Ed Hamilton: One of the last Chelsea Hotel Bohemians, and author of Legends of the Chelsea Hotel: Living with Artists and Outlaws in New York’s Rebel Mecca

By Doug Holder

  It was the kind of winter day you may remember from your childhood, before things became so heated. Bone chilling winds whipped my face making my cheeks look like they were reddened from deep embarrassment.  On this morning I was to meet author Ed Hamilton at the Grey Dog Café in the Chelsea section of Manhattan to talk about the glory days of the famed Chelsea Hotel in New York City. Hamilton, 53, a longtime resident of the hotel, and author of the book Legends of the Chelsea Hotel, had an interesting tale to tell about this bohemian flophouse.

  The Chelsea Hotel on 23^rd St. in the Chelsea section of Manhattan has a unique history. Built in 1883 it originally was a residential hotel that housed the stars of the theatrical world. But over the years it was also the home for an eclectic group of literary, visual and musical artists of all stripes. The Welsh poet Dylan Thomas stayed at the hotel and was taken to St. Vincent’s Hospital in the Village where he died from the result of drinking himself to death mostly at the famed White Horse Tavern ,near the environs of the Chelsea. William Burroughs reportedly wrote Naked Lunch at the Chelsea, and Kerouac is rumored to have had a fling with Gore Vidal in one of the rooms, and some believed he completed On the Road there. Arthur Miller hung his hat there in his pre and post Marilyn periods, as well as noted Punker and Poet Patti Smith and the photographer Robert Mapplethorpe. (As recounted in Smith’s acclaimed memoir Just Kids). And of course Sid Vicious and Nancy met their infamous end in a gone-to-seed room in the Hotel.

  For many years the hotel was run benevolently (more or less) by Stanley Bard. Since 1957 Bard had made the Chelsea a welcoming refuge of sorts for young artists to make a go of it in the big city. He provided rooms at a reasonable rate for aspiring artists, and was often forgiving if they came up short with the rent. He sometimes took payment in the form of a painting or labor. But Bard was pushed out. Now with gentrification, condo conversion, astronomical real estate prices, the days of the Chelsea Hotel and others if its ilk are certainly numbered. With Bard’s removal the Chelsea is undergoing renovation and all the artwork that gave the building its unique flavor has vanished. Many of the permanent residents have been evicted. Hamilton told me a total of 58 have been forced out. Sixty residential apartments are left.  Hamilton said: “I was in court for five years, but I finally won the right to stay because I have a Rent Stabilized apartment.”  Indeed, Hamilton , who has been at the Chelsea since 1995, is the last of the breed who came to this hotel and lived the life of a bohemian writer, in a room lined with books, and a bathroom down the hall. He and his wife have lived outside “The broad lawns and narrow minds of the suburbs,” as Hemmingway once wrote.

  According to Hamilton the building was bought for 80 million dollars by a Moroccan family headed by real estate mogul Joseph Chetrit. Hamilton said:  “ It is a huge conglomerate that bought the Sears Tower in Chicago and other far flung interests…the Chelsea is only a mere speck of dust in the whole perspective of things.” It seems that many of the tenants who were not evicted were bought out for well below the market rate. Hamilton does not want sell, and certainly not for a price that will not allow him to stay in Manhattan. Hamilton said he tried to enlist famed punker and poet Patti Smith, the author the awarding-memoir set in the Chelsea  Just Kids,  but she ignored him. Finally she came out of the closet, but according to Hamilton, decidedly on the management’s side.  She agreed to do a concert for the tenants that was supposed to introduce them to the wonderful new world of the Chelsea Hotel  under Chetrit. Hamilton feels she was working for the management, in spite of the common knowledge of the evictions and the destruction of the interior of the hotel. When the tenants threatened a book burning, in addition to the media deluge spurred on from Hamilton’s Chelsea Hotel blog, Smith reneged.

  Hamilton and his girlfriend Debbie Martin came to the Chelsea after Hamilton’s stint at the University of Maryland, where Hamilton was teaching philosophy and working on his doctorate. But Hamilton did not really like the academic life. He was a product of the suburbs, and he was horrified to think he would wind up in a conventional lifestyle near some strip mall. Hamilton and Martin always knew about the Chelsea and its rich history, and they were determined to come to New York City to live there. According to Stanley Bard to gain entrance into the Chelsea was harder than getting into an Ivy League college, but the duo got in through a sublet. Since then, with the help of Martin, Hamilton started the Chelsea Hotel Blog, and penned the book Legends of the Chelsea Hotel….

  Hamilton made a point in his book to write not only about the famous folks who lived there but the unsung holy fools as well. Hamilton said: “The everyday folks who lived in the Chelsea brought this weird energy to the place. I think this contributed to the creativity of the Chelsea. I am sure some of the great works conceived here as well as the obscure were fired by the sparks in the atmosphere.” Hamilton told me that many artists, even after it was long apparent that they didn’t have the talent or luck to make it on a big scale, stayed on. Most folks after achieving some sort of success moved out. For the ones that stay it can be a negative experience… a reminder of what they are not.

  I asked Hamilton about some of the long term residents who are still pursuing their passion. One lady Bettina G. has been in the hotel for many decades. She is a visual artist, and a young artist who lived in the Chelsea, Sam Bennett, produced a documentary about her. According to a newspaper account she had her paintings stacked to the ceiling, and she was partially living in the hallway. Gerald Busby a current resident and a protégé of Virgil Thompson had early success (He wrote the film score for Robert Altman’s 3 Women), then went into obscurity and now has been rediscovered.

 Since I always have had an interest in the poet Charles Bukowski, I asked him if the Buk ever spent time at the Chelsea. Hamilton thought Bukowski spent one night or so there—and the poet mentioned the hotel in a poem and short story he wrote. Hamilton then went on to tell me that Harry Smith, the noted archivist, ethnomusicologist, experimental filmmaker, also known for his Anthology of American Folk Music, was a resident as well. He died at the Chelsea in 1993.

 I remember in the late 70’s when I came to Boston I lived in a number of rooming houses in Boston and Cambridge. One, the Irving Inn in Cambridge, advertised itself for Lean Pocket Transients. The other was on Newbury Street in the Back Bay of Boston. Many young people and not a few artists were able to get a reasonably priced room in the city to pursue their art or passion. When I came to the city there were a number of these places. Now they have seemed to have disappeared. Hamilton said this is true of New York as well. Rent Stabilization is vehemently opposed by the current city administration, and tenants can’t stand up to the moneyed interests they are in conflict with.

  Hamilton, continues to write fiction, his first love, and has had his work in online and print journals such as Penduline and Omphalos. Some of his fiction is loosely autobiographical and at times deals with is life growing up Catholic, and all the repressive baggage that comes with it. Although Hamilton’s Legends of the Chelsea continues to sell and sell well; he is having trouble finding an agent for his fiction.

  Hamilton has hopes for his fiction as well as for the last outpost of bohemia, the Chelsea Hotel. He thinks the chances that he and his partner will remain in the Chelsea are slim. But hope springs eternal…and he still holds a candle in the encroaching darkness. Hamilton is a creature of the city—he needs to breathe the asphalt, blink back at the blinking neon, and pursue that ephemeral light that the artist seeks. And the city, this Naked City—New York City, that has a million stories, is the one that will keep the pilot light of his creative life burning.

The Poetry Czars of The South Shore Visit Somerville

                             


By Doug Holder





Jack Scully is the co-founder with the late Mike Amado of two ongoing poetry venues in Plymouth, Massachusetts, Poetry: The Art of Words a monthly poetry series and The Poetry Showcase a yearly poetry reading held in conjunction with the Plymouth Guild for the Arts yearly juried art show. In 2012 Scully organized Visual Inverse a joint effort between poets' and visual artists at the Plymouth Center for the Arts.



Mike Amado published three books of poetry during his short time on this earth. Scully and poet Nancy Brady Cunningham have edited his fourth book. Scully, who currently serves as the literary executor of Mike’s work has read Mike's poetry as a feature reader at Greater Brockton Poetry and Arts Society, Boston National Poetry Month Festival, Main Street Café, Poetry in the Village, Stone Soup Poetry, Poets Pathway, Poetry at O'Sheas' and Salem Literary Festival 2010. He also serves as the unofficial photographer of numerous poetry venues.






Rene Schwiesow is the co-host for the South Shore Poetry venue The Art of Words. A Somerville Bagel Bard, her publishing credits include Muddy River Poetry Review, the Waterhouse Review, and Ibbetson Street Press. Rene’s work has been aired on the Talking Information Network, a non-profit service for the visually impaired. April, 2012, she was a guest on WGDH, Vermont, along with New York/Vermont poet Michael Palma. In recent news, her work, “Shades,” has been chosen as Poem of the Week by the Massachusetts Poetry Festival and will appear beginning January 25, 2013. Rene is a reviewer for Boston Area Small Press, writes a column for the arts in The Old Colony Memorial newspaper, Plymouth, MA, and is currently working on a third poetry manuscript slated for a 2014 publication date by Cervena Barva Press.



I had the pleasure to talk to these two on my Somerville Community Access Community TV show Poet to Poet: Writer to Writer.







Doug Holder: The late poet Mike Amado was special to you both. What was it about him that inspired you?



Renee Schwiesow: He was accepting of everyone. So he made it very comfortable to open up to and discuss things. He was inspired by his Native American and Portuguese background. I have always had an interest in many different cultures. So that inspired me.


Jack Scully: Mike was basically a builder. Mike’s great idea was to build a bridge between the South Shore area and the Boston area. Originally I got Mike involved with the Somerville literary group the Bagel Bards. I read about the group in a column by Ellen Steinbaum in The Boston Globe, and I asked Mike if he would be interested in attending. So I took him to a meeting. At that time the meetings took place at Finagle-A-Bagel in Harvard Square. As a result Mike had two of his books of poetry published by the Ibbetson Street Press and the Cervena Barva Press of Somerville.
\
At that time, back in 2004, there was really not much going on in the Plymouth area poetically speaking. They had open mics but that was basically for music. Mike was looking for a place to start something for poetry.



In April 2008 we had our first poetry reading. David Surrette was our featured reader. We had a small audience. Now we average 30 to 50 people. We have a great open mic. So Mike and I founded two ongoing poetry venues in Plymouth, Massachusetts, Poetry: The Art of Words a monthly poetry series and The Poetry Showcase a yearly poetry reading held in conjunction with the Plymouth Guild for the Arts yearly juried art show. Our mission was and is to basically to give poets a place to meet other poets, and a place for poets to read their work. We hope to come out with an anthology in a couple of years.

We also started a new program connected with the Plymouth Center for the Arts where we match poets and artists, and have a public reading.



DH: Renee you are a well-respected book reviewer. How do you attack a review?



RS: I thoroughly enjoy reviewing because it has given me an interesting viewpoint on poetry and fiction. I generally read a book cover to cover. And then I do research on the author and the book. I make sure I include a few excerpts. But I try to highlight the good points, and then delicately discuss the not too good things. It is a ballet of sorts—a delicate dance.



DH: Jack you are editing the late Mike Amado’s 4th book of poems.


JS: In October of 2008 Mike knew he was going to die of kidney failure. So he gathered all his poems and put them into what he called books. And so Nancy and I went to his computer and basically put the Book of Arrows together. The book is in three parts and deals with his childhood in Plymouth, the plight of the Native American, and poems he wrote 3 or 4 weeks before he died. He has several poems about the National Day of Mourning, a Native American holiday that takes place at Thanksgiving. He attended this event shortly before his death.


DH: Jack do you have any ambitions for your own poetry?



JS: I attempt to write poetry. I have dabbled. I have scribbled on pieces of paper in my drawer at home.



DH: Renee any young talents you have discovered on the South Shore?



RS: We have a 12 year old Alicia Reed. She has a lot of promise. But it has been to attract poets under 30, but we are trying

Even the Dead Are Growing Old Poems by Don Winter

Working Stiff Press

dansheridanwsp@yahoo.com

Niles, Michigan

25 Pages

Manufactured in the United States

Don Winter

 

Review by Dennis Daly

I hated these poems shortly before I liked them. They irritate. They grate. They steal your comfort. They screw you up from toe to head with their revelations of dark cruelty and bright cityscapes of emptiness. But pieced together like a jigsaw puzzle you get to see the down and dirty desperateness and shellacked heroism of an Urban Everyman’s life—maybe your own.

Cold Fact, the first poem in this collection, confronts you with the callousness of unfettered capitalism. The poet fearlessly states his case,

you can find in evil good

if you are good enough.

But where’s the good in

“Ideally you’d have every factory

you own on a barge, tow it to where

labor costs were the lowest.”? Still,

small towns withhold

their terminal truth, too afraid

or indolent or drugged to ask

who is fucking them,

I mean really…

The poem continues with a litany of families broken apart and individuals gone bad due to government supported decisions of greed glutted corporate bureaucrats.  I know something about this subject and I have seen those families in real time. I saw a work force of 16,000 decimated to less than 3000 employees with little transitional training of any value.   Their jobs moved to other countries on that “barge” Winter mentions. The human beings themselves seemed to just vaporize.

In the poem entitled Strip Bar: Hamtramck the poet details the initial excitement of moving into the environs of a strip joint with the dancing, the dangling money, the upturned faces, and the “goddamn of music” and bare skin. The denouement of this piece offers the other lonely side of the tale. Winter says,

When she finally got to me

I stuck a dollar bill

where my eyes had been.

Her face had the alert sleepiness

of a cat’s. She smiled

vacantly, moved on to the next dollar.

I drifted into the night air.

The lights on my rig pushed

the dark aside, moved me

towards the house, towards

no one waiting.

Sometimes the title of a poem summons a back story, which infuses the piece with extraordinary significance and meaning. My Grandfather was a Matewan Miner is one of those poems. Winter sets up the poem as a photograph: a bunch of coal miners posing for the camera. As they stiffly hold their breaths for the shutter we can see that they are dying from inside out. This was about the time of the so-called Matewan massacre in West Virginia—the back story. When the United Mine Workers tried to unionize these same workers, the miners were evicted from their company housing. The local sheriff Sid Hatfield with the town’s mayor and well-armed citizenry in tow faced off against the Baldwin–Felts Detective Agency (a private army of company- hired gunmen). A shootout ensued and eleven people died including seven detectives and the mayor. Detectives later murdered the sheriff. Federal and state troops were called in to stop the violence and the union’s organizing. Here’s part of the poem,

Coal’s turned their faces

into dim candles. Their teeth gone at 30.

With each cough they still mine

the coal in the dark

of their lungs.

They stare down the future.

Dust will frame their dreams.

Nice touch at the end. Dust to dust—coal dust, that is.

The poem Visitation in which the poet’s persona laments his inability to visit his child hangs like a pall above this book. His sadness seems to etch itself into these pages. He says,

All night I keep arriving

in someone else’s childhood.

And once a year you send

a postcard of his happiness.

The poem As Time Goes By meditates on the innocence of the past and the reality that dreams once proffered. Winter shows us an aging piece of Americana, the drive-in theater on Route US 31. Then mulls over its memories and meanings. Winter describes a moment of innocence,

… kids from days

of tight pants & tight dreams, we stretched out

under the night sky,

looked for a sign from the stars

like a cosmic lottery.

Of course the title of the poem was the song of innocence banned in Rick’s bar in the movie Casablanca. In fact the song highlighted the cynical son-of-a-bitch that the Bogart character had seemingly become. The poet leads us in the same direction. Describing the present realty of truckers the poet continues,

men slump alone

in rigs & deeply smoke. Big assed, barrel-chested

cowboys who eat double-fisted, steer

with their knees…

But like in Casablanca memory has its moment of triumph. Winter says it this way,

…a few remain, hang on

memory, like those unknown connections

we used to credit to the stars…

The title poem Even the Dead are Growing Old tells a horrible tale of competition with a woman’s dead boyfriend, a boyfriend she loved beyond all logic. The poet mulls over his problem,

…I can see

by her eyes she won’t let him go.

I don’t tell her I knew the guy.

I worked misery whips in Washington

with him on the other end.

Woman he was screwing then

used Maybelline greens, foundation, grape lipstick—

nothing hid the welts, things he’d done to her.

Once she wrote FUCK YOU in empty beer cans

Across the lawn. Then he flicked his knife

Like a match before her eyes.

Okay, so these things need to be told. It pisses me off but I get it. I’m not sure I like Don Winter’s persona. Hell, I’m not sure I even like Don Winter.  But damn this poet can write. He’s a natural and I’m envious.

Foreigner poems by Keith Holyoak

Dos Madres Press, 2012

Softbound, 94 pages, no price given

Review by Zvi A. Sesling

Foreigner is poet-psychologist’s homage to classical Chinese poetry, accomplished by writing the poems in this volume in the style of the great Chinese poets who thrived during the dynastic years. In fact, if you have read some of those Chinese poets – generally shorter poems than many in the Holyoak collection, you will be gratified to feel very familiar with the style and phrasing.

Take, for example, Hong Maodan Fruit which, if one did not know better, would swear it was written hundreds of years ago:

Red spiked ball

with fearsome warrior visage,

dressed to kill,

for piercing, ripping, slicing—

Who would guess

your monstrous spines are tender,

your hidden heart

so fragrant, sweet, enticing?

Holyoak, according to material supplied by Dos Madres Press, particularly studied Li Po and Tu Fu. Their influence is seen in Hong Maodan Fruit and other poems such as

The Walk-through Aviary

So fine yet strong,

this net that tents the treetops,

tested by storms,

its mesh has not been torn.

Fruits are laid

on sheltered boughs for the birds;

the orange ibis

glides up to takes his turn.

Swans preen in the pond,

starlings call from their perches;

a pheasant hen

tends to her newly born.

Through filigree

I spot a pair of hawks

above the green hills,

wheeling in silent scorn.

And, of course, the title poem which is decidedly western – make that American— yet Chinese in thought and sensibility:

Foreigner

How I admire their simple greetings,

the way each fits the other

as surely as a cardigan

passed down to son from father,

Streams from their ancestral well

flowing through their tongues,

lapping at each other’s ears

and bubbling up in laughter;

How I admire their careless grace

and stance of pure belonging,

the tapestries they weave, eyes closed,

spun out of word and gesture—

But I am just an ungainly bird

staring mute from a bough,

stopping a day and a night before

I mount the sky to wander.

In addition to Keith Holyoak’s poetry, his son Jim, who studied Chinese art has illustrated this volume of poetry also in the Chinese style enhancing the ambience of a very readable and handsome volume of poetry.

__________________________________________

Zvi A. Sesling

Reviewer for Boston Small Press and Poetry Scene

Author, King of the Jungle (Ibbetson Street Press)

Author, Across Stones of Bad Dreams (Cervena Barva Press)

Author, Fire Tongue (forthcoming, Cervena Barva Press)

Editor, Muddy River Poetry Review

Editor, Bagel Bards Anthology 7

Angels&Beasts poems by Claudia Serea

Phoenicia Publishing

Montreal, Quebec, Canada

Copyright © 2012 by Claudia Serea

85 pages, hardbound, no price give

Review by Zvi A. Sesling

There is always something about Eastern European poets that has found its way to my often offbeat sensibilities. Claudia Serea, who left Romania for the United States in 1995 is another poet who I can add to my collection of surrealist Eastern Europeans who fit into this mold of exciting creative poetics.

Now living in New Jersey and working in New York, Ms. Serea’s first poetry books, To Part Is to Die a Little, was published by Gloria Mindock’s Cervena Barva Press.

This particular volume, Angels&Beasts is one of prose poems. Of the volumes of prose poetry which I have come across most have poems that read more like flash fiction, maybe even short stories. However, Ms. Serea’s poetry ( many without titles – unless the bold print at the beginning of the poems is the title) is short and to the point. The longest I read was eleven lines. Yet despite their brevity they make their point, like an arrow shot into the reader. (And one particular poem answers my childhood question of why, as I am riding down a highway I see hundreds of birds sitting on telephone wires):

Page 30:

I send you transparent love letters that barn swallows sow in the sky

when I miss you. The swallows are great mail carriers: they fly fast

and low, preserving the letters’ sentiments. Sometimes their job

makes them late for school, and they get punished: they have to sit

for hours on a wire and sing in unison.

Or perhaps you have wondered about what happens to balloons the little boy or girl at a parade let loose. Perhaps the poem on Page 23 will give you some idea:

The red balloon reports the blue one for its inflated ego. The blue balloon

bursts into tears. The yellow one doesn’t feel so well, and the white one has a

blank stare as my brother ties them all to his backpack.

When the clouds look the other way, the wind steals the balloons and

ties them to the tallest tree branch. from there, the balloons can see the sunset

and the planes in the sky’s belly.

At night, they float with the moon.

If you have ever been to Times Square you may recognize the characters Ms. Serea has met in the poem on Page 66:

42^nd Street Times Square

The man in a top hat blows into a noisemaker. His shadow wakes

up startled and bites his leg. Boy, are my arms tired of flying, mutters

a suitcase a girls pulls through the crowd. The preacher rolls his eyes

and yells Repent! Repent! For God is a consuming fire—and I would,

but my train has arrived.

Everything about her poetry is offbeat: askew here, off kilter there, perhaps backwards or upside down. It is how you choose to read it, it is your interpretation of what she says. Unlike some poets, she does not make her life ours because she is different, which of course makes me wonder what she is like at home, in the office, with friends or lovers or with children. This is quite enjoyable for me and it might be for you as well.

__________________________________________

Zvi A. Sesling

Reviewer for Boston Small Press and Poetry Scene

Author, King of the Jungle and Across Stones of Bad Dreams

Editor, Muddy River Poetry Review

Editor, Bagel Bards Anthology 7

Editor, Bagel Bards Anthology 8

Somerville’s Callie Chapman Korn and the Zoe Dance Company

By Doug Holder

Zoe Dance Company

  One might pass the window of the Sherman Café in Union Square and see a man in his middle years praying over his New York Times, nursing a cup of coffee, and pondering the remains of his oatmeal scone. That would be me. On this particular morning I was waiting to interview the Artistic Director of the Zoe Dance Company, Callie Chapman Korn.

  Korn is originally from Lynn, Mass. but for a number of years has lived in Somerville with her husband and kids.

  Korn, a graduate of the Boston Conservatory, started the Zoe with her classmates in 2002. They used to perform at places like the Boston Common accompanied by a boom box. They kept at it and they were later performing at a number venues in and around Boston and internationally, such as Somerville’s Art Beat, Harvard Square’s May Fair, Boston Center for the Arts, Mass. College of the Arts, Green Street Studios,  Corporacion Cultural de Las Condes ( Santiago, Chile), and many others. 

  I asked Korn if she considers her company a Modern Dance company. She replied: “Modern Dance was basically a movement of the 1950s. The Postmodern movement was in the 1960s. I like to call us a Contemporary Dance company. We have a fusion of many styles and influences.”

   One part of Zoe’s mission statement (according to their website) is to increase social awareness. Korn has a special interest in the 1970 coup in Chile, and the corruption of government. Through movement, video, and vocalization, some of her dance pieces have addressed this.

   Zoe has no official office. Korn said this true of most local dance companies.

   She said she strives to expand her audience base beyond rich white people. In this regard the company has performed at such venues as the Somerville Dance Festival, and has had performances at the Union Square Plaza, events that are free and open to all.

  I asked Korn what themes she brings to her dance. She said: “Emotion, how people love, how they hate, and how they react to each other.”

  This young choreographer told me she has a performance coming up at the Dance Complex in Cambridge March 1 to 3. It may well be worthwhile for my fellow Somervillians to cross the border to the Republic to view the work of this gifted artist who resides in the Paris of New England, Somerville, Mass.

Shore Lines: Poems from the Water’s Edge by Philip Burnham, Jr.

Ibbetson Street Press

www.ibbetsonpress.com

Somerville, MA

ISBN:978-0-9846614-9-7

73 Pages

$15.00












Review by Dennis Daly



Philip Burnham murmurs his subdued poems to us as if they were delicate miracles of nature or intricate tidal secrets. And many of them are. His poetic techniques, although traditional, are never overbearing and Burnham’s rhymes, off-rhymes, and near rhymes flow easily and unforced. The poet’s persona captures you with his likeability and does a masterful job conveying love, loss, and mortality through images of the natural world and an extraordinary perception of the ordinary and touchable implements of time and place.



The sonnet, Fog at Round Pond, Maine, fittingly introduces this collection. Boats become personified vessels of dreams, which either strain at life’s moorings or lay low in hibernation. Burnham begins this way,



See how the boats are compass to the wind,

Bows pointed east toward Muscongus Bay,

Taut on their moorings, slipped against the play

Of tides, their line as of a single mind…



A bit of color can change everything. So the poet seems to suggest in his poem, Waiting for the Red-winged Blackbirds. We leave the dark and passive monotony of winter and enter into the staccato of rebirth. And with this rebirth comes a subtle intimation of danger. Burnham describes the commotion,



…returning birds flashing their

Red shoulders in the cane, staccato cries

Of greeting and of warning cross the air

When dark arrival, ritual mating

Signify an end to winter waiting.



The blood of imagination and romance can infuse the most remote and windswept geography with passion and mystery. The poem Nohaval Cove, County Cork does exactly that, not with full blown stories, but with pointed suggestions—a neat artifice that Burnham accomplishes with great effect. Following an unmarked and overgrown path down a precarious cliff, the poet discovers his singular metaphor. He describes it thusly,



… a narrow

Cove slid under brae and bluff, a shallow

Treacherous peat black water’s waves to wear

Round sharp-shinned shards of blunt Irish coast sheared

Off into a secret landfall for boats

Of rebels, smugglers, lovers, come about

Conspiracy, so willing to risk all

To be ashore, or gone…



Burnham uses the technique of suggestion in his anti-war poem entitled On Pemaquid Beach: The Lost Soldier. He demands that his readers conjure up the battles of Anzio and Normandy and the emotion and drama of those two debarkations. I go him one further and think of Gallipoli. Then he changes the context of this unknown soldier, or does he. Here is the last stanza,



Then as the dunes were cleared, the armies’ heated joust

Come to an end, brave talk of battles went among

His comrades when he unnoticeably fell, lost

In the gathering of toys children carried home.



War does at a distance seem to be little more than a gathering of God’s children and their curious toys.



Many of Burnham’s nature poems emit an impressionistic, almost a Monet-like shimmer of light. In A Dream of Fishes the surface sparkles with treasure emanating from a deeper place. The poet says it is,



…as if someone had ploughed

Dark fields and turned up diamonds or a horde

Of hidden coins, a miser treasury

From some forgotten king whose wealth was stored

Too deep for public generosity..



Obviously a royal member of the 1%!



The poem Beach Stones also uses this impressionistic angle to observe nature and then adds a bit of alchemy to the mix. The piece begins this way,



Like jewels in an ancient kingdom’s crown

Half-buried under sand small smooth stones lie

Sea-washed brilliant to catch a wander eye

At the retreat of tides lovers come down

To walk along the silvered water’s edge

In broken repetitions whispering

“Again,” “again,” imagining a ring…



Burnham’s love poems in this collection are well done on multiple levels. In the poem 1960 Wedding Photograph the poet describes a momentary Eden of happiness, almost a childhood game of pretend that was, of course, not pretend, but very real and very lovely. The poet meditates on this moment of light and shadow decades later with updated information and an exposed sadness. He laments,



… the bride

Two of her bridesmaids and a groomsman die,

Two maids and two men are divorced, the groom,

His best man widowed…

The Companion piece of the previous poem is Anniversary 1961. It interests me for a couple of reasons. First of all it is beautifully done with an affecting metaphor of two doves and two ways of seeing things. The second thing is the technique. If this regularly metered poem had been perfectly rhymed it would not have worked. So Burnham seems to have disguised his rhymes ever so slightly; and, just like that, the tone rings true. Listen,



A twelve-month passage from our wedding day

We sailed aboard a queen to England bound,

A gift of doves for anniversary,

One looked to sea, the other back to land.



Gold-eyed, sienna figures smooth as love

For two score years and more they were displayed

On mantles in the houses where we lived,

One saw the hearth, the other looked away.



A poem Burnham wrote for his daughter entitled Departure’s Space has at its heart almost a metaphysical section recalling the mental constructions of 16th century Jesuit Matteo Ricci—his memory palaces. Burnham explains,



Our Pacific to Atlantic Oceans’

Continental separation distance



Enough to raise over the weathered face

Of earth a memory palace from times

Of meeting, conversation, embrace,

A breeze-borne architecture, love’s design



Where we may turn to return to repose

At days’ end…



These and the other well-wrought poems of Burnham’s are best read on a wild and deserted spur of stone separated from shore by the tidal powers. Recite them aloud; then savor their elegance for years to come.



*****  Dennis Daly is the author of The Custom House.

Poetry Series Continues at the Newton Free Library, Feb 12, 7PM

Poetry Series Continues

at the Newton Free Library,

Tuesday, February 12, 7:00 pm 

 

The Poetry Series at the Newton Free Library continues on Tuesday, February 12 at 7:00 pm with readings by Irene Koronas, Jack Scully with Nancy Brady Cunningham, and Nicole Terez Dutton. An open mic will follow with a limit of one poem per person. Come early to sign up for the open mic; limited slots are available, time permitting. The series is facilitated by Doug Holder of Ibbetson Street Press.

Irene Koronas has been writing poetry and working as an artist since the age of twelve. Her poems are published in various small press journals; she has five chap books and is the fiction editor of the Wilderness House Literary Review.
Jack Scully and the late Mike Amado co-founded two ongoing poetry venues in Plymouth, MA. Poetry: The Art of Words, a monthly poetry series, and The Poetry Showcase, a poetry reading held in conjunction with the Plymouth Guild for the Arts annual juried art show. Mike Amado published three books of poetry during his short life. Scully and poet Nancy Brady Cunningham edited Amado’s fourth book and will read from his works. Scully, who currently serves as the literary executor of Mike’s work has read Mike's poetry as a feature reader at Greater Brockton Poetry and Arts Society, Boston National Poetry Month Festival, Main Street Café, Poetry in the Village, Stone Soup Poetry and Salem Literary Festival 2010.

Nicole Terez Dutton's work has appeared in Callaloo, Ploughshares, 32 Poems, Indiana Review and Salt Hill Journal. Nicole earned an MFA from Brown University. She has received fellowships from the Fine Arts Work Center, Bread Loaf Writers' Conference and the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts. She won the 2011 Cave Canem Poetry Prize for If One of Us Should Fall.

For more information call the Newton Free Library at 617-796-1360. All programs are free and open to the public, parking is free. The Newton Free Library is handicap accessible.