Entry C, 26 Plympton St., Cambridge. 617-547-4648. 8 p.m. Free. www.grolierpoetrybookshop.com!!Oct. 23 An Evening of Poetry with Kevin Young, Erica Funkhouser, and Dan Chiasson
Concord Library, 129 Main St., Concord. 978-318-3347. 7:30 p.m. Free. Part of the Concord Festival of Authors, which runs through Nov. 5.
Oct. 24 Kevin Young and Jacquelyn Pope
Cambridge Center for Adult Education, 56 Brattle St., Harvard Square, Cambridge. 617-547-6789. 8 p.m. Tickets $3.
Nov. 2 Chapter and Verse reading
St. John’s Church, 1 Roanoke Ave., Jamiaca Jamaica Plain. 617-325-8388. 7:30 p.m. Free. Readers include Roslindale poet Peter Bates and the poet Sandee Storey, along with Doug Most, editor of the Boston Globe Magazine.
Nov. 3 Tapestry of Voices reading
Borders bookstore, 10-24 School St., Boston. 617-306-9484. Readings are usually the second Thursday of each month at 6:30 p.m., followed by an open mic at 7:30 p.m. Free. The Nov. 3 reading, a variation on the series’ usual schedule, includes Sarah Getty, Irene Koronas, Preston Hood III, and Lamont Steptoe.
Nov. 13 Steven Cramer, Susan Edwards Richmond, and Diane Randolph!Concord Poetry Center at the Emerson Umbrella, 40 Stow St., Concord. 978-371-0820. 3 p.m. $6, $3 students. www.concordpoetry.org!!
Nov. 14 The Poems of Allen Ginsberg
Cambridge Center for Adult Education, 56 Brattle St., Harvard Square, Cambridge. 617-547-6789. 8 p.m. $10, $7 students and seniors. Readers include Frank Bidart, William Corbett, Gail Mazur, Maureen McLane, David Rivard, Lloyd Schwartz, and Joseph Torra. Event benefits the Blacksmith House Poetry Series.!

Interview with The Old Guard: Avant- Garde Artist Aldo Tambellini

by Doug Holder


I first met Aldo Tambelini about five years ago, when we were involved in a group that was putting out a poetry anthology: “City of Poets: 18 Boston Voices.” Tambellini is a poet who has been a longtime political activist, an avant-garde film and video maker, a sculptor, and painter . Tambellini was born in Syracuse, N.Y. 1930, and was taken to Italy to live shortly after. His neighborhood in the Italian village he resided in was bombed during World War ll, and he lost 21 neighbors and friends. In 1946 he returned to Syracuse University to study art, and later got an M.A. in Sculpture from Notre Dame in 1959. After this Tambellini moved to New York City, and founded an artistic group named:" Group Center,” an active counter-culture organization that hosted group exhibits, organized Vietnam War demonstrations, multi-media events, etc... He later founded “The Gate Theatre,” in the East Village of NYC, the only daily public theatre to show alternative, independent films. In the 1960’s he was a pioneer of the “Alternative Video Movement,” and later he went on to teach at the “M.I.T. Center for Advanced Visual Studies.” In 1998 he hosted a poetry venue in Cambridge, Mass. titled “The People’s Poetry,” and he has accrued numerous poetry publication credits over the years. I spoke to him on my Somerville Community Access TV Show, “Poet to Poet: Writer to Writer.”
Tambellini made it clear that the avant-garde of his salad days in the 50’s and 60’s was different from the avant-garde today. In fact Tambellini dismisses the contemporary avant-garde, and told this writer if there was any worthwhile work he wasn’t aware of it. Tambellini, no fan of Lyrical poetry, has a strong belief in art used as a political tool. Tambellini said that part of being a human being is to interact with society, to challenge the “establishment,” and to fight poverty and oppression. Tambellini, who experienced the horrors of World War ll firsthand, uses his art to address his ghosts. Recently he self-published a book of his poetry that consists of a number of his poems published on the website: “Voices in Times of War”
Tambellini, 75, is certainly not from the computer generation, but is profoundly aware of its significance. Tambellini stated: “It is impossible not to work with the computer. It creates a space to communicate with a very large group of people.” And this, according to Tambellini, is what he is about. Communicating. In his early years in New York City he worked at “St. Mark’s Church in the Bowery” bringing as much artwork as possible to the public without dealing with a gallery or dealer. Computer Science and Science in general are important to Tambellini because he feels it reveals the nature of the world. This “nature,” is what Tambellini explores in the mediums of painting, video, sculpture, and poetry.
The themes in his paintings he described as “circular.” He reflected: "We are all tied up to the universe... we are in a circle, in that we are all connected.”
Tambellini said his poetry is written with the intent to read to an audience. Tambellini, feels his poetry is presented at its best when it is spoken, not lying inert on the page.
Tambellini also talked about his years in the alternative video scene. He has always had a fascination with TV. TV, unlike movies, during the pre-video, DVD days, was ubiquitous. With a movie you had to go to a specific theatre in order to view it. TV was in every home, and Tambellini was well aware of its power. When Tambellini was starting out there was no video work, other than the work being done at the major networks. So he was like a dog on a meat truck, when he discovered this nascent art form. He incorporated light , his own voice, test patterns, news clips, and children’s songs, in a sort of abstract video painting. These videos were devoid of narrative or dialogue.
Tambellini said he always used Afro-American poetry and poets in his video work. He is close friends with esteemed Afro-American poets and writers Ishmael Reed and Askia Toure. He feels Afro-American poets reveal the underside of America, and the American Dream. Tambellini said these poets reveal the “reality of America.”
Tambellini continues to stay active, and participates in the “Howl Festival” in New York’s Lower East Side every year, and his videos are being shown at the New England Video Festival in Coolidge Corner this month. Tambellini feels his work keeps him vital, and he wants to remain nothing less. ---Doug Holder


http://www.ibbetsonpress.com
http://dougholder.blogspot.com
http://authorsden.com/douglasholder
http://somervillenewswritersfestival.com

Time and Other Poems. Hugh Fox. ( Presa:S:Press PO BOX 792 Rockford, MI 49341) presapress@aol.com $6

With Hugh Fox's work I always find an abundance. An abundance of ideas, images Yings, Yangs, births, deaths...you name it. Hugh is not a minimalist, and now in his 70's, he has enjoyed a fascinating and full life, and he is not afraid to tell you about it. Hugh appreciates everything from the highest of brow to the lowest. His poetry in "Time and Other Poems," celebrates the rich and wild cornucopia of life and his despair and regret that he will have to leave it behind at some point. Fox emeshes the reader in a delicious sensory onslaught throughout this collection. In this passage from "Time/Le Temps" Fox paints a portrait of the poet in 'Frisco with his pals A.D. Winans and Richard Morris; all renowned member of the small press. This poem is a wonderful mixture of the passage of time and the desire to stay behind:
" Watching a video tape interview with A.D. Winans
in San Francisco, Vesuvio's restaurant, eight years ago,
..... Richard Morris in the corner,
watching, the camera strays to him once in a while, looking
haggard and frail, dead maybe three years already/ I oughta
say Everyone's gotta die, why not just get used to the idea
...., only what
I want is a forever of fried onions, candied pineapple, soft
beds, Bernadette's ears and eyes, listening, lilacs, and
clematis, my kids and pals and their growing, multiplying
Foreverness. (12)

In the poem "BacK" we are reminded of Fox's fascination with spirituality, myth and primal cultures.
" Going back, back, back
to the clouds and the
cypress and smoke, tress, mouldering twigs
and edge-of dusk bats, skunk-smells, wild turkeys
everythong wild, primal, before guns, torahs
mosques, in the beginning was the sky and you
and I
evolving into the pre- buddhistic-
buddhistic
everything
NOW. (32)

This collection is a rollercoaster ride between life and death, and as Ferlinghetti put it "A Coney Island of the Mind."

Doug Holder/ Ibbetson Update/ Somerville, Mass. 02143Doug Holder
http://www.ibbetsonpress.com
http://dougholder.blogspot.com
http://authorsden.com/douglasholder
http://somervillenewswritersfestival.com

Louisa Solano to be Honored at the Somerville News Writers Festival
By Amy E. Brais


Louisa Solano will receive the Ibbetson Press Lifetime Achievement Award Nov. 13 for her work with the Grolier Poetry Shop over the past three decades. Solano said she came to own the Grolier Poetry Shop – America’s oldest store that sells only poetry and the only store of its kind in Harvard Square- because when she was 15 years old, terribly shy to the point of being almost mute, she walked up the stone steps to the store and “had an epiphany.” She knew she would own the Grolier some day. The store is known to have had copies of Joyce’s Ulysses before it graced the shelf of every bookstore and library, housed greats such as Jack Kerouac and Alan Ginsberg in volume and in voice, and is frequently visited by Donald Hall, Philip Levine, and Seamus Heaney (to name a few) and was run for years by the infamously cantankerous Gordon Carnie, to whom Solano is quick to show her continued respect and admiration. Her first visit to the Grolier Poetry Shop soon turned into a regular occurrence. Solano recalled sitting at the end of Carnie’s couch, taking in the conversation of poets and visitors and eagerly doing whatever she could to help around the store.
“He paid me in tea and cookies and affection,” Solano explains. When Carnie died in August of 1973, Solano was 26 years old. She was selected to read at his memorial service. “You have to remember, I was mute – I didn’t speak then. I went through all of my handkerchiefs…” Solano became the owner of Carnie’s store shortly after that. “A lot of people thought that the store should close down in memory of Gordon. People thought an aspiring poet should run it. People thought I should give books away like Gordon did. The thing is – his account book was meticulously kept,” she said. In other words, Gordon had intended to receive money for his transactions, he just never collected. The store had long been supported by Carnie’s wife, so when Solano took over without the cushion of a benefactor, she had to make a few key decisions. She decided to collect money for the books she sold, and she decided to turn the Grolier into a specialty store to cater to the niche poetry market. “People thought I was insulting Gordon’s memory by making a business out of it,” Solano remarked. She found that the decision to make the store all poetry was a way of showing that “poetry has a space in every day life,” she said. But to mention Carnie is not to say that the life of the Grolier is one of the past. During the last 32 years, Solano has helped the store evolve, survive, and thrive in Harvard Square. From Chaucer to Art Garfunkle, Solano has cultivated a collection of poetry that blends the classic with the obscure and reaches well beyond her personal taste. Solano has become as much a fixture in her store as the volumes on the walls, and photographs of poets that reach up to the ceiling. “Someone once said it was a marriage. And I was deeply offended because I’ve been divorced twice. But the fact is, the love of my life is this store,” she said. Over the years, Solano has used her store as a vehicle for her own beliefs and interests. She made a point of stocking a close to 50/50 ratio of male and female poets in a store that had historically housed an imbalance of male writers. A few years after Gail Mazur initiated her reading series, Solano began her own. She uses her store front window as a place to display provocative frescoes of pertinent topics. She recalled a window from the Gulf War of children walking into the desert holding peace signs, with bombs exploding in the distance, and frescos addressing topics such as feminism and AIDS. Solano never shied away from carrying and distributing her share of controversial or progressive poetry. She mentioned selling the books that openly addressed such issues as heritage, gender, and homosexuality. As Solano spoke, dwarfed by bookcases on all sides, a young journalist made her selections. Solano has been helping her by making suggestions to the girl intermittently throughout our conversation, and I watch as she rings her customer up. She has decided on a book by Denise Levertov, and with Solano’s guidance chooses Thomas’s A Child’s Christmas In Whales. “I’ve sold hundreds of these over the years,” she said. A little while after the girl leaves, a woman comes in. She’s visiting from Maine, and after Solano told her the store is closed for the night, says she will come back tomorrow. After the woman leaves, Solano remarks, “A lot of tourists come through here because this store is what they expected from Harvard Square. It serves as a tribute to intellect.”
For many, the Grolier does serve as a tribute to intellect and to poetry, full of both celebration, and the inevitable loss that comes with caring for something so deeply. “Being in the presence of a great poet, whether or not that person recognizes you, I think it stimulates you to grow. It’s a kind of love. Even if you don’t know them – there’s an exchange going on in the spirit,” she said. Solano remembered the day she heard that Ginsberg had died. “I literally felt the earth moving beneath me. I ran around the corner to the Harvard Bookstore to tell them the news. The store clerk said, ‘thank you for this news, I’ll do a window immediately’. I was horrified – for me this was a personal loss.” She continued, mentioning Robert Creeley, a long-time friend of the store, “When Robert Creeley died, I felt that my relationship to poetry had died as well.” She folded her arms and paused. “I still can’t believe it.”
But Solano seemed focused on the endurance of poetry. When new customers walk in she often warns, “Be careful – you’re going to become a poet if you’re not already.” When asked if she is a poet, she said, “Seamus Heaney once said that ‘anyone who writes one poem a year is a poet’. I used to write poetry, but the main reason I stopped writing was that I didn’t have enough confidence in what I wanted to say. It’s hard when you’re surrounded by all these great voices. I just don’t have that kind of ego,” she said. Still, Solano appreciates the endeavors of other amateur poets. “I love watching the writing process. Even if the ideas are redundant –new generations always push them further,” she said. . Looking back at her time at the Grolier, Solano viewed it as a fulfilling career rife with personal growth. “I feel that year by year I have gotten stronger and stronger in my belief in myself. I had believed that the store was my identity. Coming in here is such a healing process for me. I am one of the most fortunate people in the world. I have done exactly what I wanted to do. Most people’s dreams don’t come true like that,” she said.For more information about the festival go :

to: http://www.somervillenewswitersfestival.com

Poetry Series @ Toast October 9, 2005 ( The Toast Poetry Series meets the Second Sunday each month at 3PM at the Toast Lounge 70 Union Square)

Grey skies but not much rain this past Sunday, when the monthly Somerville Poetry Readings was held at Toast Lounge in Union Square. Toast's backroom set the stage for an afternoon of lyrics and music while the front bar catered to the afternoon sports fans. Chiemi, a local singer-songwriter, opened with a few of her new tunes, creating a whimsical and contemplative atmosphere.

Doug Holder, the founder of this Series in 2004, hosted this month's performance. Doug himself, , has just published a poetry collection entitled "Wrestling With My Father" (Yellow Pepper Press), to favorable reviews by the likes of CD Collins (Winner of a Cambridge Poetry Award and member of the St. Botolph's Club Foundation Board) and other venerable critics.

Philip E. Burnham Jr. and Ann Carhart were featured Sunday. Philip read to the cozy audience situated at candlelit tables from his new Ibbetson Press publication, "Housekeeping: Poems Out of the Ordinary." Ann, who presented some of her works over the Summer at the Out of the Blue Gallery in Cambridge, read from her book, "Sanctus, Sanctus, Sanctus", also published by the Ibbetson Press. Those in attendance included Ann's eldest daughter, an actress, Patricia Collins. Philip expressed his enthusiasm at being paired with Ann as a featured poet. "I think she frames life in very elegant and succinct pictures," he said.

Also reading Sunday were Chad Parenteau and Lynne Stickler. Chad's recently published work is "Self-Portrait in Fire." Lynne, an editor at the Ibbetson Press, was instrumental in the completion of "Housekeeping." She expressed her enjoyment at the Toast readings, describing the venue as "really up and coming: with "new faces." New faces indicates new ears for the likes of bards who frequent Toast.

Speaking of new faces, Augustine J. Russo, Jr., has stepped onto the Toast stage as the new General Manager. More to come on that in coverage of his anticipated upcoming Somerville news interview. Also, for those you who may crave a bite to eat while lounging in Toast's trendy, modern-medieval lair, such fare is now available from the next door kitchen of The Independent.--

Chiemi

YELLOW PEPPER PRESS IS PROUD TO ANNOUNCE THE PUBLICATION OF
Doug Holder

"Wrestling With My Father"
A Poetry Collection
by Doug Holder



Praise for "Wrestling With My Father"


"In Doug Holder's New Collection, Wrestling With My Father in the Nude digs deep into familial roots, tracing history and blood lines with tenderness and truth. In lean verse, he head straight for difficult content, the clash of cultures, the silences between men, the silenced women, dreams and losses. He holds all these close, preserving what has past and seeing clearly what remains. Holder's metaphors rise so organically from the content... "the bridge to the Bronx/ a spurt of connective tissue/" or "Rows/of ancient Jewish mothers/ like angry crustaceans, perched on lawn chairs/... that they grab you viscerally, draw you in, shake you up, and set your down enriched and satisfied.Go get this book, take it home, savor it."
by CD Collins ( Winner of a Cambridge Poetry Award and member of the "St. Botolph Club"

Foundation Board)"These keys open upon the tabernacles of memory where words as kisses act as resurrection and their poetry engages the forgotten smell of fathers and those lost worlds of words in which they live and still speak."Michael Basinski ( Curator of the Rare Books and Poetry collection at the University of Buffalo.)


----- Wrestling With My Father by Doug Holder. Hugh Fox reacts. " I never cry at films, reading anything, “real” life doesn’t touch me....but reading Wrestling With My Father in the Nude, just a few pages into it, and it really got to me, tears in my eyes, deep emotions. He pushes all the real-world buttons here. Him and New York, the old Jews, old stores on old streets, meeting old pals, Marx Brothers movies, fedoras at rakish angles, ball parks, elevated tracks, hot dogs...he gets all the right, evocative, reality-evoking details, like his mother’s jaw cracking as she (now a widow) has dinner alone, his father’s photo on the refrigerator door “held tenuously/by a cheap magnet.” (“Portrait of My Mother During her Solitary Meal.”) We’re surrounded by all this wealth and run-over of reality, but what Holder has done here is to get the key details that resurrect it all, bring it all back. I felt I was living my own life all over again, and the night after I read Wrestling With My Father in the Nude I stretched out in bed and started thinking about dead friends, dead grandmothers, dead parents and all the streets and stores, the whole ambience of Chicago that somehow merged in my mind with Holder’s Bronx and came back to painfully haunt me: “Which man will know me/from my birth as a bald bawling baby to a balding middle aged man?....Who will make impossibly corny jokes/and impossibly dry Martinis/in front of a fire/on a long winter/Sunday afternoon? //Yes he is dead. And I will miss him./And I will remember/and mark/his passage,/because there will never/be someone quite/like him/who will cross/this stage again.” (“Which Man Will Know Me Now.”)"Hugh Fox, 2005. ( Founding editor of the Pushcart Prize, and founding member of the Committee of Small Magazine Editors/Publishers)




"With words carefully etched into the touchstone of a father’s love, Holder looks back to directly grasp, sans sentimentality, the struggle of men to be fathers and sons. In lines that are spare and piercing, like the thin rays of truth that linger long after the weighing of successes and failures in the lives of men, Holder evokes his father, resurrects him, not as whole phantasm but as whole human, alive in the bonds of trust generated by a son’s love. "

(Afaa M. Weaver is a professor of English Literature at Simmons College in Boston)


There is a universality in his verse and in the pervasive emotional tug of war that Holder threads
neatly throughout this collection; and ,ultimately, the bitter-sweet bonding that occurs when
we all finally discover our fathers. Kudos for this grand effort that makes us wish that we were the authors of these poems.

Harris Gardner/ Tapestry of Voices (Author : LEST THEY BECOME)



Douglas Holder's poetry is strongest when it is reminiscentof days gone by. In "Wrestling With My Father in TheNude", Holder, through the eyes of boyhood, pays homage tothe father of his past. Through the eyes of the present,he is able to look at mortality of father and son. Hispoetry covers the internal, external and if possible, themolecules of life of one man, while giving us the panorama of two.

( Tim Gager-- Founder of the "Dire Series" and cofounder of the "Heat City Review.") Holder has struck a nerve and a chord in constructing a potent, forceful memorial to his father.

"Wrestling With My Father" can now be purchased from the "Ibbetson Street Press," for 6 dollars--post paid. http://www.ibbetsonpress.com

Ibbetson St. Press
25 School St.
Somerville, Ma.
02143
617-628-2313

Review of Lo Galluccio’s HOT RAIN Singing Bone Press, Ibbetson Street Press 2004 $5. http://www.ibbetsonpress.com


Having heard of Lo Galluccio for some time as I frequent the Boston-Cambridge poetry venues, I had the good fortune to hear her read poems at a recent feature at Emack and Bolio’s in Roslindale, MA. I should preface these comments on that reading and her recently published chapbook, HOT RAIN (Ibbetson Street Press) with the fact that I am a tough critic to please. I’ve been doing my own poetry readings and attending nationally and locally known poetry readings on and off for 30 years now, having lived in Ann Arbor, Michigan and Boston, MA. I’ve heard many “pretenders to the throne” of poetry and music, along with some very good academic and street poets. Lo Galluccio is an original and striking voice, based both on the quality of her work and her lyrically pleasing performance style. Her work is an interesting amalgam of the psychological, mythical and musical. Its content is entertaining and challenging at the same time, weaving in toughness and surrealism.

HOT RAIN is a musical and sustained piece of work. In her Acknowledgments, Lo writes “These poems are about love, loss, identity and just the language out of which they are made.” This is accurate but also an understatement. For Lo Galluccio’s best work is earthy, vivid, painful and haunting. Her style is marked by interesting use of conventional poetic devices like internal rhyme, alliteration, the use of refrain, lending to a distinctive, lyrical style. Her voice is sometimes nonsensical, almost like Dame Edith Sitwell on acid! She makes playful use of rhyming preconscious language in wordplay poems like “The Sweat of His Labor”’s lines: “A mermaid is caught./A mermaid is not.”
The poems occasionally echo poets from another century, while making the subject matter and voice her own:

“The heart pounds in every mask.
Desire burns to ashes of wisdom.
That is passion’s task.” (from “Virtue’s Tongue”)

There’s an oddly medieval tone sometimes from witchcraft, notable in recurrent words like crossbow, flintlock, repeated interest in Puritans, Hansel and Gretel, black bras and rainy days. One of the most interesting aspects of her work in HOT RAIN is how she manages to mix the Catholic/Christian with the pagan in poems like “No Matter What that God Judges”, one of my favorite in this collection:

“And there’s a Godfather looking down saying
That one, if left alone, will find her way to me.
But there is also an Earth Mother looking up
Within me, humming – she hums gorgeously –
No matter what that God judges she or me to be.
We string our necklaces and wash our hair.”

In the poem, “Being Visited”, there’s a kaleidoscope created, containing twists of shifting color, familiar and often violent images of death (bullets, caskets, cancer). There’s the suggestion of living on the edge, quickly scuttling across spiritual underlayers of damaged faith, challenged by being offered a ticket to ride more comfortably in an urban limousine.

In HOT RAIN, Lo Galluccio’s best work combines the eloquent and passionate with a fair amount of discipline. To my mind, this would include the following poems: “No Matter What that God Judges”, “Sarasota I”, “Sarasota IV”, “3 AM Hudson Street”, “The Dream of Life”, and “The Spectre of Guilt”. In all of these poems, fresh diction, highly original imagery, and poetic “shape” predominate. There’s a wide range of feelings explored from the sensual to the angry and cheated “child of ghosts” in “The Dream of Life”. There’s eloquence with mystery and a knack at seeing ghosts in the wallpaper of ordinary rooms (see “The Spectre of Guilt”). When she writes with
tenderness in the two elegies for her dead father, Anthony (“Sarasota I” and “Sarasota IV”), she’s at her best in lines like these:

“I wept into granite to raise you.
Did you drink? Has God
Swallowed like gumdrops your oracle eyes?
Did the morphine blind you like Oedipus?
When will we say our good-byes.”

HOT RAIN is a very good body of work and deserving of a careful reading. There is a lot of energy here, of sense and spirit, a strong sense of place and haunting shadows. It’s a book of poems written by a woman who’s lived, loved, lost and who continues to have a sense of wonder, the wellspring of creativity. In the future, I would like to see her work with historical themes, perhaps use increased narrative diction and move forward from the autobiographical to a larger canvas. I recommend this chapbook and encourage all to attend her next poetry reading in Boston or wherever she roams.


--Carolyn Gregory