Belmont Poems by Stephen Burt

Belmont

Poems by

Stephen Burt

Graywolf Press

Minneapolis MN

Copyright © 2013 by Stephen Burt

96 pages, softbound, $15

Review by Zvi A. Sesling

Stephen Burt is known for his poetry criticism and he is the quintessential poet as this book proves. For the most part readers do not seek information when reading poetry. What they do seek is something deeper – insight into something taken as ordinary or every day.  Sought also is the conversion of the ordinary into the memorable.  The true poet does this.

Then of course, there is the not-so-ordinary and the poet who will title a poem Prothalamion With Laocoӧn Simulacrum, well, he should become a favorite of mine. I read this book of poems and Stephen Burt became one of my favorites.  Not only because of the poem so titled, not only because of his poems of the Boston area, not only because of the sly humor, but because Stephen Burt’s writing has every element that makes poetry a pleasure to read. 

His poems bring fresh approaches to worn subjects, a personal passion that infects the readers with a gasp of recognition as in Poem of Six A.M :

One child wakes up when the other has gone

back to bed, if not to sleep. One more false dawn

or

Lead, lead on,

fortissimo washer and dryer, mechanical train                 

in our unfinished basement: who else could play for me

your wild snare, your floor tom and your gong,

their rough polyrhythms, subordinate quarter and main

beat? Who keeps the darks from turning gray for me?

and this one:

There is also a song

made of Cheerios, honey nut and multigrain,

oats, rice, wheat, corn;

and barley. Nobody should pay for me

we can afford it. Soon I will enter a zone

of bananas and yogurt and plastic forks, propane

tanks and cheese wheels wrapped and set out on a tray for me.

Burt’s poetry is worth the time for those who are tired of intellectualized

poems with hidden meanings or secret messages, who hunger for more direct communication with which they can associate.

In “when the sweet wind did gently kiss the trees” the final stanza is like a punch to the midsection, hitting us where we recognize ourselves:

you don’t just decide/to become a different person,/but realize that you have become the person you are—/not who you were, not who you want to be,/but something close to them,/in exactly the way/ the new low-intensity streetlights come close to the moon.

It has often been said that poets need be storytellers and Burt’s understanding of that is evident and compelling.  Augmenting the tenderness of his poetry is a degree of irony,  playfulness, sexiness and always devotion to his craft.

To close let us look at the first eight lines of Belmont Overture (Poem of Eight A.M.):

It’s about settling down and settling in

            and trying not to settle for,

about three miles from the urban core,

            where the not-quite-wild bald turkey, looking so lost

and inquisitive next to the stop for the 74,

            peers into the roseless rosebush, up at the pointless or

above one townhouse’s steps, and the US

            and floral and nautical flags flaunt their calm semaphore.

The lines embody the attributes of storytelling, irony and the devotion to the craft of making poetry sing to the reader.  As for the playfulness and sexiness of Burt’s work,

you will have to read the whole book to discover an American author who leads the way in accessible poetry for the thinking person.

J.D. Scrimgeour: A Writer Who Struggles to Find Just The Right Words.




JD SCRIMGEOUR

 


J.D. Scrimgeour: A Writer Who Struggles to Find Just The Right Words.






Interview with Doug Holder




I think any serious writer who claims he or she doesn’t spend a lot of time and effort to find just the right word, is either telling a lie or is in serious denial. Poet/Writer/Salem St. University professor J.D. Scrimgeour fits this bill. Whether he is writing a poem about a badly disfigured woman or a passage about a basketball game, he makes sure the words make the writing come to life.

Scrimgeour teaches at Salem State University. He recently published the poetry collection Territories (Last Automat Press). He has published another book of poetry, The Last Miles, and two books of creative nonfiction, Spin Moves and Themes For English B: A Professor’s Education In and Out of Class. With musician Philip Swanson he formed the performance group, Confluence, and released a CD of poetry and music, Ogunquit & Other Works.

I had the pleasure to interview him on my Somerville Community Access TV show  " Poet to Poet: Writer to Writer."






Doug Holder: You collaborated with composer Philip Swanson, etc… to put your poetry to music. Can you tell me about this—the dynamics—difficulties, etc…



J.D .Scrimgeour: I met Phil at some sort of campus event. He is a professor at Salem State University in the music department. We talked about getting our students together to collaborate on something. And we decided to try it first ourselves to see what happened. And so I gave him a couple of pieces of writing and he looked them over. He got really interested in a long poem that I wrote titled: “Ogunquit.” We just started meeting and figuring out things. And we started taking his music and attaching it to my words. He composed some new music. I didn’t actually change my words but I did have to figure out timing—when to come in and when to come out. We talked a lot about when we wanted the music to fade out. A lot of our discussions were about sound and rhythm actually. It was incredibly rewarding.







DH: In your mini-memoir “Spin Moves” basketball seems to be the focal point. You examine your life through your involvement with the game. I have interviewed poets who used boxing and baseball as poetic subjects. Poet Philip Burnham, Jr., described baseball as ripe for poetry of failure. He said if you get 3 hits every for every 10 at bats you are considered doing well. What is it about basketball that allures you?







JS: I was always involved with sports. I played basketball and baseball in high school. Early on I was attracted to the speed of the game. There is also a lot of deception in basketball that is very interesting. As much as it is about grace and power, it is also about setting people up so you are a step ahead of them. I remember the poet Charles Simic came to Salem State and talked about how chess is sort of similar to poetry because you are thinking 3 or 4 moves ahead and setting something up. I am not sure this correlation is exactly for me in poetry but there is an appreciation that the mental and physical are working at a high level, all at once.







DH: In your memoir you wrote that John McPhee’s basetball writing was stilted, too polite, lacking the gusto, the very words that would bring the game to life.







JS: You are picking up on a passage that I feel a little embarrassed about. Probably because I was such a Young Turk at the time. So I brought McPhee down a peg. But McPhee wrote a good book about basketball. I was especially interested in trying to come up with how could language capture the energy, the surprise that is available to a basketball player. How do you set the game on the page? I think the game may need a soundtrack behind the writing to make it come alive. I am also interested with what the writer does with punctuation and how the words are going to sound. So I use sentence fragments, dashes, etc… Punctuation is so valuable to set pacing. What a difference in the feeling between a colon and a dash!







DH: You are interested in the genre of Creative Non-Fiction. This is a relative new category. What exactly is it?







JS: It captures so many genres. It may be a memoir that does not follow a conventional narrative structure. It can be like a prose poem. It is non-fiction that you don’t feel you need a fact checker. You may “expand” the truth. I always indicate to the reader if I am going a bit beyond the exact truth however. Some writers don’t feel the need to.







DH: Charlotte Gordon, a colleague of mine at Endicott College wrote that she believes you mission is similar to that of Walt Whitman, in that you celebrate the common man.







JS: There is no way that I can compare myself to Whitman. I think what she is picking up on is that I’ve always had an interest in writing about other people. My poetry deals with the psychological and the sociological. In my new book “Territories” the first half of the book contains two long dramatic monologues in the voice of a student. The voice is a composite of various students I have known.







DSH “ Terrortories” first half is about a gay man—and at times very graphic. How did you research this? It sounded very authentic.







JS: I had a student that I knew pretty well, that I worked with. And I took a few facts of his life and other students and integrated them. Being involved with the arts you become aware and have to be sensitive to sexual orientation issue. I did informal research. I talked to people. I sent out writing to people to see if it sounded right. There were certain words and phrases that I went back and changed. I once asked a student about how he felt about the term "gay boys" instead of "queens." A couple of students from Salem State performed these monologues under the direction of a Salem State theatre professor. People were compelled by the performance.







DH: I was reading the poem " After the Fire" that deals with a woman's zen-like acceptance of her disfiguring facial burns and her subsequent loses. Can you talk a bit about this powerful piece?







JS: I really like that poem. It was the voice of a woman that was horribly scared by a fire and bad things continued to happen during her life. Her husband leaves her. It is based on someone I knew from my life. She was a friend of my wife's and she was on Oprah. And she said " I want to live." I used that line and the poem came from these things I experienced. Two things were happening in my life at the time. We were having our first child, and if you remember the speaker of that poem, she sort of imagines the children she might of had. Also at the same time a friend of ours Mary discovered that her cancer came back. The possibilities of not surviving colored the poem.






UNDER THE GHOST





If I knelt by my mother’s grave, his

dark shadow followed me even there.

~Harriet Jacobs





Why should a piece of property

kneel at another’s grave?

The whole earth

is red clay. Master won’t stop

slipping me notes.

“I can’t read,” I lied.

He was at the window yesterday,

white shirt a ghost. Some things

don’t even have to be bought.

I’m fifteen. He has a beard,

his shoes are quiet as weeds.

Momma died a long time ago.

She had one dress,

blue. I wear it

when I come here.

Ants crawl up the blank stone—

searching for a name?

Tonight, I will sleep

with grandmother. The stone’s

shadow slowly draws back.

Does it really disappear at noon?

White people are under crosses.

Jesus used to be white.

Property. “You must be subject

to my will in all things.”

To sleep always under a stone.

Brush an ant off my leg. Is

Momma a ghost? To sleep

with Momma, like I used to—

a shadow. To be under a ghost.


---- J. D. Scrimgeour

Patron Emeritus By Chad Parenteau

 

Patron Emeritus

By Chad Parenteau

FootHills Publishing

Kanona, New York

www.foothillspublishing.com

71 Pages

$16.00

Review by Dennis Daly

Minimalist poems, like those in Patron Emeritus by Chad Parenteau, imbue each word with a density of meaning that demands resolution and balance. Without careful calibrations stanzas would fall off the page and punctuation could explode. Parenteau not only avoids these pitfalls but successfully plays off the tension created by them. At heart these poems are narrative, although the stories, culled from the common experience of day-to-day living, the poet rubs raw, dices, compresses, and then highly polishes.

Parenteau, who hosts the famous and long-running Stone Soup poetry readings in Cambridge Massachusetts, connects with the deceased originator of that venue, Jack Powers, in his first poem. There is sensitivity here and also a not unexpected validation. The poet says,

Thought I saw you

walking taller, talking clearer

nearby crutches

lady at your table

cowboy hat

ten gallon  paladin

head weighed

nodding toward me.

In the poem entitled Manifesto Parenteau navigates two different venues of performance poetry with unabashed excitement and, interestingly enough, admits to liking the comfort and inclusion of committee work. Of course society is really a set of self-appointed committees so why not. Here are the pertinent lines,

I strafe both sides

one-way streets

run down

running

crop circles

slim pickings.

Committees agree

I do my best work

when in committee

belonging still…

I like the use of the crop circle image. Like some open-mike participants they appear suddenly at night and take surprising shapes.

Even charged language can be funny. In Parenteau’s piece Come Lately the persona-host of a poetry reading venue is at his wit’s end on a particularly bad night. I’m guessing Stone Soup.  Here’s how the poem begins,

Scant showing

only host pays

success insisted on.

Those closest

edge forget

no hands

left to hold

outreach

let alone signal

help

what they know

malady.

Of course the production of a comedic scene is at the host’s expense and due to his very earnestness and caring nature.

Another humorous poem entitled Working Late struts out longer lines and a less compressed syntax. It is one of a handful of exceptions to the poet’s prevailing style. The poet’s persona, making a living like the rest of us, works in a lab. His duties include prepping hamster cages. But in reality our poet thinks subversively and has other agendas. He identifies with the intruder, the outsider. I’m shocked! The poem ends this way,

…the empty cages always need

water freshened, new shavings every week,

more if we have a visit

from the department head.

Sometimes I’ll mess things up,

leave a cage door open, watch eyes,

mouse braving the climb to

the desktop,

pupils growing large

while sniffing my similar stare

before scurry escapes.

Any worker worth his salt knows how to hide from his boss and steal precious moments of humanity through imagination or creativeness. The poet in his piece Passing has chosen one of the most common of all havens—the bathroom. Parenteau describes his sanctuary,

Bosses wait for

bidden bathroom

you rinse meeting off

face,  unsmear specs.

They know you

trespasser

door closing there

they are

talking by door

cordially predatoral…

The poem Air Lines begins with the passengers vaguely fearing discovery and surrendering their metallic implements and ends with their expected arrival in Pittsburgh, the city built on the melting of metals and its own factory-employed citizens. Parenteau catches the unease felt by many air travelers perfectly. In this context even nature’s controls become dangerously businesslike. The poet explains,

travelers cringe at thought

added contact, padded shells

hard complimentary cashews

muttering minor turbulence

as if nature were bureaucracy

bringing us to Pittsburgh

another mill town in search

of purpose its people long

melted down

Another airport terminal. Another flawed city. The poem Not In Denver attributes Parenteau’s unpleasant work experiences to the soullessness of his surroundings. His world weariness is evident. Yet his observations, wry visions, and the way he holds fire at the end seem to imply future hope. Here’s the conclusion,

World like

Pseudo-Denver

forget face

looking between alarm

clock stings

hand smashed poise.

Revolving doors

state soul

water bodies

looked nice

all I’ll say.

Parenteau romps over the page in the poem Phoning In. His sparse wording hits all the right notes. The poet’s persona calls in sick. His attitude mixes anger, wit, imagination, and misery. The misery seems to be more job-related than illness-related. Here’s how the poet starts off,

Calling sick

citing teeth marks,

yesterday’s wolves.

Shoulder bites

sting more recalling

pat shoulders.

The point again? Explain

more they ask your

chewed foot.

The title poem, Patron Emeritus, deserves to be the title poem. It speaks to Everyman. A poet must make do as a citizen of life. He faces internally as an artist must, but he also must deal with the external and, in that realm, hug, revisit, forgive, and remain his own person. A coffee shop represents the universal backdrop of the poet’s existence. As patron emeritus he settles in for the duration in spite of past difficulties. In a steadying voice Parenteau briefs us on how it feels,

Sitting down

finally unfamiliar

feels immune.

The manager said

Your firing was inevitable.

Ask for him

Demand halves

Take everything…

Like gem stones the hard knocks of life shine with intensity from these accomplished poems. Get yourself a coffee. Make sure the boss is not around. Then read this book.

Ibbetson Street Press/Endicott College Young Poet Series Author Emily Pineau reads at Ibbetson 33 Reading

***** Emily  Pineau is the author of   No Need to Speak  (Ibbetson Street Press)

  Clifton Snider of The Small Press Review wrote in his review of Pineau's poetry collection:  " Emily Pineau indeed shows great promise. I congratulate her and wish her well." ( May/June 2013)

Endicott College/Ibbetson Street Press Young Poet Series Author Emily Pineau with Doug Holder ( Photo by Zvi Sesling)

Staff of Ibbetson Street Magazine  ( Right  Doug Holder Center Retired Poetry Editor Robert K. Johnson Left Poetry Editor Harris Gardner  Back  Managing Editor Lawrence Kessenich

Somerville Writer Lisa Borders pens new novel “The Fifty- First State"

Lisa Borders

Somerville writer Lisa Borders pens new novel “The Fifty- First State”


By Doug Holder




Rarely do I venture from my home away from home at the Bloc11 Café or the Sherman Café in the Union Square section of town, but for Somerville novelist Lisa Borders I made an exception. After all-- I heard a lot about this talented writer who resides in the Paris of New England, but I never had a chance to interview her. So I journeyed to the hinterlands of Davis Square to speak to her at the famed literary haunt, the Diesel Café.



Borders told me she moved to the Boston area in 1995. She first lived in Belmont, Mass; a town that has the distinction of being voted the most boring burg in the Commonwealth by The Boston Globe. I agree—I have worked in Belmont at the literary landmark McLean Hospital ( Home to Plath, Lowell and Sexton...oh yes and me) for over 30 years. I would take Somerville over Belmont any day. And indeed, Belmont did not prove to be fertile grounds for Borders. She told me: “It wasn’t my scene. It was a suburban place—family orientated—not a place for a single woman.” So Borders picked up stakes in 1998 and moved to the promised land of the “Ville. She found an apartment in a house owned by two sisters, and has lived there ever since. Borders loves the scene here and mentioned such Somerville writers as Pagan Kennedy, Beck Tuch, and Ethan Gilsdorf as folks she admires and is acquainted with.



Borders is the author of the novel “ Cloud Cuckoo Land,” and the soon to be released novel “ The Fifty- First State." She is an accomplished writer. She received grants from the Mass. Cultural Council, the Somerville Arts Council, and the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts. She also has had fellowships at the Millay Colony, the Virginia Center for the Arts, and others. Of her own writing Borders told me “ I don’t want to be pigeon-holed as only writing for women. "My goal is to attract a wide range of readers. I strive to engage the senses and appeal to the intellect. That’s what I feel good writing should do."



Borders told me that her books have been published by small independent presses. Her first book was published by River City Publishing in Alabama. Her latest "The Fifty- First State" will be released in October 2013 by Engine Books in Indiana. Borders said of Engine Books "It is a boutique press. It publishes about 4 titles a year. The bigger presses seem to concentrate on commercial fiction. These are novels that are driven by plot , not language or voice. For instance page turners or thrillers. Literary fiction--the stuff that I write seems to be accepted more frequently by small presses."



Now I have always said that I don't want to go to a writer's retreat because I have been retreating all my life, but Borders begs to differ. She said she gets a significant amount of writing done in places like the Millay Colony, and retreats of that ilk. She reflected: " All the other stuff of life--the distractions fall away. The cat isn't jumping on me and there is not that inopportune knock on the door. You can focus on your work."



Borders grew up in Central New Jersey but she and her mom later moved to South Jersey. This is where "The Fifty- First State" is set. The novel concerns a character Hallie Corsin. After her father's death she moves from New York City back to South Jersey to care for her estranged half brother during his last year of high school. During the course of the novel the pair forms a makeshift family with complications, and gets involved in an environmental sleuthing project that involves frog deformities.


Borders works as a cytotechnician for the health insurance and to pay the bills. Basically she screens Pap Smears. Borders has taught at Grub St. in Boston for many years, as well as on the college level. Borders likes the niche she created for herself in Somerville, and looking forward to many productive years to come.

Former Somerville News Editor George Hassett and the " Gangsters of Boston"

Former Somerville News Editor George Hassett and "The Gangsters of Boston"

by Doug Holder

 A number of years ago I had the privilege to work with George Hassett, the baby-faced former editor at The Somerville News. And during his tenure at the paper I became aware of  his interest in crime. He was a student of the Winter Hill Gang, the machinations of Whitey Bulger, and many others of this ilk. Because of Hassett's passion for the ne'er-do-wells of the world it came to no surprise for me that he penned "Gangsters of Boston."

On the back cover of “Gangsters…” it states the book is  “…the first comprehensive account of three centuries of thug life in a city where America began.” That is of course Boston and the immediate environs, including Somerville.

  Hassett goes back to colonial times and explores how gangs helped spark the American Revolution. One early gangster was Ebenezer Mackintosh. According to Hassett this nascent thug went up against the hated Stamp Act. He is described by the author:

 “At various times imprisoned and deemed a drunkard…Mackintosh finally had the chance to prove his dedication to liberty. To attack the British crown he summoned the laborers, fishermen, and seamen from the rough and tumble ranks of the town’s waterfront community. Also members of the town’s perpetually warring street gangs were there. Each of them, however, respected Mackintosh and followed his command as the night wore on.”

Mackintosh, with the help of his hardscrabble band of brothers caused severe havoc when Andrew Oliver--the British appointed official-- was to implement the Act. This colonial thug led a crowd that ransacked and plundered Oliver’s office building.

From the Colonial era Hassett goes on to explore criminals from many of the historical eras of Boston. Hassett's gimlet eye roves over to Malcolm X who resided in Boston, and  who was involved in petty and not so petty crime. Hassett explains how Mr. X used his criminal past to bolster his street credibility during the Civil Rights Era. Hassett also covers the Brinks Job, The Winter Hill Gang, Whitey Bulger, Joe Kennedy, the Chinese gangs, and gives us a fly on the wall view of a Mafia induction ceremony. 

According to Hassett the exacting requirements to join the “family” included killing your own brother if need be, and leaving your mother’s death bed to take care of family business. Hassett is a consummate observer of this pond scum of bookmakers, liars, thieves, murders, and maintains an objective reporter’s viewpoint.

And of course there are all the colorful names that gangs etc... come up with for their partners in crime. Like Charlestown’s Arthur “ Butchy” Doe “Animal” Joe Barboza, the “Cheese Man,” George Mook “The King of the Chinese,” or the drug seeking female thug “ Dotty from Dorchester.” All these characters make for lively reading.

At an event at the Book Shop at Ball Square, Hassett read from his new book and answered questions from the audience. I asked Hassett if the gangsters of Boston could be considered heroic. Hassett opined that perhaps in colonial times when they went against the British, but he would be hard pressed to pin a medal on contemporary gangsters who were and are actively involved in the drug trade.  Hassett, who wrote for the Boston Phoenix before it hit the alternative press dust said that he would not go after Mafia figures after he graduates law school. He feels that the “Mob” is greatly diminished and the significant and savvy characters of the past are now in their dotage. But because of Hassett those bad boys of a bygone era will be remembered for generations to come. And this is important because one thing we can surely learn from this book is that in the end—crime doesn’t pay.

Review of THE REGRET OF A FLOWER, Selected Poems, by Gail Thornton, Redmund Productions, A Division of PME, LLC, Kershaw, South Carolina, 2013, $12.50

Review of THE REGRET OF A FLOWER, Selected Poems, by Gail Thornton, Redmund Productions, A Division of PME, LLC, Kershaw, South Carolina, 2013, $12.50

Review by Barbara Bialick

In The Regret of a Flower, Gail Thornton shows that even in the adversity of physical and mental illness, the human spirit moves toward love and creativity.  As she writes in the title poem, “You have taught me to accept/compliments gracefully,/because when I cut them/too close to the bud,/what I have is a stem/and a dead plume in my hand/taking up all of the space/where the love should be.” She has had to live with both polio and bipolar illness and yet she points out “I’m as varied as the sea,/words rolling out of me/in a tempest/…The turn of a phrase:/salt tears, refreshing me/as it spills onto the page-my naked world at midnight.”

Indeed she dedicates the collection to “my true love, Frank, without whom my poetry would lose its song in my heart.”

As she has moved through life, she discovered that people can love each other in different ways, even in the bustle of a writing workshop. In “Drunk as Drunk On Neruda” she writes,  “Finally, it was poetry that united us/we worked together on a poem/we both wished we had written/…we made love to the printed page and said goodbye without a touch…”

Indeed poetry is an important part of her life. Creativity trumps the alternative, which is to feel only pain. “Poetry is not horizontal-It grows like the Baobab/into the desert of my heart/groping for last year’s rain.”

In “Bipolar Ballroom” she can only wonder at the “Head bangers in my bedroom,/in my head room;/thoughts pile up like compost/fed by my baby tears./My fears, years of faking it/taking/then losing it, losing it/…Dreams keep five dialogues/in unison/Shouting.”

She also thinks back in “Polio and the Family House” which says, “You held me/captive in your rooms,/stretched taught, like sheets between trees./You held me while I lost my limbs;/The House:/Grinning,/keeps our faces tacked to the past…”

Writing poetry, however, can be a companionable activity. “The inkwell really my/unconscious dream/…reading/each line, as one would/the correspondence/from a faraway friend.”

Gail Thornton lives in a small town in Massachusetts. She has read poetry at the Boston Center for the Arts and at Newton Free Library. She has attended poetry workshops at the Cambridge Center for Adult Education as well as the William Joiner Center for War and Its Social Consequences at the University of Massachusetts Boston. You can read “Gail Thornton’s World” at gailthornton.blogspot.com.