Poet/Translator/Videographer Nidia Hernandez finds a Haven in America.

 
                       Nidia Hernandez with Doug Holder

By New England Poetry Club board member Doug Holder

I first met Nidia Hernandez at a meeting of the literary group the "Bagel Bards" that was then housed in the basement of the Panera Bread in Porter Square, Cambridge. She had recently arrived from Venezuela--and all ready was in a frenzy of activities for the poetry community. Right off the bat she recorded the poetry of many of our members, and seemed to bring the high holy to our work.

Nidia Hernandez was a refuge from the oppressive Maduro regime in Venezuela. For over three decades she was considered a leading figure in the Latin American poetry scene. She had a long running poetry interview program "La Maja Desnuda." Her radio show was eventually closed down, and she wound up leaving her homeland for the promise of America, and its freedom. Since 2017 she has been an immigrant in this country, and has proved to be a valuable member of the poetry community.

Hernandez who resides in the Jamaica Plain section of Boston, noticed that Silvia Plath's first house-- near Hernandez's own residence--has been overlooked.  Hernandez, a zealot of all things poetry, organized a successful effort to get a plaque on the outside of the house--so it would have more recognition as a valuable literary landmark.

Hernandez continues to record important poets during her stay in this country. Many of them are on Spotify, and can also can be accessed from the Arrowsmith Press website. Hernandez reflected, " I have interviewed poets like, Marie Howe, Charles Simic, Joy Harjo, Robert Pinsky and many others."

She has worked consistently with Askold Melnczuk, the director of the prestigious Arrowsmith Press on a Latin American  Poet Curation project. She featured such poets as Rafael Cardenas, and other writers from Cuba, Venezuela and elsewhere.

When Denise Provost and I were the co-presidents of the New England Poetry Poetry Club-- a venerable literary institution, that was founded by Robert Frost, Amy Lowell and others-- we decided to lead the effort to bring her on the board of directors. She went right to work. She has spearheaded a project to honor the poet Amy Lowell, and even  secured  Massachusetts governor Maura Healey to read a Amy Lowell poem--which she videotaped. She created a string of well-designed posters and flyers, and had done valuable work on our website.

While in the country, Hernandez has completed her first book of poetry " The Farewell Light," a bilingual edition that is a profound compilation on culture, family, language, as well as a critically acclaimed anthology that she edited, " The Invisible Boarders of Time: Five Female Latin American Poets. ( Both Books from the Arrowsmith Press)

Hernandez has truly thrived and contributed to her new homeland as evidenced by her body of work. She is an essential, and notable woman in our poetry community.

For more info on Hernandez go to:   https://www.arrowsmithpress.com/journal/tag/More+by+Nidia+Herna%CC%81ndez

 

Red Letter Poem #252

  The Red Letters

 

 

In ancient Rome, feast days were indicated on the calendar by red letters.

To my mind, all poetry and art serves as a reminder that every day we wake together beneath the sun is a red-letter day.

––Steven Ratiner

 

 

 

 

 

 

Red Letter Poem #252

 

 

 

 

Domicile: Kharkiv, Ukraine


Table and chairs; sofa, ottoman, mattress;

wardrobe, bureau, family photos;

garish wallpaper, ceiling, four walls ...



Table smashed/ chairs: snapped matchsticks/

sofa, ottoman, mattress smoldering/

wardrobe disemboweled/ bureau toppled/

wallpaper shrapnel-pocked/ ceiling gaping/

fourth wall sheared away....

Stage set for tragedy awaiting playwright:

title: Domicile.



Enter: woman in babushka with broom.

Sweeps wood (splinters), crockery (fragments),

glass (shards), masonry (chips) into neat piles;

bends to see smiling faces: (charred photos).


––Mark Pawlak



Long-time readers of the Letters know that, since 2022––when Russia launched yet another invasion of Ukraine––I’ve featured poems every few months spotlighting this terrible conflict. My goal, quite simply, is to offer a continuing reminder of the suffering this democratic ally is being forced to endure, sadly obscured in our current political wrangling. Most often, I’ve brought you the voices of Ukrainian poets, offering first-hand glimpses of what is going on in their homeland. But occasionally, I’ve featured an American poet bearing witness from afar. Today’s Letter features the estimable Mark Pawlak––author of ten poetry collections, and for decades, one of the editors at Hanging Loose Press– offers us a piece from Special Operation, a long sequence of poems from a forthcoming collection he’s currently assembling. In writing to me about his project, Mark expressed his concern for poems “of faux witness or worse, depictions of voyeuristic violence.” His work is neither. Rather, what Mark is doing is documenting the anguish most sensitive observers experience, overwhelmed by the barbarous aggression of a powerful country upon its weaker neighbor. That, and the sense of despair which results from seeing one’s own country abdicate its position as the ‘champion of democracy’ in favor of the narrowest self-interest––as we watch the current administration callously washing its hands of the matter, leaving Ukraine to its fate. And through this, we can’t help but wonder what we, as a people, are becoming.



Mark’s poem begins with a little catalog of household items, impassively detailed: table, chairs, sofa, mattress––the simple elements that signify home. Then he describes what any careful observer has likely culled from newspaper and network accounts: that same home transformed into a scene of utter destruction by a wanton act. Unlike the more “discursive, observational poetics” (as Mark himself described it) of his recent collection Away, Away (Arrowsmith Press,) these new poems were arriving, unbidden, “in the ironic, mordant mode I had employed decades ago” in his collection Special Handling: New and Selected Newspaper Poems. His direct influences are poets like Ernesto Cardinal, Zbigniew Herbert, Charles Reznikoff and especially Bertolt Brecht. (Mark views Brecht’s Deutsche Kriegsfibel––German War Primer––as a direct antecedent.) Sometimes it is a crucial act of conscience to simply not look away. But then the poem takes a turn, carrying us where straight journalism cannot: “Stage set for tragedy awaiting playwright:/ title: Domicile.” Don’t you remember seeing video of whole apartment buildings sliced open by a missile strike? And didn’t each exposed room resemble a little tableau in the theater of cruelty? The phrase “fourth wall sheared away” prisms the context, focusing on both the missing outer shell of the building as well as the theatrical convention separating stage from viewer. Not only must we must accept our role as audience, we’re aware that our ‘safe space’ can be easily violated. The “woman in Babushka” (a ‘character’ that will become a thread throughout this set of poems) is the stolid protagonist in this one-woman tragedy––and when she sweeps up the ‘smiling faces’ from her shattered life, the wellbeing of our own loved ones feels suddenly at risk.



One of the narratives Mark’s poems seem to be conveying: even the buffering presence of oceans bordering our country is no longer a guarantee of protection––if it ever was. Think of the brutal assault on the World Trade Center, or the far-more elusive invader of a virulent germ hitchhiking inside the body of a traveler. What wall keeps such suffering out? Mark’s own family learned this lesson the hard way. Early in the last century, his two grandfathers emigrated from Galicia as that portion of the Austro-Hungarian Empire was dramatically changing hands. One came to America from Krakow (present day Poland;) and the other journeyed here from Lwow (now Lviv in beleaguered Ukraine.) Historian Timothy Schneider’s book about the region is aptly named Bloodlands because of the 14 million deaths authored there by Hitler and Stalin––a brutal tradition Putin seems determined to continue. Clearly, we ignore the affairs of our near and distant neighbors at our own peril––though that historical lesson seems to have been somehow forgotten. Mark reminded me of an old Polish joke––one that I once heard from my own grandfather (who made a similar exodus fleeing similar wars): a peasant comes in from the cold and snow and says to his wife, "Matka, we no longer live in the Soviet Union. We're in Poland now.” "Thank the Lord," she replies. "We’ll no longer have to suffer those terrible Russian winters." These days, there is harsh weather storming across the planet; no home or household will be insulated from those bitter winds.

 

 

 

 

 

The Red Letters

 

* If you would like to receive these poems every Friday in your own in-box – or would like to write in with comments or submissions – send correspondence to:

steven.arlingtonlaureate@gmail.com

 

 

* To learn more about the origins of the Red Letter Project, check out an essay I wrote for Arrowsmith Magazine:

https://www.arrowsmithpress.com/community-of-voices

 

and the Boston Area Small Press and Poetry Scene

http://dougholder.blogspot.com

 

* For updates and announcements about Red Letter projects and poetry readings, please follow me on BlueSky

@stevenratiner.bsky.social

and on Twitter          

@StevenRatiner

 

And coming soon:

a new website to house all the Red Letter archives at StevenRatiner.com

Romeo and Juliet, a play by William Shakespeare At The Hartford Stage

 Romeo and Juliet

Review of Romeo and Juliet, a play by William Shakespeare

At The Hartford Stage through May 18, 2025

By Andy Hoffman

Definitely worth the trip to see the Hartford Stage production of Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet. Directed by the company’s Artistic Director Melia Bensussen, this instance of the classic possesses both the familiar tragedy of “star-crossed” lovers and much unfamiliar, new without devolving into the strange for strangeness’ sake. Bensussen places the play in colonial Mexico at a moment of historical uncertainty. This setting opens the play to a rich textual vein in Shakespeare’s script, the repeated references to light and dark paired with as much emphasis on love and death. The actors hit those contrasts with just the right weight: enough to strike the ear of the audience without twisting the language into incomprehension. We expect professional productions to render Shakespeare’s verse with clarity, and this production goes beyond merely making his lines intelligible. The actors sound contemporary, finding the humor and the tension that carries the play swiftly through the familiar rough waters of youthful love.

The deceptively simple set proves itself malleable enough to represent the city of Verona, a church, a garden, a public sphere, a private banquet hall, a bedroom. And a crypt, all with almost no disruption of either the stage or the flow of the play. Bensussen and her cast run through Romeo and Juliet with astonishing speed, giving up almost nothing in the process. The set, equipped with a few arches, several entrances, and the simplest suggestion of a balcony, appears a first as textured stone, but as the play goes on the changes in lighting reveal colors and patterns hidden on the paint. These striking, almost magic, transformations of the stage allow the design to seamlessly represent a variety of venues. A few simple devices – lanterns dropped from above, the bed (and later crypt) rising from below – give the actors all they require to establish their setting. The costumes, too, redolent of both 19th Century Mexico and Dia de los Muertos, with their flowers and skulls, carry through the themes of light and dark, love and death. The production demonstrates the mastery The Hartford Stage has achieved under Bensussen.

The performances, too, propel this Romeo and Juliet past standard productions of the Bard. I must single out Carmen Berkeley, who finds strength in Juliet, most frequently portrayed as the object of Romeo’s random passion. Juliet’s strength in this production doesn’t come from her beauty, though she surely has that, but rather from her self-knowledge. Shakespeare’s script can reduce Juliet to a pawn in the Capulet family’s political positioning, but Berkeley presents her as a young woman with the power of self-determination. The cast around Juliet, with one exception, leans into her strength, supporting her as she drives the action of the play. Juliet’s parents, played by Gerardo Rodriguez and Eva Kaminsky, Annmarie Kelly as her nurse, put Juliet’s power at the center of the performance and help make this production as effective as it is. The remainder of the cast shapes the movement of the play, keeping the pace breathless. Alejandra Escalante, as Mercutio, deserves special notice. Romeo here becomes the one weak link in the cast, perhaps because his power recedes as Juliet’s blossoms, but I couldn’t help but feel that an actor with better chops than Niall Cunningham could have found a way to make Romeo more compelling even as Carmen Berkeley shines.

Melia Bensussen has done more than simply direct a fresh production of a Shakespeare classic, itself a remarkable accomplishment. She has also opened the play to new insights and new emotions, at least for me. In addition to the tragic and well-worn love story, this production made me see a strong political message, one that could transcend the long-settled quarrels of Elizabethan England. In that time, after the religious violence of Henry VIII and Queen Mary – persecuting first Catholics and then Protestants – Elizabeth navigated a difficult line that maintained an uneasy peace. Shakespeare himself came from a family with long-standing Catholic ties and therefore lived in and benefitted from this truce. In addition to the passion shared by Romeo and Juliet, they can also be seen as two faces of Christianity – or two sides of any political conflict – and Romeo and Juliet as a plea to create peace before that passion destroys them both and Verona with them. Congratulations to the entire production, with special laurels for its director and its Juliet.

Somerville Poets: Meeting for Voices of Somerville: The Documentary

 

There will be a meeting on May 10th at 12:30 PM about a documentary that is going to produced about Somerville Poets... It will be at the Bloc Cafe in Union Square at 12:30PM. Hope to see you there!

Voices of Somerville

_A Celebration of Poets and Poetry

Logline

Voices of Somerville is a short documentary that captures the vibrant poetry scene in Somerville, Massachusetts, exploring the diverse voices of local poets and the impact of poetry as a medium for connection and cultural expression within the community.
Project Overview

This 20-30 minute documentary will delve into the rich tapestry of Somerville's poetry community, showcasing notable poets and poetry groups such as the New England Poetry Club, Ibbetson Street Press, Bagel Bards and Červená Barva Press. Through interviews, live poetry readings, and community events, the film will highlight the significance of poetry in fostering dialogue and understanding among residents. The documentary aims to document the artistic contributions of poets like Lloyd Schwartz, Doug Holder, and Gloria Mindock est., emphasizing their influence on both local culture and the broader literary landscape. By showcasing poetry readings and workshops, Voices of Somerville will celebrate the power of words to connect individuals and inspire collaboration among artists across various mediums.

This documentary will not only preserve the voices of Somerville's poets but also encourage a deeper appreciation for the literary arts within the community, inviting viewers to engage with and explore the transformative power of poetry in their own lives.