From Mist to Shadow and Flowering Weeds by Robert K. Johnson

(Robert K. Johnson)


Unfathomable Life



Robert K. Johnson's From Mist to Shadow (Ibbetson Street Press, 2006) & Flowering Weeds (Cervena Barva Press, 2008).



Review by Fred Marchant

fjmarchant@aol.com





In West of Your City (1961), William Stafford's first book, there is a poem to keep in mind when reading Robert K. Johnson's two most recent books of poetry. The Stafford poem is “The Well Rising.” In three short-lined quatrains it offers the reader a mini-catalogue of quotidian miracles occurring all around us: a well rising without sound, a spring bubbling on a hillside, the swerving swallows, their decision-making as they bank. These are “thunderous examples,” writes Stafford, and he ends the poem by saying “I place my feet / with care in such a world.” Robert K. Johnson's new poems also step with care in his world, and by implication and experience they teach us the kind of attention such care requires.

Let us begin with Johnson's poetic line. It is invariably short, often enjambed, and always ceremonial. The line breaks never seem to hurry us along. Instead each line functions almost like an act of perception unto itself. Of course there are lines to follow, and as we move through them the poem grows by accretion and lamination. Here, as an example, is “Older,” from Flowering Weeds:



You listen to a concert's

swirl of melody

or to the silent hum

of sunlight on your face



and what rises deep inside you

like surge of June-warm surf

climbing a sand-dune's slope



is a new nameless feeling

that, somehow, includes



the press of love,

the dogged grip of regret,

catapulting joy

and even merciless pain



and leads you to accept,

as calmly as willow leaves

accept a stir of wind,



everything past and present

in your unfathomable life.



The deliberative pacing of this poem is one significant source of its beauty. The deliberation going on here, however, is filled with an almost subliminal tension. Something there is that moves this poem along, even as each line tries to slow it down, tries to isolate and name each stage of feeling, thought, or perception. It is that mini-drama at the end of each line that keeps us in the poem, wondering, and yet ready, open to the surprise of the places the poem takes us.

Johnson is also devoted to the sentence. In the curve and forward motion of his syntax is another significant source of beauty. A number of poems, for instance, consist of a single highly wrought sentence stretched out over the tenterhooks of lineation and stanza. “Four Hours After The Stroke,” for instance, startles us each step of the way:



For a moment it is as if

by standing on tiptoe

I'm able to gain a peek

above a windowsill

see someone who must be

a nurse her dress is so white

walking toward a bed

I'm lying propped up in

and she starts to speak to me

but my tired toes give way

my body sags below

the sill and I'm once again

staring at thick fog

grey as a prison cell.



This sentence verges on the edge of collapse, just as the speaker himself struggles not to fall. Almost falling into a run-on more than once, the sentence somehow holds itself together syntactically as we move along with it slowly, carefully, and at the end, sadly.

But if Johnson's verse is ceremonial, what ceremony is being enacted? If his poems consist of steady, step-by-careful steps, what is the nature of the journey? Sometimes it is a journey toward discovery, but his poems tend not to culminate or rest easy in sheer epiphany. From Mist to Shadow, the very title itself, hints that a life, like a day, is a journey from one darkness to the next, not an arriving at or dwelling long in a place where we see the light. His world and ours is utterly ephemeral. Our day can be studded with menace or near-madness, and there may be secret, eruptive threats moving underneath the surface. But in these poems there also is an overall affirmation. For all their stern realism, the central event in Johnson's poetry is his attention to tenderness, to our capacity to touch and be touched, to be moved by the marvelous, and to have our existence affirmed by what passes for ordinary life, which in these poems is never simply ordinary.

As Simone Weil said, prayer consists of attention. There is no theology hiding behind Johnson's poems, but his rhythms and images, and his careful attention to both, add up to prayer in a secular key. “Inside A Church in Rome,” from Flowering Weeds presents us, for example, with the poet watching an elderly woman at prayer. Ordinarily he says he accepts “the sky as empty,” but for that instant, as he watched, the poet is “wrapped inside the swirl // of a measureless longing / to share the faith that feeds / this woman's life.” It is longing of this almost vertiginous sort that Robert K. Johnson's work embodies, enacts, and records. Yes, by the end of the poem, the feeling has passed, and that ephemerality too is real and felt. But for that moment, the poet has been touched by what he has seen. We encounter such moments throughout Johnson's poetry: especially in the natural world, where ducks might paddle smoothly across a moonlit pond, and above all in the world of our close relations, when one might be touched by a beloved's lips. In childhood memory and adult perplexity, in beauty and loss, in pleasure and pain, in mist and shadow, these poems chart one person's way as he moves through, is touched and touches his “unfathomable life.”



*Fred Marchant is the author of Tipping Point, which won the Washington Prize in poetry. He is a professor of English and the director of creative writing at Suffolk University in Boston, and he is a teaching affiliate of the William Joiner Center for the Study of War and Social Consequences at the University of Massachusetts, Boston.

Documentary based on "I Refused to Die" Ibbetson Street Press--2005 to premiere: Nov. 10

For immediate releaseOctober 26, 2008 "The Holocaust: Memory and Legacy" to premiere Nov. 10 with "The Morgenthau Story" (documentary films)

Contacts: Susie Davidson617-566-7557; Susie_d@yahoo.comApo Torosyan978-535-1206; apotoros@comcast.net


CONDENSED LISTING:

Monday, Nov. 10, 6:30 p.m. films with panel; 10:30 p.m.-12:30 a.m. second showing of the two films alone: Two documentary films on the subject of genocide and human rights, "The Holocaust: Memory and Legacy" narrated by WBZ's Jordan Rich and based on a book by Susie Davidson, and "The Morgenthau Story", directed by Apo Torosyan, on Henry Morgenthau, Sr., Ambassador to the Ottoman Empire during the Armenian Genocide, will premiere at the Studio Cinema, 376 Trapelo Rd., Belmont. Mid-film panel discussion, moderated by Jordan Rich, with Andrew Tarsy, Chief Institutional Advancement Officer Facing History and Ourselves; Sharistan Melkonian, Chair, Armenian National Committee of Eastern Massachusetts; Dr. Aristotle Michopoulos, Professor and Director of Greek Studies at Hellenic College, Brookline; and Elyse Rast, Holocaust Programs Coordinator, Jewish Community Relations Council and the New England Holocaust Memorial, as well as World War II veterans and concentration camp liberators Cranston Rogers and Phil Minsky; Holocaust survivors, and the films' producers,directors and writers.


$7 admission includes refreshments; theatre concessions (including U Kosher popcorn) also available (free drink and popcorn refills). Three wi-fi computer stations for patrons. Information: www.IRefusedtoDie.com, www.aramaifilms.com, Susie_d@yahoo.com, 617-566-7557; apotoros@comcast.net, 978-535-1206; or the Studio Cinema at 617-484-9751.

Bert Stern, co-founder of Off the Grid Press to read at the Somerville News Writers Festival Nov. 22, 2008

( Off the Grid author and co-founder Henry Braun)


( Off the Grid co-founders Tam Lin Neville/Bert Stern)



Off the Grid Press

By Bert Stern, PhD.


Our press had its origins in the wilds of Northern Maine. Henry Braun, our first author, cut some lumber to pay for the production costs of his new book, Loyalty. In the process of putting the book together, Henry’s wife, Joan, learned that she couldn’t buy just a single ISBN number; she had to buy ten. So, in 2005, the Brauns, along with Bert Stern and Tam Neville, current co-editors of the press, decided to found OTGP. What we most wanted was to encourage writing by elders like ourselves. So we began – a press for poets over 60.



Loyalties was widely praised, by poets like Betsy Sholl, Eleanor Wilner, Nathaniel Tarne, among others. It was also awarded The Maine Writer’s Prize for Poetry, 2008. The quality of our first book set the standards for the two that followed. We were not interested in publishing everything that came our way. In fact, out of 20 plus submissions, we have selected only two.



A Darker, Sweeter String, our second book, is by Lee Sharkey, co-editor of Beloit Poetry Journal. Francine Sterle said of the book: “These taut, truth-telling poems teach us how to ‘heft more weight than we can carry,’ how to speak the unspeakable.” The unspeakable here is the daily news of our anguished times.



Terry Adams, the author of our third book, Adam’s Ribs, became a conscientious objector while serving as Secret Control Officer at the U.S. Air Force’s Strategic Air Command Headquarters during the Vietnam era. His book features poems about emotional and spiritual flashpoints, written with a lyric honesty and fierceness. They are risky poems, often moving to a kind of jazz beat. In the words of James Reiss, “Adams has paid close attention to red-hot emotional moments frozen in time.”



We at Off the Grid are proud of our writers and their books. We are also proud that, through the expertise of our designer, Michael Alpert (head of University of Maine Press), our books are beautiful objects in themselves, printed on acid-free paper and bound with Smythe-Sewn bindings.



All three of our books deal with issues of war, some more directly than others. Though the press is not looking for political poetry per se, during the selection process, an important criteria for the editors is that the poet look beyond his or her own personal world.



Off the Grid Press is a cooperative. While poets pay production costs, editorial services are both free and pro-active. Our two editors, widely published poets and writers, provide editorial assistance described by one of our authors as “loving and insistent.” Though the press does incur some expenses, it makes no profit, and all proceeds go to the author. Today, with new submissions on our desks, we at Off the Grid Press look forward to a long and distinguished list of our titles.



Our reading period is all year long and we invite submissions. Please see our website first, ( offthegridpress.net) for guidelines and required application.


SOMERVILLE NEWS WRITERS FESTIVAL HTT://www.somervillenewswritersfestival.com

The Somerville News Writers Festival Nov. 22 2008

Click on Header for complete information. Call 617-666-4010 for tickets now!!! or pick them up at 21 A College Ave. Davis Square Somerville, Mass.

NUNCA MAIS: NEVER AGAIN PORTUGESE / ENGLISH POEMS HUGH FOX.

NUNCA MAIS: NEVER AGAIN PORTUGESE / ENGLISH POEMS HUGH FOX. (http://www.cornerstonepresstl.com St. Louis, Missouri $15)


The prolific Hugh Fox has released a new collection of poems that he wrote in Portuguese and translated into English. It concerns a recent trip he took with his wife to Brazil. As in many of his recent books it deals with the richness of life and the close proximity of death. Hugh Fox, at 76, knows the fat lady is close to her closing number, and in spite of his gourmet, and gourmand taste for the world, and his still frenzied involvement, that Mermanesque belt of a song still haunts him. Kevin Gallagher, Boston-area poet and founder of COMPOST magazine, writes an email to Fox that Fox incorporates into the poem:

“Enough talking all the time about/death that comes when it comes.”

But the reason Fox riffs so much about death is that he loves life so much. The book is chock full of signature Fox flourishes: the overflow of food, art, sex, people, more food, and much more sex. Fox inhales deeply the beguiling perfume of the world and doesn’t want to exhale. Here he describes a rather pedestrian garden in Brazil:

“ Even the most common places
(Spring—a center for gardens)
always an aura of divinity, a bunch
of super-old women, from an asylum
of the super-old orchid type
of flowers possible, the street outside,
music, what I feel more than anything a
consciousness of the whole world
I have, as frantically as the Buddha
grabbing on to the totality of the present moment.”

As Kevin Gallagher advises Fox:

“Life, think about life,/everyone has to die, it doesn’t make/ any sense to preoccupy yourself with the inevitable”

But knowing Fox, his obsessions will continue, and they will continue to obsess us all.


Doug Holder/Ibbetson Update

CD Collins: A Somerville writer with Kentucky stories

CD Collins: A Somerville writer with Kentucky stories

C.D. Collins crosses many genres. She is an accomplished short story writer, vocalist, poet and consummate performance artist. She has performed at such venues as as the Charles Playhouse, Club Passim, as well as academic institutions across the country. This Somerville resident, originally from Kentucky, has had her work published in such journals as: “Story Quarterly,” “Salamander,” “Ibbetson Street,” and many others. She has received grants from the Somerville Arts Council for music and literature. She won a Cambridge Poetry Award, and her latest CD is “Subtracting Down”, a compilation of post-modern mountain storytelling. She is a member of the “Writer’s Room” in Boston, and has a new book of poetry coming out with the Ibbetson Street Press: “Self-Portrait With A Severed Head.” I talked with her on my Somerville Community Access TV Show: “Poet to Poet:Writer to Writer” on Somerville Community Access TV.


Doug Holder: You are from Kentucky, but you moved to Somerville in the mid 80’s. How would your life been different if you stayed in Kentucky?

CD Collins: I probably would be dead, or really depressed. I wanted to leave Kentucky to become a writer. I needed to be in the company of other writers. When I was teaching high school in Kentucky I had a cute little student who told me:” Go, be a writer.” So I left. I moved to the Fenway section of Boston with a friend and I was mugged the first week, and my car was stolen…welcome to Boston! I now divide my time between Kentucky and Somerville. Both places compliment each other.

DH: You straddle so many genres…what do you define yourself as?

CD: Let’s say writer. And the definition of a writer is that you write. You can’t be a writer if you are not writing. I have an M.A. in English Literature.

DH: Tell me about your involvement with poetry and music?

CD:I had these friends that I met who were in a band called “Miss Bliss” They eventually wanted me to head them up. They wanted a poet up there on stage. So I started doing poetry and music. I was one of the first to do it again during its resurgence—the Jeff Robinson Trio was also doing it. The new band that came out of this was “Pin Curl.” It was an all-female chamber rock band. And now my band is called: “Rock-a-Betty.” I like to work with musicians. It puts me in front of an audience. It gives this beautiful palette of music behind it and it gets me performing. So basically I say I am a writer and a spoken word artist.

DH: You describe your cd “Subtracting Down” as “post modern mountain” storytelling. Define that.

CD: I would say it is like this. I believe we all should read the literary canon. We should know what we are so we can understand “post modern” I am taking the styles, the tropes, the Southern Gothic style, Blue Grass and Gospel and using it in my work. I am a Buddhist Baptist, and a lesbian. I take my culture and I lovingly hang it inside out, and upside down. I can write a song about gay marriage, the Gay Pride parade to a simple country tune. I am merging my thoughts and ideas from the New South.

DH: You write that as a transplanted Southerner, and long-time Somerville resident you are aware of the “cultural intersection” and “divide” of the two. Well… what are they?

CD: Well, God love ya, as a dyed-in-the-wool New Englander. I spent the summer in Kentucky—and then came back to Somerville. And I always have what I call that “Yankee moment.” It’s usually in Pennsylvania or New York State. When I am driving back to Somerville, there are more people, more traffic, everything is faster. I’ll be cut off, people are rude, I’ll smile at someone, and they won’t smile back. It hurts. And if I take someone down South they may feel a little exposed. People down there look at each other. Southerners actually look in cars. But it is a community that takes care of you. So when I come back here it is a little painful for me. So I can be offended when someone is being their natural city self. But I have all the things here that I wouldn’t have in Kentucky. I came here to be a writer, and I have a group of writers, excellent people, who are helping me.

DH: Word has it you are starting an artist retreat in Kentucky?

CD: I’m lucky. I have a farm in Kentucky, and it has 56 acres. I have a little Victorian cottage on it, and it has 4 bedrooms. After I got the hell raisers out, I took it over. I worked with this guy Ray, and we restored it. I want writers, poets, and musicians to come.

DH: You have a new book of stories coming out “Blue Land.” It deals with a lot of sexual abuse, and drug abuse. Is this to some extent autobiographical?

CD: My writing is not strictly autobiographical. It can be taken from any source including myself.

-- Doug Holder

for more info go to http:/www./cdcollins.com



YANKEE SPRING


O my New Englanders,
O You fib, you tell tall tales, you make myths.
O why do you lie about the weather?
In a way this habit is touching, like a belief in Easter Bunny or the tooth fairy, teaching grade-schoolers to depict the seasons with construction-paper cut-outs of April showers followed by May flowers as if one resided in Camelot.

Myth One:


Spring is just around the corner
As though a few green tongues slicing up through semi-frozen soil,
or iron-hard buds poking out like thumbs,
trying to hitchhike their way south,
were signs of spring.
They are not.
As though
Pasty-legged fraternity chums in Bermuda shorts
suffering from hangovers and chilblains
oohing and aahing around a single crocus
were spring itself.
It is not.


Myth Two:

(……the reason I prefer New England to Los Angeles, Reykjavik, Acapulco, etc. is that……)
We have four seasons.
This is not true.
We have two seasons.
Season One:


Winter ——
an 8 month period lasting from November through June
Followed by a raw stretch of
….morning showers tapering off to snow squalls in the afternoon,
…scattered thunderstorms moving through to make way for steady rain,
…and for the weekend a cold snap with brisk sleet showers.
this unpredictable medley is punctuated by
the blossoming of a lone weeping cherry tree,
it sweet pink confetti tumbling across the parking lot,
random 90 degree sunny days.
Call these blessings, my friends,
but do not call them spring.
Season two:
Construction ——
a concretized stretch of weeks characterized by
superheated atmospheric inversions
and jackhammer dust,
a time of desolation in the metropolis
when the students leave for Europe,
or go off sailing to the Cape & the Islands,
leaving only
those wearing hardhats and earplugs,
And scruffy, displaced artists
who have sublet apartments here
because they cannot afford summer rent in their own apartments
in Rockport and Provincetown
the Artist Colonies…
Which leads us to


Myth Three:

We have an Ocean.
Ok, technically this is true,
But it is not for sissies.
On Saturday morning you must rise at 5 a.m.
drive for two hours
for the opportunity of waiting in line
to pay $20 before the parking lot fills up,
splash on Skin So Soft
to repel vampirish green heads
And no-see-ums
which, like invisible air-borne barracudas,
gnaw chunks of exposed human flesh.
While lugging your beach chair and cooler along the sandy path,
You will read signs
admonishing you to
Stay Away
from the dunes, the grass, the trees or any living plants,
to wear long sleeved white clothing and long white pants
tucked into white socks inside white tennis shoes.
to continually scan
for moving freckles
And, obviously, to burn your clothing the moment you return home.
These signs have a scolding tone,
as do the Pollution Indexes warning us to stay inside.
Which seem to shift the blame onto us,
The breathers.


Myth four:


We have foliage.
No, that one is true.
We do have foliage and it is spectacular, but you must be quick.
because the appearance of the first flaming maple leaf in Boston,
signals that branches are bare in Vermont, Maine, & New Hampshire,
It’s all cornflakes on the ground now, my sweets,
And covered in a foot of snow.
But,
Spring is just around the corner.
When I first moved to Boston,
I waited along with you
But became enraged as each promised season failed to materialize,
I swore at leafless trees,
and heirloom furniture parked on the streets between colossal snow drifts
But now I am at peace.
Because O my New England
I have learned that the hand gestures and facial expressions
At rotaries and stop lights
the horns honking and taxi drivers jumping out of their cars.
Are native forms of celebrations,
The flipping over of out-of-state vehicles by sports’ fans
Is a type of communal theater,
Hello, I wave back, smiling.
Go Sox, Go Patriots, I yell, honking in unison.
We live in New England!
where wind fingers icily under our collars.
where the red line screeches from Central into Harvard Station.
I disembark into the acrid electric scent of subway’s back draft,
sprint up the metal stairs of the out-of-order escalator,
and stride onto the gray pavement
polka-dotted with historical chewing gum,
And I am glad.
When I hear your minor myths:
Boston wears an emerald necklace,
Boston is a very livable city,
OR
We can just hop on 93 and be there in no time…
I smile
Hope is cruel
thus I have deserted it.
So now,
I love you New England,
I love your peoples and your libraries,
I love your cappuccinos and your concerts,
Your artists and your architecture,
Your tabernacles and your theaters,
Your rowdy fans and your rivers.
Oh my New England, my Boston, my Cambridge, my Somerville, my Medford, my Worcester
You awaken spring in my Southern heart.
© CD Collins

Call Me Waiter. Joseph Torra.

( Joe Torra--Right)



Call Me Waiter. Joseph Torra. (Pressed Wafer 9 Columbus Sq. Boston, MA $10)

Joe Torra, poet, writer, and publisher, has lived down the block from me in Somerville, Mass. for many years. For the longest time I have heard about his literary accomplishments, be it his critically-acclaimed novel “Gas Station,” his literary journal “lift,” his numerous poetry collections, etc… When I asked him what he was doing for a living he always told me that he was a waiter. Recently though Torra, a man in his 50’s, is now teaching at U/Mass Boston.

Now Torra and I have a few things in common. We are contemporaries, and like him I have always been involved in the writing life in one shape or form. Like Torra, I had many jobs that afforded me the time to write. I was never a waiter, but I worked as a dishwasher at the long-defunct Ken’s Deli in Copley Square, Boston in the 70’s, and I was a short order cook at the “Fatted Calf” in Boston, where I flipped burgers, and appointed little balls of cheese on the bloody pucks of meat. So I know what it is like to work in the food industry and it ain’t easy.

Torra, has written a memoir “Call Me Waiter,” that recalls his many years as a server and his struggle to establish himself as a writer. The waiter jobs he had were transient, grueling, often well-paid, and most importantly provided him with the flexibility to write. Torra writes of his slow ascent as a writer, and his vocation as a means to an end:

“My poetry was bringing a modicum of success and that is where I would put my energy. Poems were being accepted by various little magazines. After reading at the Word of Mouth, I also gave readings around the city. Friendships developed with writers I came in contact with. If it took working shifts in a restaurant at night to support this life, so be it.”

Torra goes into detail not only about his working life, but also about the subculture of restaurants: the gay waiters, the alcoholic managers, the sociopath cooks, the parade of grad students, artists, musicians, supporting their lifestyle, and pocketing tips. In this passage Torra describes the typical reaction when he tells people at work that he is a writer:

“I’m always bemused at the way they react when they find out I am a writer. It shouldn’t come as any surprise. There are probably more artists in the restaurant business, pound for pound, than any other industry, I’ve worked with jazz, rock, folk and classical musicians, sculptures, dancers, female impersonators, actor, singers, photographers, poets and novelists—I even worked with a guy who painted with spoons. Why else, they must wonder, would someone my age be doing this…?

I tell them . They look puzzled. If I publish novels what am I doing here? I attempt an abridged account of the publishing industry. They’re bewildered. Then a friendly grin, perhaps they figured it out—I can’t be much of a writer if I publish books and tend bar for a living.”

At the end of the memoir Torra realizes that he is at the end of the line with being a waiter, and cuts himself loose. Although frightened, he enjoyed a sense of freedom:

“I have no idea where I am headed, what the future holds. Images of working all night as a shelf stocker, a cab driver or variety store clerk cross my mind. I know I must remain out of the business no matter what it takes. Something is out there for me. Standing on bike pedals to stretch my legs, I feel like I am floating.”

“Call Me Waiter” is one of the better books I have read about the writing life. Torra has a workman-like style, that lays out the consuming need to write, and the need to support it anyway you can—no matter what, in a straight, no chaser fashion. Torra, born to a blue collar family in Medford, Mass brings a work ethic to his life and art that is a refreshing change from all the Left Bank, Iowa Writers Workshop stuff that lines the bookshelves.

Highly recommended.

Exorcism poetry recording by Larissa Schmailo

Exorcism poetry recording by Larissa Schmailo
Reviewed by Shannon O’Connor





Larissa Schmailo’s Exorcism breaks open with the brief flourish of “Vow,” and then leads into the rambling ranting of “Warsaw Ghetto,” which is reminiscent of The Rolling Stones’ “Sympathy for the Devil.” “I am the Warsaw Ghetto/ I am the Underground Railroad,” Schmailo’s poetry is accented by guitars and keyboards. The narrator puts herself into places she could never have been, but only imagined, “I am a five year old girl in Jim Crow Mississippi going to school.”


In “Bloom,” Schmailo pays homage to Molly Bloom, the wife of Leopold Bloom, of the novel Ulysses. The poem is crunchy and staccato, “This is December/ and over there’s Christmas/ and we call April Easter cause she makes them March.” She catches the spirit of Ulysses and the breathless voice of Molly’s character in the last chapter of the novel which belongs to her, “Hi, I’m Molly Bloom, blow by my bedroom/ by the window a frozen bird, frozen for weeks/ a weak bird, a dead duck, a gone goose, a pigeon petered out.”


The title track of the CD, “Exorcism,” is a found poem, taken from Group Dynamics, People of the Lie, Hope for Healing Human Evil by M. Scott Peck. The poem deals with the massacre at Mai Lai; it starts with a chant, “This is holy ground, this is holy ground…” The poem is a song, sung in different registers to heighten the tension of the gory truth, “The written orders were ambiguous, the Mai Lai orders were ambiguous, JUST WASTE THE PLACE.” The fact that “Exorcism” is a found poem makes it more dramatic and endearing. This is the truth, as told by someone else. “Exorcism” proves that anything can be a poem. Poetry could be found in textbooks or on cereal boxes.


Schmailo’s lyrics and rhythms bear shades of Jim Morrison and Patti Smith. The unbridled and sometimes psychotic sensuality makes one wonder why the world is so horrible, and is there anything anyone can do about it? If there is, poetry might be the thing to save the world, if we can learn to speak to one another in a language we all can share.

“The Man in the Booth in the Midtown Tunnel" goes to Endicott College

“The Man in the Booth in the Midtown Tunnel" goes to Endicott College

I was invited to give a workshop for my poetry collection “The Man in the Booth in the Midtown Tunnel” by an unusual man, Dan Sklar. Dan Sklar is the Creative Writing Director at Endicott College in Beverly, Mass. Dan has turned into a great supporter of the small press in the Boston area. There are too few colleges, universities, that welcome little magazines and small presses, and because of Dan, many poets who would not have been heard by many students, are given a voice. Besides the Cape Cod Writers Center headed by the gracious Ann Elizabeth Tom, and Michael Sullivan of the William Joiner Center at U/Mass/Boston, and a few select others, Sklar is a major solid citizen. Sklar, of course is a widely published small press poet and probably mentions his credits in Free Verse and Ibbetson Street more than he mentions his publications in the Harvard Review, and other top shelf mags. When you go out to Endicott, Sklar treats everyone the same. Whether you are a big deal poet with a Pulitzer, or you are putting out a stapled chapbook with a minipress, well, Sklar digs you…as long as the work works for him. I tell Dan whenever I go out to Endicott I feel like a mensch, a distinguished poet, instead of an extinguished one. Hats off to this guy and buy his latest book “Bicycles, Canoes, and Drums”

*I included some remarks that I made to his class about “The Man in the Booth in the Midtown Tunnel” (Cervena Barva Press):

There are some people who are nature poets, there are language poets, metaphysical poets, and you name it. I guess I can call myself a peoples’ poet. I write mostly about people—character studies, if you will. I guess it goes back to when I was a kid watching the Twilight Zone—you know the original in black and white. Rod Serling, the host, would introduce some character, a guy, down-on-his-luck, maybe a reclusive bookworm, a snake oil salesman, in a gone-to-seed hotel room, with the requisite neon sign blinking garishly outside his window. Serling would introduce him: “Have if you will Mr. Henry Beamish, a small fastidious man whose only passion is the written word.”

To me, often people on the margin have been a source of fascination. I have worked a s a counselor at a psych. hospital, McLean Hospital, for 26 years now, and I guess for some reason I was attracted to the “craziness” of the ward, over the “craziness” of the outside world. When we discharge clients from the program I work now, I often joke; “I haven’t been discharged yet, and won’t be anytime soon.” A good portion of the work I have produced has dealt with the often overlooked denizens of the back ward, and the people I have encountered in bars, coffee shops, and subways, etc… in Boston/Cambridge/Somerville.

In my life, and I am sure in yours, there has always been a person, who remains a strong symbol, an icon for you, a flashing light, on this journey we all take. So when I wrote: “The Man in the Booth in the Midtown Tunnel,” I concentrated on a man I saw in a small booth in the middle of the Midtown Tunnel when I was a kid. The tunnel connects the borough of Queens to the borough of Manhattan. The booth and the man are long gone, but the booth hasn’t given up the ghost. Now as a middle age man, probably around the same age as the guy in the booth, I realized this man represented encroaching adulthood: the trip from the relative security of a Long Island childhood, to an unknown, alluring, yet frightening adult world. Did this man have a wife, friends, a life outside the booth, I asked my Dad. My father confused as to why I was fixated on this obscure figure said: “How the hell do I know?”
When I was on the skids, I retreated to a booth of my own making, whether a cubicle in a dark library, or the small furnished room I lived in the Back Bay of Boston for many years. We emerge and submerge in metaphorical tunnels. We emerge from the vaginal tunnel towards the light and cry, later we reenter that tunnel and die. We have many rites of passage. All I know is, wherever I go that man, in that cramped booth, will always follow me.


To order go to http://cervenabarvapress.com

PORTER SQUARE BOOKS: “You Can Live Here!”

PORTER SQUARE BOOKS: “You Can Live Here!”

BY DOUG HOLDER

It was a crisp, autumnal morning when I walked into Porter Square Books in Porter Square. It was the kind of classic New England day that made you want to chat about books, and feel their presence around you. Porter Square Books is nestled on the border of Somerville and Cambridge, in the Porter Square Shopping Mall. Whenever I go in to browse, or have a cup of coffee at their Café Zing, there is always the bustle of customer traffic, and lively conversation. In her regular corner, sipping a cup of Zing coffee, long-time Somerville resident Laurinda Bedingfield, told me: “You can live here.” She loves the store’s sense of community. She feels that it is welcoming to the book lovers, her dogs (at the outside café), and the person who wants to sit and sip and tap on their laptop.


Porter Square Books is certainly known for their diverse selection of books, but they are equally known as a store that reaches out to the community. I talked with Dale Szczeblowski, General Manager, Carol Stoltz, Children’s Books Buyer, and Jane Dawson, Personnel Director. They gave me a good idea about the wide reach of the store.

Porter Square Books, has been in business for four years, and is still doing well in spite of the climate of recession. The store has birthed a few new programs since I last talked with them. On their website they added a Blog. The Blog is an indisputable part of our culture now. To the staff it seemed like a great way to get the word out, and is yet another way to market books. Many employees contribute to the Blog, including Somerville resident and master bookseller, Josh Cook.

Porter Square Books has also partnered with the Literary Volunteers of America. They promote this program which sends volunteers out in the community to teach adults the basic reading and writing skills needed to survive in the world-at-large. The volunteers go to many venues, and spend 8 to 10 hours a week teaching.

Porter Square Books participates in many book fairs, is involved in fundraising efforts, some of which were held at the Somerville Library, and they are a participant in the “Reach Out and Read” program (that started out in Boston, but now is national), that gets books into doctors’ offices, and teaches parents how to read to their kids in the most effective manner.

Recently Porter Square has started a book club, run by Joan Sindall that meets at 4PM the third Monday of the month. So far it has been well-attended, and there have been raves about Sindall, and the group itself.

Szcbelowski, talked about some of the bestsellers at the store which include: “The Condition” by Jennifer Haigh (Haigh will read at the Somerville News Writers Festival), and Dennis Lehane’s “the Given Day.”

I asked the group if there were any Somerville residents among the helpful and knowledgeable staff. And of course, the ubiquitous Josh Cook came up, who has been with the store since its inception. Also—Robert Smyth, a long-time Somerville resident, and founder of the highly -regarded Yellow Moon Press, has worked at the store for a year or so.

The store responds to the “intellectual” demographics of its surroundings. So they offer readings of high brow and serious authors, as well as well- known local writers. Some who will appear in the coming months are: Anita Shreve, Allegra Goodman, and two well-regarded local poets Deborah M. Priestly and Joyce Jillison.

As always, Porter Square Books will be sponsoring The Somerville News Writers Festival Nov 22, 2008 at 6:30PM. I could think of no better supporter of a community event than this great community bookstore!

For more information about Porter square books go to http://portersquarebooks.com
Somerville News Writers Festival http://somervillenewswritersfestival.com

How books are printed: From Letterpress to Print-On-Demand

How books are printed: From Letterpress to Print-On-Demand


By Steve Glines

* Steve Glines is the book designer for the Ibbetson Street Press of Somerville, Mass.

When I was about ten my grandfather gave me a book he had been saving just for me. It was my first book. I don’t remember the title or content but it was a beautiful book, my own book. It had a dust jacket that my grandfather removed and tossed aside to reveal a soft brown leather book with the title and author embossed in 18 carrot gold on the cover and spine. Both the cover and spine had been tooled with a beautiful border. I thought the spine especially beautiful. The hide had been glued to a form of cardboard made of cotton fibers and the endpapers of the book itself were glued to the spine with the glue joint covered over with a beautiful hand made gold and green marbled paper. The body of the book had been printed by letterpress in giant 16 page signatures then sewn into a cloth backing with a Smyth Sewing machine. The first signature of the book, only 4 pages, had been printed by engraving and contained the title page with a florid design together with a portrait of the author reminiscent of those found on currency. There was a phantom signature of tissue paper between each of the engraved pages to protect the engravings.

You could tell the book had not been opened and read because the signatures had not been cut. The binding process included folding and gathering the signatures then sewing them into the backing but the resulting signatures were not trimmed as they are today. My grandfather ceremoniously handed me his paper cutter and instructed me to cut the signatures firmly but gently. For him learning how to properly open a book was a sacred right of passage. As I slowly sliced the first signature open I could feel the individual cotton fibers stretch then break as I drew the dull knife upwards. By the time I had cut the last signature the book had become mine. I would be the first person to set eyes on the printed page since they had come off the press. There was magic in that.

When I opened the book and looked at the first page in the first signature I could see the slightly uneven imprint of the type in the soft textured paper. Even without a magnifying glass I could see the needle edge of the types serifs where it cut into the paper carrying with it the carbon black filled ink. It was beautiful.

Books were made this way for several hundred years. Typesetting was a tedious, expensive and challenging work when done by hand and dangerous when done by a linotype machine that cast individual lines or slugs of metal type from negatively shaped type masters and hot molten lead. These slugs were then printed for proofing on small presses called galley presses. When all was well the slugs were then placed in a large 2 x 4 page panel for printing. Two of these were required to print one sixteen page signature. It was a slow tedious labor intensive process.

Before about 1970 fine, hardbound books were only printed by letterpress. I am old enough to remember when the change occurred. Offset printing was considered cheep and not worthy of a fine printed book. By 1980 all hardbound books were printed by offset lithography.

Offset lithography printing uses a flat metal or plastic sheet called a plate that has been photographically prepared so that ink sticks to the image area and is rejected elsewhere. Ink is transferred from the plate to a roller that presses into ink into the paper. One of the drawbacks to offset lithography is that the offset plate cannot carry as much ink to the paper or press as hard as a letterpress. Because of this the paper used in offset printing must be very flat and without the “tooth” that characterizes the “fine” papers used in letterpress. When the thin film of ink on an offset roller is pressed against the very flat paper, fine lines, dots and type serifs tend to spread so serif type faces printed by offset tend to look a little muddy when compared to identical type printed by letterpress. This feature of offset printing lead directly to an explosion in the use of san-serif type faces like Helvetica, Universe and others in book design. One good feature of offset printing is the ability to print photographs with a resolution many times greater than letterpress offers.

In older books photographs were often printed individually then glued or “tipped” into the book or entire signatures of photographs or drawings were printed by etching presses then sewn into the book. The maximum resolution of a letterpress was about 45 dots per inch using newsprint and as much as 85 dots per inch using paper specially prepared for the purpose. This paper was often hard and brittle from the clay used to prepare the paper to take a very sharp image. The harder and flatter the surface the sharper the dots could be. Etching presses or rotogravure, are capable of impressions of up to 200 dots per inch but this process is very expensive and gravure doesn’t print type very well at all. The colorful magazines distributed with Sunday Newspapers were always printed by rotogravure. That was then; today both newspapers and the colorful magazines they contain on Sunday are printed by offset. Because offset printing was an inexpensive way to print both type and art on the same page it became very popular with textbook publishers. It didn’t take long for paperback publishers to switch to offset followed quickly by traditional publishers.

Not only did the switch to offset represent a revolution in printing at the same time there was a revolution in typesetting. Letterpress printing was a part the old industrial revolution characterized by big dirty machines, steam engine technology. Typesetting was a blue-collar profession conducted in the bowls of a factory. Type was literally hot as the liquid lead flowed down open channels to form the slug in a linotype machine. In the late 1960’s “cold type” became popular. Early “cold type” systems came from IBM Selectric ™ Typewriters modified to print real typographers’ fonts onto specially prepared paper and Compugraphic ™ and other brands of machines that composed type onto photographic paper. These galleys would then be used to “paste-up” a dummy of the publication which then was then used to photographically create an offset plate.

Today, of course, hot type and paste-up is a thing of the past because of the multitude of personal computer programs that can electronically paste-up, proof the image on ink jet or laser printers and electronically create an offset plate. Xerox, Hewlett Packard and Kodak all pioneered in the use of ink jet and laser as “page-proof printers” with a quality image that rivaled or bettered that produced by an offset press.

The best offset printers can print images with a resolution of 300 dots per inch at a rate measuring in the thousands of impressions per minute but an offset pressman might have to print as many as 50 sheets to get the inking on a plate exactly right before turning up the press. Because of the tuning required an offset job is cheaper than a proofing press only of the print run exceeds many hundred or thousands of impressions. For many years book publishing has been constrained by the economies of scale in offset printing. For example, printing a 200 page paperback book might cost as much as $2000 to set up and 2 cents per impression. Printing and binding 100 copies could cost $35 or more per book but in quantities of 50,000 the cost falls into the range of pennies per book.

Modern proofing presses, for example Hewlett Packard’s Indigo series of industrial laser printers, are capable of printing an 11” by 17” images in full color with a resolution of 1200 dots per inch at the rate of up to 1000 pages per minute. The quality of the image produced by these printers is superior to almost all offset printing but cost considerably more than offset at its optimum but considerably less than offset in very small quantities. With the introduction of home, commercial and industrial laser printers “printing on demand” was born and “publishing on demand” soon after.

Publishers face two dilemmas: First, Can they sell enough books to make publishing worthwhile? Second, how can publishers keep their back list alive without having to print and stock uneconomical quantities of books? For most mainstream publishers pre- and post-publication costs dictate an initial print run of many thousands of books. These same economics prohibit the publication of books with potentially smaller audiances and prohibit altogether books on the backlist that could have long but active tails. A book by a major publisher that might sell 100 – 300 books a year in perpetuity is quickly marked out of print.

“Publishing on demand,” or POD, is a technology that solves the problem of small press runs. POD marries laser proofing technology with conventional bindery equipment to create a book production system that is as efficient at printing a one-of book as it is 2,000 books. Of course the unit cost is much, much higher and the production rate much lower than offset but back listed books that once would have gone out of print can be quickly and effectively produced by a Lulu or Lightning press one at a time at a cost point guaranteed to earn the publisher a profit.

To a small to medium sized publisher POD is a revolution. Not only does the use of POD eliminate an investment in inventory but the quality of publication is greater or equal to that produced by offset. The simple elimination of large inventories allows smaller publishers to publish more books than they otherwise could and the availability of POD published works guarantees that no book will ever go out of print. The agility of POD will almost guarantee that new and exciting works will flow to those publishers who using POD, will be able to respond quickly and decisively to the market. By reducing the cost to market while maintaining expected quality will insure the publisher using POD will have an advantage over their more conventional competition.

Review of Bicycles, Canoes, Drums by Dan Sklar

Review of Bicycles, Canoes, Drums

By Dan Sklar

Ibbetson Street Press 2008

25 School St. Somerville, Mass. 02143

http://ibbetsonpress.com




Fans of European 19th century verse, thick with symbolism and multi-syllabic, will find little to love in Dan Sklar’s Bicycles, Canoes, Drums. Sklar’s poetry could be characterized as American Primitive, clean and bracing as creek water. Like Whitman, Sklar celebrates the mystery and profundity of the everyday. This is “guy” poetry, muscularly chronicling the days and to-do list of the contemporary American male, helplessly and joyfully committed to the challenges of raising a houseful of boys, teaching sleepy-eyed college students, and handling the ignominies of manuscript rejection letters.



In Teacher, My Son is Not a Robot, Sklar tackles a standardized-test-obsessed school system: “So his math is not perfect/and he writes some letters backwards/but man can he read and his poems are poetry/and they made the teachers cry/that was all I needed to hear.”



Sklar takes on the mid-life heavy-lifting for us all in The Importance of Sweat:

“It is important to sweat//to be in a union//to spend time wandering the streets//to let yourself go to hell and get in fights/and lose a job and lie on the floor//and listen to old Thelonious Monk records/and smoke cigars and stare blankly and/regret everything you ever did/even the good things.”



Sklar unerringly sights a target and brings it down at our feet, gutting it of all extraneous parts. He strips middle-class life, its complexities, its fears, to the basics, into an ecstatic distillation. The last line of What I Think About Sometimes is: “When your bicycle is stolen, walk.” A timely reminder that that we must “repo” our happiness back from those who may hold the state of our 401k’s, but not our lives, in their hands.



Sklar’s poems tumble and sing with enormously universal appeal.



Reviewed by Lisa Beatman, author of Manufacturing America: Poems from the Factory Floor (Ibbetson Street Press 2008).

JOHN AMEN: PUTTING HIS LITERARY MAGAZINE ON A “PEDESTAL”

JOHN AMEN: PUTTING HIS LITERARY MAGAZINE ON A “PEDESTAL”

By Doug Holder

John Amen is the founder of the well-regarded online magazine “Pedestal” that was launched in 2000. His most recent poetry collection is titled: “More of Me Disappears” that was praised by the prominent American poet Thomas Lux . I talked with Amen on my Somerville Community Access TV Show: “Poet to Poet: Writer to Writer.”



Doug Holder: Why did you start an online literary magazine like Pedestal. Are online lit. mags as important today as print journals?

John Amen: In terms of starting the magazine I guess I have always been interesting in doing something like this. I always thought it would be a print publication. Around 1998 or 9, I started to explore the Internet more. I noticed that there were a few literary magazines online like: PIFF, THREE CANDLES, etc… I noticed a few science fiction online zines as well. When I encountered this it seemed like a very interesting way to go. But there was, and still is, some prejudice against online publishing.

DH: Yeah, but some say Pedestal is as good or better than most print magazines.

JA: Yeah. I think so. I think we have come a long way. We have been around for eight years. We have managed to create something that is well regarded. It is gratifying to see how things evolved. We have brought together the tradition of poetry magazines with the technology of the time. I think we have traditional literary values in a modern setting.


DH: Are you a nonprofit?


JA: Yes. Going nonprofit helped us a lot. The first time we went nonprofit I would open letters and see checks from readers, and it was kind of mind blowing. It was a mark of approval, validation.

DH: How are you going to adjust for the economic straits the country is in?

JA: October is usually our fund raising month. We held off sending emails to readers. I thought that this would be the worst time to ask readers for money. Fortunately we got a grant. We do pay writers. Right now we are going to publish the same amount. But we would modify it if need be.

DH: In an interview with poet Gloria Mindock, you said that you like being an editor because they are on: “ …the firing line of creative endeavor.” Can you expand on that?

JA: I am exposed to a lot of poetry, manuscripts. You see such diverse work, and you get a sense of what’s going on. What are the collective mindsets? Are the timeless themes still there? etc… You can see how things evolve…you have a sense of connection.

DH: Do you think you have seen more of your own work published because you are the editor of a well-known magazine?

JA: I think it helps more with speaking and reading engagements. I see it primarily in that area, but it may be true in publishing.

DH: I notice you publish such well-known small press poets as Jared Smith, A.D. Winans, and Eric Greinke. What do you look for in a poem?

JA: Jared’s work has evolved and changed…I like his work a lot.

The poem has to have that intangible magic that grabs you buy the balls. Of all the poems you’ve read, what poem do you remember? And after all the things you read only a few things really stick.

At Pedestal we are open to a lot of work that others might not be. There are a lot of poets I have connected with that I am not sure other editors have. I am not afraid to go with them.

DH: Does the buck stop with you?

JA: It varies. Sometimes I am more involved. If my editor is given full judgment over the work—then I usually sit back.

DH: In your poems there is mention of time in NYC and drug abuse. Is this autobiographical?

JA: Loosely. I did live in New York for a while. I have experience with ”substances.” The details are modified.

DH: There are a lot of late night diners too.

JA: I always loved diners. Diners at 2AM, with bad coffee.

DH: I had a disagreement with Rebecca Wolff the founder of Fence Magazine. I had asked her if any of her books were Print-On-Demand. She told me that she would never use Print -On-Demand…she never saw one that looked like a real book. Do you feel there is an elitist attitude toward POD? How do you feel about POD as a method for publishing books?

JA: I emailed somebody, and asked him : “What does it matter if something is POD? He said the potential problem is that people put out these books but they are not invested in them, so there is a surplus of books with no backing.

However most people I know who are involved in the business of publishing poetry are pretty invested in poetry.

DH: I mean the publisher has to buy the books from the online printer, he has to edit them, select the poet, design the book, etc…That’s an investment.

JA: Financially it seems that it would be to the advantage of the publisher to be invested in his project.

DH: Do you have an MFA?

JA: No. I majored in English and Philosophy as an undergrad. I took creative writing classes as part of the degree and I enjoyed it. I enjoyed the space to explore and interact. I suppose, a lot of people go to an MFA to get a teaching job and to get published.

DH: Do you teach?

JA: I tutor high school age kids. I have taught four-day workshops at Colleges, etc…

DH: What would you tell the readers about submitting to Pedestal?

JA: Send us your work. We are always open. Pedestal is doing well and we are going to be around.

Harp All Made of Gold (Thunderstack Production, 2006) by Klyd Watkins

Harp All Made of Gold (Thunderstack Production, 2006) by Klyd Watkins with Family and Friends

Review by Pam Rosenblatt

Klyd Watkins with Family and Friends’ Harp All Made of Gold CD has been produced three times: 2000, 2004, 2006, always by Thundershack Production. This experimental piece combines traditional myth telling with concrete to abstract and abstract to concrete music and poetry. It’s a country Nashville music style of the 1960’s gone wild, so wild that it takes the listener two or three tries before he can understand what’s going on. But once the listener comprehends the purpose of the far out, almost drug-like state of the music and the eerie repetitious chorus and speaker who often says lyrical phrases with veering off with the use of improvisations, the listener almost laughs at himself for not catching on the theme of the text more quickly.

Basically, Harp All of Gold CD is a story tale about what happens to Jack of Jack and the Beanstalk fame and to his cherished golden harp after the falling of the beanstalk and the mean Giant. The whole piece is composed to be sensed as a dream-like state, like the Greek mythological sea journey that Odysseus took when he and his sailors had to fight the music of the Sirens on their way back from Troy to Ithaca and their loved ones. Actually, Watkins makes a lot of references to Greek mythology in Harp All Made of Gold. At one point, Watkins has Jack kiss his own reflection in water, reminding the listener of Narcissus who did the same thing after a maiden cursed Narcissus to fall in love with himself because he rejected her advances. Then, as an effective, though sometimes irritating, musical technique, Watkins has created a chorus that echoes the speaker’s words and phrases, sounding like the choruses found in Greek tragedies like Sophocles’ Antigone and Oedipus Rex. The chorus singing on Watkins’ CD is, in reality, family members and friends of Watkins from Nashville, Tennessee.

There are nine tracks on this CD, and each track glides smoothly into the next. Even the final track (Track 9) runs back onto the first track (Track 1) as though the story never ends. It’s circular. And through the use of echoing repetitive phrases and improvisations of words on the CD, Watkins catches the listener’s attention. The spoken words sometimes are different from the written words inside the booklet found in the front plastic CD cover.

Now, this musical story tale begins with a man named “Jack” who simply “walked up a dry creek bed…” The listener knows nothing more about this man “Jack”, except he has “walked up a dry creek bed…” This concrete statement gently eases the listener into a very creative, abstract and experimental work. The next line suggests the journey to follow “… was/ /easy traveling…”, so the listener expects a clear and concrete music and poetry experience, although the background music reminds the listener of Nashville tunes. Then, the tone changes, as soon as in the fourth and fifth lines which read, “where the bank/was deep/enough to keep tree limbs/
from flapping /in his face…” Suddenly things get abstracted as if the listener is entering a dream-state of the speaker, as read in the lines that follow: “among the pathless / forest hills/ deep enough…”

In the next few lines, Watkins uses colorful, articulate description and a concrete simile to develop the story line:

that his staff carved over with
oval emblems of frogs and owls and
dancing ladies—the ball
on top—could be seen by Squirrels
beside the creek bed
bobbing above the bank top
as he hiked upward and eastward—
calluses on the bottom of his bare feet
so efficient—so dense—like those
on the tips of a bass player’s fingers — the skin
looks nearly normal and does not deaden
that feel.

The listener understands that Jack’s staff is a special one, craved so ornately with animals and “dancing ladies”. His journey hasn’t been an easy as the “calluses on the bottom of his bare feet/so efficient—so dense—like those on the tips of a bass player’s fingers….” But he is confused as to who Jack is and what the purpose of the journey through the creek and the increasingly abstracted music is. Watkins has combined concrete ideas with abstracted ones to make the listener feel a little dizzy and uncertain about the trip he is about to go on.

Watkins gets more concrete and informative toward the end of the section when the speaker reveals that “On [Jack’s] back a harp he carried,/ a harp all made of gold.”
Now, this harp turns out to be rather unusual. Not only is it made out of gold, but is a woman and sings to Jack during the nighttime when he sleeps. Jack only wishes that the harp sing to him while he is awake. Watkins cleverly writes, “the songs she played made him dream things She teased him/with choruses/about her giant—…” Now, the listener is becoming aware the whole composition of the CD – the music and the actual spoken poetry – is imaginary. Since when is a harp a woman? Since when can a harp actually sing? And since when does a giant actually exist? The answers to these rhetorical questions are all the same: “Probably never” – except through the assistance of a very creative poet/musician’s imagination.

Watkins is slowly letting the listener in on the meat and potatoes of the story line. The listener does realize that three characters exist in the story: a man named “Jack”; a singing female harp; and a mean giant. But where these three characters are headed is still abstract, still unclear. Finally, Watkins lets the listener in on another tidbit about the relationship between the harp and the giant and Jack:




She teased him
with choruses
about her giant—
track 3— choruses about her giant
teased him with choruses
like:
Fee Fi Foe Fum
Dread so hungry
got to smell him out some
Englishmun Some Englishmun…


Now the listener has been informed that the harp was once owned by the Giant “Dread”,
and that “Dread” wasn’t a kind giant. Where “Jack” fits in at this point is unclear, except that the harp is flirtatious with her new owner.
In Track 5, Watkins clarifies things in words, though the music is still dream-like. The listener is informed that “Dread” is

The very ogre
Who’d tried to sniff out old Jack
For supper— who chased after Jack
Fleeing with the stolen treasure
But Jack made it back down
And grabbed his axe
And chopped down the bean stalk
As Dread tumbled out of the sky
Behind them…

This point in the CD and in the booklet is where the listener probably has figured out that Watkins’ Harp All Made of Gold is an experimental poetic version of “Jack and the Bean Stalk” – mostly after the falling of the bean stalk and of “Dread” the giant. A breath of relief for deciphering this complicated CD both musically and poetically most likely occurs. And the rest of the story line falls easily into place.

The ending of the story tale is interestingly left ambiguous. The question remains: Did this “Jack” really experience the climb of the bean stalk, rescue the singing gold harp from the mean giant, chop down the bean stalk and thus kill “Dread”, journey along and through a creek to a campsite where “He hoped they would listen/to him tell about the giants”? Or is “Jack” dreaming or fantasizing about this whole journey?

Klyd Watkins’ Harp All Made of Gold is a CD to listen to if you’re willing to open your mind to experimental music and poetry combined. If you are flexible enough to accept things differently, then you will enjoy Watkins and his family and friends’ work on this CD.

Recommended.

--Pam Rosenblatt/Ibbetson Update/Oct 2008/Somerville, Mass.

They Don’t Look Like Real Books: Taking A Stand on Print-On-Demand.

( Rebecca Wolff: Founder of "Fence" magazine



They Don’t Look Like Real Books: Taking A Stand on Print-On-Demand.

* With Rebecca Wolff at the Massachusetts Poetry Festival (Lowell, Mass.)


I was at the Massachusetts Poetry Festival on Oct 11, 2008 to take part in the Small Press Festival. There were a number of presses and magazines represented there, such as: Godine Publishing, Cervena Barva Press, Ibbetson Street, Boston Review, Fulcrum, Zephyr Press, Zoland Books and many more. I got the chance to speak to many folks, both publishers and the general public. Ed Sanders, legendary poet, and founder of the 60’s political/ folk/art/rock band the “Fugs,” as well as “Fuck You: The Magazine of the Arts,”( to name just a few accomplishments), was there. He was in Ibbetson Street 23, and I interviewed him recently for The Somerville News, so it was nice to run into him.

As I wandered around the tables, I stopped off at Fence Books, an offshoot of the hip and influential literary magazine “Fence” I spoke to the founder Rebecca Wolff, who I met briefly years ago at the Boston Alternative Poetry Conference. Since then she has come along way and Fence has received recognition from the literati, and is now housed at the University of Albany in New York, where they are the recipient (no doubt) of institutional largess. I admired the Fence books that were on the table and innocently asked if any were “Print-On-Demand.” Well Wolff was like a wolf on a meat truck, and replied: Never! “I never saw one that looked like a ‘real’ book.”

Well perhaps Rebecca works in a rarefied atmosphere, far above the banal masses of the small press. But as an editor and reviewer myself, I see a slew of poetry books each year, review my share: good, bad and indifferent. I certainly can determine what a “real” book looks like. And these perfect-bound collections coming from Print-On-Demand printers are “real” books, and books to be proud of.

I invited Wolff to come by the Ibbetson Press table to take a look. She did after I called out her name as she passed my table. She looked over titles and said: “ Oh, I don’t know, the covers look like pictures of pictures.” Whatever. She did allow; “ I suppose they are comparable.”

There was a small press panel during the festival, and I situated myself in the front row so I could partake in the Q and A. On the panel were Ed Sanders, Geoffrey Young, Anna Moschovakis, Rebecca Wolff, and Kyle Schlesinger. Somerville, Mass. poet Joe Torra, a neighbor of mine, moderated it.

I asked the panelists about the “elitist” attitudes I face when I tell people we now publish Print-On-Demand books. I used Rebecca Wolff’s comment as an example. I talked about the history of the small press and its role in fostering new talent, its job of getting worthy poets on the margin out there and heard. For many of us, without the largess of the academy, foundation grants, big lips for ass kissing, etc…the only affordable way ( especially in the economic straits we have now) is Print-On-Demand. Because of low and non-existent start up prices, and printing geared to exactly how much we need at a given time, we don’t have books sitting around collecting dust. The books are quality productions, our own have been bought by university libraries, bookstores, for classes, and we get regular commissions. We are lucky if we break even, but you go in this for the love.

Anyway the panelist seemed to agree that Print-On-Demand is a viable option. Sanders, a veteran of the Mimeograph Revolution on the Lower East Side of NYC in the 60’s reminded us of the importance of printing poetry, even if it is a simple broadside, and has a press run of 2 or 3 copies. Another panelist said if he had Print-On-Demand in his day, all the books decaying in his garage would not be there. Wolff made some comments about her advocacy of poets and her efforts for the best presentation of their work ( as if we don’t!). At the end she said: ” I am intrigued…” or something in that vein, well, you know the drill.

Whenever a new technology, or new approach, is around there is always a lot of resistance. But now publishers like David Godine Jr., and others are starting to experiment with Print-On-Demand. We must remember what Jerome Rothenburg points out in his preface to “A Secret History of the Lower East Side” ( as noted in the program for the festival:

“American poetry, the part by which it has been and will be known, has long been on the margins, nurtured in the margins, carried forward, vibrant in the margins…”

Perhaps, now that Wolff has joined the ranks of the literati, she has lost sight of the fact. Let’s encourage not discourage.


Doug Holder/ Ibbetson Update

A Clock With No Hands. Poems By Tom Sexton.

A Clock With No Hands. Poems By Tom Sexton. (Adastra Press 16 Reservation Rd. Easthampton, Ma. 01027) $16.


As a small press publisher, I have always looked up to the likes of David Godine, Jr, and Gary Metras, (publisher of the Adastra Press). Mr. Metras has been publishing poetry books since 1979, and if you examine his title list you will see such small press favorites as: Alan Catlin, Leonard Cirino, Michael Casey, not to mention the likes of Thomas Lux, Jack Gilbert. and the list goes on. Metras, who was recently profiled in Poets and Writers magazine, publishes wonderfully crafted books, in which production values, as well as poetry, are very important.

That being said, I have been in contact with Metras (a well-respected poet in his own right), and he will appear on my Somerville Cable Access TV Show ‘Poet to Poet: Writer to Writer’ this fall (2008) The latest poetry collection he sent me is “A Clock With No Hands,” by Tom Sexton. I have to say hands down that this is great stuff.

Sexton was born in Lowell in 1940. He went on to be one of the two professors who began the English Dept. at the newly established Anchorage campus of the University of Alaska. He taught there for twenty-four years.

The poems in the collection deal with Sexton’s hometown of Lowell, Mass, as he experienced it in the 40’s and 50’s. Thornton Wilder would be an admirer of this collection. Sexton acts like the narrator of Wilder’s “Our Town”, bringing out the flavor, the workers, the old factories, the canals, of this down-at-the-heels, old mill city.

I think readers who live in Lowell, as well as readers who never been near the banks of the Merrimack River could appreciate the poetry. Like all quality work it has that ‘universal” sensibility.

Being Jewish, I found the poem: “Rag Man” particularly touching. The man in this poem is sort of the “Merchant of Venice’ of Lowell. And the boy observing him finds out that yes, a Jew does indeed bleed like the rest of us:

“… Pray for the conversion of
the Jews,” the priest in the pulpit said.
“They killed Christ and have the devil’s
tail beneath their coats.” Mulligan said
he heard someone say that to his father.
I watch the rag man, scarecrow-thin,
below me on the street. No horns. No tail.
He gets down and takes something from
his pocket for his horse and then goes on,
the wet cobbles like skulls in his wake.”

Food for me has always been very evocative. A simple kosher hot dog can be more powerful than say, a Rembrandt or a Mapplethorpe. The poem “Hoare’s Fish Market” brings me back to a time when I visited the market with my late Dad. I can remember that first waft of the ocean when you entered the store, and the dead stare of the fish on their deathbed of ice.


“I walked to the market with my father
on Fridays to buy four pieces of cod
wrapped in paper soaked with grease
by the time we got back to our kitchen
where my mother and sister were waiting.
If times were good, my father bought
a piece for a neighbor who always called
it hake, or skate if he just wanted to talk.

Mr. Hoare, our Neptune in tall boots,
watched over it all: haddock and cod,
halibut, tuna, swordfish and salmon
all laid out on an endless bed of ice.
When he spoke, you heard the distant sea
with its vast multitudes that would always be.

Highly Recommended.


Doug Holder/ Ibbetson Update

"For All These Wretched, Beautiful & Insignificant Things So Uselessly & Carelessly Destroyed." (Poems) by Hosho McCreesh

"For All These Wretched, Beautiful

& Insignificant Things So Uselessly

& Carelessly Destroyed." (Poems) by Hosho McCreesh

ISBN: 978-1-934513-09-5

Sunnyoutside Press

P.O. Box 911

Buffalo, NY 14207

USA

www.sunnyoutside.com

Hosho McCreesh © 2008



Review by Mike Amado



If Morrissey, back in the days of his former band The Smiths,

were to inspire poets to explore the beauty of long titles, and

then grade them, "For All These. . ." by Hosho McCreesh

would receive an A-plus. But McCreesh ups the volume with

these terse, yet full and rich verses of "For All These Wretched,

Beautiful& Insignificant Things So Uselessly & Carelessly Destroyed."

It great to have a title that's a part of and is one with the poem.

It's refreshing to read a collection that has a long title itself,

(as opposed to having a title consisting of only one word,

which is a current thing to do). These first line-ish / titles provide an

expansive foyer to a familiar structure.



The poem:

"What We Want Is a Nice Bottle,

A Little Music & Some Humble Place

To Host Little Celebrations of Living -

...maybe a decent potato soup &

a few bucks left over

after covering our nut.

But there's nothing for it,

not in this kind of world . . ."



Embedded within the images and simpleness of the everyday is

a longing and a search to reclaim, remember and birthe these

celebrations and beauties once again. A sort of repairing of that

which was dismantled. These are words of loss, sadness and

resiliency.





In the same vein, "Full Moon, Half Sun . . ." dwells with a

desolation:

"Long Shadows Draped

Over Dusty Backroads -

A Train Whistle Cries Out

Across the Rio Grande Valley -

& life,

thus far:

a search

for some place

that cannot be

taken

away.



Poet, artist and prose writer Hosho McCreesh was first introduced to

the word through music. And a music gently flows in the voice of this

chapbook, singing standards of a new age.

On the covers and festooning the inside pages of "For All These. . ."

are the illustrations of Kevin Charles Kline. Basic drawings of skeletons,

body parts and all sorts of anatomy scatted about so "Carelessly",

driving home the books premise.





McCreesh performs some dismantling of his own in the poem "It Was Paris . . ."

Leveling Paris' legendary assumptions into ordinary truths, that, Paris is

after all like "anywhere" and "everywhere" else.

Describing the fabled city as, "Vibrating With some Kind of Romantic,

Sad Song . . .", the speaker desperately walking the streets,

"Lonely as a weeping trumpet," only to find at that moment,

"a flash of angry movement" - an empty dog food can thrown in the Seine.

"Suddenly the day went cold,

went painfully, typically

unromantic."





McCreesh also pays a lament to Vincent Van Gogh in

"This Dizzying, Senseless Place . . ." asking:

what if his beloved would have, "just/ taken/ the/ ear"

and accepted it as:

"a gesture, an offering,

a talisman of something

deep & honest & true."



"For All These . . ." takes the reader from Paris to the American

south west and down to the lonely depths of the human condition.

A world where " . . . we ask too much of life.", and rue how even

the insignificant can be taken for granted and lost even to itself.



*Mike Amado is a reviewer for the Boston Area Small Press and Poetry Scene

and the author of "stunted Inner Child Shot the TV" ( Cervena Barva Press).

Francis d’Assisi by Gary Metras

Francis d’Assisi 2008
Gary Metras
Finishing Line Press
$14.00

today’s need for ecological awareness on a minute level - an awareness of being who we are and who we were and who we are becoming; this poem preaches in the same way any poem imparts its subject - the message is in clear and forthright verses. Gary Metras is not embarrassed to relate the life of a Saint. “whatever house they enter, they are first to say, “Peace to this house.”

‘A poem’ expounds on, “and still they come.” yes. this small book speaks to me as a Christian but it is so much more if the reader is willing to go beyond the obvious. the first few pages question; questions I did not think lent to the reading or the poem. Metras’ writing shines by the third page. from then on, whether the reader knows the story or not, there is a push to recognize phrases as ones’ own. the poem begins again and again, without ending.

“the brothers and the people tore down the folksy
church
that cradled the simple chapel,
quarried whole hillsides for marble,
in the name of Francis,
mined clay banks from rivers to bake into bricks,
stacked them
taller and wider for the bronze and marble,
in the name of Francis.

St. Francis poem encompasses all the proverbs and metaphors for our present generation. metaphors we place our knowledge on.’ a poem’ is a telling, not a reinvention of what was; it is what is.

for me a good poem takes me to my deepest self. I may cry, get angry or sometimes feel nothing. all the above takes place in the 25 pages.

“and in the great age of global leisure,
tourists came, more and more each year,
and with them hotels, restaurants, laundries

came coca cola, levis jeans. came iPod.


and somewhere in this story of faith
the hills of hell was made heaven
in the name of Francis”

one of my complaints is that St. Francis ‘ life story says it all and he makes no judgments for us, (“silent teaching.”) we are allowed the luxury of making our own judgments. by the end of this, ‘a poem,’ I think Metras leaves the story for a modern day tale of woe that may not be conducive to the epic faith of St. Francis. I think the reader already knows the message and can connect the dots themselves. negatives aside, there is a communion of chapters, a natural love of story telling and a grace beyond words.

Irene Koronas
Poetry Editor
Ibbetson Street Press
www.ibbetsonpress.com

Investigations:The Mystery of the Girl Slueth by Kathleen Aguero

Investigations
The Mystery of the Girl Sleuth
Kathleen Aguero
Cervena Barva Press
$700

Investigations is a celebration of Nancy Drew novels (50 years) during the late 1950’s. she led a way for young women who wanted more than what they, may of perceived, as domestic boredom. Nancy did not have the proverbial mother to relate too. she also had an absentee father, a lawyer. this left the young investigator on her won to rife out her suspicions. unlike superman who needed superpowers to accomplish his task of riding the world of evil doers, Nancy worked closely with her friends for what seemed a more human story.

“I understand, the mysteries of the scoured pot,
clogged toilet, tolling dinner bell,
hold no appeal. but chances are you’re not
going to marry Carson Drew,
conveniently absent when the action starts,
never demanding you halt mid-case to listen
to his tale of triumph at the office…”

Nancy Drew’s tale has been placed into the capable hands or words of Kathleen Aguero. Aguero translates, reinvents and looks for clues that relate to her present situations as in, ‘the case of the suicidal friend,’ “you didn’t leave a note, just your own body on the stairs.” and again in ‘jewel box,’ which I had the privilege of hearing the poet read Aguero shows us her mother’s delusional clarity, her mother’s love, the perception of honesty in leaving, of placing value in memory, connecting, collecting personal items, identifying their significance, “we have to do this now…” her poems are full of references, clues; the password:

“she was clever.
she found the wooden gate where they put the garbage out.
she pulled, but it was locked.
she waited, but no one came
so she joined the walkers, round and round the halls
out one door, in the other…

this is a clear case. this chapbook will leave you wanting more
of Kathleen Aguero’s writing.

Irene Koronas
Poetry Editor
Ibbetson Street Press
www.ibbetsonpress.com

MARTY BECKERMAN BRINGS “DUMBOCRACY” TO THE SOMERVILLE NEWS WRITERS FESTIVAL (Nov. 22, 2008)

MARTY BECKERMAN BRINGS “DUMBOCRACY” TO THE SOMERVILLE NEWS WRITERS FESTIVAL (Nov. 22, 2008)

By Doug Holder


Writer Marty Beckerman is an extremist. He “extremely” hates “extremists” of any stripe, be they Left or Right. He writes in the introduction to his book: “Dumbocracy: Adventures with the Loony Left, The Rabid Right, and other American Idiots,” (Disinformation Press) that:

“…extremists are no fun. Hardcore right-wingers wish to shove God down our throats, but hate the freedom of guys who shove things down one another’s throats…Meanwhile left-wingers wish to regulate our behavior with taxes on anything unhealthy/enjoyable, prohibitions on tactless speech and regulations that determine how much time we spend in the shower.”

You might think that Beckerman, an East Coast writer in his 20’s, might seriously lean to the Left. You’d be wrong. This dude looks askance at both extremes.

Beckerman, who will appearing at The Somerville News Writers Festival Nov. 22, 2008 recounts his experience with abortion activists, feminists, Republicans, Democrats, in short all the stumblebums on the scene. He records, like some hip Boswell, the life and times of this febrile Milieu, with all their many warts. The book is peppered with absurd quotes from these zealots, and he works in a very funny and astute commentary. Beckerman obviously has done his homework, and there is no paucity of levity in this book.

Like H.L.Mencken, (the famous columnist for The Baltimore Sun), said of Puritanism, Beckerman feels these foaming –at-the-mouth hordes are fearful “that someone, somewhere, may be happy.”


He writes:

“ Activists of the Left and Right, whose only pleasure is derived from depriving others of pleasure, have erected a Nanny State that forbids the enjoyment of anything. Our government spends zillions of dollars, and passes zillion of laws, to protect you from pornography, marijuana, alcohol, cigarettes and unhealthy food. Not only is the knee-jerk moral totalitarianism unnecessary, it often exacerbates the vice in question; forbidden fruit is far sweeter than mundane bullshit.”


To further illustrate his point of the absurdity of this maddening crowd, Beckerman gets a plum quote from feminist Sally Miller Gearhart in her essay: “ “The Future—If There Is One—Is Female”:

“To secure a world of female values and female freedom we must, I believe, add one more element to the structure of the future: the ratio of men to women must be radically reduced so that men approximate only ten percent of the population…One option is of course male infanticide.” Fortunately for us guys Gearhart later said that infanticide was “unworkable,” not immoral mind you!

And how about porno? Beckerman reminds us that Republican “Tricky” Dick Nixon believed that pornography had a direct link to crime. A task force he created opined:

“There is no warrant for continued government interference with the full freedom of adults to read, obtain or view whatever they wish.” In fact the commission determined that the majority of rapists for instance, viewed less pornography than the average American male, and lived in conservative Christian households.”

Beckerman has an interesting take on the sodomy question. It seems that the Supreme Court ruled in 2003 that laws that criminalize private bedroom behavior are unconstitutional. He writes that Republican Rick Santorum suggested that the US government designate all sexual intercourse illegal. He quotes Santorum:

“ If the Supreme Court says that you have the right to consensual sex within your home, then you have the right to bigamy, you have the right to polygamy, you have the right to incest, you have the right to adultery…homosexuality…man on child…It all comes from, I would argue this right to privacy that doesn’t exist in my opinion in the United Sates Constitution, this right that was created.”

Beckerman points out that the Senator is a devout Catholic, and doesn’t believe in in- vitro fertilization, so this implies, according to the author—he wants the extinction of humanity. Hmm…

Of course the Left has gone crazy in quite another way. Beckerman points out that Texas A&M “requires” faculty to celebrate and “promote” homosexuality. Carnegie Mellon University fired a staff member for refusing to wear a gay pride symbol during a sensitivity training. And the list goes on.

In this time of violent fundamentalist creeds, virulent free market capitalism, regulation, deregulation, blue and red states, and hate, we need someone like Beckerman to step back and throw a metaphorical pie in these jokers’ eyes.


--Doug Holder


* For more info. About The Somerville News Writers Festival go to: http://somervillenewswritersfestival.com