MARTY BECKERMAN BRINGS “DUMBOCRACY” TO THE SOMERVILLE NEWS WRITERS FESTIVAL (Nov. 22, 2008)

MARTY BECKERMAN BRINGS “DUMBOCRACY” TO THE SOMERVILLE NEWS WRITERS FESTIVAL (Nov. 22, 2008)

By Doug Holder


Writer Marty Beckerman is an extremist. He “extremely” hates “extremists” of any stripe, be they Left or Right. He writes in the introduction to his book: “Dumbocracy: Adventures with the Loony Left, The Rabid Right, and other American Idiots,” (Disinformation Press) that:

“…extremists are no fun. Hardcore right-wingers wish to shove God down our throats, but hate the freedom of guys who shove things down one another’s throats…Meanwhile left-wingers wish to regulate our behavior with taxes on anything unhealthy/enjoyable, prohibitions on tactless speech and regulations that determine how much time we spend in the shower.”

You might think that Beckerman, an East Coast writer in his 20’s, might seriously lean to the Left. You’d be wrong. This dude looks askance at both extremes.

Beckerman, who will appearing at The Somerville News Writers Festival Nov. 22, 2008 recounts his experience with abortion activists, feminists, Republicans, Democrats, in short all the stumblebums on the scene. He records, like some hip Boswell, the life and times of this febrile Milieu, with all their many warts. The book is peppered with absurd quotes from these zealots, and he works in a very funny and astute commentary. Beckerman obviously has done his homework, and there is no paucity of levity in this book.

Like H.L.Mencken, (the famous columnist for The Baltimore Sun), said of Puritanism, Beckerman feels these foaming –at-the-mouth hordes are fearful “that someone, somewhere, may be happy.”


He writes:

“ Activists of the Left and Right, whose only pleasure is derived from depriving others of pleasure, have erected a Nanny State that forbids the enjoyment of anything. Our government spends zillions of dollars, and passes zillion of laws, to protect you from pornography, marijuana, alcohol, cigarettes and unhealthy food. Not only is the knee-jerk moral totalitarianism unnecessary, it often exacerbates the vice in question; forbidden fruit is far sweeter than mundane bullshit.”


To further illustrate his point of the absurdity of this maddening crowd, Beckerman gets a plum quote from feminist Sally Miller Gearhart in her essay: “ “The Future—If There Is One—Is Female”:

“To secure a world of female values and female freedom we must, I believe, add one more element to the structure of the future: the ratio of men to women must be radically reduced so that men approximate only ten percent of the population…One option is of course male infanticide.” Fortunately for us guys Gearhart later said that infanticide was “unworkable,” not immoral mind you!

And how about porno? Beckerman reminds us that Republican “Tricky” Dick Nixon believed that pornography had a direct link to crime. A task force he created opined:

“There is no warrant for continued government interference with the full freedom of adults to read, obtain or view whatever they wish.” In fact the commission determined that the majority of rapists for instance, viewed less pornography than the average American male, and lived in conservative Christian households.”

Beckerman has an interesting take on the sodomy question. It seems that the Supreme Court ruled in 2003 that laws that criminalize private bedroom behavior are unconstitutional. He writes that Republican Rick Santorum suggested that the US government designate all sexual intercourse illegal. He quotes Santorum:

“ If the Supreme Court says that you have the right to consensual sex within your home, then you have the right to bigamy, you have the right to polygamy, you have the right to incest, you have the right to adultery…homosexuality…man on child…It all comes from, I would argue this right to privacy that doesn’t exist in my opinion in the United Sates Constitution, this right that was created.”

Beckerman points out that the Senator is a devout Catholic, and doesn’t believe in in- vitro fertilization, so this implies, according to the author—he wants the extinction of humanity. Hmm…

Of course the Left has gone crazy in quite another way. Beckerman points out that Texas A&M “requires” faculty to celebrate and “promote” homosexuality. Carnegie Mellon University fired a staff member for refusing to wear a gay pride symbol during a sensitivity training. And the list goes on.

In this time of violent fundamentalist creeds, virulent free market capitalism, regulation, deregulation, blue and red states, and hate, we need someone like Beckerman to step back and throw a metaphorical pie in these jokers’ eyes.


--Doug Holder


* For more info. About The Somerville News Writers Festival go to: http://somervillenewswritersfestival.com

Language beyond sense in the new poems by Stanley Nelson.

Language beyond sense in the new poems by Stanley Nelson.

Review by Michael Todd Steffen


On November 1, 2008 PRESA:S:PRESS will release the new book of four long poems by Stanley Nelson entitled City of the Sun, a work that asks for and deserves both sides of the coin.

Heads: The book is unified, exhibiting throughout the four meditations extensive use of anaphora, repetition of key words, phrases and images. There is an intention or plan to the formal oddness of Nelson’s language. In building long poems out of isolated blocks of wording used over and over, rather than giving the reader a sense of amplitude from the long works, Nelson’s picked-out vocabulary hammers on us the idea of a narrowing of language and experience. This effect of the poetry, a sense beyond the literal meanings of words, the prosody, impresses upon us an uneasiness, like the dissonance of Bela Bartok’s irresolute music. Nelson’s themes, as I have eked them out, call for such “tonal” disturbance and alarm: solar or nuclear energy and waste (“City of the Sun”), the destitution of spiritual initiation (“Fragrances”), the violence of social transgression, apocalypse and rebirth (“Genesis Vibes”), and the silence and revealing or “Con/Cealment/Un/Concealing” of holocaust (“Heidegger/HEIDEGGER”).

Tails: the general impression left by reading through City of the Sun with all of the repetition can become annoying. Beyond the mimetic sleight of a narrowing circular verbal representation of a like society, the poems come off as superficial. One strong objection I had was the impertinence of the language itself, the pseudo-apocalyptic symbolism of odd beasts coupling, of “Solarians” and “Pythagorean hymns” and twice-baked Dylan-like doggerel (“Dominican friars/Become louts and liars…) in the poem “City of the Sun.” Similarly “Genesis Vibes” ignores the general reader by riddling the text with names and events from the Old Testament. Most of us will recognize a reference, say, to enslaved Joseph who dreams prophecy for the Pharaoh. But over and over to drum up

jebuzite, hittite, hivite
japhethite, caananite, hamite

Bedouins
on donkeys…

—over and over, is asking to have most of your readers fan through looking for the next title page or drop the book altogether.

Back to Heads: From “Genesis Vibes,” a poem pronouncedly inspired by T.S. Eliot’s The Waste Land, Nelson goes onto “Heidegger/HEIDEGGER”, a poem about the disputed German philosopher Martin Heidegger who derived his ontology from Edmund Husserl’s phenomenology during the rise of the Nazi regime. The juxtaposition of a Judaic theme with this specific philosopher evokes a dubious time in history, and we wonder to what extent Nelson explores the pattern repeating itself in our day. What parallels are to be drawn is a question that plays both sides: the possible implied responses and the making of the question itself.

The second poem, “Fragrances,” because it is based on a more individualistic experience and displays a clearer narrative progression, asks for a short discussion.
The repeated elements or characters of the poem involve “the mouth of a dying god” forming into “a perfect O,” the god’s initiate in the tottering rain, the courtesan in her boudoir preparing scents and illusions. The “plot” of the poem circles patiently as the initiate approaches, through 19 sections, the courtesan’s boudoir, clinging to the death of the god. The ablative “Notwithstanding” is repeated, along with the images of arches, fountains, musical instruments, the woods “pine and fir” and animals and religious symbols. The poem climaxes in the final section with the initiate’s entrance into the courtesan’s boudoir as the god dies. Yet with the miracle of the god’s song being resurrected in the courtesan’s post-coital caresses.

In and around these basic reappearances in the poem Nelson adds incidental music, variations to the structure which, simply because they are not part of the choral incantations, like the variation lines of a villanelle, delight us with surprise:

The dying god
Caught in the shadow of the arches
Dreams instead of a realm
Of storybooks and shy giraffes. (Section 10)


For his innovation with the visual lining of verse, Stanley Nelson has been compared to Apollinaire and E.E. Cummings. The traditionalists may find it difficult to embrace Nelson’s effluence of disparate elements, yet may also perceive a neoclassical dream-like quality to his “worlds” with their gravity from the Old Testament, reminiscent of the artificial settings in, say, Yeats’s “Sailing to Byzantium” or Blake’s lithograph of Cain fleeing from the body of his slain brother Abel.
The poetry does have an impact, if it convinces us beyond our private discretions.
If not, oh well, Stanley Nelson has a readership among the avant-garde in America and England where his plays have toured. He has a long list of publications to his credit, and City of the Sun is his 17th published book of poems. Whatever poet may claim a license to do as he wishes with words, Stanley Nelson ranks among them.


City of the Sun by Stanley Nelson will be available through PRESA:S:PRESS/P.O. Box 792/ Rockford, Michigan 49341, presapress@aol.com for $16.95.


.

Marginalia: Poems from the Old Irish Louis McKee

Marginalia: Poems from the Old Irish
Translation by Louis McKee
Adastra Press
$18


It is clear that the monks who wrote these nineteen poems in Marginalia had a good time writing them; that Louis McKee enjoyed translating them; and that Gary Metras at Adastra Press got a kick out of printing them in this beautiful little volume in the original Gaelic as well as English. Some might call these quatrains “slight,” but they are, after all, marginalia, and in order to appreciate them fully, one must imagine the mindset of the men who wrote them. As McKee describes them in his brief introduction, they spent “long hours in scriptoriums copying the texts of gospels,” but would “occasionally…stray from their tedious work and take a moment to jot their own thoughts.”

The thoughts of these monks range from the sublime to the ridiculous, as these two translations will demonstrate:

O God, give me a bowl of tears
to wash away my sins;
or I will be like the dry earth,
without blessing, without blossom.

·

And good for a man with a pig—
I used to have pig myself:
it is better, the pig walking with you,
yesterday’s pig is but today’s fart.

The monks – or, at least, our translator, Louis McKee – seem to tend more toward the ridiculous, or, at least, the humorous. One imagines that they would have needed to inject a little humor in their tedious work, and they often to do it rather deftly. Here are a few examples:

No doubt, you’ll see the fox run
circles around those who chase after him:
but with all respect to my sly friend,
many a man is warmed by his fine pelt.

·

Silk, gold, silver,
music, and verses in Latin
gifted even to the finest pup,
still he’ll not be a gentleman.

·

What gives, Father?
Why are you up there on a high horse,
doing the good work St. Francis did
perfectly well on his own two feet?

The last poem borders on the blasphemous, addressing God with a certain amount of contempt. I imagine that this was not the only monk who used marginalia to express theological doubts, though this is the only example in this brief collection.

Finally, like all poets, these monks had much to say about writing poetry. Let us leave the reader with these commentaries on the art:

I write, and I will write,
as long as my stomach is full;
let me get hungry, though,
and poetry be damned!

·

They tell me
he has no horses for poems;
he gives what he thinks they are worth—
a cow.

My favorite – and the most contemporary sounding – of the comments is:

Don’t be blaming the poets, man—
it’s not their fault;
you will get no more from a pot,
than what’s in it.



Lawrence Kessenich
September 27, 2008



It is clear that the monks who wrote these nineteen poems in Marginalia had a good time writing them; that Louis McKee enjoyed translating them; and that Gary Metras at Adastra Press got a kick out of printing them in this beautiful little volume in the original Gaelic as well as English. Some might call these quatrains “slight,” but they are, after all, marginalia, and in order to appreciate them fully, one must imagine the mindset of the men who wrote them. As McKee describes them in his brief introduction, they spent “long hours in scriptoriums copying the texts of gospels,” but would “occasionally…stray from their tedious work and take a moment to jot their own thoughts.”

The thoughts of these monks range from the sublime to the ridiculous, as these two translations will demonstrate:

O God, give me a bowl of tears
to wash away my sins;
or I will be like the dry earth,
without blessing, without blossom.

·

And good for a man with a pig—
I used to have pig myself:
it is better, the pig walking with you,
yesterday’s pig is but today’s fart.

The monks – or, at least, our translator, Louis McKee – seem to tend more toward the ridiculous, or, at least, the humorous. One imagines that they would have needed to inject a little humor in their tedious work, and they often to do it rather deftly. Here are a few examples:

No doubt, you’ll see the fox run
circles around those who chase after him:
but with all respect to my sly friend,
many a man is warmed by his fine pelt.

·

Silk, gold, silver,
music, and verses in Latin
gifted even to the finest pup,
still he’ll not be a gentleman.

·

What gives, Father?
Why are you up there on a high horse,
doing the good work St. Francis did
perfectly well on his own two feet?

The last poem borders on the blasphemous, addressing God with a certain amount of contempt. I imagine that this was not the only monk who used marginalia to express theological doubts, though this is the only example in this brief collection.

Finally, like all poets, these monks had much to say about writing poetry. Let us leave the reader with these commentaries on the art:

I write, and I will write,
as long as my stomach is full;
let me get hungry, though,
and poetry be damned!

·

They tell me
he has no horses for poems;
he gives what he thinks they are worth—
a cow.

My favorite – and the most contemporary sounding – of the comments is:

Don’t be blaming the poets, man—
it’s not their fault;
you will get no more from a pot,
than what’s in it.



Lawrence Kessenich
September 27, 2008

Foods You Will Enjoy by Bill Buffett

Foods You Will Enjoy

By Bill Buffet

Review by Catherine Nichols

$24.95


To order: http://buffettstore.com/welcome.html


Opposite Bill Buffett’s forward to his book Foods You Will Enjoy, there’s a black and white photo of the grocery store Buffett’s in 1937—a sign in the front window celebrates the store’s sixty-eighth year in business. The store has an elegant glass-brick transom over its wide front windows, and an array of tidily arranged goods. The book tells the story of the grocery store from its beginnings when Nebraska was frontier. In a way, this book—with its zippy design and nostalgia for a store that has closed its doors—just shows us how little has changed over the years. Food is a pleasure. The book’s visual style reels through the decades of fresh clean food, starting with 1860s’ ads for Troy brand evaporated milk (a silhouette of a boy chasing cows against a turquoise sky) through every kind of fruit, white vinegar, vegetable soup to, finally, Golden Valley Deluxe Plums—purple and green against a cream background—from 1969 when the store finally closed.

It was Sidney Buffett who opened the store in 1868 in Omaha, Nebraska. The accompanying photos show rough dirt roads and horses pulling carriages. The store has a display of peaches and melons in baskets outside the door. The business stays in the Buffett family, passed from father to son. While Buffett makes a point of showing these men’s personalities through their letters and business decisions, they all feel more similar than different. The Buffett men have a core of steady business decisions, unsentimental pride in their store, and savvy adaptations as the nineteenth century turns into the twentieth and beyond. Earnest Buffett placed a billboard between Omaha and Lincoln letting drivers know they’d gotten half way to the other city—and reminding them to buy at Buffett’s when they got home.

As Bill Buffett himself is able to take over with memories of his own and interviews and letters from the store clerks and delivery boys he worked alongside, the book grows even warmer toward the bygone store and its era. He remembers growing up as the son of a respected man, but not “treated with white gloves” as he worked in the store. He took all jobs from stocking the shelves to making deliveries, learning the trade at his father’s side.

The book is the biography of a business, but also a community, and a family. The store Buffett remembers may not be in business—though it does have its own museum exhibit—but its heart is still living.

SIMMONS INTERNATIONAL CHINESE POETRY FESTIVAL Oct 3 to 5

西蒙斯國際漢語詩歌節
SIMMONS INTERNATIONAL CHINESE POETRY FESTIVAL
October 4-5, 2008
300 THE FENWAY BOSTON, MA 02115


SATURDAY MORNING 10/4
9:00 to 10:30
Discussion of Translation

10:45 am to 12:15 pm
Roundtable on Contemporary Issues
Afternoon Break 12:30 to 7pm

SATURDAY EVENING
Festival Reading
7 pm to 10 pm

SUNDAY MORNING 10/5
9am to 10:30 pm
Translation Wrap Up

10:45am to 12:15 pm
Dialogue on Teaching Creative
Writing (the M.F.A.)

12:30 pm
Closing Ceremonies

ALL EVENTS ARE FREE AND OPEN TO THE PUBLIC
For more info: poetscafe@msn.com
Take the E Heath Street Car on the Green MBTA Subway
Parking is available nearby at differing rates.

Brothers by Eric Wasserman

Brothers





by Eric Wasserman

Cervena Barva Press, Softbound, $7, Copyright © 2008 by Eric Matthew Wasserman

Review by Zvi A. Sesling



When I first started reading Eric Wasserman’s chapbook, actually the first chapter of his novel Celluloid Strangers, I was a bit skeptical. The beginning was a bit slow, takes place in 1948, has a Jewish character who has emigrated from Dorchester to California and went to law school at night.



Where is this going I asked myself and the next dozen pages let’s me know in no uncertain terms (I think) where this is headed. Since it is the first chapter, it’s hard to really know, but I want to know and hopefully you will want to know as well.



The protagonist, Morris Gandelman Adams has taken his wife’s surname to hide his Jewish identity. As he sits by his swimming pool “clear, like recently cleaned coffee table glass” he wonders why a brother he has not seen in ten years suddenly calls him and both Morris and the reader soon find out. The first chapter reminds me of Elmore Leonard if Leonard wrote a Jewish thriller, which is where this novel is probably heading.



Despite a few questionable facts: were there power lawnmowers in 1948?

And Philco radios during World War II. Or did local radio spend a lot of time on UCLA basketball? But aside from these minor questions, the writing is crisp, moves along and creates as many questions as it answers, all in 19 pages!



If this is headed in the Jewish gangster story direction, it is doing a good job, may be a bit like Ted Gray’s The Hoods, a 1950s novel which followed friends and brothers from childhood to adulthood, first as punks, then petty criminals and finally to their gangster status. In this story the brothers are already adults and so far only one brother is an admitted criminal.



I have only read one chapter of the novel in this Cervena Barva chapbook, which, incidentally, won the 2007 Cervena Barva Press Fiction Chapbook Prize. The press is edited by Gloria Mindock who puts out quality fiction and poetry and having read a few of her productions, this one reads like another success for her – and for Eric Wasserman who has a collection of short fiction and is Professor English at the University of Akron, where he also teaches in the Northeast Ohio Master of Fine Arts program.

The Boston Red Sox World Series Encyclopedia

The Boston Red Sox World Series Encyclopedia

[No Longer the World’s Shortest Book]

by Bill Nowlin and Jim Prime
Rounder Books

www.rounderbooks.com
ISBN 978-1-57940-161-0 $18.95

A review by Mignon Ariel King



After 86 years worth of “almost,” we deserve this book. We who got hooked in middle school, back in ’75—falling in love with the magnificent Jim “Oughtta-be-in-the-Hall-of-Fame” Rice, watching Carlton Fisk will a ball into fair territory for that glorious home run—only to spend nearly two decades falling just short of World Series bragging rights, well, we earned this book. While reading this tightly-packed collection of facts, remember that this is Bill & Jim’s excellent adventure, written by Sox fans for Sox fans.



For older fans, the play-by-play descriptions and analyses of each game will be dead-on, capturing the spirit of the games, and the slightly grainy thumbnail photos of long-gone heroes will be appreciated.

You want box scores? They’ve got your box scores over here! Want vignettes as well as stats? No problem. You might even end up thinking you were on Huntington Avenue in 1903.



The Encyclopedia is well-researched, with interesting back-of-the-book features such as a list of firsts. Who hit the first inside-the-park World Series homer? If you have a young Sox fan, maybe you can trick him into reading a book by having him look up the answer himself. The beginning of each series section is colorfully written before the authors get into the nuts and bolts of the game, and the player feature helps fans to re-appreciate players—like Mark Bellhorn, 2004. There are a lot of happy “oh, yeah, I remember him” moments to be had in this celebration of the myths (the Curse of Babe Ruth), the truths (the Sox won 7 of the 11 Series they went to), and the pure phenomenon (the “Idiots” won).



The passion and knowledge of the authors combine in a pleasing manner that echoes the finest moments of Friday Night Baseball broadcasts. That is, reading this book is almost as fun as listening to Remy &

Orsillo commentate while sitting on the couch munching cheese doodles. In fact, the only shortcoming of the encyclopedia is that it probably won’t excite and win over non-Sox fans. Members of Sox Nation will, however, reread for years to come, smiling from ear to ear while reliving each sweet carom off the scoreboard with the aroma of Fenway Franks in our nostrils.