Ibbetson Street Press Poetry Award

IBBETSON STREET PRESS POETRY AWARD


The Ibbetson Street Press Poetry Award is presented at the annual Somerville News Writers Festival (http://somervillenewswritersfestival.com/ ) held every year at the Jimmy Tingle Off-Broadway Theatre in Davis Square. The festival will be held November 11th this year. In past years poets and writers such as Pulitzer Prize winner Franz Wright, Robert Olen Butler, Oscar-nominated novelist Tom Perotta, Iowa Writer’s Workshop head Lan Samantha Chang, Sue Miller ( author of “The Good Mother”) , Steve Almond, Boston Globe Columnist Alex Beam, poet Nick Flynn, and many others have read in this event. This year former poet/laureate Robert Pinsky will be receiving the Lifetime Achievement award.

Ibbetson Street Press is also pleased to announce the 2nd annual Ibbetson Street Poetry Contest.

The winner of the Ibbetson Street Press Poetry Contest award (must be a Massachusetts resident) will receive a $100 cash award, a framed certificate, publication in the literary journal “Ibbetson Street” http://ibbetsonpress.com/ and a poetry feature in the “Lyrical Somerville,” in The Somerville News.

To enter send 3 to 5 poems, any genre, length, to Doug Holder 25 School St. Somerville, Mass. 02143. Entry fee is $10. Cash or check only. Make payable to “Ibbetson Street Press” or “Doug Holder. Deadline: Sept 15, 2007

The contest will be judged by Richard Wilhelm http://richardwilhelm.blogspot.com/ poet and arts/editor of the Ibbetson Street Press.

The winner will be announced at the festival, and will receive his or her award. A runner up will be announced as well.

Tino Villanueva: A Chicano poet with an eye in many worlds...

Tino Villanueva: A Chicano poet with an eye on many worlds…

Tino Villanueva is a Chicano writer who according to celebrated poet Martin Espada invented (along with Gary Soto), a new genre of poetry. Espada opines that Villanueva conceived: “…serious literature about farm workers. That in itself guarantees Tino a place in literary history.” Villanueva, who earned a PhD in Spanish Literature, and is a professor at Boston University, does not however live in a literary ghetto of Latino literature. Reginald Gibbons, former editor of Tri- Quarterly magazine wrote that Villanueva has: “… found a way, to write of both worlds (Chicano and Anglo) that makes sense, I believe to all readers, even those who might be interested in one of those worlds or the other.”

Villanueva has received a 1994 American Book Award for “Scene for the Movie Giant,” and has penned a number of books, including: “Primera Causa/ First Cause,’ “Shaking off the Dark,” and others. He also edited the literary magazine: “Imagine: International Chicano Poetry Journal.”

I talked with Villanueva on my Somerville Cable Access TV show: “Poet to Poet/Writer to Writer.”

Doug Holder: What is your experience with political poetry? Do you feel it gets mired in dogma?

Tino Villanueva: It’s not an easy genre to write in. I’m very wary about it. And I often think what Pablo Neruda said about political poetry. His warning to a young poet was not to begin writing political poetry until he mastered what poetry “is.”
When you start out you think what you write is poetry but it is sloganeering or just propaganda. What Neruda says is politics as well as love, and I would add religion, are three major things that if you want to write about them, you have to “pass through.” You have to have experience in technique and know what poetry is. You may think you are writing a love poem, but it is just gushy, saccarhine and sentimental.

DH: Were you an “angry young poet?”

TV: I was born in Texas in 1941. I went into the Service. I served in Panama. When I was a freshman in college I was 24 years old. I graduated in three years. I went to college on the G.I. Bill. When I started writing poetry I felt true love for the poetry of Dylan Thomas. If he was writing about birth and death then that was what I was writing about. He became my mentor. I wanted to sound like him…he had a great voice. He was a marvelous reader.

Later I became part of the Chicano Movement on campus. We had a Latino Civil Rights Movement from 1965 to 1975. So my poems from this period may show anger. Those types of poems are in my first book that came out in 1972. They were mostly written as an undergraduate and in graduate school.
DH: Are you embarrassed by these early poems?

TV: There are one or two poems that are salvageable. Some poems I don’t bother reading. With many of the poems I tried to sound like Dylan Thomas. It was important work in that I learned discipline and how to say what I wanted to say. It took me 12 years to write the next book.

DH: In an article in the Texas Observer it states that your poetry has echoes of French Existentialism, where you insist on the possibilities of creating oneself through choice and will. What have you created?

TV: I don’t know what the critic meant there. There are some poems in my last three books that show a transformation of a young man struggling out of a disadvantaged background and making something out of himself. He first wanted to be a baseball player because he thought he had a good curve ball. But the scouts never came. He had no idea back then that he would become a poet. But he would save himself that way.

So in my last two books there are several poems that make reference to this transformation. It is making something out of yourself through sheer will.

So in my last two books there are several poems that make reference to this transformation. Making something out of yourself through sheer will.

DH: In a poem of yours you wrote: “I write. I stop writing. I write.” Is this your definition of the writing life?

TV: When you are hitting it right, yes. When the muse is with you, when the inspiration is with you—those are the moments you have to take advantage of. You hit some dry spots, but you have to get out of it.

DH: What do you do to get out of writer’s block?

TV: Well language produces language. I turn on the radio, even if it is a soap opera. I’ll pick up a newspaper. I might hear something that snaps me out of it—a particular turn of phrase. Sometimes I will pick up a book by Ashbery, Elizabeth Bishop, and read work that inspires me.


DH: You are a very accomplished and learned man. Yet you still take courses at the Boston Center for Adult Education, and attend groups like the “Bagel Bards,” a group of poets that meet at the local Au Bon Pain.

TV: I am always learning something. Intelligent talk always helps me write or snap out of a block.

DH: Do you write in cafes?

TV: I am not a café sitter. When I am in Barcelona or Madrid, but not Boston.

DH: Is writing natural or “organic” for you?

TV: I’ll quote from James Dickey: “We all have ideas about what we want to write about. It takes 10% inspiration and 90% perspiration.” We’ll, you have ideas I am sure—you have to figure out how to express them—you have to figure out how you are going to transfer it on the page. What kind of images you are going to present? I am full of ideas but I have to find the words. I have to work to find the words. It is not easy.

DH: How was it being a Latino-American in the Academy?

TV: Well I had no role models. I was treated well in Buffalo and Boston. I felt welcomed. At Wellesley College I taught the first Chicano Lit. course in 1978.

THE BAGEL BARDS

THE BAGEL BARDS: A GROUP SHOT

( Click on to enlarge)

Join us at the the Au Bon Pain in Davis Square at 9AM every other Saturday, and Central Square Au Bon Pain-the other Saturday.

June 2: Central Square-- Au Bon Pain

June 9: Davis Square-- Au Bon Pain-- and so on..

Come and go as you please...very informal.

An informal group of poets and writers ... all welcome. Chat, network, get published, make new friends...

FOR SARAH ( a poem in memory of Sarah Hannah)

Sarah Hannah

I got this poem from Ibbetson Street poet Ruth Sabath Rosenthal. Ruth was a student of Sarah's when she lived in

New York City, and they kept in touch when Sarah moved back to the Boston- area.


FOR SARAH.

My friend, mine is a beating heart,
a poem bursting to come forth;
yours has stopped. No dormancy
of writer's block. Stopped for good.

O, that yours would still beat out poems.
No matter how dark, we'd listen,
we'd learn, we'd understand & maybe
you'd be here now. Perhaps

a Sonnet with its turn moving to depths
of utter bleakness, assonance resounding
in the second stanza. No resolution fit
for dreamy eyes to rest upon.

Blank verse, rhyme-riddled with
syllabic runs, each iambic line
symbolic unto itself, each stanza break,
a whip crack, a heart breaking.

A Villanelle, whose repeating end-
rhymed lines bleed their way down
to a finale punctuated by a question
mark & dead silence.

A Sestina of razor-sharp repitition
echoing the i in cry. A lament that pierces
through stanza upon stanza, until
reaching biblical heights of irony.

O. that we'd hear more from you. No
matter how dark the sound, we'd listen,
we'd learn, we'd understand & maybe
you'd be here now.

Ruth Sabath Rosenthal -

Poet Sarah Hannah Has Passed.

http://www.writersartists.net/shannah.htm



Poet Sarah Hannah Has Passed.

Poet Sarah Hannah, Emerson College instructor and author of “Longing Distance” has passed away. Hannah reportedly committed suicide.

A Newton, Mass. native, she held a PhD. From Columbia University. I had the pleasure to know her, interview her, book her for readings, and publish her in issue 20 of the Ibbetson Street Press. She was a striking woman, wore a nose ring, played the bass in a rock band, and had a brilliant poetic talent.

Ironically she sent me an article she wrote on the poetry of Sylvia Plath; who met the same fate. She said her next book of poetry was to deal with the mental illness of her mother. Tupelo Press is publishing the collection, and it was due out in the next several months. I had booked her for The Somerville News Writers Festival, and she asked me to help book her for a reading at McLean Hospital, which I was close to doing. I sent her an email last week. I was told that she killed herself last week. She was only in her early 40’s. I know her high school teacher. She seemed so happy. Her star was rising. She had been through a divorce. She had everything to live for. I have only clichés. I am sorry. I have worked at McLean Hospital for 25 years, but I am not immune to this. May she rest in peace.

The family is having a private memorial. There will be a public memorial at Emerson College in the fall.

I conducted this interview with Sarah a year ago:
Boston Area Small Press and Poetry Scene

Interview with poet Sarah Hannah: A Poet within “Longing Distance”

Sarah Hannah is an educator, a poet with a PhD from Columbia University, and a sometimes rock musician. Her poems have appeared in “Barrow Street,” “Parnassus,” “Gulf Coast,” “Crab Orchard Review,” and others. Her original manuscript, which became her first poetry collection “Longing Distance,” was a semi-finalist for the “Yale Younger Poets Prize,” in 2002. Anne Dillard describes her collection as: “…an extremely moving work. I’m struck by her intelligence of emotion and her unmistakable voice…Sarah Hannah is a true original.” She currently resides with her husband in Cambridge and teaches at Emerson College in Boston. She was a guest on my Somerville Community Access TV show “Poet to Poet/Writer to Writer.

”Doug Holder: Can you tell us about the “Yale Younger Poets Prize” which “Longing Distance,” was a semi-finalist for?

Sarah Hannah: That was a sort of near miss. That was in 2002. That was the year Tupelo Press accepted my book. I found out I was a runner up by phoning the editor, (not the judge) who was W.S. Merwin. The editor told me he remembered the book, and it was a semi-finalist, and it was a strong book.

Doug Holder: A lot of folks claim a PhD can ruin a poet. You learn how to write academic papers, but you forget how to write poetry. This does not seem to be the case with you.

Sarah Hannah: It ruined me in the sense that while I was writing my dissertation, I felt that I didn’t have time to write poetry. But I think the PhD made me a better poet. It forced me to really study poetry deeply. You have to grapple with ideas that are foreign to you. You read more than just contemporary poets. You learn to become a better writer.Some people become sidetracked. They go into a PhD program and they emerge as critics not poets. There are more people around than you think that are poets and scholars.

Doug Holder: How did you come up with the title for your collection “Longing Distance?”

Sarah Hannah: I was writing a series of sonnets about a messed up love affair. You know “absence makes the heart grow fonder,” an all those clichés. So I came up with a line while I was in the country watching my husband scale a rock. I thought of the line: “I keep you at longing distance.” I thought it was just going to be another sonnet in the sequence. I wrote the sonnet, but then wound up expunging it from the book. I kept “Longing Distance,’ as the title.

Doug Holder: From our email exchanges I get the impression you haven’t had an easy life.

Sarah Hannah: I lived a hardscrabble life. I’ve seen life disintegrate. I wanted to put back my experiences in more metaphysical or formal terms.I grew up in Newton, Mass., in the Waban section. A lot of neurosis going on there. I would say seven out of my eight high school friends were bulimic. I was not. My mother was hospitalized at the same “summer hotel” Anne Sexton visited.

Doug Holder: How does your teaching at Emerson College fit with your poetry?

Sarah Hannah: It’s fitting beautifully because I am teaching poetry, as opposed to composition. I am teaching traditional form to graduate and undergraduate students. I teach a hybrid literature and writing course.

Doug Holder: Why did you move from the bright lights and big city of New York to the more provincial environs of Boston?

Sarah Hannah: I am a lover of the underdog. Boston is the underdog to New York. I felt I had to come back. You know: “My end is my beginning, my beginning my end.” I have always missed Boston. I am a loyal person that way. My husband and I purchased a house in Cambridge. It’s right in the Central Square area. It’s a very diverse city. I often write at the ‘1369” Coffee Shop or ‘Grendel’s Den,” in Harvard Square. I feel rooted here.

Doug Holder: How does the lit scene here compare to the “Big Apple?”

Sarah Hannah: There are a lot of readings here like N.Y. I lived in N.Y. for 17 years. It took me 8 years to get “out” there. It seems much faster out here. I have a book though, that makes a difference. I was worried. It took a long time for me to establish myself in New York City. But I didn’t loose my contacts because I maintained my connection to the journal “Barrow Street,” and now I am an editor there.”

Endicott College: A Hub for the Arts on the North Shore

Endicott College: A Hub for the Arts on the North Shore

By Doug Holder

If someone is artistically inclined, and he or she drives out to the campus of Endicott College in Beverly, Mass., they may very well be tempted to paint a picture or compose a poem. The stately old New England homes, the breathtaking view of Beverly Harbor, the waft of a bracing sea breeze, certainly can conjure up the muse. So it makes sense that Endicott College is focused on bringing on an ambitious program in the arts and writing to its hallowed halls.

Endicott College was founded in 1939 by Dr. Eleanor Tupper and her husband Dr. George O. Bierke, with the idea, (according to the official Endicott history):

“to educate women for greater independence professionally and socially.” Endicott then and now offers a solid classroom experience, as well as a link to the outside work-a-day world through a recognized internship program. From just 20 students in 1941, there are now over 1,800 daytime undergraduates, as well as 1100 adult students in graduate and professional studies programs. This along with a 230 acre, well-appointed estate, completes a very pleasing picture.

But Endicott’s ambitions have not stopped here. Dr. Peter Eden, the new Dean of Arts and Sciences, has a PhD in Microbiology, but is very interested in delivering a complete package for a liberal arts institution such as Endicott College. To this end he has worked with Chairman of the Humanities Dr. Mark Herlihy, and Creative Writing professor Dr. Dan Sklar, to affiliate the college with the prestigious journal of arts and ideas, “the new renaissance.” Headed by Louise Reynolds, the magazine has an illustrious history of presenting the best poetry, fiction, and articles of pressing social concern to a national and international audience. A new office has been set up, and students will intern with the magazine and learn the essentials of writing, reviewing, and what it takes to put out a quality journal.

Mark Herlihy feels that the connection with “the new renaissance”, and the recent creation of the Creative Writing program, can only bolster the liberal arts education. Herlihy says of “the new renaissance:”

“The college’s affiliation connects the college to a broad network of poets, artists, and writers in New England and beyond.”

Dan Sklar, who initially approached Peter Eden and Mark Herlihy with the idea for a residency for “the new renaissance,” is a dyed-in-the-wool published poet, and playwright, who tries to connect the literary world to the academic. In classes he is noted for his use of the work of living writers and poetry from small press journals. He has ambitions for an MFA in Creative Writing at Endicott College, if things go well. Sklar told the NEWS:

“Creative writing is grounded in the love of language, and writing in a natural, spontaneous, and expressive and open way. We feel there is a deep connection between the arts, literature and history as an inspirational light in one’s growth as an artist. The MFA is an extension of this philosophy. Our vision of the MFA is also one that is noncompetitive where students become part of a community of writers who are inspired by the world, everyday life, each other’s work, and by the things we see, and the art we see…”

Mark Herlihy also told the NEWS that the undergraduate literary magazine the “Endicott Review,” (that Dan Sklar is faculty advisor for)), had a poem in “The Best American Poetry 2006” edited by the former poet/Laureate Billy Collins. The college has also added to the faculty Charlotte Gordon, author of “Mistress Bradstreet: The Untold Story of America’s First Poet,” which won a Massachusetts Book Award.

Endicott is also expanding on another front as well. Mark Towner, Dean of the Fine Arts School of Art and Design, says that the Board of Trustees of the college authorized the construction of a 70,000 square foot Center for Visual and Performing Arts at the College. The design will be completed June 15, and construction should begin on July 1, 2007. Towner adds that:

“The new facility will support the visual arts by providing state-of-the-art studios, galleries, and workshops. The latter will include woodwork/model building/ book arts (printmaking/bookbinding), finishing and mounting, computer labs, digital printing, a performance hall and a blackbox theatre. These two major additions will support the growth of both music and theatre arts at Endicott.”


With all this new activity on this campus by-the sea, it seems likely that Endicott will become the arts and cultural hub of the North Shore. Boston and Cambridge watch your backs!

Doug Holder

Modern Lovers: Sherman Cafe- Memorial Day ( Somerville, Mass.)

So there I was having a scone at Sherman's...like I have done on and off for a decade, when I hear someone say : "Hey, I hear you are closing." I asked the counterman, and he said today--Sunday Sept 14, 2014 was the last day of the Sherman Cafe. I guess it wasn't making money--and the owner decided to close it. They are going to morph into a somewhat tony ice cream shop--that will probably fit the high end image the hip and new square will affect in the coming months and years. It was a great cafe-- I have interviewed many local and national writers and artists there like Hugh Fox, Ethan Gilsdorf, Afaa Michael Weaver, too many to name. I also reveled in their oatmeal/cherry scone...it made rare appearances as of late. I also composed many a poem there. This fateful morning I was having breakfast with my old friend Jennifer Matthews--who is relocating to another part of the state, and who I just finished a music,poetry collaboration with. So parting is such sweet/sorrow.. Here is a poem I wrote at the said cafe some years ago--hope you enjoy:

Modern Lovers: Sherman Cafe-Memorial Day-Somerville, Mass.

Lovers

joined at the hip...

they sit.

Across the small table

hand on his mouse

the other on

the folds of her

draping blouse.

He sends an amorous

message

to the inbox

of her wireless

beating heart--

And says the very

same things,

lovers have

always said,

from the start.

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