Winter Dreams by Philip E. Burnham, Jr.

 


Winter Dreams 

by Philip E. Burnham, Jr. 

ISBN: 978-1-329-61896-1 

Ibbetson Street Press 

25 School St. 

Somerville, Mass. 02143 

The more I read these poems by Philip Burnham, the more I enjoy rereading them. One reason I kept returning to their lyrical descriptions is the pleasure that comes with an appreciation of their craft; a pleasure that began with “That Snowy Field,” the first poem in the collection: 

So undisturbed and seeming singular 

As if it fell a sheet of paper here 

New snow is cover to a neighbor field 

* * * 

When children may print angels to the sky 

And I, in love, will write your name with mine 

On this imagined sheet of paper here 

So undisturbed and seeming singular. 

This is not the only poem in Winter Dreams, which brought to mind Eliot’s line, “In my end is my beginning.” “On Crissy Field” and “Rainbow Rain,” also have endings that concretely echo their beginnings. These couplets are from the latter poem, "Blue rain, green rain, yellow rain, red,/Mist, showers, torrents, thunder heads. … And stored within our watershed/Blue rain, green rain, yellow rain, red." Other poems, such as his audaciously titled, “Bare Ruined Choirs’” are more oblique in their implication that to live may be to go around in circles and that, possibly, the best we might hope to accomplish would be to craft beautiful circles.  

I hesitate to praise these poems for their accessibility and traditional formalities for fear they will be dismissed, as out of fashion, but in Frost’s tennis match Philip deserves a low seed. Because of his dedication to the formalities of meter, line length and rhyme, they have a surface clarity. Reading them I never found myself disoriented and going “Huh! Where am I?” or asking, “What is going on here?” His themes are universal: birth, life, death, spring, summer, autumn, winter, loneliness, love, loss, grief and exultation. You will find little to puzzle over in these poems but much to ponder. 

Here in “Walking October,” he muses upon his mortality 

Crisp apples drop hard off the orchards trees  

Thudding to ground a hazardous drum-roll 

Of solemn, ceremonial gravity 

Marking the dispatch of an other Fall. 

* * * 

There is no telling if we may repeat 

Another year the possibility 

Of walking through October's vast retreat 

When endings seem in the majority.  

And again on this same theme in “August Shadows”: 

We have been here so many times before, 

Brief lives with seasons, unprepared to part, 

We stand half in the house, half out the door, 

Our mind to come inside, but not our heart. 

Philip is a widower and four of the poems are addressed to his deceased wife as "Birthday Greeting[s] IX, X, XI, and XII …” Of these number XII “California Family/Louise at Seventy-five, February 27, 2014," is the only one of the 74 poems in the collection in free verse; it ends: 

Where you might now be walking 

On the beach or in a meadow 

Had only death not said,' 

“Come, drink my wine."  

Her death has been only alluded to in the first three of these poems each of which has a regularity of meter and rhyme, but here, when “death” is at last admitted, the formalities are discarded. It is as if death is the one event that can disrupt the personal order of one’s life. But the disruption is temporary; the order may be recovered, as it is in the poems surrounding this one; it may be recovered through the comfort of the poetry. Yes, this collection says, our lives need rhyme contained in a metric of reason.   

Many of his best poems are ones of melancholy and parting, of taking leave of people, things and life but they are, never the less, exhilarating because melancholy is not depression and, while it may trigger grief, separation, whether caused by time or distance or death, provides rich opportunities for appreciation. "Quartet," which begins, "The shingled roof's a dance and slight of rain,/A breaker sea's tattoo and slip from shore," and ends, "Its score of nature's and unnature's notes/Played in my youth and now in my retreat." is a good example of the many poems in this collection that thrive upon this tension. 

However, Winter Dreams also has much cheer and Philip has a mastery of light verse, which he displays in several poems; perhaps best in this channeling of A. A. Milne, “Getting What One Asked For”: 

When I was merely four - or, three, 

Curious adults asked of me, 

"Philip, what would you like to be 

When you grow up?" Precociously, 

I would reply that if I might, 

I'd like to be a famous knight, 

With shiny armor for my coat, 

A castle circled by a moat. 

Time and again I was moved by the ritual formality of Winter Dreams. I am not sure these cyclical themes could have been expressed as well in freer verse. With their recurrent themes composed in couplets, quatrains, sonnets, villanelles and other forms of his invention I think this poet is saying, “While I am not telling you anything you have not heard before, but these truths need repetition. They are couched in rhyme and metric regularity to aid the memory, so they may more easily become known by heart, as they must be, if we are to share in the survival of our humanity.”

A Day in the Life: Early Morning : Union Square, Somerville

A Day in the Life: Early Morning : Union Square

By Doug Holder

Early Morning, Union Square. I walk down Bow Street—Goodyear's lights are on-- and a slow stream of people with tired treads, dirty transmission fluid, in need of change—of oil, in need of alignment, enlightenment—make their way into the office. I hear the jocular good morning from the Hispanic crossing guard—we are all her children, as she guides us through the gridlocked traffic of the Square. In the post office—I exchange gossip with the clerk—she told me a SWAT team was here earlier, “Well—I figured I would tell my journalist—thought you would like to know...” She tells me she is going to retire next year... “Maybe I will work the election booths with the other old ladies,” she laughed. At the Community Laundromat on Bow Street—a gaggle of homeless men are in semi-coherent chatter: “ Hey you are a weird dude—stop touching me,” one tells the other. There is an argument about which liquor store opens the earliest—vodka nips are in vogue for them. Bloc 11 is open—and there are the usual. A tall man with a reddish beard engrossed in his book, and the handsome woman I have seen for years, with a helmet of stylish gray hair-- (me thinks she works at Harvard), props a book up for her before work read. Hip baristas croon at me “The usual?” Honey grain bagel --tomatoes-- dry-- I add my hummus and fish in the back room. Outside the parade starts-- mothers with their strollers, the tight spandex of the bicyclists. At the Union Square Smoke Shop where I get my Globe and Times—the Indian woman at the counter chirps a “Good morning.” There is a strong smell of tobacco and I watch the lottery people ask for arcane combinations of tickets, mega this and thus—and in the back an opium den?—no, TV sets where patrons are hypnotized, and watch the numbers cross the screen. Back in the Bloc11 I solicit teaching advice from my friend Steve Swensen, a retired teacher from St. Joseph's and Somerville High. He feels lucky to have spent a 39 year career around a few blocks—more or less. Later I listen to a group of dog walkers talk about their canine charges as if the mutts were in psychoanalysis—a treatment plan for each—I suppose every dog has its day. People start to squeeze in Union Square Donuts—artisan donuts—not the pedestrian glazed munchkins you get at Dunkin. There are cabals of people at tables—hunched over—hatching conspiracies—or so it seems. The Neighborhood Restaurant is still there—I remember their Cream of Wheat—that wonderful—cinnamon infused lead weight in my stomach. And the outdoor eating under a lattice of vines. Bloc 11 fills—Mayor Curatone, dapper and handsome, in a dark suit—fields a pitch from another developer or what not. Mothers try to muffle their babies' cries. People come and go, and get on with their lives..

Aeronaut Brewing Offers a Sip of Brew and a Taste of the Arts

Aeronaut Brewing Offers a Sip of Brew and a Taste of the Arts

By Doug Holder

A cold rain blanketed Somerville when I met with Ben Holmes and Randy Winchester at my usual corner at the Bloc 11 Cafe in Union Square. Holmes, who looks to be in his twenties is the founder of the Aeronaut Brewing Company on Tyler Street just outside Union Square. Holmes lives in the Spring Hill section of Somerville, and he told me his family has a long lineage in our town. A close relative lived  for over sixty years on School Street ( My stomping grounds), and his family owned a tinware factory in Somerville as well. Winchester who runs the Duck Village Theater component of the venue has a less illustrious background in Somerville, but he has lived in our burg on and off for a total of 10 years. He recently had to move to Arlington, Mass. because of the skyrocketing rents the city is experiencing. For over  30 years Winchester worked at MIT  where he ran video network systems along with other varied duties. Now he books musicians and other artists at the Brewery—as well as conducts research on yeast for the development of new and enticing craft beers.

The Aeronaut is a place to get a draft to be sure. But it is also hosts indie-style music, as well as classical, jazz, fusion, etc.. It houses a science lab that makes for interesting local brews, and even boasts a studio that live streams( on the internet) many of the performances that take place here.

Aeronaut opened June 21, 2014, and it is located near another innovative spot-- the Artisan's Asylum. Holmes said of the Asylum, “ We do a bunch of things together. The Asylum works with metal, wood, high tech, and computers. So we have projects like manufacturing tap handles, and other related stuff.”

Winchester told me a bit more about some of the artists and musicians they have hosted. It is an eclectic list. They have provided the venue for Shakespeare productions, rap groups, massive light and sound projects, Brooklyn-based jazz ensembles, and Reggae groups. Ubiquitous Somerville artist Paul Gonzalez lll has displayed his work here and, local composer, and singer Marlene Tholl has performed in the space, and the list goes on.

The lab where brew masters experiment with different forms of yeast, has produced some exotic concoctions. There is Expat—a roasted and aromatic brew—Orangutan Skies—made with tropical and citrus hops, Cocoa Sutra—infused with cacao nibs from Somerville Chocolate, and others.

I asked Winchester where he got the name Duck Village Stage. He told me that Duck Village is a section of Somerville based around Dane, Washington, and Beacon Streets. It is has been said that Duck Village was popular among illegal makers of moonshine during Prohibition  because in this densely populated environ it was easy to escape the cops. The said Brewery is firmly in Duck Village territory.

Holmes told me he has a 10 year lease for the enterprise. He said he hopes that Somerville will make his neighborhood into a Fabrication District, where innovative places such as his can be protected from the skyrocketing rents gentrification will bring.

It is evident that these two men are representative of a new breed of entrepreneur/innovators—here--in--the Paris of New England.

For more information go to http://www.aeronautbrewing.com

A Collection of Friends by Thomas Sheehan

 

A Collection of Friends by Thomas Sheehan

Review by Nina R. Alonso

A Collection of Friends by Thomas Sheehan brings the reader into his life with intense physicality, the rough texture of early and later years. The story that opens the collection, Dumpmaster’s Boy, brings us the sandwich he’s carrying to his grandfather, “the great sandwich in a line of great sandwiches...wrapped in brown paper and tied up in white string by my Grandmother, Mary Brennan Igoe.” We feel the characters, hear the noises the stove makes, watch this grandmother’s eyes, and the world is palpable.

His detailing of the dump is both precise and gorgeous: “Old wet blankets falling apart. Horses in there someplace, perhaps pieces of them...Cluttered newspapers...ink blobbing in clumps, words going downhill like sundown. Squashes rotted to the last seed of hope.” Sheehan’s writing is often poetic, pulling the last bit from whatever he’s seen and felt.

In these days of irony and abstraction, it is a relief to read someone who is connected to life, however disturbing, painful and surprising. In The Great God Shove, a bullied boy finds a way, despite his small size and years, to go on the attack, and the writing’s neither indulgent nor syrupy.

Later stories explore characters, a chronic drunk, a fellow student. In Parkie, Tanker, Tiger of Tobruk it’s a soldier friend back from the war. “That afternoon I realized Parkie had come home to die,” seen and felt in a deeply essential way. “Our differences were obvious, though we did not speak of them. The sands of North Africa had clutched at him and almost taken him. Off a mountain in Korea I had come with my feet nearly frozen.” These are fine stories.