Exorcism poetry recording by Larissa Schmailo

Exorcism poetry recording by Larissa Schmailo
Reviewed by Shannon O’Connor





Larissa Schmailo’s Exorcism breaks open with the brief flourish of “Vow,” and then leads into the rambling ranting of “Warsaw Ghetto,” which is reminiscent of The Rolling Stones’ “Sympathy for the Devil.” “I am the Warsaw Ghetto/ I am the Underground Railroad,” Schmailo’s poetry is accented by guitars and keyboards. The narrator puts herself into places she could never have been, but only imagined, “I am a five year old girl in Jim Crow Mississippi going to school.”


In “Bloom,” Schmailo pays homage to Molly Bloom, the wife of Leopold Bloom, of the novel Ulysses. The poem is crunchy and staccato, “This is December/ and over there’s Christmas/ and we call April Easter cause she makes them March.” She catches the spirit of Ulysses and the breathless voice of Molly’s character in the last chapter of the novel which belongs to her, “Hi, I’m Molly Bloom, blow by my bedroom/ by the window a frozen bird, frozen for weeks/ a weak bird, a dead duck, a gone goose, a pigeon petered out.”


The title track of the CD, “Exorcism,” is a found poem, taken from Group Dynamics, People of the Lie, Hope for Healing Human Evil by M. Scott Peck. The poem deals with the massacre at Mai Lai; it starts with a chant, “This is holy ground, this is holy ground…” The poem is a song, sung in different registers to heighten the tension of the gory truth, “The written orders were ambiguous, the Mai Lai orders were ambiguous, JUST WASTE THE PLACE.” The fact that “Exorcism” is a found poem makes it more dramatic and endearing. This is the truth, as told by someone else. “Exorcism” proves that anything can be a poem. Poetry could be found in textbooks or on cereal boxes.


Schmailo’s lyrics and rhythms bear shades of Jim Morrison and Patti Smith. The unbridled and sometimes psychotic sensuality makes one wonder why the world is so horrible, and is there anything anyone can do about it? If there is, poetry might be the thing to save the world, if we can learn to speak to one another in a language we all can share.

“The Man in the Booth in the Midtown Tunnel" goes to Endicott College

“The Man in the Booth in the Midtown Tunnel" goes to Endicott College

I was invited to give a workshop for my poetry collection “The Man in the Booth in the Midtown Tunnel” by an unusual man, Dan Sklar. Dan Sklar is the Creative Writing Director at Endicott College in Beverly, Mass. Dan has turned into a great supporter of the small press in the Boston area. There are too few colleges, universities, that welcome little magazines and small presses, and because of Dan, many poets who would not have been heard by many students, are given a voice. Besides the Cape Cod Writers Center headed by the gracious Ann Elizabeth Tom, and Michael Sullivan of the William Joiner Center at U/Mass/Boston, and a few select others, Sklar is a major solid citizen. Sklar, of course is a widely published small press poet and probably mentions his credits in Free Verse and Ibbetson Street more than he mentions his publications in the Harvard Review, and other top shelf mags. When you go out to Endicott, Sklar treats everyone the same. Whether you are a big deal poet with a Pulitzer, or you are putting out a stapled chapbook with a minipress, well, Sklar digs you…as long as the work works for him. I tell Dan whenever I go out to Endicott I feel like a mensch, a distinguished poet, instead of an extinguished one. Hats off to this guy and buy his latest book “Bicycles, Canoes, and Drums”

*I included some remarks that I made to his class about “The Man in the Booth in the Midtown Tunnel” (Cervena Barva Press):

There are some people who are nature poets, there are language poets, metaphysical poets, and you name it. I guess I can call myself a peoples’ poet. I write mostly about people—character studies, if you will. I guess it goes back to when I was a kid watching the Twilight Zone—you know the original in black and white. Rod Serling, the host, would introduce some character, a guy, down-on-his-luck, maybe a reclusive bookworm, a snake oil salesman, in a gone-to-seed hotel room, with the requisite neon sign blinking garishly outside his window. Serling would introduce him: “Have if you will Mr. Henry Beamish, a small fastidious man whose only passion is the written word.”

To me, often people on the margin have been a source of fascination. I have worked a s a counselor at a psych. hospital, McLean Hospital, for 26 years now, and I guess for some reason I was attracted to the “craziness” of the ward, over the “craziness” of the outside world. When we discharge clients from the program I work now, I often joke; “I haven’t been discharged yet, and won’t be anytime soon.” A good portion of the work I have produced has dealt with the often overlooked denizens of the back ward, and the people I have encountered in bars, coffee shops, and subways, etc… in Boston/Cambridge/Somerville.

In my life, and I am sure in yours, there has always been a person, who remains a strong symbol, an icon for you, a flashing light, on this journey we all take. So when I wrote: “The Man in the Booth in the Midtown Tunnel,” I concentrated on a man I saw in a small booth in the middle of the Midtown Tunnel when I was a kid. The tunnel connects the borough of Queens to the borough of Manhattan. The booth and the man are long gone, but the booth hasn’t given up the ghost. Now as a middle age man, probably around the same age as the guy in the booth, I realized this man represented encroaching adulthood: the trip from the relative security of a Long Island childhood, to an unknown, alluring, yet frightening adult world. Did this man have a wife, friends, a life outside the booth, I asked my Dad. My father confused as to why I was fixated on this obscure figure said: “How the hell do I know?”
When I was on the skids, I retreated to a booth of my own making, whether a cubicle in a dark library, or the small furnished room I lived in the Back Bay of Boston for many years. We emerge and submerge in metaphorical tunnels. We emerge from the vaginal tunnel towards the light and cry, later we reenter that tunnel and die. We have many rites of passage. All I know is, wherever I go that man, in that cramped booth, will always follow me.


To order go to http://cervenabarvapress.com

PORTER SQUARE BOOKS: “You Can Live Here!”

PORTER SQUARE BOOKS: “You Can Live Here!”

BY DOUG HOLDER

It was a crisp, autumnal morning when I walked into Porter Square Books in Porter Square. It was the kind of classic New England day that made you want to chat about books, and feel their presence around you. Porter Square Books is nestled on the border of Somerville and Cambridge, in the Porter Square Shopping Mall. Whenever I go in to browse, or have a cup of coffee at their Café Zing, there is always the bustle of customer traffic, and lively conversation. In her regular corner, sipping a cup of Zing coffee, long-time Somerville resident Laurinda Bedingfield, told me: “You can live here.” She loves the store’s sense of community. She feels that it is welcoming to the book lovers, her dogs (at the outside café), and the person who wants to sit and sip and tap on their laptop.


Porter Square Books is certainly known for their diverse selection of books, but they are equally known as a store that reaches out to the community. I talked with Dale Szczeblowski, General Manager, Carol Stoltz, Children’s Books Buyer, and Jane Dawson, Personnel Director. They gave me a good idea about the wide reach of the store.

Porter Square Books, has been in business for four years, and is still doing well in spite of the climate of recession. The store has birthed a few new programs since I last talked with them. On their website they added a Blog. The Blog is an indisputable part of our culture now. To the staff it seemed like a great way to get the word out, and is yet another way to market books. Many employees contribute to the Blog, including Somerville resident and master bookseller, Josh Cook.

Porter Square Books has also partnered with the Literary Volunteers of America. They promote this program which sends volunteers out in the community to teach adults the basic reading and writing skills needed to survive in the world-at-large. The volunteers go to many venues, and spend 8 to 10 hours a week teaching.

Porter Square Books participates in many book fairs, is involved in fundraising efforts, some of which were held at the Somerville Library, and they are a participant in the “Reach Out and Read” program (that started out in Boston, but now is national), that gets books into doctors’ offices, and teaches parents how to read to their kids in the most effective manner.

Recently Porter Square has started a book club, run by Joan Sindall that meets at 4PM the third Monday of the month. So far it has been well-attended, and there have been raves about Sindall, and the group itself.

Szcbelowski, talked about some of the bestsellers at the store which include: “The Condition” by Jennifer Haigh (Haigh will read at the Somerville News Writers Festival), and Dennis Lehane’s “the Given Day.”

I asked the group if there were any Somerville residents among the helpful and knowledgeable staff. And of course, the ubiquitous Josh Cook came up, who has been with the store since its inception. Also—Robert Smyth, a long-time Somerville resident, and founder of the highly -regarded Yellow Moon Press, has worked at the store for a year or so.

The store responds to the “intellectual” demographics of its surroundings. So they offer readings of high brow and serious authors, as well as well- known local writers. Some who will appear in the coming months are: Anita Shreve, Allegra Goodman, and two well-regarded local poets Deborah M. Priestly and Joyce Jillison.

As always, Porter Square Books will be sponsoring The Somerville News Writers Festival Nov 22, 2008 at 6:30PM. I could think of no better supporter of a community event than this great community bookstore!

For more information about Porter square books go to http://portersquarebooks.com
Somerville News Writers Festival http://somervillenewswritersfestival.com

How books are printed: From Letterpress to Print-On-Demand

How books are printed: From Letterpress to Print-On-Demand


By Steve Glines

* Steve Glines is the book designer for the Ibbetson Street Press of Somerville, Mass.

When I was about ten my grandfather gave me a book he had been saving just for me. It was my first book. I don’t remember the title or content but it was a beautiful book, my own book. It had a dust jacket that my grandfather removed and tossed aside to reveal a soft brown leather book with the title and author embossed in 18 carrot gold on the cover and spine. Both the cover and spine had been tooled with a beautiful border. I thought the spine especially beautiful. The hide had been glued to a form of cardboard made of cotton fibers and the endpapers of the book itself were glued to the spine with the glue joint covered over with a beautiful hand made gold and green marbled paper. The body of the book had been printed by letterpress in giant 16 page signatures then sewn into a cloth backing with a Smyth Sewing machine. The first signature of the book, only 4 pages, had been printed by engraving and contained the title page with a florid design together with a portrait of the author reminiscent of those found on currency. There was a phantom signature of tissue paper between each of the engraved pages to protect the engravings.

You could tell the book had not been opened and read because the signatures had not been cut. The binding process included folding and gathering the signatures then sewing them into the backing but the resulting signatures were not trimmed as they are today. My grandfather ceremoniously handed me his paper cutter and instructed me to cut the signatures firmly but gently. For him learning how to properly open a book was a sacred right of passage. As I slowly sliced the first signature open I could feel the individual cotton fibers stretch then break as I drew the dull knife upwards. By the time I had cut the last signature the book had become mine. I would be the first person to set eyes on the printed page since they had come off the press. There was magic in that.

When I opened the book and looked at the first page in the first signature I could see the slightly uneven imprint of the type in the soft textured paper. Even without a magnifying glass I could see the needle edge of the types serifs where it cut into the paper carrying with it the carbon black filled ink. It was beautiful.

Books were made this way for several hundred years. Typesetting was a tedious, expensive and challenging work when done by hand and dangerous when done by a linotype machine that cast individual lines or slugs of metal type from negatively shaped type masters and hot molten lead. These slugs were then printed for proofing on small presses called galley presses. When all was well the slugs were then placed in a large 2 x 4 page panel for printing. Two of these were required to print one sixteen page signature. It was a slow tedious labor intensive process.

Before about 1970 fine, hardbound books were only printed by letterpress. I am old enough to remember when the change occurred. Offset printing was considered cheep and not worthy of a fine printed book. By 1980 all hardbound books were printed by offset lithography.

Offset lithography printing uses a flat metal or plastic sheet called a plate that has been photographically prepared so that ink sticks to the image area and is rejected elsewhere. Ink is transferred from the plate to a roller that presses into ink into the paper. One of the drawbacks to offset lithography is that the offset plate cannot carry as much ink to the paper or press as hard as a letterpress. Because of this the paper used in offset printing must be very flat and without the “tooth” that characterizes the “fine” papers used in letterpress. When the thin film of ink on an offset roller is pressed against the very flat paper, fine lines, dots and type serifs tend to spread so serif type faces printed by offset tend to look a little muddy when compared to identical type printed by letterpress. This feature of offset printing lead directly to an explosion in the use of san-serif type faces like Helvetica, Universe and others in book design. One good feature of offset printing is the ability to print photographs with a resolution many times greater than letterpress offers.

In older books photographs were often printed individually then glued or “tipped” into the book or entire signatures of photographs or drawings were printed by etching presses then sewn into the book. The maximum resolution of a letterpress was about 45 dots per inch using newsprint and as much as 85 dots per inch using paper specially prepared for the purpose. This paper was often hard and brittle from the clay used to prepare the paper to take a very sharp image. The harder and flatter the surface the sharper the dots could be. Etching presses or rotogravure, are capable of impressions of up to 200 dots per inch but this process is very expensive and gravure doesn’t print type very well at all. The colorful magazines distributed with Sunday Newspapers were always printed by rotogravure. That was then; today both newspapers and the colorful magazines they contain on Sunday are printed by offset. Because offset printing was an inexpensive way to print both type and art on the same page it became very popular with textbook publishers. It didn’t take long for paperback publishers to switch to offset followed quickly by traditional publishers.

Not only did the switch to offset represent a revolution in printing at the same time there was a revolution in typesetting. Letterpress printing was a part the old industrial revolution characterized by big dirty machines, steam engine technology. Typesetting was a blue-collar profession conducted in the bowls of a factory. Type was literally hot as the liquid lead flowed down open channels to form the slug in a linotype machine. In the late 1960’s “cold type” became popular. Early “cold type” systems came from IBM Selectric ™ Typewriters modified to print real typographers’ fonts onto specially prepared paper and Compugraphic ™ and other brands of machines that composed type onto photographic paper. These galleys would then be used to “paste-up” a dummy of the publication which then was then used to photographically create an offset plate.

Today, of course, hot type and paste-up is a thing of the past because of the multitude of personal computer programs that can electronically paste-up, proof the image on ink jet or laser printers and electronically create an offset plate. Xerox, Hewlett Packard and Kodak all pioneered in the use of ink jet and laser as “page-proof printers” with a quality image that rivaled or bettered that produced by an offset press.

The best offset printers can print images with a resolution of 300 dots per inch at a rate measuring in the thousands of impressions per minute but an offset pressman might have to print as many as 50 sheets to get the inking on a plate exactly right before turning up the press. Because of the tuning required an offset job is cheaper than a proofing press only of the print run exceeds many hundred or thousands of impressions. For many years book publishing has been constrained by the economies of scale in offset printing. For example, printing a 200 page paperback book might cost as much as $2000 to set up and 2 cents per impression. Printing and binding 100 copies could cost $35 or more per book but in quantities of 50,000 the cost falls into the range of pennies per book.

Modern proofing presses, for example Hewlett Packard’s Indigo series of industrial laser printers, are capable of printing an 11” by 17” images in full color with a resolution of 1200 dots per inch at the rate of up to 1000 pages per minute. The quality of the image produced by these printers is superior to almost all offset printing but cost considerably more than offset at its optimum but considerably less than offset in very small quantities. With the introduction of home, commercial and industrial laser printers “printing on demand” was born and “publishing on demand” soon after.

Publishers face two dilemmas: First, Can they sell enough books to make publishing worthwhile? Second, how can publishers keep their back list alive without having to print and stock uneconomical quantities of books? For most mainstream publishers pre- and post-publication costs dictate an initial print run of many thousands of books. These same economics prohibit the publication of books with potentially smaller audiances and prohibit altogether books on the backlist that could have long but active tails. A book by a major publisher that might sell 100 – 300 books a year in perpetuity is quickly marked out of print.

“Publishing on demand,” or POD, is a technology that solves the problem of small press runs. POD marries laser proofing technology with conventional bindery equipment to create a book production system that is as efficient at printing a one-of book as it is 2,000 books. Of course the unit cost is much, much higher and the production rate much lower than offset but back listed books that once would have gone out of print can be quickly and effectively produced by a Lulu or Lightning press one at a time at a cost point guaranteed to earn the publisher a profit.

To a small to medium sized publisher POD is a revolution. Not only does the use of POD eliminate an investment in inventory but the quality of publication is greater or equal to that produced by offset. The simple elimination of large inventories allows smaller publishers to publish more books than they otherwise could and the availability of POD published works guarantees that no book will ever go out of print. The agility of POD will almost guarantee that new and exciting works will flow to those publishers who using POD, will be able to respond quickly and decisively to the market. By reducing the cost to market while maintaining expected quality will insure the publisher using POD will have an advantage over their more conventional competition.

Review of Bicycles, Canoes, Drums by Dan Sklar

Review of Bicycles, Canoes, Drums

By Dan Sklar

Ibbetson Street Press 2008

25 School St. Somerville, Mass. 02143

http://ibbetsonpress.com




Fans of European 19th century verse, thick with symbolism and multi-syllabic, will find little to love in Dan Sklar’s Bicycles, Canoes, Drums. Sklar’s poetry could be characterized as American Primitive, clean and bracing as creek water. Like Whitman, Sklar celebrates the mystery and profundity of the everyday. This is “guy” poetry, muscularly chronicling the days and to-do list of the contemporary American male, helplessly and joyfully committed to the challenges of raising a houseful of boys, teaching sleepy-eyed college students, and handling the ignominies of manuscript rejection letters.



In Teacher, My Son is Not a Robot, Sklar tackles a standardized-test-obsessed school system: “So his math is not perfect/and he writes some letters backwards/but man can he read and his poems are poetry/and they made the teachers cry/that was all I needed to hear.”



Sklar takes on the mid-life heavy-lifting for us all in The Importance of Sweat:

“It is important to sweat//to be in a union//to spend time wandering the streets//to let yourself go to hell and get in fights/and lose a job and lie on the floor//and listen to old Thelonious Monk records/and smoke cigars and stare blankly and/regret everything you ever did/even the good things.”



Sklar unerringly sights a target and brings it down at our feet, gutting it of all extraneous parts. He strips middle-class life, its complexities, its fears, to the basics, into an ecstatic distillation. The last line of What I Think About Sometimes is: “When your bicycle is stolen, walk.” A timely reminder that that we must “repo” our happiness back from those who may hold the state of our 401k’s, but not our lives, in their hands.



Sklar’s poems tumble and sing with enormously universal appeal.



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

JOHN AMEN: PUTTING HIS LITERARY MAGAZINE ON A “PEDESTAL”

JOHN AMEN: PUTTING HIS LITERARY MAGAZINE ON A “PEDESTAL”

By Doug Holder

John Amen is the founder of the well-regarded online magazine “Pedestal” that was launched in 2000. His most recent poetry collection is titled: “More of Me Disappears” that was praised by the prominent American poet Thomas Lux . I talked with Amen on my Somerville Community Access TV Show: “Poet to Poet: Writer to Writer.”



Doug Holder: Why did you start an online literary magazine like Pedestal. Are online lit. mags as important today as print journals?

John Amen: In terms of starting the magazine I guess I have always been interesting in doing something like this. I always thought it would be a print publication. Around 1998 or 9, I started to explore the Internet more. I noticed that there were a few literary magazines online like: PIFF, THREE CANDLES, etc… I noticed a few science fiction online zines as well. When I encountered this it seemed like a very interesting way to go. But there was, and still is, some prejudice against online publishing.

DH: Yeah, but some say Pedestal is as good or better than most print magazines.

JA: Yeah. I think so. I think we have come a long way. We have been around for eight years. We have managed to create something that is well regarded. It is gratifying to see how things evolved. We have brought together the tradition of poetry magazines with the technology of the time. I think we have traditional literary values in a modern setting.


DH: Are you a nonprofit?


JA: Yes. Going nonprofit helped us a lot. The first time we went nonprofit I would open letters and see checks from readers, and it was kind of mind blowing. It was a mark of approval, validation.

DH: How are you going to adjust for the economic straits the country is in?

JA: October is usually our fund raising month. We held off sending emails to readers. I thought that this would be the worst time to ask readers for money. Fortunately we got a grant. We do pay writers. Right now we are going to publish the same amount. But we would modify it if need be.

DH: In an interview with poet Gloria Mindock, you said that you like being an editor because they are on: “ …the firing line of creative endeavor.” Can you expand on that?

JA: I am exposed to a lot of poetry, manuscripts. You see such diverse work, and you get a sense of what’s going on. What are the collective mindsets? Are the timeless themes still there? etc… You can see how things evolve…you have a sense of connection.

DH: Do you think you have seen more of your own work published because you are the editor of a well-known magazine?

JA: I think it helps more with speaking and reading engagements. I see it primarily in that area, but it may be true in publishing.

DH: I notice you publish such well-known small press poets as Jared Smith, A.D. Winans, and Eric Greinke. What do you look for in a poem?

JA: Jared’s work has evolved and changed…I like his work a lot.

The poem has to have that intangible magic that grabs you buy the balls. Of all the poems you’ve read, what poem do you remember? And after all the things you read only a few things really stick.

At Pedestal we are open to a lot of work that others might not be. There are a lot of poets I have connected with that I am not sure other editors have. I am not afraid to go with them.

DH: Does the buck stop with you?

JA: It varies. Sometimes I am more involved. If my editor is given full judgment over the work—then I usually sit back.

DH: In your poems there is mention of time in NYC and drug abuse. Is this autobiographical?

JA: Loosely. I did live in New York for a while. I have experience with ”substances.” The details are modified.

DH: There are a lot of late night diners too.

JA: I always loved diners. Diners at 2AM, with bad coffee.

DH: I had a disagreement with Rebecca Wolff the founder of Fence Magazine. I had asked her if any of her books were Print-On-Demand. She told me that she would never use Print -On-Demand…she never saw one that looked like a real book. Do you feel there is an elitist attitude toward POD? How do you feel about POD as a method for publishing books?

JA: I emailed somebody, and asked him : “What does it matter if something is POD? He said the potential problem is that people put out these books but they are not invested in them, so there is a surplus of books with no backing.

However most people I know who are involved in the business of publishing poetry are pretty invested in poetry.

DH: I mean the publisher has to buy the books from the online printer, he has to edit them, select the poet, design the book, etc…That’s an investment.

JA: Financially it seems that it would be to the advantage of the publisher to be invested in his project.

DH: Do you have an MFA?

JA: No. I majored in English and Philosophy as an undergrad. I took creative writing classes as part of the degree and I enjoyed it. I enjoyed the space to explore and interact. I suppose, a lot of people go to an MFA to get a teaching job and to get published.

DH: Do you teach?

JA: I tutor high school age kids. I have taught four-day workshops at Colleges, etc…

DH: What would you tell the readers about submitting to Pedestal?

JA: Send us your work. We are always open. Pedestal is doing well and we are going to be around.

Harp All Made of Gold (Thunderstack Production, 2006) by Klyd Watkins

Harp All Made of Gold (Thunderstack Production, 2006) by Klyd Watkins with Family and Friends

Review by Pam Rosenblatt

Klyd Watkins with Family and Friends’ Harp All Made of Gold CD has been produced three times: 2000, 2004, 2006, always by Thundershack Production. This experimental piece combines traditional myth telling with concrete to abstract and abstract to concrete music and poetry. It’s a country Nashville music style of the 1960’s gone wild, so wild that it takes the listener two or three tries before he can understand what’s going on. But once the listener comprehends the purpose of the far out, almost drug-like state of the music and the eerie repetitious chorus and speaker who often says lyrical phrases with veering off with the use of improvisations, the listener almost laughs at himself for not catching on the theme of the text more quickly.

Basically, Harp All of Gold CD is a story tale about what happens to Jack of Jack and the Beanstalk fame and to his cherished golden harp after the falling of the beanstalk and the mean Giant. The whole piece is composed to be sensed as a dream-like state, like the Greek mythological sea journey that Odysseus took when he and his sailors had to fight the music of the Sirens on their way back from Troy to Ithaca and their loved ones. Actually, Watkins makes a lot of references to Greek mythology in Harp All Made of Gold. At one point, Watkins has Jack kiss his own reflection in water, reminding the listener of Narcissus who did the same thing after a maiden cursed Narcissus to fall in love with himself because he rejected her advances. Then, as an effective, though sometimes irritating, musical technique, Watkins has created a chorus that echoes the speaker’s words and phrases, sounding like the choruses found in Greek tragedies like Sophocles’ Antigone and Oedipus Rex. The chorus singing on Watkins’ CD is, in reality, family members and friends of Watkins from Nashville, Tennessee.

There are nine tracks on this CD, and each track glides smoothly into the next. Even the final track (Track 9) runs back onto the first track (Track 1) as though the story never ends. It’s circular. And through the use of echoing repetitive phrases and improvisations of words on the CD, Watkins catches the listener’s attention. The spoken words sometimes are different from the written words inside the booklet found in the front plastic CD cover.

Now, this musical story tale begins with a man named “Jack” who simply “walked up a dry creek bed…” The listener knows nothing more about this man “Jack”, except he has “walked up a dry creek bed…” This concrete statement gently eases the listener into a very creative, abstract and experimental work. The next line suggests the journey to follow “… was/ /easy traveling…”, so the listener expects a clear and concrete music and poetry experience, although the background music reminds the listener of Nashville tunes. Then, the tone changes, as soon as in the fourth and fifth lines which read, “where the bank/was deep/enough to keep tree limbs/
from flapping /in his face…” Suddenly things get abstracted as if the listener is entering a dream-state of the speaker, as read in the lines that follow: “among the pathless / forest hills/ deep enough…”

In the next few lines, Watkins uses colorful, articulate description and a concrete simile to develop the story line:

that his staff carved over with
oval emblems of frogs and owls and
dancing ladies—the ball
on top—could be seen by Squirrels
beside the creek bed
bobbing above the bank top
as he hiked upward and eastward—
calluses on the bottom of his bare feet
so efficient—so dense—like those
on the tips of a bass player’s fingers — the skin
looks nearly normal and does not deaden
that feel.

The listener understands that Jack’s staff is a special one, craved so ornately with animals and “dancing ladies”. His journey hasn’t been an easy as the “calluses on the bottom of his bare feet/so efficient—so dense—like those on the tips of a bass player’s fingers….” But he is confused as to who Jack is and what the purpose of the journey through the creek and the increasingly abstracted music is. Watkins has combined concrete ideas with abstracted ones to make the listener feel a little dizzy and uncertain about the trip he is about to go on.

Watkins gets more concrete and informative toward the end of the section when the speaker reveals that “On [Jack’s] back a harp he carried,/ a harp all made of gold.”
Now, this harp turns out to be rather unusual. Not only is it made out of gold, but is a woman and sings to Jack during the nighttime when he sleeps. Jack only wishes that the harp sing to him while he is awake. Watkins cleverly writes, “the songs she played made him dream things She teased him/with choruses/about her giant—…” Now, the listener is becoming aware the whole composition of the CD – the music and the actual spoken poetry – is imaginary. Since when is a harp a woman? Since when can a harp actually sing? And since when does a giant actually exist? The answers to these rhetorical questions are all the same: “Probably never” – except through the assistance of a very creative poet/musician’s imagination.

Watkins is slowly letting the listener in on the meat and potatoes of the story line. The listener does realize that three characters exist in the story: a man named “Jack”; a singing female harp; and a mean giant. But where these three characters are headed is still abstract, still unclear. Finally, Watkins lets the listener in on another tidbit about the relationship between the harp and the giant and Jack:




She teased him
with choruses
about her giant—
track 3— choruses about her giant
teased him with choruses
like:
Fee Fi Foe Fum
Dread so hungry
got to smell him out some
Englishmun Some Englishmun…


Now the listener has been informed that the harp was once owned by the Giant “Dread”,
and that “Dread” wasn’t a kind giant. Where “Jack” fits in at this point is unclear, except that the harp is flirtatious with her new owner.
In Track 5, Watkins clarifies things in words, though the music is still dream-like. The listener is informed that “Dread” is

The very ogre
Who’d tried to sniff out old Jack
For supper— who chased after Jack
Fleeing with the stolen treasure
But Jack made it back down
And grabbed his axe
And chopped down the bean stalk
As Dread tumbled out of the sky
Behind them…

This point in the CD and in the booklet is where the listener probably has figured out that Watkins’ Harp All Made of Gold is an experimental poetic version of “Jack and the Bean Stalk” – mostly after the falling of the bean stalk and of “Dread” the giant. A breath of relief for deciphering this complicated CD both musically and poetically most likely occurs. And the rest of the story line falls easily into place.

The ending of the story tale is interestingly left ambiguous. The question remains: Did this “Jack” really experience the climb of the bean stalk, rescue the singing gold harp from the mean giant, chop down the bean stalk and thus kill “Dread”, journey along and through a creek to a campsite where “He hoped they would listen/to him tell about the giants”? Or is “Jack” dreaming or fantasizing about this whole journey?

Klyd Watkins’ Harp All Made of Gold is a CD to listen to if you’re willing to open your mind to experimental music and poetry combined. If you are flexible enough to accept things differently, then you will enjoy Watkins and his family and friends’ work on this CD.

Recommended.

--Pam Rosenblatt/Ibbetson Update/Oct 2008/Somerville, Mass.

They Don’t Look Like Real Books: Taking A Stand on Print-On-Demand.

( Rebecca Wolff: Founder of "Fence" magazine



They Don’t Look Like Real Books: Taking A Stand on Print-On-Demand.

* With Rebecca Wolff at the Massachusetts Poetry Festival (Lowell, Mass.)


I was at the Massachusetts Poetry Festival on Oct 11, 2008 to take part in the Small Press Festival. There were a number of presses and magazines represented there, such as: Godine Publishing, Cervena Barva Press, Ibbetson Street, Boston Review, Fulcrum, Zephyr Press, Zoland Books and many more. I got the chance to speak to many folks, both publishers and the general public. Ed Sanders, legendary poet, and founder of the 60’s political/ folk/art/rock band the “Fugs,” as well as “Fuck You: The Magazine of the Arts,”( to name just a few accomplishments), was there. He was in Ibbetson Street 23, and I interviewed him recently for The Somerville News, so it was nice to run into him.

As I wandered around the tables, I stopped off at Fence Books, an offshoot of the hip and influential literary magazine “Fence” I spoke to the founder Rebecca Wolff, who I met briefly years ago at the Boston Alternative Poetry Conference. Since then she has come along way and Fence has received recognition from the literati, and is now housed at the University of Albany in New York, where they are the recipient (no doubt) of institutional largess. I admired the Fence books that were on the table and innocently asked if any were “Print-On-Demand.” Well Wolff was like a wolf on a meat truck, and replied: Never! “I never saw one that looked like a ‘real’ book.”

Well perhaps Rebecca works in a rarefied atmosphere, far above the banal masses of the small press. But as an editor and reviewer myself, I see a slew of poetry books each year, review my share: good, bad and indifferent. I certainly can determine what a “real” book looks like. And these perfect-bound collections coming from Print-On-Demand printers are “real” books, and books to be proud of.

I invited Wolff to come by the Ibbetson Press table to take a look. She did after I called out her name as she passed my table. She looked over titles and said: “ Oh, I don’t know, the covers look like pictures of pictures.” Whatever. She did allow; “ I suppose they are comparable.”

There was a small press panel during the festival, and I situated myself in the front row so I could partake in the Q and A. On the panel were Ed Sanders, Geoffrey Young, Anna Moschovakis, Rebecca Wolff, and Kyle Schlesinger. Somerville, Mass. poet Joe Torra, a neighbor of mine, moderated it.

I asked the panelists about the “elitist” attitudes I face when I tell people we now publish Print-On-Demand books. I used Rebecca Wolff’s comment as an example. I talked about the history of the small press and its role in fostering new talent, its job of getting worthy poets on the margin out there and heard. For many of us, without the largess of the academy, foundation grants, big lips for ass kissing, etc…the only affordable way ( especially in the economic straits we have now) is Print-On-Demand. Because of low and non-existent start up prices, and printing geared to exactly how much we need at a given time, we don’t have books sitting around collecting dust. The books are quality productions, our own have been bought by university libraries, bookstores, for classes, and we get regular commissions. We are lucky if we break even, but you go in this for the love.

Anyway the panelist seemed to agree that Print-On-Demand is a viable option. Sanders, a veteran of the Mimeograph Revolution on the Lower East Side of NYC in the 60’s reminded us of the importance of printing poetry, even if it is a simple broadside, and has a press run of 2 or 3 copies. Another panelist said if he had Print-On-Demand in his day, all the books decaying in his garage would not be there. Wolff made some comments about her advocacy of poets and her efforts for the best presentation of their work ( as if we don’t!). At the end she said: ” I am intrigued…” or something in that vein, well, you know the drill.

Whenever a new technology, or new approach, is around there is always a lot of resistance. But now publishers like David Godine Jr., and others are starting to experiment with Print-On-Demand. We must remember what Jerome Rothenburg points out in his preface to “A Secret History of the Lower East Side” ( as noted in the program for the festival:

“American poetry, the part by which it has been and will be known, has long been on the margins, nurtured in the margins, carried forward, vibrant in the margins…”

Perhaps, now that Wolff has joined the ranks of the literati, she has lost sight of the fact. Let’s encourage not discourage.


Doug Holder/ Ibbetson Update

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.