THE CENTER FOR THE ARTS AT THE ARMORY POETRY AT THE CAFÉ 191 HIGHLAND AVENUE SOMERVILLE, MA

THE CENTER FOR THE ARTS AT THE ARMORY POETRY AT THE CAFÉ  191 HIGHLAND AVENUE SOMERVILLE, MA TUESDAY, JUNE 18, 2019 7:00 PM/ADMISSION: $4.00 READING AND OPEN MIC Hosted by: Harris Gardner and Gloria Mindock THE FIRST AND LAST WORD POETRY SERIES Martha Boss's current collection of poetry, Prayer, was published by Oddball Magazine in 2016. She is known for her countless artist-designed chapbook collections and her strong wit in her poetry. Martha states, she is inspired by the poet Yehuda Amichai. Doug Holder is the founder of the Ibbetson Street Press of Somerville, MA. He has recently collaborated with playwright Lawrence Kessenich on a new play based on a short story he wrote "The Patient." It is going to be published by the Presa Press, and has had a staged reading at the Playwright's Platform in the Boston area. Holder's poem "Oh Don't She Said, It's Cold" adapted into a song by singer/songwriter Jennifer Matthews, will be performed by the dance company "text moves" in the fall at various venues in the area. Holder is the arts editor of The Somerville Times, and teaches writing at Bunker Hill Community College in Boston, and Endicott College in Beverly, MA. He holds an MLA in literature from Harvard University. Ralph Pennel is the author of A World Less Perfect for Dying In, published by Cervena Barva Press. His writing has appeared or is forthcoming in The Iowa Review, Ocean State Review, Thrice Fiction, Rain Taxi Review of Books and others. Ralph was nominated for a Pushcart and was twice finalist for Somerville Poet Laureate. He is on the board of the NEPC and teaches at Bentley University. The Center for the Arts is located between Davis Square and Union Square. Parking is located behind the armory at the rear of the building. Arts at the Armory is approximately a 15 minute walk from Davis Square which is on the MTBA Red Line. You can also find us by using either the MBTA RT 88 and RT 90 bus that can be caught either at Lechmere (Green Line) or Davis Square (Red Line). Get off at the Highland Avenue and Lowell Street stop. You can also get to us from Sullivan Square (Orange Line) by using the MBTA RT 90 bus. Get off at the Highland Avenue and Benton Road stop.

Somerville's Matthew Martino: Approaches his work with 'Savage Grace'

Matthew Martino at the Bloc 11 Cafe

Somerville's Matthew Martino: Approaches his work with 'Savage Grace'

By Doug Holder

I met lighting designer, filmmaker Matthew Martino at my backroom respite in the Bloc 11 Cafe in Union Square, Somerville. Martino, a 40ish man-- brought an abundance of energy and focus to our interview, and certainly these same qualities inform his work for his production company “Savage Grace Entertainment” based at 545 McGrath Highway in our city.

Martino is a 4^th generation Somervillian. He recently purchased a building in Somerville that houses both him and his production studio for his business.  Martino told me that, “Since rents are skyrocketing in the city—the only way to stay here was to buy a building.” And so now Martino's feet are firmly place on the ground—here in our burg.

Martino has long been involved in the Somerville arts scene. His has worked with the Somerville Arts Council's "ArtBeat Festival," he has brought “ movie nights” to the city, and has been involved with “Carnavale,” a multicultural street festival, that is very popular in our neck of the woods.

Martino has an interesting background. Back in the day, he helped with the lighting of the Mikado at the North Shore Music Festival, as well as the “ Robots' Opera” with Tod Machover and Robert Pinsky, working under my own Tony Award winning lighting designer brother Don Holder.

Martino cut his teeth with the iconoclastic, indie film company “Troma Entertainment” based in New York City. Many well-known actors who were just starting out passed through there. “One that comes to mind is Kevin Costner,” Martino said. One of Troma's noted movies  it produced was the “Toxic Avenger.” This film was first ignored because of its violence, but then went on to be a cult favorite. It was a regular midnight feature at the Bleecker Street Cinemas in New York City in 1985. The operation was run by director Lloyd  Kaufman, an “Old hippie kind of guy,” according to Martino. Martino continued, "The movies he produced were horror films that were cheap to make. They were filled with ample doses of sex, schlock, and had a consistently low budget.” Martino did many things there, including managing human chickens--(people made up to look like chickens)--with makeup and the appointment of these strange birds in their cages

Martino said it is hard to make a living as a theatrical lighting designer in Boston,so to make the daily nut he works as a corporate lighting designer. He lights events, meeting, award ceremonies for many major lights in the corporate world in these parts.

Martino has finished producing and releasing a movie:  "Chainsaw Maidens from Hell," and is the planning stages for a sequel.   He is proud how his  movie "Chainsaw...."  has reached certain filmmaker industry benchmarks. His company has a strong educational component as well. He teaches basic stage combat techniques, and has educational outreach in large swaths of the state--and is available to help stage, produce, light, etc... a wide variety of productions. He is well know for his work with youth organizations.

Martino said, " I want more local producers on the scene here, instead of the all folks from Los Angeles who come here --make a movie, and then go back to L.A."

And indeed Martino is determined to make that a reality --here-- in the " Paris of New England."

Sarah Jensen talks about Maynard James Keenan, founder of the band 'Tool' in the 'Neighborhood.'

Sarah Jensen (Left) Shelia Borgess ( Right)

Sarah Jensen talks about Maynard James Keenan, founder of the band 'Tool' in the 'Neighborhood.'

By Doug Holder

Sarah Jensen met me at the Neighborhood Restaurant in Union Square, Somerville to talk about her book A Perfect Union Of Contrary Things. The book is a biography of Maynard James Keenan, the founder of the iconoclastic band,“ Tool,” not to mention a well-regarded vintner, and Renaissance man. A Perfect Union of Contrary Things (Backbeat Books) debuted at number 10 on the New York Times best seller list in 2016 and has since been translated into French and Italian and is forthcoming in Hungarian

According to Jensen, "The authorized biography of musician and vintner Maynard James Keenan, an intimate portrait of a multifaceted man far more remarkable than his public persona suggests. The story of his journey to his place in the international spotlight, the book explores his isolated and stultifying childhood, his doubts and joys, the difficult decisions he faced and how he surmounted them, and his influence on contemporary music and regional wine-making. The narrative is enhanced by the small details that transform personal reminiscence to universal tale: the songs that sustained him, the species of birds he watched take seeds from his father’s hand, the wines he sampled on a Somerville roof deck.”

It was fitting that we met at the Neighborhood, over a bowl of their renowned cream of wheat. It was here that Keenan hung out ( and still visits when he is in town) with his high school friend  who lived in Somerville at the time. They became acquainted with each other back in Ludington, Michigan, a small town about a five hour drive from Chicago. Through her brother Kjiirt, Jensen became long time friends with Keenan. She knew him vaguely years back—but the first time she really became aware of him, was when he came to visit her in the North End of Boston --where she once lived. Her first impression of Keenan was that, “ He was very punk. He was dressed all in black. We became fast friends. I spent a lot of time with Keenan and my brother in Somerville.” Keenan had an appreciation of wine, and good food. Jensen can recall sitting on a Somerville rooftop—drinking good wine, having great conversation, and eating good cuisine.

Keenan's love of wine eventually led him to become an award-winning vintner. He has a a vineyard and restaurant in Jerome, Arizona, and other locations.

I asked Jensen about Tool's music, she said: “ There is really no way to describe it. It has been described as progressive, art rock, etc.... It is symphonic, it is at times simply noise, but there is nothing cliché about it. The message is, “ Think for yourself.. If you have talent you owe it to the universe to share it."

In her book Jensen wanted to get behind his image as a rock star—to the more nuanced man beneath. Jensen told me, “ He reads a lot—philosophy, he studies ancient geometry, and is a big fan of Joseph Campbell. “

Jensen told me that Keenan worked at Stanhope Framers in Union square. She said, “It was a steady gig, but the work was too intense, and involved meticulous attention to detail. He learned about merchandising and other things that proved valuable for his career when he worked for Boston Pet in Boston.

The Neighbor hood restaurant was the real focal point for Keenan in Somerville. Jensen smiled, “It was home for him and my brother. Shelia Borgess, who has run her family restaurant for years joined Jensen and me. She impressed me as a down-to-earth women, who likes to laugh and seems to revel in her work environment. As for Keenan she said. “ We were both outsiders. I came up from new Jersey to help run the family business, and Maynard was from a small town in Ohio. He was really a genuine and regular guy. A guy you felt great being around.” In the book Borgess is quoted:

Maynard was quiet,” Sheila would recall. “You didn’t hear too much from him, but he was a funny, sly, quick-witted kid, and so accepting. He must have been going through his own Michigan withdrawal and being out of his comfort zone. I was out of mine, but we found each other and got through those years.

I asked Jensen, why she thought people should read her book. She replied, “ Because it is about all of us. It is a metaphor for our lives. He followed his own bliss, and what he believed in. He stayed true to himself.”

Doug Holder Interviews Luke Salisbury author of "No Common War"

Amounting to Nothing Poems by Paul Quenon, OCSO

Paul Quenon

Amounting to Nothing

Poems by Paul Quenon, OCSO

Paraclete Press

Brewster, MA

www.paracletepress.com

ISBN: 978-1-64060-201-4

93 Pages

$18.00

Review by Dennis Daly

Like Tibetan prayer flags hung outdoors, pervading the natural world with wisdom and blessings before fading into invisibility, Paul Quenon’s newest poems, included in his collection Amounting to Nothing, are wind-blown mantras of belief and renewal.

Quenon, a Cistercian (Trappist) monk living at Gethsemani Abbey in rural Kentucky, atomizes himself into his wondrous community of creatures and phenomena. His self-deprecation informs both his wit and wisdom. Inconveniently, however, the poet's brand of humility questions even his own judgment and thus his attempts to measure out a life. A flaw perhaps, but also an artistic irritation and poetic spur.

Abnegation of being or a merging with the divine holds the key for any good monk seeking holiness. In Quenon's opening poem, Mad Monk's Life Ambition, his persona tries to figure things out. Double negatives aside, clever word play animates the piece. Here the monk considers his mission,

Did someone lay on a jinx and say:

You'll never amount to nothing?

How sad, since I took nothing

as my monastic goal.

I still don't amount to nothing,

still think I'm something.

I hardly amount to a hill of beans but

this already is too much of something.

What ever might you mount

to amount to nothing?

Where is that magical mountain?

Hide and Seek may be a popular children's game, but Quenon discovers that it suits his monkhood perfectly. In practice the poet finds hiding as an opportunity to observe and understand the nature of creation. Other poets would agree. Quenon goes one step further in his poem entitled Alone with the Alone and declaims the divineness in distraction,

Some poet said galaxies

are a good place to hide-- in a thicket of stars.

But any Kentucky thicket would be good enough for me;

there I could secretly watch small creatures

who want to go hide. And then I'll know

the thousand and one ways to be

and to be unknown.

It might seem like playing God on a small scale.

But God doesn't mind. God likes to pretend

at being God on a small scale.

Mankind unpleasantly ages in parcels that bump into the future and fall back into an inescapable past. But there is a whole, a smooth sphere with no outer rims, an eternity of centers. Quenon mulls over timelessness in the context of his friend and mentor, Thomas Merton. His poem entitled Merton’s Anniversary explains, for lack of a better term, monk’s time. It opens this way,

“passed” 50 years ago, they say.

Well, that number counts for nothing.

Better to say, “subsists in the ever untimed.”

Years count not, no measure there is

for boundless embrace of All-time.

Was-is-will be

co-exist there

simultaneously.

Outside this, nothing is.

Time inside this revolves;

history is a closed circle

ever completed, ever changing.

My favorite poem in this collection Quenon calls Critical Change for Whom? It begins with a troubling exchange between Quenon and Fr. Matthew. The perturbed Matthew questions the reality of things at hand as illusion. He further posits that reality is something other. Quenon, concerned with his friend’s state of mind, asserts that simplification makes more sense. What you see, a table, a bed, really exists or at least is anchored in the real. Then the poet delivers the rest of the story,

I step from Matthew’s room,

leave him to his dark concerns—

suddenly I wake, startled to find myself

elsewhere, alone, on a mattress prone,

under Orion, stars and night—

no table, no room, no Matthew,

already three years passed,

all except for this—the dream he knew

was a dream.

Quenon excels in externalizing his thoughts and emotions. In his poem Winter Conversation of Trees he imposes expressionistic attributes on a variety of Trees with an ear to attention and expository internal need. The resulting tableau quantifies his human concerns and suggests much higher levels of discussion. The poet dispenses his fervors thusly,

Complex cherry branches look cross.

Tearless weeping willow

faints earthward

from summer’s heavy losses.

Cottonwood widely embraces year’s completion.

Gingko finely probes every minute detail of space.

Cedar of Lebanon—straightforward

In all he speaks or tells.

All herewith written

is foreign language unto

their lofty discourse.

The phenomenon of illumination and understanding Quenon chronicles in his poem Fireflies. Here he contemplates in the humble firefly’s existence and obsessive activity, specifically the unresting continuity of the fly’s off-on body switch. Individually, the fly seems to be trying a little too hard to highlight bits of earthly knowledge. In contrast the community of such creatures creates the context for their own magnificent artwork. The poet explains,

… night crowds in.

Dark flees lamps lifted,

cautiously hides from

that fly-filled field spread with

lonely, drifting stars

that never collide—

earthly constellations swarming

the dark, grassy range

ever without owning it.

Belief trumps death as Quenon , in his piece Walking Meditation, strolls through the monk’s graveyard at Gethsemani. He connects with tradition and individual remembrances delineated by simple crosses. Comfort turns to monastic anticipation,

I sense a kind acquaintance

at each step pressed in grass

soles to souls

assembled below

outside of space.

The wash of dew is cleansing,

is peace, and pleasure.

This brief moment awaits

that blink of eternity’s

eye

Monastic traditions have always offered little insights and large illuminations. Paul Quenon, steeped in that heritage of great silences, offers a bit more—first rate poetry.