“Among Thieves” by David Hosp

A BagelBards Book Review

“Among Thieves”
By David Hosp
Grand Central Publishing, New York, NY price $24.99

Reviewed 1/19/10 by Paul Steven Stone

“Among Thieves” is the fourth in a series of attorney-centric thrillers written by David Hosp. Its fictional portrayal of the notorious Isabella Gardner Museum heist of 1990 offers an interesting, if perhaps excessively violent, framework for the still unsolved crime whose purloined booty is reputedly worth billions today.

Fast-paced and interesting in its premise, the novel suffers from characters drawn with little depth, as if the novelist was relying on the reader’s efforts with similar novels and similar characters to round out his offering. The novel’s hero, attorney Scott Finn, works in concert with a former Boston cop turned detective, Tom Koslowski, and a single associate, Lissa Krantz, in a corporate arrangement more suited to detective fiction than commercial reality. The story opens in the past with the chilling murder of a family in Northern Ireland, then quickly spans 35-years and a quarter of the globe to overtake the modern-day murder of a high-ranking member of Boston’s criminal underworld.

Attorney Finn enters the story on Patriots Day on his way to a Red Sox game when he stops by the Nashua Street Jail to visit a client, Devon Malley, a small-time thief who may have been, as the novel later reveals, involved in history’s biggest and most audacious art theft. Malley not only convinces Finn to talk with local gangsters who might be of help, but also gets the lawyer to take charge of his angry, wise-cracking and inevitably hungry-for-love teenage daughter. Before Finn can contact either of Malley’s criminal colleagues, they are tortured to death by a vengeful and relentless IRA terrorist. It soon becomes clear that Malley and his daughter may be the next victims on the list unless Finn and the police can run down the murderer and find the stolen artwork in time.

“Among Thieves” is an interesting tale told by a highly capable writer who perhaps should have spent a little more time on developing his characters. The City of Boston, as well as one of its most notorious sons, Whitey Bulger, play key roles as events and narrative unwind. The story unfolds crisply, with at times excessive violence, and ends with an interesting, if not surprising, conclusion. Readers of crime fiction will enjoy “Among Thieves” even if it doesn’t make the list of top-tier legal/lawyer thrillers.

A SHEEP IN WOLF’S CLOTHING by Paul Steven Stone

A SHEEP IN WOLF’S CLOTHING
By Paul Steven Stone

For any democrats, progressives or dumbstruck Obama supporters wondering “What the hell happened?” in Massachusetts this past Tuesday, let me offer a few thoughts.
As Pogo once said in a famous cartoon strip, “We have met the enemy and he is us.”

After eight years of Bush-Cheney malign neglect, the American presidency was turned over to a man who promised to change the way Washington worked. To take back power for the people. To curtail the power of the lobbyists and their entrenched special interests. To fight Wall Street for Main Street. To bridge partisan divide. And to restore America’s pride, not just as a powerful nation but a moral one as well.
And where do we find ourselves a year later?
Stuck.
With a president who appears to value comity over fighting for what he believes in. With a president who promised to fight for real health care reform but appeared to quickly abandon the very drug cost containment and public option elements that real reform requires.

We voted for a president who would fight drug companies for the right to import drugs from Canada and who would use America’s colossal bargaining power like a club to lower drug prices. Instead we ended up with a president who negotiated away his power in exchange for the pharmaceutical industry’s collusion in a program that would never threaten either their American monopoly or their colossal greed.

We voted for a president who would fight Wall Street but who quickly brought in the usual suspects to run things, some of them clearly tarnished by their inside involvement in the financial crisis or their initial efforts to make whole the bankers and CEOs whose greed and system manipulation caused the crisis.

This last year we have hungered for a President who would worry less about upsetting the apple cart and more about removing the bad apples. It may have been politically expedient to give Bush and Cheney a ‘Get Out Of Jail Free’ card, but America’s constitution has been bloodied by their cowboy-up approach to starting wars, torturing prisoners, denying constitutional rights and subverting civil liberties.

To not shine a light on these illegal and destructive behaviors is to allow them to eat away in the dark at the cornerstone of rights that others have died to secure.

We voted for a president who, if he didn’t have the heart or courage to pursue these miscreants, would at least have had the wisdom to convene a Truth and Reconciliation Commission. If only to uphold the honor of his office and his somber responsibility to our Constitution.

Over the last year we have watched President Obama repeatedly step back from using the full weight and power of his position to foster policies and programs he was elected to pursue. His willingness to enter into compromise or meaningless negotiation with fanatical Republicans so invested in protecting the wealth and power of entrenched interests they would never meet him halfway on any field, over any issue, will prove to be his—and probably our—undoing.

Mr. President, we elected you to clean up Dodge City, but it appears you’ve settled in far too comfortably, and much more quickly than anyone could have expected.

If your advisors tell you that you are doing a good job, fire them. If you can’t find worthy advisors to replace them, perhaps you’ll have to look beyond the boundaries of Washington, D.C.

That would be change we could believe in.


Paul Steven Stone is a writer/novelist living in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Author of the novel “Or So It Seems” and the story collection “How To Train A Rock”, he works as Director of Advertising for W.B. Mason. He can be reached at PaulStevenStone@gmail.com.

The Bones We Carry Poems and Short Prose by the Streetfeet Women.

The Bones We Carry Poems and Short Prose by the Streetfeet Women. Chris Fadala, Beatrice Greene, Elena Harap, Mary Millner McCullough, Li Min Mo, and Aura Sanchexz. (Streetfeet Press 30 Brastow Ave. Somerville, Ma. 02143) $10.

The Streetfeet Women is a group that was founded in Boston in 1982 by Somerville resident Mary McCullough and Elena Harap.

It is a collective formed to create works celebrating the way ordinary women live their lives. In this collection by the Streetfleet women: "The Bones We Carry," there is poetry and prose by Chris Fadala, Beatrice Greene, Elena Harap, Mary McCullough, Li Min Mo, and Aura Sanchez. The arresting cover image titled: "Night Rider" was created by Bagel Bard Li Min Mo, and included is artwork from Veronique Epiter. This is an anthology that has veteran writers who have perfected their craft over the years. Being a poet more than anything else, I chose to focus on a sampling of poems.

Li Min Mo's "Old Woman" captures an artist staring at her own face and wondering about the passage of time--the way it becomes chiseled in one's face:

" staring at the mirror:
what's behind this old face?
lines, discolor of age,
old tree bark, my cheeks;...
hollows, bags, crow's feet,
disappearing eyebrows, lips,
the neck's fold, three or four times,
because old age just can't decide on one idea of a portrait."

Mo points out later that the vessel may be old but : " one arm dances with sunlight and the other still wraps/
around the moon."

Being a fan of Jazz, and an admirer of John Coltrane, I enjoyed Beatrice Greene's: "Jazz: Listening to Dr. Dr. John Coltrane." Greene examines the transforming aspect of the music and the affect it has on the listener:



"You move in suspended time and space

Reconfiguring our electromagnetic essence.

Our minds, bodies, spirits enraptured;

sometimes dancing,

sometimes in meditative stillness.

Transformed, we find ourselves

breathing as if by the ocean

where we birthed."



And in a study of a daughter bemoaning the state of a mother firmly in dotage and decline, Mary McCullough writes a masterful portrait of the matriarchal shadow the mother is now in: "Assurance":



hands that once braided my hair

rest in mother's lap

she sits in a chair

placed against a drab hospital wall,

converses in monotones

with her invisible listeners.

i search for a niche in her flatness,

proof of her former wholeness.



i, a nonbeliever,

address the guardian angels

of mothers and daughters,

pray for a miracle,

let her remember my name.



Highly Recommended.

Review of VAN GOGH’S EAR, by Pamela L. Laskin

Review of VAN GOGH’S EAR, by Pamela L. Laskin, Cervena Barva Press, Somerville, Massachusetts, 2010, 75 pages, $15

By Barbara Bialick

To Pamela L. Laskin, a good, thinking poetry teacher/writer, is always teaching, even through her poems, including what she learns from her students and other artists, as she treads through her experiences. “Words continue to persist/fleshless/until they take form in a poem/…New epics are born/out of millions of years/of old thumbs and cortexes;/words, who never knew/there was anywhere to go.” (“Evolution”)

Meanwhile, she leaves you with underlying symbols to identify and figure out,
a gift to the reader, such as in the central concept of Van Gogh’s ear…van goes here, Van Gogh’s here...as she divides the book into the following sections: a left ear a right ear, the ears of the self, the ears of other artists.

In “An Education”, Laskin, as teacher, contemplates an essay from a student whose “father beat her up when she resisted rape”. Coming from a life of “Irish oatmeal/two rings on my fingers…” she exclaims “I am her teacher./I have to grade her paper.”

But she is not just a teacher. She has a clear poet’s eye, as well as ear: “Just the other year/my father said, ‘I’ll love you forever’/then died…You enter/like the cave you first discovered/as a child/…Only there’s no way out…”

She also feels for the poor, sad people she’s observed in New York, where she lives. “Things That Are Beautiful” is about an old “crippled” woman “crouched in her wheelchair on a busy street…selling necklaces…” As you read the poem, you realize it’s a sestina, that’s framed on such telling words as beautiful, naked, hands, streets, and so on. “Like everyday, she is naked to the crowd.”

The cover art for this book is a beautiful drawing by Marc Chagall. But even on the back of the book, her photo demonstrates a mischievous Mona Lisa smile.

Laskin is a lecturer in the English Department at The City College, where she directs The Poetry Outreach Center. She’s published five books of poetry, as well as some poetry chapbooks, five picture books, two young adult novels, and edited a collection of fairy tales. She resides in Brooklyn, New York.

I predict there will be more good books to come.

Poems from the Left Bank: Somerville, Mass.by Doug Holder

To order click on title






Poems from the Left Bank: Somerville, Mass.by
Doug Holder


Quarter-page-sized, laser-printed, saddle-stapled poetry chapbook of the people and sights of Somerville, MA.

Release Date:
January 2010


Cover artwork: Somerville Yard by Richard Wilhelm.


Poems by Doug Holder: OLD WOMEN AT MARKETBASKET; PET STORE; TWO OLD WOMEN; BOTTLE LADY, SCHOOL ST., SOMERVILLE; OLD WOMAN OUTSIDE THE FAMILY DOLLAR STORE; HAMLET ST., SOMERVILLE; ROOMMATE WANTED; MODERN LOVERS; THE GRAVEYARD ON SOMERVILLE AVE.; "DADDY, IS HE A MONSTER?"; SPRING ON SCHOOL STREET; SOMERVILLE: WALKING TO UNION SQUARE; MOTHER LEADING HER BOY TO THE WOMEN'S ROOM; A WEED IN THE CONCRETE; DOZING AT THE GRAND CAFE; LOOKING AT A LONE WOMAN IN A BAR; FALLEN CHERUB OUTSIDE A LIQUOR STORE; DICK'S APARTMENT; I KNOW BERNIE, I CAN GET YOU IN; ON THE LAWN.

Interview with Gypsy Scholar Sonia Meyer: An activist and novelist with a dramatic past.

Interview with Gypsy Scholar Sonia Meyer: An activist and novelist with a dramatic past.

Interview by Doug Holder

Sonia Meyer was born in 1938 in Cologne, Germany. Her first memory is not of some beatific childhood scene. It was of her mother dressing her to flee her home after fellow opponents of the Nazis had been strung up by a nearby neighborhood overpass and left dangling for all to see. Mother and daughter vanished into the forests of Germany to escape the Nazis. As a child she learned to throw grenades—she carried messages to Partisan men, who were camped out to fight the Germans.

Meyer has witnessed the Holocaust from two perspectives: the Jews and the Gypsies. During World War 11, in her time in the forests hiding from the Nazis, she witnessed the mysterious Gypsies. They were proud, defiant, and outsiders—perfect targets for the Germans. She remembers a wizened, sage-like Gypsy woman who told her and her mother that they would survive the war. She has drawn on her fascinating experiences in a new novel that she has penned: “Dosha.” It is to be released by the Wilderness House Press in the spring of 2010. I spoke with Meyer on my Somerville Community Access TV show “Poet to Poet Writer to Writer.”

Doug Holder: Sonia—you have told me that you have lived much of your life like a Gypsy, how so?

Sonia Meyer: Well first of all during the War we constantly moved. And afterwords I was rescued from Germany by an Italian uncle. We moved constantly between the States, Italy, and the rest of Europe. When I was first married I lived in Finland. And when I divorced I really travelled all over the world. I had enough knowledge to make a living. I was able to go to one country to another. I had many different professions.


DH: In an article by Susie Davidson in “The Jewish Advocate” you talk about the Gypsies and the Jews during the Nazi era: “Here are two European minorities. They are almost opposite in their culture. But they were both persecuted, albeit for different reasons, and both continued to be viewed as outsiders.”
Describe how the Nazi’s viewed both groups---how are Gypsies and Jews almost opposite in culture?

SM: Jews are a very literate culture. The whole culture revolves around the Torah. Education plays a major role in Jewish life. The Gypsies are an oral culture.—right from the beginning. They never left any traces of their past. They are great poets. But their poetry is for one particular occasion, and then forgotten. There was one famous poet, a Polish Gypsy by the name of: Papuzsa. She was the first Gypsy poet to actually publish her poetry. She became famous but then discarded by the Gypsies. The Gypsies don’t want non-Gypsies to know any part of their lives.

The Nazis viewed the Jews with envy. This is the worst of all hatreds. The Jews were powerful—they were famous in academia—they had famous artists, and frankly I think Hitler needed money for his War. I think this was an excuse to kill the Jews.

The Germans had a romantic view of the Gypsies. They viewed them as free and footloose. They were artistic and their music went straight to the German heart. They especially liked the nomadic Gypsies. The partially integrated Gypsies were persecuted more rigorously. So it was a love/hate relationship with the Gypsies. They lured them—gently-into concentration camps. At first they lured them with call for employment—there was no work.

DH: How many Gypsies were killed?

SM: Estimates vary. Of course many were not registered as citizens. Estimates were everywhere from 250,000 to a million and a half. That was 75% of the whole Gypsy population. There seems to be 12 million Gypsies living in Europe. So they really came back as a population. They have a very high birthrate.

DH: Why is that?

SM: Well, to the Gypsy children are the greatest wealth of all. So they marry very young. The girls used to marry as young as age 12. To the Gypsy, children are everything.


DH: The Russians were liberators—but they were often no better than the Nazis, with rape and pillaging, etc…

SM: The Germans did what they did in a very, cold and calculating way. The Russians had lost 25 million people in World War 11.


DH: You are releasing a novel “Dosha” published by the Wilderness House Press in the Spring of 2010. Can you tell us about it?

SM: Dosha is the story of the Lovara, a nomadic Russian Gypsy tribe of horse dealers. They were considered the aristocrats of the Gypsies, because the horse is holy to the Gypsies. And the Gypsies lived freely in the Soviet Union up to the time of Khrushchev. The book first tells the story when the tribe was roaming freely. Later they were trapped and standardized into the Soviet system by Khrushchev. They planned to escape. This is the story of the tribe. And Dosha is the granddaughter of a powerful Lovara king. By legend she is supposes to be the next leader.

Staircase of Roots by Janet Winans

Staircase of Roots
Janet Winans
Off the Grid Press
ISBN 978-0-9778429-0-30-3
0-9778429-0-3-2
$15.00 2009

Janet Winans opens a window, she gives us glimpses of her observations, provincial observations similar to Chagal’s paintings, the reader can float in and out.

“Balance is immutable. Even-
handedness, punctuality, his lawyer ways.
Brown shoes with brown suit, black with
blue or gray, striped tie symmetrical
boring, I complain. But fair,
no argument. Like truth and time.”

The poems are stable, secure in their presence, yet, can be, “unseated by a smirking boy.” Winans imparts a sense of place without losing what it means to live in a myth or to be relegated to a mythological presence. Winans sees clearly. She writes without having to trick us with sentimentality.

“Our patterns,
chains and circles,
stars, whole constellations.
Muted rose and gray
your shades;
my yellow, red
and blue symmetrical.
As if engraved
the children’s, parents’
births, deaths, marriages
in running stitches,
day, month, year.”

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

DRIFTWOOD by THEODORE K. STRYKER

DRIFTWOOD by THEODORE K. STRYKER


Reviewed by Manson Solomon



During World War II, American servicemen left their mark in the form of the now famous “Kilroy Was Here” graffiti scrawled on walls all over Europe, wherever the GI’s had been. There is a variety of conflicting legends regarding the origin of the practice, and the places where the drawings of the cartoonish man peering over a wall were to be found, but the essential message was unmistakable: “The Yanks were here, we made a difference, we were real, we were triumphant!”


The fourth story in Theodore Stryker’s collection of Short Stories, Essays and Other Writings, entitled “The Second Sinking of the USS Arizona,” poignantly chronicles the thwarted effort by Jim Healy, a decorated World War II veteran, to honor a fallen comrade who had gone down with the USS Arizona at Pearl Harbor. Jim journeys all the way to Hawaii only to find, ironically, an impossibly long line of Japanese tourists waiting to view the Memorial, and he has to catch his plane back to the States without accomplishing his mission. Subsequently, upon hearing of Jim’s death, the author, himself a veteran, seeks to make amends for his friend’s disappointment by going out to Hawaii and scrawling on the Arizona Memorial wall, with his wife’s eyebrow pencil, “Jim Healy was here.”


The central message of the book, as the back cover tells us, is that the author, Ted Stryker, “though he did not set out to write for publication, as he approached the end of his life . . . felt a need to leave something behind, hopefully something of value.” Such is the spark for many a memoir: to reassure oneself that one’s life had meaning, that one was indeed here.


So what are to make of this collection of short stories (which we are told in the usual front page disclaimer are fiction, “products of the author’s imagination,” but which we are also told in the back of the book “accurately record events in his life”), and essays (which are manifestly the author’s own opinions) and “other writings”?


Firstly, it is clear that the Stories are not pure fiction, but are drawn from the author’s own experience, whether directly personal or overheard or read about. Perhaps the “fiction” disclaimer gave him license to do some creative embellishing, but had they not been based on significant real-world events, what would he be leaving behind? Literature? No, these stories are not the stuff of literature; the professional craftsmanship is not there. As memoir, imprints of the man’s presence in the world, they are interesting and entertaining, and perhaps valuable, as he had hoped, but they are not literary in any sense. To appreciate the stories, and connect with the man’s life, one has to overlook the clichéd writing.


The Essays, being the author’s views on matters of the day, will be of great interest to the author’s children and grandchildren, staking out Grandpa’s claim to have been a living, breathing human being with opinions, telling them what sort of man he was -- but they are not abiding contributions to the debates which will live on in the public mind. Ditto the “Other Writings.”


In short, this poignant memoir, while unlikely to light a great fire in the world of literature, will nevertheless undoubtedly stir the hearts of those who knew Ted Stryker personally, and in that sense he has indeed left behind “something of value”, as he hoped.

Review of TOURIST AT A MIRACLE by Mark Statman

Review of TOURIST AT A MIRACLE by Mark Statman, Hanging Loose Press, Brooklyn, New York, 88 pages, 2010, $18

By Barbara Bialick

Just look at the son’s-eye-photo of Mark Statman on the back of this colorful, well-designed book. He’s a happy man, with good job, wife and son, even translates Lorca! But he’s still looking with the wide eyes of a poet—and a fun dad.

I’d like to see how this smooth but polished poet writes the passion of Lorca… Statman says “the danger is not/that he’ll take over/my poems/but that when it happens/I won’t know/image of cow, of horse…/so when someone points it out/I won’t see—already eaten/devoured”.

I don’t see evidence of devoured by Lorca in Tourist at a Miracle, but rather a pebble-smooth style that you can read quickly from beginning to end, maybe too quickly, without noticing many symbols or startling imagery. But when I go back over individual poems, I definitely find some favorites:

“Changing”: “the stores in/my neighborhood in Brooklyn/are always changing/a flower store/becomes a bookstore/a bookstore/becomes a cell phone store/a vacant lot a drug store/…one change after another/in the changelessness”

“You’re in Love”: “It was worth it/just for when it happened/for the certainty/of how you’ll feel/when it happens again”

“The Happy Problem”: “why do you think/that just because you say it/it’s true?”

“Tourist”: “hubo un milagro, she said/a miracle/…I didn’t know/if I wanted to go/I already knew/I wouldn’t see what she had seen”


Statman has written several other works, including THE ALPHABET OF TREES: A GUIDE TO NATURE WRITING, LISTENER IN THE SNOW: THE PRACTICE AND TEACHING OF POETRY, and he co-translated with Pablo Medina, Federico Garcia Lorca’s POET IN NEW YORK. He taught for many years for the Teachers and Writers Collaborative. Currently he is an associate professor at Eugene Lang College of the New School. He is a long-time resident of New York.

CHINESE CHESS by JOSEPH PILARSKI

CHINESE CHESS by JOSEPH PILARSKI

Sitting here with this book in my lap, I am assailed by the memory of a painful phone call from my son. Last winter he put in a stint in Hollywood at Kennedy-Marshall, the producers of Steven Spielberg’s movies, and of last year’s Oscar-nominated The Curious Case of Benjamin Button. Perhaps the memory was triggered by the fact that Brad Pitt, who played Benjamin Button, appears in the second chapter of Pilarski’s book. (” ‘Look! It’s Brad Pitt!’ Jodie whispered her scream [sic]. . . In fact, it was not Brad Pitt they saw . . . But the differences made for two very different men. Where Brad Pitt had romantically intense blue eyes, Dan’s were dark brown, with an almost metallic sheen, so that when looking him in the eye one only saw a reflection. Where Brad had full lips, Dan’s were sparely chiseled. Where Brad exuded an athletic ease, Dan moved with reserve. But one thing was certain: the man the ladies sighted was about to become one of the most important men in the world.”

More likely, though, the memory was triggered by what caused my son’s anguish. “Dad,” he agonized over the phone, “all these hopeful guys have sweated blood on their scripts, they have put in years, and within just a few minutes of beginning to read, I can tell whether they are any good or not. Some so obviously don’t cut it that I have no choice but to axe them immediately, and they will never even get a second read, never see the light of day. I feel so bad.”

Like my son, when I pick up a book riddled with superficial banalities, flat, cartoon characters, clumsy, implausible, breathless dramatization, I am tempted to just toss it. When one reads lines such as the above regarding Brad Pitt, or the opening paragraph (which, as every novelist knows, must set the tone for what is to come) --

“It was an idyllic summer afternoon as he stood on the balcony of his house in a tony district of New Jersey. He was looking down into a lush valley of green that surrounded a small, beautiful suburban lake. Under a flawless blue sky, here and there a butterfly shimmered as it flitted among the myriad flowers basking in the glorious warmth.”



-- does one really need to read any further?

One already knows that what awaits are such gems as: “The sky turned ominously gray and powdery”, or “Cold fear gripped him . . “, or “The soot was in clumps traveling like torpedoes towards the house . . . spewing darkness in every direction.” (These, by the way, all appear on the first page.) One has to have the courage to delve all the way to page 6 to find “For an almost-60-year-old Jan didn’t look bad at all. In fact his stocky, muscular build gave the impression of a vitality that was more appropriate for a man in his mid-forties.” How about “And, as if on some prearranged schedule, a sailboat would pass and silhouette itself against the melting orange sun that poured itself like shimmering red liquid into the pink-gray horizon.”? Or “When provoked, he used his piercing glare as a weapon. Those exposed to it felt immediately uncomfortable and were filled with a sudden desire to run, to escape.” “Women loved to be around him, especially younger women who, inexplicably, found his confident serenity irresistible.“ “The scent in her wake was the scent of fresh cut pears. His eyes remained on her wake for a few seconds after she’d disappeared around the corner and he smiled, shaking his head. What a woman! And where the hell is this going?” “As he drank her soul through her eyes, he was suddenly taken aback: Those eyes of hers, those irises, they were the ones from his dream.” And so it goes on.

One is soon treated to a parade of unidimensional characters, the requisite beautiful women, rugged men, an Israeli enchantress, Maasai warrior, intrepid, charming CEO (the author’s alter ego), mysterious encounters in hotel rooms and planes, the usual thriller gamut. Within the first 30 pages, one is whisked in and out of Aruba, the Pentagon, Spain, Tel Aviv, Lebanon, Teheran (caricature of Ahmadinejad, who really surely needs no caricaturing), Kenya, Granada, etc etc. And a comic-book plot line, events that could never have taken place in any world that any real human inhabits. What happens next? A car chase, a bomb scare, an explosion or two, an assassination, whateva? You get the drift. This is the stuff of pulp fiction, action movies, airport bookstores.



The publisher’s blurb tells us that “Chinese Chess is an enthralling combination of well-crafted characters and perfectly detailed events. Pilarski masterminds an American investigation that will leave even the highest investigators intrigued.” Huh? Perhaps if you love pulp fiction, you will consider these cartoon characters “well-crafted” and the unreal comic-book events “perfectly detailed,” and as for the “highest investigators” . . . ?

But perhaps I am not the best person to review this kind of writing. Perhaps the best-seller thriller pulp genre should not be judged by literary standards. Perhaps it’s not art, not skill and writerly sophistication that this material should be judged by, but whether it can be turned into an escapist James Bond action screenplay. By that standard, perhaps there is more to Chinese Chess than meets a literary eye. Mine anyway.

-- Manson Solomon

Doug Holder Interviews : Gypsy Scholar and author of "Dosha" Sonia Meyer

CLICK ON PICTURE TO SEE INTERVIEW...

Sonia Meyer on Poet to poet, writer to writer from Steve Glines on Vimeo.

Two New Reviews: How to photograph the heart by Christine-Klocek-Kim and Voyager by Dawnell Harrison

How to photograph the heart
Poems
by Christine Klocek-Lim
The Lives You Touch Publications
P.O. Box 276
Gwynedd Valley, Pennsylvania 19437
Copyright 2009 by Christine Klocek-Lim

Review by Zvi A. Sesling


You remember how the lens squeezed
unimportant details into stillness:
the essential trail of rain down glass,
the plummet of autumn-dead leaves,
your grandfather’s last blink when
the breath moved on.
Your startled hands compressed
the shutter when you realized: this is it
this is the last movement he will take
away from the silent fall of morphine,
beyond the soft gasp of the nurse,
past the sick, slow thud of your heart
moving in the luminous silence.

This is the title poem of How to photograph the heart
Christine Klocek-Lim’s fine chapbook which includes
some language one cannot help but admire. Here are
some samplings (read the chapbook to find them):


** Hollow stalks of grass bend over the wet
dirt like sabotaged fences.

** The soft retreat of chlorophyll asks useless questions

** Now the moon hangs like wisdom

** how once seen, a red moon lingers
with a cinnamon tingle.

** You mention blood, but the phone’s static
insistence swallows our conversation.



Okay, maybe you don’t find these a refreshing as I do,
but they are lines I repeated visually and verbally as I
read them.

Ms. Klocek-Lim’s poetry can be disconcerting in that one
does not always know to whom, or about whom, she is writing.
However, one can cruise through this book and enjoy it, savor
its frequent pleasures and learn a few things about writing poetry
along the way.


************************************************************************************

Voyager
by Dawnell Harrison
Adastra Press
Easthampton MA
Copyright © 2009 by Dawnell Harrison
IBSN10: 0-9822495-3-5
ISBN 13: 978-0-9822495-3-6
Softbound, 22 pages

Review by Zvi A. Sesling


Dawnell Harrison’s first book of poetry, Voyager has a rich and unusual history. In its book announcement, Adastra Press says the poems in Voyager are, “...homages and inspirations from Bette Davis’s movie Now Voyager and from the life of Sylvia Plath...” But it goes deeper than that. The movie is based on a book by Olive Higgins Prouty, the title coming from Walt Whitman’s couplet in Leaves of Grass (Signet Classics, 150th Anniversary Edition, foreword by Billy Collins) entitled The Untold Want
"The untold want by life and land ne'er granted,
Now voyager sail thou forth to seek and find."
Prouty also wrote Stella Dallas, which in the 1940s and 1950s was a very popular radio soap opera. Prouty, who had what in the early 1900s was called a nervous breakdown, spent time in a sanatorium and used her experiences, particularly in Now Voyager.

Dawnell Harrison has captured the flavor of both the film version of Prouty’s novel and of Sylvia Plath, who also had her mental breakdown. Both Prouty and Plath attended Smith College which makes a direct connection to Adastra Press in Easthampton, MA.

Harrison is a native of the State of Washington and lives in Idaho, that is about we learn about her, except that she is a graduate of the University of Washington. Her poetry, however, is ambitious. Writing poems inspired by fiction based on actual mental illness, as well as what one knows about Plath can be not only difficult, but cumbersome.

Harrison, however, seems to have an easy flow to her poetry that permits her to swing between her two subjects with ease and incisiveness. For example some lines from, The World Has Gone Mad:

The world has gone mad.
My only solace, like a sea creature
living its existence in a salty, safe shell,
is to imagine swimming
amongst them as a mermaid in
silky blues and greens

In Little Schizophrenic Girl, there are more lines about madness:

We love our little schizophrenic girl,
talking to cats
and we think they understand her.
They are always meowing back,
so we just assume,
disquieting as it seems.

And finally, a few lines from the final poem in the chapbook, Games and Sparrows:

Today I am counting
sparrows and one
landed on my
back doorstep eaves.
Darting his head around
looking for predators.
Even he is playing
for his life.

What I like about Harrison’s poetry is her 21st century take of 20th century writing, her ability strike at the heart of issues, like an Aztec priest cutting out a heart. Shorty Shorts and Oh Voyager are two that make their point economically and effectively and are two of my personal favorites. Some of the poems in this chapbook have final lines that could be deleted, making those poems stronger, but the poems are still worth a reading, as is the whole book in which Ms. Harrison has taken on two difficult subjects and succeeded.

Finding My Place: One Man’s Journey From Cleveland to Boston and Beyond Judah Leblang.

Finding My Place: One Man’s Journey From Cleveland to Boston and Beyond Judah Leblang. www.lakeeffectpress.com $16.


Take it from me turning 50 can be difficult, your motorcycle needs constant repairs, and your hairpiece never sticks right. It can even be more “challenging” if you are Jewish, Gay—and a man still in search of his identity—for his niche in the world. Have if you will, one Mr. Judah Leblang, a well-known storyteller and writer formerly of Somerville and a columnist for the “farm team”: The Somerville Journal. Leblang has come out of the closet in more ways than one with his memoir: “My Place: One Man’s Journey From Cleveland to Boston and Beyond…” Now if things weren’t hard enough for the kid; he grew up in and around a city (Cleveland) in the 60’s and 70’s that was know for a polluted river that exploded in fire, making the dirty water of the Charles seem benign and Brahmin. Leblang traces his time from that city to his time in Boston, and along the way changes his name, embraces his sexuality, comes to terms with his past, and hopefully is at a better place now as a 50 something guy.

If you are a Baby Boomer you will certainly relate to many of his references—the trappings of his middle class youth—such as nights with the family watching the Ed Sullivan Show, Davy and Goliath cartoons in the A.M., the Zenith Color TV set, and Mr. Ed—the one and only talking horse.

Leblang’s journey takes him from an awkward and shy Jewish boy in the ‘burbs –-to a man-- still a little shy and uneasy in his own skin, but more accepting of himself. Like anyone who has been on the second half of the roller coaster ride he has endured a number of bad relationships, he tries to reconcile with his very straight older brother—and even comes to term with Cleveland—that he has a serious love/hate conflict with..

At the relatively advanced age of 51 he feels the sadness and the levity at the lengths he takes as he searches for lost youth, love, and lust. In this passage that takes place in Provincetown, a summer Mecca for Gay men, Leblang thinks:

“I was a 51 year old man, hearing aid tucked discreetly behind my left ear, striving for youth, lusting after men a decade younger. But the only look I gathered was from a dusty, wizened character about my age, leaning against a storefront. Still, he examined me up and down, with a look that might have been lust or simply curiosity.”

This is an honest account, a very intimate book, that will make you feel uncomfortable, and perhaps a bit red faced. Why?—it will bring you face to face with that poor shlub of a kid that you once were—and haven’t quite completely shaken.

Recommended.

Somerville Native Son Kevin Gallagher: From COMPOST to BOSTON UNIVERSITY

Somerville Native Son Kevin Gallagher: From COMPOST to BOSTON UNIVERSITY


Interview by Doug Holder




Back in 1995 I was published in a unique Boston-based literary magazine COMPOST, and read at an arts center in Jamaica Plain with Boston poets like Sam Cornish, Jack Powers, Joe DeRoche, and others. Kevin Gallagher was one of the founding editors, and some years later I had the privilege of publishing a poetry collection by him. Gallagher, who was born in 1968, is a native Somervillian and his mother taught at St. Joseph’s some 40 years ago.



He is the author of three books of poetry, "Gringo Guadalupe"
(Ibbetson Street, 2009), "Isolate Flecks" (Cervena Barva, 2008), and
"Looking for Lake Texcoco" (Cy Gist, 2008). Gallagher is a professor at Boston University and currently lives in Newton,MA. with his wife and newborn son. His poetry has been published in Harvard Review, Partisan Review, Green Mountains Review, LitVert, Jacket, and elsewhere. His recent books are: Putting Development First: The Importance of Policy Space in the WTO, and Free Trade and the Environment: Mexico, NAFTA, and Beyond.

I interviewed him on my Somervile Community Access TV show: “ Poet to Poet: Writer to Writer.”



Doug Holder: You were a founding member of COMPOST magazine based in Boston some years ago. How did it start, and how was it unique?



Kevin Gallagher: I was an editor, and I was an original member of the collective. We started in the early 90’s when MacIntosh and the computer were in style and you didn’t need a printing press to print something. It was before Blogs and other stuff. So we occupied this ten-year period in which out of our living room we could make a magazine. We were young, bohemian, and revolutionaries in Jamaica Plain in the early 90’s. Now we are over 40, mortgage-owning, adults with kids.



DH: But you still have your idealism, no?



KG: Absolutely. I live it every day. So as I said we started in the 90’s. A group of poets who were upset with the ingrained academic perspective that the publishing wing of Boston was all about at the time. You had to be involved with an academic quarterly-- that didn't look like fun--they didn't have any art and poetry. We wanted to include other genres of art. We wanted to be more inclusive. This was the late 80's and early 90's; the world was opening and Communism started to fade away. We had a global perspective. We also thought that American poetry, particularly in Boston, was very provincial. We focused a lot on the literature of other countries.



DH: You also had an all Boston issue.



KG: Yes. We focused on our own community, we focused on the country, and we focused around the globe. Each issue had a section that focused on Boston area poetry. We had people from all schools of poetry. We had national poets like Alan Dugan and Robert Pinsky. We had a 14-year-old girl from Roxbury. We were the first magazines that did an exclusive section of poetry from North Vietnam. Kevin Bowen was the guest editor--he is the director of the William Joiner Center at U/Mass Boston.



DH: How did it end?



KG: It was different things for different people. One person moved to Manhattan, one person gets married. We held together a little bit, but things changed.



DH: You edited an article for Jacket Magazine that concerned the one time Somerville poet Denise Levertov.




KG: I love to edit poetry. I edited an article for Jacket Magazine--I crafted a feature on her work. I asked her friends, academics, etc... to assess Denise Levertov in the 21st century. Mark Pawlak and others talked about her.




She was originally from England. She started out as a very formal poet. When Robert Creeley gave her a book by William Carlos Williams--it changed things for her. She fell in love with the American idiom. She transformed herself and became one of the core of new American poets. She had several books with New Directions. During the Vietnam War she became very political in her work. She read in front of huge crowds during demonstrations. Towards the end of her life she was an environmental poet.




DH: You are a professor at Boston University now. How does this fit in with the writing life?




KG: My day job is not about poetry. I'm glad--I do a lot of different things. I am an economist that looks at the world economy and tries to see ways to create a world economic system that can make everyone better off. I spend a lot of time in Latin America--my poetry is part of that.




DH: Can you talk about your latest collection with the Ibbetson Street Press:

"Gringo Guadalupe."


KG: To a certain extent my last two books "Gringo..." and "Looking for Lake Texcoco" ( Cy Gist 2008) are story sequences of poems written when I was in Mexico working on environmental issues. Lake Texcoco was a huge lake that was filled in, in Mexico City. A noted poet in the United States translated the collection. This book deals with the contrast between the indigenous people and global forces. There is something about soul and fate in it. The "Gringo Guadalupe" is a book that is a little sardonic. It deals with the birth of Christ. It is a series of sonnets about a husband and wife: Joe and Mary. Joe takes a job in Mexico. While he is in Mexico, an angel appears to his wife in the States, and tells her she is going to bear the Son of God. And she believes it.

DH: The last section of "Gringo..." is titled: "Frescos" These poems are short, tight, with crisp imagery. Some would say it is easier to write a short poem, that a wordy, more elaborate one. Your take?

KG: It is harder in my opinion. As a professor at Boston University--when I ask someone to do two-page paper, it is much harder than twenty. Each word counts more. So in this section, each poem is like a picture that tells its own story. Each poem has to have imagery--a strong lyrical quality--to get across the story.




Drive Bye
by Kevin Gallagher



I sat cross-legged swinging on my swing
feeling less alive than a marionette.
The neighbor’s children danced under the sunset
pulling each other’s hair while singing
songs that had a particular ring
that made them impossible to forget.
So I wasn’t surprised when the bullet
hit my head. I was too busy smiling.
I smiled when they put me in the casket.
I smiled when they lowered me under my stone.
It took my death to bury my hatchet,
the roots around me remind me of my bones.
They shot the living daylights out of me.
I can’t see. You can’t see me. But I be.
Copyright © 2002 by Kevin Gallagher

UpTown TurnAround by Don Alfieri

UpTown TurnAround
by Don Alfieri
blackautopress.blogspot.com
© Copyright Don Alfieri
12/25/09 Limited Edition
Softbound, 10 pages

Review by Zvi A. Sesling

When I was very young I saw Invasion of the Body Snatchers, Don Siegel’s masterpiece based on a Jack Finney (who co-wrote the script) novel. Both the book and the movie were social statements made during the McCarthy era: for individual thought and against communism, that Darth Vader-like force of evil. Pods were placed in a home, when the family slept, the pods took over their bodies and minds.

UpTownTurnAround, Don Alfieri’s very short opening poem brings back memories of
that movie:

HerCloseCall

BerriesShouldComeInPurple
OneOfTheseYears, ThoughtMaryLynn

“CallMeBackInFourHours.
HaveToGetSomeSleep,
JetLag, YouKnow.”

InvasionOfThe BodySnatchers
WasShowingOnTV.

But that’s just the opener. Each of the little poems in Alfieri’s chapbook is a commentary on society: drugs, a dismembered woman, and finally a hybrid poem-story of a relationship.

On first reading I admit I didn’t like this chapbook, probably because of the memories of Body Snatchers, one of the scariest movies I ever saw. It came out in 1956 and has remained embedded in my brain like a bad marriage. But, the more readings I gave these five poems, the more they grew on me. They each have their own truth, their own morality and their own impact. And if you spend time with them they will grow on you.

Review of UNDERLIFE, by January Gill O’Neil

Review of UNDERLIFE, by January Gill O’Neil of Massachusetts, CavanKerry Press LTD 2009, Fort Lee, New Jersey, 74 pages, $16

By Barbara Bialick

Underlife is a smart debut collection published on beautiful recycled paper. O'Neil has a fine, imagistic lyrical voice well worth reading for its many layers of meaning as hinted at by the title, Underlife. You can easily divide the title up into two lists: under, referring to the burial ground, sexuality, the child under the power of the parents, the man under the power of the woman, the woman under the power of the man, African-Americans’ historical anger being under the thumb of “white” society. The word, life, referring to the natural world, children, the steamy side of sexuality, and motherhood. The poet says “Protect your strange and beautiful/underlife…”

Starting with “early memories” O’Neil establishes her ethnic identity from the top: “I am from hush puppies & barbecue/from chitlins & fastbacks/…Salt & Pepper stand at attention.” In “Early Memory” the author admits to having thrown a fistful of sand into a boy’s eyes—this after being called names for so long. “There must have been such rage in me, to give such pain.” Those are old images. She really stuns in the poem, “True Story #2: Missing”—where she tells the story of a young woman “missing” at home:

“First a foot, then the whole body/found wedged upside down behind/a tall bookcase./a young woman missing in a home/she shared with her family/most of her life./Eleven days misplaced/…simply, as if she disappeared/to that land of lost socks and/missing keys…”

In the section called “Ripe Time” she dedicates her love poems to her sexy married relationship. She needed something to write about: “So I reach back to when/the writing came easy, when poems fell like tree branches…” (“Something I needed”)
The poem “Rough Country” is a testimony to the imagination: “Sweet Baby, I have imagined your death/since the day we met, a horrific tragedy…My senses begin again to commit you to memory/only to be reborn back into the same rough country/weighing inside my brain like an anvil.”

O’Neil works as a senior writer and editor at Babson College. She is also a fellow with the Cave Canem Poets, co-hosts a literary series in Arlington, Mass., and has a blog called “Poet Mom.”

Loss. By Robert R. Reldan

Loss.
By Robert R. Reldan
2008; 56pp; Pa; Infinity Publishing.com,
1094 New DeHaven St., Suit 100,
West Conshohocken, PA 19428-2713.
$8.95.


Reldan doesn’t knock you down with big-bang language and emotions, but
as you read through Loss you slowly are filled with an overwhelming
sense of loss itself, missing the reality of the real world,
remembering the past, the dead, the realities that have departed from
you permanently. Ironically, it was only after I had finished reading
Loss that I discovered that Reldan himself is not only in prison but in
solitary confinement, and I think that this solitariness creates an
unexpected intensity of feeling in the poetry itself.


I don’t mean it’s frantic, burning, a conk on the head, but filled
with a sense of almost buddhistic “distancing” from the realities of
Reldan’s own feelings, and the “distancing” gives it a special sense of
loss: “Black night --quiet time/Memory tiptoes through dusty
corridors/of the mind.../not knowing what it’s looking for/but kjnowing
it will recognize it/if found//There’s a first bike--/gathering rust,
tire flat/There’s an early birthday --look at all the balloons/There’s
a school day -- a dance --a vacation//There are so many things,
Memory/doesn’t know which way to turn...” (“Lost, But Found,” p. 17).


While you’re still surrounded by some sense of stability /having, you
don’t step to the edge of despair, but once you’re totally removed from
The Present, the Past takes over. And that’s what we have here, an
exercise in total deprivation and distancing so that the reader,
entering into Reldan’s


world, is stimulated to look at his own past in a much more
horrifically terrifying way. No Present, all Memory/Past. Loss is a
kind of beginner’s book of multi-dimentionalizing having and losing.
You walk away from it with your own view of your own personal present
and past totally changed, feeling more than ever not merely the
preciousness of what you have, but the transience of having it.

Bloc 11: Café Society with an Open Mic.

Bloc 11: Café Society with an Open Mic.

Now, I am a regular of the cafes in my home turf of Union Square, Somerville. I try to alternate between the unpretentious home of the oatmeal scone at Sherman, and the sleek, hip environs of Bloc 11. For some reason I prefer to have my bagels at Bloc 11 (with my supplement of pickled herring) and keep to the baked goods at Sherman. Years ago I had a poetry reading at the Sherman Café, and now I noticed that Bloc 11 on Bow St. has an open mic every Thursday night from 6PM to 9PM for musicians, singers and even poets. On Wednesdays nights they have featured musicians play such as: Audrey Ryan, “Quill,” and Somerville resident Jennifer Greer. A press release states:

“This all ages, weekly series will provide a house guitar, keyboard and PA system, along with the chance to play 2 songs for peers and fans alike. This series will give back as much as it receives from performers. Never charging a cover, offering a free podcast of each performance, plus a video recording, steaming online and on Somerville Community Access Television (SCAT).

Sponsored by Rockin Bobs Guitars and Performer Magazine, those who shine at the Bloc 11's Open Mic can win free musical gear and an ad in Performer- a national music publication.

Hosted by local indie-rocker Kristen Ford, this Thursday night series is meant to foster community among musicians.

‘There is so much we can learn from each other, musically and professionally. With so few all ages venues in the city- it’s a shame to ostracize so many up and comers because of liquor sales. It’s not right to expect a starving artist to pay a cover, and buy drinks just for the opportunity to play. The open mic at Bloc 11 is open to all ages, all genders, all ability levels and all income brackets. We just ask that you come to play and listen. Those who join in have the opportunity to network, be considered for a full set on our Wednesday night acoustic series, plus the chance for national exposure with Performer Magazine.’

Kristen Ford's open mindedness has rubbed off in the first few weeks yielding memorable performances across genres, ages and genders. With initial open mics packed- one can only assume great things are to come for Bloc 11 Cafe's open mic night, and for the players who fill it.

The Bloc 11 Cafe Open Mic series will be every Thursday, starting January 7th 2010. Sign up is from 5-6pm with music 6-9pm. Open to all styles of music, spoken word and performance, Bloc 11's open mic night is only missing one thing- your performance.”


I had the chance to talk the founder of this spanking new enterprise Kristine Ford, who hails from Aldersey Street in Somerville. Ford is an employee of Bloc 11, an aspiring musician, and grew up in Western, Mass. She attended college in Chicago, and eventually moved to Somerville. Like any artist she needed a steady job to keep the income flowing, and allow her to follow her avocation. Bloc 11 has proven to be haven for her. She makes a living (and a pretty mean bagel with tomatoes, onions, and butter on the side) and works with other young artists with gigs outside of their job. Megan Brideau, for instance, is a smiling and welcoming presence behind the counter as well as the curator of art exhibits at Bloc 11. Presently her own provocative work is on display, but she has exhibited many other local artists.

Ford said he recently navigated the dangerous shoals of city government to get an entertainment license. I asked this vivacious guitarist where one could hear her play: She said:
"I’ve been around town: The Toad, Burren in Davis Square, the Lizard Lounge, and, well of course-- Bloc 11."


***Bloc 11 Café is located at 11 Bow Street, Union Square in Somerville, MA 02143
Ph: 617 623 0000
W: http://www.bloc11.com
Open 7 days, 7am-9pm Open Mic Thursdays sign up at 5, music 6-9pm.

Chad Parenteau: A Poet Who Is About Much More Than Publishing Himself.

Chad Parenteau: A Poet Who Is About Much More Than Publishing Himself.

Interview with Doug Holder

Chad Parenteau is among the “holy fools” in the poetry world who spends much more time promoting the work of other poets than he spends on promoting himself. Parenteau, 36, the host for Stone Soup Poetry, a populist poetry venue founded by the legendary poet Jack Powers in 1971 in Boston, has brought the venue up to a new level. He has brought in a new crowd while keeping the old, he has booked poets both emerging and established from around the country, and has started an online poetry magazine for Stone Soup titled: “Spoonful.” Parenteau holds an MFA from Emerson College in Boston, Mass., where he studied with such poets as Bill Knott and Gail Mazur. He is the winner of a Cambridge Poetry Award for his collection “Self-Portrait in Fire.” I spoke to Parenteau on my Somerville Community Access TV show “ Poet to Poet: Writer to Writer.”

Doug Holder: Chad, you got your MFA at Emerson College. You studied with Gail Mazur, the founder of the famed Blacksmith House Poetry Series. How was she as a teacher, and a poet?

Chad Parenteau: Very interesting. She had quite a history -- she studied with Robert Lowell. That was her first year as a teacher—when I had her for poetry class. I had her class once more where I learned about Elizabeth Bishop and Robert Lowell. It was definitely a nice brush with history, as well as a crash course in poetry.

DH: Do you like her poetry?

CP: I don’t have any of her books, but I admire what she has tried to do in her work. You get a lot of people that say she has an academic style, but Mazur has her own voice.

DH: You have brought Stone Soup Poets to a new level. You have started an affiliated magazine: “Spoonful,” started a blog that highlights upcoming readers, you have videos of the readings online, etc… What brought you to Stone Soup? What is your vision for the series and organization?

CP: I came to Stone Soup to help it—in a response to a call for help. I was a friend with Lynne Sticklor, who was an Ibbetson Street Press editor, and Bill Perrault, who has produced the videos that document the series. They were looking for someone to do bookings, perhaps co-hosting, but due to Jack Power’s state of health, I stepped up to the post of host and Webmaster. What I wanted to do was make Stone Soup more open to the public. I didn’t want it to become an exclusive book club. I wanted to say if you have read at the open mic then you are a Stone Soup Poet. I changed “Stone Soup Poets” to “Stone Soup Poetry,” because I want to emphasize that we have a weekly event. It has been a long haul to get new poets and new voices in there. And it’s only been after 4 years that I feel like I have been successful. I have tried to include voices not necessarily in the Cambridge area—people might want to contribute sometime.

DH: Do you plan to come out with a print magazine for Stone Soup?

CP: The issue with a print magazine is money. And for everyone that says they want a print magazine—no one seems to have the money to buy it. I would rather do the magazine full force or not at all. I wouldn’t want to do some photocopy at work. The online journal Spoonful does reach a whole variety of people. It is going to be biannual as of 2010. I tried to do it quarterly. I have Lynne Sticklor who is a great editor.

DH: You were a newspaper reporter early in your career. Has that given you any tools for being a poet?

CP: I think it has helped to elevate and nurture my storytelling skills. I have never been much of a fiction writer—but I always tried to tell many stories. I did that with minimum success as a graduate student. I had better luck when I became more experienced. It was Bill Knott who said even if I didn’t succeed as a poet I could be a successful non-fiction writer. That—I took as a compliment. That was what I was doing at the end of my graduate study—telling a tale. I tried to write coherent poetry—not all over the place. I had a beginning and an end—I made sure there was a reason for both.

DH: You work at the VA with diabetics. How does this fit in with your writing?

CP: It was an accident. I was a waiter for many years. I answered an ad—and it was a good thing I did because I have very laid back and caring supervisors. It is also good because I am finally out of the starving artist mode—knock on wood. It has given me access to a world that I haven’t seen before.

DH: Which poets do you admire and influenced you?

CP: Philip Levine, Tony Hoagland,. I liked Levine’s working class poetry. That speaks to me more than the academic voice.

DH: Do you think that poetry can bridge the isolation and alienation we are feeling in this digital age?

CP: I think it can. I think that’s why I still do the reading series, and why I still believe in print.




The Convenience Store Girl

Don’t even risk a quick glance
at her much-too-mature breasts.
She knows your choice of poisons—
the canned insults to your mother—
you take home with you for comfort
because you can’t afford beer,
correctly guesses the days between
your visits on the way home,
could tamper with your purchase
before you know you’ll you buy it,
inject drops of revenge quicker
than you could at the restaurant—
those customers whose allergies
rhymed with all the unknown names
of every tree in their back yard.

"A Walker in the City"

A WALKER IN THE CITY


Recently I made my yearly winter pilgrimage to the Chelsea Hotel in New York City. I was invited to read at the Cornelia Street Café in Greenwich Village, on the weekend of a major snowstorm. But like any toughened Somervillian it takes a lot of snow to dissuade me from my God-given path. Things for me were a lot different from when I last visited. “The Recession” had settled in like an old piece of furniture, I was laid off from my job of 27 years at McLean Hospital, and I had started to teach at Endicott College in Beverly, Mass. I was decidedly on a new road, and as a friend of mine said: (the novelist Paul Stone) “You are on a spiritual journey.” Well I hope I can use the journey as a tax write off.

The Chelsea Hotel has always been a great comfort to me. I always get a small, inexpensive room, a bathroom down the hall affair. It is like the Spartan furnished room I lived in the Back Bay of Boston in the 70’s. There is a lot of character to this hotel, but few amenities in comparison to other hotels in the Big Apple. At the check in desk I noticed a great whimsical painted portrait of Leonard Cohen, the poet, singer and one time resident of this hotel. When I got off the elevator to go to my room I encountered a bearded man dressed like a monk, talking animatedly on his cell phone like he was cutting a real estate deal or something. My friend, who I was visiting with, ran into an Englishman whose paintings grace the lobby of the hotel. He said he is from London, and decided to check in if for a year—15 years ago! I think if I checked in 15 years ago I might have had the same fate.

I was reading in The New York Times about a new documentary film about Patti Smith “Patti Smith: Dream of Life.” Smith was a denizen of the Chelsea in the 60s and 70s. According to the Times Smith has a new book out as well:

“Ms. Smith will visit bookstores around the country in support of “Just Kids” an autobiographical account of her relationship with Robert Mapplethorpe, her close friend and fellow inhabitant of the Chelsea Hotel in the late 1960s and 70s.” Smith, a poet, and a singer, was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2007 for her achievements, most notably for her classic debut album “Horses.”

Getting back to the title: “A Walker in the City,” walking through the streets of Somerville, Mass, as well as New York is a great way to clear your head, and since I was walking in the aftermath of the storm—the winds gave me a cold slap in the face—a freezing sucker punch—as if to say “Wake up, pal!...and take it all in.”


After checking out of the Chelsea and checking into my brother’s place down the block, I walked down to Cornelia Street in the Village for the reading. I passed a hair salon where a young guy was gesturing and swearing in Italian at a hairdresser, who had her hands on her ample hips, and was staring him down with an “I dare you” kind of expression. I went into a gourmet shop on Bleeker St. and a girl with a moose hat, requisite horns, and six rings planted in her collagen- infused lips, tried to sell me an overpriced container of nuts for a ten-spot She must of thought I was nuts.

I had a drink at a bar on in the village near the cafe and listened to a gaggle of NYU student’s chatter, while observing the shapely contours of the barmaid in her tight jeans. I saw a long-in-the-tooth rock band being photographed in front of Chelsea Guitars; their ruined, handsome faces spoke loudly in the late afternoon winter light of countless gigs, the road, the booze, and all-you-can-eat buffets of drugs.

A few hardy souls made it to the reading. The reading was for Larissa Shmailo's new collection of poetry, In Paran. Unfortunately she was ill and so we carried on. I ran into a poet friend of mine and City University professor Linda Lerner. The prolific Bronx poet Angelo Verga hosted the event, and the writer Iris Schwartz, Bob Viscusi, and others read from their work. There were a number of academic types from Brooklyn College and Hofstra University. They were amazed that I came down from Boston, in spite of the storm. I said their storm was a mere spritz in Somerville, and besides I needed the walk.


---Doug Holder

The Age of Aberrancy & the Poètes moignons by Tod Slone

(Click to enlarge)




This is taken from Tod Slone's American Dissident site: you know you are doing something right when Slone attacks you....



As part of an ongoing experiment to test the waters of democracy, especially in the academic and literary arenas, notice of this blog entry was sent to each of the persons depicted in the above watercolor (see below). Will any of them dare comment? Likely not. Their shame is that they do not cherish, but rather scorn, vigorous debate, democracy’s cornerstone. Their shame, at least those in the teaching profession (Pinsky, Marchant, Houlihan, Wright, and Espada), is that they do not seek to expose their students to all points of view and all possibilities for inspiration with regards writing, including and especially dissidence and purposeful conflict with power. Their shame is their contentment that dissidents like me and others are kept out of their festivals, kept from public funding, and kept from the eye of youth. Their shame is that my freedom of expression and that of other American dissidents is being crushed at every corner. Some of them have even become millionaire professor poets. Indeed, how can one possibly expect raw, visceral truth from such persons?

The idea for the above watercolor brewed over several weeks time and was likely sparked by the probable clique connection existing between Joan Houlihan, Director of the Concord Poetry Center, Karen Wulf, Director of Pen New England, Joan Bertin, Director of the National Coalition against Censorship, and Fred Marchant, Director of the Suffolk University Poetry Center. Both Wulf and Houlihan operate from Lesley University (Cambridge, MA). Both Wulf and Bertin refuse to address the freedom of expression and censorship issues I’d brought to their attention. Why?

The only concrete explanation I could come up with was the clique. Marchant often reads paired with Houlihan. Then Charles Coe of the Massachusetts Cultural Council and Massachusetts Poetry Festival refuses to address my request to be invited to the latter. To that concoction, I added Doug Holder of Ibbetson Press, who interviewed Coe and didn’t seem upset at all that I was not invited to the Festival. Then, to fill out the picture, I added Robert Pinsky who received an award from Holder, Martin Espada of the University of Massachusetts for diversity’s sake, and Franz Wright of Brandeis University, who was invited by Houlihan to read.

Of course, many others could have been added to the picture. Duke University professor Gary Hull, Director of the Program on Values and Ethics in the Marketplace, for example, could have been added. He refused to respond to my emails requesting he place my signature, as editor of The American Dissident, on a petition he created to decry Yale University’s decision to censor cartoons. Has it perhaps gotten that bad that petitions are only open to certain categories of citizens?

In America, perhaps we are indeed now in the Age of Aberrancy, where censorship has become rampant and censors extolled as moderators of pre-approved bourgeois aesthetics. George Orwell would have gone nuts with so much material to write about!

In essence, the rancid odor of cliquishness characterizes the established-order academic/literary scene. Offend the clique and risk ostracizing. It’s quite that simple. What really concerns the clique is not literature per se and certainly not democracy, but rather the marketing of clique members and their books.

As noted in the watercolor, its idea was also inspired by Brueghel’s painting, “The Cripples” (or “The Beggars”) and Léo Ferré’s 1956 preface to "Poète...vos papiers !" (see www.theamericandissident.org/Essays-Ferre.htm) In the quote, Ferré mentions that poets cut off their own wings, leaving just enough “moignon” (stump) so they may flutter about in the Literary Poultry Yard. He also mentions that we may expect little, if any, hope from poets of that sort

Poets in Residence in “The Somerville Home”

Poets in Residence in “The Somerville Home”

By Doug Holder

Now—you would expect to find poets in the new Arts Amory in Somerville, or amidst the din of the Bagel Bards in Davis Square, or at a high-toned literary retreat like Yaddo…or its ilk. But you might be surprised to find a couple of practicing bards at “The Somerville Home,” on Highland Ave—a five minute walks from the poet residency of my apartment on School St. According to a pamphlet I was given by the energetic Activity Director Lori Verrecchia, The Somerville Home is “… a private, non-profit corporation providing residential services for over 100 years. We are a 59 bed Level 4 Residential Care Facility incorporated in 1898, licensed by the Mass. Department of Public Health. The Home provides protective supervision in addition to the minimum basic care and services required for residents who do not routinely require nursing or medically related services…”

The Somerville Home is immaculate and the residents are evidently well taken care of, and seem to be content, and yes, (a rarity I know), happy. On a stormy, wind-swept morning in December I met the two poets in a private room, along with the officious and official house cat “Princess”

Poet Helene King told me she has been a resident of the home for 12 years, and a poet all her life. She originally hails from South Boston, and used to run a haberdashery shop in Boston. Elena Lowry, her fellow bard, hails from Arlington, Mass, and has been a resident for 6 years. She worked for 25 years at the Boston Stock Exchange. Both poets said they were influenced by Longfellow, and Emily Dickinson, but weren’t crazy about Robert Frost.

King told me her poetry has a very strong religious bent as evidenced by this poem:

CHRISTMAS-JESUS-OUR SAVIOR-DAY

Jesus is born on this day.
He is the rock of all nations.
Given to us by the Father,
He is for us the savior
For salvation.
And may his flock
Continue to serve Him,
With prayer and praise we
Will be saved and bring
Others to kneel before Him, With love and fervor,
We adore Him, bare our souls.
Praise Jesus, help us live
For you.
And keep the Christ in Christmas.

King told me, with her signature modest manner, that her poetry has been published in The Pilot, an influential Catholic paper. King writes poetry to celebrate nature, express her feelings, and hopefully to move people.

Lowry, like yours truly, has a fondness for the harsher elements of New England like: wind, rain and even snow (as long as she doesn’t have to shovel it). She has kept journals for many years, and is well-practiced at her craft. Here is a very germane poem for the season, titled: “Snow”

Snow
Swirls of mystical crystal
Falling everywhere
Essence of wonder,
Joy.
The children’s laughter
As they play,
Throwing snowballs at you.

It’s a release of pure enjoyment,
Fills the air mingled
With the sound
Of falling snow.

Gentle kisses on your brow
Silence!
Trickling droplets as
The snow descends,
A world of white & glisten,
Sparkles fill us with wonder
Permeates every care.

These two poets talked about their life at the Home, which consists of a lot more than Bingo on weekend nights. They have a writing group run by an accomplished wordsmith Cam Terwilliger; they make frequent field trips, and are given numerous “freebies” by many Somerville businesses. They said Somerville is a great place to be old. “ Everyone is supportive, and the City really takes care of their seniors,” they chimed in.

I was told that The Somerville home is open to community groups who want to use their space for events. They welcome the opportunity for residents and community members to interact. Before we left, both poets invited me to their annual Christmas Gala on Dec. 21. My mouth watered as they described the succulent scallops wrapped in bacon, and other epicurean delights that are served. It is good to know there is a place like this that treat people with dignity and respect—something our older citizens richly deserve.

SOMERVILLE WRITER MO LOTMAN DOCUMENTS DAVIS SQUARE’S COUSIN: CAMBRIDGE’S HARVARD SQUARE.

SOMERVILLE WRITER MO LOTMAN DOCUMENTS DAVIS SQUARE’S COUSIN: CAMBRIDGE’S HARVARD SQUARE.

BY DOUG HOLDER

The first thing I noticed when I opened up Mo Lotman’s impressive illustrated history of Harvard Square was a picture of the Tasty Sandwich Shop. It closed a number of years ago, and it was right next to an equally defunct restaurant the “Wursthaus.” I used to frequent the “Wursthaus” for their marvelous selection of beers, the beauty of their Bratwurst, and to dodge the barbs from the ancient waitresses. The Tasty on the other hand was only a counter, but it served an excellent cup of coffee in an old fashioned mug, and there was always the comforting sight of hotdogs simmering on a grill in a sea of grease. The counterman used to call me “smiley” because of my own frequently pensive mug. Anyway, although I have lived in my beloved burg of Somerville for the past 15 years, Harvard Square has been an equally important part of my experience since I arrived on the shores of the Charles River in the 1970’s to attend college.

“Harvard Square: An Illustrated History Since 1950” is divided in sections (by the decade) from the 1950s to the 2000s. It is richly illustrated, with a plethora of interesting essays, etc… It starts out with a piece by the late, renowned writer and Harvard graduate John Updike, in which he writes about the drugstore he used to frequent in the Square, and well, then, he goes from there:


"On Sunday mornings I would give myself the treat of sleeping through the bells from Memorial Chapel and then walking in the opposite direction to the drugstore...I would dip into my modest allowance to the extent of a cup of coffee and a cinnamon doughnut at the counter...The helpful maps in Mo Lotman's priceless assemblage of photographs told me that this haven from Latin and calculus was called Daley's Pharmacy."


The photographs in this book are breathtaking--as alluring, at least for me, as any photos of nature's splendor. From the 1950s section I saw a spread of the Square that included the ghosts of James P. Brin Sportswear, Hazen's Lunch, and Philip’s Bookstore--that will certainly tweak the memories of folks a lot older than me.


And like any square that is worth its salt, it is full of characters. And Lotman doesn't leave them out. There are portraits of Frank Cardullo, the owner of the famed eatery the” Wursthaus,” who held court every afternoon at a long table, sucking on his signature cigar, and holding court with a gaggle of cops, and various stumble bums on the scene. Just to give you a taste of this feast of an illustrated history there are descriptions and pictures of Sheldon Cohen, the former owner of the Out of Town News, the late storyteller and bard of the streets of Harvard Square: Brother Blue, Louisa Solano, the former owner of the Grolier Poetry Book Shop, to name a few.


This is a hands down impressive book and well worth the five ten spots you will slap down for it. The book will open the floodgates of your memory, and if you are a writer it is certain to jump start you from the stasis of your latest writer's block.

To Order:

stewart tabori & chang
115 West. 18th St.
New York, New York
1011
www.stebooks.com

Ibbetson Poet Molly Lynn Watt ("Shadow People" Ibbetson Street) has been named the Poet Laureate of the Harvard Institute of Learning in Retirement

Ibbetson Poet Molly Lynn Watt ("Shadow People" Ibbetson Street) has been named the Poet Laureate of the Harvard Institute of Learning in Retirement. I go this from Molly yesterday.....




On Wednesday at 3:15 I have been invited to read some of my new Civil Rights Movement Poems at Harvard Institute for Learning in Retirement. My reading will be accompanied by Joan Green, a dancer and choreographer, dancing with my reading. We have joined in a similar collaboration earlier this fall and it was well received.

The event, about an hour long total, includes a wine and cheese reception and I will be honored by being installed as Poet Laureate of The Harvard Institute for Learning in Retirement. This event honors me where I found my voice as a poet and the Civil Rights Movement was where I found my voice as an activist.

An interview with the poet Richard Moore.

Poet Richard Moore is in the obits in the Boston Globe today.(Dec 2, 2009.) Here is an interview I conducted with him some years ago. He was on my show "Poet to Poet: Writer to Writer" on Somerville Community Access TV.


An interview with the poet Richard Moore.

Richard Moore: A Poet with Rhyme and Wit.





Richard Moore has published over 10 volumes of poetry; one was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize, and another was a T.S. Eliot Prize finalist. He is also the author of a novel: “The Investigator.” Moore’s more recent poetry books include: “The Mouse Whole: An Epic,” “Pygmies and Pyramids,” and “The Naked Scarecrow.” Moore is listed in “Who’s Who in America,” and articles about his work are in the “Dictionary of Literary Biography.” His fiction, essays and more than 500 poems have been published in a variety of magazines including “The New Yorker,” “Atlantic,” “Harper’s,” etc… Moore has taught at Boston University, the N.E. Conservatory of Music, Brandeis, and others. Poet Richard Wilbur said of Moore’s work: “The best and most serious poetry is full of gaiety, and it is only dreary poets and their too-earnest readers who consider light verse demeaning.” I talked with Moore on my Somerville Community Access TV Show: “Poet to Poet/Writer to Writer.”



Doug Holder: Your poetry often rhymes, and is often funny. Why do you think both qualities are not in vogue today?



Richard Moore: I don’t know. There is a kind of class distinction. There are folks like Ezra Pound who really make it in the academy. For a friend of mine in college, Ezra Pound was a life-long hero. I met my friend after many years and said: “You know Terry I think that Ogden Nash was a more interesting poet than Pound.” He was deeply shocked by this. It was if I said something that everybody knew was wrong. I think the problem is that America is made up of different societies. There is this group and that group. This is an example of what has happened in the poetry world. If you follow Ezra Pound you can’t follow Ogden Nash.



DH: You have attended Robert Lowell’s famed seminars. Can you talk about your experience?



RM: Well Lowell was a fascinating teacher. I’m not all that great a fan of Lowell either. I can see why a lot of people would admire his work.



The Lowell I got to know was before the “confessional” Lowell. He strongly rhymed—there was a metaphysical school that preceded that. I think in the 50’s. Then there was a big shock when he changed styles. I think he was playing the game of: “How will my reputation climb?” “What is going to have an affect?”



DH: Do you think he sold out?



RM: I don’t use the last phrase. To some extent everybody sells out. Everybody will sell out if the price is right. You have to sell out to get along in America. You have to eat. Lowell was about doing something for his reputation in the literary establishment.



There was a side of Lowell that was a brilliant critic. He had a real understanding of poetry.



DH: What makes a poem stand the test of time?



RM: I think if it makes a comment about something deep and lasting about the way we live. I hear a lot of things today that don’t seem to me will last. We live in a time where lots of little things are happening—ephemeral things. It’s that deep quality—you have to be an understander of human nature. A writer of strange, deeply, shocking things.

DH: Does a good poet discover things about himself?



RM: I think poetry is discovery. As part of the poetic experience the reader can ideally sense if the poet is surprised by his poem. The question is whether the poet is saying something he didn’t intend to. It is from a deeper level. This is what makes a poem last.



DH: You are an advocate for “wildness” in poetry. Do you think contemporary poetry is too tame?



RM: I don’t think you can make a formula for it. Once you make a formula for something it isn’t wild anymore. You have to find the truth. You have to do something that you deeply have to do.



DH: You used to run the Agape Poetry Series in Boston. Can you tell me about the series?



RM: It’s no longer around. It was in the Community Church of Boston in Copley Square. There were regulars who came for every event. I had the idea to raise the standards a bit, and get really good readers. The series has been over for about ten years now.



DH: I think the best selling American poet is the late Charles Bukowski. Would you describe this hard-drinking, womanizing, poet as a “wild” poet unconstrained by civilization?



RM: I don’t really know him that well. I don’t find him interesting. I remember Robert Lowell’s comment about Ginsberg’s “Howl.” “The only good thing about it is the title.” There is emptiness in his poetry. I wonder why he is doing this. I think people like him for shallow reasons.



--Doug Holder












An interview with the poet Richard Moore.

Richard Moore: A Poet with Rhyme and Wit.





Richard Moore has published over 10 volumes of poetry; one was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize, and another was a T.S. Eliot Prize finalist. He is also the author of a novel: “The Investigator.” Moore’s more recent poetry books include: “The Mouse Whole: An Epic,” “Pygmies and Pyramids,” and “The Naked Scarecrow.” Moore is listed in “Who’s Who in America,” and articles about his work are in the “Dictionary of Literary Biography.” His fiction, essays and more than 500 poems have been published in a variety of magazines including “The New Yorker,” “Atlantic,” “Harper’s,” etc… Moore has taught at Boston University, the N.E. Conservatory of Music, Brandeis, and others. Poet Richard Wilbur said of Moore’s work: “The best and most serious poetry is full of gaiety, and it is only dreary poets and their too-earnest readers who consider light verse demeaning.” I talked with Moore on my Somerville Community Access TV Show: “Poet to Poet/Writer to Writer.”



Doug Holder: Your poetry often rhymes, and is often funny. Why do you think both qualities are not in vogue today?



Richard Moore: I don’t know. There is a kind of class distinction. There are folks like Ezra Pound who really make it in the academy. For a friend of mine in college, Ezra Pound was a life-long hero. I met my friend after many years and said: “You know Terry I think that Ogden Nash was a more interesting poet than Pound.” He was deeply shocked by this. It was if I said something that everybody knew was wrong. I think the problem is that America is made up of different societies. There is this group and that group. This is an example of what has happened in the poetry world. If you follow Ezra Pound you can’t follow Ogden Nash.



DH: You have attended Robert Lowell’s famed seminars. Can you talk about your experience?



RM: Well Lowell was a fascinating teacher. I’m not all that great a fan of Lowell either. I can see why a lot of people would admire his work.



The Lowell I got to know was before the “confessional” Lowell. He strongly rhymed—there was a metaphysical school that preceded that. I think in the 50’s. Then there was a big shock when he changed styles. I think he was playing the game of: “How will my reputation climb?” “What is going to have an affect?”



DH: Do you think he sold out?



RM: I don’t use the last phrase. To some extent everybody sells out. Everybody will sell out if the price is right. You have to sell out to get along in America. You have to eat. Lowell was about doing something for his reputation in the literary establishment.



There was a side of Lowell that was a brilliant critic. He had a real understanding of poetry.



DH: What makes a poem stand the test of time?



RM: I think if it makes a comment about something deep and lasting about the way we live. I hear a lot of things today that don’t seem to me will last. We live in a time where lots of little things are happening—ephemeral things. It’s that deep quality—you have to be an understander of human nature. A writer of strange, deeply, shocking things.

DH: Does a good poet discover things about himself?



RM: I think poetry is discovery. As part of the poetic experience the reader can ideally sense if the poet is surprised by his poem. The question is whether the poet is saying something he didn’t intend to. It is from a deeper level. This is what makes a poem last.



DH: You are an advocate for “wildness” in poetry. Do you think contemporary poetry is too tame?



RM: I don’t think you can make a formula for it. Once you make a formula for something it isn’t wild anymore. You have to find the truth. You have to do something that you deeply have to do.



DH: You used to run the Agape Poetry Series in Boston. Can you tell me about the series?



RM: It’s no longer around. It was in the Community Church of Boston in Copley Square. There were regulars who came for every event. I had the idea to raise the standards a bit, and get really good readers. The series has been over for about ten years now.



DH: I think the best selling American poet is the late Charles Bukowski. Would you describe this hard-drinking, womanizing, poet as a “wild” poet unconstrained by civilization?



RM: I don’t really know him that well. I don’t find him interesting. I remember Robert Lowell’s comment about Ginsberg’s “Howl.” “The only good thing about it is the title.” There is emptiness in his poetry. I wonder why he is doing this. I think people like him for shallow reasons.



--Doug Holder