The Bagel Bards Bring Their Poetry and Prose to the Somerville Central Library

The Bagel Bards Bring Their Poetry and Prose to the Somerville Central Library

By Doug Holder


On Monday April 27 at 6:30 PM at the Somerville Central Library (79 Highland Ave.) the Somerville literary group the “Bagel Bards” will read from their work, both poetry and prose. The group was founded four years ago by yours truly and Harris Gardner in the basement of the old Finagle-A-Bagel in Harvard Square. When the joint went south we moved it to the promised land of Somerville. Every Saturday morning from 9AM to 12PM we meet at the Au Bon Pain in Davis Square. We have an online journal the “Wilderness House Literary Review” founded by Steve Glines, and we print yearly anthologies of our work. Our members have also reviewed hundreds of books from the small press on the literary blog: “Boston Area Small Press and Poetry Scene,” and many have published collections of their own poetry and prose. We have university professors, Pushcart Prize winners, and the unpublished in our group. If you are interested in writing then you are welcomed. I included an introduction to the Bards written by Somerville poet Afaa Michael Weaver, and listed some of our many members and their books below.


“It all came to fruition the day we made our first bagel, after a few energetic drafts of the thing. It got up from the table, shook its rolling shoulders, yawned from the hollow core mouth of itself, and began to dance. At that precise moment, the miracle came as sure as the Matrix Oracle would have predicted from over her pan of cookies. Sunlight hit the bagel, and it became lines on the floor, long lines that would have been perfect for any chorus line, but instead filled themselves with words, words that made promises to all of us. These words spoke the premise. The poet is a baker although he may never have the dough. We looked at each other and knew this was our creation myth, this dance of language on some piece of paper, or in our hearts, or in the burrowed brow of the manager trying to wrap his head around the idea that poets gather in the corner of his place on Saturdays and spend a few hours living, living, living. O bard, a bagel has become a poem.”

-- Afaa Michael Weaver







Some Books by Bagel Bards


"The Wren's Cry" ( Poems) Dorian Brooks

Self-Portrait of a Severed Head ( Poems) CD Collins

Shadow People ( Poems) Molly Lynn Watt

Time Leaves ( Poems) Barbara Bialick

Seven Days in Fiji ( Non-Fiction) Steve Glines

Outpost (Poems) Abbott Ikeler

"Self-Portrait with Severed Head" (Poems) CD Collins

"Rebuilding the Pyramids" ( Poems) Mike Amado

"Hot Rain" (Poems) Lo Galluccio

"The Man in the Booth in the Midtown Tunnel" ( Poems) Doug Holder

"Louisa Solano: The Grolier Poetry Bookshop" ( Non-Fiction) Steve Glines/Doug Holder

"Hollywood and Sunset" ( Fiction) Luke Salisbury

"Or So It Seems" ( Fiction) Paul Stone

"Plum Flower Dance" (Poems) Afaa Michael Weaver

"Lest They Become" ( Poems) Harris Garner

"Way, Way Off The Road" ( Memoir) Hugh Fox

"An Apron Full of Beans" (Poems) Sam Cornish

"Awakenings" (Poems) Richard Wilhelm

"Manufacturing America" (Poems) Lisa Beatman

"Blood Soaked Dresses" (Poems) Gloria Mindock

"Self Portrait Drawn From Many" ( Poems) Irene Koronas

"From Mist to Shadow" ( Poems) Robert K. Johnson

"Dark Opens" ( Poems) Miriam Levine

" On Becoming A Fulltime Poet" ( POEMS) Llyn Clague

"On How to Read The Manual" ( Poems ) Pam Rosenblatt

MAINLINE TO THE HEART AND OTHER POEMS by Clive Matson

MAINLINE TO THE HEART AND OTHER POEMS
By Clive Matson
Published by Regent Press
ISBN 978-1587901393
92 pages/ paperback
Price $22.

REVIEW BY RICHARD WILHELM
　
MAINLINE TO THE HEART AND OTHER POEMS is a new edition of early poems published by Diane di Prima’s “Poets Press” in 1966 plus some uncollected poems from the same era. Matson arrived on the Lower East Side in 1960 and soon was attending poetry readings where he met Allen Ginsburg, Diane di Prima, Gregory Corso, and Herbert Huncke.

While the themes of most of the poems embody a young man’s concerns, e.g., his relationship with his lady, his drug experiences, his alienation from the larger society, the language is intense and beautifully crafted, the work of a seasoned writer. And yet Matson maintains a rawness, a nakedness, to the imagery as his speaker wanders the New York streets in search of transcendence come how it may, from daydreaming through a dirt-caked window, an orgasm or the rush of junk. Along with transcendence comes a lot of hassle and frustration. The first poem begins:

Fuck you, Huncke.
Leave me
hung up for junk, waiting
alone in a dark room candles
you lit burn down in.
(Teardrop in My Eye)

Matson is always honest. His poems express what he saw and how he felt without hedging or apologizing. In “Snow White” he says:

I love drugs:
cocaine and heroin today for speed and warmth,
grass for spice.
Now I dig myself.
& forget myself.
Go out for air and
the desert street is white with
radiance
from the sun.

Matson has long ago left the drug life behind and has gone on to earn an MFA in Poetry at Columbia University. He currently resides in Oakland, CA and has lead poetry workshops and taught in the classroom . Prior to reading these poems, this reviewer was unfamiliar with Matson’s work but MAINLINE TO THE HEART makes one want to know what he’s writing these days and how he has matured as a poet. His seventh book, SQUISH BOOTS (2002), was placed in John Wieners’ coffin. (Wiener’s had written the introduction to the original edition.) Clive Matson is a poet who knows the value of his vision and one surmises he has not let it dissipate. In SICKBED II, he writes:

The Ides of March comes
looking like the first of spring.
The first day
I go out into a beautiful world.. Of color&
light
where each tree & building & person
is beautiful!
It is a vision that will not last.
But I’ll damn well
bring it back someday.
The stars allow it.


--Richard Wilhelm
Ibbetson Update

The Bones of Saints Under Glass Jeff Fleming

The Bones of Saints Under Glass
Jeff Fleming
2009 Propaganda Press
www.alt-current.com

“when I focus on the raven
(a dark smudge on a blue canvas)
and the music in my ears
(a cashmere wall of perfect sound)

I am alone”

there are great poets that I have read, (like basho) who, “shakes loose the dirt of age.” Fleming brings us to an immediacy, a stop, a place to rest, almost like passing a dead creature; we stand and contemplate what we are reading, not in a way that takes us out of ourselves but in a way that holds our attention. it is a fallen log on the path ahead of us.. “this morning, I yelled at my kids so laud my throat hurt..” there is a dead seriousness about ourselves that breathes in relief at reading those words. we identify with the yell, the dead log, the fallen branch. the reality is shocking, simple and clear. “I could tell you why, write it all down, but so what? it wouldn’t matter, not to you and certainly not to them.” ‘to them’ is an important twist. yes them, are his children, them is also the outer space yelled into, or the inner space yelled from. who are we yelling at? in this small collection of poetry about family and the
implications of being within the family, the giving and taking, the growing and maturations, and finally the letting go:

“the form was abandoned
when the crops failed.

even the house
is not enough

to draw anyone
way out here.

the apple trees have gone
wild, giving fruit

to the earth
and migrating birds.

one tree, blown over
in a passing storm,

has fallen against
the empty farmhouse,

but still grows strong,
dropping apples

through an open window.
every fall, the fruit

rots upon the hard-
wood floor,

leaving seeds that struggle
to grow among

abandoned furniture”

Fleming’s poems are compassionate. and bosho seemed to be entirely focused on his outer life. well they may not be true. but I still think fleming has an insight that that guy did not have. a must read.

irene koronas
poetry editor
ibbetson street press
poetry editor
wilderness house literary review

13 Most Beautiful: Songs for Andy Warhol's Screen Tests: Review by Lo Galluccio

13 Most Beautiful: Songs for Andy Warhol's Screen Tests

On Saturday, March 21, my boyfriend, Kent Thompson and I went to the ICA in Boston on the wharf to experience Dean and Britta's (pop musical duo spin-off the rock band “Luna) commissioned musical accompaniment to 13 of Andy Warhol's screen tests from 1964-1967.

I was totally enchanted by what this virtuosic husband and wife pair came up with to score 3 minute screen tests of the glamorous misfits of the Warhol factory scene: Richard Rheem, Ann Buchanan, Paul America, Edie Sedgwick, Billy Name, Susan Bottomly, Dennis Hopper, Mary Woronov, Nico, Freddy Harko, Ingrid Superstar, Lou Reed, and Jane Holzer. Culled from approximately 500 screen tests the subjects were asked "to pose, lit with a strong backlight, and filmed by Warhol with his stationary 16 mm Bolex camera on silent black and white film."

Introduced by ancecdotes about these characters lives, Dean invented some actual songs with lyrics for several of the film portraits -- canny, wry and always at some sort of magical angle to the persona viewed. For Lou Reed, he chose to sing an old Velvet Underground tune "Not a Young Man Anymore." His original band, Luna, supposedly took a lot of musical cues from the Velvet Underground and Wareham continues to evolve as a brilliant guitarist and songwriter, always laid-back and somehow elegant simultaneously. Britta’s a lovely and poised performer; ultra-talented on both electric bass and synthetic keys. Their dreamy pop progressions and the tribal-like drums and retro feel made these somewhat bizarre portraits come to life.

Out of this night, I wrote two poems one of which I'd like to share: a snapshot of three of the "uniques" being filmed: Ann Buchanan (who wept after about a minute and a half,) Lou Reed, and the last of the series, Jane Holzer, who to my giggling astonishment actually managed to brush her teeth without a mirror for 3 minutes smiling maniacally at the camera

SCREEN TEST FOR ANDY WARHOL
Three x three minutes*
(1964-1966)

Ann

I never blinked but after a few minutes
behind my mane of chestnut hair
I started to weep. Like Mona Lisa
breaking down and cracking the slightest
highway smile. It was only water tearing
from my eyes. One tear ran down my cheek.
Then the screen went white and I was undone,
complete.

Would I be the same?
What would be my new name?
Am I christened now to be a velvetspeed freak?

Lou

I’m Lou Reed with lunar skin
and large black shades.
You can’t see my eyes; they’re
closed inside my pockets with nickels and dimes.
Laughing inside, I swig from a bottle
of coke in three directions…almost
A commercial, more like a joke.
I already sing and shoot dope.

How did I come off?
Will the coke still pop?
What will be my sound?
What pretty tramp will stick around?
Jane

I teased my blonde hair into waves
like ocean knives and my eyes
are flashing like flash cubes, like stars.
I’ve got my teeth behind bars and
my prank is to brush them brush them
Oh yes, I can froth and brush, and
swish and clean them spotless
like the silver gleam of the factory scene.
No, I won’t bleed for you Mr. Warhol,
But catch the white white white
of my smile.

I only spat out once.

Lo Galluccio

* I encourage anyone fascinated by Warhol’s scene and the fate of those who sought his approval and glamour to check out the DVD of Dean and Britta’s work. 13 MOST BEAUTIFUL will be released on Amazon.com shortly. They are already taking advanced orders.

Short Shots by Alan Catlin

Short Shots
Alan Catlin
Pocket Protector Book Eight
2009 Propaganda Press
www.alt-current.com

bar none, this small book of poems takes place in and around establishments related to alcohol. the after hour reeling, all the ramifications of the dead end lure. Catlin serves up each poem with the experience of one schooled in tender memory and quick shots:

“first light through
picture window
inside the bar

blood shot eyes stare
out at the straights
dressed for church

one last double shot
for the road is never
enough”

the plough and star words fill the bottomless pool Catlin draws from, his clear unapologetic rendering of situations that don‘t allow warrant a poem, but in this case, the poems fill the reader with biographical sketches. the first poem leading to all the rest:

“when I was working lounges
a lot tackier and a lot more
expensive than this bar that I was
doing time in, I used to get
girls like her tossed on general
principles rather than take the ten per
cent she and her friends gave out
for not noticing what was coming
down. maybe she still thought
all the men peed their pants just
thinking about fucking her, though
once you decided that wouldn’t
happen
in this lifetime or another, she was
just another aging bimbo with big tits…”

for a tiny book, it is packed, full of powerful poems. and I must say I always look forward to reading what Propaganda Press will put out next. somehow the size of these chapbooks seems to offer the poets reason to be at their best.

Irene Koronas
Poetry Editor Ibbetson Street Press
Poetry Editor Wilderness House Literary Review

Headwind Migration. Dara Barnat.

Headwind Migration. Dara Barnat. ( Pudding House Publications 81 Shadymere Lane Columbus, Ohio www.puddinghouse.com) $10.

REVIEW BY DOUG HOLDER


I met Dara Barnat when I ran a few poetry workshops in Israel as a guest of the “ Voices Israel” literary organization in December of 2007. Like me, Barnat was raised in the suburbs of New York City, but unlike me she chose to relocate to Israel. Now in her 30’s, she teaches at Tel Aviv University, and is finishing up her doctorate titled: “ Walt Whitman and Jewish American Poetry.”
I later published Barnat in an issue of Ibbetson Street, and recommended that she send her poetry manuscript to Pudding House. And sure enough a book was birthed, and she calls it “ Headwind Migration”
This collection has the tight-coiled feel of many revisions to reach the desired effect and affect. I remember teaching a workshop that Barnat was in at a hotel overlooking the Mediterranean, and telling the class how I loved to write about food ( I had been gorging myself on hummus and pita on the beach earlier.). Well Dara has a few accomplished food poems in this collection that made me hunger for more. Her poem “ The Secrets of Challah” certainly got a “rise” out of me. The idea of this deliciously knotted, and golden loaf, is fully baked to act as a conduit for the familial and ancestral legacy with all its mystery and secrets:

“My mother braids secrets
into her Challah,
folds them into pouches
of heavy dough,
kneads them to become perfect,
round loaves.

Many times I’ve watched her
bake, she adds flour or water,
depending on the texture,
and molds the skin,
a technique she learned
years ago.

Perhaps standing closer,
I might have grasped
that the air bubbles
were not really air bubbles, but
the saddest parts
of our history, the history
that finds you.

To her credit,
what better place to hide
secrets than in Challah,
where they can be shaped
into a familiar
nourishment…”

And in “A Brilliant Fish” Barnat has a wonderful flash of insight from the light of a brilliant fish. The poem explores the need to renew, rediscover, and embrace the familiar feel of love in an ever changing relationship:

“We must choose each other
again and again.

The feeling is a brilliant fish
you catch a thousand times.

We must carry each other
like smooth stones
in the palms of our hands—

a familiar feel,
a roundness.”

Highly Recommended.

Bagel Bards at the New England Poetry Club Publishing Panel

Left to Right: Gloria Mindock--(Bagel Bard--Cervena Barva Press) / Valerie Lawson (Off the Coast)/Dianna Der-Hovanessian (New England Poetry Club) and Doug Holder Bagel-Bard (Ibbetson St. Press)

(Photo by Dianne Robitaille)

We all had a great time at the publishing panel sponsored by the New England Poetry Club. ( April 6, 2009) Thanks to Diana Der-Hovanessian who made us dinner, set the panel up, and even paid us! Don't get a gig like that every time!

Something is Burning in Brooklyn by Linda Lerner

( Linda Lerner in Boston, Mass.)


“Something Is Burning In Brooklyn” by Linda Lerner. (Iniquity Press POBOX 54 Manasquan, N.J. 08736 inqiuitypress@hotmail.com)

Linda Lerner is an adjunct professor in the City College of New York system, and a dyed-in-the-wool small press poet with a number of collections out over the years. Her current collection is titled: “Something Is Burning In Brooklyn.” It deals with the demon of gentrification that has laid claim to her beloved borough of Brooklyn, a holy fool’s pursuit of a dream, and losing a mother to dementia, among other themes.
Since I am often barely ahead of gentrification myself, and will be experiencing it with the advent of a new subway line in my neck of the woods in Somerville, Mass., I appreciated Lerner’s poem “Around Every Corner Lurks A Science Fiction Story”. Here, there is a portrait of a 90- something man being evicted from his home. This is a tragedy that often doesn’t make the headlines, or the nightly news, but happens none-the less:

“someone forced out of his home
a 94 year old man on Licquer street
whose apartment a friend’s handshake
leased him decades ago for $500 a month
gets a $2000 monthly rent increase
by that man’s great grandchildren.

the old man watches his $800 a month pension
turn to play money and
swears he’ll sleep in his car
before leaving the neighborhood
he’s lived in for 90 year
there is less and less space for anyone to go…

it’s the law
the American law…”

In her accomplished closing poem: “With Apologies to Walt Whitman in 2003”, Lerner, unlike Whitman, does not hearing America “singing,” as the great poet did as he walked the streets of Brooklyn:

‘I don’t hear America singing
jogging down the streets of my city
a helicopter roaring over
heads wired to tune out
checking phones for a pulse….

I don’t hear the bard’s “melodious song”
from classroom minds uniformed for tests
who believe in the diploma
pray for the soul’s freedom from the body,
sing someone else’s song
the same song…”

Recommended.

Doug Holder/Ibbetson Update

Hugh Fox Takes on the Talmud in Outer Space.

Hugh Fox Takes on the Talmud in Outer Space.
By Doug Holder

In Hugh Fox’s new book of novellas: “Ice House and Thirteen Keys to the Talmud,” (Crossing Chaos Press) Fox is in form as a consummate avant-garde writer. Seekers of traditional narrative plot, character, be warned: this book ain’t for you. Reviewer Lo Galluccio covered the waterfront in her review of “Ice House,” that describes Fox’s life with his second wife. Fox writes of his ex: “She is the sexiest woman who has ever stretched across the bed sheets of planet Earth.” Naturally juicy tales are forthcoming in the book, be it with a devoutly abstract style.

Fox was raised as a Catholic, but he had a clandestine Jewish grandmother, who only revealed her true identity when she was belting out her swan song. She told the young Fox shortly before she took leave of this material dimension: “Become a Jew. You will never regret it; it will immensely enrich your life."

Through a Talmudic scholar of his acquaintance, Menke Katz, Fox was introduced to the Talmud, a sacred book of commentary and interpretation that would help Fox deal with life and all the curve balls it threw his way. Fox writes of the writing of “The Thirteen Keys to the Talmud”: “Of course when I wrote the book my second wife and I had broken up, and I hadn’t seen my little son, Chris, for more than a year, and it was this sense of loss that prompted me to write such a surrealistic statement about alienation separation—all in a sacred Talmudic context.” In the book, Fox’s estranged biological son Chris, wakes up in a spaceship, hurtling through the universe, and is asked a series of questions by a mysterious figure on a screen. The woman is a cross between a Talmudic scholar, a neurotic stock character from an early Woody Allen film, and a sibling of the nefarious Hal from Space Odyssey. Enough said. Leave it to Fox to blow the lid on conventions…read at your own risk!

Doug Holder/ Ibbetson Update

Sarasota VII. by Lo Galluccio

Sarasota VII.
By Lo Galluccio
2008; 57pp;Pa; Cervena
Barva Press, PO Box 440357,
W. Somerville, MA 02144-3222.
$12.00.

Review by Hugh Fox


A lot of personal, intimate, chatty info here, always brush-stroked with masterful artistry by writer-singer-you-name-it artist Lo Galluccio, one of the most interesting geniuses on the artistic scene today. And all the personal business always contextualized inside a sense of ultimate cosmic disaster: “THE BLACK HOLE ITSELF...CANNOT BE SEEN. WHAT IS BEING OBSERVED PRESUMABLY, IS/THE CONGREGATION OF STARS ORBITING THE GALACTIC CORE AND BEING PULLED TOWARD THE CENTER BY THE BLACK HOLE’S RELENTLESS GRAVITY.....” ( #16, p.17).A strong sense of sensuality/sexuality but always in a context of, if not cosmic , then personal darkness: “In a bar called Lola’s. Your eyes dilate. ‘I have to get out of here,’ you say. We left. We walked silently to the yellow house where I stayed in that city....you kissed me. Again and again. So you might suck the essence of me into the storm of your stomach...You wanted me to sleep with you, to dispell your ghosts.” (#15,p.15)There’s no one on the current writing scene more powerfully reality-creating than Lo. Under her power the page becomes not just a talking screen but Reality Itself. You’re there, all the days and nights, flights and fights, always in not only a cosmic but a Time-Present-Moving-Into-Future context: “There will come a point in time when words will be inflicted on computer screens by brain waves. Will love be inflicted similarly, onto a face by a compulsion of eyes.” (ee, p.50). You read Gallucio and you walk away with your whole world-view transformed. The provocative sensuous Now contextualized in an an All-space of ultimate grief. A must-read!

Review of POEMS OF MADNESS & ANGEL By Ray Bremser.

(Ray Bremser, Charles Plymell and Grant Hart in front of Allen Ginsberg's
farmhouse at the Committee on Poetry, Cherry Valley, NY, August 1998.
Photo by Betsy Kirschbaum. © 1998 Water Row Books.)

Review of POEMS OF MADNESS & ANGEL By Ray Bremser. Published by Water Row Press Sudbury, Mass.


The Back Beat of Bremser. — Charles Plymell

Post War America grooved on the big band era. (Krupa was no slouch). The golden age of sound was hitting every major city. Charley Parker practiced his sax in a shack across the tracks in Kansas City. The great sub-culture was growing from hep to hip to bebop tossing seeds to hip hop. The great Lord Buckley laid down the word riff when scat was pre-natal rap. Jazz heads and Benzedrine made the scene while ageless rounders, pimps, whores, ex-cons, street-wise youth and creative kids ventured toward the iconic “angry fix” and things illegal. Ray Bremser was already a member of that bohemian sub-culture. His Hoboken nose broken profile and Jersey flat land rasp was the perfect voice and look for Hollywood casting. He was proud of his presence.

Naturally, he uses the vernacular of the time to begin a philosophical soliloquy, “So let me lay it to you gently, Mr. Gone!” And, continues sarcastically, in his poetic brilliance, to explore his humanity, his history; and ends with, “It is a little / let us say, too much, man too much!” The language here needs to be appreciated in it own flavor, its own freshness, to savor its import and save it from cliché. In that setting, the familiar jive is literary ... yes, Shakespearean. It would probably take an actor now to restore the familiar charm and sound of a Bremser or a Huncke in their day. To etymologize further… the words and jazz in the culture of that time. When Huncke hitchhiked into town and repeated a common refrain: ”Man I’m beat,” it was quickly picked up by alert middle-class students of the avant-guard to define a generation of poets and writers. When people talk of the veracity and authenticity of figures like Ray Bremser and Herbert Huncke in the Beat Generation, I think of them as having been entrenched in a rudimentary sub-culture from which whole generations could derive and be named.

In this respect, I think Bremser adopted the beat influence and lifestyle as a later and much welcomed shelter from the street to which he could contribute his provenance. It is obvious in his Poems of Madness that he spent a great deal of scholarly time alone with the poetry of Hart Crane, Pound, and Shakespeare. He doesn’t try to disguise them as his own, but writes as an equal with a healthy influence one can detect; for instance, from the surreal inspiration of Hart Crane:

For I have strung up streamers
and inhaled a wild unpatriotic rebel attitude
of position out of the air where life begins/
confetti and cascades of violent pure-bred hair!

If Shakespeare were to appear, he would thoroughly enjoy the figure here, as would Chaucer. The image/idiom is timeless as well as the philosophical inquiry:

Shit up a rope, for all I care,
But watch how
sometimes, when the horizontal dreams
of a little life gone hither come to bear
dualities of weight over the head.


Bremser can uncannily tweak the prosody and myth a bit to go from Pound to perfect pitch:

saw Anubis & terror
saw motion of witchery there,
saw bone of filthy embalmer
saw seven league boots on the feet of those birds
more soarey than Bela Lugosi

And if the academic mainstream non-poets of numb nuts and nothingness don’t like it, he leaves them with something less absurd:

take your museums, marijuana!!!
stick them in high & go haywire....


--Charles Plymell














*Ray Bremser (February 22, 1934 – 1998) was an American poet.

Bremser was born in Jersey City, New Jersey. When he was 17 he went AWOL from the United States Air Force and was briefly imprisoned. The next year he was sent to Bordenstown Reformatory for 6 years for armed robbery. He began writing poetry there and sent copies to Allen Ginsberg, Gregory Corso and LeRoi Jones who published his poems in "Yugen" and threw a big party for him when he got out of jail in 1958.

He had five books of his poetry published and featured in a film, The Beat Generation: An American Dream (1987) IMDb.

He died in 1998 of lung cancer.

As part of the Beat Generation, Bremser was strongly influenced and mentored by Allen Ginsberg and Gregory Corso, as he illustrates with his catchy language and rhythmic motion in Poems of Madness."

He was the best reader of his own work I ever heard and taught me much more than the Iowa Writers Workshop. I let him sleep on our couch when he was temporarily homeless, but this upset my wife as he didn't bathe. He had no teeth and said he could eat everything but a peanut. He didn't drive. When I put on Soft Machine 6, he hated it. He preferred Be-Bop and claimed McCoy Tyner would "play" his poems on the piano. Will Schmitz

Ibbetson Street Poet Linda Larson author of "Washing the Stones" to read at Lesley University Apr. 29 7PM

Lesley Seminars, Lesley University and
The Center for Photographic Exhibitions of the New England School of Photography
present:


A Sense of Place
An evening of word and image with
photographer Vaughn Sills and poet Linda Larson


This collaboration offers photographs and poems that display the artists' unique experience
of the American South and sense of place.


Wednesday, April 29, 2009
7:00 pm
Lesley University
University Hall
2nd floor Amphitheater
1815 Massachusetts Ave
Cambridge, MA


The presentation is free and open to the public




**See Sills photograph and Larson poem below or click: http://www.exhibitioncatalogs.com/

Somerville Community Access TV Hosts public discussion with two major African-American Poets: Afaa Michael Weaver and Major Jackson

Somerville Community Access TV Hosts public discussion with two major African-American Poets: Afaa Michael Weaver and Major Jackson (click on title to view film)

A public discussion titled from “Do Woop to Hip Hop” was filmed at the Somerville Community Access TV studios, April 2, 2009. The discussion, moderated by Gloria Mindock of the Cervena Barva Press, and produced by Doug Holder of the Ibbetson Street Press, was an exchange between poets Afaa Michael Weaver and Major Jackson. Weaver (58), a professor at Simmons College and Pushcart Prize winner, and Jackson (40), the editor of the Harvard Review and author of the critically acclaimed poetry collection “Hoops”, discussed their lives and influences. Weaver discussed his years growing up in Baltimore, Maryland, the civil rights movement, his mentors, and his development as a writer. Jackson discussed his early years growing up in Philadelphia, his involvement in the city’s vibrant art scene, the strong influences of the family and church, his 16-year relationship with his mentor Afaa Michael Weaver, and other notable poets. Both men revealed much about the struggle to survive amid the turmoil of the inner city and the realization of themselves as artists. The program will be aired on Somerville Community Access TV throughout April and beyond, and clips from the interview will be online in the near future. Bill Barrell (the director of the film), and Wendy Blom, executive director of SCAT, were impressed with the quality and import of the discussion and will be nominating it for a Community Access TV award. Barrell, who has extensive experience in commercial TV in Boston, likened the discussion to a PBS production. He pointed out Mindock’s skilled and insightful queries, and the two poets breadth of knowledge and artistry. This is a program I feel will be of use to students of poetry and literature in years to come and I am proud to have played a part in it.



American Income

The survey says all groups can make more money
if they lose weight except black men…men of other colors
and women of all colors have more gold, but black men
are the summary of weight, a lead thick thing on the scales,
meters spinning until they ring off the end of the numbering
of accumulation, how things grow heavy, fish on the
ends of lines that become whales, then prehistoric sea life
beyond all memories, the billion days of human hands
working, doing all the labor one can imagine, hands
now the population of cactus leaves on a papyrus moon
waiting for the fire, the notes from all their singing gone
up into the salt breath of tears of children that dry, rise
up to be the crystalline canopy of promises, the infinite
gone fishing days with the apologies for not being able to love
anymore, gone down inside Earth somewhere where
women make no demands, have fewer dreams of forever,
these feet that marched and ran and got cut off, these hearts
torn out of chests by nameless thieves, this thrashing
until the chaff is gone out and black men know the gold
of being the dead center of things, where pain is the gateway
to Jerusalems, Boddhi trees, places for meditation and howling,
keeping the weeping heads of gods in their eyes.


Afaa Michael Weaver
Previously published in Poetry magazine

Urban Renewal

ix. To Afaa Michael S. Weaver

Bless your gnarled hands, Sir, and their paternal blues.
Tonight Kala grazes a palm over a battered face,
feeling his new-born features in a Correctional zoo.
The shock is permanent like the caged primate
who suddenly detects he—s human. A HOMO ERECTUS
stands upright on guard outside his cell.
For the record, good friend, tropes are brutal,
relentless, miraculous as a son—s birth. KING KONG—S
memoir gets repeated on the evening news
like a horror flick, and everywhere dark men
are savagely ambushed. So, when a woman strolls
towards a homeless BIGGER, the audience
tenses up involuntarily beneath a cone of light.
This is the work of blockbusters: Kala—s groan
twisting on a steel cot, and by morning—s sunlight,
your cramped hand. Pages pile to a tome
on a kitchen table; its defense is three-fifths
human, two-fifths man. I await its world premiere;
till then, when the soul hears of black guards who strike
harder, the brain goes arthritic, tropes proliferate,
and a wide screen blooms with images of heavy-weights
whose gloved-hands struggle to balance a pen.

--MAJOR JACKSON ( Post Road)

Icehouse & Thirteen Keys to the Talmud by Hugh Fox

ICEHOUSE &
THIRTEEN KEYS
TO TALMUD
By Hugh Fox
Crossing Chaos enigmatic ink
Copyright 2009
p. 290


“Independence is, in essence, the ability to
incorporate
within the perimeters of one’s own psycho-sexual
frontiers, enough release and satisfaction
mechanisms
to completely fulfill the genetic demands of one’s
own
inner-outer nature.” P, 39

Thus we have the “philosophical” ethos of a madly expansive, hyper-erotic, almost porno story of a couple living together in carnal over-drive --- clinical, surreal, intense and obsessive – in paradoxically, an icehouse. It’s a wildy funny, brilliant cosmic
parable.

Flambeaux, flambeaux Mrs. Mouse (the character who is, according to Fox in the introduction, based on his “sexiest second wife.) carries the flaming torch of lust through an “all mica-crystal-gleam-white.” Her unnamed partner in one episode pulling from her uteruis/cunt “large wet, slippery slices of fresh liver (12 slices.) p. 27 proceeding to fillet them to a “light brown.”

Food and sexual devices (like candle stubs) are just some of the catalogues of objects wall-papering this icehouse of perverse domesticity. Fox creates amazing juxtapositions of pop icons and acquaintances in a quest for an original imaginative aura:

“But it still wouldn’t come. Valentino (3 ulcers and a hernia), John Wayne,
Tarzan, King Kong, Great Dane (Lauritz Melcior, age 43 – Tristan), George
Raft, Bob Taylor, Clark Gable…in the MISFITS, blonde (her) down in the desert
(sand) and Clark Prick (motorized) driving into .putt….putt…putt….putt….the smell of peroxide semen wetting down the sand, writing (snack-prick), squaring-
circles, hypotenusing long, dry brown horizons.” P 41

CAPS, Dadaistic compound nouns invented for sound glory and nonsense, popping up parentheses…..these punctuation quirks are ALL OVER THE PLACE and
they frankly tickle the reader like a flamingo feather.

Cinematic, paradoxical, and rebelliosly conflating mysticism and sexuality, rage and adoration for ancestors, the stupid utility of everyday objects and their aesthetic/masturbatory value – Hugh Fox has brewed something that both beat William Burroughs and futuristic William Gibson would seriously envy. The one genius trait that Fox possesses is a very canny and strange sense of humor which pervades the work. Like a drug-trip of hallucinatory sex-candy, “Icehouse” swings the reader with a runaway vengeance of excess and extreme wisdom for how banal and bestial human life is. (Wrapped up in black lace and stalking in black suede fuck-me boots….)

It’s peppered with catalogues of states and appliances and nature scenary which usually lead to a sublime existential awareness:

“Tension building up. Short wave, long wave, FM, cybernetic, TV. Alternating.
Wind rubbing a close-to-the house oak tree arm against the roof, like a squeaky
Shoe, cosmic giantess out-in-the-snowstorm-moan.
The Manhole Covers:

“We know it’s coming and although it’s late,
we know that all we can do is wait….” P 1

Sort of like Godot.

Not that there aren’t allusions to sin or attempts at martyrdom: in one Fellini-like episode, we’ll call him Mr. Mouse, self-immolates….there is talk of saints and these are profound and deliberately mixed up contradictions from a genius writer who spent the better part of his writerly education steeped in Bukoswski, ancient civilizations, watching avante-garde cinema and working on underground magazines, in addition to taking cosmic gurus.

“(In the Hochscule of St. Mary Margaret Damian of the Bleeding Tit,
showering with long white “shifts” or in private stalls, private inside private
inside private, Chinese (highest church) box-puzzle minds, froze-through nights
of suspended disbelief in anything but Ice Christ hovering in the black air,
waiting to icicle down into the midst of her soft purity, to reward her (maximally)
with the Stigmata of the Bleeding Tit.) p. 53

In his in his intro to The Ghost Dance Anthology (1968-1993/4) Hugh Fox writes:

“I call (us) the Invisible Generation. We weren’t “Beats,” although we all had
great affinities to the Beat Generation. It’s tempting to call us the Hippy
Generation because we were kind of “Hippyish.” Our drugs were soft,
our world-view non-linear, non-occidental….. We lived inside the Great
American Dream Machine always dreaming our own alternative dreams.”

Fox writes with brilliant word-play, so prose and poetry intermesh and limericks emerge from other descriptions of scenes and characters, like Grandmother Gemultlichkeit:

“So goodnight little pumpernickel<
Sleep tight as an icicle<
If you never wake again,
It’s the same as if you’ve never been….”
P 61

Afterwards, Mrs. Mouse shits fistfuls on Grandma’s portrait and 12 other portraits too. Her narcissus/Dionysian/philosopher fucking savior then leaves her with a “fart at her with a haughty expression of who-needs-ya jam spread across his mug, and POOF! Disappeared. P. 58

But he still loves her, returning. And in the end, they are “fresh start – churning, churning (eyes closed) churning ---“ p 74

On peyote or not, I adore Fox’s zone in this book. The Icehouse is both a frozen tundra of cerebral observations and sensory details out of place and perfectly in place and a hot house of weird sex. A must-read.

Unfortunately, the voluptuous free verse of Icehouse left me incapacitated to review the companion piece to this book: “Thirteen Keys to Talmud.” Fox was raised steeped in Catholicism – Christ seems to be both a restraining martyr and also the son of a Sun King, a prophet – and then discovered his true Jewish ancestry.

Fox dedicated the 214 page novella to his mentor, Menke Katz, “who gave me the foundations.” And to Chris (his grandson?) to whom he credits the motivation for writing the book in the first place. It looks like a fascinating work of mysticism, replete with mathematical equations and charts. For those who don’t want to dive into the maniacal porn aspect of Icehouse, I suggest they read this. (There is also a more logical narrative – dare I say linear? – to follow.)

His epigraph is a beautiful poem:

“There is no blade of grass in this whole
world that doesn’t have a star guarding
it so that it should never vanish.” P.75

French poet Rene Char once wrote, “There is no absence that cannot be replaced.”

I think Hugh Fox would agree philosophically with this, but for me there will never be another Hugh Fox.

Lo Galluccio for Ibbetson St. Press

Advertise with a popular online and print literary column in the heart of the Paris of New England

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Off the Shelf is a popular literary column in The Somerville News written by Doug Holder. Somerville, Mass, commonly referred to as the "Paris of New England" boasts more writers per capita than the isle of Manhattan. It is a city situated in the midst of the literary capitals of America: Cambridge, Boston, and Somerville, Mass. It is a city that is full of students, academics, writers, publishers, who are nourished by the likes of Harvard University, Tufts, Brandeis, MIT, and 100 other institutions of higher learning in the immediate vicinity.

I am pleased to announce The Somerville News will be providing ad space on my literary column page in The Somerville News. Consider this:

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* If you are interested in discussing advertising opps. with me for "Off the Shelf" or The Somerville News-at-large, contact: Bobie Toner at 617-666-4010 or me Doug Holder dougholder@post.harvard.edu or call 617-628-2313.

Open Letters Carolyn Gregory Review by Irene Koronas

Open Letters
Carolyn Gregory
Windmill Editions
ISBN 9780635257440
2008 $12.00

A poultice of words soothe and reference the magic, transforming pain and the ancient muse that seems to fly in and out of Carolyn Gregory’s poetry. The window is kept open so the reader may feel the fresh air that each word represents. The poems walk along a path with seasonal moons:

“…Each pine was a great green feather in the ground.
I planted four hundred of them
and sumac, pine, and hickory surrounded the house.
Walking a dozen miles through yellow flowers,
I arrived in this green, quiet place…”

The lyrical verse takes its leisurely stroll back and forth, reciting and then like green water from sleep, Gregory shows us pond life, life’s immediacy, each line reflects pretenses from the past, the growth of going there, then taking a different turn. The pond is deep enough, muddy enough for straight up green reeds:

“…So let’s simply wander, my friend,
through gardens of lilies
delight in their unfolding calices.
let water flowing down through rocks
wash us free of past sins.”

A presence floats like so many tulips on dark glass. In her poem, “Siren,” she captures the lullaby that could re-direct and crush the words offered, but Gregory pauses before turning around, away from the deadly rocks. The reader will come to see what she encounters on her many walks. Siren is one of my favorite poems in Open Letters; it relates the dangers of being alone:

“Last night, the siren with fingers
of ice and moonlight visited.
I slept badly, pain in the middle
of my back.
The low hum of engines drifted
out a window.

With cold white arms,
the siren brushed her long braid
over my breasts.
She sang a soft lullaby
only I know.

Smiling, she mentioned the empty bottles
hidden in my closet.
She praised the narcotic, alcohol.
Perfumed poppies tumbled from her red lips
and fell across my blanket.
My back throbbed.
The moon grew big in its black egg cup…”

In “Red Queen and Blind Carbon Copies,” Gregory uses humor to point out the every day power structures that trap some people on a tread mill. Running around making copies of themselves: “who’s playing a tuba to impress students in miniskirts.” The poem describes fantasy, the expectations fantasy hinges on, then the release, the fall the expector becomes grounded on, the wallop of the fall, “…we’re bound together by what we know.” There are no fantastic imaginings in this book, even though there are classical references. Instead, Gregory presents reality, the reality of being human in a watery world:

“To lose the boundaries of breakdown lanes, starting
and stopping like a jolting horse
at rush hour behind a Fed Ex truck,

you must expand your scheme
from hours clocking down to nowhere,
from dreams that mean nothing
but time lost and floundering…”

Yes. The reader will be fascinated by the poems, yet more than likely the reader will be submerged, bobbing up for air, taking quick breathes, stroking the strophes, one after another. The poems exam, float and backstroke past long stem connections, the lily leaves and the croaking frogs waiting to be kissed.

TIM DEVIN: An artist and writer who fights urban anonymity

(Poetry book left by Tim Devin on park bench)






TIM DEVIN: An artist and writer who fights urban anonymity






Tim Devin, a former Somerville resident, is a Boston area conceptual artist and writer. His focus is according to his website: “…humanizing public space, and combating what he views as the negative effects of urban anonymity (such as people’s emotional isolation, and lack of attachment to their environment)." He currently works as a law librarian at the New England School of Law, is a member of the Rise Industries creative group, and is the founder and former member of The Boston Typewriter Orchestra. I spoke with Devin on my Somerville Community Access TV Show “ Poet to Poet: Writer to Writer.”

Doug Holder: You are a self-described conceptual artist. Can you define that?

Tim Devin: For me it is a larger term that I hope conveys that I don’t make paintings or sculptures. I use the term to tell people I deal with ideas rather than objects.

“Conceptual” is a 60’s or 70’s term that gets thrown around. I think it is a more friendly term for the art I attempt to make.

DH: Your art, as you describe it fights urban anonymity. Are you or have you been a victim of this?

TD: What I try to do is create situations that people by participating in my projects can meet each other through the different objects I leave in public. It is natural in a city to be overwhelmed and ignored a lot. I think there is a problem as a result of this.

DH: You leave flyers, poetry books, in public space. Some might say, like Shepard Fairey—you are defacing the landscape. What do you think of Fairey? Is there any comparison between you two?

TD: I would be honored to be compared to Shepard Fairey, I think what he does is really wonderful. He also has a strong populist message that I agree with. What I try to do is to leave ephemera in public space. Part of that is philosophical. I have never been involved with graffiti. Flyers and poetry books are not permanent parts of the urban landscape.

DH: “ I left this here for you to read” is a project that consists of leaving poetry books around various cities across the country (including Somerville) for people to read. This is sort of like the “message in the bottle” concept. Do you have feedback that people are reading these booklets of poetry?

TD: So far we are on issue 20, so there are about 1,000 floating around. I have received maybe 10 responses. And these people are very enthusiastic about it. So I know I reached at least 10 people. I think a lot of then get thrown out before they are read. Frankly I have no problem with that.

I like to think of it as a message in a bottle—it’s a nice way of putting it. It’s a way to potentially reach people who don’t really read poetry magazines or art magazines. A lot of local poets were in it. I think it is a platform for writers to get their work out there.

DH: You created a fictional email exchange between a girl named Sue and her now ex-boyfriend Jay. You put out flyers with their dramatic exchange on the windshields of cars. Was something happening in your own personal life? What was the response to this?

TM: There really wasn’t anything happening in my own life that was similar to this. I wanted to create ways for people to recognize each other and think compassionately. I thought: what would someone think if they went out to his or her car and on the windshield there was a print out of an exchange between a man and a woman who broke up? And you can email both! I made up 200 flyers for each city that I distributed them in. It was really affirming—the amount of responses I got. However in L.A. I didn’t get a single response. But it was really great to read the advice and criticism to the guy and his girlfriend.

DH: You also had ten sites in Somerville where you distributed flyers that had a photo, a typed paragraph, and tear slips under it. The text had a description of the experiences you had at various sites. What were these experiences?

TM: One of them was about the experiences an old friend and I had during our younger “partying” days. We had these discussions on a park bench in the city. The bench had meaning. Each description, or flyer had a moral attached to them.

DH: Another project of yours is “What will the future hold for Somerville 2010-2100” You question folks: “What will you be doing?” “What are your hopes and fears?” Do you think Somerville’s hopes, fears, and dreams would play in Peoria?

TD: I think so. The reason I chose Somerville for this project is because I hope to move back here soon. Somerville is going under rapid change. I wanted to explore what people hope and fear, about the future of Somerville. And then I want to compile it into one history where people can compare people’s visions.


-- Doug Holder


* For more info about Tim Devin go to: http://timdevin.com

Book of Beasts by Kerry Shawn Keys

Book of Beasts
Kerry Shawn Keys
Presa :S: Press 2009
ISBN 9780980008142
$12.95

Review by Irene Koronas

vignettes similar to a hair net, which keeps hair in place while cooking, maybe the net works while writing. Keys has caught small beasts and their friends or roommates. the pages turn smoothly, one to another:

“be careful of eagles.
they’re not friendly like beagles.
evil empires place them on seals
and greedy dollar bills.
they reform babies and sparrows
with claws like arrows.
they’ll kill you for a meal,
a good deal or a limo full of petrol.
O’ they’ll catch you for a lark
and throw you to the sharks.

the poems’ sense of humor, like a snake wearing a sombrero, may strike your fancy or hit a nerve, depends on the pantomime
or turtle progress:

“…hermes once burbled over
a turtle-shell lyre,
and his cowbell songs are
paradigms of desire.
turtles and bunny rabbits
run the race of time,
and both end up as road kills
in this world’s platonic pantomime.”

I’m reminded of the island of moreau. the doctor/scientist tries to transform animals into humans. he is half successful. keys tries to create beasts like a politician on a campaign trail. each vignette exposes subjects we may not be willing to look at:

“I could just dig being a pig,
not a guinea pig, mind you, but
a real bigwig porker swigging
slop in his own stylish brig.
just imagine being king of my own
creation’s farm, casting devils
(and angels) into swine, being holy
unclean, not some boring
cow or chicken…”

Dorian Brooks: A poet who ponders what is behind "The Wren's Cry"

(Poet and political activist Dorian Brooks)



Dorian Brooks: A poet who ponders what is behind "The Wren's Cry"



Interview with Doug Holder

Dorian Brooks is not a self-promoter, but if one was to read her poetry he or she would surely be hooked. Reviewer Barbara Bialick wrote of her latest collection from the Ibbetson Street Press "The Wren's Cry,"

"She both enriches and breaks our hearts with well-edited, polished lyrics carved out of love, nature and memory. But don’t stop till you read the last poems, which will almost kill you with their powerful anti-war messages, one after another, landing as a dead monarch butterfly on Sitting Bull’s hat…"


Brooks is a widely published poet, an editor for the Ibbetson Street Press, an independent scholar of women's history, a politcial activist, a graduate of Harvard, to name a few accomplishments. I interviewed Brooks about her writing life and her new collection.






Doug Holder: Why did it take to your 30's for you to take your writing of poetry seriously?

Dorian Brooks: I was always writing, but as a child of Sputnik I felt torn between poetry and science, studying science and the history of science in college and grad school. When I was about 30, living in Connecticut, I took a poetry workshop, and I remember the woman who ran it saying she liked my work but found it distant, academic, and at one point said to me, “Dorian, when are you going to get in touch with your gut?” A few years later we moved to Minnesota, where poetry was big—in the schools, in the streets—as I imagine it’s been in Russia. I took several workshops there that encouraged me to write more about what I felt strongly about, which at that time tended to be personal relationships, family.

DH: You were a technical writer in the corporate world. Many poets I interviewed have been journalists and they found it a good training ground for being a writer—how about technical writing?

DB: I suppose that in forcing you to write clearly and economically it’s a bit like poetry. But there wasn’t much emotion involved (unless you count my increasing dislike of corporate America!) The principal of the high school I went to said that a poem has to begin with an emotion, and he was right.

DH: You first thought you had to write poems that were difficult to understand. Later you changed your tune. Why?

DB: I gradually realized there was no point in being obscure; it was a kind of affectation. I used to haunt the poetry sections of libraries, taking out books of contemporary poetry I liked, and they were usually by poets whose work spoke simply and directly in ways I could understand, like Sylvia Plath, Denise Levertov, Louise Bogan, James Wright, John Haines. When I lived in Minneapolis in the mid-1970s to mid-1980s, I had a wonderful teacher, Jim White. I remember him saying of his own work, “I went from opaque to translucent to transparent.” I think that was true of mine as well.


DH: How does your concern for the environment, and for women's history, play out in your new poetry collection The Wren's Cry?

DB: Several poems come out of a concern for the environment, mostly in the section “The Earth I Travel On”—such as “Back Road,” “At Martha’s Point,” and “Ground Zero,” in which I touch on our disengagement, our split from the natural world. In “Green Man” I suggest a little more directly that our dominant religious traditions have been part of that split.

As for women’s history—in poems scattered throughout the collection, but especially in the section “Who She Was,” I draw on the theme of silenced women’s voices, as in “Historical Marker (also an anti-war poem),” “In Memoriam,” and “Who She Was.” “To Brigit” and “Sea Child” express my strong interest in female spiritual figures and women’s voices in folklore.



DH: You say poetry for you is a way to come to terms with things. You say your new collection concerns the great themes of love and death. Have you come to terms with the fact that we die...even love dies...?

DB: Well, some of the poems are on those themes. Poetry is a way to connect with, to clarify, to express one’s deep feelings and thoughts, whether about love or death or whatever—hopefully in ways others can relate to. Maybe writing itself comes out of an awareness of the transitory nature of all things, ourselves included. I guess many of the poems in The Wren’s Cry are more or less elegies—for loss of the earth as we have known it; loss of those whom I, or we, hold dear.



DH: You have a great affinity for Native American cultures. Do you find a certain purity in native cultures ... or is it wrong to characterize them as such?

DB: It’s not that I have such an affinity for Native American cultures, though I’ve tried to learn what I can about them, or some of them. It’s more that I’ve come to realize how much of those cultures we (Euro-Americans) have destroyed over the past several hundred years. As a country, we’ve never really acknowledged that part of our history, and I think that until we do, it’s just lying there like a wound festering beneath the surface of things. Indians were mainly to be got out of the way—by assimilation, removal, or outright genocide—so we could take their lands and resources; and this taking is still going on, most recently in the appropriation of their spiritual traditions. I know “it wasn’t me” personally that did it, but it was my culture, whose hallmarks of dominance and greed are with us still and I believe directing much of what our country is doing vis a vis the rest of the world today.

As for Native cultures being “pure,” I wouldn’t put it that way, but I do think they often reflect important values that we in the dominant culture have lost sight of, such as a closeness to and spiritual affinity with nature, and a sense of community, of interrelatedness with others. I think that some older, pre-Christian, pre-industrial European cultures have held similar values, but they were mostly lost, and we’d do well to revisit them now.

DH: How does editing the magazine "Ibbetson Street" help or hinder your work as a poet?

DB: It doesn’t hinder my work. To some extent I think it helps it in the sense that it makes me aware of how many good poets are out there these days, writing on all manner of subjects, and that’s a source of inspiration.



August




By late summer, the maples

have gathered so much darkness

among their boughs,

we finally concede

our own maturing.



We hear crickets and mourn

an earlier music,

the days grown shorter now,

even our few words

a measure of acquiescence.



And in time,

longing itself dwindles

to a single leaf—

fine-veined and lucent,

yet trifling.



Day closes

and we are one

with the vesper sparrow,

at home with solitude

and night descending.

* From The Wren's Cry." ( Ibbetson 2009)


To order "The Wren's Cry" contact ibbetsonpress@msn.com Or send $17 check or money order to: Ibbetson Street Press 25 School St. Somerville, Mass. 02143

Work & Days: Academic Freedom & Intellectual Activism Edited by Ed Carvalho

Works & Days
Academic Freedom & Intellectual Activism
in the Post 9/11 University
Volumes 26-27, 2008-09
Edward J. Carvalho Editor
ISSN: 0886-2060 $15.00

“…since 9/11 there have been many startling instances where the
dominant culture’s rhetoric of terrorism and fear have cast a pall
over the terrain of academic freedom.” Edward J. Carvalho

The above sentence sets the ground work, premises of what follows in each essay; the subject being terrorism, how the word itself effects, in a given situation and in an actual sense of meaning, and its effect on academia. Each essay or interview imparts knowledge by experts, within the range of their capabilities and intellectual understanding and research. Carvalho has assembled and puts forward these important dialogues: “now more than ever, rational, purposeful discussions on the future of our society must emerge so that the controversies outlined in this collection remain a relevant topic of concern for all citizens…”

Works & Days, contains some of the best, complete understandings, from historical to prophetic outlooks, and the role of the present state of regulations and deregulating, in colleges and universities. “Caught in the Crunch,” by Ellen Messer-Davidow. Her essay creates an conducive and inclusive atmosphere for what one may understand as observation and reporting. In reading her essay, I realize, trying to quote her in minuscule, is almost an impossibility, an injustice to what is being presented, but, I will attempt it, in an incomplete way:

“To harness research to their agendas, conservatives have wielded
defunding more blatantly. The basic strategy for defunding
progressive research was devised by Lynne Cheney, when she
chaired the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) from
1984 to 1994. She openly used her position to issue NEH reports
denouncing the scholarship on gender, race, class and theory,
and behind the scenes she packed the NEH council, staff,
and peer review panels with conservatives who in turn marked
this scholarship down in grant competitions.”

Each writer introduces a similar, yet different, experience and study. In an interview with Cornel West, Edward Carvalho asks, “…can you talk a little about the impact of these forces (imperialistic) on academic freedom and intellectual activism?” Cornell West, being a prolific speaker and writer, launches into a discussion which includes the Patriot Act and its influence on the academic environment:

“… So you’ve got these three forces-you’ve got 9/11 connected to the
Patriot Act, which is political; consensus, in terms of economic
ideology, and so forth; and then, of course, you’ve got the military
presence and imperial occupation, with the Israeli-Palestinian issue
looming large in relation to 9/11, and the academy unable to have
a Socratic dialogue about it.”

Cavalho has chosen his writers carefully, with certainty, and emphatic substances; they discuss some of the problems, connected to and with 9/11, within the academic society and the ramifications brought on by that particular day and thereafter the changes wrought upon the higher places of learning. The reader will find an exact fit, a voice worthy of their liking. My favorites are similar to Socrates questioning Cebes in Phaedo. “Why, when you add one to one, I am not sure either that the one to which one is added has become by the addition, two. I cannot understand how, when they are brought together, this union or placing of one by the other, should be the cause of their becoming two, whereas, when they were separated, each of them was one, and they were not two…” All the conversations within this book are one, each essay placed beside each one another, as one indication. I especially related to the interviews:

Edward Carvalho: In speaking of the relations between resistance and labor, what are some of the fundamental differences between dissidence, insurgence, and terrorism…?

Martin Espada: My own feeling about vocabulary that your addressing is that, yes, on the one hand, it’s certainly very subjective; you can talk about point of view as a major factor in labeling people as terrorists, or dissidents, or subversives, or whatever it might be. On the other hand, I think we can and should come to some agreement about what these words mean. Rather than simply dismissing it as an entirely subjective process, it’s more responsible of us as writers and activists to stop and say, “Okay, let’s decide what these words mean,” instead of just dismissing these words out of hand and never using them again.

EC: …have such terms been corrupted by the war in Iraq?…

ME: What we as poets can do is reconcile language and meaning and to put the blood back into the words. The fact of the matter is that words are perfect engines of meaning. Words are not simply noise, and words are not simply there to distract, frighten, or manipulate us. With that said, if we can simply reconcile language and meaning in ways to deliberately counteract the separation of language and meaning carried out by the people holding political and economic power, then we will have done our job as poets…

There are so many worthy writings in this book that I can only recommend buying it and gleaning from it what you will find relatable.

Karren Baird-Olson, “Learning-Centered” Urban University. Baird-olson gives an in-depth research/look into some of the problems after and before 9/11. She presents a subtitled list of subjects from her research: Cultural Imperialism, Economic Discrimination, Hyper-Surveillance, Marginalization and Exclusion. Each of these subjects backed-up in paragraphs, thoughtful explanations:

Ignoring these and other financial realities facing students, a
number of administrators, educational policy-makers, and
politicians continue to view students as consumers of a service
and to speak of their higher learning in terms of a “purchased good”
rather than “as a rite and a right.” above and beyond this obvious
corporative model, the same administrative strata erodes educational
opportunity by recommending that students incur additional debt
by taking supplemental loans to pay for their education. Few will
openly acknowledge that the ideology of privatization in education
is code for racialized thinking, which uses tropes for scapegoat
certain underrepresented student populations, in this case, First Peoples
and persons of color. The consequent justifications for shutting
out those groups from higher education undermines and/or destroys
“ethnic studies” programs, and thus excludes or silences the voices
of the less powerful…

Carvalho’s own expression, to which a reader can access, relate to what is being put forth: “But beyond the discussions and theorizing, past the vista of mere spectatorship, the ideas outlined here must become living things and through concerted agency be put to sustainable action…”

The book, Works & Days, presents a comprehensive, cohesive cross section of deliberations by the various writers. Each writer intones their perceptions through qualified research and experiences that reinforce their truths; their writing leaves an opening, so that a reader may come to think or believe or find an insightful way or course of action. This then becomes the building; how we might come to learn what the academic administrative systems try or not try to decree, how their actions effect us, according to an atmosphere of terror; terror being an implied word, presenting and implementing certain stipulations that accord an action on the part of the implementer; the leaning toward restrictions. This book takes on a huge subject and huge questions are asked of the academics and Cavalho presents, to us the reader, some of the answers, some of the thoughtful dialogues and historical data; with a sense of integrity, with an understanding of what is
happening within our educational facilities that effect us, a nation of individuals.

Irene Koronas
Poetry Editor & Reviewer
Ibbetson Street Press
Poetry Editor
Wilderness House Literary Review

Going Home. A Horror Story. Lawrence Millman

Going Home

A Horror Story


by Lawrence Millman



sunnyoutside, Buffalo, NY

Copyright 2008 Lawrence Milman

ISBN 978-1-9345513-15-6

Paperback 25 pages $8







Review by Zvi A. Sesling







Lawrence Millman calls this a horror story which it well may be based on three things: the story, the mother and Millman's writing. That is not to say Millman's writing is a horror. In fact the exact opposite. He is very funny, very clever and very dead on. Not every Jewish mother is like Lawrence Millman's Going Home mother. However, I am sure there are many a Jewish male who may feel that their mother in some way or another - as cliche ridden as this may be - the kind of mother Peter's (the protagonist's) mother is. Even the hero's (??) name is central to the story which I refuse to giveaway because it is, as I said, very funny, very clever and very dead on.



As a horror story, Millman redefines what a horror is. It is a very funny and had me laughing out loud, not usual fare for horror. In fact, having read a few horror stories here and there, and not having read any of Millman's previous works (for which I now feel deprived), I would say he may be in a class of his own.





The Going Home characters are all too believable, particularly the interplay between Peter and mother. Their relationship is not unique in mother-son relationships, until of course, Millman adds his touch. Throughout the story Millman maintains crisp dialogue, tension coupled with humor and, of course, an ending that leaves you .... well, let's say, aware of the dark side of maternal instincts.



Reading this short story I definitely want to read at least some of Millman's eleven books. A book of his short stories, if they are anything like this would rival one of my favorite short story writers, Lawrence Block and putting Millman at that level says a lot for my like of this story. Read it and enjoy.


* Zvi Sesling is the editor of the Muddy River Poetry Review

Review of The Tide Clock And Other Poems by Tanya Contos

Review of The Tide Clock And Other Poems by Tanya Contos, Somerset Hall Press, Boston, MA, 2008

By Barbara Bialick, author of TIME LEAVES (Ibbetson Street Press)

The beauty of The Tide Clock poems is the feeling you get as you undulate up through the lives of the people of the sea, where life and death are intrinsic to the scene (like shards of glass or a seal’s carcass)—then you sadly partake of the collectables and dryness of the landlocked, for whom death is sickening like a dead grandmother’s “mummy”-like wig in an attic found by a curious little boy. Similarly, “great grandmother cannot sleep…”as you lie on her old bed: “In her portrait she wears black bombazine/and a Byzantine virgin-martyr’s air of noble resignation.”
In contrast, near the ocean: in “Midnight Swim”, “The new moon slices the sky like a scythe/and scatters its harvest of hundreds of stars/across the dark water in sight of the beach.”

As you end the book, you will probably feel compelled to start it all over again, as if it is the circle of life, for her ancestors, as well as a relative or a past love who died, with the tide recorded on The Tide Clock: “Until (everything could change, with a new man friend?) then your tide clock tells me/whether the rocks are submerged or exposed/at the spot on the point where they scattered your ashes.”

Even the family set of Dresden angels has suffered as they moved “for better than half a century in transit/in trunks of cars and holds of ships…the cellist and the violinist/contemplate their broken bows/as if there must be some mistake/…the only one intact/is the conductor/her perfect palm is raised/…she seems to say Look I know I know but play”

In this intriguing collection, the author is the conductor, as she brings you these vignettes of ocean people, their “flotsam” and how they react to moving “off island”… She concludes along the way that “the land has a heartbeat as strong as the tide” as the old-timers and the almanac have said. “We take this on faith,/we listen anxiously, straining against the wind.”

But as she points out in her preface, she’s “someone who can barely breathe, much less write, more than a few miles from open water…” This would be a good book to take with you on a personal voyage to the sea, or to grab if you live there all the time.
The book’s glossy cover has a beautiful and mysterious orange figure rising up near an ocean, a painting by George Kordis, that is as fascinating to study as are the poems within.

--Barbara Bialick, author of TIME LEAVES (Ibbetson Street Press)

Self-Portrait With Severed Head by CD COLLINS

Self-Portrait with Severed Head
CD Collins
Ibbetson St. Press
Copyright 2009
Pages =56



REVIEW BY LO GALLUCCIO


A thoroughbred herself, CD’s dedication (epigraph) for the book underscores her love of contradictions and her canny sense of humor; not to mention her love of horses:

She ran with the heart of a locomotive,
On champagne-glass ankles.”
From a Washington Post writer on the death of Eight Belles
from fractured ankles.

The book’s production, with a violet and black cover of a dark-haired woman lying dead or unconscious and a woman on the upper-right holding a camera between her naked knees sets up the use of photography in the collection: four gorgeous abstract b&w photos marking the four sections: “Element,” “Spoken Songs,” “Incognito,” and “Prodigal.”
(The “Spoken Songs” section opens with an on-stage shot of CD at Berklee College of Music.)

In this book there is an almost perfect fusing or alternation between narrative memory, rhymed and unrhymed, and pop-culture imagery and dream. The musicality and the female presence or essence is strong. It’s like Chrissie Hynde’s wailing: “Gonna use my arms, gonna use my legs, gonna use my style….” And while CD sure knows how to spin a story and create beautiful metaphors in and around it, she herself never leaves the poem, as if it were a special room she won’t leave unlocked.

“I love the fragrance of grease
from exhaust fans
into the winter morning,
walking past on my way to the factory,
how steam billows into clouds
my hands
two blue stars
in my coat pockets.” P. 7, “Subtracting Down”

Hands, her hands, the labor of hands, is a popular theme in this book – used literally and metaphorically. As if, jolted from a nightmare or a surreal dream, CD always finds her own hands to recognize her humanity and reality of self. Eyes are the other mighty part of the body—as she says, “they shoot with a camera instead” – talking about hunters in “Moon Again.” Or, in the poem “Diamonds,” she writes:

“Diamonds

are so necessary,
for cutting emeralds, rubies, glass
the perfect substance for the task.
Give me diamond chips in a velvet box.
I’ll grind them with my eyes to dust.”

And in the poem “Everyeye,” a signature poem for the collection, she writes:

“I can see but my eyes are closed.
I can see but I keep my eyes in my pocket.” P. 24

In the title poem, “Self-portrait with a Severed Head,” CD displays what Joni Mitchell once wrote was “the hope and hopelessness I’ve witnessed all these years….” It is an example of a brilliant juxtaposition that Collin’s uses to startle us into reflecting throughout the book:

At first she says: “To touch is to change.” And that freedom to love, to intertwine, to “finish a lover” as she says in a later poem, seems the essence of sensual bond and hope. But the poem ends with a very different image:

“I imagine all our cascading faces
smiling larger than ourselves,
fixed and absorbed through my eye,
and think how small
our souls must be by now.”

When hunters “shoot with a camera instead” this seems a metaphor for poetry also, for it is a means of survival and sometimes a way of the thief, capturing the world around him/her, when the world has no real choice but to be captured. That is also a way of describing the craft of poetry, I think, though others might disagree. And it also seems an allusion to the photos in the book that serve as exquisitely strange place marks.

Again in spoken songs, CD infuses her dry (maybe Southern?) humor into an epigraph: a popular joke to some in the world of celebrity tracking. But the joke serves only as the tip of a poem that is about much more. It’s called “The Blues.”

“If Mama Cass had given Karen Carpenter that ham sandwich, they’d both be alive today.”

I must admit, never having heard the joke, I had to giggle. It’s so absurdly funny the way we know that Mama Cass died on a ham sandwich and Karen Carpenter died of self-starvation.

The actual story of the poem intermixes memories of high school parties and her relationship to the boys, the boys that may or may not have been sent off to the Vietnam War.

“You needed to be smaller than him
so he could protect you,
Once he starved himself for a month,
eating only bananas.
He was a pacifist.
He looked like Jesus,
With his long hair and suffering face.” P. 32

She invokes the music of Abbey Road and Purple Haze, Janis Joplin
And the sit-com characters Dick Van Dyke and Mary Tyler Moore…

“You listened to their voices,
Described them like wine.
At least they had voices,
you seemed to lose yours,
drinking White Russians in snowstorms, running fast….”

p. 31 The Blues

And then the joke at the beginning; the fateful twist of Mama Cassie’s choking and Karen Carpenter’s anorexia comes down to hunger, famine even, or cannibalism that we all eat each other’s faces and images and stardom somehow: Or want them, or sacrifice for them. There are martyrs and there are Queens and it doesn’t matter when you’re young, you “eat them” because you actually want, as CD has brilliantly and through years of evolution found, her own voice.

“It was Karen singing,
in the end she looked like your old boyfriend, Jesus.
You are starving,
And she is singing,
And this is what you ate.”

p. 33 The Blues


“Spanish Mountain” – one of my favorite more abstract poems takes the landscape and objects of a foreign land as metaphors for other things: For me, it gives the section a fine Mediterranean glaze:

“Roof tiles are candysticks
Sun is white smoke
God is brown dust
Marble chip is dawn shard
Sleep is colossus.”

p. 35 Spanish Mountain


There are fairies in the gloaming, there are her mother’s old dogs she hears over and over despite their absence, there is always a CD finding her heart against a severed head but dangling that head into so many road maps we can barely fathom it. She is one of the best poets at word play I have read in years and her feminine intuition is matched by her great respect for the grounded strength of the real world. I would highly recommend you read this book, from Doug Holder’s indie operation that gains depth, range and excellence every year in its writers works. Brava to CD Collins.


Lo Galluccio is a writer and vocal artist who lives in Cambridge, MA

**********To order CD COLLINS' book go to http://lulu.com/ibbetsonpress

Boston National Poetry Month Festival April 4 2009

PRESS RELEASE


PRESS RELEASE

THE BOSTON NATIONAL POETRY MONTH FESTIVAL

Now In Its Successful NINTH!!! Year

CO-SPONSORS: Tapestry of Voices & Kaji Aso Studio in partnership with the Boston Public Library, SAVE the DATE, Saturday, April 4th 10:00 A.M.- 4:45 P.M. OPEN MIKE: 1:30 to 4:00P.M. The Festival will be held at the library’s main branch in Copley Square. FREE ADMISSION

53 Major and Emerging poets will each do a ten minute reading; ALSO

Featuring six extraordinarily talented prize winning high school students: Dianna Willard & Joshua Mejia from Boston Latin High School; Yolanda Cruz, Peter Li & Yamira Serret: Boston Arts Academy; Gabriella Fee: Walnut Hill School for the Arts. These student stars will open the Festival at 10:00 A.M. SAM CORNISH, Boston’s current and first Poet Laureate will open the formal part of the Festival at 11:00 A.M. 52 additional major and emerging poets will follow with a

POETRY MARATHON

Some of the many luminaries include SAM CORNISH, Diana Der Hovanessian, Richard Wollman, Jennifer Barber, Afaa M. Weaver, Barbara Helfgott-Hyett, Dan Tobin, Ellen Steinbaum, Charles Coe, Ryk McIntyre, Elizabeth McKim, Regie O’Gibson, Kate Finnegan, Michael Bialis, Gary Tucker, (Kaji Aso Studio), Marc Widershien, Sandee Story, CD Collins, Marc Goldfinger, Diana Saenz, Stuart Peterfreund, Valerie Lawson, Joseph DeRoche, Frannie Lindsay, Ifeanyi Menkiti, Dick Lourie , Mark Pawlak, Lainie Senechal, Harris Gardner, Joanna Nealon, Susan Donnelly, Irene Koronas, Doug Holder and a Plethora of other prize winning poets.

This Festival has it all: Professional published poets, celebrities, numerous prize winners, student participation, OPEN MIKE.
Even more, it is about community, neighborhoods, diversity, Boston, and Massachusetts. This popular tradition is one of the largest events in Boston’s Contribution to National Poetry Month. FREE ADMISSION !!!
FOR INFORMATION: Tapestry of Voices: 617-306-9484 or 617-723-3716
Library: 617-536-5400

Wheelchair accessible. Assistive listening devices available. To request a sign language interpreter, or for other special needs, call 617-536-7855(TTY) at least two weeks before the program date.

The Book of Colors and Painters by Korkut Onaran

The Book of Colors
And Painters
Korkut Onaran
Cervena Barva Press
1007 Chapbook Award Winner 7.00

Review by Irene Koronas

Korkut Onaran creates in two parts; the first part imparts how the artist thinks about colors. “then, what remains is reflected on the water surface.” each color, each pigment, represents his personal perspective, “like phallic flowers” or “black has brought titanic silences.”

In part two we meet the painters; chagall:

“…the full moon is taking them into a pool
of blue, a deep dark bright blue,
and they swim in it
eating the plums, the grapes,
eating the tiny bananas,

and they speak of the flowers
-word by word, the flowers-
and they speak like fireworks…”

we meet Paul Klee:

“full moon
falls
into the pond
and bounces

then touches the window
glows on the ceiling
lands on child’s cheeks
and enters his dreams…”

This chapbook is bound to call attention to itself and to you the reader who will enjoy all the implications of color.