Somerville's Ibbetson Press Releases Issue 21

(Ibbetson Street Press staff/contributors at original Ibbetson Street location in Somerville, Mass.)

Somerville’s literary journal “Ibbetson Street” releases its 21st issue.

Doug Holder


Since 1998 the “Ibbetson Street Press” has published a literary journal “Ibbetson Street,” and poetry collections from its original home on 33 Ibbetson Street, and now on 25 School Street in our beloved burg. Founded by Doug Holder, Dianne Robitaille, and Richard Wilhelm, the press is now releasing its 21st issue, with a celebratory reading to be held June 10 (5PM) at McIntyre and Moore Books in Davis Square. The press publishes many folks outside of Somerville, but Somerville poets are always well-represented in each issue. In terms of staff Somerville residents Linda Haviland Conte and Ray Conte run the website, Highland Road resident Richard Wilhelm, is the long-time arts/editor, and Dianne Robitaille my wife and trusty editor, resides with me at our well-appointed apartment on School Street just outside of Union Square.


In issue 21 we have a number of fine poems from ‘ville bards. Linda Haviland Conte, a special education teacher, and long-time resident of Hall Ave, has a poem perfect for a spring day:



CLUB FORSYTHIA


It’s a happening place
in my neighbor’s yard
where Forsythia dangles her
bright yellow kerchiefs in greeting
to the cool spring breezes.
Blue Jays, cardinals and finches
vie for the best branches
to flash their fancy colors
and nip at the blossoms
as if scarfing down their brightness
could make them any more perky.

--- Linda Haviland Conte


There is also poetry from such local talents as: Timothy Gager, Lo Galluccio, Dianne Robitaille, and Deborah M. Priestly, to name just a few. Jennifer Matthews, who has sung at many Somerville venues, has some striking photography on the front and back covers. There is also an account of an afternoon with Louisa Solano, the former owner of the famed “Grolier Poetry Book Shop,” when she was a guest at the ‘Wilderness House Literary Retreat in Littleton, Mass. ‘Ibbetson Street’ is available at McIntyre Moore Books, Porter Square Books, and the Grolier Poetry Book Shop in Harvard Square. http://www./ibbetsonpress.com

Doug Holder to appear on "Poet's Corner" Provincetown Radio

Re: “The Poets Corner” features Doug HolderDate: May 17, May 14, 2007Contact: Joe Gouveia CapePoet@yahoo.com

(Left) Doug Holder

Boston Poet & Publisher Doug Holder to Appear on Provincetown Community Radio Boston resident, poet and publisher of The Ibbetson St. Press, Doug Holder will appear on WOMR-FM, community radio station of Provincetown, MA on Thursday, May 17 & 24, 2007 from 12:45 to 1:00pm as a two part interview.

The show “The Poets Corner,” hosted by Cape Cod poet Joe Gouveia, airs every Thursday on 92.1FM or online at www.WOMR.org

Doug Holder is a mainstay of the Boston Poetry scene and integral literati to the greater poetry community at large. He will speak about and read his own original writing, his views on contemporary poetry in the US and speak on what it takes to operate a small press.

For more info concerning this interview or any other inquiries on “The Poets Corner” show, host Joe Gouveia call WOMR-FM in Provincetown at 508.487.2619

Review of "Ibbetson Street" 20

Review of “Ibbetson Street 21” in the Small Press Review / March-April 2007 http://ibbetsonpress.com Ibbetson Street Press 25 School St. Somerville, Mass. 02143

R. Kimm


Ibbetson Street has finally reached its 20th issue mark. About 41 pages, mostly poetry… Surprisingly firm, supple poems. Heavy instantaneous dose of…infused with nature. Willing to leap beyond what has already happened, to, the Original.

From Jean Keskulla’s “Reading Russian Folktales on a Flight to Florida” (p.7)


The lovers seated in front of
us nibble
each other’s ears, lips,
eyelids, I think
they are two girls until one
turns,
revealing a stubby chin, a
husky
adolescent voice. They alone
are not weary.

Across the aisle a girl brushes
her long
lustrous hair over and over;
even her round
white arm seems to gleam
with each stroke.
I think I know what it's like
to be Baba Yaga,
the witch, eager to feast on
the young.

A.K. Allin’s poem, “central park Jan. 2005,” is prefaced with this quote from Tim Blue (?) speaking about Jean Genet (?)

Pre-Islamic theology of vi-
sionary space sees geography
as event rather than thing.
The one who lives within it
wanders through something
that has happened.

Esp. righteous poems by Ruth Sabath Rosenthal (“For Want of Red”) and Sue Budin (“Wanting’)

Plus a pro-forma “dueling essay” on “gender equity” in poetry published c. 1950-2006 by Charles Ries and Ellaraine Lockie.


To order a copy of Ibbetson Street send 7 dollares to Ibbetson Street 25 School St. Somerville, Mass. 02143

Cervena Barva Press Reading Photos by Dianne Robitaille

This is just a partial group of pictures --- others should be posted on http://www.cervenabarvapress.com


Gloria Mindock/ with partner Bill-- Cervena webmaster / Mark Pawlak- Hanging Loose Press http://www.hanglingloosepress.com

Bill Lewis and Deborah Priestly. (Out of the Blue Gallery)

( Left) Dave McNamara (http://sunnyoutside.com) and partner.

Doug Holder ( author of " All The Meals I Had Before" "No One Dies At The Au Bon Pain")

"No One Dies At The Au Bon Pain" by Doug Holder ( reviewed by Hugh Fox.)

No One Dies at the Au BonPain By Doug Holder 2007; 28pp; Pa; sunnyoutside, POB 441429,Somerville, MA 02144. $8.00. http://sunnyoutside.com

First off, a little background. There are a couple of Au Bon Pain coffee houses in the Boston area. My own favorite is in Harvard Square. Doug Holder is the mythical, revered, super-star head of Ibbetson Street Press in Somerville.

And the whole book here has a certain mythical-classical feel about it. Like St. Augustine or San Juan de la Cruz had come back reincarnated and started re-meditating on death, time, the meaning of life:

"I am not afraid of bones./I trace them/through a facade of flesh..../and there/is always/the joke/of a skeleton/under the myth/of the most beautiful woman.//Bones--/they are what/make us/most human. ( I Am Not Afraid of Bones, p.9).

The poetry gets even scarier when it gets medical, moves out of philosophical-theological theory into things like colonoscopies: "In the funeral parlor bathroom/I thought/odd/how the light/seems to divinely illuminate me/through the stained glass window/as if I was part of a purifying ritual./I strained and strained/and wondered about/that test/and how long/I have before/that dreaded/rest. (Colonoscopy, p.21).

Always a sense of impending doom as a normal component of daily living:

"that short/tenuous last breath/that will surely be/the death//of me. (My Life: In Contrast with Others, p.24).

Amazingly effective, what we have here are classic, condensed meditations on what it's all about in a context of eventual anihilation. A volume to be on the shelves next to Keats, Whitman, Rimbaud.

Hugh Fox/Ibbetson Update

* Hugh Fox was born in Chicago in 1932. He has his Ph.D.from the U. of Illinois, has taught at Loyola in Los Angeles, the U. of Sonora in Hermosillo, Mexico, the Instituto Pedagogico and the Universidad Catholico in Caracas, the U. of Santa Catarina in Florianopolis, Brazil, and for some 35 years was a professor at Michigan State U. He has some 85 books published, poetry, archaeology, criticism, novels, literary and cultural history, and more.
Bill Ryan in The Unborn Book: "Hugh Fox is the Paul Bunyan of American Letters, part myth, part monster, and, myself-as-subject, a magnificent non-stop storyteller."

Defiance by Hugh Fox (reviewed by Lo Galluccio)

Defiance: Pensee Rouges et Noirs
Poems by Hugh Fox
Higgannum Hill Books
88 pages
rcdebold@mindspring.com

Hugh Fox’s latest collection, Defiance, is a brilliant freeverse exploration of fractured language in two languages – French and English, my favorite of all his work thus far. It’s divided into two sections, like any revolutionary undertaking, “Hope” and “Despair” – in fact the first section’s “Hope” is more deconstructed and list-like and Kerouacian than the second, which becomes more narrative and real. I suppose that tells us about Hugh’s stance in the existential picture, and maybe why he chose to write this collection in French and English. French being the birthplace of class revolution as we know it, deconstructionism, romantic beauty (for me, it runs a close second to Italian as a romance language’s ultimate beauty) and existentialism. Immediately, I wanted to re-read Barthes, “A Lover’s Discourse” as I remember it being laid out in lettered segments, both delicious and abstract. So is Hugh’s book: it is delicious and it is rather abstract/formal but child-like too. What is a fox, clever and defiant? Yes.

We dig in at the Hope Section:

In the poem FORGETTING (on p 29)

(I’ve written in the margins MAKING SENSE BREAKING SENSE)

“The raven still hovering over all
Our Baruchs, Attas and Adonais,
mea culpa, mea culpa,
maxima
grasping
the reins of
TO BE
even though the devil-
angel shadows
still growl
even
here.”

Hugh starts with an event or a place and unwinds to his own position or place in it, an emotional one, “maxima” referring to mea culpa in Latin and then down to the positing of a devil-angel growling in shadows, a typical hybrid moral invention or amoral invention of Fox’s. Remember the collection sports a sinuous orange Fox on the cover, maybe and of course Fox himself, in a defiant foxy frame of mind.

More language games in the poem SATORI (p 25) on which I write at the bottom Strange love poem, a love poem to what really? And then figure out:

In the daughter-granddaughter,
Spanish-Portuguese
Jewish-Moslem
Christian- Aztec-Hercules Sungod
Buddhistic
Village under the
Lilac-poppy
Moon-sun sky

Je t’aime/toute le monde moi aime -*

nothing more than

NOW

It is a love poem ultimately to the referent on the left, all the religious descriptions end in Buddhistic, the religion of the present, of sitting with oneself in the present, breathing and the little pyramid of love, I love you/all of the world, my friends, nothing more than NOW. The power of Now. With all the other religious referring to it coming down to it on the right hand list. Our image is the village under the lilac poppy moon sun sky. So Hugh will take important, even personal fragments, that may seem abstract, and combine them to a splendid whole image. One that contains opposites, one that tastes good on the mouth that embraces earth and sky, a flower like the red delirium poppy.

In MAGNA MATER Hugh translates the first French stanzas into English at the bottom. As my French is not terribly good, I will give you the English:

The magic of nothing,
Nude legs in tennis shoes,
Long hair all fluffed up, two
Women who are taking a walk
Because everything has begun to
Be reborn, almost ready to die/sleep
Again, I wait for magic runes and

Y
F
Prehistoric musics when everyone,
Like me today, believes that the earth was
The Magic Mother,
Nothing else.

In this poem, Hugh refers to a subject in which he has shown an archeological interest: prehistory and the cross-connections of culture, in addition to women as sign, the signifier also. It is the Magic Mother that he yearns for. To go back, as Van Morrison sings, to be born again, in “Astral Weeks.” He starts with the seemingly suburban “nude legs in tennis shoes” looking for the magic of nothing….to be found in women. That is fine, fine. Prehistoric musics and prehistoric muses as well….

There is a feeling of lists and list making and transcription in these poems that is elegant and sly mystical and beautiful. It does not seem overly constructed, not haphazard and that makes for a thrilling and imploring read.

In EROS – Post-Modern.

“All night long massaging our feet with sandalwood oil, a cloudless, billion-starred sky, full moon and your feet….”

A quote from another poem?

Then the French,
“Moi aussi, la meme shose…mais nous sommes separes puir seicles et les spaces celestes/me too, the same thing…but we’ve been separated by centuries and celestial spaces…”

And then,

“Gitane-Gypsy cornhusks and tequila, submerging back to sane-times, before the Aryans come in.”

Post-Modern is also, for Fox, a time before recorded history, before the Aryans came in. the gypsy signifying erotic innocence and free-beauty. This his love, his romance. His roaming. His trance-dance...

The second half of the book, “Despair” contains more mosaics of real world details. For instance, in ONE MORE DAY (p. 66)

“One more day alive, coming
to this page to reach out to you
wherever I may find you, now,
or in a thousand years buried
in a tomb under endless sands,
inflamed and half mad, my
groin screaming! The doctors
(general physical) examining
my eyes and toes, while my prick, balls,
prostate burn, burn, burn
all through the psycho night.”

For the poem EDEN, I wrote: “Condradiction: this poem is in the section called Despair. Hugh’s turning things on their head, upside down.”

Feeling ashamed of walking
Under new maples, drinking pink
lemonade instead of getting shot
in the head by a terratenanente
in the Brazilian Outback, walking
over new grass next to new ferns
instead of through pigshit,
being constipated instead of having
cholera, surviving to 60
instead of being tossed onto the sidewalk
from four stores up by the “Gestapo”
when I was two.

Okay, black humor. A dark poem which still centers also around the new maples and the pink lemonade. “Every picture has its shadow and it’s source of light, blindness, blindness and sight” Joni Mitchell.

And another example of the “polytheistic heavens” that Hugh Fox believes in/lives under can be found in the references in the facing poem called, “What are the voices….”
p 73 which I’ve circled: (the whole poem):

“Hanuman dance, Ganesh dissolve into the
mud of the ashes, Kali
stand, sword and severed head,
blessing and protecting?”

It’s important to note that with all the shifting political and historical entities, Hugh still pins most of his poems on a love of women—la femme eternale --- and deities of other cultures. He is in this sense, despite his Judeo-Christian background a true Sufi poet because he gives many of these figures their magical and essential power. They are part of his landscape….Kali the goddess of destruction/creation in Hinduism, Hanuman, Krishna’s monkey-headed and winged messenger and Ganesh, the Gateway God who is throw in to the ocean in plaster from by his beloved devotees. None of this is highlighted as strange, foreign or inconsistent with life as we know it to Hugh. They are, like the world he hearkens back to, elemental and animistic and this is the interesting mix of Hugh Fox’s vision. Whether they are truly real, truly the answer can be found in his question mark.

There is something human and bitter-sweet, like the mirror we look in each morning, about the book’s second half and perhaps I will leave it off with one last poem:

THINGS I CRY ABOUT (p 78)

“A man about sixty comes into
The café, very elegant, reminds
me of my father, she’s maybe
fifty, the suave perfect legs and
elegant Madrilena face, they
sit down and order and all
or a suddent it’s like he takes
off a mask, starts kidding around,
I can’t hear what he’s saying but
He’s five again, I can’t see her
Face, she’s laughing, you never
See this kind of thing where I’m
From, no multiple personalities,
Just one mask per person.”

For Hugh, one mask per person is not really what we want to expect from each other. He prefers the ancient mask, the Carnival, the unexpected and wrestles with the Thanatos/Eros swing in us all. Defiance is as much about defying death as language as a means to defy what is placid and pedestrian all the time about life in the modern world.


Lo Galluccio
Ibbetson St. Press

Q and A on Mass. Book Award

With the announcement of the Mass. Book Awards today I posed the question to the executive director: " Can the small press can have a category in the Mass. Book Awards.?" The winners are usually associated with the big publishing houses, and have received much recognition already. ( example this years' winners are Claire Messud, Franz Wright, Louise Gluck) These are all great writers, but how about some state-wide recognition for the alternative presses?

And the response:



Hi, Doug -- I saw this email that went to the Amherst office/Book awards coordinator. I hear you ... and -- as you can imagine -- funding is an issue. At present, we are struggling to support the four categories we have. I have long wanted to add a design and also illustration awards. I hadn't thought about a separate small press award ... for a number of reasons. Primarily, I don't want to ghettoize small press publishing ... b/c I see no reason why small press publications can't compete with trade houses... but another way to promote what is going on with our small presses ... that is desirable. I will add it to the concerns as we discuss next steps with the program and certainly keep you in any loops that start to get traced.
Regards, Sharon
************************************************ Sharon Shaloo, Executive Director Massachusetts Center for the Book Mailing from Boston office: massbook@simmons.edu On the web at http://www.massbook.org/

Quoting Doug HOLDER :
I think you should have a category for small press authors and poets people who publish chapbooks in the state. There is a great literary subculture that is ignored... Certainly all the people you selected were great writers. But Messud, Wright, Gluck and the like have recieved thousands of accolades. How about a category that would represent the alternative press which plays an important part in literary history?

Best--Doug Holder

Should Somerville Have A Poet Laureate?

Should Somerville Have A Poet Laureate?

Doug Holder

When I asked a city alderman recently about the possibility of the council considering having a poet laureate like Cambridge and Boston are presently pondering he laughed, stating: “So that’s the latest trend, huh?” So I decided to send out a call for comments from Somerville residents, poets, etc…to see what they think of the idea: Here is what I got:

C.D. Collins (Poet/Vocalist): “We should have one. It should be an annual award.”

Bert Stern (Off the Grid Press) “I think that Somerville poetry speaks clearly and humanely, and with a notion of folk poetry that has a long lineage. Somerville is witty and has guts, and is somewhat anti- Cambridge. I see it as a position of public responsibility. A laureate should write occasional poems, celebrate commissions, like the English poet/laureate, who writes poems for coronations, etc…

Gloria Mindock (Cervena Barva Press): “Somerville is such a rich community with so many artists and writers living here. It would be a great idea to have one.

So many writers in Somerville have remarkable qualifications if one must choose the poet laureate based on that. Having some sort of guidelines is good because it closes the door to “bad writing” or a writer who hasn’t developed good writing skills. The poet laureate should be community minded. All the books and publications in the world does not mean anything if you don’t care about the artistic scene in Somerville. “

Afaa Michael Weaver (Simmons College): “So many? Why not just one of Massachusetts? Too many and it gets diluted.”

Ian Thal (Poet/Mime/Performer): “The question should be: ‘Would having a poet laureate serve Somerville in a manner that the Somerville Arts Council does not already?’ The Somerville Arts Council does a better job than most cities in Massachusetts supporting the arts/artists (certainly better than Boston). The laureate position should add something to what is already there.”

Tam Lin Neville (author of “Journey Cake”): Of course we should have a poet/laureate. I am sure we have more poets here than Boston and Cambridge put together. My pick would be someone who combines the quality of a good poet—and someone with the proper community spirit.”

Doug Holder

IBBETSON STREET 21 READING

On June 10, 2007 at 5PM at McIntyre and Moore Books in Davis Square ( 255 Elm St.), Somerville, the Ibbetson Street Press will celebrate the release of its literary journal "Ibbetson Street 21"

The press was founded in 1998, by Doug Holder, Timothy, Richard Wilhelm and Dianne Robitaille, and started publishing from its home on (33) Ibbetson Street in Somerville, Mass, later moving several streets down to 25 School Street in the same city.

Since its inception the press has released over 30 books of poetry from local and national authors, and 21 issues of the journal "Ibbetson Street." Ibbetson Street is listed in the "Index of American Periodical Verse," and won several pics of the month from the "Small Press Review."

Many of the journals and books published over the years are archived at Harvard, Brown, Buffalo, Yale, university libraries, as well as "Poet's House" in New York City.

The reading will cellebrate the release of "Ibbetson 21" The new issue has poetry from such local stars as : Timothy Gager, Bert Stern, Deborah Priestly, Lo Galluccio, Dorian Brooks, Robert K. Johnson, Dianne Robitaille, Marc Widershien, and many more.

Front and back cover photographer is the work of poet/vocalist Jennifer Matthews.

Featured readers: will be Doug Holder, Bert Stern, Richard Wilhelm, Molly Lynn Watt, Dorian Brooks and others. There will be an open mic to follow. Refreshments provided. Free admission. Handicap Accessible.

Review of "Sky Is" by George Wallace

SKY IS
George Wallace, lyrics and vocals
The Moontones, music
October, 2006
http://cdbaby.com/cd/wallacemoontones

$13

SKY IS is a self-produced CD of poetry and music from Long Island-based George Wallace, backed by a group called the Moontones. There is no mention of personnel so, whoever the Moontones are, they need to start advocating for themselves more and get credit for their work. The music contributes effectively to the dynamics of the CD. Now a note of disclosure: I have at least a cursory knowledge of George Wallace’s poetry and admire his work. I met him on several occasions including one evening when he came to my house in the company of Marc Widershien to help Doug Holder, John Wunjo and myself with some proof-reading back in paleolithic times before Robert K. Johnson and Dorian Brooks took over the editorial helm of Ibbetson Street. So I expected the CD to be good. I was not disappointed.

The first piece on the CD is "When I Go Away," a lilting, upbeat poem which is enhanced by melodies derived from a major scale. The piece that follows, "The 12th Street Shuffle," is bluesy, kind of film noir-ish. Wallace intones:

it was the east river
it was not the east river
it was the black keys
it was not the black keys
it was the 12th street shuffle
captured for eternity
in a convex spoon

(Apologies to Wallace. I didn’t see the lyrics in print so in this review I’m creating line breaks as I hear them, rather than how Wallace may have conceived them.)

"This Does Not Stop Me," the fourth number, saunters along on a funky groove. Wallace lays out his lover’s habits and foibles but says in the refrain "this does not stop me." Wallace’s voice is responded to by lovely minor key licks.

The beautiful "Heaven Soars East" conveys a longing for peace with lyrics like:

the land we know is no longer
the land we have known
a drop of rain turns
yellow in a blackbird’s eye

And further on:

some things that should have changed
remain the same a man who
would otherwise be occupied
making baskets from wisteria vines
is busy making preparations for war

In "Growing," set to some mournful Appalachian fiddle, the speaker observes all the things that are commanding his attention. He struggles with lists of things he should be doing, but decides against making a list, preferring to just "be alive and remember things."

In "Sky Is," fractured gypsy violin runs heighten the enigmatic beauty.

sky is a woman in white stockings,
baghdad in coral rain

The eighth and last and longest piece (at 4:06) is "I Have Discovered A Country." It begins with:
I have discovered a country
of modest people that live
without great obsessions
that live without great anxiety
that live in the silence
of forgotten places, in the alleyways
of their imagination

He describes this country as one:

where schemes are impossible
where a handshake is unnecessary
where doctors are poets
and horoscopes are optional
and
there are many colors on its flag
and
the politicians close their mouths while chewing
what a great country I have discovered

And what a great poetry-music album I have discovered.

--Richard Wilhelm

Ibbetson Update

*Richard Wilhelm is the arts/editor for the Ibbetson Street Press. He is working on a collection of his poetry to be edited by Cambridge, Mass. poet Doug Worth that is slated to be out early next year. Check out Wilhelm's blog at http://www.richardwilhelm.blogspot.com

A Photographic Study of the Bagel Bards by Pam Rosenblatt

No One Dies At The Au Bon Pain

Reviews and press:
Bio:

Doug Holder was born in Manhattan on July 5, 1955. A small press activist, he founded the Ibbetson Street Press (Somerville, Massachusetts) in 1998. Holder is a co-founder of The Somerville News Writers Festival and is the curator of the Newton Free Library Poetry Series, both in Massachusetts. His work has appeared in such magazines as Rattle, Doubletake, The Boston Globe Magazine, Poesy, Small Press Review, Artword Quarterly, Manifold (UK), The Café Review, the new renaissance, and many others. He holds an MA in Literature from Harvard University.

Blurbs:

“This book is a gift, the silhouette of restlessness as Holder studies the way things end and sees that there is no real ending. He celebrates ‘a standing chant, a prayer for the common man.’ Holder understands compassion as generosity in tender poems carved from the quickened wood of the moment.” —Afaa Michael Weaver, Simmons College

“The images and angles of thought and language are at once familiar and plain and odd. They are flashes of insight and snapshots of time and place and humanity.” —Dan Sklar, Endicott College

“With confidence and occasional flashes of humor, these are poems (lamentations/meditations) on what was, is, and ultimately will be. They are strong and unapologetic in both their rage and acceptance, offering up a clear view of the truth—that no one gets out of here alive.”

—Gloria Mindock, Červená Barva Press

Of All The Meals I Had Before

"Of All The Meals I Had Before:Poems About Food and Eating"by Doug Holder

...He fills our plate with “unapologetically greasy Egg Foo Young,” “tamed tenderloin,” “a chorus line” of “rotisserie chickens,” and “some fraction of gelatinous liver quivering.”

Mary Buchinger Bodwell, Ph.D.Assistant Professor of EnglishMassachusetts College of Pharmacy and Health Sciences

These food poems are served up spicy like Italian cousine. Read them before dinner or after dessert, either way like Chinese food, you'll return hungry for more. A.D. Winans

A delightful and delicious collection of poems, whetting the appetite for more. These are the kinds of witty, Jewishy poems I envision Woody Allen would write, should he ever take to writing poetry.Helen Bar-Lev, Artist, PoetEditor-in-Chief Voices Israel Anthology

...A lot of the poetry has a certain edginess mixed with wit and humor that equally provokes to thought while it entertains. Everyone should indulge themselves in this gourmet buffet. This collection, as well as Holder's other published works, belong in every serious collectors library.

Harris GardnerExecutive Director, Tapestry of Voices
Of All The Meals I Had Before: Poems About Food and Eating
$7.00
Shipping
$1.50
Total
$8.50

Send check or money order payable to: Cervena Barva PressP.O. Box 440357,W. Somerville, MA 02144-3222
e-mail: editor@cervenabarvapress.com
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Send me______copies of "Of All The Meals I Had Before: Poems About Food and Eating" Total enclosed: $______
Name____________________________________________________________________
Street____________________________________________________________________
City___________________________State________________Zip____________________
e-mail_________________________________Phone_____________________________

Where Images Become Imbued With Time by Jared Smith

Where Images Become Imbued with Time: New Poems by Jared Smith. (The Puddin’head Press 2007) http://www.puddinheadpress.com $15. http://puddinhousepress.com


This new collection of poetry by Jared Smith is infused with images of light and mortality. Smith, a veteran of the small press scene is erudite, urbane, yet as down-to-earth as the late Conceptualist poet Charles Reznikoff. His work showcases his wide and eclectic reading, but he never seems to be doing it for show, but rather to tip his Stetson hat to the many great artists who preceded him. I particularly enjoyed Smith’s poem “Father,” in which he captures the enigma that all fathers are in one way or another to their sons, and how after awhile we all see the old patriarchs staring back at us in our shaving mirrors.



“The aurora borealis blows through the cells of my bone,
igniting them so that they are torn apart and scattered in the solar wind.
What was it that you wanted to achieve? Why
did we wear our tight shirt collars to expensive hotels
or spend long years sweating our fears into foreign sheets?
I am older now then you were on that day
when you lay down in a blueberry patch and died
on vacation beneath a Minnesota sky.”

Like Auden, Smith realizes that death comes in the most banal of ways, and places. To quote the old master, death is not always appointed to some dramatic backdrop:

“Anyhow in a corner, some untidy spot

Where the dogs go on with their doggy life and the torturer's horse,

Scratches its innocent behind on a tree.”

In Smith’s poem “Stroke” a piece of well-done pot roast could bring the poet’s demise:

“ A piece of fat in the artery
ends it.
The complexity of patterns
recognition of symmetries
echoing of histories;
understanding
a pot roast
becomes a blinding light.”

Certainly food for thought.

Highly Recommended.

Ibbetson Update/ Doug Holder/ Somerville, Mass./ April 2007

The Fathers We Find by Charles Ries. Reviewed by Pablo Teasedale

The Fathers We Find by Charles P. Ries. Available from: Charles P. Ries, 5821 W. Trenton Place, Milwaukee, WI 53213. $13.00 includes postage.

Reviewed by Pablo Teasedale

Pablo Teasdale’s first interview was with Raquel Welch when he was a sailor and she was a new star. Since then, he has interviewed many artists formally and informally. . . both well-know and unknown. Among the notables: Anais Nin, Bob Hope, Lyn Lifshin, James Leo Herlihy and Brian Morissey. His drawings have been published in the U. S. A. and Germany. His synthesizer compositions are used by poets and dancers in live and broadcast productions internationally. Teasdale has been the subject of four documentaries and lives in Santa Cruz, California. He is currently writing a memoir titled, "Let Me Tell You About My Redundancy Again."


It is 3:30 a.m. and I am sitting in my apartment overlooking an empty Pacific Avenue. The St. George is quiet tonight and so is the city of Santa Cruz. I have just finished The Fathers We Find and want to make a few comments about this 118-page novel.

First, it was given to me by poet Nancy Gauquier who had read it and liked it. Second, I met Charles not long ago here in town when he was the featured reader at The Wired Wash Cafe which is an important part of Santa Cruz’s (and California’s) poetry life. It is a noisy laundromat with espresso machines and a dangerous restroom. “What,” I asked myself, “is Charles P. Ries doing here?” At a party later, I learned he had been imported by Christopher Robin (Zen Baby) and Brian Morrisey (Poesy). I barely got to talk with Charles, but I was very interested in his poetry and his thought. Now having read this novel, I understand why he seemed so interesting. He is.

While I was reading I had an awareness occur twice that surprised me: I forgot I was reading. The writing was so clear that it just seemed to be going into my consciousness with no effort on my part. I decided that either Charles Ries is an excellent writer or he had found a hole in my head just the right size to insert a nozzle to pour the information into my brain. I guess it must be that he is an excellent writer.

The novel deals with the difficult subject of fathers. Since I was both born and adopted, I had two fathers, and I am a father now, so I know how confusing and profound both having fathers and being a father can be. (Is!) But here in this memoir we see an iconic father…a successful mink farming pillar of the Catholic Church…a quiet and disturbingly bound up man with very high standards…Charles’s father.

That this highly intelligent, sensitive, and aware poet I met, and this almost scary (yet strangely beautiful) father of his, had at one time almost come to blows did not surprise me. And it really makes me wonder at how we are shaped by strong forces in our childhoods, and at how hard it can be to discover that there is a much different entity coming into being which somehow has to break free of the shapers and shape itself.

This is an age-old story but it is told with such clarity that it is one of the best tellings. I laughed, I cried. I am grateful. Another thing that happened to me (that I also liked) as I read, was that I saw or felt or somehow knew and understood that the word “mink” and the term “blackberry brandy” could be used in one sentence to recreate an exquisite juxtaposition…one I can feel, smell, taste, see and…almost…hear. (There is mud in this story too.)

This is a very, very good novel. A memoir. A difficult love story with many layers. Read it, then give it to a friend. Learn about mink and blackberry brandy… and love.

Ibbetson Update/ April 2007

Molly Lynn Watt: A poet who sheds light on "Shadow People"

Molly Lynn Watt: A poet who sheds light on “Shadow People”

Molly Lynn Watt, the gregarious host of the popular “Fireside Reading Series” in Cambridge, Mass. has recently released a collection of her own poetry “Shadow People” published by the Ibbetson Street Press of Somerville, Mass. Poets such as Fred Marchant (Director of the Poetry Center of Suffolk University—Boston), and Eva Bourke, the author of “The Latitude of Naples,” and an elected member of the Aosdana in Ireland, have praised her new collection. Watt has been a long-time educator of kids of all ages, she has been involved with educational publishing, and she writes personal essays and articles for a number of magazines. Watt with her husband Dan Watt and Tony Seletan produced a CD: “Songs and Letters of the Spanish Civil War.”


Doug Holder: You have been a writer in one form or the other for most of your life. You came to poetry late however. What took you so long?

Molly Lynn Watt: I am a very late comer to poetry. I accidentally came to it. I signed up for a career in memoir writing, but I didn’t get in. My back up course was poetry. It was at Harvard Extension. So I went to a poetry course, and I haven’t stopped since. This was about five years ago.

I did write poetry in college. We had a literary magazine and I had poems in it. But then… you know… I got pregnant, had to work, I was a single mother, etc... didn’t have the time.

DH: Can you talk about the CD you completed that consists of recitations and songs from your husband’s parents love letters during the time of the Spanish Civil War in the 1930’s?

MLW: It turns out there is such a thing as “reading theatre,” but I didn’t know there was such a
thing. My husband’s father was in the Spanish Civil War. This was before Hitler, and World War ll.
The idea of fighting a fascist like Franco was a strong one. George Watt, my father-in-law, went over to Spain like a lot of young men. He was a political commissar in the Abraham Lincoln Brigade. He was a Communist when many people were. His wife Ruth was a pacifist and activist. They had quite a marvelous correspondence. We found the letters just recently. We had both sides of the exchange. Ruth was a wonderful writer. My husband didn’t know anything about his mother because she died when he was born. We sat down and read all these letters and wrote up an exchange. We had a friend who researched all the songs of the period, and we have been putting on a show with the songs, and produced a CD.

DH: How did you come up with the title: “Shadow People” for you new poetry collection?

MLW: I had to have a title. So while I was sifting through my manuscript I was looking for a good line… a good title. When I thought of the poems in the collection I thought of the “Shadow People” who are psychological tied to us. There are a lot of Shadow People in my head … some are ghosts. People who are on the fringe, like the man I wrote about sitting in the Cambridge Common.

DH: Can you talk about your long involvement with the “Civil Rights Movement”?

MLW: Someone asked me once, “When did you first get involved in civil rights”?
That took me back. But I remembered in the second grade during World War ll my parents had me walk a little Japanese girl to school and back. They didn’t make a big deal about it, but I realized that was a strong thing I did. I protected her from the taunts of kids. I remember too that I was chauffeur-driven to school with the only Black family in town. I realize now my father was taking a stand. He was a minister. In fact Andrew Young was one of my father’s students. My father worked with many Black ministers from the South.

I was sent to boarding school and I had a Black roommate and I didn’t think a thing about it. But she was turned down as a roommate by everyone else.

I worked in 1963 at the “Highlander Educational and Research Center,” which provided Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King with citizenship training. It was located in Knoxville, Kentucky, and designed for adult education. I was directing a work camp for voter registration workers. Both Blacks and Whites were housed there. As a result we were all arrested and the place was burned down.

DH: Do you think poetry can transform or be redemptive?

MLW: I think poetry allows you to get in touch with things that are buried. It is helpful to look back at our experiences and reframe them in ways that are helpful for us and others. The poet Fred Marchant told me that I needed to mention the incest in my family if I was to become a true poet. So I wrote a poem dealing with that subject. Now I am able to mention incest without a great deal of trepidation in my work.

DH: What is the poetic life for you?

MWL: I guess it is when you are actively writing poems. Everything that happens seems to be a possibility for a poem.

Doug Holder

The Rose Cafe: Love and War in Corsica

The Rose Café: Love and War in Corsica
By John Hanson Mitchell
Shoemaker & Hoard, $25.00, 243 pages
ISBN 978-1-59376-095-3

Review by Steve Glines

John Hanson Mitchell is a man on a permanent quest.

Go out to the wilderness and find out what you are made of. There is always seminal event that forms the body of a great man (or woman’s) character. For men it has often meant going off to war where the soul is stripped of the possessions of youth and reformed on the anvil of Thor. For most of us this transformation, if we have it at all, takes the form of a quest and there is a time-honored tradition of quest literature dating to antiquity.

For urbanized Americans youth this quest often involves Europe or another exotic location and if you are lucky, both. My daughter’s quest was orchestrated by her college, about the only thing about the place for which I am grateful. She was dropped in Aix en Provence in France with 24 classmates and instructed to walk, which they did for 4 months, camping by the side of the road as they went. She left America an angry, lost teenager and returned a driven adult determined to find her place in the universe. After 2 months on the road she called me from Syracuse in Sicily to announce her epiphany: She could be 30 and wish she had her architects license or she could be 30 and have her architects license but she was going to be 30 anyway. She came home and made the deans list.

My own quest took me to Nova Scotia and Newfoundland Canada where I hiked and hitchhiked for almost five months after High School. I slept in a fish-packing shed on the northern tip of Cape Breton Island where I cleaned fish and shoveled ice for a month for beer and food. When I grew restless I moved on to Newfoundland.

The harbor a small fishing port named Fortune was filled with half a dozen tramp steamers, Liberty Ships, left over from WWII. In the bar of the only restaurant in Fortune I met the captain of a ship that continuously made the circuit from Fortune to Iceland, Ireland, England, France, Africa, Bermuda, New York City, Halifax and back to Fortune. His ship and its predecessors had been making the run, with obvious interruptions, for almost 100 years. It was a three-month journey. I needed a passport. Did I know how to cook? Would I like the adventure? It paid Canadian minimum wage. It has bothered me ever since that I said no.

Later I was hitchhiking to another small port to catch a boat ride back to civilization. It was 9 pm. I looked at the map and realized my destination for the night was 25 miles down the dirt road in front of me. I walked all night through the fog, my flashlight useful only for illuminating the edge of the ditch. About 4 am the fog lifted and the first hint of daylight appeared in the sky. I walked up a steep hill, a switchback, climbing out of a deep dark valley. As I walked over the crest I saw the most beautiful sight I have ever seen: a ship, perhaps 300 feet long, with multi-colored lights draped from bow to stern, passing up through the rigging of the tramps crane and mast. The town itself was smaller, just ten or fifteen small pastel colored shacks. I walked onboard, found myself a bench and went to sleep. An hour after the boat left port the bursar found me. I paid for a ticket to Port-aux-Basque and went back to sleep.

For the next two days we drifted along the south shore of Newfoundland stopping at one village after another. At one village I got off to explore while the ship exchanged cargo. An entire town had moved from one side of a river to another to accommodate a larger pier. I asked a local what the cost of a house was there. He blinked at me in disbelief then said, “We have lots of houses here, pick one. We’ll outfit it for ya!” A foghorn lament announced the departure of the tramp so I hopped back onboard and watched the little village that would have welcomed me slide slowly into the mist. So many “what ifs.”

John Hanson Mitchell’s new book “The Rose Café” is the tale of a quest. He is a young student studying in Paris in the early 1960’s. He is bored and uninspired, in other words, a typical French student filled with ennui. He is both unable and uninterested in writing although he carries an empty notebook with him wherever he goes. A chance offer takes him to Corsica where he ingratiated himself with the owner of “The Rose Café” who offers him a job for the season cleaning fish and sweeping up for room and board. What follows is a wonderfully charming account of the local characters. Mitchell’s ability to delve into the characters of the local town is reminiscent of Dickens. The collection of characters is wonderful and we get a small town full: There is Le Baron, the aristocratic patron with a very shady background, the agonizingly French tease Marie and classic French lovers Jean-Paul and Micheline to name just a few.

Mitchell has always been adept at describing Place. His “Ceremonial Time” covers the details of one square mile of land in Littleton Massachusetts where living characters provide an anthropomorphic dimension to the geography. With “Living at the End of Time” he explores both eccentric people and the detail of his environment in a Waldenesque shack. We dig deeper into the quest experience with “Walking Towards Walden: A Pilgrimage in Search of Place” where “Place” still takes prominence. In Mitchell’s book “Looking for Mr. Gilbert: The Reimagined Life of an African American” we finally see what he can do with character development. Place is replaced by Character.

“The Rose Café” is the crescendo of Mitchell’s quest. While we get his usual treatment of the geography in intimate detail where necessary, it never overwhelms the characters that bring light to the scenery. The description of a dilapidated farmhouse surrounded by semi-wild donkeys is just enough to illuminate the eccentricities of the farmer/donkey herder who tells us fantastical stories about the locals. We get to know the people of Corsica and the arid scrub they inhabit through Mitchell’s eyes.

At the end of the tourist season Mitchell leaves Corsica and returns to school. In a final brilliant tease, Mitchell’s last sentence says more about Corsica, its society and his characters than all the rest of the book. It’s marvelous and you’ll put the book down after a good knee-slapping laugh.

When Mitchell left Corsica he began to write. His quest had only begun and we hope will never be over. A very charming book recommended to all.

Steve Glines/ Ibbetson Update/ April 2007

At the reception for Poetry Festival

( Photo courtesy of Elizabeth Doran)

Doug Holder/Dianne Robitaille at the reception for The Boston National Poetry Festival. http://tapestryofvoices.com

Hanging Loose 90

Hanging Loose 90. (231 Wyckoff St. Brooklyn, NY 11217) http://www.hangingloosepress.com/ $11

Mark Pawlak, who along with Somerville, Mass. resident Dick Lourie and Robert Hershon, is an editor of the venerable small press and literary magazine “Hanging Loose.” Pawlak sent me the latest issue of “Hanging Loose with a note steering me to his article concerning the late, celebrated Somerville poet Denise Levertov, and her husband Mitch Goldman. Pawlak met and was befriended by Levertov when he was a student at MIT in the late 60’s. Pawlak gives the reader a view of the poetic as well as the political life of Levertov, who was a dyed-in-the-wool civil rights and anti-war activist. Pawlak points out that Levertov distrusted formal education, and for the most part was an autodidact. Pawlak writes:

“Denise distrusted formal education, which she felt all too frequently resulted in mis-education.”

Pawlak reports that Levertov proved to be an endless font of wisdom about her craft. He writes:

“Denise admonished me: It was not worth my while, nor was it productive for me to keep struggling with one particular poem in an effort to get it ‘right.’ Sometimes you have to give it up—abandon it was the word she used… You have to move on and open yourself to new poems.”

Pawlak who is well-regarded both as an editor and a poet was told by Levertov not to become an editor:

“Denise professed to greatly value the work of magazine and press editors, admitting that she would find it hard to survive as a writer with out their efforts, but she nevertheless thought that to become one was the death knell for a poet. Denise believed in the primacy of the poet’s calling and jealously guarded her time to write.”

Also in this issue is some fine poetry. I greatly enjoyed the lead poem by Jack Anderson “As We Grow Old Together”

As We Grow Old Together

We do not mention it, ever,
yet every morning we study each other,
and although each of us surely suspects,
we say nothing about it,

yet every morning we study each other,
searching for any new and suspicious
never before noticed tremble or quaver;
without saying anything we watch what we do.

and when we start talking we track our words,
alert for any fresh memory collapse,
any phrase that unravels and trails off to no end
or runs headlong away, then limps into mumble,

and after we’ve carefully studied each other
we sigh with relief, happy to find
we can go on as before at least one day more,
so we say “Good morning” and give thanks it is good.

Highly Recommended.

Doug Holder/ Ibbetson Update

Former Poet Laureate Robert Pinsky to receive Ibbetson Street Press Lifetime Achievement Award in Nov. 2007

Former national Poet Laureate Robert Pinsky will be the recipient of the Ibbetson Street Press Lifetime Achievement award, as part of the "Somerville News Writers Festival" (Nov. 11 2007) to be held at Jimmy Tingle's Off Broadway Theatre in Davis Square, Somerville. Former winners were poets Robert K. Johnson, Jack Powers, former Grolier Poetry Book Shop owner Louisa Solano, and publisher David R. Godine, founder of "David R. Godine, Inc."

The (2007) "Somerville News Writers Festival" founded by Doug Holder and Tim Gager, will also include featured reader Tom Perrotta, poets: Sarah Hannah, Danielle Georges, Gloria Mindock and others to be announced. Over the last five years the festival has included such poets and writers as : Lan Samantha Chang, Franz Wright, Sue Miller, Steve Almond, Robert Olen Butler, Afaa Michael Weaver, Nick Flynn and
many others.

For more info go to http://somervillenewswritersfestival.com