Plaint Poems by Richard Darabaner

            Plaint

            Poems by Richard Darabaner

            Edited and with an Intro by

               Daniel Gabriel

            Published by Dos Madres Press

            www.dosmadres/com

            Copyright 2012

REVIEW BY LO GALLUCCIO

                        According to Daniel Gabriel's introduction to this relatively small but rather pristine

            collection of poems, the author, Richard Darabaner, was motivated by “the quest for knowledge

            and religion” in his life and work.  He earned a B.A. in English at Cornell University (summa

            cum laude;) an M.A. In English Literature at the City College of New York; and a Master of

            Philosophy in English at the City University of NYC, Graduate School.  He also taught at

            various colleges and high schools in the NY area.  In addition he has written several short           stories and a novel entitled, “Every Wound a Memory.”

                        Indeed the wounding forces in both love and religion are made manifest in many of

            Darabaner's poems.  The title of the collection “Plaint”is apparently an invented word to mean,

            the allision of lament and complaint.  His faith in God is shadowed with irony and indifference

            as well as an “ironic recovery of that love....and an ironic redemption.”  (Intro.)  As with Emily

            Dickinson's darker side, the shorter pithy poems seem to be intimate with impending death.

            Darabur committed suicide in 1985 in New York City.

                        In his poem “Desire” he writes:

                        (I am, as a poet, accustomed to consummation in despair.

                         I am not longing to desire the sand.  This is a commitment of faith.) p. 3

            For some reason, the sand, the object of the 2^nd sentence raises questions.  Is it the sand in

            an hour glass and thus the sands of time; is it the sand of some ravaged Dalian desert; or

            perhaps the warm beige sand Edith Piaf was found adoring after her life as a powerful and

            moving scion-singer of France was cut short by alcoholism?  Maybe this sand is just sand,

            a metaphor for the earth, but closer to the ocean and its tides.  Anyway, it seems clear

            that he sees the fate of a poet to be “a consummation in despair..”  But “the renunciation of         sand”    is also a commitment of faith..  Faith, then, in what?  God, one imagines but can't

            be totally sure....

                        In another poem, more Biblical and stately in syntax, the author speaks of  Christ, “The

            Savior,” and says:

                        “Yet I have a heart of things unspoken

                          You turn again.

                          You would not hear me if I were there.

                           ….......

                          Only the thought of Him and you were resigned.”

           

                        “This is a great gift from Him to thou.”

                                    from  [Not Yet Have I Begun The Poem of My Heart.]n p 2

                        The poet moves from the first person speaking to perhaps God, or Christ,

                        and then moves to the thought of Him (Christ) as a resigning stance.  And

                        calls this through not prayer or invocation to be a “great gift,” using thou

                        instead of “You” at the end.  It is as if an absent or aloof Christ is possible

                        to believe through a thought, just a touch of memory, perhaps, and is then

                        a great gift.  A deft sequence.               

                       

                        The woundedness of poets and artists (of faith) is apparent in “Out of the Maelstrom

                        and Intro the Hagstrom.”

                        “Wounded those years are

                           when one finds one's steps”

                        “Wounded those bodies brought to task

                          Should their memory worn plots of the Old City...”

                        “Wounded those ones who feel the wound

                          But not the body wounded,

                          Without the grey sky of dawn

                          To recall in a tiny cell of detachment

                          The steadfast calm of their agony.”

                        The last two lines are quite striking:”to recall in a tiny cell of detachment/The steadfast

                        calm of their agony.” This also suggests the poet's or seer's position – detachment

                        recalling, and the stoicism he keeps in agony, while surveying all pain and pleasure.

                        On a more lyrical note, the poem “Wave” which also seems more modern somehow in

                        its diction because it plays with the meaning of the word “wave,” and its possible

                        variants.  A wave could mean hello or goodbye, wave as that gesture of moving one's

                        forearm and hand back and forth.  The other wave could be like a wavelength or a

                        wave of water in the sea,  i.e. large ripple, etc. 

                        In a turn towards humor he writes:

                        “Don't wave at me with your mouth full

                          I don't know whether you're waving or eating. P 17

                        And ends more solemnly with:

                        “Not you but your wave I felt secure with

                        Your wave wasn't eating

                        You were

                        Your wave wouldn't let your brother hunger.”  p. 7

                        Thus separately the goodwill of the gesture or wave,  from the body its attached to,

                        ingesting mere food, but food necessary to prevent hunger, another state of deprivation.

                        It is so also, in the “light verse” of [I'm Not Touched an Inch by Your Salamander”]

                        which ends:

                        '

                        You assume I'm syncopated like the wind.”

                        Poems such as th3ese are grace notes in a collection of mostly short,. 6-10 line works

                        and a few longer ones.  His poem, “Echo” clearly speaks of reverberation of the                                                Crucifixion in a quite original way.  As if speaking directly of Christ in effigy:

                        “Without an echo of your former truth alive

                         Alive out of memoryless waking you come

                         to hold the rack of Calvary.”  p. 12

                        Interesting that he doesn't use the more direct and psychological sounding word,                                                “amnesia” but inste4ad, “alive out of memoryless, waking you come....”  to your

                        fate of death.  Christ is awake but has no memories of his life on earth as he takes

                        the rack of Calvary.

                        For those accustomed to more colorful scenery and objects and sensual modes and                               emotions from the “real world”or a real rather than metaphysical riddle in their poetry,                            this collection  may not suffice. But for any with a yearning to explore theological                              equations or dissonance within the framework of religious faith, I recommend this short                           volume of select poems by the late Richard Darabaner. He paints in greys and blacks and                whites with the occasional splash of sand or wave, beige or green.....

                        Reviewed by Lo Galluccio

                        for Ibbetson St. Press

                        www.logalluccio.weebly.com

                                               

R.D. Armstrong and the return of the LUMMOX Magazine

 When I first started the Lummox Press back in 1994, I still had my health and a job as a self-employed handyman. At that point, Lummox was a way to offset the costs of submitting poetry to magazines, etc. The Internet hadn’t really caught on yet and the idea of submission via email was still in its infancy. Now, it’s nearly twenty years later and I can’t imagine life without email or the cloud or all the other amazing things that we take for granted now, but that seemed so incredible back then, granted, there are still no flying cars, but…

Now, what defines my health has changed and I don’t really make much money as a handyman anymore, but the one constant in my life is my Lummox Press. It is my primary source of income and I feel as if I am on the verge of something incredible: a chance to actually make a living publishing what I love and want to – POETRY. Is it so far-fetched to think that this is possible? Most people I talk to about it seem to think so. But, maybe because I’m a dreamer, I think it can be done. All I know is that at the moment, the Lummox Press is working, and so am I.

LUMMOX magazine or LUMMOX, the anthology (I’m still not sure what to call it), is the latest in a series of attempts on my part to showcase the poetic talent that is thriving in this country and beyond. Back in the mid-nineties, I used to publish a little magazine (5.5 X 8.5 inches), with between 24 and 56 pages, which “explored the creative mind.” I did it monthly for eight years and bimonthly for three more. I’m still proud of my commitment to that monthly schedule…not bad for a slacker! The Lummox Journal paid for itself and even showed a modest profit, but eventually I lost interest in it. So at the end of 2006, it ended.

I felt bad about that, though most of my subscribers seemed to understand. I was burned out. I wanted to do something else. I needed a break. It was time to move on. Which I did. A few years later I began publishing a series of trade paperbacks by up and coming (mostly) poets. At the end of that year, my health took a dramatic turn and my life began to fall apart. But the one thing that held together was my belief in the Lummox Press. It has been my rock to cling to in times of self-doubt or when others have turned against me.

Over the past 4 years, I have put together an impressive catalog of over 30 titles in this particular series (with many more on the way). The jewel in this particular crown is the new annual magazine called LUMMOX. It is like the old Lummox Journal but on steroids! It has interviews, and essays, and reviews, and artwork, but mostly it has poetry…lots of poetry from all over the world! I hope the next issue will have even more from other countries world-wide and that LUMMOX will truly become a vehicle for poets worldwide to share their visions with each other.

RD Armstrong

Editor-in-chief

LUMMOX

Jim Vrabel: Putting Berryman's The Dream Songs on Stage

Jim Vrabel is a local historian and the author of When In Boston: A Timeline & Almanac (Northeastern University Press). He is co-author of John Paul II: A Personal Portrait of the Pope and the Man (St. Martin’s Press).


A long-time neighborhood activist and former city official in Boston, he now lives in Brookline, Massachusetts.


Jim attended the Graduate School of English at the University of Iowa, which is where he first encountered John Berryman’s Dream Songs. After expecting others to do it, he composed Homage to Henry: A Dramatization of John Berryman’s The Dream Songs, an 80-minute one-man play by taking some 90 of the most brilliant and autobiographical of the songs - in whole or in part - re-ordering them and adding a very few lines of connecting text.


The play received a staged reading at the Charlestown Working Theater, and has been performed for the Association of Literary Scholars, Critics and Writers at Boston University and at the Oberon Theater as a benefit for the Grolier Poetry Book Shop in Cambridge.


Paul Mariani, Berryman’s biographer and a poet himself, calls Homage to Henry “a sad and very human story, as stark in its way as anything in Samuel Beckett.”

I talked with Vrabel on my Somerville Community Access TV show: Poet to Poet: Writer to Writer.



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



Doug Holder: You are not a poet--yet you wrote play based on the character of Henry from John Berryman's poetic work The Dream Songs. And you made this play accessible. Do you think that is a problem with poetry--that it is not accessible for the non-poet?



Jim Vrabel: Well I think so. A lot of modern poetry, like modern art, is very inaccessible to the layperson. And this is a problem. It cuts your audience down.



DH: Does it have to be inaccessible to be good?



JV: No, Billy Collins and Sharon Olds, two very celebrated poets, are very accessible. And again the problem may be the academic business. The way to make a living as a writer is through teaching and the academy, and then you before you know it you are down that path.



DH: How did you decide what to keep and what not to keep from The Dream Songs in your play Homage to Harry?



JV: I wanted it to work as a play. Originally I had another character from The Dream Songs but I couldn't make it work. So I put all the poems on the wall and started to arrange things and saw what worked and what didn't.

And this is what I came up with.



DH: Was Henry Berryman's alter ego?



JV: I can't figure it out--but I don't think you need to figure it out. I think you should first appreciate Henry and the character just for what they are. It's the words---it is the way he uses words that is important.



DH: Well if Henry was an alter ego for Berryman--then like Berryman he might be in his early 40's, the age in which Berryman wrote this work. Henry talked as if it was all over--although he was a relatively young man. Do you think Berryman depression came into play?



JV: I think it was his depression. He could have had many more years ahead of him. There were many references to suicide in the poems.



DH: Why do you think so many poets and writers are afflicted by this?



JV: I think they see more and feel more than the rest of the world. And sometimes that is too hard to take. The gift is if they can write about it well.



DH: Henry like Berryman seemed to be very competitive with other poets.



JV: Yes. He mentions other poets in the poems. Take Dylan Thomas, he describes him as: " The doomed bard roaming down the thirsty West." And Eliot: " The subtle American banker man." And Pound: " The lunatic." Robert Lowell: " The Bostonian, rugged, grand, and sorrowful." And of course Frost: "The sage." I think Berryman would like to put himself among these guys.



DH: Jim you are a historian as well. In fact the abridged version of your historical timeline of the City of Boston When in Boston is coming out soon. What was one of the more interesting events you covered in the book?



JV: Yes it is a timeline from before Boston was founded to the present. One of my favorite events was when Whitman came to Boston and Emerson tried to convince him to take all the explicit references out of Leaves of Grass. They walked around for hours but of course Whitman was not convinced.

The Briar Patch Selected Poems & Translations By J. Kates

The Briar Patch


Selected Poems & Translations

By J. Kates

Hobblebush Books

Brookline, New Hampshire

www.hobblebush.com

ISBN: 978-0-9845921-8-0

99 Pages

$16.00



Review by Dennis Daly



These poems by J. Kates pay attention in an unblinking way to the human condition. Their sometimes prickly, sometimes witty observations on life and art dance with stark, often startling insight. Kates uses rhyme, off-rhyme, and other formalist techniques with a light touch, bringing out the poetic moments, not overwhelming them. His dramatic details strike honest notes, whether he is bemoaning democracy’s wasting effect on artistry, recording the passionate violence in a lovers’ quarrel, or looking down a gun’s barrel. The poet’s introductory title piece sets the tone and it is, in its way, too true. He says,



… Everything’s attached.

In the briar patch whichever way

you turn, somebody gets scratched.



From the beginning of this book Kates seems to inject a bit of old time religion. The concept of predestination is trotted out front and center. Universal creation cues ennui. Even human tragedy and evil one generally expects as part of life. As you are slowing down looking at the next horrendous crack up, you hear the poetic traffic cop exclaim, “Nothing to see here; move along.” In the poem Six-Day Wonder, Kates describes the humdrum,



… The celebrated night-

and-day dichotomy had praise



from man, the delegate, whose chief end

was to make glory of all this

orderly chaos and pretend

that a small part of it was his.



The sun in place, nothing was new

under it. The stars were moved

because there was nothing else to do

but love, and be loved.



Notice the word pretend. In the poet’s predictable world, man must still pretend that he controls something, anything.



The poem entitled Range nicely connects the moving parts of our world. The author explains,



arrow and bow are not estranged—



archer and target shaft and field are brought

together by letting go,

and what the bowstring whispered in my ear

at that one instant they all know.



Life and art are part of the same picture. The whispering bowstring suggests the artist’s muse. Almost a companion piece to this poem is If Achilles Were a Point, another poem with movable parts. Here Kates portrays his version of Zeno’s paradox. He shows Achilles chasing his tortoise over the impossible infinite distance he must traverse by halves. The twist comes when the poet lets love into the equation and love conquers yet another man-made logic. Achilles, according to Kates, wants the tortoise shell as a love offering. The poet puts it this way,



{Achilles}, as the distance

narrowed by halves,

plunged his arms forward

into the illogic of victory



Pre-Christmas jingling songs depress this writer as it does many others. He wants relief from the predictable and the humdrum. In the poem Advent he even cites Yeats’ Second Coming—the beast slouching towards Bethlehem to no avail. But he still hopes. Here is how the poem ends:



The jingling songs we’re sick of,

not even a rough beast slouching

unless the wet cats

crying to be fed

or a special election

with no one special running.

Nothing is dry enough to burn.



We wait on the event

to make a season of these days:

a drop in temperature

crystallizing rain

to the snow it started out as,

that we had given up expecting.



The poem entitled The Genuine Monets compares the original paintings of the French impressionist that are kept in secure museums under scientific light to cheap prints of the same artist hanging presumably in the poet’s bedroom. Kates describes his cheap print this way,



…I have a poster

Of the pond with waterlilies

That I picked up at the Coop

For a dollar fifty.



And moving sunlight dances

every hour a different dance

around my waterlilies.

The shadow of the wooden bridge

alters with each cloud

outside my window.



A statue falls to begin the poem In Interesting Times. The falling statue of course represents liberation and the benefits therein. Kates suggests that liberation is not always conducive to the dynamic of art. In fact quite the opposite. Other things capture the imagination in a newly freed society. Porn for one. The poet complains,



…liberation wore thin

as the new flood of sleazy magazines

that showed nothing but skin, always more skin—

where was the blood?



Kates has a way of turning passion into detail and interesting detail at that. Two poems especially struck me: Weapons and Man with a Gun. In weapons the poet describes the household item thrown during a fight. He lists books and food and facts and ideas. Each item is hurtful in its own unique way. The poet makes that clear in his last stanza,



of all our effects

none is harmless.

This axe I sharpen

Is an eight-pound maul.



During the free verse piece Man with a Gun the man vanishes. The gun speaks , the gun threatens, and the gun controls. The poet records each detail,



The gun says

Give me all your money.

I have none.

Except for the jagged hole

The gun is speaking through

The window shows nothing

But my own reflection…



The poetic force here powers over fear and delivers.



The last section in this impressive book includes a set of translations. My favorite is Lamentation In Captivity by Richard the Lionhearted. Richard complains that he has not yet been ransomed by his brother King John et al. The verse is tightly structured, metered, and rhymed--almost a prison for Richard. He tries to be witty and subtle but teeters on the edge of losing it. This is a very, very well done piece. Great book!

New Ibbetson Release: Shorelines by Philip E. Burnham, Jr.

Oct. 2012.......  $15   go to http://www.lulu.com/ibbetsonpress to order


"Burnham’s poems of sea-washed peace are formal, precise
in description, and elegant. His care for language and his
exquisite ear make the poems a gift for any reader."Bert Stern, Off the Grid Press

"Why Read Poetry? Because poetry is singing on paper and it
soothes, stirs, opens the eyes and heart of the reader. And
Philip Burnham’s way of seeing and singing is the canny
sailor’s way…whose heart is lifted sailing into New York
harbor (in “Good Morning, Alice”) lifted only to be broken
“On Pemaquid Beach” and healed with ”After Isaiah.”
Burnham’s poems will also win admiration for their subtle
classic forms."Diana Der-Hovanessian, President,
New England Poetry Club

"Philip Burnham’s poems have a slow-building intensity to
them, a quiet meditative force that gathers from the first
few lines and takes the reader into the heart of his experiences
of nature, love, history, and place. Shore Lines is a
rich trove of the well-observed and the deeply felt."Adam Haslett,
Author of You are Not a Stranger Here
National Book Award and Pulitzer Prize Finalist

Lummox Press: An Anthology of the Best of the Small Press Due out Nov. 2012!

Found Art




To spot a diamond bit

among crushed beer cans

and rusty cars

is to find truth

in this man-made world.



Roseanna Frechette



Lummox Press announces the inaugural issue of a new annual magazine/anthology entitled LUMMOX, due out in Nov. of this year. The first issue has the work of over 160 poets in it and features SPECIAL SPOTLIGHTS on poetry from all over the US and beyond! Guest Editors Georgia Santa Maria (ABQ, NM), Jane Lipman (Santa Fe, NM), Biola Olatunde (Nigeria), Don Kingfisher Campbell (San Gabriel Valley, CA), Doug Holder (Boston area), Ed Nudelman (Academia), Jaimes Palacio (OC poets), Jane Crown (International), Marie Lecrivain (LA Poets), Mike Adams (Colorado area) and Ryan Guth (Mid-South) represent their areas with gusto! In addition to all this, the poetry from all over the US, Canada and the world is represented by both known and unknown poets. There are essays on poetry; reviews of poetry; 2 interviews with a couple of SoCal movers and shakers: G. Murray Thomas & Rick Lupert! There is also a Tributes section to fallen poets. On top of all this there is also artwork by Robert Branaman, Mark Hartenbach, Claudio Parentela, Norman Olson, James McGrath and Raindog. All this for just $25 (shipping included) when you buy direct from the Lummox Press website!



Reserve a copy at: www.lummoxpress.com/journal.html scroll to the bottom of the page for the Pay Pal button or directions to pay by check.

Images of America: BOSTON’S DOWNTOWN MOVIE PALACES

Images of America


BOSTON’S DOWNTOWN

MOVIE PALACES



by Arthur Singer and Ron Goodman

Arcadia Publishing

Charleston SC

Copyright © 2011 by Arthur Singer

Softbound, 612 pgs, $21.99

ISBN 978-0-7385-7631-2





Review by Zvi A. Sesling



In his introduction to Boston’s Downtown Movie Palaces, Arthur Singer notes that the book is, “a ticket, a ticket through time to visit these places in their heyday.” And Singer

keeps the promise. Beginning in 1775 when Faneuil Hall was made into a theatre by the British forces led by Gen. John Burgoyne, the book provides prints, photographs and informative captions to carry readers a little known historical aspect of Boston. There are fires, the first theater with electric lights (under Thomas Edison’s supervision), the inventor of Vaudeville, and a thorough, fascinating history of Washington Street, then Boston’s Broadway, the Modern Theatre, the Orpheum, Loew’s State Theatre and Back Bay theatres, the Metropolitan, Keith Memorial and Paramount theatres. And while the history is an interesting step back in time, the photos are even more fun. So is the scurrying views of Brookline, Somerville, Dorchester, West Newton and other local theaters that were “rescued” and could now be listed as “survivors.” For those old enough to remember original theaters, knowing they are alive and doing well is a thrill.

And the sad demise of great old movie houses like the Saxon, Pilgrim, RKO Keith Memorial, and others. I can remember the Franklin, Morton and Oriental in Dorchester and Mattapan, all gone, though there was an attempt to revive the Oriental in Canton with it twinkling star and floating cloud ceiling. I am told it did not last either.



However, let me say that Arthur Singer and Ron Goodman have provided a great slice of nostalgia and a big chunk of history which is a captivating read. When it is coupled with photos of the past, result is successful and well worth having on one’s bookshelf.

Review of SEQUENCE 8 By Amy Tighe

Review of

SEQUENCE 8

By Amy Tighe

Performed by Les 7 doigts de la main

Directed by Shana Carroll and Sebastien Soldevila

Presented by Arts Emerson, commissioning partner

Cutler Majestic Theatre

219 Tremont Street, Boston Theatre District

September 27 thru October 7, 2012

Recommended for all ages

Tickets from $25-$79

available through ArtsEmerson.org

 or 617-824-8400

Your heart is a generosity.  It beats alone in your own body and in tandem with every other heart on this planet. 

Experiencing SEQUENCE 8 is as intimate and as generous as feeling your own hopeful heart when it finally connects to the beating of our global heart.  The combination of classic circus performances, precisely choreographed and inspired dance and superior acrobatic skills by 8 young artists, all sly masters in their disciplines, simply opens us to a new future.  The troupe, called Les 7 doigts de la main, relies on personal strength, focus and endless joy from the individual artists and a seamless collaboration with one another.  There is almost no high tech technology, the circus props have all been used for hundreds of years in circuses and street theatres, and an elegantly simple set design creates a night of transformation for all. 

Years ago when a lesser circus came to town, at the Boston Garden, you could go and watch the animals out back.  You couldn’t get close to them, but it was better than the zoo.  I was a clown wannabe at the time, and hung around as much as possible to feed my  facepaint  fantasies.  The tigers were housed in the back. There were four baby tigers, less than a year old in a cage together. You could get really close to them and I spent hours watching them. 

 I raised kittens, and was familiar with the play all felines share.  But this was different.  I was witnessing “play” in its original form, an element as necessary as oxygen.  The tribe of tigers were fascinated with everything and attached to nothing.  One watched us humans as we watched her, while she indifferently chewing on a sibling’s ear, and at the same time  another sibling was capturing her tail between his large  clumsy paws.  Then in an instant, they would change, stalk and pounce on the imaginary gazelle in their cage in unison before they collapsed into corners to wash themselves ferociously.

Sequence 8 was sort of like that, only better.

Les 7 doigts de la main is a Montreal based troupe. Their name is a play on words – instead of the unison of five fingers on one hand, they describe their troupe as having “beautifully awkward dexterity” whose “initial goal was to bring circus to a human scale.”  Watch out.  They do it.  

This is NOT Cirque du Soliel or Ringling Brothers.  Yes, many of the feats are similar to what you have seen before—a lithe gorgeous young woman performing scary circus miracles in a ring above the crowd, elastic acrobats throwing themselves through impossible openings, adorable powerful young men scootling up poles as easily as most of us breathe.

But here is what is different: This troupe takes us into their hearts while they play. The evening starts off with a moderator thanking us for being there. After all, he says, they would not be performers without an audience.  And, he adds, “you wouldn’t be much of an audience without the performers—you’d be sitting staring at an empty stage, right? “

And that’s when it starts—the performers have declared  “Tag, you’re it!” Surprised, you are caught and so you just run.  They draw you into to their performance, whether it is doing a double somersault on a bouncing balance beam, or soaring through the theatre while being catapulted by a see-saw, you are there.  Tag, you are it, catch them if you can.  And if you can’t, it doesn’t matter because they have taken us all in to become baby tigers at play. We are led back to engage with the archetype of original play and deep innocence.

The sense of intimacy and familiarity is profoundly crafted into each artist’s performance.  You don’t really watch these performers, you experience your connection to them as they twist, catch, fly and question common sense.  Hanging upside down on a trapeze by just the top of your foot is something we have seen before, but when this troupe performer does it, the entire audience is arching their foot with him and feeling the breeze in their hair as he swings.  We exhaled as one when he landed.

My well dressed neighbors in the seats next to me tell me that they just feel love when they watch Les 7 doigts de la main.  They feel the love between the performers and they feel how the performers love their work.  I am surprised at this, a middle aged couple talking so freely about love after the show.  But, it is the first circus I have ever seen to receive a spontaneous standing ovation, so perhaps more than just my section neighbors feel it.

We talk about youth, about being twice the age of who we have just seen, I think we might go on a diatribe about regrets from our own lives and the yoga classes we should really get back to…..  After all, the audience is mostly older tonight

.

But we don’t. Something has changed. We have witnessed mastery:  the strength of practicing a feat over and over until your body can catch a colleague dropping from 8 feet and throw her to another’s waiting arms without anyone missing a heartbeat.  We witnessed a group of artists not only create and inhabit a world of total interdependence, but play effortlessly and generously within it.  We have felt them open to us as playmates.

As I leave the theatre, I ask the dyed cherry-red-haired 20-something patrons who sat at the top balcony, if they felt the immediacy of the performers.  I also ask two tiny Russian women, who are “a leetle over 70, some” tottering as they leave, what they thought.  Each and everyone replies “I felt  them” as they unconsciously touch their hearts.  “But that leetle girl,” continues my tiny Russian new friend strongly, “I worry for her.”

Sequence 8 is an intimate and intelligent invitation to experience our collective heart.  Go, and play, and be ready to hear your heart open.

Review of EARTH LISTENING, Poems by Becky D. Sakellariou

 

Review of  EARTH LISTENING, Poems by Becky D. Sakellariou, with a CD of the author reading selected poems, Hobblebush Books, 17-A Old Milford Road, Brookline,

New Hampshire 03033, 2010, The Hobblebush Granite State Poetry Series, Volume II, www.hobblebush.com, $15.

Review by Barbara Bialick, author TIME LEAVES

From Euboia, Greece to the state of New Hampshire, Becky Sakellariou meditates on life

“with its depth, its explorations of love and loss (to what) seems to be like one long prayer…” according to reader Patricia Fargnoli. Indeed, as the author says in her own words, “These poems explore what I call the beginning of dying, the way our pores open to the world even more intensely as we age…”

The poem “The Inside of a Prayer” begins with the epigraph:  “We are all descendants of travelers”—William Least Heat Moon. The poem reads:  “Hold still/the translucent moon…Hang it above the blood/scarlet sumac and let it tell us/of the women and men/who boarded wooden ships/who traveled through eons/of other moons/to become you.”

She continues this line of thought in “God Doesn’t Need a Boat”:  Come, ferryman of our fears,/carry our boat across the gap/the one between fire and daylight/…Bear us back into the light.”

To the author, what is most “unexpected is death”.  In the poem “Unexpected”, she concludes “A quick, violent wind/…roars across the fields/…into the tomorrow of worry, fear/another harvest gone,/another year lost.”

Becky D. Sakellariou was born and raised in New England but has lived most of her adult life in Greece. Since 2007, she has been going back and forth to New Hampshire for part of every year.  She has a B.A. in Literature from Antioch College and a M.Ed. in Cross-Cultural Education from Lesley College.  She has published in a variety of journals. In 2005, she won first prize in the Blue Light Press Chapbook contest for THE IMPORTANCE OF BONE. 

Interview with Poet Steve Cramer Director of the MFA Program in Creative Writing at Lesley University

 With Doug Holder

****I thought I had lost the following interview--but I just recently found it. It was conducted on my Somerville Community Access TV Show  Poet to Poet: Writer to Writer in 2004.  The audio tape is archived at the Poetry Room at the Lamont Library/Harvard University.

Steve Cramer is the author of four poetry collections, the latest being “Goodbye To The Orchard”  (Sarabande 2004). His poems and criticism have been in the “Partisan Review,” “The New Republic,” “The Paris Review,” among others. He was the recipient of fellowships from the “Mass. Artists Foundation“, and the “National Endowment for the Arts.” He has taught literature and writing at B.U., MIT and Tufts. He currently directs the low-residency MFA program in Creative Writing at Lesley University in Cambridge, Mass.. I talked with him on my Somerville Community Access TV Show “Poet to Poet/Writer To Writer.”


Doug Holder: Steve, the MFA program at Lesley University is barely a year old. Can you talk about it, and what makes the program unique?


Steve Cramer: It’s a low-residency MFA in Creative Writing. We have four genres: Poetry, fiction, non-fiction, and writing for young people. We will have our first graduating class in the Summer of 2005.


Doug Holder: Can you define “low-residency?”


Steve Cramer: The first low-residency program that I know of was at Goddard College in Vermont. The low-residency programs were conceived as programs for older people who had been through college. It was for folks who had perhaps given up on writing, and then had gone back to it later. In our program writing students and experienced writers can work together in the old way, through the mail, in a one to one relationship. In order to fuel-inject this experience this program holds residencies of about ten days twice-a-year; where everyone in the program, students and faculty get together. We hold workshops, there are seminars, readings, so people leave energized both to rework their writing and to experiment as well. It is a collective experience, followed by an intimate experience between a mentor and someone looking for a mentor. The result is a MFA.


Doug Holder: Can you talk about the faculty you hired?

Steve Cramer: In terms of faculty who live in the area we have Michael Lowenthal (fiction), and Rachel Kadish (fiction). We also have Janet Sylvester who teaches poetry at Harvard. A number of our writers are not American writers, but they do write in English. We have a Jamaican writer Wayne Brown, and Rachel Manley, the daughter of the former prime minister of Jamaica. So we have a diverse faculty.


Doug Holder: A former student of yours, who has just joined us, David Sirios, told me your collection “Goodbye to the Orchard” might refer to the orchard at Bennington College where you taught for awhile. Is that true?

Steve Cramer: It’s true and not true. I taught at Bennington for five years. For most of that time my family lived in this seedy apple orchard. There are a number of poems where the orchard figures in. The title poem: "Before the Orchard,”was actually started when we were leaving the orchard. It was a poem I could not finish at the time because I moved out. It was only after a year or two, that I finished the poem “Goodbye To The Orchard.”
Basically the “orchard’ is an emblem for me of a natural state that at first is cultivated, but left alone will revert back to a wild state.

Doug Holder: Can you tell us something about “Sarabande” the house that published your book?

Steve Cramer: It was founded by two poets. I don’t know what drove them to start an independent literary press. They market books well, and they have a great board of directors. They have a chapbook series. They have published chaps by: Frank Bidart, James Tate and others. It is a very canny way to attract people to their press.

Doug Holder: You start and end your book with a “loose” translation of a poem. Can you talk about the structure of this collection?


Steve Cramer: The book begins with a poem that is a loose translation of  " Throw Yourself Like Seed" by Miguel de Unamuno.   My recently deceased mentor, the poet Donald Justice, did this all the time. Whenever there was a period in which he wasn’t writing his own poems, he either worked on a translation of a poem, and tried to improve it, if he felt it was lacking. I knew both translations would form the foundation of the book. The first one sets the terms of the book, and the last one by the same poet “It is Night In My Study" “ was about writing a poem and imagining your own death as the conclusion of writing this poem.
In “Throw Yourself Like Seed” ( the lead translation) I don’t agree with the premise that your work, your art, is the single lasting thing. I was very conscious of starting with a poem I don’t agree with. In terms of what door I would like the reader to enter, I believe it.

Doug Holder: In the poem “Body on the Brain”, you really have another take on the body beautiful. I quote:"When we add our stink to a stranger’s stink from the next stall, two stinks/stink less than one-and isn’t this/ how mind and body mate when we’re in love.” Are you talking about true love as a sort of mating of warts and all?

Steve Cramer: This is a poem that has offended more people than any other that I have written. It was posted on an online magazine called: “Slate.” And it was available for immediate comment after it was posted. A cyber population got involved right away, and had some responses like:’ You ruined my day!’ “Thanks for sharing.” I took it as a badge of honor. Yeats wrote : “ ... and love is pitched in a tent, near the place of excrement.” We are essentially body in almost all of our life experience. We are bodies with sophisticated software, with a little free will mixed in.

Doug Holder: A prominent poet told me if a young student asked him if it was a good idea to attend a MFA program, he would say: “What ... Are you crazy? Go to law school, there are jobs there. Join the Merchant Marines, at least it’s more interesting.” How would you respond to this?

Steve Cramer: MFA programs have been fodder for comments like that since there have been MFA programs. If someone came up to me and said: “Should I go to a MFA program?,” I would not answer it with an answer but with a series of questions. An MFA program is the institutionalization between the master artist and the apprentice. I would tell them if they think they are going to get a teaching job somewhere other than Murray, Kentucky, they are fostering an illusion. To work with people on an art, who are masters of the art, is not a new idea. I don’t think it is a culturally ruinous thing to have a lot of people interested in writing. Very often if they don’t become writers, they become passionate readers.

Doug Holder: David can you tell us about Steven Cramer, the teacher?

David Sirios: I was an older student. I was very serious about poetry. I found Steven to be illuminated and illuminating on the subject of poetry. The way he taught Elizabeth Bishop, Louise Gluck, John Ashbury, was really great. You taught me things I would never of learned on my own.

Doug Holder: Thank you gentleman, for joining me on Poet To Poet/ Writer To Writer.


Doug Holder is the host of Poet to Poet/ Writer To Writer -- airs at 5PM on Tuesdays on SCAT Channel 3 on an irregular basis. http://www.poettopoetwritertowriterblogspotcom

Oppressive Light Selected poems by Robert Walser

Oppressive Light

Selected poems by Robert Walser

Translated & Edited by Daniele Pantano

Black Lawrence Press

www.blacklawrencepress.com

ISBN: 978-1-936873-17-3

180 Pages

$19.00

Review by Dennis Daly

“I’m not here to write, I’m here to be mad,” Robert Walser (1878-1956) explained to a friend and admirer who had come to see him at the Herisau asylum in Switzerland. Walser meant it. For the next twenty plus years until his death this famous novelist, short story writer, and self-described poet refrained from writing anything at all. Most who knew Walser best before he entered the asylum thought him mad. Those who visited him after he was committed believed him quite sane. It seems to me that there is a lesson here—somewhere.

As a young man Walser got himself a job as a bank clerk, a job he was very good at and clearly identified with. He later failed at an acting audition, worked at multiple clerical jobs, and trained as a butler, at which he worked and seemed suited to. His little view of the good life, where details are ordered, and emotions are calm, probably stems from these experiences.

For a time Walser even supported himself with his writings. Franz Kafka, for one, delighted in his prose and echoed Walser in his own writings. Hermann Hesse also admired Walser’s art.  But after the First World War Walser’s writings became less popular and he turned into a vagabond of sorts, moving from place to place. He had a position in the National Archives in Bern for a while, but then was fired. He drank too often and too much and finally tried suicide, an attempt which he also numbered among his perceived failures.

During these years Walser wrote some excellent expressionistic poems. Many of these unique, well-crafted miniature pieces were published in prestigious literary magazines. Walser’s madness, if madness it was, did not originate in artistic anonymity or lack of acknowledgement. It came from some place deeper.

Danielo Pantano, himself a Swiss poet, does admirable work in conveying the intensity and starkness of Walser’s darkly euphoric vision. The original German is printed on the opposite pages for those interested in Walser’s rhyme schemes and other mechanics translated into this nicely toned English version.

The first poem in the book, entitled In The Office, entrances with the portrayal of everyman- the- clerk. It’s not a caricature; it’s something else. Reading it is like observing the pinning of a butterfly: intimate and troubling. Here is the better part of the poem,

The moon peers in on us.

He sees me as a miserable clerk

languishing under the strict gaze

of my boss.

Embarrassed, I scratch my neck.

I’ve never known

life’s lasting sunshine.

My flaw is my skill…

Notice also that it’s the moon that observes the clerk in the above poem. We get to watch many of Walser’s poetic creations from above, from outer space. In the poem Rushing we look down on the dynamic of Walser’s world. The poet says,

In the world there’s still this rush,

the rush that never ceases;

I love—and it will never stop,

a love that rushes through the world.

Sometimes the poet zooms in for a closer look. In the truly miniature piece, As Always, a simple lamp and table seem to have the same weight as the poet’s longings and fears. These juxtapositions all take place in a single room, yet strangely there doesn’t seem to be a whit of claustrophobia. Walser describes the scene and ponders,

The lamp is still here,

the table is also still her,

and I’m still in the room,

and my longings, ah,

still sighs, as always.

Cowardice, are you still here?

and Lie, you, too?

I hear a dim, Yes:

Misfortune is still here,

and I’m still in the room,

as always.

Walser often uses the idea of outside meadow and or inside room as geographical points, places of safety where he can demand a kind of sanctuary from nature. One of his most existential poems and one that uses both these geographical havens the poet calls Tryst.  Here are two sections,

…the meadows are fresh and pure,

and a spot in shade and sunshine

like well-behaved children.

Here the strong desire

that is my life dissolves,

And,

… there’s complaining in the room

of such a soft kind, so white, so dreamy,

and again I’m left knowing nothing.

I only know that it’s quiet here,

stripped of all needs and doings,

here it feels good, here I can rest,

for no time measures my time.

The macrocosmic world seems to be hiding something from human kind. In Evening Song the poet hints at it this way,

Something like the weariness of nature

wants to lie down on the houses and fields.

Its subtle smile moves from tree to tree

but you can barely recognize it.

How miserable is the small breeze

that still travels the evening world.

Certain poets by their withdrawal from social and emotional life negate themselves and almost disappear. As they vanish their vision becomes their existence and its intensity becomes overwhelming and even oppressive. It empties them. They become cold, husks of themselves, the remnants left after poetic possession has finished with them. The young Walser somehow knew this. One of his early poems describes the scene,

You do not see me crossing the meadow

stiff and dead from the mist?

I long for that home,

that home that I never had,

and without any hope

that I’ll ever be able to reach it.

For such a home, never touched,

I carry that longing that will

never die, like that meadow dies

stiff and dead from the mist.

You do see me crossing it, full of dread?

On Christmas Day in 1956 a group of children found Walser’s body, frozen stiff, lying dead in the snow. He had walked away from the asylum, across a large meadow, leaving footprints. Those footprints are here in this book.