What’s So Funny by Joseph Torra.

What’s So Funny by Joseph Torra. ( Pressed Wafer Press. 9 Columbus Square. Boston, Mass. 02116) $12.

Review by Doug Holder



Joe Torra, a neighbor of mine in my neck of the woods in Somerviile,Mass. is a poet, and novelist who I have admired for years. A while ago I read his memoir “Call Me Waiter” that recounts his years as a struggling writer who worked as a waiter to support his art. It was a wonderful portrait of an artist as a working stiff. A straight-no-chaser account, it was funny, sad, and ultimately uplifting.



Like any good poet Joe Torra can express in words what we want to say but can’t quite spit out. In his new novel “ What’s So Funny” his protagonist is a down-at-the heels, 54 year old comedian, living in what he calls the New Jersey of Boston: Everett, Mass.



On the surface this novel is hilarious. Being the same age as Torra and his main character, I can identify with many of the gripes and perceptions of this sad sack of a comedian. And there is a rich trove of observations in this book. I must admit I finished the novel in a few hours on a Megabus heading to NYC, and like the comedian I was visiting my mother who was caught in the depressing confines of a nursing home. To do justice to this book I have to excerpt the various takes on the world of this Medford bred, Italian-American comedian. Take his view on funerals:



“ There’s nothing worse than attending a family wedding or funeral. All my cousins are fat and old like me…At the wakes my cousins ask things like-- do I remember the time we did that? As if something we did 45 years ago still has meaning. I have a cousin... who always asks do I remember the time he had to take a shit when we were hanging out behind the school yard...At a recent wedding he brought this up as we sat around the table eating prime rib.."





Or how about a New Age woman he used to date?



" Jill was one of those New Age women. She let her hair go gray at eleven. She didn't wear makeup... She burned incense and practiced a synthesis of paganism, Buddhism and consumerism. She had the most amazing hemp wardrobe imaginable, and a different meditation pillow for each day of the week."





And of course his take on his humble Medford, Mass. roots:



" I grew up in Medford, Massachusetts. People from Medford are known to pronounce it Meffa. But I went to college, and live one mile away, so I only say Meffa when I'm drunk, because when you are drunk you let your guard down and its back to basics."





In essence the comedian views his life as a joke--literally. The man is like a poet, the writer, the artist, who uses his whole life as fodder for his work. Even at this low point in his greatly diminished career he continues to plan his next sketch, practicing his next bit for hours in front of his bathroom mirror.



What I am thankful for is Torra doesn't fall into the trap of being maudlin-- or plays for cheap sentiment. The comedian, a single man, has a chance to date an attractive woman who has an interest in him. And no--the love of a good woman doesn't save our hero in this novel. In fact his short and superficial alliance gives him more material for his art. In this passage he takes a full account of his sorry self before going out on another date:



" She was smart and independent. But what could we do? How could I could I possibly undress in front of her with my sagging flesh, and the skin-growth in my upper thigh near my scrotum. What if I couldn't preform?"



This fine novel can be read on two levels. As an astute comedian's view on an absurd world, or a meditation on the all consuming passion of an artist. Take your choice--or choose both-- a must read.

Silk Egg by Eileen R. Tabios

Silk Egg
by Eileen R. Tabios
Shearsman Books
Exeter Books
Copyright © Eileen R. Tabios, 2011
ISBN: 978-1-84861-143-1
Softbound, 131 pages, $17

Review by Zvi A. Sesling

Some poets just slap you across the face and say, “Here is something new, find it exciting or not, conventional or not, I have written for those who understand and those who do not will come to understand.” There have been more than a few American poets who slapped faces with their “new” poetry. Walt Whitman, was certainly one. The Imagists, Objectivists and the Beats were among the more notable. There are other poets as well who have changed the way we read and write poetry, who have gone one step beyond.

Now along comes Eileen R. Tabios – actually she is not just coming along – she has been
around for a while having “released 18 print, 4 electronic and 1 CD poetry collections, an art-essay collection, a poetry essay/interview anthology, a short story book and a collection of novels.”* For these efforts she has received numerous awards and grants and is well known on the west coast, if not the entire country. She also founded Meritage House, a multi-disciplinary literary and arts press based in San Francisco and St. Helena CA.

Ms. Tabios’ “slap” didn’t start with the title, it began when I opened the book of “novels.” Each chapter is a self contained novel and novels making up what I would call the total novel. In other words the sum is as great as the parts, the parts necessary for the sum. I personally had not seen this before, though Rainer Maria Rilke’s The Lay of the Love and Death of Cornet Christoph Rilke employs a similar concept, though not as creative or unique as Ms. Tabios.

As I read through Silk Egg different thoughts flashed across my mind: art deco, a punch of noir, of corrupted romance novels or sharp detective stories – in other words the writing of the 1930s or 1940s. However, while the writing has a retro appearance, it is thoroughly modern, maybe ahead of its time. Definitely captivating and ground breaking.

Ms. Tabios writes images that make wish I had thought of them, lines that make think and stories that leave me wondering (or in wonder):

Pg. 15: Look where the window finally stops.
“Sky is better than aspirin.”

Pg. 41: Red velvet petals. On one a wet diamond.
Her shears also sliced the sun.
Six roses fell. All revealed red cracking into mother-of-
pearl.
London seemed even more distant that day.

Pg. 81 Whenever surf broke and water pock-marked air, she
recalled Helen – the much-maligned Helen.
Surf broke to reveal pale ankles bound by thin strips of
gold-painted leather.

These are just three examples. You may find others far more mysterious, elusive or exciting. Ms. Tabios is a writer who is in control, knows her trade is whether its is
Silk Egg or one of her others volumes, she is a writer who is worth a long, slow read and then a re-read.

Hello: Snow Emergency Remains In Effect

I wrote this poem for Jackie Rossetti and the City of Somerville:



















Hello: Snow Emergency Remains In Effect






***** For Jackie Rossetti

Like an anxious lover
I wait for her call
her passionless voice
at the break of dawn:

"This is Jackie Rossetti from the City of Somerville...
we are still on..."

Well...
Until Feb. 2
at the very least,
as the snow outside
my window
shows no intent
to cease.

In the winter of my discontent,
I want to see her--
my raging heart
into the raging storm
but she is a rebel
she is on the
other side of the tracks
on the odd-side of the street...
How I wish
we can meet.

I will try to save her
a seat
perhaps a lawn chair
on that
freshly minted white carpet
but she'll treat
me like thrash
and throw it all way
after all...
it's a snow day.

I will pine for her
I will salt
I will sand
I won't
let what we have
slip from my frostbitten hand.

I would never dare
to shovel
what we share--
our pristine New England snow--
our frigid love,
the cold storage secrets we keep
onto the unforgiving
mean streets.


But in the end
I will break
a city ordinance
our ticket
to meet.

She will be unforgiving
subject me to fines
but Jackie Rossetti
I can read
between the lines.

---Doug Holder

March 3rd, 2011, 8:15 pm marks the 14th annual Women Musicians Network

March 3rd, 2011, 8:15 pm marks the 14th annual Women Musicians Network

by Kirk Etherton





March 3rd, 2011, 8:15 pm marks the 14th annual Women Musicians Network
concert. As always, it will be at the Berklee Performance Center, and the focus
will be on Berklee women students from around the world.

There will be 12 diverse acts, ranging from R&B to film music, alternative, and
Flamenco piano. Lucy Holstedt, W.M.N. co-founder and faculty advisor, is
"extremely pleased" that Daniela Schachter--an acclaimed jazz composer and
performer--will be a special guest. "Daniela was in the show back when she
was a Berklee student: she was excellent then, and of course she's even better
now," says Holstedt. "It's great that she was available."

This is the second year in row that a group from Berklee City Music joins the
W.M.N. concert. "These are some wonderful Middle School kids," according to
Lucy, who will add a "very interesting dimension" to the evening.

Tickets are only $10 at the B.P.C. box office (which doesn't take phone orders).
Tickets are also available this year via Ticketmaster. According to Jennifer
Fuchel, a professor at Suffolk University (who hasn't missed a W.M.N. concert
"for several years"), it's best to get tickets in advance.

"I don't believe it has sold out in the past," says Ms. Fuchel, but this is always
such an amazing concert, I'm surprised to see a single empty seat."


A longtime Somerville fan said, "There's nothing exactly like it. Which is
exactly why you'll like it."

For more info., go to berkleebpc.com

“The Whalen Poem” poetry by William Corbett

A Sumptuous 61 pages of poetry
called “The Whalen Poem”
poetry by William Corbett

article by Michael T. Steffen


Biblical rains cut
Gullies in the driveway…

So begins the rhapsodic poem from Hanging Loose Press called “The Whalen Poem” by William Corbett, announcing a flood, timely in our subconscious still somewhere unresolved, displaced and afloat with Katrina, an image of waste and dissolution of things and people from their homes and organization in the world. The diluvial reference continues only for a few more lines:

Leak under chimney-flashing,
Drown cherry tomatoes.
Pipe breaks at joint…

—a sequence of images, common and downplayed, suggesting the devastation of seminal creation. Then the image of the flood itself trails off into other associations, becoming the disassembled method of the poem’s non-sequential procedure:

From the cellar drain spews
Last night’s scrapings ground
Fine in the sink’s disposal whine.
GLOOMY DISRESPECT
They won’t talk to me
They lived in a Love Dungeon
My brown suede shoes
Spoilt their wedding!
Nurses plot in lab
“You wouldn’t swear in court”
He claims his wife feels violated…

The lines now enact what Robert Bly identified in the sheaves of postmodern poetry as “leaping poetry,” a composition of juxtapositions rather than of sensible connections. The logic of the transitions from one passage to another, one line to another, remains tacit for the reader’s discernment, or invention.


So much of postmodern and Internet-era poetry derives from this early 20th century method (discovered in the late 19th century French Symbolists), that today’s reader hardly expects a poem to adhere to a continuous story or line of argument. So reading “The Whalen Poem” should not disturb us as the poems of Cummings or Pound or William Carlos Williams greatly caught the gasping Victorian sensibilities of their age by surprise and with amusement.


At the onset of his poem Corbett demonstrates his intention to keep the reader’s curiosity, in the tradition he is working from, by using culturally iconic—‘correlative’—themes and images and names: broken marriage, hospital, rape, litigation, trivial pursuit:

“What’s the greatest novel
Of the 20th century? You first.”

“Ahh, Remembrance of Things Past.”

“Ha! I said 20th century!”

In the first two pages we get glimpses of well-known recent and contemporary poets
James Merrill, Allen Grossman, and get more direct mention of such common domain names as Norman Mailer, FDR, Reagan and J. Edgar Hoover. We are likely hooked on the sumptuous array of prominent historical themes possible here.


The flood image that begins the poem is one controlling metaphor that justifies (or excuses) the bric-à-brac assembly of materials that make up “The Whalen Poem.” Another major reference used to suggest the work’s hidden or suggested continuity is its inspiration from the poetry of Philip Whalen (phonically reminiscent of Melville...). Whalen took part in the poetic movement of the 1950s and 60s associated with Gary Snyder, Allen Ginsberg, Michael McClure and novelist Jack Kerouac. The master poet practiced Zen and wrote in an annotational stream-of-consciousness freehand. This comes through in Corbett’s poem which after the carefully placed sequences of the first two pages more freely digresses into a sort of personal scrapbook of shorthand for memoirs, favorites lists of associate artists, musicians, athletes, and “THINGS HITHERTO UNINCLUDED”—interspersed with some more concentrated narrative scenes and unsparingly private moments, such as,

After 47 years Mary M______
Buick convertible top down, parking,
Her legs spread wide, finally,
Reach for the sky…

and,

My father-in-law had a plan
But it didn’t include
His last words to me,
The son-in-law he was fond of…
…having me wrap his penis
And balls in a cashmere sweater
(Prevents bedsores) while he died of cancer.

Dante would have known the Bible as the Vulgate, Jerome’s version, the spoken language about the streets of Rome in Jerome’s time, and the poet of the Divine Comedy would make a monumental decision for Italy in writing his great poem in Italian instead of Latin. His native language deep in his mind and from his pen, experienced beyond learned, gave Dante a pliancy which enabled him the subtleties necessary for allegory, especially allegory of the damned where much indirect if not altogether euphemistic language was required. Where our innate modesty is involved, in particular, if Dante couldn’t avoid horrific imagery, which his topoi of Sheol and Revelations allowed him, like the soul of one man gnawing at the head of another man, he still managed to invent his terrible emblems of desecration in an indirect language. Corbett shows awareness of the these tools of speech in the opening of “The Whalen Poem” with the drowned “cherry tomatoes” and the pipe broken at the joint. That’s why I sensed the poem lapsed as I read on into it further. I felt the artist had dropped his brush and gone off into finger painting. The items in the lists failed to suggest anything beyond themselves other than items in lists.


There is much to catch the eye in “The Whalen Poem.” It is an edited work, where abridgments suggest the conscious act of inclusion and omission. It stirs with an air of the advents of a cultural or spiritual life and attempts to gather about itself a cosmogenic (Allen Grossman’s term) world, not unlike “The Ether Dome” or “The Waste Land”—great poems that evoke, paradoxically, a prototypical individual consciousness reminiscent of that slight gap between Adam’s reaching finger and the index of God on the Sistine Chapel. I believe this to be in the intentions of “The Whalen Poem.” And the intentions of a work of art weigh heavily in the estimation of its form and finish, if it’s true that form is achieved through the carrying-out of intentions. T.S. Eliot wrote notes to help the reader with the possible difficulties of abbreviation in “The Waste Land.” Readers of “The Whalen Poem” may want to be at a pc or laptop with Google under their fingers to elucidate the many names listed in it.

These things said, William Corbett has demonstrated no small patience or faith in having brought this poem to its book length. Like Lo Gallucio’s Sarasota VII (Cervena Barva Press),“The Whalen Poem” attests to the large and unrelenting spirit of poetry that demands our inmost humility and limits again and again. It marks this as an achievement which a poet with the talent of Corbett should not be satisfied to stop at, however much “The Whalen Poem” will entertain and intrigue its readers.

Beirut Again by Allen C. West

Beirut Again
by Allen C. West
Off the Grid Press
Copyright © 201 by Allen C. West
ISBN: 978-0-9778429-4-0
Softbound, 75 pages, $15

Review by Zvi A. Sesling



Oh, oh I thought, here is politics as poetry. However, I was more than pleasantly surprised by Allen West’s poetry. It is a recollection of life, love and personal
thoughts that take the reader into the world of his youth, his fears/nightmares and
youthful visits from the Grand Canyon to Fenway Park. He flips and back and
forth between present and past, between childhood, World War II, loves – any of which the reader cannot only associate with, but even visualize him/herself in the poem.

One of the poems that particularly caught my attention is “beloved” which is reminiscent of the Sufi poets:

your wrist is still
as warm as an egg

in my palm
i dare not touch

your pale leached
ear dare not taste

your lips
your cracked tongue’s

charred underside
i do not see your dreams

do not enter your bed
but bend to you

inhale the broken
breath

West writes about his father (to whom the book is dedicated), mother,
ghosts, bears, fish, lovers and whatever else has left an impression on
his fertile mind and creative powers.

This is a book I enjoyed because it is personal, enjoyable and that Holy Grail word of poetry: accessible

Pop Art edited by Jessica Harman

Popt Art
Jessican Harman, editor
Available on Lulu.com
$16.00

Review by Rene Schwiesow

Jessica Harman, the editor of the new literary mag “Popt Art” was born in Montreal, spent some time in Maryland and has currently chosen to reside in Brookline, Massachusetts near the poetic mecca of the Boston/Cambridge/Somerville area. And indeed, her inaugural issue pops with notables such as Marge Piercy, Doug Holder, Irene Koronas, Chad Parenteau, Mike Amado, Zvi Seisling, Bridget Galway, Sean Theall, Michael Kei Stewart, Jessica herself and many more.

This first issue of “Popt Art,” centers on the theme of portraits or self-portraits and includes prose that leans heavily upon the inner exploration of self. From the prose blog “What It’s like to be Schizophrenic,” to “My Mother’s Fat,” the writing in these two contributions not only offers a glimpse into the issues of mental and eating disorders but draws us into the center of the thought processes of a person dealing with a psychosis or obesity.

And though “Popt Art” showcases a number of worthy Massachusetts’ talents, contributors from around the world make their mark in this first issue as well. From Canada, to Malaysia, to Alaska, Tennessee, Minnesota, Maryland, and New York, each contributor offers us insight into another, into the human condition.

But wait; in addition to the poetic/prosaic musings of the writers, visual art bursts with flavor, interspersed between the words. Fine work by Paloma Radcliffe, Adam Ottavi, and Joshua Abelow appear as well as a stunning portfolio by Alisha Naomi Fisher. My only criticism is that the intense black of the black and white prints muddies the visuals.

As an inaugural issue “Popt Art” gives us plenty of opportunities to relish the talent of those published, though the issue does suffer from a few first-time gaffes. For example, the table of contents lists author and title, but omits page numbers making it difficult to go back and find a particular contributor with ease. And this reviewer would prefer to see the name of the author up front, rather than at the end of the work. The issue is also fraught with typos and general layout errors. Growing pains, one would hope, that will be cleared up in the next issue of “Popt Art.”

“Popt Art,” will be holding a premiere party at Out of the Blue Gallery, 109 Prospect Street, in Cambridge, MA on March 19th at 8:00 pm. Contributors will be reading their work published in this inaugural issue. Visual art will be on display. Each successive issue of “Popt Art,” will be themed. You may follow along on the website at:

http://sites.google.com/site/lieraryzinevol1contributors/Home.

“Popt Art” can also be found on facebook.

Ibbetson Street Press/Boston Area Small Press Scene Exhibit at the Halle Library/ Endicott College/Beverly, Mass.

Since Ibbetson Street and Endicott College said they would start archiving books as part of the Small Press Poetry and Literary Collection at the Halle Library we have received books from around the country from poets and writers of all genres. Here is an exhibit at the library that library director Brian Courtemanche and his great staff put together.


CLICK ON PICTURE TO ENLARGE

New Hampshire's Poet Laureate Visits Somerville, Mass.

New Hampshire's Poet Laureate Visits Somerville, Mass.

By Doug Holder


Since there is not a Poet Laureate in Somerville I must admit I stray and look for greener pastures. And in one of these green pastures I found New Hampshire Poet Laureate Walter E. Butts. I met Butts at a poetry reading at the Piano Factory Art Gallery in Boston. A friend of mine, the poet and artist James de Crescentis runs the gallery and he organized a reading for Butts. Butts is an unpretentious man but his talent is not modest. After work long years in the Human Services he made the switch to teaching writing, and perfecting his craft. I made a point of contacting him so I could interview him on my Somerville Community Access TV show " Poet to Poet: Writer to Writer."

Doug Holder: You have been quoted as saying that in times of great turmoil poetry is more crucial than ever.

Walter E. Butts: I believe the essence of poetry--which to me--is an engagement with discovery of the self and the world around you. It extends beyond the singular effort. It speaks to much larger issues. What does it mean to be human? Even a Confessional poet like Robert Lowell--who wrote personal poems--went beyond the self because he is in the larger human family.

DH: So even when we navel gaze we are speaking beyond the personal?

WEB: It depends on how self-indulgent and how inward it is. That can be limiting--surely. Getting back to your question--I think when you look at the political questions on a national/world level--when you look at other threats on our individuality--it seems to me in order to transcend these terrible things---well, the personal poem is a way to engage that.


DH: You told me you were part of the Stone Soup Poetry scene on Beacon Hill in the 70's founded by the late Jack Powers. What was it like in the day?

WEB: I had been active in other communities prior to Stone Soup and Boston. What Jack did--this was in the old days when he was on Cambridge Street on Beacon Hill ( 1978)--well, he opened things up a lot. He created a grassroots organization not just about poetry and literature, but around the idea of a community of artists and others. He provided them a space. A bunch of us would go to his space on Monday nights. Every Monday we would go in this room and sit around and read and talk. It had a Renaissance feel.


DH: What has the Poet Laureate position done for you? What is your role as Laureate?

WEB: My own poetry takes care of itself. I continue to write and I continue to engage. The Poet Laureate position--in terms of what it has done for me me as a poet is great recognition. I see my role as an ambassador for poetry in the state. One of the things I do every two weeks through the New Hampshire Council of the Arts' website is a feature titled "Poet's Showcase ." And every two weeks I post a poet from New Hampshire with a poem and a bio. That's one way of getting a lot of the poets in the state out there. We have had Donald Hall, Alice Fogel, Marie Harris, and Ed Carney...to name a few. This gives you a sense of the vitality of the state.


DH: I am a small press publisher, and I have been published in the small press for years. Is the small press valuable for the poet?

WEB: It is critical. I believe it has been proven that small press remains on the cutting edge of literary movements. Significant issues both political and cultural have been profoundly addressed there.


DH: Were you part of the "Mimeograph Revolution" in the 60's?

WEB: For a year I lived in NYC. I hung out at St. Mark's--the home of The Poetry Project--and took wonderful free writing workshops with a poet named Maureen Owen. At the end of this workshop, in the basement of St. Mark's, we put this mimeo anthology together. I can remember the paper strewn all over the chairs in the room. A mimeo, by the way, is sort of a poor man's xerox.

DH: You have taught poetry writing at Hesser College in New Hampshire and Goddard College in Vermont. i will go back to the old question can poetry writing be taught? Can you be anyone be taught to write " competent" verse?

WEB: No. I don't think so. It is not just a matter of talent; it's a matter of passion. Collectively, as poets, we seem to have this antenna out all the time--we seem to have a facility to pay attention to small details. We pay attention to what goes on internally and externally at the same time. I think creative writing as an educational exercise is wonderful.


DH: What grabs you about a poem when you first read it?

WEB: For two years my wife and I ran a small press magazine " Crying Sky.' It was a print journal, so I have read a lot of poems. I have no interest in poetry wars or styles. When a poem seduces me--that's what counts. I have to be seduced by something: wordplay, metaphor or by a shift in the sense of things. The poem is showing me something that I haven't seen before. For some reason when I read a W.S. Merwin poem I feel inspired. There is a vast difference between his poetry and mine. But for whatever reason he takes me to places I look for.




BOYS AT THE SATURDAY MATINEE



We were happy those afternoons,

with our boxes of Dots,

watered-down sodas, and bags

spilling over with popcorn,

even as the sudden dark

and slow slide of curtains

silenced our laughter and screams, while we waited

for a Saturday matinee serial to begin:



Black Arrow and Captain Marvel,

Buck Rogers and Flash Gordon,

The Green Hornet and Dick Tracy,

Red Ryder and The Lone Ranger,

or any one of a dozen others

our saved quarters let us follow for twenty minutes each week

into new episodes of heroes, villains,

kidnappings and impossible escapes, and always a beautiful woman

who had to be rescued.

But sometimes it was hard to figure

who the criminal mastermind really was.

And despite how many times we saw

a chapter end with the hero

trapped and certainly doomed,

we argued his fate until we returned

to be captured again

by those metaphors of good and evil

that rose up like truth, like faith,

before our cheers and applause,

our eternal and communal praise.

The Tower Journal, Nov. 2010

Review of TODAY THEN TOMORROW by Andy Levine

Review of TODAY THEN TOMORROW by Andy Levine, Vizion Books, 2010, 69 pages, no bio included.

Review by Barbara Bialick

Getting one’s precious poems published in a book is a joy that shouldn’t be denied.
On the other hand, it’s important to know who your audience is…Andy Levine’s friends and family should enjoy his book Today Then Tomorrow. If he wants a wider audience, he needs to re-edit almost everything, I am sorry to say. Even in the friendlier realm of the small press, the readers are looking for one’s best effort. He probably has profound ideas that I skimmed over because there was little metaphor, imagery, alliteration and too much prose to be found. He also writes most of these poems in singy song rhyme. Near the third and fourth section I woke up to realize he does have a repeating rhythm throughout this too-lengthy work. I began to sound it out as a sort of rap style, only without the colorful language. He should keep rapping and writing because as Levine says himself, “a genuine effort/is needed/to mend a world/devastated.”

Here’s an example of his apparent rap rhythm in a poem whose title I don’t get,

“Press Control, Alternative Deletion”:

How often
do you question
what you believe,
as doubt
dawns scrutiny
of information received...

…The new pollution
is promotion
staining streets
and our eyes,
conditioning our mind
even more
than we realize…

As he titles his first section, I will conclude this review: “Live with others, think on your own.”

Review of “Stellar Telegram,” poetry by Kasandra Larsen

Review of “Stellar Telegram,” poetry by Kasandra Larsen

Sheltering Pines Press

http://www.shelteringpinespress.com

$7



Review by Samantha Milowsky



Kasandra Larsen, originally from Massachusetts, currently lives in New Orleans.



Larsen’s sensual poems deftly employ classic forms such as the sonnet. There is a musicality and richness of language to her work. Beginning her creative life as a classical pianist, she hears music in poetry.



She pays attention to life around her. The details whirl in “Waiting, Lee Circle” where a Mardi Gras scene includes “vendors on cellphones,” “uniformed megaphone warnings,” and “insistent fresh hot dog rhythms…”



There are a few poems where Hurricane Katrina is used to reflect on the past and to relate to other’s suffering. In “On a Senior Picture Not Seen Since Katrina,” the speaker reminisces over an old high-school photo, the unexpected kindness from a pretty cheerleader towards an awkward poet. These poems frequently delve past common surface biases. Such reminiscing comforts the speaker: “Maybe only my imagination took that picture, lifted it above the toxic waves, gave a little cheer when it made it to the Gulf Coast, swirled in a fresh eddy headed out of here.”



“A Stand-in For the Body, A Refuge, Identity” reflects on the fragility of home, “the haunted one where dishes flew off the dining table,” as well as sympathizing with “Bill” who also experienced loss of home, spending “two years in a FEMA trailer after Hurricane Isabel.” Here, the speaker is reaching out beyond her own historical experience with Katrina, reminding us that many people experience tragedy. We are all connected in our mutual vulnerability.



Larsen has an inquisitive side to her poetry. “The Purposes of Sleep Are Only Partly Clear” is resplendent with imagery about insomnia: “Pillows fluffed with insomnia/spread around her hair like a net./Her bright bones lie awake inside,” and end humorously with “…of her outburst, whispers/have become the only movement/the moon makes all night, peering in/just to criticize the linens.”



Larsen’s poems have a rich synthesis between language as a subject for contemplation alongside relationships, family, and religion.



The opening sonnet “Some Things are Better Left” weaves the ideas of the power a poet could wield, even in what’s unspoken, such as the title proves; however, is the poet being constrained by a “churches claim that thoughts are as culpable as deeds?”



There is the rhetorical contemplation of a poet taking their job seriously, considering both what’s said and unsaid: “a poet tries to choose, hopes what’s unheard/prevents her lips from being liable.” The poem moves into the intimate ramifications of what’s unspoken between “us” - “This purgatory of unspoken lines/hangs still between us now.”



“Stellar Telegram” continues the contemplation “overwhelmed by the richness of language," and the movement into encompassing relationships between a man and woman as “the world’s bodies of wounded water/dripped, rippled in unison at the sky.”



I recommend Stellar Telegram to poetry lovers and readers wishing to immerse in the sensual language, imagery, and experiences Larsen weaves.

Laying the Spirit Bare, Surfacing the Subtext: WHITE AS SILVER, poems by Rane Arroyo

Laying the Spirit Bare, Surfacing the Subtext:
WHITE AS SILVER, poems by Rane Arroyo

by Michael Todd Steffen


The poems in Rane Arroyo’s eleventh published book of poetry, WHITE AS SILVER
(Cervena Barva Press), display an abandon which is also a freedom of the swan’s and of a youthfulness perceiving the potential disorganization of the world in its intimate mirror of that creative silence and secrecy of the artist’s meditation. Odd sequences abound. Time and place lose their specificity in the poet’s far-in-reaching visions:

why

am I crossing bridges at midnight
as if a twenty-year-old again who
wants to parachute off Miss Liberty?
My America isn’t on a staid map. (“Short Version”, p. 3)


Chicago wears a burning
birthday suit. We can go,
oh, anywhere. Why not
Fisher’s where the thin
poets are all we have for
needles? (“Freed of Innocence”, p. 17)

The liberty of arranging unlikely juxtapositions bespeaks a bearably open spirit directing acceptance from within outward instead of the self being subjected to an impinging, critical environment. In so doing, Arroyo’s text, what we have before us, advances the gambols and surprises we normally only get glimpses of while reading up through the suggestions or subtext of a work. Surprising transpositions of terms spark out from this unusual kiln:

The graffiti artists are now grown-ups,
returned to childhood in prisons for
crimes not about art. Some of them
are in maximum security art galleries. (“Modern Hometown”, p. 4)


When the mortar of undertone becomes the subject, the masonry itself, the imagery of the poem, takes on a hovering disconnected quality, leading to a puzzlement of appearances:

I resist you and take a walk on
a long pier on a shrinking lake.

Women in rowboats whistle down
currents. Men build a lighthouse

for UFOs. I spend the currency of
my eyebrows and leather coat in

shuttered bars on eerie Erie Street.
Men in raincoats ply me with shots

and chagrin… (“My Sex Life”, p. 5)

Everything gets turned around here. More emphatically than most books of American poetry, WHITE AS SILVER, in its literal claim on eminence and assurance, eschews the lucid connectivity of accusative reason in a criminal character:

Under gods, under gaming stars,
under our most honest skin,
waits joy and flight from logic’s thugs. (“Listen”, p. 16)

That is a turn of mind, a sense of humor and defiance, reminiscent of Surrealism, with which Arroyo flares in his frequent use of the copulative structure for odd centaurian terms:

My shadow is a bodyguard
never to taste champagne.

The streets are a tambourine’s
autopsy. Home is a pool

made translucent by breathing
furniture and blue windows. (“Life without Maps”, p. 35)

At the sunset of his day, Arroyo exhibits a zest to demolish common structures, risking the venture of leaving his guests behind in a uniquely understood assembly of language, in his unyielding sequences that do not fail to miff and intrigue us:

A call to pray for Aaron who
is brittle with his bitterness
after seeing his buddy turn
into a bursting chandelier in
a desert darker than thought. (“Radio Evangelist”, p. 26)

Arroyo prestos an astonishing literal surface that will communicate to readers of mosaics. There remains to consider the true reader who is on the quest of acquiring vocabulary and patterns of thought that will guide her or him throughout life, even on life’s tangents, barring some event that demands rethinking and reaffirming everything learned. WHITE AS SILVER (maybe not unlike Pound’s Cantos, or The Book of Revelations, though in a very different, much more modest, personal reach) requires a certain invitation. Lacking common objectives and familiarity, it will not sing to a general audience. Though this can be one of the book’s intimate gifts.



WHITE AS SILVER by Rane Arroyo, 54 pp
available for $15
from Cervena Barva Press
P.O. Box 440357
West Somerville, MA 02144-3222
http://www.cervenabarvapress.com
Bookstore: http://www.thelostbookshelf.com

Historic Diary by Tony Trigilio

Historic Diary

Tony Trigilio

Blaze Vox [book]

ISBN: 978-1-60964-012-5

2011







“Oswald's 'Historic Diary,' which commences on October 16, 1959

the date Oswald arrived in Moscow, and other writings he later

prepared, have provided the Commission with one source of information

about Oswald's activities throughout his stay in the Soviet Union.

Even assuming the diary was intended to be a truthful record, it is

not an accurate guide to the details of Oswald's activities.”

-The Warren Commission Report-




Trigilio researches most-or-all the events that surrounded the life of Harvey

Lee Oswald. Some people remember the day president Kennedy was shot

in Dallas Texas. If the reader does not know about these events then this

book will inform and raise questions. My question is what is poetry?

I can place this book in an experimental category but some may find it

unconventional writing, that is, some may not regard the creative work

poetry. I think of this book as multi-poetic/investigative/explorations.

Trigilio melds imagination with factual information. The reader will

travel through poetic forms and factual elements.




The experimentation in this book is used as intellectual tools to expound

on what many readers may consider theories, or imagination, or cover-up.

I relate the contents to the poet Susan Howe who presented letters from a

library archive, as poetry. Howe did the research and then presented the

letters as is. The contents of Trigilio's book will intrigue and draw the

reader into a genre of poetry that is expanding its influence as a viable

way of presenting poetry, which makes it difficult to review since it is not

what one may expect of poetry. Trigilio presents events and the events

are presented as poetry. What I appreciate about his work is that he

manipulates his findings, making for a creative read.




“If something happens to...It was 1958 when...If something

happens to Richard...We drove the Skylark to Granville, Tx...

If something...It couldn't have been 1958...But how come

Tony doesn't visit his cousin Tommy, he lives in Chicago...”...




The above poem continues on for a little more than a page and is hinged

on repetition. Each verse or poem or page is full of explanations that thread

the poems together like an underground existence emerging in dead voices;

connections which seem to collaborate another world explanation.




“Marguerite Oswald




This is my life and my son's life

going down in history.




At grammar school graduation, I had the honor

of wearing a pink dress instead of a white one.




And sang the song “Little Pink Roses.”

I played the piano. We had house parties




in those days and a lot of gatherings-

and it was everything Marguerite.




I also played a ukulele.




.. .. ..

.. .. ..




Lee used to climb the roof with binoculars,

looking at the stars.




He read about astrology and knew about

any animal there was. I don't doubt




he studied the animals-their feeding habits,

sleeping habits, their secrets.




He could converse. At the Bronx Zoo.

That's where they picked him up for truancy...”







Irene Koronas

Reviewer:

Ibbetson Street Press

Poetry Editor:

Wilderness House Literary Review

A History of Yearning, by Kathleen Spivack

A History of Yearning, by Kathleen Spivack
The Sow’s Ear Poetry Review, 2009 ($15)
Order at: http://amazon.com

Kathleen Spivack certainly has all the credentials of a distinguished poet. Not only has she been published almost everywhere (The New Yorker, The Paris Review, etc. etc.), she has also received numerous prestigious fellowships and grants. Heck, she was even a student and friend of Robert Lowell!


Ultimately, of course, the only thing a reader can really respond to is the work. In the case of A History of Yearning, the work is—to put it very simply—terrific.


This modest volume, published as The 2009 Sow’s Ear Chapbook Competition Winner, contains a total of 19 poems, organized into three sections: A History of Yearning, Earth’s Burnt Umber, and The Lost World. Subjects include the experience of great art, war, personal and societal loss, and moments of transcendent visual beauty that may never be captured on canvas (but are perfectly painted and framed on the page by this exceptionally gifted poet). If we sometimes read human history as a book of yearnings that are derailed, thwarted or otherwise unfulfilled, Kathleen’s beautiful little chapbook is a huge achievement in the opposite direction: every page succeeds in giving us new angles and insights, a deeper understanding of the worlds that lie within and without. As readers, this is what we yearn for. As a writer, Spivack never lets us down.


It is always a luxury to read someone like Ms. Spivack—someone who has both a unique, masterful touch with language and a true intellectual’s grasp of several significant subjects. I’m reminded of Seamus Heaney’s work dealing with “the troubles” in Northern Ireland, or with the unique pleasures and trials encountered in a small farming community.


“After Night Hawks. Hopper. 1942.” is the second poem in A History of Yearning; it combines beautifully wrought observations of one work of art (the Edward Hopper painting) with images of World War II and its psychological aftermaths, plus a profound understanding of American culture during this time. The result is a multifaceted work of poetic art. In the concluding stanza, all the people in the painting

...viewed from outside
as from heaven, are frozen
before their perhaps
untarnished destinies.
The color ‘blood,” its sharp
metallic smear, is yet to
appear in this picture. In
Edward Hopper’s painting,
Night Hawks 1942, the man
with his back to us, waiting, half-
lit, has already figured this out.

In Part Three of the three-part poem “Photographs Already Fading, “ Spivack recounts her 2003 visit to an exhibit at London’s Imperial War Museum, which features World War One Poets. Here, work by famous survivors of the trenches, such as Siegfried Sassoon and Robert Graves, can be listened to on rented headphones; it is all “...read beautifully by contemporary actors.” In another section of the exhibit, presented behind glass and resembling

...perfectly sliced limes in aspic, letters
to their mothers are preserved in cases,
as when photographs are taken underwater, idealized,
the scholar-warriors made more luminous by time.
They wave to us, frond-like, going down,
as if telling us something urgent, moving away....

I could give additional quotes from the book, but I’m fairly certain you’ll get much more enjoyment from reading the poems—and this collection—in their entirety. (In a similar vein, it’s always better to be told by a friend, “You will really love this movie, because it deals with (X), and (Y) and (Z) give great performances,” than to be subjected to a bunch of five-second fragments which have been plucked from the whole film and then edited into a three-minute trailer.) So, I’ll end with two thoughts that may be of use.


1) If, for some reason, you do not enjoy the poetry of folks such as Heaney, Richard Hoffman, Galway Kinnell, Grace Paley, and Jim Schley, then you probably will be less than thrilled by Kathleen Spivack.


2) Buy a case of A History of Yearning (if chapbooks are sold by the case), and whenever you’re invited to a party, present a copy to your host. After all, there is always plenty of wine around. It’s great to open something that leaves one feeling clear-headed and invigorated. with senses heightened rather than dulled.
2009 was a very good year.

Kirk Etherton, Somerville, MA
February, 2011

Boston Area Small Press Scene/Ibbetson Street Press Exhibit at the Halle Library at Endicott College/Beverly, Mass.

Well there is a display of Ibbetson Street Books and other books on the main floor of the Halle Library at Endicott College. The display is titled: Boston Area Small Press and Poetry Scene/Ibbetson Street Press. And if you want to contribute a book you penned, be it poetry, or fiction, then send it to us and we will catalogue it and put in the Endicott College Poetry and Literary Arts Collection. Here are the books currently on display:


http://endicott.edu


Out of the Ordinary / Robert K. Johnson



PRESA 13 / Editor Eric Greinke



From Mist to Shadow/ Robert K. Johnson



Missing Moments/ by Robert K. Johnson



Blossoms of the Apricot/ Robert K. Johnson



Blood Soaked Dresses/ Gloria Mindock



Wren’s Cry/ Dorian Broooks



JID Jesuit / Andrew Gettler


Anytime Blues/Linda Lerner


City Woman/Linda Lerner


Entering Dennis/ Dennis Rhodes


East of the Moon/Ruth Kramer Baden


King of the Jungle/ Zvi Sesling


Steerage/Bert Stern


The Dark Opens/Miriam Levine


Living In Dangerous Times/Linda Lerner







We hope to have an extensive collection and we would love for you to be part of it. Send your donations to :


Endicott College
Halle Library
ATTN: Brian Courtemanche
376 Hale St.
Beverly, Mass.
01915
Boston Area Small Press Scene/Ibbetson Street Press Exhibit at the Halle Library at Endicott College/Beverly, Mass

The Yoga Divas by Rob Dinsmoor

The Yoga Divas
Rob Dinsmoor
Zingology Press
$15.00

Review by Rene Schwiesow

Rob Dinsmoor, a yoga teacher, tells us he did not choose yoga as a career, it chose him. The word yoga is Sanskrit, the root of which means “to yoke,” or to unite. During yoga one may find that they are “united,” with what Deepak Chopra calls, “the field” [of consciousness].

Dinsmoor is also a free-lance writer with many articles published on health and medical issues and has a background as a comedy writer with a group called, Chucklehead. Chucklehead was the subject of his first book: “Tales of the Troupe.” On the back of his second book, “The Yoga Divas,” Dinsmoor refers to an experience during a Kundalini yoga class from which there was no turning back. He goes on to say that he “became inextricably connected with the universe.”

While similar to other types of yoga, Kundalini yoga connects itself to Kundalini energy, which can be described as a sleeping, dormant energetic force that rises from the base of the spine – it is the energy of the Self and through its awakening an individual may be liberated from the constraints of Ego. I was intrigued by what I read, because I am an energy healer, very familiar with the chakras, and I have practiced yoga. I thought I was going to read about a profound spiritual journey, an awakening to uniting with “the field.”

The opening story, entitled “Kundalini Awakened,” was interesting and gave us a good look at the experience of Kundalini. He described well the pessimism that many beginners have when approaching a philosophy designed to awaken consciousness. He also described well what might happen to that individual once they complete the experience and walk out into the world again, craving something to ground them back to the earth. Dinsmoor grounds himself by eating a hearty breakfast filled with carbs and proteins. I was looking forward to the second story, entitled “Kali of the Night.” Kali, is the Hindu goddess of destruction. She is associated with time, change, removing the old and aiding one in implementing the new. Fitting, I thought for the story to follow a “Kundalini awakening.”

Imagine my surprise when I found out that the Kali Dinsmoor referred to was a woman who waked into a yoga class. A woman that Dinsmoor described as, “a feral feline. . .dark and sexy she-creature of the night.” Still I persisted in believing there may be a metaphorical connection to Kali, the goddess, and his Kundalini experience. No such luck. By the end of the story, Dinsmoor had finagled a lunch date with the girl, described their mad email liaison, and ended with their relationship drifting off into nothingness. Well, I suppose that could have a meditative angle.

The rest of the book contains other such stories, most of which include sightings of females and his interest in the curvy creatures. He offers some interesting glimpses into his travels, but only scratches the superficial surface of those experiences. Then Dinsmoor closes out the book with stories of his childhood that are not connected to his yoga. Perhaps Dinsmoor’s intent for the book was more comedic in nature, given his past writing acknowledgments. Bottom line, if you are looking for something more akin to the spiritual journey of a Yogi, you will not find that here. You will, however, find lots of allusions to the intrigue of the female form and some slightly comic romps through Dinsmoor’s life – many with a good foundation. It is a pity that Dinsmoor did not more aptly build upon those foundations.

Rene Schwiesow is the co-host of the popular South Shore poetry venue, The Art of Words in Plymouth, MA.

Review of “Gesangvoll – Songful” poetry by Hugh Fox

(Hugh Fox)




Review of “Gesangvoll – Songful” poetry by Hugh Fox

Pudding House Chapbook Series

ISBN 1-58998-812-4

$10

http://www.puddinghouse.com/


Review by Samantha Milowsky






The opening poem “Gesangvoll - Songful” is a compressed neighborhood scene on a “neolithic Chicago Street” that “became a transplanted history channel province.” The poem is an indicator of where the chapbook is headed with a tapestry of characters and narratives, employing a compressed and humorous style.



In the poem “Always,” there are surprising assertions such as “Incas spoke Arabic,” and a questioning of identity, what informs it, especially with different ethnic groups and cultures living together and mixing languages. The speaker humorously ponders “maybe they should call it The United Wanderers from Everywhere instead of the United States of America.”



There is joyful, neurotic rambling in the poem “Afraid,” asserting “I’m not afraid of DEATH, because I believe in reincarnation,” which leads to questioning what the speaker may be reincarnated into. Perhaps “a beauty next time…or an Einstein…Ein, one, Stein, stone… lots of pebbles in that head.” Or perhaps reincarnated into a disembodied nirvana with “pizza forever, no weight to loose.” It is an acknowledgement of the power of belief, at least to quell fear, while also being a bit funny about it.



There is enjoyable wordplay throughout. In “Quarter to Nine,” there is apocalyptic humor in “Planet Earth is about to implode in/on itself and then move from/im/to/ex?” and in “Leaving,” the sarcasm of “getting Rest in Peace tickets to what’s the noseless, eyeless, breathless difference?”



There are also painterly translated poems of the poet’s. In “Sendo Felix/Being Happy” the poet extols:



Being happy, only this, nothing

else, nothing out the future or

past, nothing about “isms” or

“atics,” pre- or almost- human bones,

kings, the hungry, only the aggressively

green hills, the clouds, birds floating

between the clouds like butterflies,

miniature paintings, flying over the

hills themselves.



I recommend Gesangvoll - Songful for the achievement of scope in short poems, the rich narrative of a multi-cultural experience, the humorous contemplation of life and aging, and the beauty of the poems’ lines

REVIEW OF “SO FAR, SO GOOD” poetry by Karen Alkalay-Gut

REVIEW OF “SO FAR, SO GOOD” poetry by Karen Alkalay-Gut, c. 2004, Boulevard Books/Babel Guides, 71 Lytton Road, OXFORD OX4 3NY, 127 pages. Author’s website: www.karenalkalay-gut.com

Review by Barbara Bialick

Karen Alkalay-Gut is a professor of English at Tel Aviv University who came into the world on the last night of the Blitz in London. She grew up in Rochester, New York, where she completed a Ph.D. at the University of Rochester. Since 1972, she’s lived in Israel, where she teaches and raised a family. The reason I give you the bio before the review is because part of what makes this book interesting is her worldly point of view. It is not encrusted with imagery and symbolism, but it is full of independence, curiosity and commentary with a little of the supernatural thrown in. As it says on the back cover, she “casts a seasoned eye over existence in our particular dangerous, stimulating moment.”

The front cover shows a black and white café photograph with one mysterious figure painted orange. To me, that represents Israel, where the terrorist can suddenly appear, but didn’t explode in this photo. Hence, “so far, so good” as the cover poem, dated Tel Aviv, 2002, says. Even so, after 9-11-2001, she ran for safety in Ireland, where she couldn’t find anything Jewish.

One of the strong themes in this book is that aging women are often still the same inside. In “Friends” she writes “I know women who do not sleep at night from desire/a fire licks at their aging thighs/despite their wizened skin.” But in the poem “54” she thinks back to when her immigrant mother was that age: “I remember my mother at my age now-/old and foreign and wholly unequipped/for the revolution of my world./…But here I am at 54/still feeling like a born orphan/wishing my mother at my age/had been able to take me as I was.”

I was particularly interested in her narrative of looking for an apartment in Tel Aviv, Israel. It gave me a sense of intimacy of Israeli everyday life: “The façade is always unfathomable,/a united front of blinds closed to the street,/at least at midday when we arrive to weigh/the possibility of living on the inside, to be/part of the scene…Once inside, it is much easier. From each window we can view/a different family, busy with their lives/and ours. Friday afternoon and the mother/of the soldier is hanging his weekend fatigues/…She leans/a bit further over the clothes line than she needs to/so she can see us evaluating the empty bedroom…”

And so on goes “So Far, So Good,” which one can probably find on Amazon.com.
In addition to teaching, says the bio on her website, she chairs the Israel Association of Writers in English, is Vice Chair of the Federation of Writers Unions in Israel, is a board member of the Yiddish Writers Association and is a coordinating editor of the “Jerusalem Review.”

At the Concord of the Rivers by Anne Ipsen

At the Concord of the Rivers
Anne Ipsen
Ibus Press, Newton, MA
$25.00 Hardcover; $18.00 Paperback

By Rene Schwiesow

What better place for a doctoral student of history to wake up in than the past. Which is exactly where Anne Ipsen’s protagonist, Abigail Walker, finds herself in Ipsen’s most recent book, “At the Concord of the Rivers.” Abigail is a stressed student in the 1950’s whose professor believes that women will always quit their education to get married. And, indeed, Abigail is pulled between the work on her doctoral thesis and planning a wedding. Frustrated by her mother’s demands for the necessity of dress alteration appointments and an angry phone conversation with her fiancé, Abigail takes off for the Natick Historical Society and the haven of research.

However, a deer, a pothole and rain-slicked roads cause an accident that prevents Abigail from ever arriving in Natick. Instead, after a tree limb falls and renders her unconscious, she wakes to find herself in the 17th Century and mistaken for a young lad.

Is Abigail’s time travel to become a blessing or a curse? She vacillates between the good fortune of being immersed into the very way of life she had been researching and wondering how she will ever be returned to the 20th Century.

Ipsen’s own research serves her well in the telling of Abigail’s tale. With the turning of each page, we are drawn further into the life of 17th Century New England. Maps appear in our minds as Abigail and Paul Hosmer, a young part-Indian man with whom Abigail begins a relationship, traverse the countryside on horseback. The relationship that Paul and Abigail forge and the love that they find could prove dangerous to both of them once it becomes public knowledge. But, “At the Concord of the Rivers” is far more than an interracial love triangle that spans centuries. The ease with which disease may have spread in the 1700’s is evident as Abigail struggles to teach both healers and lay persons the necessity of cleanliness. The suppression of women, the ideology that denies them an education, rumbles beneath Abigail being offered a teaching position. The rigidity of Puritan Concord and New England springs to life through the clergyman, Tedious Thatcher; services at the Meeting House; and through discussions about the Salem Witch Trials. Ironically the kind, elderly woman who takes Abigail into her home practices herbology and employs what may be considered holistic measures in her healing of both New Englanders and Natives alike. Midwife, healer, and intuitive, Hannah is the pivot around which Abigail’s life now turns.

“At the Concord of the Rivers,” is indeed a historical work. Yet Ipsen’s creation of fictional character allows the history to unfold in a way that grants us our own experience with the 17th Century. Facts on education, politics, religion, and a woman’s place, become the undercurrent for the daily flow that binds the people to the land, their God, their prejudices, and to each other.

Rene Schwiesow is the co-host of Plymouth’s The Art of Words

"Meeting Matisse" by Leo Racicot

"Meeting Matisse"

by Leo Racicot


Other than a lifelong attraction (beginning
with a French class field trip to Boston's Museum
of Fine Art with our teacher, Mary Ann Manning
Kennedy, in my sophomore year) to Impressionist
and Expressionist painters, Monet, Manet, Renoir,
Degas and van Gogh, I am hardly what you would
call an art hound, although once an older woman
and her much younger paramour in Chinatown's
Little Hong Kong told me I looked like the
Russian, Marc Chagall and tried to entice me
into a threesome but all I wanted or needed from
that little, magic eatery on that cold and lonesome
night was the egg foo young (no gravy). And I never
recall feeling one way or the other about the Fauvist,
Henri Matisse. So I still do not know what compelled
me to take a chance and a bus to see if I could get into
the Metropolitan Museum of Art's Henri Matisse exhibit.
This was in about 1993, and winter because it was bitter,
bitter cold; no gloves or hat or extra sweater were of any
use to me as I stood in the freezing cold of Fifth Avenue
and 82nd Street hoping to get a gander at what all the
cultural world was a-buzz about. At best, I expected an
attractively put-together package of the artist's output,
nothing more. When a line monitor announced to the
crowd that the exhibit was reaching capacity limits for
the day, I was so angry, I spit. And I know that something
cosmic charged me to stay in that line, something well
outside myself, and to shiver and stomp my feet against
the frustration and ennui for what seemed like days praying,
actually praying that I would be one of the lucky ones to
make it through the door and land a ticket.

* * * *

Words come slowly for describing "Madame". She had
a pouty, lipsticked mouth that formed French words the
way a vagina forms enticements. Her eyes were shimmering
lapis lazuli, sparkly, alert, still the prettiest blue eyes I have
ever seen, and her soft, brunette flip -- so popular then --
lent her a "Coffee, Tea or Me" "Come Fly Me" 60s stewardess
air (on flights going only to Paris, of course!), as did her winsome
figure which she always decorated to perfection with fashion skirts
and clicky dress-up shoes. My crush on her went way beyond
sex, for it extended its arms around the language she was
teaching. I am sure as a summer's day is long that it is only
because she was my high school French teacher that I later
chose French as my major in college.

Not only was she my French teacher my freshman year
but oh! Eureka! my sophomore year as well. My ticket stub
to heaven could not look any better than did that September
sophomore class schedule with her name once again printed
on it though this time around she was "Mrs. Kennedy", not
the "Miss Manning" of the previous term. It was a happy
but sad year that year; "Madame" became pregnant ("enceinte")
almost right away and announced a leave of absence that was
to extend past the end of the school year. So no more "Madame".
All of the color went out of the sky, and the classroom as
> in walked Doris H.R.H. Bourgeois-Herlihy, a looker, too, and
a genuine eccentric but not "Madame". I was devastated,
as young boys who understand themselves little, and Life
even less, will be. For when I waited outside her classroom,
in the darkened school hall of a late fall afternoon, hoping to
be able to say goodbye, and miracle of miracles, she put out
the light and emerged, pretty as a package, carrying in her
frilly, little arms a bouquet of cherry-red roses, and smiled
widely at me, "Hello" and then "Au revoir", I felt a thunder
of revelation in my stomach; I loved her not because
she was female but because I was female, and that my
real colors bled for men, not women.

"Madame" disappeared down an empty hall, and I
knew that all my future was to be taken up in the
pursuit of and ultimately failed attempts at bedding
unattainable men.

* * * *

In the year of the Matisse exhibit, no less than three
infatuations had come crashing down on me, all of them
aborted in mid-flight, unconsummated, and all of them
for musicians who it took me years to realize make glorious
music but are usually totally fucked up in the head when it
comes to romance. I needed healing, and I needed to find a
way to live again...

Had I opened myself to it, I might have shared a collective
ecstacy alongside my fellow museumgoers but I walked away
from that and convinced myself I was alone with my joy.
Here, inside the exhibit hall, my eyes, overcome by rapture,
swallowed the colors the way Madame Kennedy's mouth
had swallowed French. I never knew colors could have such
sound, such bold and unceasing reverberation.
The walls radiated color. I was covered in it.
It was lifting me up off the ground Life had thrown me down on.
I even saw my darling mother resurrected for me, as a twin in the picture,
"Woman Before an Aquarium". I was brought back to some forgotten
garden of feelings, blossoming with ghosts both living and
gone, and it was springtime again in me. Matisse had
a secret in his throat that he was more than willing to tell:
"Live! And live joyously!"

"There is no more to be said for loving another person
than for loving the whole world", my friend, Quentin
Crisp, wrote me in a letter, to try to mend my broken soul.
There is maybe no lasting bandage that romance can make,
no white knight on a white horse to lift you from the saddle
to his arms. But we can love ourselves. Again and again,
if we open up to it, there is art and language and literature.
Creators and what they create are our safehouse against
self-destruction.

Again and again, there is resurrection!

Again and again, there is Matisse.

Famed Poet's Theatre Comes to Somerville!

Famed Poet's Theater Comes to Somerville!

With Doug Holder

Richard Cambridge, who incidentally lives in the Republic of Cambridge, has moved his much lauded Poet’s Theater to the Arts Armory in Somerville, Mass, from Club Passim in Harvard Square. I first met Richard Cambridge when we were part of a group of poets working on an anthology “City of Poets: 18 Boston Voices” organized by Don DiVecchio in 2000. I ran into Richard recently at the Armory, and well, here is our interview:


Can you talk about the “Poet’s Theatre” at the “Club Passim” in Harvard Square, Cambridge, that you revived?




When Club Passim went into receivership and had to be reformulated; Tim Mason, a friend and a booking agent for the Club, called and asked me if I wanted to do a ‘Poet’s Theatre” there. I had been doing poetry theatre before then on the local scene. So I jumped at the chance. I really enjoyed doing it. Back when “Passim” was “Club 47” they has a “Poets’ Theatre,” and it was very political. They were really enmeshed with the issues of the day: Civil Rights, Vietnam, etc… It faded out. I started it up again in 1995.

I always looked at poets as something other than someone doing a feature or poem. I came from the performance-poet tradition. But I wanted to move towards something larger. I tried to find people in the community who were folk singers, dancers, and comedians to help me put together poetry theatre. Our first feature was the poet Sebastian Lockwood.


Why have you moved Poet's Theatre to Somerville?

I had been at Club Passim for fifteen years, and it was a great run. The club took a hit in donor contributions after the financial crash in September, 2008, and needed to maximize earnings, even on the off nights.

Have you had any Somerville connections over the years?

Living in mid-Cambridge for so many years, my path winds in and out of Somerville nearly every day: cafes, restaurants, venues, kitty care. New current favorite for me:
Neighborhood Café in Union Square. Long time favorite: the Wine Cask is tops. I miss the open mike Licia Skye and Ryk McIntyre ran at Redbones.

Any new developments in your own poetry life--school, books,....

I’m enrolled in an MFA program in fiction at Stonecoast, U of So. Maine.
I’m polishing a novel about a hitchhiking journey I took in the Nineties.

Can you talk about your view of poetry as a force for change?

I wonder if we are not doing enough, for I see little effect for good in the greater, public arena in our country today. Sure, on a local level, on a personal level, poetry— all the arts are a force for healing, and can and do profoundly affect peoples’ lives.

Split This Rock is a festival that happens every other year in DC. It calls for poets and writers to witness with their words against injustice. I am excited about it because its a gathering of writers who are marching on the White House, not just political activists. Perhaps if word and deed can unite and grow we will be able to effect more change for the good.

I ask myself, okay, what level do I have to write at for the government to take notice and ban my words. Here's an example: Years ago NPR asked Martín Espada to write a poem for "All Things Considered." He wrote a poem about Mumia Abu Jamal, the Black journalist on Death Row. The government calls up NPR and says you can't put that on the radio, so NPR censors the poem. Espada wrote an essay, "All Things Censored" as a response.

In other countries poetry has been a huge force for change. I think of Pablo Neruda who wedded poetic vision with public service all his life, was targeted for many years in Chile for stinging the rulers with his verses. He had to go underground in 1947 to complete his Canto General to avoid arrest and imprisonment.



Will the Theater present on a regular basis?


The second or third Friday of the month. Rockabetty is up next, Feb 21, CD Collins & part of her band.

I don't have a website for this, but am open to ideas. I do have Facebook



****The Center for Arts at the Armory, 191 Highland Avenue, Somerville, MA 02143 | (P) 617.718.2191, (F) 617.718.1755 | (E) info@ArtsattheArmory.org

Citizen Somerville: Growing up with the Winter Hill Gang by Bobby Martini and Elayne Keratsis

Citizen Somerville: Growing up with the Winter Hill Gang
Bobby Martini & Elayne Keratsis
Powder House Press
$16.95

by Rene Schwiesow

“It’s not just another mob book. It’s my life,” Bobby Martini says at the end of the trailer for his book “Citizen Somerville: Growing up with the Winter Hill Gang.” The book was released in December, 2010. Martini wrote the book based on a series of interviews, including interviews with reputed Winter Hill Gang Boss, Howard “Howie” Winter. The trailer and a clip of a videotaped session with Winter can be found on You Tube and provides interesting viewing as companion to the book.

During an interview with Martini, Ellen Brogna, Winter’s wife, speaks of her struggle with anxiety and fear that began as an adolescent and continues even now – “but you build walls and you learn to deal,” Brogna ends. Martini goes on to say, “We are all professional wall builders. I’m one myself. I don’t even think it’s a conscious choice. The booze, the crime, the violence comes out and the walls automatically go up to protect childhood as much as possible. Once they’re up, they rarely come down for the rest of your life.”

Certainly many of Martini’s readers can identify with building walls. It is his ability to deconstruct a portion of his own walls that makes his honesty palpable in his writing. He allows others access not only to the history of Somerville’s “Winter Hill Gang,” but also to the stories of the families whose lives were interwoven behind the public discussion of organized crime.

“Citizen Somerville” is a historical novel, a memoir, and a sharing of a culture made public through news media reports, movies and literature, but rarely seen through the eyes of family. Martini brings us into his living room and into the living room of Howie Winter in a way that reminds us that “family” has a universal understanding, perhaps reminds of the dysfunctions and foibles we deal with, and offers a reminder of the love we have for those we hold close. He weaves family through the stories of crime, murder, mayhem, loss and sorrow so that, at times, we can very nearly see the eyes of those living through the dangerous times of the Irish Gang Wars during the 1960’s in Somerville and Charlestown. While the writing does not always follow chronological order and Martini’s insertion of his own experiences in italics can make the story line difficult to follow, the book, nevertheless, is a page-turner. In fact, the way in which the story is told and Martini’s commitment to using New England vernacular add to the authenticity of the tale.

The story could not be told without writing in Steve “The Rifleman” Flemmi and Whitey Bulger. Bulger had moved into Winter’s garage in the 1970’s with his own bookmaking and, while Winter was away, began to overtake the Somerville enterprise. Nor could it be told without discussing the way the FBI had been in bed with both Bulger and Flemmi. It’s history, and as I mentioned, this book is historical. However, Winter, the man John Kerry once referred to as the “Number Two Crime Boss in New England,” now often referred to as “The Gentleman Gangster,” wants to make it perfectly clear that neither Whitey Bulger nor Steve “The Rifleman” Flemmi were ever part of Howie Winter’s Winter Hill Gang. Today, in his late 70’s, Winter is no longer affiliated with organized crime in New England, both he and Martini consider themselves Somerville survivors with a deep love for their city. And that is clear in the telling of their stories.

Rene Schwiesow is a member of the Somerville-based Bagel Bards.

The Secret Admirer by Kyle Flak

The Secret Admirer
by Kyle Flak
Copyright 2010 by Kyle Flak
Adastra Press
Easthampton, MA 01027
Softbound, 20pages, $16.00
ISBN 10: 0-9822495-8-6
ISBN 13: 978-0-9822495-8-1

Review by Zvi A. Sesling

Some of the best poetry around is put out by small press publishers, among whom Adastra Press ranks as one of the best. Having read several of publisher Gary Metras’ offerings I was enthused to receive The Secret Admirer by Kyle Flak for review.

Once again Metras has not let me down. Flak a Michigan native who was educated at Northern Michigan University and the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. As a poet Flak falls somewhere between Jim Carroll and Charles Bukowski: tough, gritty, direct, honest (?), a few drinks and some drugs thrown in and sometimes sentimental but almost always an exciting adventure to read.

Most of the poems are culled from Flak’s apparently adventuresome life opening with “When We Were Both Sixteen” and following with titles such as “What Grunge Was About,” “Guys Night Out,” and the title poem, “Secret Admirer,” among others.

My personal favorite is “After A Stay in the County Jail”

It was hamburgers & dill pickles
all over again. You in a
gingham skirt high above
the knee, squirting
ketchup in the
picnic sunshine. “Look!
five seagulls are
hopping over
this way!”
you said, and I just spooked
them off with a
big, red kickball, laughing.
Laughing because it’s so nice
to finally have a
problem that isn’t
really a problem.

There is also an absolute favorite: “Amherst, Massachusetts”

Emily Dickinson calls me up at midnight to
ask if I want to really get stoned and
watch old wrestling videos.

“Just let me
put some pants on, Emily. I’ll be
right over.”

My car is a yellow Camaro.

There are French fries all over
the floor.

I turn on the headlights.

And zoom on over

to see the only girl in town
who still know what poetry

is all about.

Anytime you can take the iconic Ms. Dickinson, throw in Ms. Maryjane you have a poet who also (in addition to the attributes I mentioned earlier) can conjure up some fun reading.

Methinks Gary Metras knows what poetry is all about and his meticulously handmade books of which this one is letterpress printed, sewn and bound by hand by Metras (with some help from the author). The production takes about three months and is worth keeping not just because there are only 200 copies and this is a first edition, but because
the whole shebang is a true work of art.

Review of ACROSS STONES OF BAD DREAMS by Zvi A. Sesling

Review of ACROSS STONES OF BAD DREAMS by Zvi A. Sesling, Cervena Barva Press, P.O. Box 440357, W. Somerville, MA 02144-3222, cover art by William J. Kelle, 39 pages, 2011, $7.

Review by Barbara Bialick

This great chapbook is about the giant dumpster of memory in the realm of past loves gone dead. The image of death carries right into the end, where Sesling imagines heaven as a welcoming place with a beautiful aquamarine sky like his mother’s ring…and yet there are his mother and father and relatives still instilling guilt and criticism and where “Piles of ancestors like old newspapers in the basement/will present themselves as headlines for me to acknowledge,…the sun yellow as the stars my aunts, uncles, cousins wore.” Only “Dogs from my past will bound forward through green fields,/tails wagging a quick metronome to their happy bark…”

That’s a heavy ending, and yet the sad, angry, sardonic but wry, and rye light touches of getting dumped by or dumping his past loves, even a son, carries you to the end with the voice of an experienced and knowing writer’s careful use of language. This whole collection works.

Back to the dumpster. “In this dumpster are all the dumped people, lovers, wives/husbands, boyfriends, girlfriends/old friends, acquaintances,/parents, children/,,,crushed like grapes…waiting for a chance to be rescued, dumped again.”
Sesling even feels dumped by the brother he does not have—“The brother who does not/exist is the shadow that/follows in the streets/or the rooms I enter/he never cries for me”.

Zvi Sesling, who recently published “King of the Jungle” (Ibbetson Street Press), is the editor of the “Muddy River Poetry Review”. He has published poetry in “Midstream”,
“Saranac Review,” “Voices Israel Anthology,” “Cyclamen and Swords” and many others. In 2007 he received First Prize in the Reuben Rose International Poetry Competition.

To buy this book, which I hope you do, go to Cervena Barva’s bookstore at www.thelostbookshelf.com.

Cambridge Community Poem: Bringing Poetry to The People

Former Cambridge Populist Peter Payack sent me the introduction to his book project (Cambridge Community Poem) that should be released in Feb. 2011. I am very pleased to be included:


INTRODUCTION
Bringing Poetry to The People

As Cambridge’s first Poet Populist, one of my first initiatives was to create a poem, by the people of Cambridge. Instead of me writing about Cambridge, my idea was to let the many voices of Cambridge write a poem about their town. The result is now in your hands.

What makes this collection, this poem of 231 parts, unique is that it is not written exclusively by poets. It is written by the very people who make up Cambridge itself.

This volume includes poems by octogenarians, third graders, college presidents and professors, city workers, Pulitzer Prize winners, elected officials, Grammy Award winners, teachers, All-Americans, All-State athletes and a five-time NFL Pro Bowler, comedians, street performers, carpenters, high school students, scientists, researchers, lawyers, actors, doctors, artists, nurses, coaches, bicycle mechanics, marathoners, Poet Laureates, firefighters, pharmacists. And even poets and writers, if you can imagine that!

I put out a call asking for poems with up-lifting themes of city life, peace, community spirit, and the past, present and future of Cambridge. This was followed up with several news stories including a front page piece in the Boston Globe (February 20, 2009). I received hundreds of poems, from people down the street to people around the planet.

I attended various city events, like the Cambridge River Festival, the Revels RiverSing and Fresh Pond Day, went to visit the Kennedy-Longfellow School, Cambridge Rindge & Latin, and Haggerty schools, gave numerous poetry readings and talked with people that I ran into on the street.

Then out of the blue, the idea itself was endorsed by one of the living legendary poets of our time, John Ashbery. When on a visit to Harvard to receive the University’s Arts Medal, he said when asked in the Boston Globe: (Q) “Cambridge’s Poet Populist, Peter Payack, is asking residents to submit a few lines of poetry for a ‘community poem.’ Do you think this is a good idea?” And to tell the truth, I held my breath wondering what Ashbery was going to say! (A) “I like the idea of many voices contributing to a single poem. The 19th century proto-surrealist French poet Lautreamont once wrote that poetry should be made by everybody, and that sounds like what this project is carrying out.” Phewww…. But, I already knew the answer, anyway.

For forty years I have made it my mission to bring poetry out of the hands of strictly the academics and bring it back to the people, where it belongs. I have done this with a number of projects starting with Phone-a-Poem, The Cambridge/Boston Poetry Hotline, (1976-2001), which some weeks would receive up to 50,000 calls. And most recently Poet Populist Peter Payack’s Poetry Cookies that you can still buy at the Grolier Poetry Book Shop. (Find complete list of my major public poetry projects in the addendum.)

Cambridge has always been seen as a special place. And what makes Cambridge that special place is the people who have at one time or another called it their home, from the Wampanoag Tribes, the first European settlers who re-named the area Newtowne, George Washington and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, to our venerable senior citizens and our school children of today.

As intended this collection, this poem, has a symphony of voices. I tried to give artistic freedom to each writer and so did very little stylistic editing. These are Cambridge voices through and through.

I hope the Cambridge Community Poem brings some poetic light to the special place we call home.

Peter Payack
January 29, 2011
Cambridge, Massachusetts