A Clock With No Hands. Poems By Tom Sexton.

A Clock With No Hands. Poems By Tom Sexton. (Adastra Press 16 Reservation Rd. Easthampton, Ma. 01027) $16.


As a small press publisher, I have always looked up to the likes of David Godine, Jr, and Gary Metras, (publisher of the Adastra Press). Mr. Metras has been publishing poetry books since 1979, and if you examine his title list you will see such small press favorites as: Alan Catlin, Leonard Cirino, Michael Casey, not to mention the likes of Thomas Lux, Jack Gilbert. and the list goes on. Metras, who was recently profiled in Poets and Writers magazine, publishes wonderfully crafted books, in which production values, as well as poetry, are very important.

That being said, I have been in contact with Metras (a well-respected poet in his own right), and he will appear on my Somerville Cable Access TV Show ‘Poet to Poet: Writer to Writer’ this fall (2008) The latest poetry collection he sent me is “A Clock With No Hands,” by Tom Sexton. I have to say hands down that this is great stuff.

Sexton was born in Lowell in 1940. He went on to be one of the two professors who began the English Dept. at the newly established Anchorage campus of the University of Alaska. He taught there for twenty-four years.

The poems in the collection deal with Sexton’s hometown of Lowell, Mass, as he experienced it in the 40’s and 50’s. Thornton Wilder would be an admirer of this collection. Sexton acts like the narrator of Wilder’s “Our Town”, bringing out the flavor, the workers, the old factories, the canals, of this down-at-the-heels, old mill city.

I think readers who live in Lowell, as well as readers who never been near the banks of the Merrimack River could appreciate the poetry. Like all quality work it has that ‘universal” sensibility.

Being Jewish, I found the poem: “Rag Man” particularly touching. The man in this poem is sort of the “Merchant of Venice’ of Lowell. And the boy observing him finds out that yes, a Jew does indeed bleed like the rest of us:

“… Pray for the conversion of
the Jews,” the priest in the pulpit said.
“They killed Christ and have the devil’s
tail beneath their coats.” Mulligan said
he heard someone say that to his father.
I watch the rag man, scarecrow-thin,
below me on the street. No horns. No tail.
He gets down and takes something from
his pocket for his horse and then goes on,
the wet cobbles like skulls in his wake.”

Food for me has always been very evocative. A simple kosher hot dog can be more powerful than say, a Rembrandt or a Mapplethorpe. The poem “Hoare’s Fish Market” brings me back to a time when I visited the market with my late Dad. I can remember that first waft of the ocean when you entered the store, and the dead stare of the fish on their deathbed of ice.


“I walked to the market with my father
on Fridays to buy four pieces of cod
wrapped in paper soaked with grease
by the time we got back to our kitchen
where my mother and sister were waiting.
If times were good, my father bought
a piece for a neighbor who always called
it hake, or skate if he just wanted to talk.

Mr. Hoare, our Neptune in tall boots,
watched over it all: haddock and cod,
halibut, tuna, swordfish and salmon
all laid out on an endless bed of ice.
When he spoke, you heard the distant sea
with its vast multitudes that would always be.

Highly Recommended.


Doug Holder/ Ibbetson Update

"For All These Wretched, Beautiful & Insignificant Things So Uselessly & Carelessly Destroyed." (Poems) by Hosho McCreesh

"For All These Wretched, Beautiful

& Insignificant Things So Uselessly

& Carelessly Destroyed." (Poems) by Hosho McCreesh

ISBN: 978-1-934513-09-5

Sunnyoutside Press

P.O. Box 911

Buffalo, NY 14207

USA

www.sunnyoutside.com

Hosho McCreesh © 2008



Review by Mike Amado



If Morrissey, back in the days of his former band The Smiths,

were to inspire poets to explore the beauty of long titles, and

then grade them, "For All These. . ." by Hosho McCreesh

would receive an A-plus. But McCreesh ups the volume with

these terse, yet full and rich verses of "For All These Wretched,

Beautiful& Insignificant Things So Uselessly & Carelessly Destroyed."

It great to have a title that's a part of and is one with the poem.

It's refreshing to read a collection that has a long title itself,

(as opposed to having a title consisting of only one word,

which is a current thing to do). These first line-ish / titles provide an

expansive foyer to a familiar structure.



The poem:

"What We Want Is a Nice Bottle,

A Little Music & Some Humble Place

To Host Little Celebrations of Living -

...maybe a decent potato soup &

a few bucks left over

after covering our nut.

But there's nothing for it,

not in this kind of world . . ."



Embedded within the images and simpleness of the everyday is

a longing and a search to reclaim, remember and birthe these

celebrations and beauties once again. A sort of repairing of that

which was dismantled. These are words of loss, sadness and

resiliency.





In the same vein, "Full Moon, Half Sun . . ." dwells with a

desolation:

"Long Shadows Draped

Over Dusty Backroads -

A Train Whistle Cries Out

Across the Rio Grande Valley -

& life,

thus far:

a search

for some place

that cannot be

taken

away.



Poet, artist and prose writer Hosho McCreesh was first introduced to

the word through music. And a music gently flows in the voice of this

chapbook, singing standards of a new age.

On the covers and festooning the inside pages of "For All These. . ."

are the illustrations of Kevin Charles Kline. Basic drawings of skeletons,

body parts and all sorts of anatomy scatted about so "Carelessly",

driving home the books premise.





McCreesh performs some dismantling of his own in the poem "It Was Paris . . ."

Leveling Paris' legendary assumptions into ordinary truths, that, Paris is

after all like "anywhere" and "everywhere" else.

Describing the fabled city as, "Vibrating With some Kind of Romantic,

Sad Song . . .", the speaker desperately walking the streets,

"Lonely as a weeping trumpet," only to find at that moment,

"a flash of angry movement" - an empty dog food can thrown in the Seine.

"Suddenly the day went cold,

went painfully, typically

unromantic."





McCreesh also pays a lament to Vincent Van Gogh in

"This Dizzying, Senseless Place . . ." asking:

what if his beloved would have, "just/ taken/ the/ ear"

and accepted it as:

"a gesture, an offering,

a talisman of something

deep & honest & true."



"For All These . . ." takes the reader from Paris to the American

south west and down to the lonely depths of the human condition.

A world where " . . . we ask too much of life.", and rue how even

the insignificant can be taken for granted and lost even to itself.



*Mike Amado is a reviewer for the Boston Area Small Press and Poetry Scene

and the author of "stunted Inner Child Shot the TV" ( Cervena Barva Press).

Francis d’Assisi by Gary Metras

Francis d’Assisi 2008
Gary Metras
Finishing Line Press
$14.00

today’s need for ecological awareness on a minute level - an awareness of being who we are and who we were and who we are becoming; this poem preaches in the same way any poem imparts its subject - the message is in clear and forthright verses. Gary Metras is not embarrassed to relate the life of a Saint. “whatever house they enter, they are first to say, “Peace to this house.”

‘A poem’ expounds on, “and still they come.” yes. this small book speaks to me as a Christian but it is so much more if the reader is willing to go beyond the obvious. the first few pages question; questions I did not think lent to the reading or the poem. Metras’ writing shines by the third page. from then on, whether the reader knows the story or not, there is a push to recognize phrases as ones’ own. the poem begins again and again, without ending.

“the brothers and the people tore down the folksy
church
that cradled the simple chapel,
quarried whole hillsides for marble,
in the name of Francis,
mined clay banks from rivers to bake into bricks,
stacked them
taller and wider for the bronze and marble,
in the name of Francis.

St. Francis poem encompasses all the proverbs and metaphors for our present generation. metaphors we place our knowledge on.’ a poem’ is a telling, not a reinvention of what was; it is what is.

for me a good poem takes me to my deepest self. I may cry, get angry or sometimes feel nothing. all the above takes place in the 25 pages.

“and in the great age of global leisure,
tourists came, more and more each year,
and with them hotels, restaurants, laundries

came coca cola, levis jeans. came iPod.


and somewhere in this story of faith
the hills of hell was made heaven
in the name of Francis”

one of my complaints is that St. Francis ‘ life story says it all and he makes no judgments for us, (“silent teaching.”) we are allowed the luxury of making our own judgments. by the end of this, ‘a poem,’ I think Metras leaves the story for a modern day tale of woe that may not be conducive to the epic faith of St. Francis. I think the reader already knows the message and can connect the dots themselves. negatives aside, there is a communion of chapters, a natural love of story telling and a grace beyond words.

Irene Koronas
Poetry Editor
Ibbetson Street Press
www.ibbetsonpress.com

Investigations:The Mystery of the Girl Slueth by Kathleen Aguero

Investigations
The Mystery of the Girl Sleuth
Kathleen Aguero
Cervena Barva Press
$700

Investigations is a celebration of Nancy Drew novels (50 years) during the late 1950’s. she led a way for young women who wanted more than what they, may of perceived, as domestic boredom. Nancy did not have the proverbial mother to relate too. she also had an absentee father, a lawyer. this left the young investigator on her won to rife out her suspicions. unlike superman who needed superpowers to accomplish his task of riding the world of evil doers, Nancy worked closely with her friends for what seemed a more human story.

“I understand, the mysteries of the scoured pot,
clogged toilet, tolling dinner bell,
hold no appeal. but chances are you’re not
going to marry Carson Drew,
conveniently absent when the action starts,
never demanding you halt mid-case to listen
to his tale of triumph at the office…”

Nancy Drew’s tale has been placed into the capable hands or words of Kathleen Aguero. Aguero translates, reinvents and looks for clues that relate to her present situations as in, ‘the case of the suicidal friend,’ “you didn’t leave a note, just your own body on the stairs.” and again in ‘jewel box,’ which I had the privilege of hearing the poet read Aguero shows us her mother’s delusional clarity, her mother’s love, the perception of honesty in leaving, of placing value in memory, connecting, collecting personal items, identifying their significance, “we have to do this now…” her poems are full of references, clues; the password:

“she was clever.
she found the wooden gate where they put the garbage out.
she pulled, but it was locked.
she waited, but no one came
so she joined the walkers, round and round the halls
out one door, in the other…

this is a clear case. this chapbook will leave you wanting more
of Kathleen Aguero’s writing.

Irene Koronas
Poetry Editor
Ibbetson Street Press
www.ibbetsonpress.com

MARTY BECKERMAN BRINGS “DUMBOCRACY” TO THE SOMERVILLE NEWS WRITERS FESTIVAL (Nov. 22, 2008)

MARTY BECKERMAN BRINGS “DUMBOCRACY” TO THE SOMERVILLE NEWS WRITERS FESTIVAL (Nov. 22, 2008)

By Doug Holder


Writer Marty Beckerman is an extremist. He “extremely” hates “extremists” of any stripe, be they Left or Right. He writes in the introduction to his book: “Dumbocracy: Adventures with the Loony Left, The Rabid Right, and other American Idiots,” (Disinformation Press) that:

“…extremists are no fun. Hardcore right-wingers wish to shove God down our throats, but hate the freedom of guys who shove things down one another’s throats…Meanwhile left-wingers wish to regulate our behavior with taxes on anything unhealthy/enjoyable, prohibitions on tactless speech and regulations that determine how much time we spend in the shower.”

You might think that Beckerman, an East Coast writer in his 20’s, might seriously lean to the Left. You’d be wrong. This dude looks askance at both extremes.

Beckerman, who will appearing at The Somerville News Writers Festival Nov. 22, 2008 recounts his experience with abortion activists, feminists, Republicans, Democrats, in short all the stumblebums on the scene. He records, like some hip Boswell, the life and times of this febrile Milieu, with all their many warts. The book is peppered with absurd quotes from these zealots, and he works in a very funny and astute commentary. Beckerman obviously has done his homework, and there is no paucity of levity in this book.

Like H.L.Mencken, (the famous columnist for The Baltimore Sun), said of Puritanism, Beckerman feels these foaming –at-the-mouth hordes are fearful “that someone, somewhere, may be happy.”


He writes:

“ Activists of the Left and Right, whose only pleasure is derived from depriving others of pleasure, have erected a Nanny State that forbids the enjoyment of anything. Our government spends zillions of dollars, and passes zillion of laws, to protect you from pornography, marijuana, alcohol, cigarettes and unhealthy food. Not only is the knee-jerk moral totalitarianism unnecessary, it often exacerbates the vice in question; forbidden fruit is far sweeter than mundane bullshit.”


To further illustrate his point of the absurdity of this maddening crowd, Beckerman gets a plum quote from feminist Sally Miller Gearhart in her essay: “ “The Future—If There Is One—Is Female”:

“To secure a world of female values and female freedom we must, I believe, add one more element to the structure of the future: the ratio of men to women must be radically reduced so that men approximate only ten percent of the population…One option is of course male infanticide.” Fortunately for us guys Gearhart later said that infanticide was “unworkable,” not immoral mind you!

And how about porno? Beckerman reminds us that Republican “Tricky” Dick Nixon believed that pornography had a direct link to crime. A task force he created opined:

“There is no warrant for continued government interference with the full freedom of adults to read, obtain or view whatever they wish.” In fact the commission determined that the majority of rapists for instance, viewed less pornography than the average American male, and lived in conservative Christian households.”

Beckerman has an interesting take on the sodomy question. It seems that the Supreme Court ruled in 2003 that laws that criminalize private bedroom behavior are unconstitutional. He writes that Republican Rick Santorum suggested that the US government designate all sexual intercourse illegal. He quotes Santorum:

“ If the Supreme Court says that you have the right to consensual sex within your home, then you have the right to bigamy, you have the right to polygamy, you have the right to incest, you have the right to adultery…homosexuality…man on child…It all comes from, I would argue this right to privacy that doesn’t exist in my opinion in the United Sates Constitution, this right that was created.”

Beckerman points out that the Senator is a devout Catholic, and doesn’t believe in in- vitro fertilization, so this implies, according to the author—he wants the extinction of humanity. Hmm…

Of course the Left has gone crazy in quite another way. Beckerman points out that Texas A&M “requires” faculty to celebrate and “promote” homosexuality. Carnegie Mellon University fired a staff member for refusing to wear a gay pride symbol during a sensitivity training. And the list goes on.

In this time of violent fundamentalist creeds, virulent free market capitalism, regulation, deregulation, blue and red states, and hate, we need someone like Beckerman to step back and throw a metaphorical pie in these jokers’ eyes.


--Doug Holder


* For more info. About The Somerville News Writers Festival go to: http://somervillenewswritersfestival.com

Language beyond sense in the new poems by Stanley Nelson.

Language beyond sense in the new poems by Stanley Nelson.

Review by Michael Todd Steffen


On November 1, 2008 PRESA:S:PRESS will release the new book of four long poems by Stanley Nelson entitled City of the Sun, a work that asks for and deserves both sides of the coin.

Heads: The book is unified, exhibiting throughout the four meditations extensive use of anaphora, repetition of key words, phrases and images. There is an intention or plan to the formal oddness of Nelson’s language. In building long poems out of isolated blocks of wording used over and over, rather than giving the reader a sense of amplitude from the long works, Nelson’s picked-out vocabulary hammers on us the idea of a narrowing of language and experience. This effect of the poetry, a sense beyond the literal meanings of words, the prosody, impresses upon us an uneasiness, like the dissonance of Bela Bartok’s irresolute music. Nelson’s themes, as I have eked them out, call for such “tonal” disturbance and alarm: solar or nuclear energy and waste (“City of the Sun”), the destitution of spiritual initiation (“Fragrances”), the violence of social transgression, apocalypse and rebirth (“Genesis Vibes”), and the silence and revealing or “Con/Cealment/Un/Concealing” of holocaust (“Heidegger/HEIDEGGER”).

Tails: the general impression left by reading through City of the Sun with all of the repetition can become annoying. Beyond the mimetic sleight of a narrowing circular verbal representation of a like society, the poems come off as superficial. One strong objection I had was the impertinence of the language itself, the pseudo-apocalyptic symbolism of odd beasts coupling, of “Solarians” and “Pythagorean hymns” and twice-baked Dylan-like doggerel (“Dominican friars/Become louts and liars…) in the poem “City of the Sun.” Similarly “Genesis Vibes” ignores the general reader by riddling the text with names and events from the Old Testament. Most of us will recognize a reference, say, to enslaved Joseph who dreams prophecy for the Pharaoh. But over and over to drum up

jebuzite, hittite, hivite
japhethite, caananite, hamite

Bedouins
on donkeys…

—over and over, is asking to have most of your readers fan through looking for the next title page or drop the book altogether.

Back to Heads: From “Genesis Vibes,” a poem pronouncedly inspired by T.S. Eliot’s The Waste Land, Nelson goes onto “Heidegger/HEIDEGGER”, a poem about the disputed German philosopher Martin Heidegger who derived his ontology from Edmund Husserl’s phenomenology during the rise of the Nazi regime. The juxtaposition of a Judaic theme with this specific philosopher evokes a dubious time in history, and we wonder to what extent Nelson explores the pattern repeating itself in our day. What parallels are to be drawn is a question that plays both sides: the possible implied responses and the making of the question itself.

The second poem, “Fragrances,” because it is based on a more individualistic experience and displays a clearer narrative progression, asks for a short discussion.
The repeated elements or characters of the poem involve “the mouth of a dying god” forming into “a perfect O,” the god’s initiate in the tottering rain, the courtesan in her boudoir preparing scents and illusions. The “plot” of the poem circles patiently as the initiate approaches, through 19 sections, the courtesan’s boudoir, clinging to the death of the god. The ablative “Notwithstanding” is repeated, along with the images of arches, fountains, musical instruments, the woods “pine and fir” and animals and religious symbols. The poem climaxes in the final section with the initiate’s entrance into the courtesan’s boudoir as the god dies. Yet with the miracle of the god’s song being resurrected in the courtesan’s post-coital caresses.

In and around these basic reappearances in the poem Nelson adds incidental music, variations to the structure which, simply because they are not part of the choral incantations, like the variation lines of a villanelle, delight us with surprise:

The dying god
Caught in the shadow of the arches
Dreams instead of a realm
Of storybooks and shy giraffes. (Section 10)


For his innovation with the visual lining of verse, Stanley Nelson has been compared to Apollinaire and E.E. Cummings. The traditionalists may find it difficult to embrace Nelson’s effluence of disparate elements, yet may also perceive a neoclassical dream-like quality to his “worlds” with their gravity from the Old Testament, reminiscent of the artificial settings in, say, Yeats’s “Sailing to Byzantium” or Blake’s lithograph of Cain fleeing from the body of his slain brother Abel.
The poetry does have an impact, if it convinces us beyond our private discretions.
If not, oh well, Stanley Nelson has a readership among the avant-garde in America and England where his plays have toured. He has a long list of publications to his credit, and City of the Sun is his 17th published book of poems. Whatever poet may claim a license to do as he wishes with words, Stanley Nelson ranks among them.


City of the Sun by Stanley Nelson will be available through PRESA:S:PRESS/P.O. Box 792/ Rockford, Michigan 49341, presapress@aol.com for $16.95.


.

Marginalia: Poems from the Old Irish Louis McKee

Marginalia: Poems from the Old Irish
Translation by Louis McKee
Adastra Press
$18


It is clear that the monks who wrote these nineteen poems in Marginalia had a good time writing them; that Louis McKee enjoyed translating them; and that Gary Metras at Adastra Press got a kick out of printing them in this beautiful little volume in the original Gaelic as well as English. Some might call these quatrains “slight,” but they are, after all, marginalia, and in order to appreciate them fully, one must imagine the mindset of the men who wrote them. As McKee describes them in his brief introduction, they spent “long hours in scriptoriums copying the texts of gospels,” but would “occasionally…stray from their tedious work and take a moment to jot their own thoughts.”

The thoughts of these monks range from the sublime to the ridiculous, as these two translations will demonstrate:

O God, give me a bowl of tears
to wash away my sins;
or I will be like the dry earth,
without blessing, without blossom.

·

And good for a man with a pig—
I used to have pig myself:
it is better, the pig walking with you,
yesterday’s pig is but today’s fart.

The monks – or, at least, our translator, Louis McKee – seem to tend more toward the ridiculous, or, at least, the humorous. One imagines that they would have needed to inject a little humor in their tedious work, and they often to do it rather deftly. Here are a few examples:

No doubt, you’ll see the fox run
circles around those who chase after him:
but with all respect to my sly friend,
many a man is warmed by his fine pelt.

·

Silk, gold, silver,
music, and verses in Latin
gifted even to the finest pup,
still he’ll not be a gentleman.

·

What gives, Father?
Why are you up there on a high horse,
doing the good work St. Francis did
perfectly well on his own two feet?

The last poem borders on the blasphemous, addressing God with a certain amount of contempt. I imagine that this was not the only monk who used marginalia to express theological doubts, though this is the only example in this brief collection.

Finally, like all poets, these monks had much to say about writing poetry. Let us leave the reader with these commentaries on the art:

I write, and I will write,
as long as my stomach is full;
let me get hungry, though,
and poetry be damned!

·

They tell me
he has no horses for poems;
he gives what he thinks they are worth—
a cow.

My favorite – and the most contemporary sounding – of the comments is:

Don’t be blaming the poets, man—
it’s not their fault;
you will get no more from a pot,
than what’s in it.



Lawrence Kessenich
September 27, 2008



It is clear that the monks who wrote these nineteen poems in Marginalia had a good time writing them; that Louis McKee enjoyed translating them; and that Gary Metras at Adastra Press got a kick out of printing them in this beautiful little volume in the original Gaelic as well as English. Some might call these quatrains “slight,” but they are, after all, marginalia, and in order to appreciate them fully, one must imagine the mindset of the men who wrote them. As McKee describes them in his brief introduction, they spent “long hours in scriptoriums copying the texts of gospels,” but would “occasionally…stray from their tedious work and take a moment to jot their own thoughts.”

The thoughts of these monks range from the sublime to the ridiculous, as these two translations will demonstrate:

O God, give me a bowl of tears
to wash away my sins;
or I will be like the dry earth,
without blessing, without blossom.

·

And good for a man with a pig—
I used to have pig myself:
it is better, the pig walking with you,
yesterday’s pig is but today’s fart.

The monks – or, at least, our translator, Louis McKee – seem to tend more toward the ridiculous, or, at least, the humorous. One imagines that they would have needed to inject a little humor in their tedious work, and they often to do it rather deftly. Here are a few examples:

No doubt, you’ll see the fox run
circles around those who chase after him:
but with all respect to my sly friend,
many a man is warmed by his fine pelt.

·

Silk, gold, silver,
music, and verses in Latin
gifted even to the finest pup,
still he’ll not be a gentleman.

·

What gives, Father?
Why are you up there on a high horse,
doing the good work St. Francis did
perfectly well on his own two feet?

The last poem borders on the blasphemous, addressing God with a certain amount of contempt. I imagine that this was not the only monk who used marginalia to express theological doubts, though this is the only example in this brief collection.

Finally, like all poets, these monks had much to say about writing poetry. Let us leave the reader with these commentaries on the art:

I write, and I will write,
as long as my stomach is full;
let me get hungry, though,
and poetry be damned!

·

They tell me
he has no horses for poems;
he gives what he thinks they are worth—
a cow.

My favorite – and the most contemporary sounding – of the comments is:

Don’t be blaming the poets, man—
it’s not their fault;
you will get no more from a pot,
than what’s in it.



Lawrence Kessenich
September 27, 2008

Foods You Will Enjoy by Bill Buffett

Foods You Will Enjoy

By Bill Buffet

Review by Catherine Nichols

$24.95


To order: http://buffettstore.com/welcome.html


Opposite Bill Buffett’s forward to his book Foods You Will Enjoy, there’s a black and white photo of the grocery store Buffett’s in 1937—a sign in the front window celebrates the store’s sixty-eighth year in business. The store has an elegant glass-brick transom over its wide front windows, and an array of tidily arranged goods. The book tells the story of the grocery store from its beginnings when Nebraska was frontier. In a way, this book—with its zippy design and nostalgia for a store that has closed its doors—just shows us how little has changed over the years. Food is a pleasure. The book’s visual style reels through the decades of fresh clean food, starting with 1860s’ ads for Troy brand evaporated milk (a silhouette of a boy chasing cows against a turquoise sky) through every kind of fruit, white vinegar, vegetable soup to, finally, Golden Valley Deluxe Plums—purple and green against a cream background—from 1969 when the store finally closed.

It was Sidney Buffett who opened the store in 1868 in Omaha, Nebraska. The accompanying photos show rough dirt roads and horses pulling carriages. The store has a display of peaches and melons in baskets outside the door. The business stays in the Buffett family, passed from father to son. While Buffett makes a point of showing these men’s personalities through their letters and business decisions, they all feel more similar than different. The Buffett men have a core of steady business decisions, unsentimental pride in their store, and savvy adaptations as the nineteenth century turns into the twentieth and beyond. Earnest Buffett placed a billboard between Omaha and Lincoln letting drivers know they’d gotten half way to the other city—and reminding them to buy at Buffett’s when they got home.

As Bill Buffett himself is able to take over with memories of his own and interviews and letters from the store clerks and delivery boys he worked alongside, the book grows even warmer toward the bygone store and its era. He remembers growing up as the son of a respected man, but not “treated with white gloves” as he worked in the store. He took all jobs from stocking the shelves to making deliveries, learning the trade at his father’s side.

The book is the biography of a business, but also a community, and a family. The store Buffett remembers may not be in business—though it does have its own museum exhibit—but its heart is still living.

SIMMONS INTERNATIONAL CHINESE POETRY FESTIVAL Oct 3 to 5

西蒙斯國際漢語詩歌節
SIMMONS INTERNATIONAL CHINESE POETRY FESTIVAL
October 4-5, 2008
300 THE FENWAY BOSTON, MA 02115


SATURDAY MORNING 10/4
9:00 to 10:30
Discussion of Translation

10:45 am to 12:15 pm
Roundtable on Contemporary Issues
Afternoon Break 12:30 to 7pm

SATURDAY EVENING
Festival Reading
7 pm to 10 pm

SUNDAY MORNING 10/5
9am to 10:30 pm
Translation Wrap Up

10:45am to 12:15 pm
Dialogue on Teaching Creative
Writing (the M.F.A.)

12:30 pm
Closing Ceremonies

ALL EVENTS ARE FREE AND OPEN TO THE PUBLIC
For more info: poetscafe@msn.com
Take the E Heath Street Car on the Green MBTA Subway
Parking is available nearby at differing rates.

Brothers by Eric Wasserman

Brothers





by Eric Wasserman

Cervena Barva Press, Softbound, $7, Copyright © 2008 by Eric Matthew Wasserman

Review by Zvi A. Sesling



When I first started reading Eric Wasserman’s chapbook, actually the first chapter of his novel Celluloid Strangers, I was a bit skeptical. The beginning was a bit slow, takes place in 1948, has a Jewish character who has emigrated from Dorchester to California and went to law school at night.



Where is this going I asked myself and the next dozen pages let’s me know in no uncertain terms (I think) where this is headed. Since it is the first chapter, it’s hard to really know, but I want to know and hopefully you will want to know as well.



The protagonist, Morris Gandelman Adams has taken his wife’s surname to hide his Jewish identity. As he sits by his swimming pool “clear, like recently cleaned coffee table glass” he wonders why a brother he has not seen in ten years suddenly calls him and both Morris and the reader soon find out. The first chapter reminds me of Elmore Leonard if Leonard wrote a Jewish thriller, which is where this novel is probably heading.



Despite a few questionable facts: were there power lawnmowers in 1948?

And Philco radios during World War II. Or did local radio spend a lot of time on UCLA basketball? But aside from these minor questions, the writing is crisp, moves along and creates as many questions as it answers, all in 19 pages!



If this is headed in the Jewish gangster story direction, it is doing a good job, may be a bit like Ted Gray’s The Hoods, a 1950s novel which followed friends and brothers from childhood to adulthood, first as punks, then petty criminals and finally to their gangster status. In this story the brothers are already adults and so far only one brother is an admitted criminal.



I have only read one chapter of the novel in this Cervena Barva chapbook, which, incidentally, won the 2007 Cervena Barva Press Fiction Chapbook Prize. The press is edited by Gloria Mindock who puts out quality fiction and poetry and having read a few of her productions, this one reads like another success for her – and for Eric Wasserman who has a collection of short fiction and is Professor English at the University of Akron, where he also teaches in the Northeast Ohio Master of Fine Arts program.

The Boston Red Sox World Series Encyclopedia

The Boston Red Sox World Series Encyclopedia

[No Longer the World’s Shortest Book]

by Bill Nowlin and Jim Prime
Rounder Books

www.rounderbooks.com
ISBN 978-1-57940-161-0 $18.95

A review by Mignon Ariel King



After 86 years worth of “almost,” we deserve this book. We who got hooked in middle school, back in ’75—falling in love with the magnificent Jim “Oughtta-be-in-the-Hall-of-Fame” Rice, watching Carlton Fisk will a ball into fair territory for that glorious home run—only to spend nearly two decades falling just short of World Series bragging rights, well, we earned this book. While reading this tightly-packed collection of facts, remember that this is Bill & Jim’s excellent adventure, written by Sox fans for Sox fans.



For older fans, the play-by-play descriptions and analyses of each game will be dead-on, capturing the spirit of the games, and the slightly grainy thumbnail photos of long-gone heroes will be appreciated.

You want box scores? They’ve got your box scores over here! Want vignettes as well as stats? No problem. You might even end up thinking you were on Huntington Avenue in 1903.



The Encyclopedia is well-researched, with interesting back-of-the-book features such as a list of firsts. Who hit the first inside-the-park World Series homer? If you have a young Sox fan, maybe you can trick him into reading a book by having him look up the answer himself. The beginning of each series section is colorfully written before the authors get into the nuts and bolts of the game, and the player feature helps fans to re-appreciate players—like Mark Bellhorn, 2004. There are a lot of happy “oh, yeah, I remember him” moments to be had in this celebration of the myths (the Curse of Babe Ruth), the truths (the Sox won 7 of the 11 Series they went to), and the pure phenomenon (the “Idiots” won).



The passion and knowledge of the authors combine in a pleasing manner that echoes the finest moments of Friday Night Baseball broadcasts. That is, reading this book is almost as fun as listening to Remy &

Orsillo commentate while sitting on the couch munching cheese doodles. In fact, the only shortcoming of the encyclopedia is that it probably won’t excite and win over non-Sox fans. Members of Sox Nation will, however, reread for years to come, smiling from ear to ear while reliving each sweet carom off the scoreboard with the aroma of Fenway Franks in our nostrils.

The Plot of I1 Trovatore and other poems Gerald Locklin.

The Plot of I1 Trovatore and other poems Gerald Locklin. ( Kamini Press http://www.kaminipress.com order@kaminipress.com ) $6


Gerald Locklin is a well-published teacher, writer, and poet. A Locklin poem is valued currency in the small press. Hell—I have even seen a Locklin play reviewed in the old gray lady herself “The New York Times.” The guy gets around. Now , Henry Denander’s Kamini Press has released a chap of poetry by Locklin: “The Plot of l1 Trovatore…” Denander, is based in Sweden…I think he summers in Greece, well, he is way out of my league anyway. I usually summer in the South, South Boston that is , on the better side of Carson Beach. Denander’s small chapbooks are wonderfully illustrated by Denander himself, and to be published by him is a sought after commodity. In this chap there is a color sketch from the Verdi opera that is the title of the book, and a flattering sketch of the author in the back.


In his title poem “ The Plot…” Locklin brings Verdi’s opera down from its operatic heights to the shallows of the vernacular:

“…it’s described as being complicated
but it’s really not that bad:

good brother, bad brother
hot for the same maiden.
rich and powerful white geeks
making war, while gypsies sing and
dance and get laid…

simple as blood, guts and nuts.”

In the poem ”Roll, Baby, Roll” the poet uses Verdi’s prolific output as an example of going with your artistic flow, don’t look back, and be like the rabid dog chasing the meat truck or in this case your artistic destiny:

“ there’s a lesson to be learned:
when you’re on a roll,
keep pedaling like crazy
and pray it lasts fifty years,
while turning a deaf ear
to the envious
who will be urging you
to “get a life.”

Recommended.

Doug Holder/ Ibbetson Update/Sept 2008/Somerville, Mass.

Whispers Poems by Jonathan Russell

Whispers

Poems

by Jonathan Russell

Peter E. Randall Publisher LLC

Portsmouth NH

Hardbound, ISBN 1-931807-70-1, ISBN 13: 978-1-931807-70-8


Review by Zvi A. Sesling



Here is a book with a different use of language and, perhaps, an over-the-top way of presenting images. Take, for example, Ghost Ship, which opens:



Our telescopes we focus on a very strange

ship distantly ghosting veils of mist

- her ratlin’s spider’s webs to towering masts,

their crows’ next thread.





In a number of his poems Russell succeeds in projecting the energy and movement. However, a poem must also be something the reader can experience for himself or herself and that is the level to which Russell is less successful—at least on the written page. Instead of reading this book I might be better off hearing Russell read his work. Reading this is a bit like being handed words to a song, but never knowing the tune.



So let me say what I like. It is 169 pages of poetry, which is big enough. You don’t get short changed on the number of poems. And there is a theme to these poems.

What I don't like about the book, starting with the almost religious cover of flower and water and quote: Shuffling through the Fall of sleep/fond dreams begin to whisper.

Poetry has always been subjective. You submit poems to Magazine A and get rejected. Send the same poem to Magazine B and voila! It’s accepted. So it is possible that while I am not a fan of this book, others will be. That’s what makes poetry so diverse – there’s always something for someone in almost every book of poetry.

Russell, by the way, is an Englishman who has become a U.S. citizen. He holds an Honorary Doctorate of Literature from the London Institute for Applied Research and Docteur des Lettres, Pyschologie et Litterature, from the Academie Des Sciences Humaines Universelles in Paris. He is an Honorary Professor Humanities at the Institute of Higher Economic and Social Studies in Brussels, Belgium and was chosen “International Literary Man of the Year for Se rvices to Poetry by the International Biographical Center of Cambridge (England). In 1998 and 1999 he received the grand prize from the American Poetry Association and has been admitted to the Academy of American Poets.

Mass. Book Awards Announced

The award for poetry for the annual Mass. Book Award http://www.massbookaward.org
went to Henri Cole for his collection: "Blackbird and Wolf"

Honors went to Robert Pinsky for his collection: "Gulf Music" and...

Moira Linehan for her collection "If No Moon"

Also Junot Diaz ( who will be in the Somerville News Writers Festival Nov. 22 http://somervillenewswritersfestival.com) won the fiction award for "The Brief Life of Oscar Wao"

Village Limits by Greg Joly

Village Limits by Greg Joly

Adastra Press
(16 Reservation Rd., Easthampton, MA, United States
(413)527-3324, (413)549-2201 fax)

Reviewed by Lawrence Kessenich





Roughly speaking, there are two kinds of poems in Greg Joly’s Village Limits, just published by Adastra Press: short, serious, meditative poems, such as “15,” “Sawmill,” “Village Spring,” and “she said,” and longer, narrative, often amusing ones, such as “Directions,” “Firewall,” “Town Meeting,” and “Milk-Run Driver.” What unites them all, and gives the book an enjoyable sense of eavesdropping on small town life, is character – and, in many cases, characters, the classic rural New England kind in their contemporary incarnation.



The brief “Village Spring” opens the book:



Peter leaves wide
the doors to his shop
& all day
little is done
as people stop to
talk winter out
of their systems
in a cradle
of sun
between
two open doors.



Like most of the shorter poems, this one is more lyrical than the longer ones, and here the character, Peter, is more a part of the background than a full-blown character. But we get a sense of what he must be like, because he’s clearly a magnet for the town folk, a relaxed presence who makes them feel comfortable lingering and chatting.



In “Sawmill,” another short poem, Joel is also undeveloped, but he is the catalyst for his fellow workers noticing a kind of beauty they might not otherwise notice, which tells us something important about him:



When pitching boards
sometimes a knot
breaks free
We hold these out
for Joel who first
held one
clear against
the late spring
sun to show us
how the rosin-thick
edge blazed
a translucent corona
ravenous to flare
up on coals knocked
bright in the predawn cold.



“15,” however, is all character, a girl determined to make it on her own, no matter what it costs her, as the second half of the poem makes clear:



& she knows well enough
to keep clear of her mother’s
boyfriend back at the trailer.
& who cares if she spends
the high school weekend
turning a trick
with some rich ski bum.
At least that way she can
pay her own way
& the baby’s.



More predominant in the book, however, are longer poems, one to five pages, all or partially humorous, that paint colorful portraits of small town characters “in action.”

Walter speaking at the “Town Meeting” against a motion to increase the town’s donation to the animal shelter; Nat Heath “comin’ off Gilbert Hill full / tilt with 90 bales of straw” that have caught fire; Simon, ice cream in his beard from the cone he’s eating, telling some “flatlanders” who ask, “How to do you get to Manchester?” that “My brother usually takes me.”



There a few more serious narrative poems, too. “Last Auction of the Season in Worthington” interweaves the auctioneer’s plea for bids for Robert C. Treager’s tools and farm implements with quotes from the conversations townspeople are having as the auction goes on. In “Mud Season,” the narrator, a newspaper editor, is given a dressing down by a citizen who didn’t like what the editor had written in a recent issue.



The longer, narrative poems are less “quotable.” Their impact is cumulative, the tale building over the entire length of the poem.



It must also be added that this is yet another beautifully produced book from Gary Metras’s wonderful Adastra Press – which was the subject of well-deserved accolades in the most recent issue of Poets & Writers. The creamy paper, well-chosen font, and sharp, clear printing present these poems in a way that would make any poet envious. Would that all poetry could be displayed for the world in such an artistic package.


Lawrence Kessenich/Ibbetson Update

New Curator of Harvard Poetry Room Announced!

Well... I was doing my usual rounds in Harvard Square...you know the drill--Harvard Coop, Harvard Bookstore, the Grolier, and then to the the Woodberry Poetry Room at the Lamont Library at Harvard. Seems the asst. curator said the new curator of this august poetry room will be none other than Christina Davis (Publicity and Marketing Director) of Poet's House in NYC. She will be arriving on this side of the Charles Sept.24

Poet's House is a great place, (http://poetshouse.org) they have a great poetry library, and consider the book, particuraly the poetry book, a sacred object.

The young asst. curator told me Davis is the author of the collection "Forth A Raven" (Alice James Books) Hope we will be "raven" about her.

Seems there is going to be a reception Oct. 2 Call 617-495-2454 to get details or email: pksteinb@fas.harvard.edu

Red Sox Threads by Bill Nowlin

Red Sox Threads

Odds & Ends From Red Sox History

by Bill Nowlin

Rounder Books, 2008, $18.95, Softcover, 545 pgs. ISBN -13:978-1-57940-157-3

Review by Zvi A. Sesling



I always thought I knew baseball trivia. Then I read Bill Nowlin’s Red Sox Threads, Odds and Ends From Red Sox History. I compare myself to Bill Nowlin’s work as I would my knowledge of the universe compared to Stephen Hawking. Zero. Zip. Nada. These guys are in a class by themselves and Nowlin’s book on the Red Sox tops anything I’ve seen to date.



The long forgotten names he whips up like soufflé include Matt Batts and Danny Heep (Batts was Heep’s uncle). Jack “Tomato” Lamabe, Willie Tasby, Tom Satriano, and so many more from every era of Bosox history. Eight or 80, any member of Red Sox nation will find a “lost” name, an old hero, and many facts or trivia bits they never knew.



Red Sox Threads is a totally amazing book by Nowlin, a Lexington, MA native, and Cambridge, MA resident, who began writing about the Sox as a teenager. He has written more than 100 articles in various publications and 15 books about the team he loves – or rather to which he is addicted.



So what’s in this book? Practically everything any Red Sox fan would want to know: How the team got its name, player nicknames, all the players who ever played for the Sox, foreign born players, Latinos, Jewish (you’ll be surprised), Native Americans (more surprises), African-Americans, Asian ball players and even women who played at Fenway Park (but not for the Red Sox).



Are you interested in relatives (like Batts and Heep) who played for the Red Sox? Or do you prefer to learn about names that appear in a box score but never played for the Sox – the phantoms? Maybe you recall the one game wonders: Bob Scherbarth (1950), Jim Hisner (1951), Guy “Moose” Morton (1954), Bill “Rudy” Schlesinger (1965) and the most recent one game wonder Peabody’s Steve Lomasney (1999). Then there are those who played in two games.....



Ah, but there is so much more. Sox opening day wins, road openers, how some great Sox broke in to the majors, and, yes, a page entitled, “The day the Red Sox showed up in the wrong city.”



There is also a lot of history (and some conjecture) about the Red Sox racism, how they turned down Jackie Robinson, Willie Mays and Sam Jethroe (Boston Braves 1950 Rookie of the Year). Read closely and you will find who said what, especially the racial epithets. Nowlin does not hold back on the truth or even alleged accusations of racism.

You will find it all in the more than 500 pages of material he has compiled.



Some of my favorites sections are players’ names based on different things like girl’s names, occupations, religion, plants, drinking, animals and so on. And my personal favorite story was about Ted Williams (an all time favorite even though I am an inveterate Braves fan) and his positive attitude toward black ball players.

Zvi Sesling/ Ibbetson Update

Ibbetson Street 24 Reading Nov. 8, 2008 Out of the Blue Art Gallery

"Ibbetson Street" Somerville's independent literary magazine has been around since 1998, and was founded by Doug Holder, Dianne Robitaille and Richard Wilhelm. We will be celebrating the release of our 24th Issue with poetry from Gary Metras ( founder of Adastra Press),Linda Larson,Mignon Ariel King,Mary Buchinger, Linda Haviland Conte, Ed Galing and many others. Artwork both front and back covers by renowned poet Tino Villanueva. The reading will take place at the Out of the Blue Art Gallery 106 Prospect St. Cambridge, Mass 3 to 5PM Open mic after features

http://ibbetsonpress.com
http://ibbetsonpress.blogspot.com

. *****All past and present contributors are invited to read

Review of Louis McKee’s chapbook, Still Life, 2008, FootHills Publishing

Review of Louis McKee’s chapbook, Still Life, 2008, FootHills Publishing
by Tam Lin Neville

Louis McKee’s heart is often breaking, at age fifty and a bachelor, (if I can trust a poet to tell the truth.). But he looks at heartache from the vantage point of age, with understanding, with pain, but without self-pity. As the poet looks back on his life we are given instead wonder at the way his experience has grown richer and more layered over time.
Perhaps the book’s title is meant ironically, but if not, Still Life seems a mis-nomer. Nothing stays still in this graceful book. Memory keeps diving down into the past with the fluidity of a mind grown both dreamier and more honest with age.
Turning, diving – the poet’s sense of motion is expressed in a style so seamless, you forget it’s there. Only someone long practiced in the craft of poetry could write the following spare, yet evocative, poem.

HER HAND

How small, her hand
minus the rings.

They’re back in her room
rolled up in her heavy socks

just in case
someone should go rummaging

through her things.
Her hand, on the table top

in a roadside restaurant,
fidgets with the silver –

the spoon isn’t clean;
she waits for the coffee

she hopes will give her
something to hold on to.

Before the waitress can return,
I lay my own hand

on hers; how small hers is,
and her fingers, so bare, cold.

The rhymes and slant rhymes of “rings,” “rummaging,” “things,” and “clean” slide me effortlessly into the poem. Almost before I know it, I’m concerned about this women I know so little, and so much, about. I feel her fragility, paranoia, the way her sensitivity searches out the smallest disturbing detail, the unclean spoon in the roadside restaurant.
McKee writes often of women and with real yearning – always gentle, inquiring, never rapacious.

AT FIFTY

At fifty he is still unable
to forget about the sixteen year old girl
he thought he loved when he was eighteen.
He thinks he loves her now,
and every day he considers telling his wife
about this girl who is not sixteen at all,
but nearly fifty, although she looks sixteen still,
at least to him, the way he sees her.
He wants to crack through the silence
of the dinner table, and unpack the bag
he’s been carrying up the steps each night;
he is paused at that step, now, so near the top,
because he is tired, and it would go easier
if he were to lighten his load, get ride of
the bag that is weighing him down,
making every step hard won.
He wants to tell his wife about the girl,
about the life that might have been,
the thirty years he’s missed, thirty years
that she thinks she knows, but
which are not the ones he was meant to live,
and he knows it is the difference
in those thirty years that he loves,
more even than he loves the girl,
the sweet pretty sixteen year old, the woman,
now near fifty, more than her.


When you are alone with this book it becomes a welcome partner, someone to spend time with on a Sunday afternoon, sitting in a café surrounded by twenty and thirty year olds. For myself, soon to be 64, I can’t help feeling there is so much these young ones can’t see. Reading Louis MeKee, I feel that my age has given me an advantage – there is so much I can see.
To read this small elegant chapbook, hand-sewn with poems well-set on the page, is to experience again that buoyancy, that sense of release from time and space constraints, that only poetry can give.

Bicycles, Canoes, Drums by Dan Sklar

Bicycles, Canoes, Drums.
By Dan Sklar
2008; 190 pp;Ibbetson Street Press,
25 School St., Somerville, MA
02143.
To order: http://lulu.com/ibbetsonpress

The refreshing thing about Sklar’s poetry is that it’s not that carefully worked-over, avant-garde, conundrum, riddle-twisted work that is less interested in getting across ideas and emotions than puzzling and impressing the reader. Sklar is Mr. Tell-It-As-It-Is. Which he himself is very aware of: “My poems/do not win/poetry awards/because/they are/not poems/at all.” (“Wanted,” p.54).

Which is not to say that they don’t move, touch you, communicate. By getting rid of all the technique games and getting to the human heart of things, Sklar is one of the most successful communicators around: “I just want to clear off my desk,/listen to jazz and write and write/and type and type about things/that are important to me at this/moment like the fact that my son is 17 and in Catamarca,/Argentina for a year learning/tango and violin and...” (“Poetry is Just Not that Important to Me Now,” p. 126).

His topics include the inner Thoreau, horses, funerals, war, bicycles, rain, aging,sex, opera, canoes (and the Iroquois), truck accidents....and there’s not a poem in this book that you can stop reading once you’ve read the first line. Unreadable poets should take a course in Sklar, get readable, read Bicycles, Canoes, Drums.

Hugh Fox/Sept 2008