The Essential Doug Holder, New & Selected Works
Doug Holder
Copyright © 2020 Doug Holder
Big Table Publishing
Boston, MA and San Francisco, CA
172 pages, $15, softbound
Review by Zvi A. Sesling
The first time I picked up a Doug Holder poetry book I immediately connected with the author on many levels. I read five more of his collections which, with this newest volume of poetry, that numbers eight books. What I discovered in all this reading is that while Holder is humorous-- he still has insight into the human condition. It is always there, as are his keen observations of all that he encounters, people, animals and almost everything on the streets of greater Boston. Take for instance one of his earlier poems from Poems of Boston and Just Beyond: The Back Bay To The Back Ward.”
A Moose in Boston
I saw it trot
down Commonwealth Avenue
its majestic head
dour and pinched
with patrician bearing
covering the same ground
that horses of lesser lineage
plodded over years before.
It strode
alongside the subway car
with the precision of dancers’ legs
looking discreetly at the window frames
of peoples’ faces
like a museum of surprise.
I heard it snort
in the humid air
its head up turned
fighting and assault to its dignity
gracefully disappearing in the bush
as if to shake a patch of persistent flies
the police
hot on its tail
The descriptions of the moose-- like a ballet dancer-- appears near royal in its bearings, as it looks at people in the subway car -- perhaps viewing them as a lower class, spying on his upper class royalty.
In another book Holder shows how some people might feel at a party, meeting
on an overcrowded bus, or trolley or street. Here is “Unknown in a Crowd” from Dreams At The Au Bon Pain:
And that’s when
you felt most at peace—
lost in the cornucopia.
Feeling
like the multi-eyed
fly on the wall
away from the claustrophobic intimacy.
Observing
not observed
owner of your own dialogue…
You think—
for once—
you can—
almost—
tolerate
them all
Holder has placed himself inside our heads. We have experienced this feeling of not wanting to be there but yet “almost/tolerate/them all.” He knows how much better it is to be observing/not observed. Holder knows the dynamics of a faculty or business meetings, a rush hour crowd in the subway, or even standing in line at a play or movie theater.
In Wrestling With My Father Holder pays a loving elegy to his father-- who was a public relations executive in New York City. His wishes for his father reflect the feelings many people have for a parent’s final departure from the living:
When Father Dies
When Father dies
let it
be in the midst
of the frenetic rush
of Madison Ave.
Let him fall like
a weathered pit bull
in a three-piece suit.
When father dies
stage his swan song
in a dark bar
with a dry martini
and an old pal.
When father dies
let it be on the rush hour
train home
his face buried
in the Post
his last breath involved
with the world.
When father dies
let it be
in front of the fireplace
with his wife,
talking to her
like she’s still
the virginal student teacher
from the Bronx.
In another book, The Man In The Booth In The Midtown Tunnel one particular poem flashes Holder’s love of literature and ironic humor with an unexpected ending. It is a trademark of his style throughout his poems.
Book Seducer
You have revealed
your subtext to me
in a hushed
intimate encounter.
I seduced you
on a train
lovingly
folding your
pages
with dog ears,
highlighting what
I loved about you
with
heart-red ink.
And even now
I talk you up
with people
I meet,
yet I abandoned you
on some commuter
rail seat.
Some of the titles in Eating Grief At 3 A.M. also hint at the playful content of his poems, such as “Eating Grief at Bickford’s,” “Father Knows Best—Mother Does the Rest” and “Curiosity Killed the Cat.”
Holder’s Portrait Of An Artist As A Young Poseur, Boston 1974-1983 displays his prose poetry skill with a series of written pictures of Boston’s iconic, mostly disappeared establishments such as Jack’s Joke Shop, Milner Hotel, Chinatown, Dr. Solomon Carter Fuller and Rexall Drugs. This theme carries over into Last Night At the Wursthaus a lament for women in bars, his mother, lottery tickets and death.
The final section “New” is a collection of Holder’s recent poems --a variety of subjects including, “Meeting Allen Ginsberg (Buffalo, NY, 1975),” “Texting In Class,” on the demise of the Jacob Wirth restaurant in Boston, “Marijuana” and “Dreaming on the Senior Line at Market Basket” and “In My Mind I Swam to Spectacle Island.”
Holder’s newest book concludes with “If We Froze with a Fork in our Hand” that leaves us asking an important question about our hurried lives.
Before we took the bait
and just before the bite
before we enveloped it with
our hungry breath
before the mindless flap
of our coated tongues
before we smashed it
with a new set
of porcelain teeth,
and the day to day
grind of our cracking jaws
How about,
if we just
took a second
to simply
pause?
Doug Holder is an inveterate walker. Hours or miles do not seem to matter. From his home in Somerville, MA he has traversed most of his hometown, Cambridge, Boston and other areas accessible by foot. The cover of his new book shows him in his cocked hat, a newspaper tucked under his arm pounding the pavement of some neighborhood. He could be a business executive, a homeless person or a private detective. But the telltale clue of Holder’s existence is on the front cover and was written by the late poet Sam Cornish, Boston’s first Poet Laureate:
“Holder is a poet of the street and coffeehouses, an observer of the everyday. He sees the world not for what it is, but on his own terms. Hie is living in the poem rather than the poetry.”
Doug Holder is a poet I admire. His poetry has often inspired my own work and many other poets. Moreover, “Essential Doug Holder,” is a must for every poetry lover to read and cherish.
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Zvi A. Sesli
Author, War Zones &The Lynching of Leo Frank
Editor, Muddy River Poetry Review
Editor, Bagel Bards Anthology 7, 8, 12