Somerville Writer Pagan Kennedy: The Woman Makes The Man

Somerville writer Pagan Kennedy: The Woman Makes the Man


Doug Holder

We reinvent ourselves all the time. We change jobs, get a facelift, become born again, get a new mantra or Mercedes, whatever… This country, “The American Dream,” is based on reinvention. But how about reinventing yourself as someone of the opposite sex? How about undergoing years of painful operations; preparing oneself to face intolerance and discrimination society to achieve goals? Writer Pagan Kennedy has tackled such a subject in her new book The First Man-Made Man: The Story of Two Sex Changes, One Love Affair, and a Twentieth Century Medical Revolution (Bloomsbury). Kennedy, a long-time Somerville resident, and the author of a number of critically-acclaimed fiction and nonfiction titles including: Black Livingstone and Spinsters, has written a true account of Laura Dillon, a woman born in England in 1915. Laura, later known as Michael Dillon, became the first person to undergo a sex change from female to male. Dillon’s quest for radical change was at a time when the use of plastic surgery and synthetic hormones were in their seminal stages of development. During Dillon’s long and torturous journey he became a medical doctor, and even had an unrequited love affair with Roberta Cowell, a preoperative male to female he thought would understand him. In the end Dillon began a spiritual quest for acceptance in India and Tibet where he attempted to become an ordained Buddhist monk. Kennedy has tackled this bizarre story in an objective, non-histrionic manner, making for a totally engrossing read. The Beat interviewed Kennedy recently about The First Man- Made Man:





Doug Holder: Laura Dillon started out as a female. But her life was dedicated to her transformation to a male, which was totally unheard of in 1940's and 1950's England. How much do you think this obsession was psychological, and how much physical. How much did the repressive attitude towards women contribute to this?

Pagan Kennedy: Born in 1915, Laura Dillon began to have intimations that she was not really a girl even in the nursery. But her true revelation came at age 17, when a boy held open a gate for her, and she realized that he saw her as a woman. "It was a horrible moment and I felt stunned," Dillon wrote later. "I had never thought of myself as a female despite being technically a girl. People thought I was a woman, but I wasn't. I was just me." From then on, she was compelled to dress and act as a man. She did not know how to explain herself or her urges, given that the word 'transsexual' had still not come into use. So she had to invent the idea for herself. She faced enormous discrimination -- not so much as a woman but as a person who dressed in drag and looked androgynous. This fueled her desire to transform her body into a male's; she wanted other people to stop tormenting her. In the late 1930s, she became the first woman on record to begin taking testosterone, which is an enormously effective drug for changing appearance. By the early 1940s, Laura Dillon had become a male tow-truck driver named Michael Dillon. He wrote one of the first texts ever to argue for the rights of transsexuals. He then earned a medical degree and became a doctor. At the end of his life, he explored India and became one of the first Westerners ever to take vows as a Tibetan Buddhist. The first half of Dillon's adult life was dedicated to changing his body; in the second half, he worked on transforming his own mind and grasping spiritual truths.


Doug Holder: Obviously Dillon felt strongly about being a complete male, to the extent of getting a penis. He didn't seem to be that concenred with the sexual aspect of a relationship. He seemed to be more interested in the trappings of "respectability" Married, house-- the middle class ideal. Your take?


Pagan Kennedy: Yes, his greatest desire was to become invisible and to live an ordinary life. This is a privilege that most of us take for granted. Imagine how exhausting it would be to draw stares and catcalls every time you walk down the street, to be fired from jobs, to be ostracized. Dillon -- like many transgendered people today -- had faced a kind of social torture that ground him down. So once he could pass as a man, he longed to fit in and be accepted, because he'd never had that luxury before. At the same, he hungered to find some spiritual enlightenment and Truth (with a capital T); this urge sent him on a fascinating quest all over the world; he traveled from America to Africa to China, and eventually he found what he was looking for in India. He would end up at a remote monastery in the Himalayas, enduring all kinds of deprivations -- from hunger to hard work -- in order to gain mastery over his own mind.





Doug Holder: Dillon graduated medical school. He was a mediocre student at best. Do you think he would have made the cut if he was a mediocre woman student?


Pagan Kennedy: He went to Trinity medical school in the late 1940s in Dublin. He spent much of those years commuting back to England to have more than a dozen plastic surgeries to transform his body so that he could pass as male in the shower or locker room. Often ill from surgery, he had a ready explanation: he had been injured in the Blitz. The Irish didn't question him on this; they knew too many other Englishman who had been hideously maimed by the bombs that fell on London, Bristol, Cardiff. In fact, Dillon had served bravely during the war as a fire watcher, putting out flames that sprung up from bombs and watching over a building full of gasoline that could have gone up any moment. So he was given allowances as an Englishman who'd been through the war. But I should also emphasized that he performed well enough in med school to pass all his tests and even perform surgeries -- which was miraculous, considering that he spent so much of his time as a patient himself.


Doug Holder:Dillon fled to Tibet, after his failed attempts at a relationship with another transexual, and his outing by the popular press. He sought to be a Buddhist Monk, but he was rejected because he was of the "third sex" I wonder if this was a first case for this order, and did they really have an understanding where this guy was coming from?


Pagan Kennedy: The Buddhist monastic code -- 2,500 years old -- does prohibit people who belong to the "third sex" from becoming monks. However, it's hard to say what exactly religious leaders meant, thousands of years ago, by that term "third sex." Also, the monastic code prohibits people with a zillion other conditions, from goiter to eczema, so a lot of people ignore these bans. Initially, Dillon sought to become a monk in the Theravada tradition, but the leaders blocked him. He found the Tibetan Buddhists to be much more sympathetic. Had he lived a few more years, he surely would have become a monk.

Doug Holder: How would Dillion fare in 2007?


Pagan Kennedy: In 2007 would Dillon have a respectable medical practice, marriage, sexual life or least have a much better chance at it.

In fact, hundreds or thousands of transgendered men are now living the kinds of ordinary lives to which Dillon once aspired: marriage, kids, careers. And many of them are living quite extraordinary lives. For instance, Dr. Ben Barres, now one of the top brain scientists in the country, went through MIT as a woman and transitioned after that. He has spoken out eloquently about discrimination against women in the sciences.


Doug Holder. There is a picture of a pipe on the front cover of the book. Dillon smoke a pipe. Was the pipe a sort of smoke screen (pardon the pun) for Dillon?



Pagan Kennedy: When she was at Oxford in the 1930s, Laura Dillon struggled to figure out who she was. Her friends had told her she was a "homosexual" because she was attracted to other women, and yet Laura knew that her discomfort did not have to do with sex so much as with identity. She needed other people to recognize her as a man -- more particularly, she knew she had to become an Oxford man, an intellectual and thinker. Because she did not have a word, she picked a symbol for her future self; in secret, she bought a pipe and brought it back to her room at Oxford and began puffing on it. The pipe -- that male appendage in the shape of a question mark -- seemed to perfectly sum up what Dillon knew she needed to survive. Eventually, she did become exactly the kind of man she'd picture: Michael Dillon was a pipe-smoking intellectual, an Oxford man and a respected doctor. And then, when he began living at a monastery in India -- and hoped to dissolve his ego in order to find englightment -- he threw the pipe over a cliff. This, for him, was the ultimate sacrifice: he intended to give up not just the pleasure of smoking, but also all his privileges as an Englishman in India.

.....This article originally appeared in the Middlesex Beat / May 2007.

Poet Bob Clawson talks about Anne Sexton at the Wilderness House Literary Retreat

Bob Clawson: Sharing his experience with poet Anne Sexton at the Wilderness House Literary Retreat.

Doug Holder

On May 19 at the Wilderness House Literary Retreat in Littleton, Mass. poet, writer, journalist, educator Bob Clawson talked with a group of literature lovers about his friendship with the acclaimed, Pulitzer-Prize winning poet, the late Anne Sexton. Clawson showered his audience with his fascinating anecdotes and experiences with Sexton, who wrote “To Bedlam and Part Way Back,” among other critically acclaimed poetry collections.

Clawson explained that he was teaching English at Weston High School in Weston, Mass. in 1963. He had students read the works of contemporary poets to stoke the interest of his young charges. While reading Sexton’s poem “Menstruation at 40” in the faculty room, the gym teacher asked Clawson if he was a fan of Sexton. When he answered in the affirmative; the teacher said he was a friend of the poet and he would introduce him to her.

It seems that Sexton lived in Weston, and she eventually invited Clawson for a visit. Clawson described Sexton as being not what he expected for a lady poet of the time. She was certainly not dowdy and was adorned in a shocking pink dress. Eventually Sexton read at Weston High School and was a great hit. They needed a large auditorium to handle the crowd the second time around.

Sexton campaigned to be Poet-In-Residence at Weston High, but it seems the headmaster felt she shamelessly flirted with him and told Clawson, “We can’t have this here!’

Clawson was reluctant to talk of Sexton’s mental illness that eventually lead to her suicide. Clawson recalled: “She wasn’t really diagnosed. She told me she heard voices.. Her husband, a wool merchant, was said to have beaten her, which couldn’t help matters.” According to Clawson, Sexton would sometimes call him around midnight and want him come to her house stating “I’m desperate.”

For such an accomplished poet it is surprising that she never finished college. Clawson said she eloped during junior college and never went back. She was self-educated and widely read. Clawson said he was always under the impression he was speaking with a highly intelligent and knowledgeable person.

Sexton had eclectic tastes, and could not be placed in one particular school of poetry. She respected Allen Ginsberg, and was not a snob about who she admired. And although she had no formal higher education, she was welcomed with open arms by the academy according to Clawson.

Later, Clawson, Sexton, and a couple of musicians put together a “chamber rock” group to put Sexton’s poems to music. The group's name: “Anne Sexton and Her kind.” Her poems were adapted to the demands of musical composition. Sexton read while the musicians complimented her with accomplished guitar and bass accompaniment.”

The group had many gigs from the DeCordova Museum in Lincoln, Mass., Jordan Hall in Boston, to venues throughout the country.

Sexton found the concerts extremely draining, and could only do a limited amount. But from the musical tapes that Clawson brought in, it was evident that she was an accomplished performer with a beautiful and haunting voice, not to mention breathtaking poetry.

Doug Holder

For more information about the Wilderness House Literary Retreat go to: http://wildernesshouse.org/

Boston Review Comes To Somerville

The Boston Review Comes to Somerville.

By Doug Holder

Last summer a well-regarded bimonthly magazine of literature and ideas moved to 35 Medford St. in Somerville, Mass. Somerville has been a home to many small magazines and presses and the “Boston Review” is a welcomed addition.

I remember working at the said magazine at its Boston venue quite a few years ago. I worked as an editorial assistant in a cramped warren of offices; across the hall from a tailor shop. In a dark room I pored over a slush pile of manuscripts, both poetry and fiction, from all over the country. I used to write capsule reviews of the submission so the editors could decide what to read and what not to read. Although the environs were less than luxurious, I learned a great deal about what goes into producing a bimonthly magazine of the arts and ideas.

The “Boston Review” according to its mission statement is a “non-partisan bimonthly magazine of ideas with a distinctive reputation for bringing together academics, civic leaders, policymakers, activists and other public intellectuals in service of a more vibrant civil society, and a stronger democracy." The magazine also views the “… arts as an essential part of the enterprise. Putting politics and poetry on the same page…”

The “Boston Review” was founded in 1975, and it emerged in the 80’s as a respected regional literary magazine that had occasional political articles. In 1991 Joshua Cohen, then a professor at MIT, became the editor and increased the national readership. He developed the “Boston Review’ into an influential magazine of ideas.

In 2002, the former editorial director of the Beacon Press in Boston, Deborah Chasman, joined the magazine as a co-editor. Chasman “professionalized’ the journal, and launched a books series with the MIT Press. Cohen, who is now a professor at Stanford University in California, still edits the magazine with Chasman. The poetry section is edited by Timothy Donnelly and Benjamin Paloff, and recently such local poets as Peter Richard’s and Tanya Larkin’s work has appeared in the Review. I asked Chasman a few questions about Somerville’s new magazine-in-residence:

First off- You guys were located at MIT, and before that Boston. Why the move to Somerville? Is Somerville a good fit?

Yes, we love our new offices. We moved off the MIT campus last summer, after Josh Cohen took a position at Stanford University. Although Josh remains co-editor, we decided not to relocate the magazine to the west coast (it is, after all, the *Boston* Review). In Somerville, we found a large, convenient, beautiful and affordable space where we can focus on our work. For the same price we could have had a place downtown, half the size and with a marble foyer. We choose the renovated horse stable in Somerville over the marble-foyered high-rise. It's a fit better with our mission.




You wrote that you put politics and poetry on the "same page." Are you afraid that Poetry and Polemic are like oil and water--they don't mix?

Boston Review is unique in our strong commitment to both politics and poetry--and we believe they mix very well on our pages. We don't see our political writing as polemic. In fact, we're don't publish articles that are simply ideological. They must be rooted in solid evidence and argument. This requires discipline and honest exploration of the world much in the way that creative writing does.


In the Boston Review’s mission statement it reads that the powers-that-be on the magazine see the arts as an essential part of the human enterprise. How so? Is it as essential as medicine, science, finance, politics or philosophy, for instance?

It is. Arts have always been one of the best ways of expressing our common humanity. What could be more important than that?


DoubleTake magazine moved to Somerville (Davis Square) for a short while and then folded. Is this a bad omen? You have been around since 1975, what do you attribute your staying power to?

We run on a shoestring budget focused on the essentials and it's proportional to the revenue we make from advertising and subscriptions. We do still need help from individual donors and foundations, but we pull a good part of our own weight, and we are always trying to develop new ways to increase the revenue we earn. For example, last fall we launched a book series with MIT Press, with content based on magazine articles. We do the editorial and design work; they produce and market the books and we share the revenue. Of course, we could always use more money.


How can a student-age Somerville resident become an intern? What would they learn?

We generally take college-age students for internships. Because we are a small operation, our interns get an introduction to the whole magazine publishing process--from screening submissions, to editing and fact-checking, and doing art research for our print issue. They are also involved in the marketing/business side--from fielding subscriber questions to helping with our direct mail--and helping maintain and update our website.

* for more info: http://www.bostonreview.net
Doug Holder/ Ibbetson Update

Taxidancing by Paul Pines

Taxidancing Paul Pines ( Ikon 151 First Ave N.Y., N.Y 1003) $13 ikoninc@aol.com

What a background for a poet. Paul Pines grew up in Brooklyn, and spent time in the Lower East Side of NYC. He tended bar, drove a cab, shipped out as a merchant seaman, and opened his own jazz club in the Bowery: “The Tin Palace” in 1970. He is now a practicing psychotherapist in upstate New York. So this ain’t your usual MFA-trained bard, but certainly one who has been well-schooled. This poetry collection "Taxidancing,", admirably illustrated by Wayne Atherton, is divided into two parts: “After Hours” that deals with Pines life during his stint in the Lower East Side; his cabbie, and jazz club owner days. The other “Bits and Pieces” has a more spiritual context to it.

I was most interested in “:After Hours” having grown up in the New York City area, and passing some time in the environs that Pines did. In this compelling portrait of a jazz man as a cokehead , “Cocaine Cadenza,’ Pines “nosedives “ into the face of “Bradley” after he has finished a set:

“After Bradley
finishes his last set
I see his nose
has become
pitted
as a moon rock
a terrain on which
bulges grow from
other bulges
like Black Forest
mushrooms
a huge sponge
with a
starboard
list
a creature
that has started
to drift
leaving
a small
abyss
in the middle
of his face.”

And Pines ode to the mad genius Be-Bop pianist Thelonious Monk :“Monk’s Dream,” captures the between-the-notes brilliance of this enigmatic artist: “Twisting the symphony/ as Ives did/.… A single note implied/ between the keys/ a note we can’t hear/ no less/ look at/ call white/or black…”

Hughly Recommended
Doug Holder/Ibbetson Update/ May 2007/ Somerville, Mass.

Hugh Fox Reviews "Shadow People" by Molly Lynn Watt

This review appeared in the March/April 2007 issue of the "small press review"



Shadow People: Poems by Molly Lynn Watt (Ibbetson Street Press- 2006) orderfrom http://www.lulu.com


Watt is kind of a flesh-and-blood monument in the Boston area, totallyinvolved with the poetic life there, but she reads like some kind of youngworld-traveller soaked in world-literature, concentrating especially on the ephemeralness of human existence. As in this in Memoriam poem titled simply“Margie”(1916-1999): “It is always spring where she sits in her chair/underMonet’s blue sky and fields of tulips/ Her fragile body bends over the nailclippers.../shaking/both hands shaking....” (p.25)

Unexpected poems here about the Yup’ik Indians in Alaska, theMendenhall Glacier and the Tlingit Indians (again Alaska), Central Park inNYC during the winter, streetlife in Boston-Cambridge,everything always witha sense of transience, everything evaporating, vanishing away, even when she writes about the year she was born, 1938:

“That bloody year of 1938 when I was born..../Nazis carried out pogroms against the Jewish Born...//Storm troopers smashed synagogues and shops and homes/Time named Hitler man of the year....” (“1938,” p. 11).

At the same time that she’s lamenting the shortness of life, swirling in memories of lost-time, she preaches deliciously Debussyan delicatesermons on grasping the Here and Now: “...Wear a crown of daisies/Build afire on sand.../Listen for the peepers/Wait for fireflies in the meadow.”(“Abandon Your Shoes,” p.51).

A living classic.

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
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Send check or money order payable to: Cervena Barva PressP.O. Box 440357,W. Somerville, MA 02144-3222
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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