solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short by Ed Carvalho

solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short
Edward J. Carvalho
Fine Tooth Press ($12.95)

by Doug Holder 560 wds. Rec’d 7/2/07. Rel date FEB 07

Edward J. Carvalho is not afraid of the warts on the smooth surface of civilization. Carvalho, with the perceptive gimlet eye of a skilled poet, focuses in on the archetypes of our modern society to get beyond the sizzle to the steak of existence in his new poetry collection: “Solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.” The title indicates a Hobbesian view of the world, and Carvalho’s book is not for the faint of heart, but I couldn’t call the book bleak. It is full of humor, original language and insights:

In the poem “Sometimeboy” the poet, an observant fly-on-the- wall, views a man of a certain age reading a magazine about boats. Carvalho wonders if the man’s dreams hit the shoals and wonders if he will be able to avoid the same pitfalls:

There you are in front of my book,
poor man, there you are reading a magazine
about boats, your hair is white.

I don’t know your name
But your hat says “brew Moon”
And your t-shirt says “Mr. Drain.”

Maybe, one night after schooners
of beer, we can empty the ocean together
and you can tell me

what happens to the life of man
when it sags like that toothpick
from the corner of your lips,

is chewn by dentures to the very end?


And what better image to bring home the point than the sagging point of a forlorn toothpick?

In many of the poems in this collection Carvalho examines how we are cut off from ourselves and from society. Carvalho dives into the “no strings attached” world of the “wireless” crowd to give the reader a view of contemporary alienation. In the poem: “Song of the Wireless Man,” he unearths and subverts the wireless world with the same techno babble that is currency in this milieu:

"The trees are not telephone poles unrealized, to be cut wireless, man, smooth/
from roots,/ the forests were not all grown to carry contracts and proposals in digital cans to restaurants./Let me eat in pieces the hills of upstate New York the deciduous mountains/of New England."


just one cup of cafÈ coffee should be placid, not ripple hippie to delicious in phat
ebbs of “Rappers Delight” Baby (baby) Bubbah look away from the satellite and leave
the cirrus as they are,
do not attempt to find hybrid ways to store your data behind a trail of Wi-Fi
moisture miles above, your wireless cousins in their flying casinos.

“Uncle Horsie” is a poem that will make you think twice and perhaps thrice before you let your genial brother play with your kid. Here Carvalho places the innocence of childhood in a dance with jaded adulthood:

My niece
takes great pride in being
a 3 year-old cowgirl.
She likes to play with me,
the goateed equine

She doesn’t know
how adults pretend—
how I want to leave
the laughter of the family room,
go the bathroom

and eat an orchard of Percocet
from her grandfather’s
medicine cabinet—
all this to be a better
hide-and-go-seeker
when I’m home


She knows the part of me
who is Uncle Horsie
when I return smiling
to the captured stable
never letting her see
any of the real animal lurking
beneath the saddle.

This is a fine first collection by Ed Carvalho.

Interview With Writer Luke Salisbury: An author who explores alternative universes of baseball, literartue, and political intrigue.

By Doug Holder

Luke Salisbury is a professor of English at Bunker Hill Community College in Boston. Salisbury, 60, is a man with a gift for gab, and the well-turned phrase. Eclectic in his tastes, Salisbury, with his signature rapid - fire cadence and disarming laugh, regales you with his anecdotes, his impressive knowledge of baseball, and his “alternative” universe of film, books and political intrigue he has spent many years pondering and writing about. He is the author of a number of fiction titles including: “The Answer is Baseball.” (Time Books, 1989), “The Cleveland Indian” (Smith, 1992), and his novel about the great filmmaker D.W. Griffith “Hollywood and Sunset” (2007). His writing has appeared in such publications as “The Boston Globe,” “Ploughshares,” “Cooperstown Review,” "Pulp- smith,” and others. Salisbury received his M.A. in Creative Writing from Boston University and lives in Chelsea, Mass. with his wife Barbara. I interviewed Salisbury on my Somerville Community Access TV show ‘Poet to Poet/ Writer to Writer.”

Doug Holder: You said the dawn of Elvis, the Beatles, liberated you from the buttoned-down, all boys purgatory, prep school world you grew up in. Who were the writers that liberated you when you were coming of age?

Luke Salisbury: I went away to an all boy’s school when I was fourteen. I hadn’t been a big star with girls in the 7th and 8th grade. I felt I was isolated. I felt that I was never going to get off. There were things that kept my soul together: rock ‘n roll, literature, and baseball. My life was changed—saved or ruined—when I read the “ The Great Gatsby” when I was seventeen. I never wanted to do anything but write a book that good. I never will; maybe no one else will. The book explains even in the first page the whole world. Its pressures, its nuances, its mystery. Faulkner would be another influence. Why? Because there is something about being a teenager reading something you can barely understand, and you know it is over your head—but by God—you know it is worthwhile.

DH: Did you feel liberated by any 60’s era writers?

LS: I got that from rock ‘n roll, not from 60’s literature. I was not a Jack Kerouac person. I was not reading that stuff as it was being done. Later in the 60’s when I really needed to be on an island protected from my own demons and the demons around me, Nabokov became my obsession. I was traveling around Europe in the summer of 1968 buying his paperbacks at kiosks in railroad stations .I was always in an alternative world of baseball, literature and rock ’n roll. I’d love to name some 60’s poets but none of them were important as the “Rolling Stones.” And also what I considered classic literature. In the 60’s I spent a long time reading “Tristan Shandy” and “Tom Jones.”

DH: Did you engage in any of the “excesses” of the era?

LS: As many as I could. But there were three things going on. Political revolution which I thought was bullshit because I didn’t actually see anyone go out and fighting. Then there was the drug revolution. I always thought I was wrapped a little too tight to do the heavy duty stuff. Then there was the sexual revolution. It was a wonderful time to be a young man. I mean the middle and late 60’s, not the stuff that comes to us post “Easy Rider.” Love and peace that stuff was bullshit. It was about resistance. It was about resisting the draft and authority.

DH: You wrote two assasination novels. One was “Blue Eden.” Did you find the elitist intrigue, the possibilities of nefarious cabals behind the Kennedy assassination a source of fascination?

LS: It was. Because in the late 60’s I’d sit around and think about the novels I would like to write. I became obsessed with the Kennedy assassination. This stuff happens in front of your face, you don’t know what it is. There is subtext, there are stories… this is raw material. Everybody was taking a crack at it—the big time writers like like Mailer and DeLillo. But once you get into it you can’t get out.

DH: So who really killed Kennedy?

LS: I have no idea. Maybe Oswald, but he certainly wasn’t alone. It’s fascinating but it is like drugs and then you go home to detox and get out.

DH: In a recent book you penned “Hollywood and Sunset” you write of D.W. Griffith, the famed filmmaker, whose signature work was “The Birth of a Nation.” You refer to Griffith and others of his ilk as “sellers of light.” What are novelist’s sellers of?

LS: Ah… Inner light. All sorts of light. I got interested in Hollywood because it is really the center of power.

Basically D.W. Griffith invented Hollywood. He did everything with the two dimensional movie that could be done. He made the most racist movie ever produced: “The Birth of a Nation.” It made a huge amount of money and it took advantage of a racist sensibility of the time- what could be more American?

You had a frontier of the movies in his time. What happens when America hits the Pacific? We invent a dream-factory Hollywood. So I became very interested.

DH: How does this American sensibility differ from the European?

LS: “We” have to keep moving. We never stop. The past is used up.

DH: Does obsession help a writer?

LS: Yes. Who the hell is willing to sit and write a novel and then another novel, without it getting published? If they finally do get published the only people who read them is an obscure reviewer somewhere. But you keep doing it. It is madness. Poets can write a poem in five minutes or five years. There is no way to do this as a novelist.

Someone has to support you; or you have to support yourself. Many of us teach. So yes obsession helps. But just having obsession doesn’t mean that God will give you success, or that you have much talent. But it makes life worth living.

DH: Many writers work a variety of odd jobs to support themselves. You worked as a security guard for a number of years. How did that help or hinder your writing life?

LS: While I was a security guard I read “Gravity’s Rainbow,” and “Remembrances of Things Past.” I worked at Polaroid during the night shift. You have to survive if you are a writer. Especially if you are not in the generous bosom of a university. Faulkner said the best job for a writer is a piano player at a bordello. The hours are good and there is a lot of interesting company around.

I had many jobs in the 70’s. I worked in the Welfare Dept.. I worked for a school board in the Bronx, etc…

DH: You have taught at Bunker Hill Community College for over twenty years. How has this been?

LS: I have taught for 22 years. And it’s a great job. The average of the students is 30 years old. People come from everywhere, and there are no Yuppies. This isn’t Boston University. The kids and older people don’t think I am an idiot because I don’t make much money. Most of the students at Bunker Hill are there to learn skills, learn English, etc… I don’t think you can do better teaching adults in a public school, in a big city. It’s not the hell-hole that “Goodwill Hunting” characterized it as.

DH: You have been published by Harry Smith the legendary small press figure.

LS: Yes. Harry was basically a poet and published poets. He had a magazine from 1964 to 1998 “The Smith.” He had a policy of publishing unpublished writers. Half the magazine was devoted to their work. I had sent him something in 1970 and he turned it down. Five years later I sent him something and he sent me back an envelope with a “Yes” written across the front. He discovered me, and my friend the poet Jared Smith. He help start COSMEP—the seminal small press organization.

DH: So you have an affinity for the small press?

LS: Oh yes. There would be a lot less literature if it wasn’t for the small press. Where do we go if we are not one of the twenty people writing novels? I thank God for the small press and the internet—we can find each other here.

DH: You have written extensively about baseball. Why?

LS: You get a tremendous amount of respect knowing about sports. Baseball was that ‘alternative” world for me—it saved me.

Doug Holder

Formation of ISCS PRESS/ service to small publishers

(Left to Right) Glines and Holder
Press Release

Two Creative Talents Announce the Formation of ISCSpress to Service Small
Publishers and Independent Authors

Steve Glines, president of Industrial Myth and Magic and Doug Holder,
president of Ibbetson Street Press announce the creation of ISCSpress a
publishers service bureau offering editorial, production and marketing
services nationwide.

Somerville, MA (PRWEB) July 20, 2007 -- Steve Glines, president of
Industrial Myth and Magic and Doug Holder, president of Ibbetson Street
Press announce the creation of ISCSpress to service the needs of small
publishers and independent authors in the Boston area and nationwide.

"Both small presses and independently published authors are rarely able to
provide the expertise required to bring a book to market," said Doug Holder,
"by combining our editorial, design and marketing skills we hope to bring
about a renaissance in the small press world by allowing independent
publishers access to the same level of resources the big boys have."

"We have a magnificent staff," said Steve Glines, "Our principal designer
has been designing books for over 30 years and our editors include a
Pulitzer Prize finalist, serial novelists, retired and active professors,
Fulbright scholars and assorted other literati. Our marketing director has
successfully promoted dozens of books in just the last year, placing
reviews, radio interviews and arranging readings and book signings all over
the US."

Ibbetson Street publishes the best of the small press. Our press is
nationally distributed. We have received notice in the Boston Globe, Small
Press Review, Harvard Review, Verse Daily, etc. We have published over 30
books by writers like: A.D. Winans, Linda Lerner, Ed Galing, Robert K.
Johnson, Louisa Solano, Hugh Fox and others; as well as 21 issues of the
literary journal "Ibbetson Street." Ibbetson Street Press books are
distributed nationally and are available at most independent bookstores and
on Amazon.com. See www.ibbetsonpress.com.

Industrial Myth is a cooperative collection of poets, playwrights,
novelists, freelance journalists and an assortment of fine and commercial
artists who know when to think out of the box. At Industrial Myth & Magic
our mission is to tell an intriguing story that will resonate with your
customers and draw them to you, your company and your products. It's not
good enough to state the obvious, you need a more compelling story, a story
that will be told and retold. It's not just advertising, it's not just
marketing, it's not just corporate design, it's the creation of an
industrial myth and that's magic. See www.industrialmyth.com.

ISCSPress is an author and publishers service bureau. ISCSpress performs all
the functions of a publisher on an a la carte basis:

- Editorial: including developmental editing, ghost writing, copyediting.
- Production: including book design, copyright, ISBN and CIP registration,
printer brokerage (both conventional and POD), warehousing and fulfillment.
- Marketing: including pitching to editors, publishers and authors agents,
marketing campaigns to bookstores and unconventional outlets, placing
reviews, author and book publicity & promotion, arranging book signing
tours, web site development and book club promotion.

ISCSpress associates have written, edited, designed and promoted hundreds of
books over the past few years. ISCSpress can be found on the web at http://
www.ISCSpress.com.

Praise for the Boston Area Small Press and Poetry Scene

Dear Doug Holder—



I’m writing a brief entry on the Grolier for the forthcoming Oxford Companion to the Book. Your BLOG piece on the Grolier was very helpful.



Thanks—



Paul



Editor Emeritus UMass Press

_____________________________

Paul M. Wright, PhD

"In A Stone's Hollow" by Freddy Frankel.

IN A Stone's Hollow : Poems by Freddy Frankel. ( Bedbug Press PO BOX 39 Brownsville, Or 97327) www.bedbugpress.com

After a long career in medicine Newton, Mass. poet Freddy Frankel, ( now in his 80's) has come into his own as a poet. Frankel, in a relatively short period of time, has won the "New England Writers Robert Penn Warren Award," his poetry collection "Hottentot Venus" was published by the Pudding House Press, and his work has appeared in such journals as : Concho River, Passager, The Iconoclast, and Ibbetson Street. In his latest collection: " In A Stone's Hollow," Frankel, who was born in South Africa, writes about his experiences as a South African recruit in World War ll, and his childhood experience of racism , apartheid, and growing up Jewish. I was particularly drawn to Frankel's poems of his childhood in South Africa. In the poem "My Mother's Jewish Accent," Frankel sees his mother in a sort of Yiddish "Pygmalion" scene, in which she tries to corset her native tongue to the tapered and cultivated tones of a proper English accent:

"In the presence of the English
my mother widened her mouth,
exhaled the new angular words
unfolding on her unathletic tongue.

The tutor came, I watched from the garden
as she read, separating syllables into a string of pearls;
lips rounded to free the dipthongs house--spouse;
droning this--that, the dentals forced against her teeth.

Then I saw her stand before the mirror, inflating
her cheeks and her chest, in small bursts hammering
Out, damned spot! Out, I say! My mother, my favorite
person, lost to me--becoming somebody else."

This is a rude awakening of a boy to adult realities, and the pain of assimilation.

In "Grief and Grievance" Frankel reveals the disparity between the White and Black world through a funeral for a neighbor's infant. Frankel uses flowers to make his poem bloom:

" After the funeral
of my neighbor's infant son
roses and delphiniums
on the tables, orchids
on the mantel, people stand
in clusters. In the kitchen
the house-boy washes teacups,
eyes fixed on the sink.
A year ago he lost
his daughter, picked wild
baby's breath to decorate
her grave. Grief and grievance
softly rise and fall,
servants carry trays, Tea for madam,
would the master like some tea?"

Highly Recommended.

For the Living Dead by Eric Greinke

For The Living Dead, poems by Eric Greinke, Published by Free Books, Lowell, Michigan

This collection of poems is organized thematically and visually. The poems are meditations on The Living Dead – from the metaphysical questions in the first poem, “Lonely Planets,” to the horrific physical details of physical death and its consequences in “The severed head of Orpheus,” to the questioning transcendent yet dubious final “I feel the spirits of the dead...I hear the call of light...through the neutral rocks/ the stale bread that feeds/ the dreams of the anemic world” the reader is led through rooms of death arranged like an art exhibit. The title For the Living Dead evokes robots, a lifeless planet, and the horrors of nonfeeling, inhumane humans. It is a spare picture, described unemotionally but with a subtext of nostalgia for a time when humans were connected to their natural place in their environment. The poem suggests that inattention to the health of planet Earth is intimately connected to the health of its human inhabitants, and as such, For the Living Dead is an elegy to a dead planet. However, Greinke reminds us in the first poem, “Exploding supernovae/Spread particles/Across the galaxy. /We still live/ in that ocean, we/ Carry it around/ in our cells.” The first poem ends “Our eyes are the water/ In the ocean of stars./ We can taste it our tears.”

“In Space” reminds us that “the faster you go/ the more energy it takes.” In the nostalgia for a time of past imagination and boyhood that is one of the book’s theme, the poet asks, “’But what about the spaceships?’/You ask, remembering a time.”’

In the world of Greinke’s book, natural phenomena are strange and upside down. “What have you done/ to my moon, mother?/ Why does it seem/ To snow forever?”/ (“Initial Contact”)

“When the naiveté of the poet begins to seem unreal and dreamlike. “With all the universe/ behind me/ and only the blue sphere / of planet earth/ Floating before me/ I’d never worry/ That we might drift apart? (Perspective), Greinke balances such scenes of wistfulness with humor. “When the soaked house/ dries in the sun,’
clouds of steam rise up,/ & naive strangers alert the firehouse.”

The power of innocence attempts to balances the cynicism of this book – eloquently stated in “Garment,” where the poet acquires the Platonic power to see reality. “My coat of fool’s gold/ Wiser than the stars/Like the dark heart/ Hidden in a bright cave/ Hidden in infinity/ So far out in the open/ That little fish/Swim through its fabric.”

Greinke’s work is a testimony to the power of close observation of nature as a way of redemption becoming one of the Living Dead. However, he is not optimistic. He is in fact, shockingly pessismistic. “Political agendas/ Stink up the galaxy/ Stalked in Stockings/ Born to run away/ Lost civilizations/In the tired sky/ I blink/ drink water/ Fish disappear?”

Greinke’s language is plain, eloquent, original, and occasionally gorgeous as in “Crop Damage” where “desperate fields wept/Red with wounded tomatoes.”

In the title poem, the poet grovels in an awful vision of the Living Dead. He sees zombies everywhere; having been one and having experienced an awakening, he is sensitive to the terror of living like a zombie, “mesmerized by fireworks/ They like to run amok/ When they aren’t milling aimlessly/... Zombies have no sex lives/ They share the despair of the wolfman/ Drunk on power under full moon/ soaked in gasoline waiting for a light/ Enflamed by love & hate/ Counting down to the final insult.... They are the human furniture/They are the living dishrags...fitted with artificial hearts.” The truly terrifying picture of the Living Dead would overwhelm the reader with despair, were it not for the fact that the poet has flashes of inspiring language. Near the end, we have a kind of prayer. “I hear the spirits of the dead/They explode like seedpods/A thousand downy spheres/Doors that won’t stay closed/Locks meant to be broken/ Dandelions born in the wind.”

Highly Recommended.\
Reviewed by Anne Brudevold

* Anne Brudevold is the publisher of the Eden River Press.

Boston Street Icon “Mr. Butch” Dies at age 56.

Boston Street Icon “Mr. Butch” Dies at age 56.

It is poetic justice that Mr. Butch died on the streets of Boston in a motor scooter accident. He was a true creature of those streets for so many years.
When I first moved back to Boston in the late 70’s I was living in a rooming house on Newbury Street (yes there were rooming houses there!) and working at a grocery store at the corner of Newbury and Mass Ave. I worked the 3 to 11 shift, and I had a wonderful but unsavory cast of characters who frequented the store. There was a buck-toothed African-American prostitute who proudly told me: “I only give head to my man.” There was a middle-aged security guard Maynard, who reminded me of a uniformed Noel Coward; his hat tilted at a rakish angle, an ever-present sardonic smile, and a cigarette dangling elegantly and effeminately between his fingers. He would tell me of his sexual encounters during his shift. It seems he was always approached by a handsome young man who insisted on doing “favors” for him. “I mean what’s a girl, I mean…a guy to do!” The famed rock group “The Cars” recorded a few buildings down and they all had sophisticated tastes, requesting a variety of Drake’s Cakes.

But one of the most memorable characters was a tall, lanky, Blackman with dreadlocks and an infectious laugh, who always tried to cop a cup of free coffee and a snack. Sometimes he would have a bright red guitar strapped to his back. He often smelled of booze, or the sweet smell of marijuana would waft my way when he approached the counter. One very cold winter night I let him stay in the store, forgetting to let him out when I locked up. He spent the night there, and I am sure he had a nice meal, and an undisturbed, peaceful sleep, much to the manager’s chagrin. Suffice to say I wasn’t long for that gig.

Over the years Mr. Butch was like a welcomed Beacon to me. I used to run into him in Kenmore Square outside the now defunct Punk Rock club the “Rat” during my pub crawling days. He was such an enigma. He survived the streets by choice for so many years, and 56 is a ripe old age for a street person. At times he was a living statue, standing squarely and straight, strumming his red guitar amidst the maelstrom of all the Brooks Brother suits that detoured around him. He gave his long, callused finger to conventional society--the cell-phoned hordes rushing to make the almighty buck--or a killing.

In some ways it was a comfort to see him. He was a memory of my seminal days in Boston, a simpler place, more accepting of “eccentrics,” a place where you could rent a cheap room in the Back Bay and start your life in the city. You could actually afford to live the life of an artist for a while. I used to sit out on the steps of my Brownstone in the summer and slap the hands of all the beautiful and not so beautiful street people who flowed by in the humid breeze.

Butch was known by many generations of students, rock bands, hucksters, ner-do-wells, and poseurs--the whole maddening crowd that made this city so attractive to me when I cut my teeth here. I will miss passing this man on the street, how we nodded to each other in our world-weary fashion, saying: “Hey, man, what’s happening?” He has passed and so has another phase of my life.

Doug Holder

Poet Michael Mack Brings His Art to Mental Illness

Poet Michael Mack Brings His Art to Mental Illness

Doug Holder

In many cases it is said that “great pain brings great art.” In the case of local poet Michael Mack it has a brought a performance piece “Hearing Voices: Speaking In Tongues” that deals with Mack’s experience of growing up with a schizophrenic mother. Mack’s evocative and heart wrenching performance piece engages his genius for words and dramatic
portrayal in dealing with a very tragic disease. He has also penned a poetry collection “Homework” that deals with his less-than-ideal childhood.

Michael Mack served in the Air Force, and later worked a number of factory and general labor jobs before going back to school and completing a degree in Creative Writing from MIT. His poems have appeared in such journals as: “Beliot Poetry Journal,” “The Cumberland Poetry Journal,” as well as being aired on NPR. He has received grants from the Massachusetts Cultural Council, and other organizations. Mack has performed at New York City’s Midtown International Theatre Festival, Philadelphia Fringe Festival, and the Austin International Poetry Festival. Mack regularly presents his one man play “Hearing Voices…” for consumers and providers of mental health services and for faculty and students of Harvard Medical School.

Doug Holder: Do you think your mother’s mental illness was responsible for you becoming a poet?

Michael Mack: I think I would headed somewhere in an artistic direction eventually. But it clearly gives me material to work with. It was certainly the first larger issue that I was writing about. It was compelling for me to delve into it and find some kind of creative expression.

DH: You are not schizophrenic yourself. How were you able to create this psychotic environment on stage?

MM: I think that was one of the gifts my mother gave me. A sense of her interior world both by her talking about it and seeing her experience it. I could have sufficient empathy to understand her experience without going through the grueling life of a mentally ill person.

DH: Do you feel artists are affected to a higher degree by mental illness in comparison to the general public?

MM: Yes. I believe there is a book out by a psychotherapist Kay Redfield Jameson “Touched With Fire.” Redfield, who is herself afflicted with a Bipolar Disorder, explores the relationship between mental illness and the arts. In this book she looked at the relationship between mental illness and poets. She found there is a higher percentage of poets than other artist who suffer from mental illness.

DH: You studied with Maxine Kumin, the celebrated Pulitzer-Prize winning poet, when you were at MIT. Can you talk about this experience?

MM: She saw something in me that I wasn’t able to see yet. Her’s was the third poetry class that I ever had and she gave me a tremendous amount of encouragement. She saw something in my writing that was worth tapping into, worth pursuing. She saw it as rich terrain, and saw the possibility of me doing something with it. She took me under her wing and we developed a friendship. Sometimes I would go to her farm in New Hampshire and help her out with farm work. I think of her as a mentor. She gave me guidance where and when I needed it.

DH: I have run poetry groups for psychiatric patients for years now. I found the reaction to it often positive and sometimes visceral. And when you perform in state hospitals what ha been your experience?

MM: My experience I am pleased to say has been tremendously positive. I have presented in a number of state hospital settings, and as you know in these setting folks have been there for a long time. I was really concerned about presenting this work. It is so close to home for them. I was pleased to see the response was positive because it gives voice to their experience.
Before I was to do a show at two hospitals recently I was told that the patients were up and down and easily distracted. But this wasn’t true when I presented this work. It must have been rewarding them to have their experience reflected back to them.

I present the material in a very loving way. I am very respectful of my mother’s life. I think my mother and father acted heroically in the context of their lives. Neither of them ended up with the life they envisioned for themselves. My father stuck by my mother for longer than most would.

DH: Did you resent the childhood that you were given?

MM: When I first wrote about these years ago I experienced a lot of anger. I was angry that I was cheated out of a childhood. But the more I explored the experience I realized that they had a heck of job. All things considered they pulled it together remarkably. It was through the writing of this work I understood both my parents in a much deeper way.

DH: Were you influenced by Plath and Sexton’s poetry?

MM: Plath was really my first love. She was the poet I responded to most. Partly because of the experience she was writing about. But also I found a tremendous amount of energy in her writing. I was drawn to both of these poets.

DH: In your poetry collection: “Homework” you write in the poem “Tardive Dyskinesia” about the involuntary movements of your mother caused by psychiatric medications:

“On the twigs of her wrists, my mother’s hands
bobolink, titmouse, linnet, finch

Flutter in her lap, peck her blouse’s buttons
Wagtail, waxwing, solitaire, brambling

Curl into nests, shivering fists

rose finch, siskin, tanager…”

This is almost like a beautifully choreographed dance with mental illness. Do you much unexpected beauty here?

MM: In a word yes. I think one of the things about my mother’s mental illness that she had insights and a wonderful use of language. It gave me a chance to appreciate the beautiful and surprising ways she used it. The words I used in the poem you mentioned were names of birds. I thought there was something bird-like in her tremors from Tardive Dyskinesia.

Doug Holder

Duende (poems) by Tracy K. Smith

Duende (poems) by Tracy K. Smith

$14.00 US/ $17.50 Can. paperback

Graywolf Press

www.graywolfpress.com

ISBN: 978-I-55597-475-6

Pub.: 2007



Review by Mike Amado



At first reading of Duende, by Tracy K. Smith, I found her work to be
uber-academic; implying all the MFA tools at her disposal.

In all truth, this collection is "deep" on an outside level if that makes sense.
I initially stayed engaged with this book solely due to the title.

I'm not certain that the concept of duende had originated with Garcia Lorca but it weaves its way through this collection in a dark undercurrent.
Unfortunately, this review is not the place to pontificate on that concept.



Duende travels with an even keel through the hurt of forgetting
to the vacancy of memory, fraught with the want of what is lost ,then
to an encompassing forgiveness that leaves the speaker and the reader intact, and still following.




All the elements are there: loss, desire, ennui, acceptance.
There is basic, everyday information within Smith's work, however it's varies into a mystic shroud. Hard as a brick wall - in other words, it is real and apprehensible like the head-spinning conclusion to a cross-cultural whirlwind romance with a married man that ends in a bar somewhere in Portugal, in which a beer thieving woman writes Macumba, (witchcraft) on the napkin of the jilted. She is now left to
ponder how, "Love is a momentary lapse of treason". That's just my impression of the information. The mystery works.

This reader wonders if this is a poetry volume or a travel log at times.



Some poems embody a harsher tone. In "Letter to a Photojournalist Going-in", Smith paints an affecting scenario, both general and personal, of war documented by embedded cameras. Asking:

"Who can say the word love when everything - everything -

pushes back with the promise to grind itself to dust?"

In "I Killed You Because You Didn't Go to School and Had No Future"

she brings to fruition a brutal reality of extreme poverty.



In "Slow Burn" Smith writes:


"We tend toward the danger at the center.

Soft core teeming blue with fire. We tend

Toward what will singe and flare, but coil

Back when brought near. Sometimes we read

About people pushed there and left to recover.

They don't. Come out mangled or not at all,

Minds flayed by visions no one can fathom."



There's no question that Tracy K. Smith possesses a strong voice
and is accomplished. Duende is the winner of the James Laughlin Award of the Academy of American Poets.

Aside from that, if a reader prefers works of dark elegance, Duende gets the approval stamp.



Mike Amado/Ibbetson Update/ July 2007

Limbos for Amplified Harpsichord by Stanley Nelson

Limbos for Amplified Harpsichord
by Stanley Nelson
Paperback
ISBN: 0977252485
Pub. Date: September 28, 2007

Review by Irene Koronas.

Stanley Nelson’s poetry, at least in this volume of work, ‘limbos for amplified harpsichord,‘ is at first startling in his use of space. otherwise, he uses the typical constructs that most poets use. his takes his subject and plays it throughout the book; Couperin is his fusion between the rhythm of the poems and the repetition of images (cherubs). fraught with intellectual references to historical figures and painting, he is able to bring the past into this present rendition of a musical score. cage he is not. he brings his own sensibility to writing poetry.

the reader maybe entranced by his cherubs; I find them to be an overused metaphor for whatever the winged creatures may represent. he poses many question: “how to become the lonely one? how to know the solitude of the patient one?” these question do not lead me to any conclusions or answers about myself, they only reflect the writers intentions at questioning himself. in understanding these questions I am left with the same question. what is experimental about this work, other than the form? perhaps he deems it experimental in breaking up of some words or scrambling the theme?

the poems would reach a wider audience if he used a more standard form. this would then allow the reader an easier access to his poetry without having to figure out the score (even though the poems are suppose to look like a musical sheet.) I’m not convinced by his fairy tale or classical approach. “the artist-cavalier meets his brother-self the composer-artist as objects breathe in air like sound; dead leaves and powder horn, herring on polished pewter, lutes and lobsters.” these images are classical Dutch paintings trying for a modern day appeal; the experimentations of the present day writer?

this is a well written book with obvious well read references that will appeal to many people. there are some experimentation but not enough to be called experimental. “how to carve in the cherub in the wood of the harpsichord?” ‘limbos for amplified harpsichord,’ is a throw back to classical poets and if read as such the reader will enjoy and be enthralled by nelson’s writing.

>rene koronas. irene Koronas is the poetry editor for the Wilderness House Literary Review http://whlreview.com. and the author of "self portrait drawn from many..." ( Ibbetson St. 2007)

GUD (greatest uncommon denominator) Autumn 2007

GUD (greatest uncommon denominator)
Issue 1 – Autumn 2007
USD $10
Instigator: Sue Miller
Editors: Julia Bernd, Sal Coraccio, Kaolin Fire, Sue Miller
Pages: 198

This is a dark, wicked, futuristic, funny, brilliant and up/down collection of literature. Some of it pissed me off a bit. I looked up the author of Max Velocity, and, surprised to find she was a female, realized she’d also been anthologized in an L. Ron Hubbard collection so…. Okay then. Now, it’s just I don’t really dig a scenario of no birth control and girlfriends being buried in the earth to undergo labor and having tuberic flesh-eating children. I try not to be judgmental, but a buzzer goes off in me, like, uh if there’s no point to this, isn’t it a bit dangerously misogynistic? But, then, maybe I’m not visionary enough to apprehend the true sci-fi sorcery involved. And that’s cool. It’s cool because the rest of this journal is pretty awesome. And that story was well-written and engrossing. The picture of a female torso growing branches which introduced it, made for a perfect epigraph.

I also grimaced when, at the end of Steve Dines’ “Unzipped” the Iraq War Vet loses his shit completely and smashes a mirror into the face of his well-meaning, stand-by-your-man girlfriend. I got the gritty sarcasm and post traumatic stress disordered telling of Humpty Dumpty dismantled and tortured which he read to his five year old. Again, though, it’s just the violence so exquisitely and bloodlessly drawn that kind of shakes me up these days. I appreciated the long interior monologue which the avenging vet had leading up to his final moments in a park going pervert on a kid as his woman lay in a hospital bed all scarred up. That’s the War. And that is, I’m sure, no exaggeration in some cases. It’s haunting and reflective of how military violence really does warp a soldier’s psyche.

The writing is superb. And these rather grisly tales are kind of exceptions in a sophomore strike that is even better than the journal’s debut. It’s more daring, more surreal and probably more sci-fi. It seems that in almost every case, we’re treated to a tale of life and death, fantasy and fable, reality and hyper-dream. The male violence stories can be balanced thematically against other works in which women are the mysterious and commanding witches, as in “Women of the Doll” – probably my favorite. Or the bonding that develops in an unexpectedly theatrical situation in “Aliens” by Jordan E. Rosenfeld that takes place in an Arizona organic food restaurant when one waitress is fired and the other reveals her fake sexy Russian identity to be one of many shifting personas she dons for fun and transformation. The two dance in front of mirrors in a shack filled with various outfits and wigs.

While I have a feeling that “Arrow” by Nadine Darling will be the popular fave of this collection – how do I guess this – well, my psychic voices and several friends thought so – and it is a genius hilarious conceit to have a woman pierced in the heart by an arrow she can’t remove but that also doesn’t kill her… I like “Women of the Doll.” For me, it would be a perfect short film. It is difficult to handle the subject of the supernatural with deft and earnest detail so it really seems imaginable and also incredibly out of the world, but Nisi Shawl manages to invent such a world. A woman has consecrated her life to the protection of a magical doll named Viola who comes to life on an altar and demand flowers at night and food, and lovingly calls her Auntie Josette. Auntie Josette is a pagan witch who moves from hotel to hotel with a missionary’s focus. Between her beautiful bathing concoctions and invocations, she finds men who desire her physically and then seduces them into contributing to the Doll fund. It’s a story of a woman who’s been abused and is now protected by psychic visions and witchcraft. The doll, Viola, represents a child, a dream-creature, a manifestation of female power. And I suppose, on the other side, Josette, has forfeited the usual comforts of monogamy to care for something that could become a burden, and danger, except for her pure love for the doll.

The poetry sprinkled in Issue 1 is also fine, to mention a few, Sisyphus of the Staircase, by Cami Park – a variation on the Greek myth, Tim Gager’s Your personal Ground Zero (for Franz Wright), and Catholic Girls by Kenneth Clark, among my favorites. The artwork is also special and mythical, befitting a journal with a cover sporting the stained glass Celtic Salmon of creativity.

It is a collection that has weirdness, beauty and excellence peopled by rabid robots, animated dolls, arrow-struck humans, fearless artists, crushed war veterans and wacky waitresses. It is also a cutting edge tribute to fiction as a form and to language as transcendence.

Lo Galluccio
Ibbetson St. Press

d.a. levy & the mimeograph revolution

_________________________________________________



d.a. levy & the mimeograph revolution

Edited by: Larry Smith & Ingrid Swanberg

Bottom Dog Press

P.O. Box 425

Huron, Ohio 44839

Price: $25 / 264 Pages


Review By: Charles P. Ries


A few months ago I asked Chris Harter, Editor/Publisher of Bathtub Gin who are some the pioneers in the small press movement. He said without a doubt one of them had to be the late d.a. levy of Cleveland, Ohio. This was the first time I had heard of d.a. levy. When levy shot himself in November of 1968, I was fourteen years old. With five older siblings who were all politically active, I was well aware of the Cultural Revolution that was unfolding around me: civil rights, the Viet Nam war, Woodstock….the counter culture. This moment in time was vividly brought back to life for me in the mimeo graph revolution. In his Editor’s Notes in the May-June 2007 Small Press Review, Len Fulton says that the mimeo graph revolution “is almost overwhelming in its reach and passion for its subject. It’s is sobering to think that one young person could accomplish to much in so short a time, while confronting torment from within – and genuine torments from without.” While I enjoyed reading levy’s poetry and seeing his visual art, what I found most compelling were the numerous interviews with him from this time period. They reminded me how ground breaking the free speech movement of the 1960’s was, and what a wonderful, diverse and passionate group of poets were at the forefront of this effort. If you love the small press, poetry, and the freedom of expression we all hold so dear, you must read this book.

The Endicott Review

The Endicott Review,
Vol.24, #1. Spring, 2007.
Edited by Ruth Henderson
4/yr; 80pp; School of Arts
and Sciences, Endicott College,
Beverly, Massachusetts 01915

The Endicott Review consists of creative work from the Endicott
community and friends. (p.1) Which sounds very limited/limiting. But it
ain't necessarily so.

Lots of top-drawer, supra-territorial, universal poets here. Like Harris
Gardner, who has a kick-in-the-shins poem that is one of the most effective
poems I've ever read on death and time: "Pedicures merely provide/short term temporal cures. /Nothing transient endures/past the mortician's lipstick
kiss. /what we live signs our faces, /little changes, though makeup makes it so."(p.78)

And the same goes for master-poet Doug Holder who has one of the
strangest (but on-target) poems he has ever written in this issue: “And he takes her
hand. /And walks into the room, /with all his reluctance, /and all its strange
allure. /And it will be a woman who he will trust. Who will teach/him the right
way, /as he drops his pants/and releases a fine and diffuse spray. (Mother
Leading Her Boy into the Ladies Room, p.27). One of those poems for midnight
meditations, right?

A great political poem "This is the Kind of World I Want to Live In" by
Joseph Cooney, all about the current global war-hate situation, a great
short-short story about simply being by Alex Hart, (Just Over the Horizon A Few
More Times), a deeply existentially-positive poem by Kathleen Kirk based on
William Blake's Jacob's Dream: "Life is a child's toy:/It keeps dripping
endlessly down/from heaven.//If you do it right." (Eternal Levity, p.38).


The art here, too, is top drawer, especially Harriet Henderson's
jump-out-at-you paintings of Haiti or wherever (no bio-data, no lowdown on origins),
Lydia Holt'ss cryptological patchwork portrait, Jen Rheume's bar-scene
photo-painting mixes.

I've got a couple little suggestions to the editor here. Don't confine
the mag to Endicott college students and friends, expand the bios, maybe even
put in some essays....and get the mag out into the big-time literary world.

Hugh Fox


*** Hugh Fox is a poet/archaeologist who has taught at Michigan State University since 1968. Author of 66 books, he is a major figure in the U.S. small press world, serving as editor of Ghost Dance: the International Quarterly of Experimental Poetry from 1968-1995.

The Somerville News Writers Festival Nov 2007

Well we have the lineup for The Somerville News Writers Festival for Nov.11, 2007



The Somerville News Witers Festival

Founders: Doug Holder http://authorsden.com/douglasholder/
Tim Gager http://timothygager.com

http://somervillenewswritersfestival.com


FICTION


Tom Perrotta http://www.tomperrotta.net/
Steve Almond http://www.stevenalmond.com/
Stephanie Gayle http://stephaniegayle.com/
Errol Uys http://erroluys.com/
Joe Ann Hart http://www.hachettebookgroupusa.com/authors/61/3724/index.html
Timothy Gager http://timothygager.com




IBBETSON STREET PRESS LIFETIME ACHIEVEMENT AWARD:


Robert Pinsky: http://www.poets.org/poet.php/prmPID/200





POETRY

Gloria Mindock http://wwwcervenabarvapress.com
Dainelle Legros Georges http://www.curbstone.org/ainterview.cfm?AuthID=123
Irene Koronas http://www.haikuhut.com/Irene%20Koronas.htm
Lo Galluccio http://www.logalluccio.com

Teaching Metaphors. Nate Graziano.

Teaching Metaphors. Nathan Graziano. ( sunnyoutside PO BOX 441429 Somerville, Mass. 02144) http://www.sunnyoutside.com

Sunnyoutside, a creative and prolific small press based in Somerville, Mass. has released a new book by poet Nate Graziano. Graziano is a mainstay of their list and for good reason. His work has the flashes of insight, irony, and humor as well as accessibility that makes for an engaging read. Graziano has been a high school English teacher since 1997 and has penned a book of poetry about his experiences. Graziano writes: “Teaching metaphors has literally taken me ten years to write. It is a mosaic of the students and colleagues I’ve worked with in the various schools I taught. These poems are not based solely on any individuals, rather they’re imaginative amalgams. These poems are also not a picturesque depiction of the world of education, but I hope they’re honest—good and bad.”

The book is divided into two sections: the “Student Body” and “The Faculty” I found “The Faculty” section the most compelling. Here Graziano captures the eccentrics, the burnouts, the ‘types” that we find in any faculty. In the poem “Burnout”, a gone-to-seed teacher brutalizes his students with his time-worn film strips and sepia-tinged pop quizzes that he has given to generations of students.

“The students’ heads drop to the desks
like metal balls down greased chutes,
etherized by The Burnout’s filmstrip
and the sustained beeps between frames.

A sedated voice from a scratchy recording
talks of Nero’s orders for matricide,
a question on the multiple-choice pop quiz
The Burnout will give following the filmstrip.
It’s the same quiz the students’ parents
took twenty years ago when they slept
through Western History with The Burnout,
the man rumored to keep a silver flask
beside the fiddle in his desk drawer.

And in “The Devastation of Donuts” Graziano views the cycles of the faculty of the school through donuts and his “glazed” and jaded eyes:

“On Fridays The Administration” springs/ for coffee and donuts in the Teacher’s Lounge/ Most of the Faculty attempts to attend/…despite the fact that most of our bodies/have been devastated by donuts/ The younger faculty slim and wrinkle-free, / and still brimming with college theory, / chocolate-gazed, unfazed… It wasn’t long ago I stood in fresh shoes./…I n those days, I was more forgiving of my frame/ before the donuts took hold,/ latched to my bones and refused to let go.”

Highly Recommended.

"Poems to Go"

Amy Gumley, a Boston-based writer, contacted me recently. She has an interesting enterprise, "Poems-To-Go." Here is an article in the Boston Globe's Sidekick section:

More than words
By Bobby Hankinson

PoemsToGo.tv

There are certain moments in life that require us to create a memory with words. But since most of us don’t normally consider ourselves the next Shakespeare, putting feelings down on paper is enough to induce cold sweats. One could turn to mass-produced greeting cards, but those don’t always do the trick.

Boston-based writer Amy Gumley is here to help. And this time, it’s personal.

Her site, PoemsToGo.tv, provides personalized poetry and speeches for every occasion — weddings, anniversaries, birthdays, even memorials. Poems and speeches are e-mailed or mailed on stationery within four business days, though customers can have their materials rushed to them in 24 hours for a little extra.

Users specify if they want a customized poem, toast, or speech (from three to five minutes). Then they are e-mailed a list of questions to give the writer a better idea of the personal details to include. The bridal-shower poem questionnaire we looked over was like a game of 20 questions, inquiring about the bride’s characteristics, occupation, favorite foods, and relationship with her fiance.

Gumley used to write greeting cards for an online company. Inspired by her father’s entrepreneurship, she started the business in 2001 with help from her husband, a computer consultant. She now employs seven freelancers from all over the world.

Poems cost $64.95 and candle-lighting poems (for up to 15 candles) are $199.95. A one-minute toast is $99.95; three-to-five-minute speeches run from $149.95 to $249.95.

We think the prices are well worth it to avoid crafting a speech that’s remembered for all the wrong reasons.

Somerville Poet Taylor Stoehr Participates in “Politics, Writing, and Publishing” panel at U/Mass Boston.

Somerville Poet Taylor Stoehr Participates in “Politics, Writing, and Publishing” panel at U/Mass Boston.

Every June the William Joiner Writers’ workshop convenes at U/Mass Boston for two weeks of workshops, seminars, and panel discussions. I attended the Workshop in 2000 to 2001 and I found it an invaluable experience for anyone interested in enriching his writing life and the practice of his or her craft. Michael Sullivan, the coordinator for the Workshop, and a native Somervillian invited me back to participate on a small press publishing panel, and to attend a panel discussion on politics,writing and publishing.

The “Politics, Writing and Publishing” panel met at the Harbor Art Gallery on the windswept U/Mass campus. The participants were Taylor Stoehr, Demetria Martinez, Bob Nichols, and Lady Borton.

Taylor Stoehr has taught at U/Mass Boston for many years and has a long and accomplished history of publication, translation and activism. His most recent book of ancient Chinese poetry translation: “I Hear My Gate Slam…”was featured recently in the “Lyrical Somerville” column in The Somerville News.

Stoehr feels that the current climate of the publishing industry is less than friendly towards political writing. Even if political writing with a historical context gets out there, there is so much “swamping” in the industry that a book of this nature would be lost in a slush pile of commercial books. Stoehr said: “TV has literally wiped out history.” The industry is interested in books that will make the most money. He feels the political and historical writers of today must like the great Russian writer Tolstoy; make their work come to life to appeal to a wider readership. Tolstoy, according to Stoehr, effectively used the common solider in his fiction to reach a universal audience. In his own class Stoehr tries to take current events and relate them to historical precedents in order to light a fire under his student charges. Stoehr feels that by giving history more a sense of immediacy, this genre of writing has a better chance to flourish.

Lady Borton, a noted translator, feels that “point of view” is very important in political writing. She told the audience the longer she is in a country she is writing about, the less she realizes she knows. Borton for the last ten years has been involved with editing an anthology of Vietnamese poetry “Defiant Muse” The book is to be released by both American and Vietnamese publishing houses, and is translated by Vietnamese Americans. The involvement of indigenous people is essential for the “point of view” and thusly for the spirit of the work to come across, she feels.

Most of the panelists agreed that to some extent or the other everybody is a political writer. If you live in a comfort zone like the suburbs, your writing tends to be more personal than political. The more comfortable the reader is the less likely he is going to read something that breaks convention. Breaking convention is what good political writing does. Publishers for the most part don’t want to take a chance, and that means an almost certain death for the hopeful political poets and writers out there.

Drive-ins, Gas Stations, The Bright Motels. Wendy Drexler

Drive-ins, Gas Stations, The Bright Motels. Wendy Drexler. (Pudding House Press 81 Shadymere Lane Columbus, Ohio 43213) http://puddinghouse.com


Belmont, Mass. poet Wendy Drexler has a new poetry collection out with the prolific small press “Pudding House” of Columbus, Ohio. Many of these poems deal with Drexler’s childhood, and the poet has a knack for getting into the head of the child she was through an authentic voice. In the poem “At The Drive-In-I Ask My Father About Sex” the young Drexler has an awakening sexual curiosity, and her queries are answered bluntly but right –on- the- money by her Dad. His answers literally make her flee to the ladies room:

“… At intermission I ask him, you know,
where babies come from. He tells me

there’s another hole that’s not
for peeing where the penis goes in

and where the baby comes out.
I want to see. I run to the ladies room,

lock myself into a stall, brace my knees
against the back of the door.

The floodlights go out and the speakers
crackle tin again. I creep past

the couples in their parked cars.
My gum loses its jolt on my tongue.

My father is generous
with his ladle of small talk.”

The poem “Western Motel” was written in tribute to the painter Edward Hopper. Drexler, like Hopper works with light with striking effects. Here she describes a signature Hopperesque woman, tightly wound and introspective (in Hooper’s painting) residing in a nondescript hotel room looking vacantly out her window to the landscape. Here the poet wishes the painter might have painted her with a different sensibility.


“Let her hair tangle and go wild.
If sunset paint her, let moonlight spill.
Everything is right beyond her vision—

rough leaves, the pink chastity
of blossoms, the buds.

Recommended.

Doug Holder/ Ibbetson Update

Players in the Dream, Dreamers in the Play by Marian K. Shapiro

Players in the Dream, Dreamers in the Play ($14.95) (Plain View Press, P.O. 42255, Austin, TX 78704) plainviewpress.net

By Marian Kaplun Shapiro

Review by Pam Rosenblatt

At the first glance, Marian Kaplun Shapiro’s Players in the Dream, Dreamers in the Play can be viewed as filled with experimental poetry, fun innovative poetry linguistically speaking but not so easy to decode. And the first impression is pretty accurate. The 101 page poetry book contains poems that are visually interesting and aesthetic. Shapiro sculpts each poem as if a block of clay and makes it into a memorable experience. Enjambment, rhythm, lyrics, narratives, and meter are often used to make the reader question what message she is trying to get across and what form of experimental poetry she is using through her gentle flow of words, mixed in with caesuras and ever-changing syntax in her poetry.

Published in 2006, Shapiro’s Players in the Dream, Dreamers in the Play is made up of three parts. In this review, let’s concentrate on the visual poetry.

In Part 1: Hyphen, the book’s first section, Shapiro draws us into her world of experimental poetry with "Introduction" (p. 9), the opening poem consisting of one stanza with five short lines. The poem goes against ordinary train of thought. The poem reads:

I
kite
earth-sky
string pulled taut, exquisite
hyphen between mute boundaries.

What is Shapiro trying to get across? Immediately she has presented us with an experimental piece that becomes more abstract as the reader progresses. In only five lines, Shapiro has caught our interest but hasn’t made the start of the journey an easy read. It’s difficult to decipher, but not impossible. In the first line, the capitalized "I" is a strong and concrete word. In the second line, the lower case "kite" is a visual concrete item that the reader recalls from memory as getting visually smaller and more vulnerable in the sky. The hyphen between the "earth" and "sky" connects both of these words, creating a tension in the poem in the third line, thus leading into the fourth line which reads "string pulled taut, exquisite". Such must be the appearance of the "kite" with its "taut" thin "string" that the "I", or abstracted speaker, holds. The string acts as "hyphen between mute boundaries", or the silent but concrete "earth" and the quiet but sublime "sky", as cited in the fifth and last line in the poem. Our imagination has been set free to enjoy – and to work at – the Players in the Dream, Dreamers in the Play, created for the reader as well as Shapiro herself.

Throughout Part 1: Hyphen, Shapiro shows her more innovative poems, poems that are visually eye-catching, as seen in "Monkey Mind", which is a work of art.

In "Monkey Mind"(p. 10), she goes against traditional syntax, capitalizing on meter, repetition, and rhythm. And her uses of caesuras are very effective, as seen in the first section of the poem which is copied below:

rising
falling
rising wedding
falling
later rising e-mail
falling
rising
what if falling rain
rising
falling
rising
rising
falling
rising lunch

Through imagination and innovation, Shapiro has experimented with language and captured the readers interest through the poem’s unusual form, use of syllable which, when read, actually gives a sense of "falling" and "rising". The reader can almost visualize the "rain" coming down and moving up. The reader gets a feeling of gaining and losing through the up and down of the syllables in the two words "rising" and "falling". Also, Shapiro has effectively used white space as a background for this open form poem.

Shapiro’s poem, "Pure Love" (p.92) is found in Part 3: and, the last section of the book. Dedicated to her grandfather, Edward (Issak) Kaplun, who lived from April 18, 1880 to May 31, 1955, she once again demonstrates her witty, playful, and imaginative ability to use words and make them into a visual poem that goes against traditional poetic form. Through manipulation of caesuras and active, concrete word imagery and repetition of individual letters like "sssssssssss’s" and "mmmmmmmmm’s and nnnnnnnnnnnnn’s", Shapiro makes the reader smile and appreciate her abstract, creative piece which, at the end of the poem, or "On the other side of the invisible world / where we are both perfect, / where you live/ /and where you love me from" shows that the abstracted speaker is curious but secure in the afterworld where her grandfather and she will again meet.

Repetition plays a major part in "Ellipses" (p. 99), the second to last poem in Part 3: and. This poem is about a break up between two lovers. Here Shapiro seems to try to explain allegorically why she doesn’t follow traditional poetic form in this and other poems, emphasized with the repeated use of ellipses through the fragmented phrases, when she writes,

you know how it is…
because, after all… considering…
well, of course… …in those days
not that he meant anything by it…
better to forgive and forget…

On one hand, the speaker is giving excuses about the dissolved relationship, while, at the same time, on the other hand, Shapiro seems to apologize for her method of dissolving sentences, making open form poetry that is visually sublime. The speaker’s train of thought is almost like she is speaking to the reader, creating a one on one relationship.

Players in the Dream, Dreamers in the Play isn’t simply visual experimental poetry. It has socio-political poetry in it too, as seen in Part 2: Holding Truth Still, as in "September 11, 2001" (p. 48) and "Strange Meeting" (p.47). Some of the connotations of the words in the poems are so powerful and vivid that it’s difficult to read without feeling the speaker’s pain, as viewed in "September 11, 2001" when the speaker says,

…. Here
on earth we
need air. Peace
shatters in rainbow
storms of bloody
glass bullets
and severed hands. We
need water….

In this poem, through enjambment and concrete imagery, Shapiro has captured the cruelty of what happened on 9/11.

And in "Strange Meeting II", Shapiro writes, "Words,/ping off my shoulders / insist / around my head / set off short-circuits, storming every orifice. / Neurons fire, landmines in the blood. / This is a war, and I am afraid / You, true friend, become my enemy." In this contemporary poem, Shapiro shows a radical and visual poetic style through concrete imagery and sentence fragmentation, though in various degrees.

All in all, Marian Kaplun Shapiro’s Players in the Dream, Dreamers in the Play has proved herself to truly be a poet who is highly skilled in different forms of experimental poetry media. She is not afraid to experiment with language (especially words, meter, and rhythm) and form. And she has done so in a clever and effective manner.
###


Pam Rosenblatt/ Boston Area Small Press and Poetry Scene



Bibliography -- Online:

Barr, John. "American Poetry in the New Century". Poetry Magazine. June 9, 2007. pp. 1 - 7. .
"Experimental Poetry". Experimental poetry today. June 9, 2007. pp. 1 – 9.
"Experimental Poetry in Spain". Corner Magazine: Number Five / Fall 2001 – Spring 2002. June 10, 2007. pp. 1 - 26. .
"modernism". Answers.com. June 12, 2007. pp. 1 -12.
"Object Permanence magazine, 1994 -1997". Object Permanence, 1994-1997. pp. 1 – 4.
.
Munjal, Savi. "Method in Madness: A study if the Ex-centric Cubist Aesthetics of Pablo Picasso and Gertrude Stein". June 12, 2007. pp. 1 -17.
"Poetry". Poetry – MSN Encarta. June 11, 2007. pp. 1 -4. .
Retallack, Joan. "What is Experimental Poetry & Why Do We Need It?" Jacket 32. June 9, 2007. pp. 1 -13.
________________________________________________________________________________

Bibliography -- Books

Kinzie, Mary. A Poet's Guide to Poetry. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1999. pp. 47, 90 -92, 382, 459, 468.
Raffel, Burton. How to Read A Poem. New York: Penguin Books, 1983. pp. 236.
Timpane, John, PhD. With Maureen Watts. Poetry FOR DUMMIES. New York: Wiley Publishing, Inc., 2001. pp. 10, 30, 58 – 59, 160, 245.
Labels: Rosenblatt on Shapiro

"The Hunter's Trance: Nature,Spirit & Ecology." by Carl Von Essen

The Hunter’s Trance: Nature, Spirit, & Ecology Carl Von Essen. (http://www.lindisfarne.org/) ( Lindisfarne Books. 610 Main St. Great Barrington, Mass. 02130 $25.


Carl Von Essen writes in his book “The Hunter’s Trance: Nature, Spirit &Ecology” (Lindisfarne Books 2007) that since he was a child he was beguiled by the sight and sounds of nature. He realized the import of the natural world; the primal, spiritual and physical experience it brings to a life. Von Essen realized that he was not alone. Many people had ecstatic experiences in the wild, be they scientists, fishermen, or mountaineers. With an eye on the negative impact civilization has had on the environment Von Essen writes:

“A vision evolved that a spiritual bond with the natural world can be a potent path toward environmental healing. That vision, undoubtedly shared by many, has taken shape in this book.”

Von Essen, a retired oncologist wants to explore, “… the roads and byways of mystical experiences as they relate to our evolutionary, biological and psychological connection with nature.”

And indeed Von Essen does this and does this well. He uses liberal doses of poetry from Emerson, Longfellow, Whitman, and other poets, as well as the philosophical musings of William James, personal anecdotes about ecstatic experiences in the wild; not to mention hard research data from respected scientists, to illuminate his point.

Von Essen, ideally wants the reader to approach nature in a “Hunter’s Trance.” He writes:

“The hunter’s trance is a total mental and physical concentration whereby extraneous signals internal or external are quenched or diverted, enabling the psyche of the hunter to perceive his quarry and its world with a supernatural alertness. The merging of the world into the mind allows the subject to experience a comprehension that extends beyond the everyday dimensions of perception.’”

This is prudent advice considering all the “white” noise in this febrile world that keeps us from a true meditative sensibility.

Von Essen is a world class traveler and explorer with many exotic locales on his long resume. Provincial in my own travels, be it to a lack of funds, time or ambition; I couldn’t help but wonder if it was possible to experience some of what Von Essen experienced on a verdant part of Highland Ave. rather than the Himalayas.

Still the book is written in a very accessible manner, with very telling selections of poetry, philosophy, etc… In a way Von Essen mourns how far we have moved from our primitive selves, when we were not as divorced from nature as we find ourselves today. He quotes Wordsworth:

“For I have learned
To look on nature, not as in the hour
Of thoughtless youth, but hearing oftentimes
The still sad music of humanity,
Nor harsh or grating, though of ample power
To chasten and subdue. And I have felt a presence…

Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns,
And the round ocean and living air,
And the blue sky, and the mind of man;
A motion and a spirit, that impels
All thinking things, all objects of thought.
And rolls all things…

The guide, the guardian of my heart, and soul
Of all my moral being.”

Von Essen wants society to reconnect with the wonders of the natural world. He hopes when we realize what we have missed and what we will miss, then perhaps this will jumpstart us to stop the rapid destruction of our environment.

Doug Holder