NEAR OCCASIONS OF SIN
By: Louis McKee
Cynic Press
Post Office Box 40691
Philadelphia, PA 19107
Price: $8.00
44 Poems / 79 pages
ISBN: 0-9673401-6-0

Review By: CHARLES P .RIES

Louis McKee exemplifies the ‘philosopher poet’. From the title of his last collection of poetry Near Occasions of Sin, to the content of his poetry we see a writer who is not just good with words, or good with image, or selective about the moments in time he chooses to inspect, but a poet who is capable using his well- honed skill with word, image and observation and elevating all of them with a philosopher’s mind. McKee is rich and textured in his yearning observations, nimble in his rich insights and wise in his conclusions. I felt I was not only being entertained, but learning. I was growing larger because of his clarity and counsel. It is not surprising that McKee has led an examined life as suggested in his poem,

“After The Sixth Visit”: “That’s that one / when you lie / back and say no- / thing, everything / having been said / at least five times / already, and she / says well, what / are you thinking / right now? And you / tell her that / you’re thinking you / want to fuck her / and she says why / do you think that / is? but it is / too late, time is / gone, fifty minute / hours, seventy / dollars, and you / know when you leave / that you won’t be / back, you are better / then you have / any right to expect.”

McKee is a man who wants love, who loves love; a man who adores women but has had more then his share of challenges getting them, keeping them, and loving them. He, like all lovers (and writers), is a work in progress. This is illustrated in his poem,

“Failed Haiku”: “This evening I took a moment / to indulge a fantasy – you, / walking naked along a Jersey beach, / the sunlight on your lovely ass. / An ancient Japanese master / could work miracles with as much. / I am content with this.”

And again from his poem, “The Reason I Write”: “I like to think she gets naked / and looks at herself in the full-length mirror; / as she does, and with a smile, slips /into soft bliss of soapy comfort, / the almost-too-hot water uncomfortable / for just a moment but then just right. / With her wondrous hair pulled up, / she uses it as a pillow, pours a glass / of wine, then picks up a book of poems. / This is the reason they were written. / The rest of you, get your muses where you can. / I write for this woman, naked in a hot bath / under a modesty of bubbles. This is our / moment. Our poem. You find your own.”

As I read this, McKee’s thirteenth collection of poetry, I could not help but think of the late great small press poet Albert Huffstickler (who passed away in 2002) who, like McKee, had the ability to yearn and observe so purposefully. When I read poets of McKee or Huffstickler’s emotional depth I wish they wrote novels. I wish these short, rich, textured scenes and their meaning could be extended 300 more pages. Many poets write well, but few poets give us work as rich and profoundly meaningful as Louis McKee.

Ibbetson Update/ Charles Ries

POET MARTHA COLLINS PUTS UP A “BLUE FRONT”

Interview with Doug Holder

Martha Collins, the author of the critically acclaimed poetry collection “Blue Front” ( Graywolf, 2006) walks into a room and exudes energy, intelligence and warmth. Collins who established the Creative Writing Program at U/Mass Boston, and currently holds the Pauline Delaney Chair in Creative Writing at Oberlin College, seems to have abounding enthusiasm for her work and an infectious curiosity about the world-at-large. Born in Omaha Nebraska in 1940, she earned a B.A. at Stanford University and holds a PhD from the University of Iowa. Collins is the author of five books of poetry, a chapbook “Gone So Far,” and two co-translated poetry collections from the Vietnamese. Her honors include fellowships from the National Endowment of the Arts, the Ingram Merrill Foundation and others.

In her most recent collection “Blue Front,” Collins dissects a lynching her father experienced when he was a child in Cairo, Illinois. I spoke with Collins on my Somerville Community Access TV Show “ Poet to Poet: Writer to Writer.”

Doug Holder: The poet Richard Wollman told me he lives the “poetic life.” What would that be for you- and do you live it?

Martha Collins: I do. I write it. I’m not sure what it is. I think being a poet shapes the way you look at the world. I don’t write all the time. I don’t worry about it. There are periods when what I am doing is figuring out what I am going to do next.

It is work. It is natural work. It is work that engages me on every level. Both on the intellectual and emotional level.

So I don’t really know what the “poetic life” is. I am a poet, and my life gets filtered through that fact in ways I don’t even know.


DH: In your most recent poetry collection “ Blue Front” you dissect a horrible lynching that occurred in your father’s hometown of Cairo, Illinois. How much in detail did you father go into about this event?

MC: He didn’t say much at all. And when I was much younger I wasn’t asking a lot of questions. Once when I was a child we were driving through Cairo and my father told me that he saw someone hanged there. I had an image of a grizzly, public execution. Later I saw an exhibit of lynching postcards in New York City in 2001. The images were shocking. (This collection is now available online.) There were messages on the back of these cards. People kept them as souvenirs. I came across a series of postcards about the Cairo lynching. And for the first time I realized that this “hanging” that my father saw was a public lynching. By-the-time I came to this awareness my father had passed away—so I couldn’t ask him of course.

The point-of-view in this book is one of wonder. I did a tremendous amount of research, and used the Illinois State Archives extensively.
I visited Cairo several times.

DH: Is there a Southern sensibility down there?

MC. It is very Southern. Cairo is at the very tip of the state, where the Mississippi and Ohio Rivers come together. On one side of one river is Kentucky and the other side Missouri.

DH: How were you received down there when you were doing your research?

MC: People down there were terrific. The librarian was extremely helpful. I got into the vault and was able to look at the city directories. I talked to the city treasurer down there who was involved in the short and unsuccessful civil rights movement in Cairo from 1967 to 1973.

DH: Were you a Civil Rights activist?

MC: I was not much of an activist. I wasn’t unconcerned but I wasn’t an activist. I really became an activist during the Vietnam War.

DH: In the poem “Hung” from “Blue Front” you use stripped down language, short staccato bursts of language with great effect:

“ as a mirror on a wall, or the fall of a dress. A dress, a shirt on a line, to fasten to dry… with rope, like a swing, from a tree… from a pole, like a flag,… in the night, in the air, like a shirt, without, or without, or without only a shirt, without, like an empty sleeve.”

Was this approach used to convey the shock of the event?


MC: People asked about the style. I wrote it as I was finding out things. I didn’t know a lot when I started writing. I could not leave the subject alone. I was in Santa Fe on a residency, and I started playing around on the internet. I typed in “lynching,” etc.. The point of view of the book is “wondering.” What happened? I kept approaching it from different angels.

I obsessed about several aspects of the lynching. I just took a word: hang, shoot, burn, and sort of played with the various meanings of the words. It is a way of trying to get into the subject matter.

DH: You are known for your translations of Vietnamese poetry. How did you become involved with the language?

MC: Through a specific poet. This began at the William Joiner Center at U/Mass Boston. The center started as a veterans group in the late 80s’. Later they opened the workshop. From the very beginning they brought Vietnamese to the workshops. One of the amazing things was to see veterans from both sides reading together. I met Nguyen Tang Shih there and wound up translating him.

DH: Did you actually learn the language?

MC: I did. Kevin Bowen ( the director of William Joiner) called me up and said there is a course at Harvard and did I want to take it? I said sure. I took Vietnamese for most of a year.

DH: You are an editor of a literary magazine—right?

MC: I am the editor of Field magazine. It is published at Oberlin College in Ohio.

DH: You started the creative writing program at U/Mass Boston. Can you tell me about this?

MC: I started it in 1979. There were creative writing courses before. What I did was to give it structure.

DH: Dana Goodyear wrote in the New York Times Book Review of your book “Blue Front” that in least in regard to your syntax you are a language poet.

MC: I never considered myself in any school. There is an experimental quality in my poetry.


---Doug Holder



Martha Collins, the author of the critically acclaimed poetry collection “Blue Front” ( Graywolf, 2006) walks into a room and exudes energy, intelligence and warmth. Collins who established the Creative Writing Program at U/Mass Boston, and currently holds the Pauline Delaney Chair in Creative Writing at Oberlin College, seems to have abounding enthusiasm for her work and an infectious curiosity about the world-at-large. Born in Omaha Nebraska in 1940, she earned a B.A. at Stanford University and holds a PhD from the University of Iowa. Collins is the author of five books of poetry, a chapbook “Gone So Far,” and two co-translated poetry collections from the Vietnamese. Her honors include fellowships from the National Endowment of the Arts, the Ingram Merrill Foundation and others.

In her most recent collection “Blue Front,” Collins dissects a lynching her father experienced when he was a child in Cairo, Illinois. I spoke with Collins on my Somerville Community Access TV Show “ Poet to Poet: Writer to Writer.”

Doug Holder: The poet Richard Wollman told me he lives the “poetic life.” What would that be for you- and do you live it?

Martha Collins: I do. I write it. I’m not sure what it is. I think being a poet shapes the way you look at the world. I don’t write all the time. I don’t worry about it. There are periods when what I am doing is figuring out what I am going to do next.

It is work. It is natural work. It is work that engages me on every level. Both on the intellectual and emotional level.

So I don’t really know what the “poetic life” is. I am a poet, and my life gets filtered through that fact in ways I don’t even know.


DH: In your most recent poetry collection “ Blue Front” you dissect a horrible lynching that occurred in your father’s hometown of Cairo, Illinois. How much in detail did you father go into about this event?

MC: He didn’t say much at all. And when I was much younger I wasn’t asking a lot of questions. Once when I was a child we were driving through Cairo and my father told me that he saw someone hanged there. I had an image of a grizzly, public execution. Later I saw an exhibit of lynching postcards in New York City in 2001. The images were shocking. (This collection is now available online.) There were messages on the back of these cards. People kept them as souvenirs. I came across a series of postcards about the Cairo lynching. And for the first time I realized that this “hanging” that my father saw was a public lynching. By-the-time I came to this awareness my father had passed away—so I couldn’t ask him of course.

The point-of-view in this book is one of wonder. I did a tremendous amount of research, and used the Illinois State Archives extensively.
I visited Cairo several times.

DH: Is there a Southern sensibility down there?

MC. It is very Southern. Cairo is at the very tip of the state, where the Mississippi and Ohio Rivers come together. On one side of one river is Kentucky and the other side Missouri.

DH: How were you received down there when you were doing your research?

MC: People down there were terrific. The librarian was extremely helpful. I got into the vault and was able to look at the city directories. I talked to the city treasurer down there who was involved in the short and unsuccessful civil rights movement in Cairo from 1957 to 1963.

DH: Were you a Civil Rights activist?

MC: I was not much of an activist. I wasn’t unconcerned but I wasn’t an activist. I really became an activist during the Vietnam War.

DH: In the poem “Hung” from “Blue Front” you use stripped down language, short staccato bursts of language with great effect:

“ as a mirror on a wall, or the fall of a dress. A dress, a shirt on a line, to fasten to dry… with rope, like a swing, from a tree… from a pole, like a flag,… in the night, in the air, like a shirt, without, or without, or without only a shirt, without, like an empty sleeve.”

Was this approach used to convey the shock of the event?


MC: People asked about the style. I wrote it as I was finding out things. I didn’t know a lot when I started writing. I could not leave the subject alone. I was in Santa Fe on a residency, and I started playing around on the internet. I typed in “lynching,” etc.. The point of view of the book is “wondering.” What happened? I kept approaching it from different angels.

I obsessed about several aspects of the lynching. I just took a word: hang, shoot, burn, and sort of played with the various meanings of the words. It is a way of trying to get into the subject matter.

DH: You are known for your translations of Vietnamese poetry. How did you become involved with the language?

MC: Through a specific poet. This began at the William Joiner Center at U/Mass Boston. The center started as a veterans group in the late 80s’. Later they opened the workshop. From the very beginning they brought Vietnamese to the workshops. One of the amazing things was to see veterans from both sides reading together. I met Nguyen Tang Shih there and wound up translating him.

DH: Did you actually learn the language?

MC: I did. Kevin Bowen ( the director of William Joiner) called me up and said there is a course at Harvard and did I want to take it? I said sure. I took Vietnamese for most of a year.

DH: You are an editor of a literary magazine—right?

MC: I am the editor of Field magazine. It is published at Oberlin College in Ohio.

DH: You started the creative writing program at U/Mass Boston. Can you tell me about this?

MC: I started it in 1979. There were creative writing courses before. What I did was to give it structure.

DH: Dana Goodyear wrote in the New York Times Book Review of your book “Blue Front” that in least in regard to your syntax you are a language poet.

MC: I never considered myself in any school. There is an experimental quality in my poetry.


---Doug Holder

The Cambridge Spirit. Writings: Julia H. Low. Drawings by Andre B. Toth. (411 Franklin St. Apt. 813 Cambridge, Mass. 02139) juliahlow@yahoo.com bandol_thai@yahoo.com No. Price.

In the introduction to this beautifully illustrated book: “The Cambridge Spirit” Julia Low writes: “What makes Cambridge so special is the Cambridge spirit. A phenomenon that is abstract yet visible, an atmosphere that is brilliantly real.” Both Julia Low the writer and Andre Toth the illustrator dedicate this book to the residents and friends of the City of Cambridge and visitors alike.” The creators and many of the subjects written about are residents of the city.

Andre B. Toth has a watercolor illustration of the Charles River and its banks on the front cover…very fetching if I do say so myself. There are illustrations peppered throughout this book including: the Central Square T entrance, 1369 Coffee House, the Gateway to Harvard Yard, “Out of Town News,”, as well as some of the denizens of Cambridge’s many neighborhoods.

Julia Low who is the writer for this book is an unapologetic lover of the “Republic”. She writes in “My Heart Belongs to Cambridge,”

“Harvard square steals my soul,/ Nations learn to live in peace…Charles bank is my place to stroll/ My heart belongs to Cambridge.”

And how about an ode to of all places “The Cambridge Citywide Senior Center.”

“Couldn’t wait to be sixty-five/ on February twenty-eight/ When bus rides will be ten cents and five/ T ride will cost only two ten cents/ Know what diversity is?/ Find it at the Cambridge Citywide Senior Center… Come to 806 Massachusetts Avenue/ Where Arts and crafts, pool playing, and/ sounds of music fills the rooms.”

And here is a love poem to the River Charles:

So Long, Charles, Farewell!

Was it not so long ago,
When he held my hand
As we strolled along the Charles?
His whispers softly touching my heart.

Will I find his image above the clouds?
Or under the frozen waters,
Perhaps on the familiar bench
Where we once counted the fallen stars.

It was not long ago
When he let go my hand.
Since then, I have been longing and
Yearning for return.

So long, Charles, farewell!
“tis not the winter chill I cannot bear,
But the emptiness he left behind,
Since he went away…

This book is a very nice grassroots effort by two senior citizens, involved in a long, requited love-affair with the fair city of Cambridge.

Doug Holder/ Ibbetson update