The republic of Lies: Poems by Ed Ochester.

The republic of Lies: Poems by Ed Ochester. (ADASTRA PRESS
16 Reservation Road, Easthampton, MA 01027 (413)527-3324, (413)549-2201 fax


Ed Ochester, 68, has had a long career as a poet and editor. He is the editor of the Pitt. Poetry Series and co-editor of the poetry journal 5A.M. Ochester, is well into the second half of the rollercoaster ride, but still has more than a bit of the rebel flowing through his veins. His poetry seems to cut through all the posturing and smoke and mirrors society throws at us, and cuts to the chase. In the poem “ Butterfly Effect” the poet takes broad swipes at the lies we all tell ourselves as we “plod along.”

“ I am thinking of all the Americans, who believe that in former lives,
they were Catherine The Great or Nefertiti ,
and all the ones who believe,
in the butterfly effect…

some jerk who farts in Albuquerque,
might trigger a typhoon in Sumatra,
though if that were true we’d have more storms then Jupiter and
the earth already would be destroyed…

all of us poor dumb fucks,
heads filled with shit
muttering to ourselves
as we plod along.”

And here is a poem that pays homage to all those “ rebels without a cause”: “Why I love Teenagers::

“In Holiday Park, PA
the Burger King
has put out a signboard advertising
for late-night employees
and some kid
contemptuous
of minimum wage
the ‘free enterprise system”
and possibly even
“In God We Trust”
has stolen the “C” from the sign
so that it reads:
“Now hiring Losers.”

Highly Recommended.

Doug Holder/ Ibbetson Update

JAZZ AND GOSPEL CONCERT TO BENEFIT VICTOR ROSARIO’S LEGAL DEFENSE FUND

JAZZ AND GOSPEL CONCERT TO BENEFIT
VICTOR ROSARIO’S LEGAL DEFENSE FUND





WHERE: OLD CAMBRIDGE BAPTIST CHURCH
1150 MASSACHUSETTS AVENUE
CAMBRIDGE, MA

WHEN: SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 8, 7:30 PM
(ENTER THROUGH RED DOOR ON LEFT SIDE)

WHO: GEOFFREY DANA HICKS ON PIANO
JIMMY SMITH, LO GALLUCCIO
& OTHERS ON VOCALS
WILLIE SORDILLO ON SAXOPHONE

ADMISSION: $20.00 TO BENEFIT LEGAL DEFENSE FUND COME SWING AND ENJOY FOR A GOOD CAUSE!

Review of Drinking The Light by Laverne Frith

Review of Drinking The Light by Laverne Frith



Drinking The Light ($12.00 U.S.A.) (Finishing Line Press, P.O. Box 1626, Georgetown, Kentucky 40324) finishinglinepress.com

By Laverne Frith



Laverne Frith’s Drinking The Light is an aesthetically astute poetry book. At first glance, the reader may think the 29 page chapbook will be a religious experience, but it isn’t really that. It’s a highly crafted collection of poetry that seems to teach the reader a lot of things, especially about beautiful writing, visual art, photography, as well as nature.

Through economy of words, enjambment, and concrete imagery, Frith explains everyday situations and aesthetics with immediate insight. He teaches the reader about light’s importance in photography by writing about life and inanimate objects and the effects of light upon them. With ease and skill, Frith has the reader “Drinking The Light”, understanding photography and art and poetry in a reading experience that is visually oriented.[1]

In his opening poem, “Toward Clarity: The Power of Contrast” (p. 3) , Frith lets the reader know the speaker of the poem is interested in art.



I find the picture

much too muddled



I play it stark

strip out the middle tones



go from negative to positive

to negative to positive



over and over again



only the outlines

matter now



here I find

all the subtleties



for my attraction



Here Frith has created a beautiful, flowing piece about a “picture”, probably a photograph, that metaphorically sets the tone for the chapbook to follow. Like a photograph with a “muddled” or disordered scene, the speaker reflects that the book to follow isn’t clear in its intentions. This is similar to life’s path. The speaker seems to suggest that the following poems contain messages that are hidden, as he says, “here I find/all the subtleties//for my attraction”.

The speaker is interested in photography and the effects of light and immediately lets the reader know the journey isn’t going to be that clear, a lot of contrasts will happen, as often seen in photographs.

And, yet, the experience will probably be a smooth, flowing and speedy one, as Frith indicates through the poem’s lack of punctuation. Frith doesn’t even capitalize any of the words except the word “I” which give a focus – a focal point – to the piece and the chapbook.

Frith writes poems about light several times in the book. “In Reluctant Light” (p. 7), “In A Vase” (p. 11), and “Drinking The Light” (p. 24), the speaker tells about the dramatic effects light has on subjects and in scenes. Frith has captured with words visual images that a photographer or a painter portrays in artwork.

In “In Reluctant Light”, the speaker says, “the window sill is deep/in cobalt blue/bottles lined abreast//so many varied shapes/and densities/translucent warnings”. Frith has described this scene so articulately and with such clarity that the reader can visualize the setting as if he was viewing an actual photograph. The reader can easily imagine “the bottles filled/with dry flowers/herbs and ornamental fans” written further down the poem, as well as the “cobalt blue/bottles lined abreast” because Frith has written so concretely. He does get a bit abstract and “muddled” when he explains “so many varied shapes/and densities/translucent warnings” and about “contained regret/overlaying anxious moods/of the afternoon”. But this can be attributed to the darkening of the daylight where “a candle here and there/I only need/to strike a match”. Through words, Frith has captured the tone of light so important to understand in a photograph.

Again, light is a focal point in “In A Vase” where “of early morning/window light/mums float//lower tendrils/spread/in counterpoise”. The reader can easily imagine this quaint scene. Frith has created a beautiful poem by making the reader visualize “window light” hitting the “mums (that) float//lower tendrils/spread/in counterpoise.” This poem is written at a distance, as if we are viewing a photograph.

“Drinking The Light”, which is the title of Frith’s chapbook, is written at a distance, after Frith has viewed a photograph. The person who took the photograph remains a mystery, but the concrete imagery again plays an important part in helping the reader visualize the artwork being described. The effects of light in a dark setting are revealed. The speaker explains:



in the wee hours

on this vacant street

the storefront mannequins hold sway



their window dresses seize the stage

drinking the light

like tonic water



light that shadow-drips

from their broadbrimmed hats

obscuring the plasticity of face…



We have a sense of time, place, subject, and light so clearly and gracefully depicted through

the use of words.

In Drinking The Light, Firth has also poetry about things that live in nature. The poems “The Jay” (p. 8) and “White Arachnid” (p. 9) describe a blue jay and a white spider and a moth doing what is expected of them. In “The Jay”, Frith writes:



there are so many

blue aspects of the Jay

that are so difficult to capture







with its flitting nuances

of hunt and capture

its exercises



from break of day

through transient shadow

through bright full sun…



The speaker tells the reader of his observations about the Blue Jay’s habits, “with its flitting nuances/of hunt and capture” all day long or “from break of day/through transient shadow/through bright full sun. Frith has evoked visual imagery, like that viewed in a photograph or a painting, through economizing of words.

Frith portrays the spider in a distinctive light in his symmetrical poem “White Arachnid”, a poem which is offset in the final stanza with its single line “will not wait.” Just as spiders have the tendency to surprise their prey – and human beings, too –, the speaker “Startle(s)” the reader at the start of the poem. Frith has capitalized the word “Startle”, which is what the spider has done to the “waiting moth” who has been captured in the spider’s web spun “on the night glass”.

The moth couldn’t easily spot “the night glass” in the “ephemeris of the night” with its “incandescent light”. Frith has created a beautiful piece about the habits of the spider and “a waiting moth”, the captured prey. Frith seems to have viewed this scene often enough to realize

“Neither will rest for long/The permitting night//will not wait.” Through Frith’s simple observations, the darkness of the night is visualized in its “incandescent light”. It’s as if the reader is reading a photograph made from words.

Besides photography and nature, Frith also has published poems about visual art, as seen in “An Artist’s Self Portrait”(p. 5), “Young Girl At The Piano” (p. 14), “Mosaic” (p. 16), and

“Arrival Of The Normandy Train At The Gare Saint-Lazare” (p. 17). These poems are also about the tones of light in artwork and very good readings.

All in all, Laverne Frith’s Drinking The Light is aesthetically pleasing and a thought-inducing poetry read. If you have an interest in light and its effects in art, photography and life, you should enjoy reading this chapbook. And if you don’t necessarily want to put your thinking cap on and learn about light’s tone in various stages, you probably still will find Drinking The Light a delight to read.


Pam Rosenblatt/Ibbetson Update/Somerville, Mass. Aug 2007





###



--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

[1] Alain Briot, “Aesthetic and Photography”, http?//luminous-landscape.com/columns/aesthetics-l.shtml,

p.1.

IBBETSON STREET PRESENTS: FROM MIST TO SHADOW by Robert K. Johnson

IBBETSON STREET PRESENTS:

From Mist To Shadow: Poems by Robert K. Johnson


Fred Marchant (Director of the Poetry Center at Suffolk University) writes of Johnson’s work: “His is an art of transparency, an art in which language through its own devices becomes nearly invisible and what is seen through the scrim is usually an epiphany… The ordinary life is under the poet’s gaze transformed into something approaching the sacred…”

“From Mist To Shadow” is an apt title for Robert K. Johnson’s newest collection of poetry. The poems offer a wide range of subject matters and styles. The book’s first pages concern the poet’s early years, and the final pages his later years. In between we have meditation on family, literature, career, movies and a host of characters who have weaved in and out of the poet’s life.

Robert K. Johnson was a Professor of English at Suffolk University (Boston, Mass) for many years and is the author of six collections of poetry. His work has appeared in a wide variety of magazines, journals and newspapers. He is currently the submission editor for the Ibbetson Street Press of Somerville, Mass.






To order: send a check for $12 to:

Ibbetson Street Press
25 School St.
Somerville, Mass.
02143
dougholder@post.harvard.edu

I HAVE MEASURED OUT MY LIFE IN COFFEE SPOONS.I HAVE MEASURED OUT MY LIFE IN COFFEE SPOONS.

I HAVE MEASURED OUT MY LIFE IN COFFEE SPOONS.

I was staring at my usual oatmeal scone at the Sherman Café in Union Square, Somerville last Sunday when I realized to some extent that : “I have measured out my life in coffee spoons,” as T.S. Eliot wrote. For as long as I can remember coffee shops have been a balm; a comforting presence in my life. My late father was a consummate New York City PR man from the 1950’s until his death several years ago. He wasn’t a coffee house sort of guy, but he did frequent the popular watering holes of the time like “P.J. Clark’s” and the “Twenty One Club.” And even in his 80’s he hopped onto the train into the city to met his old cronies from back in the day to down a few and chat. My late uncle Dave Kirschenbaum, a noted rare book dealer, and the owner of the Carnegie Bookstore on New York’s Book Row, had breakfast at the same hotel near Central Park for over 50 years. When he died they affixed a plaque to his table with his name on it.

Well, I have not frequented such illustrious places on a regular basis, but through most of my 52 years there has been a coffee shop, house, or counter in my life. When I first moved back to Boston after college in 1978 I lived in a rooming house on Newbury St in the tony Back Bay section. I used to habituate the counter at the Guild’s Drugstore which was on Boylston Street across from the Lenox Hotel. I always had a glorious hash and eggs that stuck in my stomach like an anchoring lead weight. The sight of a bright yellow yoke sun oozing over a pungent hump of corned beef hash was a simple, daily pleasure. Behind the counter was Ethel, a tough-talking, middle-aged lady from Southie who spoke with the heavily accented r “s” of a true native. She had an arsenal of stories about life in the Colonial Projects, about her ner-do-well husband, and the hijinks of an insufferable son. Both food and anecdotes were generously served to all. David Brudnoy, the WBZ talk show host and cultural critic was a regular. He was always leafing through a stack of newspapers, while he ate a rather pedestrian meal of toast and coffee. I never got up the nerve to speak to him, although he was my idea of what the urbane, man-about-town should act and look like. There was also Walter, the obese candy counter clerk, who had an impressive breakfast of a half dozen eggs, several English muffins wading in butter, and of course a pile of grease-infused hash browns. Walter was forever talking about the novel he was working on and nobody seemed to want to challenge that notion.

Later, Brueger’s Bagels and the Au Bon Pain became my morning refuge. Over a series of regular breakfast with my friend Richard Wilhelm, we birthed a literary
baby at a corner table and we named it the “Ibbetson Street Press.” Later, at the bustling Au Bon Pain in Harvard Square, poet Harris Gardner and I came up with the idea of the “Bagel Bards” a weekly writers’ group that meets at the Au Bon Pain in Central Square, Cambridge and Davis Square, Somerville throughout the year.

When I moved to Union Square some 6 years ago, I had a short-lived affair with the Grand Café. I even managed to organize a poetry reading there, and nurtured a friendship with the owners. But just like friendships- businesses are fickle and they come and go.

And now the Sherman Café has been a long commitment of mine. I mean I have gotten more than a few poems from the fertile “grounds” of the place. I am such a steady presence that the staff becomes concerned when there is a slight deviation of my pro forma order—from iced to hot coffee for instance.

But there is something about these shops. Amidst the chatter I have clarity and concentration. Amidst the din I can write. When I bite into a scone I am home. Maybe this was a reason the writer Isaac Bashevis Singer used to haunt the cafeterias in New York City.

I really don’t want to think about it. In the end I am happy to sit, and sip.

PUSHCART NOMINATIONS 2007 Ibbetson Street 2007

PUSHCART NOMINATIONS 2007 Ibbetson Street 2007




Robert K. Johnson submission editor and myself have made our selections for the Ibbetson Street Pushcart Nominations. ( 2007) Best--Doug Holder/Ibbetson Street Press

"How To Know A Prairie Poem." Ellaraine Lockie. Issue #21.


"Morning Trek." Michael Keshigian. Issue #22.


"Passages." Linda M. Fischer. Issue #22.


"Diving" Laura Rodley Issue # 22


"Rhaposdy in Blue" Patricia L. Hamilton Issue #22


"LOWERED EXPECTATIONS IN THE LOWER 48"
Jared Smith Issue#21










The Pushcart Prize - Best of the Small Presses series, published every year since 1976, is the most honored literary project in America. Hundreds of presses and thousands of writers of short stories, poetry and essays have been represented in the pages of our annual collections.
Writers who were first noticed here include:
Raymond Carver, Tim O’Brien, Jayne Anne Phillips, Charles Baxter, Andre Dubus, Susan Minot, Mona Simpson, John Irving, Philip Lopate, Philip Levine, and many more. Each year most of the writers and many of the presses are new to the series.

Our Pushcart Prize editions are found in most libraries and bookstores. Each volume contains an index of past selections, plus lists of outstanding presses.

“Further Fenway Fiction” edited by Adam Emerson Pachter

Further Fenway Fiction. Edited by Adam Emerson Pachter ( Rounder Books. One Rounder Way. Burlington, Ma. 01803) $17. http://www.rounderbooks.com

Fenway Park would seem to be a natural setting to center works of fiction and poetry around. The stadium is a house of melodrama, history, bipolar highs and lows, all the right stuff for writers to mine. Former Somerville resident and author Adam Emerson Pachter edited an anthology of fiction aptly titled” “Fenway Fiction,” that came out in September 2005. In 2007 a second anthology: “Further Fenway Fiction,” edited by Pachter and released by the local imprint Rounder Books has hit the street, and features poetry and fiction focusing around the old town team. And as always Somerville or Somerville - connected writers are represented on these pages. Author Timothy Gager, cofounder of The Somerville News Writers Festival, Steve Almond author of “Candy Freak,” and Festival regular, as well as long-time Somerville resident and novelist Mitch Evich, all have found homes for their work.

Now mind you, I am no longer a real baseball fan, although truth-be-told I was a rabid 1969 “Miracle Mets” freak during my freshman year of high school. But over the years the passion for the game has dissipated with the weight of more wordly concerns…well you know the drill. But I still can remember a time when a Mets’ loss could bring me to tears, or when the crack of a bat could me salivate like one of Pavlov’s dogs.

This collection brings some of that heightened awareness through humor, pathos and some right-on writing.

Tim Gager’s short satirical piece “Fantasy Camp;” appealed to the mired middle- aged man in me, as Gager sends up a group of over-the hill, never-have-beens at a baseball fantasy camp. Gager has these hapless campers practice fantasies of firing managers; has withdrawn, nerdish men trained to be bombastic,” buck-stops- here” umpires, and even has women “of a certain age” train to be baseball groupies.

In Steve Almond’s “The Tragedie of Theo” ( “Prince of the Red Sox Nation”) Almond uses Shakespeare’s ‘”Hamlet” as a conceit to capture the tortured “to be or not to be” dilemma of the young Dane, I mean… general manager of the Sox,
Theo Epstein.

Mitch Evich’s “Johnny Boy,” examines a man who had a fleeting taste of success as a ballplayer, but now in his mid 30’s he is captured in a second rate city job and the banalities of a longtime marriage.


The poetry section has works from Jonathan P. Winickoff, Bob Francis, Al Basile, and Ron Skrabacz.



Adam Pachter, the editor, has a romantic piece “Cuttyhunk” that pulls at the heartstrings. Other contributors include: Rachel Solar, Henry Garfield, Bill Nowlin, Michelle Von Euw, Cecilia Tan, Jennifer Rapaport, Steven Bergman, Sarah Green David Kruh, Tracy Miller Geary, Elizabeth Pariseau, and David Desjardins.



Whether you are a fan of baseball, fiction, poetry, or all three, there is much to recommend in this anthology.

Doug Holder/ Ibbetson Update

Jared Smith reviews "Of All the Meals I Had Before" and "No One Dies At the Au Bon Pain" by Doug Holder

*This review appeared in the July/Aug 2007 issue of the Small Press Review

OF ALL THE MEALS I HAD BEFORE: Poems About Food and Eating
2007; 23 pp.; Cervena Barva Press, P.O. Box 440357, W. Somerville, MA
02144-3222; $7 http://www.cervenabarvapress.com and
NO ONE DIES AT THE AU BON PAIN; 2007; 28 pp.;
Sunnyoutside, P.O. Box 441429, Somerville, MA 02144; $8 http://www.sunnyoutside.com

Both books by Doug Holder
Reviewed by Jared Smith

These books have a big appetite, lean with both white breast and dark-meat
muscle, flavored with sad humor and regret, while reveling in all that goes
into a man. Doug Holder is perhaps the most family centered poet to emerge
in recent years, and yet he carries the literary heritage of the small press
proudly, with an awareness of and closeness to the chosen isolation from
which it evolves.

In Last Night At The Wursthaus, without apologies to Harvard or merchants
for his enjoyment of the pun, he observes: “…at the bar/scholars of the
academy/and everyday scholars of life/share the same expanse of polished
wood.” Yes. A whole urban culture dwells here, laid out for inspection and
ingestion. In Rotisserie Chickens, it is “Strange how they are displayed-/a
chorus line/propped on wire/chests out/breasts shimmering/melting flesh/legs
spread/wings/posturing/on their plump hips…Which one will I choose tonight?”

Which one indeed, where no one dies at the au bon pain? But, of course, we
are a marked and confused society. And Doug feels the pain and the pun, the
twist of the knife through bread and flesh. The Au Bon Pain is a chain of
cafes, and no one dies in cafes at leisure. But of course, they do…as every
moment and every bit of flesh taken in works its way down into the bone. In
I Am Not Afraid Of Bones, he writes “I trace them/through a façade of
flesh./ My tongue/is often crowned,/tipped with/marrow…Bones--/they are
what/make us/most human.” Nor are the bones only of the body; they are of
the institutions surrounding us as well. They have a beauty, and a purpose,
and a hollowness—and therein lies our beauty and fragile vulnerability.

These books are printed and produced in the finest tradition of the small
press: well laid-out and speaking to the mind rather than mass market.
Centers of artistic energy seem to move around the country periodically, and
it’s good to see rare meat on the finest tables again.

--Jared Smith.

*Jared Smith received his BA cum laude and MA in English and American Literature from New York University, studying under poet/critic M.L. Rosenthal, former Library of Congress Adviser Robert Hazel, and New York Quarterly founder William Packard. He is the author of six collections of poetry, including Where Images Become Imbued With Time (Puddin'head Press, Chicago, 2007; Lake Michigan And Other Poems (Puddin'head Press, Chicago, 2005); Walking The Perimeters Of The Plate Glass Window Factory (Birch Brook Press, New York, 2001); Keeping The Outlaw Alive, (Erie Street Press, Chicago, 1988); Dark Wing (Charred Norton Publications, Camillus, NY, 1984); and Song Of The Blood (The Smith Press, New York, 1983). His poems, essays, and literary criticism have appeared hundreds of times in journals over the past 30 years. His poems have been adapted to modern dance at New York's Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts, and to stage in Chicago. He is a member of The Advisory Board of The New York Quarterly, Poetry Editor of Trail & Timberline, past president of Poets & Patrons, and a member of The Academy of American Poets. He was the 2006 judge for the Jo-Anne Hirschfield Memorial Poetry Competition in Evanston. He currently is a frequent lecturer and reader at universities, colleges, libraries, and other venues across the country.

JACQUES FLEURY: INTERVIEW WITH THE “HAITIAN FIREFLY”

JACQUES FLEURY: INTERVIEW WITH THE “HAITIAN FIREFLY”

Jacques Fleury was born in Port-au-Prince, Haiti but has lived in the Somerville/Cambridge axis for many of his 36 years. He is a poet, freelance writer, journalist and hosts the Cambridge Access TV show: “Dream Weavers.” His poetry and writings have been in The Boston Haitian Reporter, Spare Change News, The Somerville News, The Alewife, The Bridge, What’s Up, etc…He is currently working on a short fiction collection and his most recent book of poetry is the collection: “Sparks in the Dark…”

Doug Holder: You grew up in Haiti, a country known for its oppressive dictatorships. How is poetry viewed by the people and the powers that be?

Jacques Fleury: The government exiles poets who incite “subversive ideologies” in public. The government doesn’t want musicians and artists ‘educating” the public. In Haiti you are taught to recite in school; you are not taught to think. You are not taught to examine things and come up with your own original point of view. I didn’t even know what critical thinking was until I started college here in America.

DH: What can happen to an artist if he expresses his “opinion” in Haiti?

JF: You can disappear. Your own family member could be waiting to turn you in for a few bucks. You can be killed. My mother has horrific story in which she was almost killed for wearing a red dress. Red supposedly represented some subversive ideology. She had to be pardoned of that. Enjoy your individual rights here in America because in countries like Haiti people can slap you and walk away.

DH What would have your chances of becoming a writer been if you remained in Haiti?

JF: Not much. All the artists I knew as a kid who were evolving, and got to the point of influencing people, were exiled or killed. The government gave you the option. They didn’t want the public to think: “Hey maybe I got a raw deal, so these artists were dealt with.”

DH: Is it still like that in Haiti?

JF I think policies are a little less draconian than they were—but I haven’t really been looking. I have been too busy with my own life right now.

DH: You don’t ‘prune” your poetry. I have often compared it to a wild jungle of words.

JF: That was an accurate description. I do grow and write like a wild jungle. That’s just my personality and it is reflected in my writing. I never know how long or short a poem is going to be. I never intend to make it short or long.

DH: Do you revise at all?

JF: Sometimes when I am writing a poem I do revisions, but I never go back to it. I don’t think about editing. I think about getting it on paper. I’ve never took a formal class on poetry so everything you see is natural. I never had to control my energy. I am a diamond in the ruff.

DH: Are there any Haitian poets locally of that you admire.

JF: Patrick Sylvain, Danielle Legros Georges, to name just a couple.

DH: There is a strong sense of your ethnic identity in your poems. Do you expect your work will grow more “assimilated” as you go on?

JP: I plan to concentrate on more “spiritual themes” in the future. I don’t want to be stuck in a ghetto of my own ethnic themes. In the past I have been dealing with my multi-ethnic identity. But
in the end I am going to do what comes naturally to me. I want to concentrate more on fiction than poetry. And if it happens to be Haitian-themed so be it. If it is more mainstream than that’s fine too. I will not compromise my work to fit someone else’s category. I am not going to be a mouthpiece for my people; I am going to speak for myself.


Free!

Dock
we'll dock stones
roll and
we'll unroll
In my america
the big flying eagle
birds well done abroad.
Two groups of people
the rich and the poor
the young and the old
the white and the black
and three tons of fat
all in procession
silent tales are blooming
flowers growing shells
olive branches
climbing white house walls
two candles burning
shades of gray
I trust in god
holy bloody sunday comes
sunday morning
god bless those whose veins
bear none
twilight swallows the moon
darkness
descends
soldiers gone awol
run like panthers
here and gone
they've staged a snare
running rivers very dry mouths
Dutiful soldiers beat their drums
paragons of strength and honor
masquerade balls
dinky shoots smack and
the dumb blond flunks
fall down stand up
walk the line
walk backwards
juggling well
will set you free

--Jacques Fleury


Doug Holder

Alice. Louis E. Bourgeois. (Presa Press POBOX 792 Michigan 49341 www.presapress.com) $6.

Alice. Louis E. Bourgeois. (Presa Press POBOX 792 Michigan 49341 www.presapress.com) $6.

Louise E. Bourgeois’ poetry seems to want to break with everything: convention, tradition, time, place, etc… The Bush administration would undoubtedly find him a dangerous live wire and tap him, and the rest of us would feel like our collective fly is perpetually down. Good. That’s some of the things a good bard does. Bourgeois wants to shed the old suit of universal authority and live by where his instincts take him. In “The Danger of Telling Someone What to Do”, the poet takes on the teacher or the master and gains purity or freedom from what he views as the tyranny of mind control:

“He couldn’t take orders; he considered them dangerous to his
freedom, his artistic freedom. Out of habit,
sloppily following
the example of others, he had attached himself to a Master
in order to write poetry and philosophy.
But after ten minutes
into his first lesson, the pupil wanted to kill the Master…
Every invective the Master exclaims takes
something away from me—a lesson is really a slaughter of consciousness…
The student stabbed the Master in the back with a switchblade
and the master hit the ground hard and died quickly. The pupil
immediately felt a surge of knowledge that would have taken a
lifetime to achieve had the Master lived.”

In “Mr. Homburg” Bourgeois takes a swipe at obsessive rationalization that can stifle an artist natural inclination:

“He kept a daily chronicle of himself without knowing why. Why
should I write about myself everyday,
not liking my life or even
the lives of others?
Why should I do anything I find to be
annoying and beneath me?

But every day he wrote and wrote, he is still writing, not
knowing why and no longer caring.”

Recommended.

Doug Holder/ Ibbetson Update

Ferrovie" (poems) by Anthony Russell White

"Ferrovie" (poems) by Anthony Russell White

Cervena Barva Press $ 5.00

Www.cervenabarvapress.com

Copyright 2007 by Anthony Russell White



Reviewed by Mike Amado



When this reviewer reads prose poems two names always are summoned,
Charles Baudelaire and Robert Bly. Upon further probing of Ferrovie
by Anthony Russell White, it turned out White was introduced to the form
by Bly himself at a workshop. The prose style renders these poems to the realm of
journal entries with easy, open language. But there are twists.



Ferrovie means trains in Italian. All ten poems embody train travel as a grounding
point.
Literally, the speaker is journeying through Italy, though no concluding destination
is mentioned. He meets a cast of characters that are instantly fantastical.
Through these characters, (real or made up doesn’t matter)the speaker finds himself
traveling abstract dimensions.



Told in first person, the speaker retells the encounters with a photographer,
a Reiki Master and a Siamese twin, joined at the ear and hand to her sister.
Ferrovie begins with a Vietnam Veteran retelling his first attack and seeing a
yellow airplane that wasn’t there. Because of that vision, the Vet and fellow train
traveler exclaims "I knew then I would survive."

The poems further unravel into the surreal. In a train station, the speaker finds
a man selling lotto tickets who has with him a "genuine" two-headed dog.
"Second head sticking out from left shoulder . . .
A red tongue lolled just like his big brothers.
. . . He was clearly a right-headed dog."

In the final poem, "Lunch With The Gypsy" we meet a gypsy who presents a map,
not of places and landmarks but of souls. (The soul, of course, being one of the
most abstract phenomena is easily inserted here among the journeying as almost
an everyday thing.) The gypsy proceeds to show how individual souls coil,
connect and link to one another in "Delicate colored webs of relationships.",
Summing up for the speaker the soul-interactions of his life.

"Then he folded it (the map) . . . down to a single glowing point . . ."



Ferrovie is the latest collection by Anthony Russell White and the winner of the
2006 Cervena Barva Press chap book contest. White considers himself "a pilgrim,
a poet and a healer" who is an admirer of Rumi, the mystic poet, born 1207 in what is
now Afghanistan, who was the impetus of the Whirling Dervishes. Along with
American poet William Stafford, these influences blend and are prevalent.
The surrealism in these poems adds a Twilight Zone / Amazing Stories appeal,
where this reader wonders what within the poems came from White’s dreams,
imagination or real events. All in all, Ferrovie equals one good trip.


--Mike Amado/Ibbetson Update/ Aug 2007

Wilderness House Literary Review Anthology

We anticipate that the Wilderness House Literary Review anthology will be out this Fall. Here is the order and list of contributors--courtesy of Gloria Mindock, the editor. Steve Glines will be designing the book. Our online magazine is at http://whlreview.com

* This will be hard copy and perfect bound.


WHLR Anthology (Order of appearence)

Autodidact by Lainie Senechal
Return from the Cove by Lainie Senechal
Fictions by Charles P. Ries
Ideas of Grace by Charles P. Ries
Irene Koronos painting 5th one that’s in art folder
Love by Robin Dancer
Reverence by Patrick Carrington
Butterflies by Julia Carlson
Fall, 2006 pix painting
Orange On Burnt Sienna by Richard Wilhelm
As We Lay Sleeping by Richard Wilhelm
Mend by Kelley J. White
reconfigured by Stevenallenmay
Eros—Post-Modern by Hugh Fox
Dog Dance by Gloria Mindock
Momentum by Matthew Silver Rosenthal
The Cat Painting image by Deborah Priestly
Four cool cats by Steve Glines
Ruins by Chris Crittenden
First Names by Carolyn Gregory
A Tree of Cats by Deborah Priestly
The Quiet Room by Doug Holder
Chinatown by Lo Galluccio
Our Meeting by Robert K. Johnson
Last Night by Robert K. Johnson
My Heart by Afaa Michael Weaver
Invitation by Doug Worth
Shopping by G Emil Reutter
His Darling by Miriam Gallagher
Partner Swing by Molly Lynn Watt
Pub Dance by Molly Lynn Watt
28th Century Milky Way Conference on Hieroglyph Philogy. Paper 27-09
by Edward Abrahamson
Red Sky at Night by Charles F. Campbell
Come Either Way by Varsha Kukafka
Chapter 3 by Anne Brudevold
Cockroach by Susan Tepper
The Language of Laundry by Pat Brodie
Mouse Trap by Gary Lehmann
Weather Report by Taylor Graham
The View From Coyoteville by Taylor Graham
Thunder Snow by Taylor Graham
October Trio by Clara Diebold
Denver Omlet, Sausage, Hash Browns by John Hildebidle
I Recognized Him As a Neighbor by John Hildebidle
Sermon on Sun Worship by Tomas O’Leary
Comment ca va by Joanne Vyce
Menopausal Philosophy by Ellaraine Lockie
One Streetlight by Bonnie Pignatiello Leer
middleair crosscry by Eytan Fichman
Twenty-One Hundred Hours by Denis Emorine (English Version only)Translation
by Phillip John Usher
French Impression by Kathy Horniak
You’ll Be a Collyer Brothers Hermit!1 by Doug Holder
Detroit For Sale, 1960’s by Barbara Bialick
Moving In by Chad Parenteau
Trees in December by Jennifer Matthews
(Poem has no title) by John Mercui Dooley/ line starts if though and ink with
this is my hand by Irene Koronos
Irene Koronos painting no. 2 in art folder
ellipse and parabola by Irene Koronos
Eddie and Nellie by Jim Woods
October Run in Danehy Park by Sarah Merrow
Scarecrow photo/painting Art
The Guilty One by Marc D. Goldfinger
Amorphophallus Rivieri by Stephen Morse
Frozen Poem, a Friday by Francis LeMoire
Trophy by Harris Gardner
Tractor in Field by Eric Greinke
Wild Strawberries by Eric Greinke
Options by Kevin McLellan
14 Stones, 76 Metaphysical Excursions, 6 Years by Alan Catlin
Bon Voyage by Sue Red
Cybermorphing Forsythias by Bill Costley
Pleiades Rising by Howard Lee Kilby
Strict Objectivity by John Hildebidle
Letter to Doug Holder from Jared Smith by Jared Smith
Whispers of Wrath by Emmanuel Giambi
Gesture by Diana Der-Hovanessian
Camels by Barbara Bialick
Panama Ten by A.D. Winans
pushpa’ poem by Pushpa Ratna Tuladhar
His Dresden Boots by Patrick Carrington
Colorless State of Existence by Coleen T. Houlihan
The Last View of Mortal Man by Steve Glines
Accusation by Beatriz Alba del Rio
A Cambridge Autumn Duo by Sarah Merrow
Four Poems after Xue Tao by Jamie Parsley
Nuclear Fishin’ by George Held
Veterans of the Boy Scout War by Gary Beck
The house at 17 Emile Dunois by Steve Glines
Over life (about my dead aunt) by Irene Koronos
Veer-Zara and Bombay’s Bollywood by Molly Lynn Watt
Rocket Scientist by Laurence McKinney
Meeting at the Pass by Afaa Michael Weaver
Painting of 4 shadow type people by Deborah Priestley/last one in art folder

The Cleveland Indian: The Legend of King Saturday by Luke Salisbury

Book Review, Timothy Gager
The Cleveland Indian: The Legend of King Saturday by Luke Salisbury (Black Heron Press/The Smith)




“If you are not careful, you can research forever, but nirvana better not arrive until the book is written.”
--Luke Salisbury on writing historical fiction.



The Cleveland Indian: The Legend of King Saturday is a remarkable book of astute detail and elegant prose. The main character King Saturday is based upon, Louis Sockalexis, a Penobscot Indian from Maine, who was one of the greatest college baseball stars of the 1890s. What Salisbury gives us with King Saturday is a remarkable presentation of a full-tilted, hard living character. Saturday’s dream is to one day own a baseball team and he will spare no ethics or morality to do so. An incredible admired athlete, as well as a drinker and ladies man, Saturday starts to throw games and bet against the Indians so that he may earn enough to achieve his goal.

As evil as King Saturday could be, author Luke Salisbury manages to create him as a sympathetic, likeable character. The narrator Henry Harrison (lawyer for the Cleveland Spiders) worships the King and is the only man Saturday trusts. Harrison, naïve in the same way Fitzgerald’s Nick Carraway is, gets a cruel lesson about life as everything he loves including women, baseball, and friends get taken from him in one way or another. Henry loves Saturday, questions him, uncovers information about him, and because of various events also loathes him. In the end Henry stays loyal to him and that is the essence and hook of the story.

As a fan of baseball I appreciated the novel, yet baseball is not the main focus of The Cleveland Indian. The main focus is the relationships between the characters woven within the historical era of the setting. One could know very little about the game of baseball and still get a lot out of this novel. I found it very interesting to be able to look up the old time player’s information and match the facts with the fiction, thus enhancing the background of the tale.

As a writer Luke Salisbury is remarkably efficient with the developing plot, which reads with ease and without labor. His attention to details about the various settings and locations of the novel is refreshing and exciting. The historical facts were informative but not shoved down the reader’s throat thus not interfering with the flow of the book. Teams, fields and players which no longer exist are brought to life.

Salisbury’s development of his characters is strength of the book. Each character is vibrant, real and the motivations of their actions are very real and believable. Writing in a first person point of view this isn’t always easy to achieve yet Salisbury manages to do it. This clarity allows the plot to advance in a very enjoyable way as I found myself charging through the novel to see how it would all unfold.

My only issues with the novel are that occasionally the author allows us background by breaking from the narrative to tell us background information. For example, when telling us about Marty Bergen, the Boston catcher, the narrator tells us he would later chops up his family with an ax. I googled it, and it was true, but impossible to be known by the Henry Harrison. From a writing perspective is this allowed? For me, I found the details fascinating and not intrusive with any major part of the story but for other readers it may be a distraction. The only distraction I found as a reader was that some of the descriptions of King Saturday, especially his hair, were repetitive yet, The Cleveland Indian: The Legend of King Saturday is still a great read and highly recommended.

.

Bear Crossing. Kell Robertson.

Bear Crossing. Kell Robertson. ( Pathwise Press. 2311 Broadway St. New Orleans, LA 70125 http://pathwisepress.com


Well…I am a dyed-in-the wool creature of the asphalt, a denizen of the rarefied air of Boston, a stranger to the West, cowboys, and the charms and horrors of the hinterlands. So I am an unlikely reviewer for “Bear Crossing,” a collection of poetry from Kell Robertson republished by the Pathwise Press. Robertson is a wizened old cowboy poet, songwriter, vagabond, ner-do-well, drunk…if he is telling the truth. Of course he quotes Faulkner, which may bring some doubt:

“I don’t have much patience with the facts, and any writer is a congenital liar to begin with or he wouldn’t take up writing.”

I did find much to recommend in this chap. Robertson works well with the “white trash” vernacular, the tall tales, and the drunken fonts of wisdom he comes across during his sojourn through the backwaters. Here is a well-observed slice-of-life in a down-at-the-heels town, titled: “Taos Plaza”

“… A young girl
lifts her skirt
to scratch
the staph infection
on her plump thigh

the local Mexican lover boys
are disgusted, “Shit
I wouldn’t fuck her
with somebody else’s dick.

Sun Hawk
one of Geronimo’s grandsons
is pleased when
I say hello, says:

“I am glad someone
remembers Sun Hawk.”

then heads for
the infection ridden girl
in a very straight line.”

In the poem “Sue” Robertson uses grotesquely dried apples as a silent Greek chorus to the lives of quiet desperation in some dusty tourist stop along the road:

“Her husband makes faces
out of dried apples
which wrinkle up
into a line
of grotesques
which she sells here
over the cash register.
Since his back went out
it’s about all that he can do
except well, sometimes
he drinks too much.
The tourist couple
in the corner booth
look again at their
Triple A map
again
as she walks into the kitchen
the husband’s eyes
follow her very fine ass
as if it was
the sun going down
for the very last time.”

Recommended.

A response to the review from the publisher:

Hello Doug,
I hope this finds you well. I wanted to thank you for your review of Kell
Robertson's Bear Crossing. As you know, any review for a small press
publication is a triumph...especially as more and more review sources dry
up. I appreciate the time you took to read and evaluate the book. This is
a book that saw many delays but now that it is out, folks are excited about
it.

However, I do take issue with a couple turns of phrase you use in your
review, and quite frankly, find them extremely prejudiced. I have reviewed
many books over the years and have always made it a principle to give honest
reviews, even if negative ones. However, I have never given descriptions of
the poet, simply the work being reviewed. While Kell will be the first to
proudly state that his biography can be found in the lines of his work, we
both know that most writers use hyperbole and imagination. Even when
reviewing the most blantantly Bukowski-worshipping tripe, I've never called
a poet a "drunk"...I've said the poet's work was awash in shallow drunken
metaphor, but that's it. There is a line in descibing the author and the
author's work, especially when one does not know the author personally. Of
course, you do elude to the question of truthfullness in Kell's work, which
mitigates your choice of description somewhat.

To be honest, perhaps the part that stuck me the most was the description of
Kell's writing as a "white trash" vernacular of the "backwaters". To be
honest, Doug, this bites of east coast elitism. I hate to sound jingoist
and the rust-belt, bible-belt, prairie-lands rally type, but when I read
something like that I'm willing to suggest that you rent a car, find the
first highway that takes you west and go discover a bit of America, my
friend. Perhaps it is my Midwestern background raising hackles, but there
is more to this country and its poetry than what is found in Harvard Square.
Kell has been around for many years and I've corresponded with him enough
to know that his knowledge, understanding and depth of history, politics,
literature and the reality of day-to-day living is one born of real
understanding and experience combined with a healthy dose of daily reading.

There is more to lands west of New England than mere backwaters (although
there are plenty of those here and in your locale). I don't take exception
to your background of asphalt and rareifed air (that would be hypocritical
given what I've said above), but personally, when I've encountered a book
that speaks to a life different from my own, I've either taken that as a
sign to expand my knowledge and plunged deeply within or I've politely
declined to read and review. This is a large country and its literature
stretches from Hawthorne's New England to Anderson's Ohio to Faulkner's
South to the pueblos of Leslie Marmon Silko.

Again, Doug, as the publisher, I appreciate the time you took with the book.
And by all means, ignore this message, keep the review on your blog as it
is...that's your perogative...or add this message as a form of debate in the
best Socratic tradition. Above all else, as Kell would say..."Ride Easy"...


Christopher Harter
Pathwise Press/Bathtub Gin
pathwisepress.com

FORTHCOMING BOOK: from Scarecrow Press: "An Author Index to Little
Magazines:
The 1960s/70s Mimeograph Revolution" -- contact pathwisepress@hotmail.com
for information.

Linda Larson: washing the stones

New Poetry Collection From The Ibbetson Street Press.

washing the stones. By Linda Larson.

Designed by Lynne Sticklor

photos by Karen C. Davis and Rob Rusk

ISBN: 978-0-979531316

$10.



The Ibbetson Street Press has released a new poetry collection by Cambridge, Mass. poet and former Spare Change News editor Linda Larson. Larsen was born in the Midwest. She spent a decade of her adult life in Madison County, Mississippi. She worked as a feature writer for The Capitol Reporter and The Jackson Advocate. Larson relocated to the Boston/Cambridge area where she has lived and worked for the past twenty years. For five years she served as editor and contributor to Spare Change News, a homeless newspaper based in Cambridge. Over the years Larsen has struggled with mental illness and addiction. She has been recognized by both houses of the Massachusetts Legislature for her advocacy work on behalf of people with mental illness. This book goes a long way towards recapturing her promise as a graduate of the John Hopkins Writing Seminars in the 1970’s and as teaching fellow in the creative writing doctoral program at the University of Southern Mississippi.


Howard Zinn (noted historian and activist) “ I am very moved by Linda Larson’s poems. They are about…all the stuff of life--straight from the heart.”

Joseph P. Kahn: (Boston Globe) “In her poetry we see glimpses of the enormous talent that’s always been there-- and the courageous battle she’s fought to keep that talent alive.”

Marc Goldfinger (Poetry Editor-Spare Change News): “Jack Spicer, a unique and wonderful poet in his own right said “ Poets are the dictation machines of the Gods.” Linda Larson’s work proves this statement.”




Ibbetson Street Press
25 School St.
Somerville, Mass.
02143
Ibbetsonpress@gmail.com
http://ibbetsonpress.com

The Front Window at the Grolier Poetry Bookshop

The Front Window at the Grolier Poetry Bookshop

(The GROLIER POETRY BOOK SHOP
6 Plympton Street, Cambridge, MA 02138

Mail and special orders invited (617) 547-4648
Outside Massachusetts 1-800-234-POEM ~ Fax (617) 547-4230
All major credit cards accepted )


http://www.grolierpoetrybookshop.com


I was at the Grolier Poetry Bookshop recently, and Dan the manager told me he is going to have a whole section devoted to chapbooks. Good news. In the front window I noticed he posted some poems, and the first was by Bagel Bard member Matt Rosenthal ( Matt- long-time-no-see!) from the Bagel Bard Anthology.

Here is a list of books in the window:

Bagel Bard Anthology edited by Steve Glines and Molly Lynn Watt
Gone So Far by Martha Collins
Back Burner Poems by John Lauristen
Cheeseburger by Mark Lamourex
So Much is Burning by William Taylor
Rumors of Electriciy by Richard Krech
Johanna Poems by Ben Mazer
First Things to Hand by Robert Pinsky
Admit the Peacock by Rebecca Kaiser Gibson
Are These My Lions by Daniel E. Levenson

• This was as of July 31 2007.

* To order Louisa Solano: The Grolier Poetry Bookshop go to http://www.ibbetsonpress.com

* The Grolier is now owned by Ifeanyi Menkiti. Louisa Solano retired a little over a year ago.


Dan is doing a great job in my humble opinion. Buy books and support the store.

Ed Carvalho and Lo Galluccio to read Aug 18 2007

Ed Carvalho and Ibbetson Street Press Poet Lo Galluccio to read at the Out of the Blue Art Gallery

by Doug Holder

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Arts/Entertainment
A Poetry Reading...
Ed Carvalho and Ibbetson Street Press Poet Lo Galluccio to read at the Out of the Blue Gallery Aug 18 8PM 106 Prospect St Cambridge, Mass.


Edward Carvalho is a twice-nominated Pushcart Prize poet (2004-2005) and author of solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short (2007) from Fine Tooth Press. His poems––once described as "original, innovative, imaginative and brutal"––have appeared along with his essays, reviews, and critical papers in numerous journals throughout the country.He holds an M.F.A. in creative writing from Goddard College (2006) and is currently researching the poetry of Walt Whitman while enrolled as a doctoral student in the Literature and Criticism program at Indiana University of Pennsylvania. Additionally, he is also the recent recipient of that university’s Twentieth and Twenty-First Annual IUP Doctoral Fellowships and employed there as editorial assistant for the Works and Days journal. A native of Connecticut, he now shares dual residence in Indiana, Pennsylvania and Boston, Massachusetts


www.edwardjcarvalho.com

“If Henry Miller, Walt Whitman, and Edgar Allan Poe had an intellectual love child, this book [solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short] may well have been result."
––Jen Woolston

“Carvalho’s words come screaming off the pages. Intense, Angry, Awesome.”
––Brian J. Kenney

“Carvalho comments upon (among other things) the frustrations presented by wireless communication, traditional creation stories, animal rights, prostitution, serial killings, and political happenings, all within the pages of solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short. Carvalho also presents countless clever references to canonical authors such as Shakespeare and Beckett, proving that this doctoral student has read all of the pre-requisite masters, and is well on his way to becoming a master himself. If Henry Miller, Walt Whitman, and Edgar Allan Poe had an intellectual love child, this book may well have been the result. You don’t need to 'get' every single allusion this author makes; but you do need to wrap your hands around a copy of this book. [. . .] His work challenges you to think about man’s struggle within a plethora of haunting, daunting, and complex social conditions." —Jen Woolston



Lo Galluccio is a writer and vocal artist with published poetry and prose in Lungfull magazine, Night magazine, Out of the Blue Writer’s Unite, Heat City Literary Review II, Ibbetson St. Press, the Bagel Bards Anthology, I am from Lower East Side, Abramelin, www.strangeroad.com, and more. She is also the poetry editor of the Cambridge Alewife newspaper with a column called, “Words and Music.” Among other venues. she’s performed at St. Mark’s church (Marathon Day reading) in NYC, Borders downtown Boston, Mad Poet’s Café in Warwick, R.I. and Toast in Somerville, MA. As a vocal artist she’s produced two CDs, Being Visited, Knitting Factory Works (1997) and Spell on You (self-release) in Boston 2003. Lo is a Harvard College graduate and attended Berklee College of music for two semesters. She’s been nominated twice for the Pushcart Prize. Her chapbook “Hot Rain” was released on Singing Bone Press in 2004, She will be reading at the Somerville Writer’s Festival in memorial for the late poet Sarah Hannah on Novmeber 11th at Jimmy Tingle’s Theatre. “Sarasota VII” a memoir written while a chorus girl in Florida, will be published by Cervena Barva Press in spring of 2008.



Lo Galluccio is an original and striking voice, based both on the quality of her work and her lyrically pleasing performance style. Her work is an interesting amalgam of the psychological, mythical and musical. Its content is entertaining and challenging at the same time, weaving in toughness and surrealism.”

Carolyn Gregory, poet

“You think by 2004 that everything that’s do-able on the page has been done and then comes Lo Galluccio and creates a whole new word-game…a totally original voice filled with psycho-social realities of contemporary America. It’s act, react, get into the psych-underground and let it flow…”

Hugh Fox, poet, critic, writer and founding member of COSMEP
***************************************************************************************************************
www.logalluccio.com

OUT OF THE BLUE GALLERY IS LOCATED AT 106 PROSPECT STREET
ACROSS FROM WHOLE FOODS IN CAMBRIDGE, MA., CENTRAL SQUARE.

Jessa Piaia: Somerville character actor portrays “America’s First Lady of Letters.”

Jessa Piaia: Somerville character actor portrays “America’s First Lady of Letters.”

Jessa Piaia is a Somerville resident who enjoys being in someone else’s shoes, not to mention their dress, bonnet, the full gamut of period garb. Piaia had made a career of portraying famous and not so famous trail-blazing women. Paia , a resident of the Union Square section of the city, has inhabited the skin of such historically significant women as: Amelia Earhart, Susan B. Anthony, and Rachel Revere, to name a few. She performs around the state and the country, and has appeared in such Somerville venues as: The Somerville Museum, , the West Branch Library, in Davis Square, as well as the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston. On Saturday Aug 11, 2 PM, at the Longfellow House ( 105 Brattle St., Cambridge) Piaia will portray Susanna Haswell Rowson. Rowson founded “The Academy of Young Ladies in downtown Boston in 1797 ( a Liberal Arts academy for Women,) wrote many novels, plays and penned the official eulogy for George Washington in 1800.

Piaia said that wearing the period clothing of her subject literally transforms her, putting her in the “skin” of her characters. Piaia, who recently moved to the area with her partner and founder of Cambridge’s “Squawk Coffeehouse” Lee Kidd, said of Union Square: “ I love the Sherman Café, Ricky’s Flowers, and all the great restaurants in the square. It is a great place to be an artist.”

After her performance at the Longfellow House, Piaia will be selling a book by Rowson: “Slaves in Algiers,” a play in three acts, still very much in print after all these years.

Piaia has a busy schedule ahead of her. She will be showcasing her talents at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston, the Webster Estate in Marshfield, and the Helen Sleeper estate in Gloucester, to name a few. To keep tabs on Piaia visit her website at: http://www.womeninhisoryprograms.com

solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short by Ed Carvalho

solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short
Edward J. Carvalho
Fine Tooth Press ($12.95)

by Doug Holder 560 wds. Rec’d 7/2/07. Rel date FEB 07

Edward J. Carvalho is not afraid of the warts on the smooth surface of civilization. Carvalho, with the perceptive gimlet eye of a skilled poet, focuses in on the archetypes of our modern society to get beyond the sizzle to the steak of existence in his new poetry collection: “Solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.” The title indicates a Hobbesian view of the world, and Carvalho’s book is not for the faint of heart, but I couldn’t call the book bleak. It is full of humor, original language and insights:

In the poem “Sometimeboy” the poet, an observant fly-on-the- wall, views a man of a certain age reading a magazine about boats. Carvalho wonders if the man’s dreams hit the shoals and wonders if he will be able to avoid the same pitfalls:

There you are in front of my book,
poor man, there you are reading a magazine
about boats, your hair is white.

I don’t know your name
But your hat says “brew Moon”
And your t-shirt says “Mr. Drain.”

Maybe, one night after schooners
of beer, we can empty the ocean together
and you can tell me

what happens to the life of man
when it sags like that toothpick
from the corner of your lips,

is chewn by dentures to the very end?


And what better image to bring home the point than the sagging point of a forlorn toothpick?

In many of the poems in this collection Carvalho examines how we are cut off from ourselves and from society. Carvalho dives into the “no strings attached” world of the “wireless” crowd to give the reader a view of contemporary alienation. In the poem: “Song of the Wireless Man,” he unearths and subverts the wireless world with the same techno babble that is currency in this milieu:

"The trees are not telephone poles unrealized, to be cut wireless, man, smooth/
from roots,/ the forests were not all grown to carry contracts and proposals in digital cans to restaurants./Let me eat in pieces the hills of upstate New York the deciduous mountains/of New England."


just one cup of cafÈ coffee should be placid, not ripple hippie to delicious in phat
ebbs of “Rappers Delight” Baby (baby) Bubbah look away from the satellite and leave
the cirrus as they are,
do not attempt to find hybrid ways to store your data behind a trail of Wi-Fi
moisture miles above, your wireless cousins in their flying casinos.

“Uncle Horsie” is a poem that will make you think twice and perhaps thrice before you let your genial brother play with your kid. Here Carvalho places the innocence of childhood in a dance with jaded adulthood:

My niece
takes great pride in being
a 3 year-old cowgirl.
She likes to play with me,
the goateed equine

She doesn’t know
how adults pretend—
how I want to leave
the laughter of the family room,
go the bathroom

and eat an orchard of Percocet
from her grandfather’s
medicine cabinet—
all this to be a better
hide-and-go-seeker
when I’m home


She knows the part of me
who is Uncle Horsie
when I return smiling
to the captured stable
never letting her see
any of the real animal lurking
beneath the saddle.

This is a fine first collection by Ed Carvalho.

Interview With Writer Luke Salisbury: An author who explores alternative universes of baseball, literartue, and political intrigue.

By Doug Holder

Luke Salisbury is a professor of English at Bunker Hill Community College in Boston. Salisbury, 60, is a man with a gift for gab, and the well-turned phrase. Eclectic in his tastes, Salisbury, with his signature rapid - fire cadence and disarming laugh, regales you with his anecdotes, his impressive knowledge of baseball, and his “alternative” universe of film, books and political intrigue he has spent many years pondering and writing about. He is the author of a number of fiction titles including: “The Answer is Baseball.” (Time Books, 1989), “The Cleveland Indian” (Smith, 1992), and his novel about the great filmmaker D.W. Griffith “Hollywood and Sunset” (2007). His writing has appeared in such publications as “The Boston Globe,” “Ploughshares,” “Cooperstown Review,” "Pulp- smith,” and others. Salisbury received his M.A. in Creative Writing from Boston University and lives in Chelsea, Mass. with his wife Barbara. I interviewed Salisbury on my Somerville Community Access TV show ‘Poet to Poet/ Writer to Writer.”

Doug Holder: You said the dawn of Elvis, the Beatles, liberated you from the buttoned-down, all boys purgatory, prep school world you grew up in. Who were the writers that liberated you when you were coming of age?

Luke Salisbury: I went away to an all boy’s school when I was fourteen. I hadn’t been a big star with girls in the 7th and 8th grade. I felt I was isolated. I felt that I was never going to get off. There were things that kept my soul together: rock ‘n roll, literature, and baseball. My life was changed—saved or ruined—when I read the “ The Great Gatsby” when I was seventeen. I never wanted to do anything but write a book that good. I never will; maybe no one else will. The book explains even in the first page the whole world. Its pressures, its nuances, its mystery. Faulkner would be another influence. Why? Because there is something about being a teenager reading something you can barely understand, and you know it is over your head—but by God—you know it is worthwhile.

DH: Did you feel liberated by any 60’s era writers?

LS: I got that from rock ‘n roll, not from 60’s literature. I was not a Jack Kerouac person. I was not reading that stuff as it was being done. Later in the 60’s when I really needed to be on an island protected from my own demons and the demons around me, Nabokov became my obsession. I was traveling around Europe in the summer of 1968 buying his paperbacks at kiosks in railroad stations .I was always in an alternative world of baseball, literature and rock ’n roll. I’d love to name some 60’s poets but none of them were important as the “Rolling Stones.” And also what I considered classic literature. In the 60’s I spent a long time reading “Tristan Shandy” and “Tom Jones.”

DH: Did you engage in any of the “excesses” of the era?

LS: As many as I could. But there were three things going on. Political revolution which I thought was bullshit because I didn’t actually see anyone go out and fighting. Then there was the drug revolution. I always thought I was wrapped a little too tight to do the heavy duty stuff. Then there was the sexual revolution. It was a wonderful time to be a young man. I mean the middle and late 60’s, not the stuff that comes to us post “Easy Rider.” Love and peace that stuff was bullshit. It was about resistance. It was about resisting the draft and authority.

DH: You wrote two assasination novels. One was “Blue Eden.” Did you find the elitist intrigue, the possibilities of nefarious cabals behind the Kennedy assassination a source of fascination?

LS: It was. Because in the late 60’s I’d sit around and think about the novels I would like to write. I became obsessed with the Kennedy assassination. This stuff happens in front of your face, you don’t know what it is. There is subtext, there are stories… this is raw material. Everybody was taking a crack at it—the big time writers like like Mailer and DeLillo. But once you get into it you can’t get out.

DH: So who really killed Kennedy?

LS: I have no idea. Maybe Oswald, but he certainly wasn’t alone. It’s fascinating but it is like drugs and then you go home to detox and get out.

DH: In a recent book you penned “Hollywood and Sunset” you write of D.W. Griffith, the famed filmmaker, whose signature work was “The Birth of a Nation.” You refer to Griffith and others of his ilk as “sellers of light.” What are novelist’s sellers of?

LS: Ah… Inner light. All sorts of light. I got interested in Hollywood because it is really the center of power.

Basically D.W. Griffith invented Hollywood. He did everything with the two dimensional movie that could be done. He made the most racist movie ever produced: “The Birth of a Nation.” It made a huge amount of money and it took advantage of a racist sensibility of the time- what could be more American?

You had a frontier of the movies in his time. What happens when America hits the Pacific? We invent a dream-factory Hollywood. So I became very interested.

DH: How does this American sensibility differ from the European?

LS: “We” have to keep moving. We never stop. The past is used up.

DH: Does obsession help a writer?

LS: Yes. Who the hell is willing to sit and write a novel and then another novel, without it getting published? If they finally do get published the only people who read them is an obscure reviewer somewhere. But you keep doing it. It is madness. Poets can write a poem in five minutes or five years. There is no way to do this as a novelist.

Someone has to support you; or you have to support yourself. Many of us teach. So yes obsession helps. But just having obsession doesn’t mean that God will give you success, or that you have much talent. But it makes life worth living.

DH: Many writers work a variety of odd jobs to support themselves. You worked as a security guard for a number of years. How did that help or hinder your writing life?

LS: While I was a security guard I read “Gravity’s Rainbow,” and “Remembrances of Things Past.” I worked at Polaroid during the night shift. You have to survive if you are a writer. Especially if you are not in the generous bosom of a university. Faulkner said the best job for a writer is a piano player at a bordello. The hours are good and there is a lot of interesting company around.

I had many jobs in the 70’s. I worked in the Welfare Dept.. I worked for a school board in the Bronx, etc…

DH: You have taught at Bunker Hill Community College for over twenty years. How has this been?

LS: I have taught for 22 years. And it’s a great job. The average of the students is 30 years old. People come from everywhere, and there are no Yuppies. This isn’t Boston University. The kids and older people don’t think I am an idiot because I don’t make much money. Most of the students at Bunker Hill are there to learn skills, learn English, etc… I don’t think you can do better teaching adults in a public school, in a big city. It’s not the hell-hole that “Goodwill Hunting” characterized it as.

DH: You have been published by Harry Smith the legendary small press figure.

LS: Yes. Harry was basically a poet and published poets. He had a magazine from 1964 to 1998 “The Smith.” He had a policy of publishing unpublished writers. Half the magazine was devoted to their work. I had sent him something in 1970 and he turned it down. Five years later I sent him something and he sent me back an envelope with a “Yes” written across the front. He discovered me, and my friend the poet Jared Smith. He help start COSMEP—the seminal small press organization.

DH: So you have an affinity for the small press?

LS: Oh yes. There would be a lot less literature if it wasn’t for the small press. Where do we go if we are not one of the twenty people writing novels? I thank God for the small press and the internet—we can find each other here.

DH: You have written extensively about baseball. Why?

LS: You get a tremendous amount of respect knowing about sports. Baseball was that ‘alternative” world for me—it saved me.

Doug Holder