Break Time. Edited by Joseph Bergin. www.carpenterpoets.org

Break Time. Edited by Joseph Bergin. http://carpenterpoets.org


In the Boston area, like many other enlightened urban areas, we have poets of all stripes living and reading in close proximity. Off hand I can think of the SLAM poets at the Cantab Lounge in Cambridge, the STONE SOUP POETS at the Out of the Blue Art Gallery in the same city, the Bagel Bards who bake in the summer sun at the Au Bon Pain in the Davis Square section of Somerville, the high-toned, and rarefied academic crowd who congregate at the Blacksmith House in Harvard Square, and the list goes on… Well, a few years back, a group of carpenters was working on a mansion on Fisher Hill in Brookline, Mass, when they came across some poems from “Hammer,” by poet and carpenter Mark Turpin. Basically these blue-collar bards were up to the challenge and they started to write poems about carpentry. They had a poetry night and nineteen men and women read their work, and so the “ Carpenter Poets” of Jamaica Plain were born. In the introduction to this volume it is written:

“There’s much to be said about parallels between writing and carpentry. There’s the act of creating something out of common supplies, fitting board-to-board, word-to-word, the beauty of the product and pride in the craft. The house we live in, the poem that lives in us.”


Many of the poems in this collection marry many of the varied props of the carpentry life to the life- at- large, and the life of the poem. The poems are fleshed with the unexpectedly beautiful objects and moments that these men and women encounter in their day’s work.

In the poem “Machine,” by Noah H. Gordon an old carpenter and bard evokes his carnal younger life inspired by a dusty lumber room:

“With Honey flow through lumber room dust
as my mind harkens back to that younger time
I wish a miscut was my only crime
Lord, let me at long last be free lust…

Now as I pass my hands along the wood
It is as though your warm flesh I caress
We merged for a moment in the darkness
And then we were swept along in life’s flood

I’ve learned to drill out love in the machine
Drifting in the world like I’m in a dream.”


Recommended.

Doug Holder/ Ibbetson Update

A Short Film"Bagel Bards" produced by Chad Parenteau

THE BAGEL BARDS

A group of poets and writers that meet every Saturday morning at the Au Bon Pain in Davis Sq, Somerville at 9AM

Adam's Ribs by Terry Adams

Adam’s Ribs
Poems by Terry Adams
Off the Grid Press
P.O. Box 84
Weld, Maine 04285
www.offthegridpress.net
ISBN: 978-0-9778429-2-6
Copyright © 2008 Terry Adams


At first take, I tried to shape a thought-link between the book title and the author’s name.
An assumption that “Adam’s Ribs” was a word-play alluding to the author himself,
(the author, of course named Terry Adams, with an “s”). Or that this collection poses
poetical claim to the fated “first man”, also known in the Kabala as the “Primal Man”.
The title poem could be read as an allegory for the poetic process where the actual ribs of Adam are ornaments of earthly understanding:

“The toil of all my days will live me again.” . . .
My children will crawl upon the earth
and nest on the earth; will increase themselves
out of their skins and give their old masks to the earth,”

Not a rejoicing in death, but a theme of returning and conclusion gives spine to Adams’ work.
“Adam’s Ribs” examines and exhumes the realm of mortality as it diffuses its chalky hand through the mundane-everyday.Terry Adams’ images are colorful, his subject matter is often risky,(the poem “Balls” for instance), and his style is anecdotal. The poems flux between short and long,the latter being at-odds with the current literary climate.

A high level of searching and reflection prods the speaker’s voice throughout.
A literal holding up of details, to both reveal and revel in.
The poem, “After the Laying-On of Hands” holds a sad tone. The act of laying-on-of-handsretains its metaphysical nature and purpose while at the same time, the poem takes on a Tibetan “Book of the Dead”- ish feel:

“He is an embryo feeling the vague drama
of his mother’s life though
a scrim of stretched flesh,
before the forces beyond itself deliver it out against any will.
I dream I would heal him by touching him,
because I contain an excess of the battles with many deaths.
I would rest my hand on his tumor,
make it glow hot and golden
in the shape of his diaphragm,
dissolve the cancer cells into
a little Eucharist of waste, an abortion
of the fore life, but he will not finish
as a living man.”



In “Forgiveness”, Adams arrives through a round-about way to acknowledging an undisclosed person who committed a crime that almost escaped going unnoticed. Or is the speaker forgiving himself forfinding what he found? The speaker finds a mother dog and six puppies all shot through the head in a clearing by the interstate,“skeletons lined up neatly / like bodybags in the news from a minor nation.”

The speaker announces, to either themself, the reader of the killer of the
dogs that this poem is a wish poem and that:

. . . “I wished for / the impossible. I wished
something other than insanity or cruelty
did the killing, and my wish
is a crime against understanding.”
Finally resolving:
“I can’t stop thinking
of all the possible excuses
for the killer, all the kinds os desperation
living out there with a gun
and no face.”

In the final poem, “I Want to See”, Adams wants to see every thought he ever thought
written down; a bold statement, a tough task and totally scarey for anyone to dare see.
He intends:
“I want worded the echoing caves where I first understood,
and each sensation of singular time expanded to a phrase.”

“The Dump” is a catalogue of the old remnants of life that get “plowed under”
for real in the dump after serving their purpose. The speaker “lofts” and throws these
“components of every whole / thing no longer a whole” while ruminating:
“The Apache have a word Alaya, that means
‘Changes while flying through air’.”

“Adam’s Ribs” brings an amalgam of worldly details to the surface and leaves them
unsheathed in celebration.

Mike Amado is a reviewer for the Boston Area Small Press and Poetry Scense
and the author of "stunted Inner Child Shot the TV" ( Cervena Barva Press).

From the Paris of New England: Interviews with Poets and Writers

I am currently working on a collection of my interviews that for the most part appeared in The Somerville News. Caitlin Jackson, an intern from the Connectitut College, is currently editing the collection. This book hopefully will be out in the fall through my own press the "Ibbetson Street Press." Mike Basinski, curator the Poetry and Rare Book Collection at the University of Buffalo has agreed to write the introduction. This will be volume 1 ... I plan to to do a second volume in late 2009...if the god lord is willing and the creek don't rise...



--Doug Holder





Below is the title and the list of interviews....













From the Paris of New England: Interviews with Poets and Writers








With Doug Holder











Author’s Note



Publications where these interviews have appeared:



The Somerville News

Hunger Magazine

Boston Area Small Press and Poetry Scene (online)

Middlesex Beat

Poesy

Spare Change News

Some Other Magazine (online)















Special Thanks To:



Donald and Jamie Norton, Biil Tauro (The Somerville News) Wendy Blom (Somerville Community Access TV), Steve Gilnes (ISCS Press), Caitlin Jackson, Mike Basinki (Buffalo University Libraries).







Table of Contents
Eva Salzman…………………………………………………………………7

Mike Basinski………………………………………………………………...10

Errol Uys…………………………………………………………………….13

Lan Samantha Chang………………………………………………………..16

Louisa Solano………………………………………………………………..18

Miriam Levine……………………………………………………………….20

Mark Doty…………………………………………………………………...23

Claire Messud………………………………………………………………..28

Lisa Beatman…………………………………………………………………30

Martha Collins………………………………………………………………..32

Dick Lourie…………………………………………………………………35

Robert Creeley…………………………………………………………………38

Afaa Michael Weaver…………………………………………………………40

Jack Powers………………………………………………………………...42

Ed Sanders…………………………………………………………………..45

Tom Perrotta…………………………………………………………………48

Diana Der-Hovanessian………………………………………………………50

Luke Salisbury…………………………………………………………………52

Sarah Hannah…………………………………………………………………55

Hugh Fox……………………………………………………………………...57



Lo Galluccio…………………………………………………………………60



Timothy Gager……………………………………………………………….63



Gloria Mindock…………………………………………………………66



Marc Widershien…………………………………………………………67



Deborah M. Priestly………………………………………………………71



Steve Almond…………………………………………………………….73



Pagan Kennedy


Robert K.Johnson

Harris Gardner

Ibbetson Street Press Author Susie Davidson Brings “In Gratitude and Hope” to the German-Jewish communities.

( Vorwerk -- Right)


Ibbetson Street Press Author Susie Davidson Brings “In Gratitude and Hope” to the German-Jewish communities.

By Doug Holder

The Ibbetson Street Press of Somerville has released a collection of remarks titled: “In Gratitude and Hope,” made to the Boston-area Jewish community by former German Consul to Boston Wolfgang K. Vorwerk. Vorwerk who was Consul from 2004 to June 2008 was asked to speak at the annual Yom HaShoah (Holocaust Memorial Day) services at Faneuil Hall in Boston in 2005. During his tenure Vorwerk has reached out to the Jewish community. Vorwerk made presentations at Temple Israel in Boston, Temple Shalom in Newton, Mass, House of Representatives, State House, Boston, Mass., and other forums. He facilitated German/Jewish dialogue; spoke to Holocaust survivors, Nazi resistors, and the general community-at-large. Vorwerk has also helped with the funding of several Holocaust-related initiatives.

In response to requests Jewish Advocate journalist and editor of the Holocaust anthology “I Refused to Die…,” ( Ibbetson Street) Susie Davidson has edited and annotated a collection of the former Consul’s remarks. This 93 page book includes photos, a foreword by Vorwerk, and a speech by German Chancellor Angela Merkel before the Knesset in Israel, among other highlights.

Vorwerk has displayed much sensitivity to the Jewish community. The Consul is well aware that some segments of the Jewish community harbor anger towards Germans and Germany. Vorwerk emphasizes past issues do not have to render all parties mute. In his own remarks he recalls his own struggle with the past, and the responsibility left to all Germans today.

The book was given out to Holocaust survivor community members at a June 22, 2008 luncheon at Temple Emeth in Chestnut Hill. Vorwerk, Davidson are convinced that that the book will leave behind a deep and lasting historic impression for the community, and many generations to come.

Copies can be purchased through the Ibbetson Street Press: http://www.ibbetsonpress.com contact 617-628-2313

And:

German Consulate pr-ioo@bost.diplo.de 617-369-4917

Small Press Fair at Lowell+ Mass. Poetry Festival

( click on title for more info. about festival)


The Small Press Fair: When we were first asked to be a part of this festival, we expressed our idea that in order for this to really "work" that we should highlight small press publishing and show its importance to the craft of poetry—without a small press culture, there is no sustainable poetics.



The goal is to reach out and draw in a sizable crowd--one which will hopefully support poetry by buying books. We'd like to think that Lowell could become a Columbus Day destination every year--you come and sell books and hang out in Kerouac's city in the middle of a New England autumn. The city will also be covered with poetry as public art and should be a visual treat.



But this can't happen without some help from you—to add some legitimacy to this event.



If you are interested?



Please contact us as soon as possible. The Book Fair and related panels will take place all day on Saturday, October 11th.



We will also keep you in contact of events as they arise and are booked--and can help with suggestions if you choose to stay in downtown Lowell for one or two of the nights--The Doubletree is a great hotel, very affordable, right at the heart of all the events in downtown--only a stones throw away from Kerouac Park--has nice views of the city, canals, the Merrimack River (immortalized by both Kerouac and Thoreau) and the New Hampshire hills. Drive about an hour in any direction from Lowell and you could end up in Boston, Providence, the beginning of Cape Cod, Salem MA, Gloucester MA, The New Hampshire and Maine Coasts, the Appalachian trail in New Hampshire (great hiking), the Berkshires, Walden Pond--the list goes on....



More… about Lowell & the Mass Poetry Festival:



Lowell already has a strong literary tradition to build from, and since Lowell received status as a Historic National Park over 25 years ago, the city has focused effort and funding to promote itself as a historic and cultural destination. As part of the milieu of a revitalized downtown, the largest and (we would argue) most successful free music and ethnic Folk Festival in the country, as well as the rich cultural history represented with its population—Lowell will begin hosting what we hope will be a successful and energetic Poetry Festival every year.



Members of the planning committee are drawing off of prior experience as well as contacts and institutional organizations that have made Lowell a great place to hold Festivals: i.e. The Lowell Folk Festival, Cultural Organization of Lowell (COOL), The Revolving Museum, and UMass Lowell are just a few of the organizations involved in planning and (just as importantly) in securing funding.


--
Derek Fenner and Ryan Gallagher
Bootstrap Productions
www.bootstrapproductions.org
bootstrapproductions@gmail.com

Review of Home: Anthology Edited by Anne Brudevold

Eden Waters Press 2008

Edited by Anne Brudevold

http://edenwaterspress.com





If the fragrance of fresh-baked chocolate chip cookies wafting out of an eight-room suburban colonial conjures home to you, then reading “Home: Antholgy” (Eden Waters Press 2008) will bring you back. If the rat-a-tat of gunfire on the mean streets of the inner city pockmarked your childhood neighborhood, ditto.



Editor Anne Brudevold has deftly woven together the work of forty-one writers to compile an anthology that spans the range of contemporary human habitat. Many fresh, unexpected images of home pop out at the reader, in the poems themselves, and in the stirring photographs liberally scattered throughout. In “House over the World”, Paul Hotovsky’s daughter dreams of long division, and “the dream turns into the nightmare/ of our house divided by the world.” The poem is as elegantly concise as an equation. An Armenian massacre of poets in 1915 is chronicled in “Coming Home” by Daniel Varoujan, translated by Diana Der-Hovanessian: “Let the oven’s smoke rise/ to mix with the blue smoke of the roofs.”



Oddly, a poem about homelessness asserts one of the most striking statements about making a home where you can. Pam Rosenblatt’s “By the Highway” voices the fundamental need for “what’s rightfully ours” in childlike repetitions: “we live here we live here we live here” – here being by an off-ramp of Massachusetts Interstate 93.



I was reminded of Jack London’s vast, crushing wilderness in Holly Anderson’s “Bovina, 4 PM.” “A motherless mob of ridges” tears through a “Braille of ridges”. The language in these poems runs the gamut from austere to ambrosial.



“Love Song for Roxbury”, Bernadette Davidson’s ode to a multi-cultural pocket of Boston, features an overflowing laundromat and “salsa erupting”, bringing to mind Octavio Paz’s classic “Mexican silence”, punctuated by cock crow and babies crying.



For all of us, no matter where we came from, the visceral punch of home informs who we are, who we have become. Turning each page of “Home” opens a window into the life of someone else on the planet we are thankful to get to know. We walk home with Tom Sheehan, in “Compensation”, to greet his wife who is emptying the trash: “Thread me into your labors/weave me onto the high day.” “Home” will make a conversation-starting coffee-table book in any studio apartment, mansion, or yurt.



Reviewed by Lisa Beatman, author of Manufacturing America: Poems from the Factory Floor (Ibbetson Street Press 2008).

Reviews of Don Winter's No Way Out But In/ Soul Noir by Mike Kriesel

( Mike Kriesel)

(Don Winter)


No Way Out But In, Don Winter, 2008, 25p. Working Stiff Press, P.O. Box 1274, Niles, Michigan 49120, $10, workingstiffpress@hotmail.com.

Todd Moore



Some books appear like comets. They get the newspaper spread, the National Public Radio talk show buzz. It’s red carpet all the way, the Billy Collins treatment on Garrison Keillor, the Barnes and Noble book signings. Some books make less auspicious appearances, like a grenade with the pin pulled rolling out on the sidewalk or a Molotov cocktail with the fuse lit, all ready to throw. These are the kinds of books I like because they are all about content and have no hint of glitz or hype whatsoever.



Don Winter’s No Way Out But In is this kind of book. Published by Working Stiff Press and selling for ten bucks, this book is a steal. This book contains some of the best poetry I’ve seen in a while. These poems remind me of the best work of Phillip Levine. And, here’s another guess. Maybe Winter knows the work of Raymond Carver as well.



One of the blurbs on the back of No Way Out mentions Hemingway and Bukowski, and while these writers are almost everyone’s influences, I think Winter’s poetry has an originality and power that is uniquely his own. As Gary Goude states in his masterly introduction, Don Winter is a working class poet, whose poetry comes out of the Midwest rust belt. Detroit, working class bars and diners, factories, the street wise, and the street poor. Some of these poems have layers of angst so thick you need a broken bottle to cut into and then through them.



2 a.m. The moon rises

above Birmingham Steel.

At 20th and Tuscaloosa

men keep warm by a fire

made from fence posts

and garage doors….

(from “Unions”)



Winter’s poetry takes place in a visceral world where French fries and broken glass are frozen to the pavement, where “faces float/ like torn pages/ across the diner windows.” The best thing about Don Winter’s poetry is that there is no whining. Instead what you find is a kind of tough guy stoicism. The poet narrator is going through a bad divorce. His world is sliding sideways away from him but somehow he manages to keep going, even though that going is taking him nowhere:



Two hundred for the night, two bones

from her dealer later, we jumped

into a Checker cab.

Back in my room,

the dope dropped my head

like a tulip.

She cleaned me out.

(from “Lonesome Town”)



There are resonances in Winter’s poetry which echo and remind me of something out of Raymond Chandler’s Red Wind, Charles Bukowski’s Burning in Water, Drowning in Flame, Jim Thompson’s The Killer Inside Me, or maybe something out of one of my books. Maybe Point Blank or Burn Like a Shadow. In my opinion, Don Winter’s poetry has all the right stuff. It’s hard, it’s edgy, it makes no excuses, and it knows where it lives. The next best thing to breaking out of a dead end life is to live in it with enormous honesty and intensity.



The note at the end of “Late Shift Waitress at Wanda’s Grill” reads “this found poem cost me blood.” What Winter seems to have learned is that all poems cost you blood. Blood mixed with nightmare chills and fever dreams.







No Way Out But In, Don Winter, Working Stiff Press, P.O. Box 1274, Niles, Michigan 49120, $10, workingstiffpress@hotmail.com.



Soul Noir, Michael Kriesel, Platonic 3Way Press, P.O. Box 184, Warsaw, Indiana, 46581, $5,

evilgenius@platonic3waypress.com.

By Troy Schoultz



Don Winter and Michael Kriesel are not only two of the most generous poets I’ve come across as far as offering advice and encouragement, but I hungrily take in any new poetic statements they offer up, be it a collection or the stray poem in any of the more quality literary mags on the market. Both gentlemen have new chapbooks out, and we the readers reap the benefits.



No Way Out But In reads like a continuation of Winters’ previous chapbooks, Things About To Disappear and On The Line. That is no disparagement. His latest comes across as the third part of a trilogy. If anything, these poems take the urgency and desperation up a few notches. These are poems of volatile hell-raising youth (“Raw”), stabbing loneliness and doubt (“Do You Think We Should”), and the casualties of capitalism and an American dream, gone haywire (“Going On” and “Unions”).



These are poems in which Winter offers up heaping helpings of a vision set in the tepid, bleaker shade of the stars and stripes that shows our home country is not always the land of milk and honey, but also too often a Darwinian boxing ring where dreams are in danger of falling like mirrors to pavement.



Unlike other poets working with the same subject matter, Winter does not come across as annoyingly self-righteous, preachy, or too “born to lose” to hold relevance. If anything, there is a pugnacious stoicism, toughness and endurance. Many poets chronicling these darker themes of realism made their work seem simplistic and effortless (the big two, Carver and Bukowski, come to mind), but the wonder of Winter is that his lines and images unfurl like flags saturated in colors that make the reader give pause with the realization of being in the presence of a serious artist.



Consider these closing lines from “The Hamtramck Hotel”: “And you sleep between the station breaks/ and a rolling curtain of freight cars block out the river. / And the moon climbs/ as the stars drip steadily into the streets.”



Michael Kriesel doesn’t so much jot down poems as offer up landscapes. His latest chapbook, Soul Noir, takes the reader on visits both interactive and internal. From the opening poem, we huddle up in a small tavern under the glow of a neon beer sign and listen to a story of a UFO buzzing above haystacks. Whether or not Kriesel planned it, he has managed to create an authentic Wisconsin Poetry: conversational, to the point, anchored in the flavors of region, nostalgic, proud, melancholy, seeped in ritual, dream-like and authentic all in the same dance.



Kriesel’s world is a heady mix of rural roadside taverns, cemeteries, farmland and distant urban mental pictures. In fact, reading many of Kriesel’s poems is akin to running across old Polaroid snapshots in a thrift store, overripe with color, an eye fastened on to a past with all senses plugged into the here and now. Kriesel’s imagery is lucid and sensory. In “Bakelite Victrola Horn” he describes an early record player apparatus as “Yellow morning glory, clear and cloudy/ as orange marmalade, stem a metal comma, / black.” The sense of ritual runs deep in “Limbo” where the poet replaces the accidentally destroyed grave marker of an infant with a poem, “Let this be that baby’s marker. Let/ this let me move on.”



Don Winter and Michael Kriesel both accomplish a necessary and forgotten function with their poetry—the nourishment and healing of the human soul. It is an important component of the craft that MFA workshop participants would do well to acquaint themselves with.

Rare Book Alert: close to flat by Irene Koronas

Rare Book Alert: close to flat by Irene Koronas


by Michael Todd Steffen



Get interested if you find an 11 x 4 brown card cover booklet in an attractive purple band, with the simple title close to flat on the front. It is a handmade booklet by Irene Koronas,
of 11 poems that so gracefully associate their assorted thoughts and images that the reader can not extinguish them with simple readings. The poems are cryptic and curious, like riddles or puzzles. We have announcements of culprits that have set up this plan of fugitive defense in the poet’s responses: It’s “laura riding” (“we all creep before her”). It’s the poet’s aging mother

handing out hand outs
handy around the house
handmade patterns
hand sewn outfits
washing by hand…

It’s the “june 1, 2008 dream” of a men’s room and a blackened bombed out car.
Reminiscent of Gertrude Stein, Koronas exposes the structures of language—

that is this then
this then that
that brings within
that which that is…

—in an intriguing poem called “is this then that” consisting of only 10 different words over 15 lines. The poem echoes a wholly embraced distraction found in the first poem “temptation” in which the poet shirks typical intellectual pursuits, watching “a robin run”—
or has Koronas dissolved reading the newspaper and the memorial day parade to this image of the orange-breasted bandit-masked bird?
Characteristically feisty, contrary, Koronas likes to surprise us with gentler depths,

and when I die
I’ll miss the color orange (“grounded”)…

her humor,

her ninety three large years
close to within an inch
of being swept up…
gamblers predict her demise (“little book”)…

as well as her acceptance,
wind lifts, carries away
small poems
the blossom of each word
breaking down (“haiku 2”).

I was lucky enough to catch Irene with a copy to purchase for $10.00. The book is hand-cut and sewn. If the community at large is lucky Irene will have placed copies of close to flat at some of the local bookshops for the serendipity of curious browsers.

The Old Witch Winks

The Old Witch Winks Don Moyer (Beatitude Press, Berkeley California) No Price.

We’ve got a book of poems here that walks us through the wardrobe or the looking glass to a new world—odd and familiar. I can imagine reading only one of these poems and getting a sense of the dense atmosphere, but reading them collected in Don Moyer’s The Old Witch Winks is a thorough exploration of a crowded shop full of strange, evocative antiques.

Moyer’s verse refers frequently to the hairy angry early books of the Bible—the Lilith or Enoch times—he brings the concepts to a seedy present day America with its morally troubling politics and culture. The religious references are paired with icons of popular piety, Doris Day and little girls, family restaurants and the Presidency, perverting all of them with the language of foulness and death.

from Weedy Words & Curling Page: Prologue for a New Bible

Enoch walked with God for 365 years,
then rose to Heaven and saw the angels
plunge to earth and mate:
trim, winged bastards
astride
buckin’ Doris Days:
trippy cowgirls,
big blue
rippling eyes,
pink panties a-rippin’

The memory of World War Two and the importance of resisting Nazis provides another recurrent contrast, often subverted by profanity: farting, fucking. Nothing can be holy in our fallen bodies or our descending empire.

“Golem Bush” is a character in these poems, when he’s mentioned and when he’s not—the collection visits and revisits the idea of sacrifice made in good faith only to be squandered. The poem “Abraham considers God’s order to sacrifice his son, Isaac” begins with a moving image of a crushed model plane:

cousin Bobby built it,
balsa, paper, paint
a big fragile beauty
gift into accident.

There’s a lingering flavor of anger over the war in Iraq and the use of soldiers’ and civilian lives for petty ends. Moyer has given us a collection of powerful, timely poems.

--Catherine Nichols/Ibbetson Update/July, 2008/Somerville, Mass.

The Domestic Exotica of the Midwest in the poems of Peter Neil Carroll

The Domestic Exotica of the Midwest in the poems of Peter Neil Carroll
By Michael Todd Steffen

Riverbourne: A Mississippi Requiem by Peter Neil Carroll is a collection of 53 poems recording in verse the poet’s meanderings with friend “Jim” along the Mississippi River, starting north in Minneapolis and finishing south in Natchez, Mississippi. Years have elapsed between the first and second poems, between two similar trips taken by the companions who amuse themselves at observing religious billboards and who’s playing who on the baseball diamonds of the towns they pass through (Prescott, Wisconsin…Guttenberg, Iowa…Quincy, Illinois… St. Louis…Tiptonville, Tennessee…Benoit, Mississippi). Along with the silent parallel of T.S. Eliot’s Dry Salvages and its descriptive/symbolic use of the Mississippi River, frequent quotes from the writings of Mark Twain give the poems a literary resonance, with reference notes at the back of the collection. This second voyage takes place in 2005, building—toward the end with forecasts of rain to the announcement of Hurricane Katrina—to a sense of recent historical drama.
There is an interesting anachronism which occurs at the outset of the book: in the second poem the “two men, 29, divorced” have returned this time 33 years later (!), which would have made one of them, the one who speaks of standing on a bridge joining his thought to the river in the first poem, “I’d Stood On That Cold Bridge, 1972,” -4 years old, which gave me a fleeting glimpse of Dante and Virgil…
That first poem speaks with a lyrical intensity that will not be carried forth. Instead, mature, disillusioned, wry, Carroll’s language like the big river gathers “no white water or rapid falls” maintaining a “monotonous, steady flow”. In doing so, Carroll manages here and there surprising metaphors:

The big river pours south
as gravity wraps around the moon
(“Gravity and the River”).

Patience with the sequence of poems will yield the reader sensations of the domestic exotica which the Midwest and Delta South have to offer readers from other regions. Landscape has a prominent generalizing voice in the vast terrain—
Late sun leans against the Minnesota bluff
across the river, orange streaks skim
the current, snagged islands float offshore…
(“What They Talk About On Saturday Afternoon”)

—and the book is so rife with these vivid descriptive passages, readers are left with a sense of having taken that easy-paced voyage by the slow great river themselves.

Riverbourne by Peter Neil Carroll is available for $12.95 from Higganum Hill Books/ P.O. Box 666/ Higganum, CT 06441/ 800-888-4741/ www.ipgbook.com/www.calliope.org/hhh/>

Books of Hope: Brings the Writer Out in Somerville Youth

Books of Hope: Brings the Writer Out in Somerville Youth

Being a small press publisher I have always been impressed with the “Books of Hope,” project. I interviewed the former director Anika Nailah and her young charges on my Somerville Community Access TV “Poet to Poet: Writer to Writer” I was impressed how Nailah instilled a love for the “word” in these kids, many from the Mystic Housing Development in our city. For nine years the program has trained kids from the projects and elsewhere in four key areas: writing, publishing, performing, marketing and outreach. The youth are involved in many aspects of producing a book, and their development is advanced through a writer-in-residence, guest artists and mentors, as well as field trips. “Books of Hope” would be the envy of many presses producing high quality and beautifully illustrated chapbooks of poetry and fiction. Soul Brown, the new director, has sent me a slew of titles from this ambitious small press. Included are: 'A Cup of Truth With No Sugar Please,” by Tanisha D., “Broken Home & Other Tales From The Hood,” by Jessica Jean-Louis, “In Between The Lines Was A Story,” by Jessica Masse, 'Superwoman' by Tanisha D., “Simple Words Hide Amazing Secrets,” by Farah Jean-Baptiste, “What Time Will Only Show,” by Tanya Lovely Joseph, “Lightning Strikes Twice,” by Maisha B. Antoine “Changes,” by Reynalle Miranda Santanna, “The Many Voices In Me,” by Farah Jean Baptiste, and “Double Dutch,” by Bendhjy Wazaire and Onyx Thorton. I decided to use a few poems from this fine stash of verse.

TAKE A TRIP

Take a trip though my world where gold tooth boot
leg rappers walk around carryin STD’s picking
up chicks on the street then havin sex with
Them in front of the cable TV

Yo take a trip through my world where people
get shot for havin something valuable
Like a Playstation 3 or Bape Ape Fashion or
Maybe not something valuable, just because
They feel like it’s the season

Really take a trip through my world and
you would see gang violence like crazy
like blood fighting crips and MS13
fighting brave hearts.

Yo, if you took a trip through my world
love would be nothing but a dream
and hate would rule the world.

Shoot take a trip through my world and
you would get shot. Not even I would
take a trip through that world.

------Farah Jean-Baptiste









IN THE MIRROR

In the mirror in front of me
I see the real me…
The me that’s afraid to walk out
of the shadows and into the light
The me that you don’t know
but would like to know
The me that has felt the troubles
and sorrows of life
The me that’s crying on the inside
trying to find his way out of this world
that he came in
But too much stress going through his head
it just feels like he’s caving in.

In the mirror in front of me
I see a person who has mastered
the skill of illusions
A person who mastered the art


of hiding his true colors
A person who has mastered the skill
of shadowing his emotions
But knowing all that he still doesn’t know
happiness.

---Bendhjy Nazaire






9 MONTHS I'LL NEVER SEE

This feeling is forever
A feeling I’ll never treasure
It brings tears and makes my legs quiver
It burns inside when I think of the 9 months
I’ll never see
How I had something growing inside me
A baby
My heart shatters when I think of the face

I’ll never see
How I knew someone that never got the chance
To know me
But my dream of holding you is gone
It will never be
But your spirit will continue to play on inside me
Like a never ending melody
While my tears become a river
And the river an ocean
An ocean of what could have been
But can never be.

Tanya Lovely Joseph

Review: The Man in the Booth in the Midtown Tunnel

The Man In The Booth
In The Midtown Tunnel
By Doug Holder
ISBN 978-1-4357-1957-6
65 pages at 13.00 paperback
Cervena Barva Press
P.O. Box 440357
W. Somerville MA 02144-3222

Doug Holder’s poetry has been defined by a study of people in their native environment. Whether on the street, in a psychiatric ward, or in the cocoon of family, his canny eyes miss nothing. He passes no judgments, makes no assumptions about those who daily cross his path or reside in the recesses of memory. This book is a gentle record of human behavior, compassionate psalms for the unusual and the mundane activities that dance through his day.

Holder’s revelations include personal snapshots. Consider this excerpt from “I Saw Myself On The Dudley Bus That Day:”

Half light,
No hair.
A bus of exiles
Each mired
In their personal
Affairs.

“In The Twin Towers” is Holder’s take on a murder that occurred in the Cambridge MA projects decades ago. In this stunning poem, an elderly man tries to remember why he loved his wife, then murders her in the smothering heat of summer:

He thinks of her gnarled hands
The liver spots --
Musing how her ring held on
To the bony corpse of her finger.

Simply and powerfully, the poet epitomizes frail defiance in “Cambridge Mass: Two Old Women:”

Arm in arm
A tight embrace
Of frail appendages
Pushing each other
At no more
Than a snail’s pace.

Each morning
Refusing the pull
Of age’s inertia

“A Dream of Minnie Baum” is Holder’s recollection of his grandmother. The moment is perfectly captured:

I sit in the deep creases of her sundress,
A purple flourish of fabric flowers,
Stunned by the musty cabal of her perfume.
My head resting on her soft deflated breasts
She exchanges Yiddish for English with mother
Tit for tat.

In these poems, Holder’s words reflect the intimacy and loneliness of humanity. Words flow quietly but memorably on these pages. Highly recommended.

Review by Laurel Johnson * Laurel Johnson is a Book Reviewer for the Midwest Book Review.

Passing the time with Boston Poet Laureate Sam Cornish.

Passing the time with Boston Poet Laureate Sam Cornish.

Doug Holder

Sam Cornish, the Boston Poet Laureate, invited me to his office to chat before participating in another meeting we were involved with later in the day with Boston-area poetry activists. On the subway, on the way to the meeting, I read through a collection of Cornish’s that I picked up at the Grolier Poetry Book Shop some time ago: “Cross A Parted Sea.” Cornish writes about everything from Pullman Porters, sharecroppers, Jackie Robinson, Martin Luther King, his father, etc. He does it with just the right amount of raw energy and the Blues, and his choice of words packs a wallop, or at times a well-appointed sucker punch: Case in point:


Dog Town Slim

Our grandfathers
were
hard as nigger
sweat
writers
that drank
the muddy
waters
of Mississippi
and the Congo
traveled
the world
in books
foot&
fist
through
Dunbar
Douglass
Johnson
And Hughes
no Uncle Toms
but men
on Grand Street
or Lenox Avenue
left bank
or after hours
joint
upside
the heads

of Gentiles
of Crackers
or to Spain
fuck
fascism
and the Krauts

their lives so crazy
that women
wrote
about them made
a music
called the blues.


Sam Cornish’s office is in the back of the audiovisual department in the basement of the Copley Square Branch of the Boston Public Library. Cornish is an affable, warm, and modest man, making him an easy person to talk to and open up to. Cornish, like the former U.S. Poet Laureate Robert Pinsky, is all about community and outreach. From talking with Cornish I got the impression he is not interested in getting more PR for the mandarins of the poetry world. He wants to reach what he calls the “Boston Underground,” which he defines as the community of poets and writers outside the academy. This is a population who publishes little magazines and books, writes for the love of it and are not careerists. He feels that these “holy fools” should get some recognition as well. Cornish wants to address the larger question “Why does poetry matter?” He wants show that poetry is an essential element of society. It is more than foundation grants, book contracts, and plum teaching positions.

Later Dale Patterson (Boston Library Foundation), Harris Gardner (Tapestry of Voices), Lo Galluccio (Poet Activist, Ibbetson Update Book Reviewer, and author),
Joe Bergin (Carpenter Poets), and Kate Finnegan (Kaji Aso Studios) came to discuss the process of getting grants for pet projects of Cornish’s, and other proposed projects by group members. Some interesting ideas were thrown out like: poetry performances at the old Strand Theatre in Dorchester, a small press book fair, readings in coffee shops across the city, thematic cross-cultural readings, paid visiting poets conducting workshops for neighborhood youth, you name it… Dale Patterson, a well-seasoned grant writer, plans to work up a draft proposal that hopefully will wind up in the willing hands of a number of foundations.

It was great to be with these enthusiastic folks who took time out of their very busy lives to volunteer their respective talents in promotion of the word. Sam Cornish is a great laureate, a man of the people, and his hands are on the pulse of the city. When I lived in Brighton years ago I used to see him walking the streets, his inquisitive, searching eyes scanning the city behind thick glasses. Cornish mentioned the book “Walker in the City,” by Alfred Kazin. Kazin was a keen observer, a lover of the ebb and flow of the eclectic, teeming city streets. This is exactly what Cornish is, and what I admire about the man. Cornish has walked the walk and he has earned the right to talk the talk.

I think Boston had the right idea supporting and funding this position. I can only hope that my hometown of Somerville will be infused with the same wisdom and fund a position such as this.

--Doug Holder

Interview with Tom Daley: From machinist to master poet.

Interview with Tom Daley: From machinist to master poet.


Tom Daley was a machinist for many years, but now finds himself a well-regarded, well-published poet and workshop leader. Daley is the poet-in-residence at the Boston Center for Adult Education, and teaches poetry and memoir writing at Lexington (MA) Community education. Daley also teaches with poets Regie Gibson, Patricia Smith, and Quincy Troupe for the Online School of Poetry, and serves on the tutorial faculty of the Walnut Hill School for the Arts. He has lectured at Brown University, as well as Stonehill College, and SUNY Cobleskill. Daley has been widely published in such journals as the: Harvard Review, Salamander, Del Sol Review, and The Bagel Bards Anthology (Numbers 1 and 2). I spoke with Daley on my Somerville Community Access TV show: “ Poet to Poet: Writer to Writer.”


Doug Holder: You have a show about Emily Dickinson coming up in the spring that you are producing. Tell us about this.

Tom Daley: Yes. I am very excited. Next April I am going to produce a show titled: “The Many Voices of Emily Dickinson.” The plan is to have it at the Cambridge Family Y—at the theater there. The idea is to have several different interpretations of Emily Dickinson including people reading her poetry in different languages: Yiddish, Italian, Spanish, etc…. I have a commitment from the Cambridge Ringe & Latin High School dance program to choreograph some pieces for this show.

Emily Dickinson had an Irish housekeeper. Dickinson appointed him to be her chief undertaker. Obviously she was obsessed with death. I though it would be interesting to have a chorus of Emily Dickinsons and a chorus of Irish serving people.



DH: Tom I have worked for many years at McLean Hospital as a Mental Health Worker. I have tried to incorporate poetry into my job by running workshops on the wards, and later setting clients up with literary internships. Were you able to integrate your interest with writing with your work as a machinist?

TD: Absolutely. I am working on a manuscript that consists principally of poems that are related to working in the factory. I was on the shop floor with a lot of interesting people. People from all over the globe. I worked with one person from Ghana, another from Haiti…they were all wonderful. I really enjoyed that aspect of it. However the job itself was miserable.

I had been groomed to be an academic poet. But the very guy who groomed me told me what a horrible life it was. He said that poets did nothing but stab each other in the back and ask each other “ How much did you get for that poem?” (Yes, people actually got paid for poetry at one time. (laugh))

So I got more interested in political work. I was involved with union and anti-racism organizing for years.

The shop I worked at was not a union shop. My idea was to have a skill so I could go to an auto plant and organize. That didn’t work out. So I ended up being just a machinist. It’s hard to find a job with just an undergraduate English degree. I could of gone on to get my MFA…sometimes I regret that I didn’t. I wouldn’t have had the experiences I had if I did though. You don’t need an MFA to teach or be a poet.


DH: The poet Regie Gibson describes your work as being concerned with “life emerging from a decaying world” Do you agree?

TD: Along with my interest with Emily Dickinson, I have this interest with the whole process of life and death. In Western culture we see death as a very separate thing from life. But there is that famous quote: “ You’re dying the minute you are born.” Decay is such a vital part of renewal. Every day we are shedding millions cells, skin, blood, all these things! One of my favorite things to do is to build a compost heap. In this pile of dead matter is a huge florescence of life. I mean you through a banana peel in and there are thousands of microbes on it.

DH: Tom you are a very well regarded poetry workshop leader. Gives us three things a poet must do in order to write good verse?

TD: They have to read. Find good poetry and read it. A lot of people come to my workshops and say: “I don’t read poetry it might influence me.” Would you learn to play the guitar without listening to someone playing the guitar? I have everyone bring a poem they admire to every meeting of the workshop. That’s how it starts.

If you are not reading you are not going to improve as a writer. Without be “infused” you are not going to be “improved.”

As a poet you have to use interesting language. You must have an interesting story and idea as well. But if you don’t have language that is doing something interesting then you are simply transcribing.


DH: Your work is big on detail, observations. Do you find this lacking in the work people bring to your workshop?

TD: Sometimes people write about totally abstract concepts like: peace, love, justice, etc… They have no detail at all. They feel if they were more specific they would crowd the reader out.

My own poetry has been described by some as simply descriptive. But I try to create an imagistic impact. It has meaning on many different levels. There is an emotional content, a philosophical content, etc…


* For more info on Tom Daley go to: onlineschoolofpoetry.org/TomDaley.html


Tom Daley
Legacy

Tonight I walk by the mirror
in my father's green shirt
that I am wearing for the first time.
For a minute I think it is him in the mirror,
without the girth or the knob of the belly button
hanging strangely inside out,
but him all the same. In that moment
something has changed me
into a man content to sleep off weekends
under the rubber tree in the living room,
to watch football and play endless games of chess with myself.
I will live and die with a legacy of a handful of shirts
and a certain quantity of affection
given without condition or responsibility,
lavished equally on dog ears, nurses, neap tides,
bittersweet chocolate, paint flaking off bridges,
young women in laundromats folding their clothes.
Ambitious only for the small comfort
of late night long distance phone calls to an old lover,
I can stand up without my loose socks slipping to my ankles
and cross a cold creek barefoot without screaming.
All this is something to bless him for,
the man who once filled out
this old green shirt.
___________________________________
Doug Holder/Ibbetson Update/July 2008

The MFA, what does Jacob A. Bennett have to say?

The MFA, what does Jacob A. Bennett have to say?

I asked former Somerville News reporter Jacob Bennett about his MFA experience at Goddard College. Jacob has helped us over the years with The Somerville News Writers Festival http://somervilenewswritersfestival.com, and has interviewed many literary figures in Somerville and beyond. He currently works at Berklee College in Boston, and is a p/t MFA student.

I'd love to speak to my experience as a low-residency MFA Writing student; read below:

No holds barred, I love the program. I may have found another group of people (students and/or faculty) or another institution less desirable or less to my academic expectations, but Goddard is a perfect fit for me. I struggled for a couple years after earning my BA, wondering what my next step would be and how I would be able to afford another degree without a full-time job, or if I were ready to pursue a PhD - then I "discovered" the low-residency model that has in the past few years become so popular for MFA programs. (Two intriguing points of fact: the first low-res MFA writing program originated at Goddard, then "moved" to Warren Wilson a couple years later [reasons for which I have yet to look into - but it was the same woman who started both programs]; and starting in the earlier years of this decade, Goddard ran into financial woes and nearly closed [cf. Antioch College], but has since rebounded, re-structuring ALL programs, graduate and under-graduate, to the low-res model.)

Aside from my love of the people and the gorgeous campus, what really endears the program to me is the actual structure of the thing. There are no physical classrooms or scheduled classes (outside the twice-yearly residencies, which occur on campus in lovely, remote Plainfield VT, and comprise about 8-9 days of intensely scheduled workshops, seminars, master classes, advising sessions and readings by faculty, students and visiting writers), the success of the program and of the individual students results directly from the effort of all involved. Each student's situation is different, but for me, working a 9-5 M-F job, it is incumbent upon me to wake up at 5:30am to read for a couple hours, go to work, get home and read/write a little more; the weekends are much less stressful, as I have the "leisure" of reading or writing at any time. Every three weeks during the fifteen week semesters I mail a packet of writing, both creative (poetry, in my case) and critical (annotations, short and long critical essays) to my faculty advisor, along with a process letter explaining points of excitement or contention, what I was thinking of while reading or writing and how readings inform my own approach to writing. In turn, my advisor mails back a response letter, as well as closely read and marked-up copies of my poetry. That's the main architecture of the program.

What sets Goddard above (in my opinion) other similar programs (e.g. Warren Wilson or Bennington), is the Teaching Practicum requirement. In the third semester, each student must create a class and teach it, from the ground up. This includes getting a third-party sponsor (YMCA, Grub Street, Boys and Girls Club, etc), finding space to teach, recruiting students, creating a syllabus and executing at least fifteen contact hours in that classroom. At the end, students evaluate the instructor, an outside observer writes a report, and the MFA-er completes a teaching essay and bibliography. This is an invaluable experience for those (me) with little independent teaching experience and who are pursuing the degree for the purpose of finding teaching jobs. In reviewing similar programs, I found that among those I liked, none compared to Goddard in the kind of depth this portion of the degree offers.

Alex by Hugh Fox

Alex by Hugh Fox (Rubicon Press Edmonton, Alberta http://www.rubiconpress.org ) $7. editor@rubiconpress.org.


At age 76 Hugh Fox tries to slow down time, savor the moment, and contend with ghosts. In the poem “Time ll” Fox captures the unrelenting rush of that prized commodity: time: “Thursday again, as if yesterday were/ last Thursday , too much
Passing over too/quickly, I keep telling myself Focus, Focus,/ in on the Now, concentrate on the lights… the river,/ night, winds…” Fox writes that he is: “Finally reaching the point of zero…forgetting where I am and why…” Fox is still strongly pulled by the material world, but he never lets us forget that we will all die.


--Doug Holder/ Ibbetson Update

My Life as a Doll by Elizabeth Kirschner

My Life as a Doll
by Elizabeth Kirschner
Autumn House Press
ISBN 978-1-932870-20-6 $14.95
www.autumnhouse.org

A review by Mignon Ariel King



If you are going through a rough time, don’t read this collection. Separated into four parts, each serving as a eulogy to the lost periods of the poet’s life, this is excruciating stuff. Cuckoo recounts in brutal detail the childhood head injury inflicted by the narrator’s mother via a baseball bat; and if you ever wondered what it feels like to lose one’s mind and know it, you will find out. The traumatized adult narrator’s words punish the reader as well as the now-deceased abusive mother. Keep reading anyhow, for although the story never gets better—that is, expect no pretty made-it-through-the-storm ending—the language can be magnificent: “Whatever emerges at season’s end/comes from a harrowing heaven…”(3).



By page six the narrator has disappeared into the basement to hide. In her addled brain, there she is ostracized from a community of dolls. Do not expect her to lead you out of the dark. She does not want to leave as: “[s]alvation was a hardship/I was not yet ready to bear”(6). The concepts of forgiveness and moving on are not part of this narrative.

The adult narrator obsessively fantasizes about confronting her mother with tears that are

“glass splinters.//Let them slice, slice, slice/her dead tongue…”(7). The contradictions that once swirled through her mind were supported by the mixed messages of the only women around her, her mother and nuns. Pages fourteen through fifteen gave me goosebumps—the good kind. One of the narrator’s purely vulnerable moments occurs

when she explains how she tried to appease her mother:



“I hid Dixie cups full of violets

in the kitchen cupboard

for her to find and penny candy tucked



into the mailbox with the mail…”(14).



Despite her anger toward nuns, the narrator constantly calls out to God, asks what keeps him too busy to save her, talks of drowning in demons. The narrator is casually cuckoo at times, like a broken talking doll stringing disjointed phrases together, yet her dark humor does not inspire the reader to sing along to the Itty Bitty Ditty that is the second section. This section could easily be renamed Itty Bitty Deaths, with sexual allusions intended. The alcoholic young adult narrator gets bogged down in too much imagery here, the result of which is that a shift on page thirty-four begins a style that sometimes smacks of flat and ordinary prose. There is death, bird, and burning imagery, but it is combined with so much cutesy nursery rhyme that the poet appears to have yielded to the

child narrator for the first time in the narrative. This appears badly-timed and could easily inspire the old “is this art or mere therapy?” debates.



If the lack of transition to Tra-la-la makes sense to you, my hat is off. Ditto for the recurring “dust baby.” Understandably, the narrator, now wife and mother of a charming 11-year-old son, has had a complete psychotic breakdown by this point, and has better things to do than keep the reader up to speed, but still…. Now, however, come brilliant, snarky lines to describe her talk therapy: “I was a talking tree/and my leaves were on fire”(43). The description of inpatient mental health care is hilarious. Try not to laugh at: “our twitchy fingers/and even twitchier minds/needed something to do”(48). Also in this section is one of the few safe places for the reader to land as the narrator falls in love with her own madness—her compassion for her son.



The final section O Healing Go Deep is mostly as melodramatic as it sounds. Yes, it seems cruel to label the deeply disturbed “melodramatic,” but Kirschner pulls no punches, nor will this reviewer. Perhaps the first section, the weakest poetry in the book, could be summed up by three phrases from the fourth: “Why oh why did she/thunder my head with the bat”(59)? “[I] turned into a mannequin/in rigor mortis”(59). “Can the living/divorce the dead? Hell’s bells, it’s time”(61). This collection is a must read for anyone going through an okay time yet feeling haunted by parental imperfections and childhood memories. Read it. Then call your mother.

Somerville Writer Patricia Wild: A Self -Described ‘Old Hippie’ writes a new memoir.

Somerville Writer Patricia Wild: A Self -Described ‘Old Hippie’ writes a new memoir.


By Doug Holder

At a recent editorial meeting at The Somerville News Patricia Wild was asked what brought her to Somerville, she laughed and said: “What else, a man.” But Wild’s roots in Somerville run much deeper than that. Her father was born in Somerville, and since the late 70’s this School St. resident has contributed to Somerville in many ways: as an educator, journalist, writer and community activist.

For 17 years Wild was a fixture at the adult education program SCALE where she taught a women’s writing class. Her first short novel was titled “Swimming In It,” that was set in Somerville. The protagonist was based on a young woman Wild taught in a homeless shelter. The girl was in the shelter due to sexual abuse at her familial home. Later this girl tragically died from a heroin overdose. The book created a strong reaction and a lot of feedback. Wild said that 1 in 4 women have been sexually abused at one point according to recent studies, so many were able to relate to this girl’s sad fate.

Wild’s ambitions do not stop at fiction writing. She writes a popular and sometimes controversial column for “The Somerville Journal,” and is currently working on a draft of play about an Alzheimer’s victim, and his caretaker titled: “ Not For Nothing.”

In her new memoir “Way Open” she recounts her years in the early 60’s in Lynchburg, Virginia, where two African American students first integrated her high school. Wild said she was aware that she has lived a life of “white privilege,” and she wanted to revisit those years through this memoir. Wild went back to Lynchburg to interview these students who are now successful professionals. She struggled with writing a book that would not have her as a focus but rather the black community and their struggles with racism. To her surprise and annoyance the students, the black community, and the white community met her arrival with caution and reluctance. Eventually after questioning her own motives with the help of her Quaker faith, she slowly gained the people’s trust.

Wild clearly loves Somerville. She said: “This is a city that makes you feel that you might change something if you attend a meeting.” She used the example of the zoning plans for Union Square that have been modified due to community input.

Wild, who describes herself as an “old hippie,” continues to be an optimist. She feels the Internet is a good thing because it connects people across the world. Injustices like genocide can’t be covered up as they once were because of the accessibility of the Web.

Wild told the staff of The Somerville News, many of whom are in their 20’s,: “ I look to you, to your generation, for the real changes to come.”


For more information go to http://www.patriciawild.net

Micropleasure by Janann Dawkins

Micropleasure

Poems

by Janann Dawkins

Leadfoot Press, Detroit, Michigan , no price

Paperback, ISBN 10: 0-9817106-1-1, ISBN 13: 978-0-9817106-1-7


Review by Zvi A. Sesling



Every book of poems I’ve read has some poems that are worth reading and some that are not. So it is with Janann Dawkins’ book Micropleasures. An associate editor for poetry at Third Wednesday magazine, Dawkins pursues erotic poetry with fervor and explicitness that can be both exciting and unnerving at the same time as in these lines from “Daydreams.”



I lift a false memory of your cheek

onto a stranger’s face, the stubble

a dull burn, so unlike you, a million

dimples of friction.



There is also an explicit two line poem “Give me your lifeforce,/It will warm me. You can guess the title.



If Dawkins can do one thing, it is to let you know what she is doing and what she feels. Her poems are laced with her obsessions and her obsessions often cross the border of the explicit. Each of her poems is an expression of her micropleasures be they enjoyed with someone else or by herself. Try “Autoerotic” for example for a young girl’s fantasy.



As Third Wednesday Magazine editor Laurence W. Thomas states in his introduction, “The poems step outside their frames, leaving readers to tread among carefully chosen words and interweaving phrases to conclusions suggested by not belabored.”



And, I might add, the suggested conclusions do not leave one wondering what she was up to. If you like the direct, in-your-face approach to sex, try reading this brief, but active chapbook.


Zvi Sesling/Ibbetson Update/ June 2008/Somerville, Mass.