Saturday, November 10, 2012

If You Can Still Dance With It: Stone Belly & Cold Mountain Poems by Michael Adams



If You Can Still Dance With It: Stone Belly & Cold Mountain
Poems by Michael Adams
Kittredge, CO: Turkey Buzzard Press, 2012
ISBN-13: 978-0-9450-94586
37 pages
$12.00

Review by David P. Miller

Poet and musician Michael Adams presents poems in three personae. These are Stone Belly, his “nom de plume or alter ego”; Cold Mountain, Adams’ rendering of T’ang Dynasty poet Han Shan in mid-20th century Appalachia; and in his own person, following a diagnosis of multiple myeloma. This brief volume introduces me to the work of a writer of great heart and broad life experience, from the blue collar communities near Pittsburgh to his current residence in Northern Colorado. More of his work, including sample poems, publications, and an audio selection, is available at www.michaeladamspoetry.com.

The image of the recluse poet retains a powerful attraction. Most of us would find it difficult to survive for more than a couple of days in a simple mountaintop dwelling, entirely self-reliant for food and heat. But there’s much to be desired in this picture: solitude, the freedom to simply concentrate on one’s own work, and the requirement to distill the complexities of living to essentials. It’s intriguing that Adams presents this image in twinned voices. The Stone Belly poems begin with the longer “Stone Belly in the Mountains.” Here we seem to see the recluse we imagine:

                Wandering in the mountains,
                lost amongst pines,
                Stone Belly grows hard and lean,
                chewing on poems.

Removed from the thick of society, he’s not unaffected by it nor attached to it:

                Third day of snow, power lines
                down all over the mountain.     

                But Stone Belly gets his juice
                from other realms –
                                wood, whiskey, and fiery chili.
                Discusses eternity with the stars.
                He hasn’t been this happy all year.

He “daydreams of a girl he hasn’t seen in 20 years” and is prepared for friends to visit, with:

                Eight bottles of bourbon, four cases of beer,
                twenty pounds of rice, one change of clothes,
                what’s left of last fall’s elk,
                buried in a cooler in the snow.

This push and pull between the joyous strenuousness of a life apart and the desire for humankind’s web (in “Stone Belly in Texas” he fruitlessly hitchhikes across the Southwest to find a girl he barely knew), slowly results in self-knowledge:

                I am not very good
                at the world’s business –
                the building and trading
                of fortunes and goods.

                I know well enough
                the quarters of the winds,
                the fluid ways of waters,
                the turning of,
                and movement through,
                the seasons.

With his Cold Mountain poems, Adams directly confronts the very archetype of the poet as solitary. His versions are inspired by the translations of Red Pine, Gary Snyder, and R.P. Seaton. Not a reader of Mandarin, he presents his versions with the hope that readers will also seek the work of those translators. Poking through my bookshelves, I discovered translations by Snyder and Burton Watson, a surprise anecdotally confirming the subtle pervading of the older Chinese poet (I hadn’t intended to collect versions, but now I have three). Adams’ Cold Mountain writings often, to my ear, have the pungency of other versions, but with a clearly North American flavor:

                Pickled pig’s feet in Manhattan –
                Some people say they’re the best.
                Men who live too close to power
                love things that dogs won’t touch.

Again  here, we have the reality that this life, for all its rewards, is not to be romanticized:

                I’m sick all the time,
                but that’s my burden.
                My face looks like an old squash
                that someone forgot
                and left out all winter.
                I’m happy with the mountains
                and a warm thick blanket.

The sequence ends with lines that point straight at the crossing between wonder and annihilation, with impermanence as the solitary’s food:

                Bone-weary
                I reached the top
                of the cliff at sundown.
                An ancient snag rose at the edge
                bereft of leaves, barren
                against the blazing sky.
                It looked like it had stood
                for a thousand years.

                Now it’s just a pile of ashes
                that kept me warm
                through the long night.

The image in this final stanza is a hinge opening on “After the Ashes,” the title of both the third set of poems and the first poem in the set. This simple phrase is rich with multiple meanings. It takes us from the contemplative conclusion of the Cold Mountain poems into the reality of Adams’ diagnosis with a type of incurable cancer. Although his stated aim with these poems is to “examine what it is like to be confronted with a life-threatening disease without prematurely seeking answers, solutions, or solace,” the phrase here suggests a sense of ashes in the mouth. However, in this poem, the phrase, now punctuated, regains calm as part of a view of “the long story of our lives / along with the sounds of love, the wordless / speech of tongues groping beyond themselves in the furnace of another’s mouth”:

                ... A campfire beneath white granite
                and stars, and, after, the ashes.

This final set is filled with a great love for “The World As it Is” (the title of another in the set) and the command to prepare to say goodbye. The volume concludes with perhaps my favorite, “The Ones Who Get the World Ready.” As Adams, sleepless at 2 A.M., sits with paper and pen,

                ... the dog
                comes in, settles at your side.
                You stare at the window and your own face
                stares back, with nothing to say.
                Don’t think this is a poem about searching
                for inspiration. It’s just a man who can’t sleep
                and doesn’t want to bother his wife
                with his restlessness.

But as he sits, he remembers the men and women who rise early,

                ... the ones who make the world
                solid and familiar for the rest of us. Trash haulers and policemen,
                paper carriers, nurses, truck drivers, bakers. Resolute, even brave,
                with a dogged, determinedly unreflective bravery, they grope
                with blind hands in the dark, clutching at the anchors
                that will secure us all for one more day to our common lives.

Michael Adams tells us to remember the bravery we all need, and can all manifest, as we move through our common lives, intimately dependent on each other, and all “staring the monster right in the face” (“Send Some Angels”).

Thursday, November 08, 2012

Reality Check word sonnets by Ricky Rapoport Friesem



Ricky Rapoport Friesem


Reality Check


word sonnets

Ricky Rapoport Friesem

Kipod Press 2012

ISBN: 978-965-9097-2-8



This Book of fourteen single word line sonnets

comes to us from Israel:


“The

purple

necklace

you

gave

me

is

all

wrong

but

I

wear

it

anyway”



The poems are as clear as a bright sky, as water

splashed over our faces, as a kiss after we read.

We are refreshed by Friesem's clarity and brevity:



“In

business

class

they

have

plastic

partitions.

In

economy

class

we

have

one

another”



Within each of these sonnets is an entire story

and often it is our own story.”



“The

more

particles

you

discover

the

more

there'll

be

to

discover.

Good

job

security”



My only criticism is the icon (eye glasses) on each and every

opposite page from the poem. The poems are powerful enough

to keep the readers attention, a blank page would lend

to the brevity the poems impart. A good buy and a great read.



Irene Koronas

Poetry Editor: Wilderness House Literary Review

Reviewer: Ibbetson Street Press

Monday, November 05, 2012

Somerville’s Kirk Etherton and Lucy Holstedt: A Couple Who Holds the Arts as High Holy.

 Etherton and Holstedt Performing at Berklee College of Music





Somerville’s Kirk Etherton and Lucy Holstedt:  A Couple Who Holds the Arts as High Holy.


By Doug Holder

   More than once I have heard a knock on my door late in the evening and it turned out to be my School St. neighbor Kirk Etherton. Etherton is a very creative Somervillian and when the germ of an idea germinates in his head about the promotion of an artistic project neither the dark of night nor the cold blasts of winter can keep him from his appointed rounds. He has also been known to drop off artful notes in my mailbox, or stop me in the street to tell me about the latest fascinating person he met, something like a Tibetan monk who has a knack for kosher cooking, and is an excellent break dancer.

  Lucy Holstedt, his other half, or as Etherton would surely put it his better half, is equally as active and passionate and the pair compliments each other well. Holstedt is a professor at Berklee College of Music in Boston, and an accomplished pianist, composer, vocalist—and may I add one mean poet. Early in her career she started as a scientist working at a lab at Columbia University in New York City and lived on the Lower East Side. But eventually she gravitated to the music scene playing the piano in clubs, restaurants, and coffeehouse such as: Folk City and the Rosebud Coffeehouse, as well as other venues across the city.

  At Berklee Holstedt started the  Women Musicians Network event in 1998 for women students to perform their own music. Now, years later, it is a very diverse network that strut their stuff on the stage. For instance, one group that is now big on the Boston music scene Zili Misik, is an all-female/Afro/Pop/Haitian/R&B/ group. This group got their start with the Network.

  Etherton has for years worked in the advertising industry on projects for the Hynes Convention Center in Boston, the anti-smoking campaign for the Mass. Department of Health, to name just a few. But he is no slouch in his pursuit of the Arts. He is a published poet and won the 2009 Ibbetson Street Press Poetry Award presented at the Somerville News Writers Festival. Etherton taught himself the guitar when he was a mere boy, and now in his middle years he composes and performs his own music and songs often in collaboration with Holstedt.

  Right now Etherton is working on promoting a new record company Mountain of  Leopards founded by a former Somervillian. He is also on the board of the Boston National Poetry Festival and has his hand in many organizations.

  Holstedt reminded me she was part of the famed Mrs. Potato Head sketch comedy group, in which she developed characters and songs for this band of sisters. Her own music is played across the country mainly at Unitarian churches.

 This couple is decidedly lovers of Somerville. Both have lived in Somerville for 15 years. Holstedt lived on Ibbetson Street, where the Ibbetson Street Press was birthed. Of the city she said:

“It is a wonderful place. It has such a wide variety of people. It is international. All these pocket parks, cafes, etc… In Somerville everybody lets you pet their pet and chat with the children. You can be yourself here-and there is not a need to fit into a particular niche.”

  Beside her, Etherton nodded in agreement. But from the corner of his eye I could see he was looking at the crowd at the crowded cafĂ© for his next find in this burg we have come to know as the Paris of New England.