Endicott College Professor Richard Oxenberg Wrestles with God in a new book "God a Dialogue"

 

I met Richard Oxenberg at Endicott College where I have taught for 15 years. Oxenberg, a professor of philosophy at Endicott has a new book out " Two Philosophers Wrestle with GOD: A Dialogue." The book concerns a series of conversations that he had with another distinguished philosopher Jerry Martin. Martin has claimed he had an actual conversation conversation with God. Oxenberg and I have talked about his book on a number of occasions; so I decided to interview him.

...Interview with Doug Holder





Could you say a little bit about how this book came about?

Yes. I first met Jerry Martin at an American Academy of Religion conference in Atlanta in 2010. He was facilitating a group discussion called 'Theology Without Walls,' which I attended. The participants were considering the question of whether and how it might be possible to do theology outside of traditional confessional boundaries; in other words, to develop a theology that would draw from multiple religious traditions rather than be confined to one. I was intrigued by the idea and later googled Jerry Martin's name to learn a little more about him. I discovered a website in which Jerry told a strange story of having engaged in a series of conversations with God. I read it with some fascination and, of course, not a little skepticism. Part of what lent it credence, though, was that Jerry Martin had some very impressive credentials. He had spent years as the chairman of the philosophy department at the University of Colorado at Boulder, and had served as head of the National Endowment for the Humanities in Washington.


Some time later I ran into Jerry again at another American Academy of Religion conference, this time in Boston. We ended up talking with one another for quite some time about our views of religion and about some of Jerry's experiences. He was very friendly and affable and we remained in contact. Eventually, he published a book of his conversations with God, called "God: An Autobiography as Told to a Philosopher." After reading it, I again had many questions. At some point we decided to sit down together and record our conversations about his experiences. This book is the result.


In your book God: A Dialogue you discuss a conversation you had with a noted philosopher Jerry Martin, who claimed to have had a conversation with this almighty deity. Did you ever feel that Dr. Martin was pompous or unstable?

So, no, my strong impression of Jerry is that he is an earnest, highly intelligent, rational person who has had an extraordinary experience and is doing his best to report it as he experienced it. What actually accounts for these experiences is another question. In Jerry's book, he writes as if he and God are just two people having a simple conversation with one another, and I'm sure that's how Jerry experienced it. My own suspicion, though, is that what is actually going on is something more psychologically and spiritually complex. We explore some of these questions in the second dialogue in the book.


Have you ever heard voices which might have been from another dimension or realm?

No, I've sometimes had what I've come to think of as 'epiphanies' - moments of insight when I feel I've come to understand something at a profound level. But I've never heard otherworldly voices.





Dr. Martin claims that we are 'instruments of God." If we are instruments of God, does that imply we have no free will? An instrument to me seems like a puppet.


I don't recall Jerry ever speaking of us as 'instruments of God.' Actually, he speaks of us as partners with God. The way it is presented in Jerry's book, God depends upon us for God's own development and even self-awareness. At one point, God says to Jerry, "I live through each individual life - inspiring, guiding, being blocked, whispering, coaching, feeling joy, and suffering." Jerry then says, "So one dimension of your story is the personal copartnering." And God responds, "Not just one dimension - the crucial dimension."


At another point, Jerry says to God, "I want a strong sense of Divine Providence," and God responds, "No, you have to give that up. I do not write the script. We are all players trying to discover our lines. I have a very special role and it involves guiding the human players toward the right action."


So, as envisioned in Jerry's book, we are not at all like puppets. God is working with us and through us and, in some sense, even in dependency on us, to achieve a good result. We definitely have free will, and the way we exercise it determines how successful the world will be.


God, according to Martin, talked about the arrogance of "human reason." Does this imply that reason is a hindrance to a strong connection to God?


It is not reason that is a hindrance, but arrogance. The phrase "the arrogance of human reason" refers to the presumptuous notion that only what human reason has thus far come to understand can possibly be true. Authentic reason is not arrogant but humble and aware of its limitations. Until Einstein, Newton's theory of gravity was the best understanding of gravity that human reason had thus far arrived at. Then Einstein came along and developed another and superior understanding. And it seems to me entirely likely that at some point Einstein's theory will itself be replaced by something even better.


So, it is foolish to think that what we now know is all there is to know. Indeed, there are many mysteries that modern science has yet to resolve. Perhaps the most significant of these is the relationship between mind and matter, sometimes called the 'mind-body' problem. Modern science has given us a highly materialistic view of reality that takes no account of features of mind that we know through introspection, such as thought, feeling, desire, and volition. An 'arrogant' rationalism, rooted in modern science, might be inclined to dismiss the subjective dimension of reality, given that scientific reasoning has thus far been unable to find a place for it. And indeed, we have philosophers who refer to the mind as an 'epiphenomenon' of the brain, in other words, just a strange side-effect of neurological processes without substantial reality. In this way, they basically dismiss all that is meaningful in life.


So, it is not reason that needs to be overcome but arrogance. The model for this in philosophy is Socrates. Socrates was certainly a great devotee of reason, but at the same time he was famous for saying, "I know that I don't know." In fact, it is reason itself, properly applied, that should prevent us from becoming arrogant. Authentic reason is aware of its own limitations.


It seems that God agrees with scientists that the Universe was created through the "Big Bang" And in fact he created the Universe because of the loneliness of the void.


Yes, one of the basic themes of Jerry's revelations has to do with what philosophers sometimes call 'the paradox of the One and the Many.' At the very foundation of reality is a primordial Unity that expresses itself in almost infinite diversity. As Jerry's book presents it, what scientists know of as 'the Big Bang' is the emergence of our diverse universe out of this more primordial divine Unity.


A distinction is made in Jerry's book between the God of this world, who is the one who primarily speaks to Jerry, and what comes to be called the 'God Beyond God,' which is the primordial Unity itself. The God of this world is an instantiation of the God Beyond God, but unlike the latter, which is eternal and quiescent, the God of this world is temporal and engaged in a project.


As Jerry's book presents it, among the first experiences of the God of this world upon emerging from the God beyond God is an experience of loneliness. When I first read this, it seemed very strange, especially in light of our common conception of God as fully self-sufficient. But the more I thought about it, the more it made sense to me. After all, loneliness is an experience we all have. If everything arises from God, then loneliness itself must have its roots in something about God. As I came to think of it, loneliness might be recognized as resulting from the fragmentation of the divine Unity that occurs when the One gives rise to the Many. Each separated individual feels itself bereft of the eternal Unity it enjoyed prior to individuation. That sense of separation is experienced as loneliness, and this loneliness gives rise to the desire for love, through which we seek to overcome the division between self and other and return to an experience of unity. So, the God of this world emerges with a project, which is to create a loving world.


God remarks that there is a " God Beyond God"—so behind God is a sort of mentor— So, is God, the creator -- an apprentice?

This is related to my answer to the last question. I'm not sure the word 'apprentice' is quite right, but the God of this world emerges with a project arising from the God Beyond God. In Jerry's book, God says at one point, "This is the ultimate story, the ultimate meaning of it all . . . I have a project to complete . . . It is in the nature of reality that the world, the totality of worlds plus Me, is here for a purpose. There is a goal . . . The goal is completeness, connectedness, to create the many and pull them back into the one."


So, this is God's job, so to speak, God's essential project. As presented in Jerry's book, it is necessary for the primal Unity - the "God Beyond God" - to create the many, for it is only through creating the many that it is able to fully actualize and express itself. But the creation of the many presents a problem, as it leads to discord, alienation, conflict, loneliness, and all forms of suffering. This problem can only be resolved through the establishment of a loving world, a world that functions in harmony with itself. This is the ultimate goal.


As Jerry and I discuss in our dialogue, when God says that the goal is to "create the many and pull them back into the one," God does not mean to bring them back into the original primal Unity, but rather to establish a harmonious, loving, concord among the many, as opposed to a conflictual discord. And this is an ongoing project. It is not a project that is going to come to an end at some point in time, but a project to be pursued at every moment of time. Every moment presents us with opportunities for furthering concord or discord and we fulfill ourselves (and God fulfills Godself) as we promote concord.


What are God's greatest wishes for humanity?

Well, it may sound a little trite, but the ultimate wish of God is for a loving world. In Jerry's book, God says to Jerry, "Love is what fully actualizes a thing. A person comes into full personhood only in a loving relationship, in loving and being loved. That is true of the whole world, and of Me as well." In another place, God says, "Love is the basic force of the universe. I enter the world out of love. The world yearns for Me, and turns to Me, out of love. Love forms the bond between man and woman, one neighbor and another, and the orders of nature. It is love that pulls all of nature upward, and heals the soul and repairs the breaches in the world. Even on the level of physics, it is love that holds the world together and provides its energy."


So, God's wish is for a world fully integrated in love. According to the God who speaks in Jerry's book, this is what all the different religions are pointing to in their various and imperfect ways. One of the great theological challenges of our time is to recognize this about the different religions and have them move from a posture of hostility toward one another to a posture of mutual respect for one another, and, beyond this, to a recognition of their commonality. And this brings us back to my answer to the first question. As I said, when I first met Jerry he was facilitating a group discussion about a project he was calling, "Theology Without Walls." According to Jerry, it was God who asked him to initiate this project. Its purpose is to have the diverse religions come to recognize their common ground and common purpose. Ultimately, that purpose is to foster a loving world.


Why should we read your book?


This book is really a companion piece to Jerry's original book: God: An Autobiography as Told to a Philosopher. That book is fascinating because of the picture of God it presents. I've tried to give an idea of that picture in my previous answers. As Jerry's book presents it, there is a single divine reality underlying all the world's religions. This God has a project, which is ultimately to foster a loving world, although that may express it too simplistically. Part of this project, and consistent with it, is the fostering of justice, beauty, artistic creativity, education, intellectual advance. The ultimate project is to fully actualize the potentialities latent in reality itself, potentialities that are only fully actualized through harmony and love. So, this is a basic theme of Jerry's book.


One drawback of Jerry's book is that its ideas are not presented systematically. Jerry was intent on recording his conversations with God just as he experienced them, and as a result - though Jerry's book is very readable - the overall message of the book may seem a little obscure. What I tried to do in my dialogues with Jerry was to ask questions and make proposals that would help us bring out the underlying message of Jerry's book in a more systematic way. I think this is one of the values of my book with Jerry.


I think anyone interested in thinking deeply about religion and spirituality would find both Jerry's original book and my book of dialogues with Jerry worthile. As one commentator wrote about my book with Jerry, "This collection of both candid and profound conversations will delight any reader with an interest in spiritual matters and the big questions of life's meaning and purpose."


I think that about says it. Thanks for your questions, Doug!

Red Letter Poem #227

 The Red Letters

 

In ancient Rome, feast days were indicated on the calendar by red letters.

To my mind, all poetry and art serves as a reminder that every day we wake together beneath the sun is a red-letter day.



––Steven Ratiner



SAVE THE DATE!



The fifth annual Red Letter LIVE! reading

will be held on Saturday, November 9th 2024

Robbins Library, Community Room, 700 Mass Ave, Arlington

1-3pm, with a reception to follow

Free, and all are welcome!



Featuring poets:



Danielle Legros Georges

Indran Amirthanayagam

Heather Treseler &

Steven Ratiner



with a musical performance by clarinetist

Todd Brunel



***If you’re in the Boston area, we’d love to see you there

A flyer is attached with artist biographies



Hosted by

Steven Ratiner and Jean Flanagan





Red Letter Poem #227


Foretold

July 4, 2024


The white sheet I dreamed

floating over us: for sleep

or was it shroud



cloud of un-



We should have known

when they called him Our

David (adultery/murder), Our

Cyrus (not one of us but)



We should

have heard King



Two more tanks!

he said in the dream

as if he were ordering coffee



Retribution



They gave him the right

to remain



––Martha Collins







Sometimes we’ll wake in a lather from a disturbing dream, and quickly dismiss its threat: just the unconscious having a Chicken Little-panic attack––and the sky is certainly not falling. But other times, opening our eyes, we’ll find the residue of the dream still vivid and terrifying, leaving us to grasp the full measure of what seems to be our prophetic imagination. On July 1st this past summer, in the matter of Trump v.United States, our nation’s highest court ruled that the President of this Republic has a near-blanket immunity from criminal prosecution for “official” acts. For the first time in our 250-year history, this seems to put our chief executive beyond the rule of law. With a Constitutional interpretation like this, a would-be tyrant could nullify an election, foment an armed insurrection, and simply refuse the peaceful transfer of power that has been the very hallmark of our democracy––all by framing his actions as part of his ‘official responsibilities.’ Quite a nightmare scenario. So it is no surprise that, just a few days later (and on the anniversary of this nation’s birth), Martha Collins found herself grappling with the latter. Martha––a poet whose artistic antenna is remarkably sensitive, attuned to both the outer machinations of our society as well the inner voice of conscience––took a bit of her nighttime terror and turned it into this brief but chilling poem.



It almost seems unnecessary to reintroduce Martha Collins in these electronic pages. Poet, translator, educator, cultural advocate, Martha is simply one of the most honored American literary talents writing today. She published her eleventh volume of poetry, Casualty Reports, with the Pitt Poetry Series in October 2022. The collection just prior to that, Because What Else Could I Do, is a wrenching response to the death of her husband; it won the Poetry Society of America’s William Carlos Williams Award. Her trilogy about race and racism in America remains a monumental examination of our society’s most bitter fault lines and the source of our national grief. Other honors include fellowships from the NEA, the Bunting Institute, the Ingram Merrill Foundation, and the Witter Bynner Foundation, as well as prizes too numerous to detail in this small space.



As her readers have come to expect, her poems exploring societal turmoil involve neither political rant nor emotional histrionics. They are carefully-wrought, musically-restrained verse––and thus their power is derived from the small modulations of tone and attention, drawing us into her unfolding vision. Here, she opens with an unimposing image––a white sheet floating above us––but we are unsure of whether this is simply part of the bedclothes or something from the tomb. The aural quality of the poem is, by turns, comforting (those chiming words like shroud and cloud, dreamand remain) and unsettling (oh, that burgeoning phrase cloud of un-, lopped off at the prefix!). And when supporters of the former President attempt to cloak him with the dignity of Biblical allusion (David. . .Cyrus. . .,) the poet punctures the pretense by calling out what they really seem to be proposing: a King, governing by fiat, and no longer subject to the will of the people. At the most crucial moment, the poem seizes us with one simple and simply devastating image: Two more tanks!/ he said in the dream/ as if he were ordering coffee. Indeed, we need not strain at deducing this individual’s political intent––the candidate has laid it all out in televised speeches. Machines of war. . .directed against one’s political enemies or legal protests of the citizenry––painful to even contemplate. But it is the casualness with which he makes these suggestions that ought to make us tremble. We’ve seen such scenes played out in banana republics and thought ourselves immune. Will Martha’s dream prove to be exaggerated fear or prophetic warning? Her quiet jeremiad takes this candidate at his word and prompts us to reexamine our own responsibilities. We must imagine what such an America would be like––not simply for ourselves but the generations that come after us. Unless, that is, we preempt that nightmare and use our electoral voices to insist on another narrative. Will our beloved country wake up in time? The answer will be arriving shortly.

 

 

 

 

Red Letters 3.0

 

* If you would like to receive these poems every Friday in your own in-box – or would like to write in with comments or submissions – send correspondence to:

steven.arlingtonlaureate@gmail.com

 

 

* To learn more about the origins of the Red Letter Project, check out an essay I wrote for Arrowsmith Magazine:

https://www.arrowsmithpress.com/community-of-voices

 

and the Boston Area Small Press and Poetry Scene

http://dougholder.blogspot.com

 

* For updates and announcements about Red Letter projects and poetry readings, please follow me on Twitter           

@StevenRatiner

 

"Lunch in Chinatown" by Mary Bonina

REVIEW BY LEE VARON

Mary Bonina’s latest chapbook “Lunch in Chinatown” (Cervena Barva Press,2024), is a window into the lives of immigrants who come to this country seeking a new beginning. In her work as an ESL teacher Bonina taught English to adult students from all over the world .

I wish everyone in our country could read “Lunch in Chinatown” and have a glimpse at how hard those coming to the U. S. struggle to learn the language and culture and forge a fresh start— many fleeing unspeakable atrocities in their native lands. In “the makeshift classroom” at the edge of Chinatown in downtown Boston, Bonina met with her students.

As you can imagine, with students from all over the world , all trying to learn English, lessons often go off-topic and into interesting new areas . Or as Bonina writes “Someone always gets a discussion moving/ on a different track, a related subject,/ one that comes with its own set of problems.”

And sometimes Bonina, as teacher, becomes enthralled with the stories her students bring to class, as when Andre , one of the Haitian men in class, tells the story of when he met his wife in the streets of Port au Prince. You can almost feel the electrifying moment as : “He puts me on that bright street brimming with activity in Port / au Prince. I can see Giselle a young girl with her friends all standing / around her. They don’t giggle . They feign aloofness/ And Andre approaches the group, as he approaches his English class:/ shyly and respectfully. “

Or in the powerful poem , “Teaching the Past Tense” when all of her students chime in with the names of the countries where they came from: “Haiti. Guatemala. Ethiopia. China.”
A benign run of the mill lesson ends with the devastating stanza: “Hagos, the Ethiopian says — not somberly,/ just matter-of-factly—‘My country./ Lots of people dead.’”

Bonina has a wonderful ability to mix short lyrical lines with longer prose-like lines. This reminded me of the way so many of her lessons must have gone— some short and to the point and others discursive and taking many twists and turns .

One of the most moving poems was the title poem “Lunch in Chinatown.” In this poem one of Bonina’s students— Wei Wei— takes her arm as they walk , the day after Christmas, along the sidewalks “slippery with snow and ice.” Teacher and student are going to a restaurant to order Dim Sum—“The air was bitter cold ,/ smoky and scented with ginger and sesame,”.

Looking down, Bonina notices that her student “wore bright yellow summer shoes,/ like ballet shoes, but with hard soles.” Wei Wei, she learns, had “worked as a doctor / in China’s largest hospital.”
It seems that her fear of falling on the slippery sidewalks and holding onto Bonina is a metaphor for how these new immigrants hold onto these English language classes, and their teacher, to help negotiate living in their sometimes precarious and often confusing new world .

This is a richly imagistic and meaningful book of poems that speaks to our shared humanity beyond cultural and linguistic differences. Though only twenty- six pages, it is packed full of memorable vignettes that resonate long after we close its pages.

Lee Varon is the author of “My Brother is Not a Monster: A Story of Addiction and Recovery,” and “A Kid’s Book About Overdose.”
She is co-editor of “Spare Change News Poems: An Anthology by Homeless People and those Touched by Homelessness.”

Red Letter Poem #226

  

Red Letter Poem #226

 

 

 

 

 

Tango


My wristband tight as a tourniquet,

my reptile skin windswept, dry as dust.

My glasses fogged by someone else’s breath.



My passport in a pocket where my hand

should go but won’t for fear of change.



The song a tango from below the border

that divides us, keeps us at arm’s length,

line drawn in sand that blows in our eyes.







––Wyn Cooper





Mary Oliver was once asked by a reader what a certain poem ‘was about’––and her answer came quickly: “commas.” She explained to me sometime later that she was not being flippant––the poem in question became, during the long revision process, a marvelous experiment in the use of commas for spacing, bundling thought, regulating breath. This memory came to mind because, if someone asked me what Wyn Cooper’s new Red Letter poem “Tango” was about, I’d be tempted to respond: T’s. Just listen to the spree of those hard consonants––seven in the first two lines!––like the rhythmic clacking of the claves as a Latin band swings into gear. In a poem named after a South American dance, it should not be surprising that the poet would have an inner soundtrack propelling the language.



But widening my purview, I find myself fascinated by a quality in many of Wyn’s poems: they feel like mini-cinemas in which we readers have arrived in our seats sometime after the first reel. We are quickly trying to catch up, fill in the narrative, speculate about the protagonist and where the movie is leading us. In the case of “Tango”, the film feels a little noir-ish, what with that “reptile skin,” fogged-over glasses, and “someone else’s breath” so close and intimate we’re feeling both aroused and exposed. But when the speaker mentions “below the border/ that divides us,” a soupçon of political intrigue enters the picture. As we approach what is surely one of the most divisive elections in American history, the very word border is fraught; and who and what we permit to cross our boundaries––let alone into our hearts and minds––becomes a matter of greater consequence. When I was young, I always loved how characters like those Humphrey Bogart often played––rugged individualists who could somehow feel enamored by and completely at ease in many cultures and locales––made me imagine a world without all those “line(s) drawn in sand” intended to separate peoples––blown sand, Wyn points out, that ultimately serve only to blind us. In those films, the dignity and imaginative freedom every character craved pointed toward a commonality I’d not heard spoken of in my public education. The very notion of a world with flexible borders and intermingling ideas seems painfully naïve these days. But elusive things like music, poetry, dreams still somehow find a way to subvert governments, slip past checkpoints, and bring us their stories, their truths.



Wyn is the author of five collections of poetry––the most recent being Mars Poetica (White Pine Press)––and the novel Way Out West (Concord Free Press.) His poems, stories, essays, and reviews––in accordance with today’s poem––have had their passports stamped by scores of publications such as The New Yorker, The Paris Review, Poetry, AGNI, and more. He is also the co-creator of two fascinating recordings featuring the voice of the novelist Madison Smartt Bell. And speaking of crossing boundaries: his poem “Fun” was the basis for the Grammy-winning song “All I Wanna Do” by Sheryl Crow. It pleases me to think of contemporary poetry, in all its complexity, making its way into so many unsuspecting ears. When our dance partner is graceful, inventive, quietly assured, how can we help but be swept away?

 

 

 

 

Red Letters 3.0

 

* If you would like to receive these poems every Friday in your own in-box – or would like to write in with comments or submissions – send correspondence to:

steven.arlingtonlaureate@gmail.com

 

 

* To learn more about the origins of the Red Letter Project, check out an essay I wrote for Arrowsmith Magazine:

https://www.arrowsmithpress.com/community-of-voices

 

and the Boston Area Small Press and Poetry Scene

http://dougholder.blogspot.com

 

* For updates and announcements about Red Letter projects and poetry readings, please follow me on Twitter           

@StevenRatiner

Nassim Review of Nassim, a play by Nassim Soleimanpour

 

Nassim

Review of Nassim, a play by Nassim Soleimanpour

At the Calderwood Pavilion of the Huntington Theatre through October 27, 2024

By Andy Hoffman

Nassim, currently playing at the Calderwood Pavilion and presented by the Huntington Theatre, defies all expectation of a theatrical experience. It features a new co-star every performance, and that co-star has not seen the script prior to the start of the show. As the play begins, we see the featured performer struggle to gain his or her footing as they attempt to act out a play about which they know almost nothing, cold-reading their lines projected on a screen behind them. The audience instantly sympathizes with the performer as the script they read pokes fun at stage conventions. On the night I saw the production, Armando Rivera, the Puerto Rico-born Co-Artistic Director of Teatro Chelsea gamely kept up with the process, even when the text on the screen appeared in Italics, as stage directions typically do. He boldly faced the challenge of talking to the audience while glancing back at the screen for his lines. A pair of hands sometimes appear with the lines, changing the words or forcing an emphasis the performer elides. About 20 minutes into the play, we learn that those hands belong to the playwright himself, Nassim Soleimanpour.

Soleimenpour has a fascinating story to tell in this autobiographical play. Born in Iran, Soleimenpour cannot produce his plays in his repressive home country. Living now in Berlin, the playwright feels always disoriented, writing in his native Farsi for audiences that will not understand him and then translating the script to perform elsewhere. As a result, NASSIM deals with language and the ways in which language both divides people and brings them together. Soleimanpour has gathered many languages on tour with his plays. He lives in Germany now, and seems largely fluent in English, though he speaks little. In the almost 500 performances of NASSIM, he has gathered words from around the world, which he shows the audience in the journal he keeps of words contributed by the audiences and defined by the performers. Through his “new best friend” – the performance’s special guest – Nassim and NASSIM reach a remarkable plateau of feeling and insight. And as you might expect, if you attend NASSIM, you might have the opportunity to learn some Farsi – onstage, in front of a supportive audience.

I would like to take this opportunity to praise Loretta Greco, the Huntington’s Artistic Director, who has shaken awake the somewhat staid old-guard company with a stunning and excellent line-up of inventive productions. And she has transformed the Boston theater scene not only through the Huntington Theatre’s annual schedule, but also through her policy of partnering with small theaters in the city, most particularly with African-American companies like the Front Porch Arts Collective. Under Greco, The Huntington will present Mfoniso Udofia’s multi-play cycle about a Nigerian American family. Efforts like this have opened up theater in the city, making it a truly a cultural institution for all of the region’s cultures. NASSIM carries this attitude forward with charm. Greco has the knack of staging shows that push the theatrical envelope while embracing the audience. Having sat through adventuresome but painful and destructive seasons at theaters elsewhere, I wish to give Greco unstinting praise for embracing the new without alienating traditional theater fans. It’s been a remarkable growth to watch. I hope the Huntington can keep Greco in Boston for a good long time.

NASSIM has an entertaining line-up of performers scheduled for its run, including Mfoniso Udofia, Tony Shalhoub, Jared Bowen, Keith Lockhart, and Imari Paris Jeffries. Every night will bring a different performance of the same play as these public figures and sometimes actors play with Nassim Soleimenpour’s script. Bringing in community leaders to perform makes NASSIM a bit of a gimmick, a gimmick that Soleimanpour used previously in his 2011 WHITE RABBIT RED RABBIT. But just because it’s a gimmick does not mean that it is easy to do or that it isn’t effective. My party left the theater feeling more connected to the world, and we can all use that feeling, however we acquire it.

The Biographer Poems by David M. Katz

 

The Biographer

Poems by David M. Katz

Dos Madres Press

Loveland, Ohio www.dosmadres.com

ISBN: 978-1-962847-07-0

71 Pages

Review by Dennis Daly

Spectral power belongs to ages and cultures long past. But here and there evidence emerges of its elusive endurance in the form of poetic techniques such as projection and personalization. Here imagination (Cotton Mather aficionados take notice) provides the proper venue with insight, empathy, and understanding as value added attachments. In his new book of poetry, The Biographer, David M. Katz haunts his set of chosen characters with his mnemonic underpaintings. He merges his rich emotional values with the objective facts of his characters, real or fictional.

Katz’s first poem, His Last Book, hooked me with its third person objectification of the artist getting old. Sentimentality and emotional pain are met head on. But they are contained and given purpose. Rather than bathos and mawkishness, the poet elicits an identifiable hard-bitten reality that one can recognize immediately. The poet introduces his protagonist empathically and with reflective preciseness,

… he realized

He was no longer young. He recognized

A periodic feebleness of mind,

A lack of balance, tendency to slip

And wobble in his steps, rise in the night

Repeatedly to pee: of scant concern

In themselves, these irksome little symptoms,

Annoying as mosquito bites,

Together made it seem to him as if

There were just two things in the universe

That mattered: his life and the end of it…

In his poem, The Altitude, Katz fills in the unknowable (read spectral) blanks between father and son. The speaker, no older than five, looks up the length of his father and nurtures the beginnings of an evolutionary understanding of the man. A moment of

drama creates a mnemonic guidepost on which the son attaches facts—both real and quasi-imaginary. Here is the heart of the poem,

… Suddenly I pitched

Forward like a ship, the mica chips

In concrete hurtling up at me before

My arm grew taut. My father’s hand had held

Me back from falling, though he didn’t seem

To notice, and we took a slow next step.

My eyes rose up and saw, beneath his hat,

A jaw, a nose, and something like a smile.

Generally, I am not fond of poems dealing with substance abuse, alcoholism or otherwise. Are You Still Drinking, Dad?, Katz’s piece on this very subject jolted me beyond any personal biases. Dealing with the disease’s phenomenon of quitting and relapse, Katz ghosts his persona with both unspoken and spoken connections that re-live intense, emotional hurts. But it is more than that. Missed opportunities caused by human failings are the bedrock of mortality. This Shakespearean sonnet is, pardon the expression, top shelf and my favorite poem in the collection. The last lines nail the irreversible pain and are not to be missed in any review. So here they are,

… He might have had one shot,

A rye to ease the future shock a bit;

Sweet Gypsy Rose; cheap peach or apricot

Liqueur. I said I’d be a father soon,

And he was miles away across the phone

On some highway with a cowboy tune

Fading behind. He always drank alone.

It’s now or never, Dad, I might have said.

Before my son was born my dad was dead.

Tread-worn spooks flitter past, still in grand context, but not as certain, not as noble in Katz’s mysterious poem The Code, written in memory of John le Carre. The real world is fading into the spectral by half and the activities of the spectral seem confused and leaderless. The poet has withdrawn his added details and leaves his audience in the dark or to their own Kafkaesque devices. The poem opens this way,

They were muttering in half-understood languages,

Half-wanting to be known, half wanting to know,

Half not and half-not. They were in the lobby,

Exchanging the code, partly overheard, the bellhops

Inured to it by now as they hustled

To the ever-ringing bell in their tight red coats…

Notice, everything appears compromised in this piece except the bell, which seems to signal the need for intervention.

Katz’s title poem and masterwork, The Biographer, A Verse Novella, spans twenty-six pages of compelling and imaginative narrative. The poet outdoes himself. He first creates a persona worthy of his truly American story. Then he essentially possesses the persona, not in a hostile way, but in a way that merges both biographer and subject in a dual adventure of creation and kaleidoscopic life.

Telling the story of an abandoned foundling, adopted on board ship on the way to Ellis Island, Katz’s persona intimates her techniques of biography referring to her subject’s newly found (and soon lost) parents,

… While Shmuel gazed, Ida

longed desperately to be off her feet. Their

Internal lives

are of course, my own creation, as is

the bulk

of any biography, a story

based

on a handful of facts. I have seen,

in fact, a creased,

anonymous photo of a pushcart

from that time

with a grimfaced father, mother, and

little girl posed

in front of it…

Katz’s narrative continues in a rapid, almost dream-like fashion, elucidating the life of vagabondage, independence, fame and activism. The reader, along for the ride, can do nothing but marvel at both the external and internal goings-on.

From beginning to end this superb book of poems illuminates the magical sum and substance of human nature, as well as the importance of soulful imagination at the heart of even the most objective life histories, or their fictional and spectral counterparts.

Somerville Artist Michael Silverman: A consummate coffee--doodler

 

Recently I caught up with Michael Silverman, one of the many artists in our creative burg. He writes,

 "My wife and I are both artists in Somerville in that we try to draw something every day at a coffee place. Over the last 6 years or so we have a stockpile of thousands of drawings. The whole thesis we have is to have fun with it.

How is it being an artist in Somerville?

It’s a treat. Love the atmosphere and the city is beautiful. Also it’s nice to be able to walk everywhere or take the T. We don’t have a car and don’t have to worry about parking/gas prices etc. Walking the bike path or down to Harvard and so on is a nice way to relax.

I haven’t cracked into the artistic community here that much as I’m not too social and tend to get hung up on minutiae that distracts from more meaningful discussion at the meetings. We did a few of the Sommer Streets festivals but I think maybe our art wasn’t the best fit for that kind of event. Mostly we just sold some pins and stickers.

I’m now thinking of that scene in Star Wars where the death star designer says “It’s a peaceful life.” lol.

You say the most important thing in creating is to have fun. Can having fun with your work, instead of wrestling with your work or struggling with it— can it bring serious work?

We all know the horrible artist who was obsessed with “My Struggle!” I did some political game stuff a while back that was fun to make and also a bit more… I wouldn’t say serious, but perhaps a bit more socially topical? It’s not my favorite project looking back.

My “fun” approach isn’t for everyone… Or even the path to making the “best” art. The serious stuff is something I don’t know how to tackle rather than something bad to make. Obsessing over somber and dark work and focusing on making that your life… I’m not sure I could stay sane. Or, to make a serious piece that deals with heavy feelings, do you just fake it? Does art reflect the feelings of the artist, or change them? Emotions are challenging for me, I’m not so sure I could look at the whole spectrum of human emotion in the mirror without a lot of support and hand holding and it feels like I already need a lot of support just to make my goofy wacky fun stuff. 

So the direct answer is: I don’t know. I would love to crack it… Serious fun!

The reason I make art is that feeling of freedom: it can be anything, there aren’t any rules (despite what people may argue), so I can just pour my soul onto the page and it’s thrilling to get my heart and mind out there. So maybe my art belongs hung on the refrigerator with the kid’s stuff? I wouldn’t be offended at that!

What was the germ of the idea to pair coffee with your art?

So I would go get coffee every day, people watch, sit there and do basically nothing while I got breakfast or whatever. Also I had some of those adult coloring books where I was deliberately not coloring in the lines and making my own pattern on top of the mandala that was there. It was kind of serendipitous to just combine the two, so I went to that “Blick” art store down near Central and bought a bunch of sharpies and a sketchbook and the “Coffee Doodle” was born.

Actually, I consider the coffee shop patrons my collaborators. Sometimes the antics of people getting a coffee or making some noises or having a conversation will change the direction I move in my drawing. There is a stream of consciousness element to the drawings, and having a bit of a kinetic element changes the work.

What coffee shop do you frequent to work on your art?

We have 3 major places that are near Davis Square, the Starbucks there, Diesel (I actually bought one of their T-Shirts) and the Bagel Place down by Rosebud, which makes a Lox and Bagel sandwich that competes with the real thing in NYC. The choice of place depends on the crowds, mood, and how hungry I am!

From looking at your work  it seem to be mostly colorful abstract paintings. Do you work in other genres?

Sometimes I will do a black and white piece when I am in a more serious mood. Those can be tougher days. As I was saying, when the art gets serious, so does my whole life, and then I start to get a bit down. I also sometimes do more representational stuff, or try to draw a cartoon. I would say about 90% of the drawings are abstract stuff. Actually some of my abstracts have been deemed “too representational” for some of the true Abstract aficionados. 

What artists influence your work?

Obviously Picasso is the big guy, can’t go wrong with him. I love cubism though I wouldn’t say I really am capable of doing it properly. Andy Warhol’s sarcastic post-modern “I want to make fun of the entire art world and make a ton of bank doing it” is admirable and cool. I think Paul Klee said something about wanting to be able to paint like a kid, which I have mastered, lol. I also like Mondrian, just because he is famously a boring person but his art is so impactful.

I also listen to a lot of pop music when I work that has a big impact on the mood of the pieces. I have a playlist of over a thousand songs and they all had their part in my work, lots of 60s, 70s, and 80s hits in there. Occasionally I will literally write down the song lyrics on the canvas, but only rarely.

Are you formally trained as an artist?

I went to an MFA program out in LA and dropped out. So … No. To me, the more formal art stuff goes into a miserable Game of Thrones style, “who will get to show their art to the world?” This is a crazy thing that I cannot stand and can even be traumatic to deal with. I don’t consider my lack of formality to be something good: I would love to make my work more professional. But sometimes if you polish a gem too much you end up ruining the stone.

In my high school days I was called “outstanding” and to be clear my school considered that a bad thing. I’m somewhat inconsistent, and sometimes really basic stuff I mess up, vs sometimes extremely complex things I just do easily.

I’m told my art is “Outsider Art” which is either art made by people without formal training, or the art of insane people. Pretty much the same thing, lol.

Why should we view your work?

When I say my art is about fun, I mean both for the artist and the audience. I’m trying to make the whole loop fun for all parties. For my work, I’ve tried to focus on the desert instead of the veggies, and I’m hoping that’s also what it feels like when people view the stuff. Even if you want to goof on my stuff or critique it, just have fun with that too!

for more info go to:

https://coffeedoodle.art