Shifting Gears Remembering Miles by K. Peddlar Bridges aka…The Roadpoet

Shifting Gears

Remembering Miles

by K. Peddlar Bridges aka…The Roadpoet

Column Shifts Press

Softbound, 165 pages, $16.95

Review by Zvi A. Sesling

Can a biker write?  K. Peddlar Bridges, aka The Roadpoet, sure can. He pours memories and dreams into a cauldron, stirs with a big wooden spoon  (or is it an old floor shift) and serves up some wonderful writing, an eclectic mix of poetry, reminisces, stories and photographs, mostly of old (antique?) cars. And I’m into the car thing because I too have always loved the cars of the 1950s and ‘60s. Even a few in the following decades. I’ve owned a 1955 Mercury, 1962 Impala, 1965 Comet, 1968 Mustang, 1971 Monte Carlo and a super hot 1988 Olds Cutlass Calais Quad 4, FE3. Even the Caddy CTS was quick car.  Anyway, this is about Bikerpoet and his book, so let’s get to it. One of my favorite pieces in this volume is Old White Station Wagon:

OLD WHITE STATION WAGON

OLD WHITE STATION WAGON –

with tired by faithful engine

resting beneath

a rusted pitted hood.

OLD WHITE STATION WAGON –

with an odometer that lies

and with foot worn pedals

that betray your age.

OLD WHITE STATION WAGON –

with ripped and torn seat covers

that tell the tales of the burdens

of your years.

OLD WHITE STATION WAGON –

like an old dog lost control of itself,

hissing radiator, dripping old pan,

seeping transmission case,

always an aggravating trail left

behind

The stories are a bit long to reprint in this review, but suffice it to say that they are well worth the read. I especially like the commentary on the ‘50s cars. When reading Shifting Gears I will make three promises: 1. you will enjoy the poetry and stories, 2. you will be transported back to yesteryear and the cars that legends are made of and 3. you will want to reread the book.  I can also promise you will learn some automotive history in the process.

And finally, some words about K. Peddlar Bridges. The book says he is a Bikerpoet, writer and former Connecticut Bike Week and Super Sunday Expo (R) Poet Laureate.

He has also been a columnist and senior columnist for the Connecticut Cruise News, Motorcyclegoodies.com, The Motorcyclists’Post and The Chop-Shop Custom News Letter. In addition he has been published in numerous publication.  Although the book I received to review is an Editor’s manuscript copy, I would venture that there will be very few changes and for anyone who even remotely likes autos, Shifting Gears, Remembering Miles is a book well worth a read. It does what pop car magazine cannot do, it brings nostalgia and first person love of autos to its pages.

_____________________________________

Zvi A. Sesling is author of King of the Jungle (Ibbetson Street, 2010), Across Stones of Bad Dreams (Cervena Barva, 2011) and the soon to be published Fire Tongue (Cervena Barva). He is Editor of Muddy River Poetry Review and Bagel Bards Anthology #7.

Just Beautiful by Tim Suermondt

Just Beautiful

by Tim Suermondt

NYQ Books

New York, NY

Softbound, 105 pages, $14.95

Review by Zvi A. Sesling

Bittersweet humor should be kept in a poet’s back pocket or purse and pulled out whenever necessary. In this new volume of Tim Suermondt’s poetry there is the bittersweet and the humor and sometimes a combination of both. Take for example

the following poem.

Winning the Pulitzer

Don’t laugh.

I have the chops.

I have the poems.

If I can outlast

the academic mumbo jumbo

I’ll have a legitimate shot,

a puncher’s chance.

At the awards ceremony

I’ll thank everyone

who helped me, give the Bronx cheer

to everyone who never did

and return to my study to write the next poem

like I always have and wanted to

oh those many years in the wilderness.

As you read his poems you might think, “Light, fluffy.”  But a second reading reveals a deeper context to the poems that deal with everyday life, jealousy, love, fame, and almost always, humor. 

Looking Forward Boldly

Almost all my friends

have become blackbirds.

            --Eugen Jebeleanu

A few will become hawks and eagles –

the one who owes me money will become

a buzzard if he doesn’t pay—standard

punishment. I expect my wife and I will

become kingfishers, diving I the deep waters,

we and hungry every day, pecking ourselves

clean on the most beautiful beaches.

The three parts of the book you can see Suermondt moving, that is, motion is as important as humor and beauty.  And that is what Just Beautiful is really about: the everyday beauty of life, of people, of living. But what I like most is his easy slide-it-in-there sense of humor that leaves you saying to yourself, “Oh, that’s good.”   Perhaps you have a silent chuckle, reread the poem and move on. That is what it is all about, past, present and future and the final poem, The Present and the Future, tells you what you have thinking all along.

 Suermondt has published two chapbooks and with this volume, two full length collections of poems.  He has been published in numerous magazines and journals, as well as online. He lives in Brooklyn with his wife, poet Pui Ying Wong.

_____________________________________

Zvi A. Sesling is author of King of the Jungle (Ibbetson Street, 2010), Across Stones of Bad Dreams (Cervena Barva, 2011) and the soon to be published Fire Tongue (Cervena Barva). He is Editor of Muddy River Poetry Review and Bagel Bards Anthology #7.

The Aurorean Editor: Cynthia Brackett-Vincent Spring/Summer 2012

The Aurorean

Editor: Cynthia Brackett-Vincent

Spring/Summer 2012

Volume XVII, Issue I

Encircle Publications

www.encirclepub.com

ISSN: 1521-8376

70 Pages

$11.00

Review by Dennis Daly

This issue of the Aurorean presents imagistic droplets from the natural world so pellucid and bright in their artistry that the pieces of the included poets seem to gain relief and bloom out on virtually every page.  And yet these poetic pieces seem to complement one another in almost an organic interconnected way. Either this editor has sold his soul for a sorcerer’s stone, or something else is going on here.  

Consider this snippet from the history of physics. In the nineteenth century a scientific experiment was developed by Thomas Young, which seemed to prove that light is a wave-like phenomenon. In his Double Slit Experiment Young allowed light to enter through an open hole on one screen to shine onto a second screen with two slits. Beyond the second screen was a wall. When one slit was covered up, the light entered and the illumination on the wall was predictable. But when both slits were open the pattern of the light projection clearly showed a series of light and dark bands. The only rational explanation for these bands was wave interference. Thus light must be made up of waves.  So far so good!

Then Albert Einstein came along with his photoelectric effect proving that light is made up of photons or particles, not waves. Yet Young’s experiment still works. Okay, and what’s the point, you may well ask.

Apparently photons know when the second slit is open and are thus conscious and act accordingly, or, alternatively, fast moving information gets processed by these particles and they duly position themselves as probability waves dictates.

Back to the Aurorean.  Am I imagining poetic roots cutting through their appointed pages seeking nourishment even as I read? In the poem Photons by Llyn Clague the music of poetry is described as packets or particles of inspiration that run the show,

my impulses to poetry

flow beneath the depthless sky,

blue by day, at night

alive with suns,

and the dry cave of self…

I especially like the metaphor of the cave, where anxieties are like bats squeaking as the photons of poetry shoot through the atomic gaps of our troglodyte selves.

In Meteor Shower by Nancy Compton Williams,

Bits of midnight sky,

heated to luminosity,

prepare the eye for dawn,

for light on casks

of honey-colored hay…

Like the photons these waves of meteors lay the very vault of heaven at our feet. They know where they are expected to be in both reality and fancy and don’t disappoint.

The poem Sonnet for a Small Rock gets right to the point,

Who says inanimate objects

don’t have sentience, for example this

small rock from a creek, which I picked up

(with its intaglio of a primitive fish)

to keep on my desk?

The poet continues attributing feelings and mortality to the now precious rock. Human perception, according to this poet, possesses the power of imbuing consciousness. A connection is made and information is somehow passed from animate human to inanimate thing.

B.Z. Niditch’s poem entitled Landscapes seems to give the words of poetry a life of their own. They expect things. The poet explains,

Folds his mellow notes

Slowly pronounces

His last sentence

In a foreign tongue

Expecting to be translated.

In Gayle Elen Harvey’s airy, elegant poem, In that Space, she asks the key question begged in the natural world by the process of death and regeneration. The poet says,

Vacant, now, the dream song of that yellow bird

may outlive you like a prayer

of one syllable.

Bells are breaking open with a clean sound

that’s weightless—

Who is listening in that space

between?

The ability of a fresh water muscle to study the universe is commented on by Craig W. Steele in his curious poem Heelsplitters. In this meditation the poet touches on uncertainty and existence (or non-existence). He says,

…Shoe-horned inside each

calcified confection lies a creature, confounding

to both Heisenberg and Schrodinger: existing; not;

re-emerging to study the universe with its tongue-body,

cast from the mold of its world like quantum Jell-O.

A little poetic gem by Charles H. Harper called It shows how unsuccessful we humans are in naming the source of consciousness in our world. The poem’s humble title becomes a powerful metaphor of our ignorance,

It is

not about you

or me—It is about

earth, space, mystery & our small place

in It.

Our very breath adds to this metaphor of human understanding in Geoffrey A. Landis piece entitled One Breath Poem. Its vividness equals the best of imagist poetry. It ends this way,

…it is enough

to say

something,

even if it is only

to praise

cherry blossoms.

Like particles of shooting light these poems surely illuminate the artistic ability of the individual poets chosen by this editor. But looked at a different way, in their plurality, they also overwhelm with their interconnected mystery and make this issue of the Aurorean a must read for all who seek to understand the nature and the wonder of poetry.

A Life in The Day by Cathy Porter

A Life in The Day

Cathy Porter

Finishing Line Press

2012  ISBN 1-59924-964-2

$14.00

“Fear has a certain smell;

a sickly sweet enticement

chasing ghosts in the machine.”

Porter's voice has no fear, it is the voice of calm prophetic

insights. The poems speak larger truths. The truths of a person

who sits for a moment on her bench under the beech tree in her

backyard, or in the park or sitting beside someone waiting for

a bus. the words guide us on a path made from many walking,

on dirt, rock and gravel:

“She covers herself

with a dirty sheet,

and settles in for the night,

winter creeping up her backside.

Deep drags on a generic menthol;

smoke rings and frosty breath

pray to the heavens.

The girl who once smoked

name brand only?

No forwarding address.

It's quiet under this bridge;

not much traffic overhead,

and the cops can't be bothered

with this area much.”

A Life in The Day, is about voices, the poet's voice, the voices

of family, and voices led by inner addiction, or the small

voices under a bridge, voices on bar stools:

“So many doors, so little

time. Sara knocked back another shot,

stood up on the bar and shouted:

“gentlemen, start your engines!”

And most did seem to be firing up

their motors. Sara knew that all

the women, and some of the guys,

thought she was a whore. She didn't care-

their lives were nothing like hers.

They were born with silver spoons in

their mouths, not like the wooden one

she was born with, still choking

on the splinters.”

The poems knocks, sing like birds song, blink like signs. Porter

scraps the pages, asking the reader to read the signs of our time,

and to listen to how people cope with living on a one way

track, their trailing off speech. Porter gives us poems that hear:

“Sometimes the best course

of action is stationary;

when answers are not needed,

nor sought after...”

Irene Koronas

Reviewer: Ibbetson Street Press

Poetry Editor: Wilderness House Literary Review

AT THE BOOK SHOP AT BALL SQUARE: AN EVENING OF POETRY

 

  

AT THE BOOK SHOP AT BALL SQUARE:

AN EVENING OF POETRY

HOSTED BY:  Gil Barbosa, proprietor 

                      Richard Wilhelm, poet

WHERE:         The Book Shop at Ball Square

                      694 Broadway

                      Somerville, MA 02144 

WHEN:           6 PM

                      Wednesday, May 23, 2012

FEATURED READERS:  

           

            DOUG HOLDER is the founder of the Ibbetson Street Press.  He teaches writing at Endicott College in Beverly, MA and Bunker Hill Community College in Boston.  His own poetry and prose have been in such journals as Rattle, Main Street Review, Houston Literary Review, Poesy, The Boston Globe, and many others.  Holder is the Arts Editor of The Somerville News, and curator of the Newton Free Library Poetry Series.  He holds an MA in Literature from Harvard University.  One of his latest collections of poetry is "The Man in the Booth in the Midtown Tunnel" (Cervena Barva Press.)

           JAMES DECRESCENTIS has had poems published in New Letters, The Cafe Review, Ibbetson Street and other literary magazines.  He currently teaches at Bunker Hill Community College and runs the Gallery at the Piano Factory in Boston.

          GLORIA MINDOCK is editor of Cervena Barva Press and The Istanbul Literary Review.  Her poetry has been translated into Romanian, Serbian, Spanish, and French.  Widely published, her poetry recently has appeared in Levure Litteraire (France) and in Vatra Veche Romania).

          LUCY HOLSTEDT teaches at Berklee College of Music.  She is a composer, songwriter, choral arranger, playwright , actor, piano player, and vocalist.  Her poetry has appeared in Ibbetson Street, The Wilderness House Literary Review, and the Lyrical Somerville column of The Somerville News.

          DOUG WORTH is a Cambridge poet, a retired teacher, and author of "Catch the Light: Selected Poems, 1963--2003", a book that won praise from such luminaries as Howard Zinn and Lawrence Ferlinghetti. 

AN OPEN MIKE WILL FOLLOW THE FEATURED READERS

Love Poems Kanta Bosniak

Love Poems

Kanta Bosniak

CreateSpace

$8.99 on Amazon

Review by Rene Schwiesow

Kanta Bosniak makes her home in the foothills of the beautiful Blue Ridge Mountains.  There she focuses on her art, music, writing, life coaching, inter-faith work and people.  I met Kanta in a wonderful, artsy coffee shop that showcases much of Kanta’s artwork on a hot, summer morning in 2011 – The Coffee Depot in Christianburg, VA.  I was surrounded by her vibrant artwork (she had a show hung in the space) and we chatted about many of our similar interests including our need to write.  Kanta has a tenacity that I admire combined with energy and action.  When she puts her mind to a task it is virtually complete even as she thinks about it.  She also has a caring, loving soft side that translates well to her book “Love Poems.” 

This work is not about sappy, teenage infatuation, but rather takes our thoughts about love to a higher level, to a place where love encompasses all relationship – that with family, others, and That which we consider the Beloved, God.  In Love Poems Kanta has combined delightful, energetic drawings with “hand-written” quotes from well-known individuals such as Rumi, Hafiz, Saint Augustine and Gibran and tossed them both with her own poetry.  This poetic, artistic salad feeds us with wisdom, color and fun.  I greatly appreciated her analogy in “Socks:”

I’m glad we’re both the sort of sock

that doesn’t get lost in the machine.

We may spin a little,

but that’s just for fun.

We’re no-drama footwear, easy care.

100% natural fiber.

Comfortable, yet stylish.

Then she’ll take us back to awakening and connection in a quiet meditative piece entitled “Morning:”

Jasmine tea and toast and You

while my beloved sleeps,

exploring inner landscapes of his own.

She spends time speaking to a phenomenon that most of us are familiar with in meeting a person who carries burdens, anger or sadness in “Traveling Light.”

Yesterday I met a woman

in love with death and sadness

The poem relays the feeling of being sucked in, to taking on the shadow of the other person

I felt the stale sweet heaviness

like mordant gray smoke

And choosing to “Travel Light,”

“No thanks,” I told her with a smile

Kanta’s book of Love Poems is a book to turn to for a pick-me-up on a drab day, for a reminder of the connection we have to all others, for a smile and warm fuzzy before drifting off to dream,

letting go,

letting go,

. . .sliding on sunbeams

carried on moonrays. . .

*****Rene Schwiesow is a co-host of the popular South Shore poetry venue The Art of Words.  She writes a monthly arts column in The Old Colony Memorial and enjoys reading her work as feature poet and at open mics.

Coyote Bush Poems from the Lost Coast By Peter Nash

Coyote Bush





Poems from the Lost Coast





By Peter Nash





Off The Grid Press





www.offthegridpress.net





69 Pages





$15.00



Review by Dennis Daly






The beauty of the natural world skulks around the edges of these poems, making inroads here and there. The impressive color photograph of a coyote bush on the cover, almost a montage of direct light and shadow, sets the ambivalent tone as mankind’s sensitivity confronts the indifference of nature.





The poem Sitting Under a Maple Tree portrays the poet’s persona resting under a tree, observing nature and its gorgeousness, and looking up at the sky for yet more inspiration (an upstairs, downstairs effect) . Seems almost perfect, but, alas there are a couple of problems. The poet demands food, warmth, and affection. All would be right he says if













…someone brought me





Bacon and eggs for supper,





Covered my shoulders with a blanket





From November to April





And kissed me good night













But even then he would be subject, like all living things, to the aging process—admittedly natural, but unpleasant for most of us. He says,













…I’d be





No great green tree





From whose branches white birds sing hosannas,





But an ancient horse





All hide and bone





Alone in a pasture





Feet splayed





Bowing to the earth.













In his poem Tracks, Nash lies down in the dry needle imprint left by a doe and her newborn. Is he communing with nature, becoming one with a pantheistic earth spirit? Well, sort of. At first the poet’s soul and the doe’s soul simply merge in a moment of apparent understanding. But there is more (again upstairs, downstairs). High over grounded nature,













…Orion





stands with his great bow by the River Eridanus.





Beside him the deerhounds





Tense at his sudden whistle,





Then rush down the star trails.













The killers from on high are also driven by natural instinct, lest the poet forget.





The affecting dedication of this book reads, “For Judy, who figures in some of these poems and all of my life.” It occurs to me that the beautiful, yet cruel context of nature only heightens human emotions such as love with tragedy and intensity. One good example of this is the poem entitled After You. The poet details the degradation of his household, the loss of pleasant detail and tasty cuisine. The meditation then turns internal. His thought patterns would change. The light would leave the sky. And finally the essence,













I’d gradually withdraw from the future.





There’d be nothing to look forward to—





No smell of rice pilaf and garlic,





No watching videos side by side,





Nor you breathing when I wake up.













In Judy’s Garden, Nash sees clearly the detail’s of his aging wife: her sore back, her dirty gloves, her baggy jeans, her gray hair. These are now inseparable from their shared life, their memories, and most importantly, his love for her:













“You look the same as ever,” I say.





She’s wearing her father’s felt fedora,





her gray hair in a neat bunch





covering the little hump above her shoulder blades





that doctor Dick said was osteoporosis.





“Yeah, right,” she calls out…













Maybe that’s a sarcastic “yeah, right,” or maybe it is an embarrassed “yeah, right,” but she knows for a moment anyway that he’s telling the truth. Love’s intensity cannot be hidden. It’s impossible.





Young love is expressive and sometimes explosive. Timeless love is more subtle and sometimes depends on subordinate clauses and gestures. The scene is the poet’s birthday party. He’s giving a speech and says,













At this age you can’t expect to run a mile,





I announce, looking at Judy,





and you’re damn lucky to hobble the distance





with someone who gives you a hand…













Later in bed:













she says she liked the part





about giving someone a hand,





then wiggles her toes against my feet—





our old signal…













The scene ends wonderfully with man’s unique or artificial nature resisting the pull of the natural order of things. In the poet’s words,













my bantam cock crows,





another old man yelling at the moon.













Nash expands his vision of man’s domesticity under siege with an extraordinary poem called The Garden. It begins with a description of wildness and beauty,













Once this was the flood plain of a river.





Bunch grass and wild oats fluttered in the silty soil





and poppies followed the sun with golden faces.













Then comes the tale of how this wild was made habitable for humans by art or, to be specific, his wife’s vision of her garden.













She put the garden in by herself,





mixed peat moss with fertilizer in the wheelbarrow





then eased dozens of roses





into the chocolate earth.





She planted the potted salvia,





wrinkled pea-like seeds of nasturtiums,





onions, carrot starts, the chunky eyes of potatoes,





three kinds of summer squash,





and dug iris bulbs in deep.













Once the earth has been defined by her art, the poet marvels at his wife’s closeness to and her understanding of nature,













She loves the feel of dirt between her palms,





the shovel against her boot,





the pull of the hose against her hip,





the heft of buckets dragging her shoulders.





Sometimes he sees her head bend close to the earth





inhaling the rough viney smell of green tomatoes.













There is an end of course. It may be tragic as man’s destiny will end as it began. Or maybe it is a marvel that it took place at all. The poem ends this way













In twenty years they’ll be gone,





the garden a few stalky rose bushes





poking up through the grass.





Plenty of time, he thinks,





for the ragged coyote bush,





the milk thistle,





to come back in.













And then, just possibly, somewhere in time, someone else will plant another garden and human love, so obvious in these poems, will flower again.

Philip Larkin, The Complete Poems Edited by Archie Burnett

 
Philip Larkin, The Complete Poems

Edited by Archie Burnett

Copyright 2012 by The Estate of Philip Larkin

Farrar, Straus and Giroux

Hardbound, 729 pages,  $40.00

ISBN 978-0-374-12696-4

Review by Zvi A. Sesling

You get a book of collected poems and think you have everything by that poet. But the new Philip Larkin, The Complete Poems edited by Archie Burnett is the penultimate book that every Larkin fan (and even those not totally familiar with his poetry) will want to have in his or her library. In fact, Burnett points out in his introduction the failures of previous editions of Larkin’s poetry. 

One thing about the British and certain academicians is their ability to dredge up every bit of minutiae on a given subject. And this is what makes Burnett’s Larkin collection complete.  Burnett has seemingly plumbed everything and anything extant on Larkin and crammed it into this volume.

Purists believe that publishing material an author chose not to publish is overstepping because he [Larkin] either had some reason not to publish them or felt they were not of sufficient merit to see in print. Yet, by choosing to do so Burnett has revealed a Larkin who is complete, that is to say, we gather new insights into a poet who ranks among England’s favorites both in his lifetime and after.

Burnett, however, does not stop merely with poems, he adds 339 pages of text notes that

trace nearly every source Larkin can be shown to have drawn on, and even, according to

a publicity piece, may have half-consciously drawn on.

Just published, this book is worth every cent, and includes poems from The North Ship, The Less Deceive, The Whitsun Weddings and High Windows. Also included are other poems published in Larkin’s lifetime and poems not published in his lifetime as well as undated or approximately dated poems.  These are followed by commentary on the poems and appendices which include Larkin’s early collections of his poems, dates of compositions and finally an index of titles and first lines.

Burnett is co-director of the Editorial Institute and professor of English at Boston University.  And this marvelous undertaking will be hard for anyone to improve on and lovers of poetry owe him a grand thank you for this work.

Why is Larkin loved? He had an ability to put class in its place and academicians in theirs, witness the following:

Epigram on an Academic Marriage

You see that man? He has a month-old wife

He married from emotional cupidity,

Hoping she’d ‘put him into touch with Life’—

Now finds all she’s in touch with is stupidity.

Or this view of age:

Long Sight in Age

They say eyes clear with age,

As dew clarifies air

To sharpen evenings,

As if time put an edge

Round the lost shape of things

To show them there;

The many-levelled trees,

The long soft ties of grass

Wincing away, the gold

Wind-ridden vanes – all these,

They say, come back to focus

As we grow old

These are but two short poems in a book full of magnificent poetry, a number of them quite longer. And as you read them remember that he never married and was quite anti-social, according to some sources I have read.  Yet Larkin’s ability to touch cords is what will make you love this book as much as I do.  Very Highly Recommended.

_________________________________________________

Zvi A. Sesling

Author, King of the Jungle (Ibbetson Street, 2010) and Across Stones of Bad Dreams (Cervena Barva, 20110)

Editor, Muddy River Poetry Review

Editor, Bagel Bards Anthology 7

Rosie Rosenzweig: Creativity with passion and compassion.

Rosie Rosenzweig: Creativity with passion and compassion.

  By Doug Holder

  Rosie Rosenzweig is a woman who has studied the creative mind for years and has found that creativity is a meditative process that often leads to compassion. She is a Jewish woman with a ravenous appetite for all things Buddhist, and speaks with a rapid fire cadence about many subjects with intelligence and authority.

  Rosenzweig’s early poetry was anthologized in the first gender-friendly American Hebrew prayer book as well as in various feminist anthologies. As the founder of the Jewish Poetry Festival in Sudbury Massachusetts, she hosted outstanding luminaries like the former the poet laureate Robert Pinsky.  Her more current poetry is being collected in a work-in-progress.

Rosenzweig’s interpretations of Biblical women appear in Reading Between the Lines, All the Women Followed Her, and Praise Her Works: Conversations with Biblical Women. Her essays have appeared in Ethical Wills, Making the Jewish Journey from Mid-life through the Elder Years, and the Foreword. Her travel memoir, A Jewish Mother in Shangri-la describes the Jewish Buddhist World of meditation.

Women’s Intergenerational issues have been a focus of her work and a recently completed a play, “Myths and Ms.” At Brandeis for almost a decade, she has been interviewing artists in various media and hosting a yearly panel at the Brandeis Rose Art Museum on the creative process in an effort to understand the psychological and spiritual state of consciousness present at the moment of creation. Defining how creativity can transform the artist, she has currently coined  a term called MotherArtTM.

I talked with Rosenzweig on my Somerville Community Access TV Show:   " Poet to Poet: Writer to Writer."

Doug Holder: Your early  poetry was anthologized in the first gender-friendly American Hebrew prayer book as well as in various feminist anthologies. Is there a need for a gender-friendly Hebrew prayer book?

Rosie Rosenzweig:  Who knows if God is a man?  Many women feel the feminine aspect of God has been underplayed. They feel that it is time for equal play. That particular prayer book was titled" Purify My Heart." I was written up in the Wall St. Journal, and other places. It is still being used years after it was released.

DH: Do you consider yourself a Jewish writer or a writer who is Jewish?

RR: Back in 1979 I characterized myself as a Jewish poet. I was publishing in Jewish journals, etc... Then my son, who became a Buddhist, took me to France, India and Nepal to meet his teachers. I started to consider Buddhism and wrote a lot about it and my experience with it.

DH: You have interviewed many artists and writers about their creative process  in an effort to understand the psychological and spiritual state of consciousness present at the moment of creation. You also believe that art has transformative power.

RR: I did a paper on this . It was with mothers and how they involved themselves in the mourning of their own mothers artistically: in films, installations, politically, etc... The Dali Lama says if you meditate compassion naturally arises. So one of my arguments is that creating is a form of meditation. When you meditate compassion arises--you let go of the story of your mother's grief and then the compassion comes into play.  For instance the artists I interviewed did creative work that helped the community in some way or a addressed a societal problem. One did a film on disability, one worked with the homeless, etc... And as you involve yourself in your creativity--you can't help but to be transformed in some way--like the women I studied.

Unguarded Crossing by Bob Brooks

Unguarded Crossing


Bob Brooks

Antrim House

www.antrimhousebooks.com

$17.00



Review by Rene Schwiesow



“Unguarded Crossing” is Brooks’ first full-length collection of poetry. However Brooks is no stranger to the written word or to publishing his work. From the nineties on, Brooks’ work has appeared in magazines such as “The Beloit Poetry Journal, “Mudfish Poetry,” “Poetry Northwest,” “Prairie Schooner,” and many others. He has also been published in three previous chapbooks: “Still in Here Someplace” by Pudding House Publications; “A Story Anyone Could Stick To” through Finishing Line Press; and “Three-season Views” also through Finishing Line Press.



Brooks began his post-Harvard life as an army translator, followed by a long-term career as an editor at a computer systems company before entering the writing/publishing arena. “Unguarded Crossing” has received praise from fellow poets, including Massachusetts born Susan Donnelly: “The poetry of Bob Brooks is both startling and inviting. . .”



After perusing Brooks’ Prologue poems and grinning over “One Reason,” a work that gives us an inkling as to why cats may not write poetry, I tumbled into section II, Closed Circle, to be met with one of my favorite sensory experiences, chocolate, in “Her Body Delectable.”



Like chocolate –

it’s so delicious,

I envy it.



My mind made the leap in those opening lines to Whitman’s “I Sing the Body Electric:” “This is the female form,/a divine nimbus exhales from it from head to foot.” What else is chocolate if not divine? Brooks continues to play on the sensory later in the work with:



tongue to lips,



thinking, “These are her lips” or

“This is her tongue,”



and the delicious experience of licking chocolate from one’s lips like relishing the sweet taste of a lover brings a welcome sigh.



Brooks addresses many human themes. Taking leave of sexuality we also find love, conflict, loss and addiction. He deftly compares addiction to the apple Eve offered Adam in “What I Can’t.”





do is, I

can’t pick up

that first drink.



That’s it. Like

what God said

to Adam:

“Of every



tree may you

freely eat

but this one. . .



And loss in “For the Memorial:”



. . .pulling apart

till only their fingers

touch at the tips



to show the sky

empty, and the dark

boats.



There are many more wonderful poetic experiences in “Unguarded Crossing,” making this book well worth experiencing.



Rene Schwiesow co-hosts the popular South Shore poetry venue, The Art of Words in Plymouth and currently writes a monthly column on the arts, which appears in The Old Colony Memorial.

A Very Funny Fellow By Donald Lev

A Very Funny Fellow

By Donald Lev

NYQ Books

www.nyqbooks.org

ISBN: 978-1-935520-55-9

108 Pages

$14.95

Review by Dennis Daly

Donald Lev’s poems herein belie the title of this book. There is a deep sadness, which permeates through these poems, and the wit and humor the poet commands make it worse. Even Lev’s cover portrait, painted in airy pastels, complete with an everyman’s baseball cap, only accentuate his pondering, animal-wary eyes and a mouth lost to grief.

The Titanic is a very funny poem indeed. Its humor, however, portrays poetry’s heart of darkness. The scene is utter chaos, the ship lists to one side, and the poet’s love has been swept overboard. The enthralled poet goes on to record,

The lifeboats have all been let loose

and the crew is maintaining order

by shooting the more panicked

among the remaining passengers.

so you see why I cannot write this just now;

till I have a chance to recollect it in tranquility.

Note that he cannot write right now, but he would if he could. Poetry doesn’t always go hand in hand with compassion I’ve noticed and apparently so has Lev.

The ogre in the poem Bowery, Circa 1950 knows something that we all know but keep well covered up. As the bartender pours him another generous glass of cheap port, the old monster rallies, growls, and the following scene ensues,

“There’ll never be another moment like this

moment,” he weeps. Nobody listens, so he

drains his glass and calls for another.

Carpe diem, I guess!

All Lev’s poems are presented in a down-to-earth conversational voice that seems self-assured and unwavering. In a short poem entitled A Window he makes a point of picturing himself this way,

A window you can’t see out of or into:

I sit before it like a cat,

Contemplating what?

There are other places, I suppose—

Other points of view.

But just this one holds my interest.

Well not quite conversational. The lines in this poem all begin with a capital letter accentuating the line and creating some sedentary tension here.

Lev describes a baseball game in Fair Ball pretty much the way most of us see it: a pleasant diversion, a controlled athletic and graceful game played under blue skies. But to Lev that’s the rub,

… crowds of onlookers drawn

from sweetest imagination.

As the third baseman scoops the ball up and

speeds it to its destination—

the peanuts in the air, the lager, the boiling franks—

where can I go with this?

Where indeed? Perfect afternoons do not lend themselves to poetry.

In The Civil War: A Documentary Lev laments the killing and brutality on the battlefield. But of course there is the fiddle music in the background. As Lev points out,

That string music

will get you every time.

And it does. Years ago I had my daughter, the violinist, play it over and over for me. Although I wasn’t consciously thinking of Chamberlain leading his Maine regiment down little round top in a bayonet charge, it was there in the background: the aesthetic or even the poetry of slaughter.

A simple observational poem, almost a throw away, entitled, The Smaller Television, becomes much deeper and, with a little twist, becomes one of Lev’s thumbnail masterpieces. Lions running down gazelles on the TV at the end of the bar begin the festivities. Other carnivores do their thing. George Washington makes a cameo. I remember Ole George was never shy about hanging deserters and spies. Then the punch line,

… evading nature and

skipping history,

my mind returned to its lair.

The poets mind, fitting right in to the context, returns to its lair, after a night of predatory wanderings. Who would have thought?

The poem, Gothic Tale, is just that: gothic. But not the language used. The words are easy going, filled with sunlight and blue skies—typical Lev. Then he hits you hard. Adults, apparently years later, return to the graves of their murdered parents and,

…a sour note sounded in the distance

from a soulless trumpeter.

And we began to weep like children

who were, after all, not to be punished.

The last line catches you off guard. What do you do with their sense of relief for escaping punishment. You know it rings true and so do I. As for the soulless trumpeter, well, the dead do not play very well on sunny days. That’s funny. And Lev is, after all, a very funny fellow.

Café Variations Presented by ArtsEmerson

Café Variations

Presented by ArtsEmerson

A co-production with Emerson Stage and SITI Company

The Cutler Majestic Theatre

219 Tremont Street, Boston, MA

April 13-April 22

Music and Lyrics by George and Ira Gershwin

Directed by Anne Bogart

www.ArtsEmerson.org

617-824-8400

Review by Amy R. Tighe

Have you ever wondered what music looks like?  You’ve seen movies with and without scores, and probably listened to concerts.   And you know how music makes you feel.  Triumphant when you hear Chariots of Fire, or beleaguered after any blues song BB ever sang.

But what does a note look like?  Or a chord? Or a well-played and precise bar performed by masters of joy?  Go see Café Variations.  You’ll see.  It’s like walking into a sheet of music that suddenly becomes alive and every note is a miniature Cupid personally inviting you to love again.  Or at least to have coffee while trying.

.

The pre-performance notices say the show is about the simple act of reaching out to another human in the environment of the café.  I thought of my years as a waitress at my local down and dirty coffee dive, long before the plugged-in, tuned-out generation haunting the Starbuck Factories today, and I was intrigued.  But the café presented here is from the 40’s, with a nightclub feeling during a fast-paced date night.  It starts with a waiter in classic Viennese café attire , who falls in love at first sight and still has to wait tables amongst the throngs of clients clamoring for coffee, cakes, romance and meaning. 

The performance is a collection of musical numbers, written by Ira and George Gershwin, several monologues and sparse, tight dialogue by Charles Mee and precise choreography by Barney O’Hanlon.  The ensemble cast is a mixture of troupes:   the professional SITI troupe from NYC, and newly graduating Emerson students.  Anne Bogart masterminded, nurtured and directed the collaboration between the students and professionals to create a superb and entertaining investigation into and celebration of love.

There isn’t really a plot. It’s more like watching a complicated romp at the café, where keeping score of the various couplings and re-couplings captivates you.  A group of customers  arrive in a cluster of pretty dresses topping vibrant petticoats, outlandish gloves, simple hats and shiny suits. They sit at tables, kiss, slap, or marry and move on.  Moments later, another line of customers arrive, the music changes, they sit, kiss, slap, or marry and move on.  The ensemble becomes a refrain, each performer a bright note and together they create a familiar melody you can’t wait to hear again and maybe you even want to hum along.  Constant motion, chronic mishaps, connection, introspection and accusations between loves all while the head waiter moves tables every few minutes to redesign the stage.   There is a gang war between men and women, moderate occasional cross dressing and a hilarious and explosive break up between two lovers who firmly hold you in the tender clutches of their coffee date.  Then the next refrain arrives, coupling and re-coupling, you see Desire’s tempo, and you step in, ready to accompany it now.

A live orchestra performs flawlessly behind a fountain that keeps changing colors.  For such simple staging, the effects are complex.  Moods shift as effortlessly as the next solo arriving on this jazz train. The music enfolds the actors into its story, and enlists the audience into finding their own. 

This collaboration between a world renowned established and professional troupe and Emerson’s own students just starting out their careers ends the second season of ArtsEmerson.  It’s a stunning example of how ArtsEmerson is bringing innovative, international and essential work within the reach of our local Boston world.  Live.  No You Tube and no instant replays.  Whether the performance takes place at the thoughtfully and attentively restored Paramount, or at the familiar, beloved, velvet worn Cutler Majestic, ArtsEmerson programming always offers  us a place at the table in the café of life where we can sit, sip and muse. Your table is waiting.

Memberships and tickets for next year are available now.

Ballroom – a love story Christine Klocek-Lim

Ballroom – a love story

Christine Klocek-Lim

Flutter Press

$6.50 on Lulu.com

Review by Rene Schwiesow

Klocek-Lim, the editor of Autumn Sky Poetry, an international poetry journal, wrote “Ballroom – a love story” during NaPoWriMo in 2011.  Taking on the task of writing a poem a day for Klocek-Lim produced a series of poems about the pain, challenge, commitment, weariness and bliss of dance lessons.  From Waltz to Cha-Cha she utilizes fresh phrases to show us images of the dances, the dancer, and the connection to a dance partner and the environment. 

If you have ever taken dance lessons you will find yourself either identifying with the way the poet relates to the lessons or surprised at the differing perspective from your own.  Either way, you will be opened up to seeing a panoramic view that includes the room, the ceiling, the lights, the people, the feet, the shuffling – however graceful or awkward the movement can be.

We swing into line of dance, the floor so smooth

I can almost see my face, a ghost blurred in the wax. . .

we hurtle around the room once, twice, then I catch

our teacher in the mirrors, her forehead surprised, wistful.

The room, itself, becomes part of the dance and voyeur all at the same time and Klocek-Lim tosses in gems such as:

The lights are on.

Dust bunnies gossiping

in corners.

And I’m certain I will remember that line the next time I notice dust bunnies in the corner of an unswept room. . .leave them alone. . .they are gossiping.

On occasion the reading left me wondering why dance; why put one’s self into a place where there is clearly pain and angst?

My mother finds me in the kitchen

with ice and bandages, foot propped. . .

My bruise looks like Argentina,

a forest of color.

Then Klocek-Lim deftly weaves in a beautiful image:

She says, now turn her again

and he unwraps me like a candied chocolate.

An exotic pear, un-netted.

She leaves us, as many women do, with the accoutrements of dance.

I fancy the pair with rhinestones.

Sweet black satin over a 2.5 inch heel.

Shoes.  Something most women can relate to, especially when pairing those shoes with a man dressed in a black shirt, tapered at the waist, and black pants.  A man who is bending his woman backward in a graceful arch, which ends with:

My shoes falling deliciously

off.

The book is about relationship and while there are times I question the jump of the mixed metaphor/images, Klocek-Lim has given us the opportunity to look at relationship through the push and pull of commitment to a medium that can allow the spirit to fly.

Rene Schwiesow is co-host of the popular South Shore poetry venue, The Art of Words.  In addition to writing poetry and fiction, she currently writes a monthly column on the arts for The Old Colony Memorial in Plymouth, MA.