A Boston Poet: Mignon Ariel King

A Boston Poet: Mignon Ariel King ( Click on highlighted title above to get WGBH site)




Mignon Ariel King is making poetry for the page. Aside from the fact that she knows it's not cool, she's been writing poetry for most of her life now. She's born to log iambic pentameter-like script, and evoke verse like the dozens found in her first book of poems called "The Woods Have Words." Published by Ibbetson Street Press, the 78-paged collection introduces readers to a Boston that is not often documented in books, on television, and in film. Born in Boston City Hospital, and raised at the intersection where Roxbury meets South Boston, Mignon grew up in a neighborhood where black, Irish, Puerto Rican, and Cape Verdean people lived side-by-side despite forced busing.

"My favorite spot growing up was the Dudley Library," she recalls.

Reading and writing were anchors for her and the poetry mattered the most. Today she is startled by the small number of black women poets who actually participate in Boston's "real" poetry scene, which includes
a good number of open-mic venues, social groups and workshops. "You walk into a group of poets," she exclaims, "and there will be thirty people there, and there's usually a maximum of three black poets and you're the only female one. There are like 5 of us, apparently, in the whole state."

Though Mignon will do a staged reading of her poems, she says, "It's different if you're a spoken word artist, but to be a written-word poet in the Twenty-First Century is incredibly not cool."

Mignon isn't aiming for cool anyhow. "I would rather just a community of writers focused on publishing rather than friends," she jokes. This is why in 2008, she launched the online journal of black women writers called "MoJo!" where she hopes to build and strengthen a chorus of new century black women writers. She also just finished a trilogy in three genres after twelve years of hard work. When asked if she would ever accept the honor of being a poet laureate, she immediately declined and said, “I’m not a people person.”

Laissez-Passer by Ricky Rapoport Friesem

Laissez-Passer
by Ricky Rapoport Friesem
Kipod Press
Israel 2009
Softbound, 115 pages


Review by Zvi A. Sesling

Israel has always produced good poets, starting in biblical times. In the more modern era many began writing in their mother tongues: Russian, Polish, German, French. Eventually Hebrew became the language of their art. Today there are many Hebrew poets and almost as many who write poetry in English. Voices Israel is one organization in Israel that promotes English poetry with a newsletter, annual poetry competition as well as a yearly anthology.

One Israeli poet writing in English is Ricky Rapoport Friesem whose latest book Laissez-Passer, Poems 2001-2009 was recently released. Friesem is a poet and documentary film maker who has written two cookbooks, an award winning poetry collection and has had her poetry published in numerous magazines.

Friesem’s poetry is often ironic, honest and short. She writes some great lines like the opening to “Frequent Flyer,” In a strange city/where no one knows my name/I can ignore the sights.

There is also the entirety of the title poem “Laissez-Passer”

Only words
can grant me freedom
let me break through
love’s tight bonds
slide me through
restraint’s barbed borders
turn me loose in the beyond

Friesem notes about the words laissez-passer, “In French, literally, ‘let go.’ Usually used to refer to a special travel document issued in lieu of a passport. And so we see her travel document within the seven lines of the poem that will help her find her freedom.

In the clever “Book Collector” Friesem sees herself as an overlooked book by a potential lover, or perhaps just scanned but never fully appreciated. Even the final line might be a double entendre:

I am a book
you’ll never read.

You’ll stroke my cover
run your fingers down my spine,
riffle through me, feel my heft
and nod with satisfaction.
But read me? Never.

I make a nice addition
to your bookshelf.
Great book.
In good condition.
Barely used.

In a book of more than 100 poems there are many to chose from and quite a few you will find worthy of a second read. Ricky Rapoport Friesem has written a personal and enjoyable poetry book.

Somerville poet/artist Celia Gilbert: A Poet who paints with the brush and words

Somerville poet/artist Celia Gilbert: A Poet who paints with the brush and words

Celia Gilbert is a Cambridge/Somerville based poet and artist with a new collection of poetry out: “Something to Exchange.” (Blaze Vox) She studied with the noted poet Robert Lowell, as well as Anne Sexton and Robert Fitzgerald. She was the poetry/fiction editor at the Boston Phoenix and interviewed both Mary Daley the late feminist scholar, and along with fellow poet Ruth Lepson, the renowned poet Robert Creeley. She is the winner of a number of awards from prestigious organizations like the Poetry Society of America and the 92nd St. Y. I talked with Gilbert on my Somerville Community Access TV show: “Poet to Poet: Writer to Writer”

Doug Holder: You studied with Robert Lowell and Anne Sexton. You were in Lowell’s famed workshop. Where was this? Can you tell us about the workshop?

Celia Gilbert: The workshop that I was thrilled to be in was at Harvard University. Robert Lowell was very generous about poets entering his seminars. I submitted poems and was excited when he said I could be there. I was there with a lot of people like Lloyd Schwartz, Jean Valentine…it was very exciting. The procedure Lowell used in class was he picked a poem that the students would submit. The student would read his or her poem and then he would read it. That was very exciting because you had your poems read by Robert Lowell. I learned a lot.

DH: Were you aware of his bouts of mental illness?

CG: It was well-known that he had a sort of seasonal illness. Most of the classes were fine. But when December came around that’s when the disorder came on. We didn’t understand seasonal affective disorder then like we do now. But at this time of the year he became more excitable. We didn’t have words like Bipolar back then.

DH: I read that when Anne Sexton was in his class at Boston University—she knew when he was headed to McLean Hospital.

CG: Yeah—but we concentrated on the poetry. Frank Bidart was in the seminar, and Frank was very much the person who helped him through the hard times.
DH: You interviewed the late poet Robert Creeley. He told me he never revised his poetry; he just threw it out if it didn’t work.

CG: I think whatever he said is true. I want to say that Robert Creeley was extremely generous. When I interviewed him with Ruth Lepson for the Phoenix, he just gave us so much time. He was very approachable. He would talk on and on. Yet his poems were so crystalline.

DH: You have a space at the Brickbottom Studios in Somerville. You are an accomplished artist as well as a poet. Can you talk about this?

CG: For most of my life I have been a poet. But I had a yearning to make art. I just never had time to explore it. About 20 years ago I took a watercolor class at the Cambridge Adult Education Center--which is a wonderful resource for people. Inspired by this I found out about a workshop at Brickbottom for monotypes.

DH: How does this fit in with your work as a poet?

CG: My poetry is not philosophical, but very visible. It is gratifying to work on visual images-- even abstract ones.

DH: In your new collection of poems "Something to Exchange" in the poem "The Meal" you write about the absence of your husband at an evening meal. I always write about food--it reveals a lot about the texture of our lives.

CG: Meals are very fraught. There was an absence of my husband at this particular meal. In the living world we create a world that we feel is safe and good. We delude ourselves that nothing bad is ever going to happen. This is how we survive. So in this poem his absence was a foreshadowing; it is a poem about how fragile life is and how lucky we are to have any happiness.



Eve Leaves Eden

The rose that bloomed at the gate
she stole for a garden of her own,
a cradle of seeds enclosed within its fullness,
defying Him the tyrant who
made the rules to keep them in.

She looked behind, one last look.
A bird sang, neither happy nor sad.
The time had come, and with that word
she understood the penalty they paid.

In her new garden,
the rose flourished along the palings,
not an aristocratic species
that would shine a week or two and fade—
a simple rambler blooming
throughout the spring and summer,
in autumn the last to go.

Winter months she brewed
the rose hips for nourishment
and saw in the curling steam
the serpent rising from her cup.



Copyright © 2005 Celia Gilbert All rights reserved
from Southwest Review
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission

Review of GIVE OVER THE HECKLER AND EVERYONE GETS HURT by Jason Tandon

Review of GIVE OVER THE HECKLER AND EVERYONE GETS HURT by Jason Tandon, Black Lawrence Press, Brooklyn, NY, 2009, 82 pages

By Barbara Bialick

It seems to me that the poet takes on the point of view of the new American everyman,
who “heckles” the weird guys in a bowling league as he travels around through obscure towns, and treasures his buddies, dog and girl. He intimates that he may be a black man, but doesn’t seem to make much of race. He also doesn’t seem to make much of high technology for that matter. He doesn’t provide a photo of himself to psych out, but leaves the reader with symbols, allegory, and details that aren’t so much imagery, but the observations of a keen eye, a poet’s eye.

In “League Night” the scary league bowler says, “give up, Heckler…with an air of onions and bourbon/a six-shooter plugs my ear/we end up outside…” (Fortunately the guy parts the circle and the author survives.)

In the next odd scene, “Easter Special”, he records, “In honor of Christ’s resurrection/Mister Donut tops a traditional glazed/with yellow frosting and jellybeans”
as the woman’s “cell phone rings ‘La Cucaracha’…”

And then there’s his dog in a great poem called “Dog Days”: “my dog…with a bout of jazz head,/…with his tongue lolling, eyes half closed, digging the mellow rhythm…”.

Another good one is called “Thanks for Nothing” in which he recalls stopping at a burger joint “north of Albert Lea, Minnesota” where he and his friend Bill neglected to tip the waitress. “She would come up short that day,/worse, get chewed up by her boss, worse than that/asked to turn in her name tag…”He continues: “That meal was the only thing I’ve ever stolen. Except for some time later, back on the east coast in debt…/I swiped two pocketfuls/of spice jars from a Grand Union../indignant/that I should pay so much for flavor.”

Less funny, however, is the poem, “Behind the University”, “It was a confederate flag unfurled/three stories down a brick face/on fraternity row/that took my eyes off the road…I pictured a little girl/praying before bed tonight. I was late to teach a class/and my reason felt like an excuse.”

Speaking of teaching, Tandon teaches in the writing program of Boston University. Born in Hartford, Connecticut, he got bachelors and masters in English from Middlebury College, and his MFA at the University of New Hampshire. This is his second collection of poetry.

Benefit for Haiti: Poetry Reading: Longfellow Hall Harvard; Feb. 10, 2010

On February 10 at 7:30 pm, Robert Pinsky, Rosanna Warren, Jorie Graham, and a dozen other Boston-area poets will join together for a collaborative reading to benefit "Partners in Health" and the people of Haiti. It will take place at Longfellow Hall/Harvard, Appian Way, Cambridge, MA. I ( Kim Triedman) have been organizing this benefit with Jim Henle from Harvard, and we will be co-chairing this event. As of today, the confirmed readers are:



Robert Pinsky

Jorie Graham

Rosanna Warren

Afaa Michael Weaver

Fred Marchant

Christina Davis

Daniel Tobin

Barbara Helfgott-Hyett

Jean-Dany Joachim

Patrick Sylvain

Wendy Mnookin

Marilene Phipps-Kettlewell

Nadia Herman-Colburn

Kim Stafford

Tom Daley

Jericho Brown

Franny Lindsay



Requested donation will be $10, with all proceeds going to Partners in Health (PIH). Poets' books will also be on sale, with all proceeds after cost going to PIH. The event is being co-sponsored by the Woodberry Poetry Room at Harvard and Harvard's Technical and Clerical Workers Union, which is providing much-needed logistical support.


I have to say it’s amazing how responsive people have been – the poets themselves, Harvard, individuals donating time and resources of various sorts. We’ve got people from so many institutions around Boston working on this. It’s going to be an incredible event on so many levels -- a true collaboration. Please support us in any way you can!


All best-
Kim Triedman (with Jim Henle)

“Among Thieves” by David Hosp

A BagelBards Book Review

“Among Thieves”
By David Hosp
Grand Central Publishing, New York, NY price $24.99

Reviewed 1/19/10 by Paul Steven Stone

“Among Thieves” is the fourth in a series of attorney-centric thrillers written by David Hosp. Its fictional portrayal of the notorious Isabella Gardner Museum heist of 1990 offers an interesting, if perhaps excessively violent, framework for the still unsolved crime whose purloined booty is reputedly worth billions today.

Fast-paced and interesting in its premise, the novel suffers from characters drawn with little depth, as if the novelist was relying on the reader’s efforts with similar novels and similar characters to round out his offering. The novel’s hero, attorney Scott Finn, works in concert with a former Boston cop turned detective, Tom Koslowski, and a single associate, Lissa Krantz, in a corporate arrangement more suited to detective fiction than commercial reality. The story opens in the past with the chilling murder of a family in Northern Ireland, then quickly spans 35-years and a quarter of the globe to overtake the modern-day murder of a high-ranking member of Boston’s criminal underworld.

Attorney Finn enters the story on Patriots Day on his way to a Red Sox game when he stops by the Nashua Street Jail to visit a client, Devon Malley, a small-time thief who may have been, as the novel later reveals, involved in history’s biggest and most audacious art theft. Malley not only convinces Finn to talk with local gangsters who might be of help, but also gets the lawyer to take charge of his angry, wise-cracking and inevitably hungry-for-love teenage daughter. Before Finn can contact either of Malley’s criminal colleagues, they are tortured to death by a vengeful and relentless IRA terrorist. It soon becomes clear that Malley and his daughter may be the next victims on the list unless Finn and the police can run down the murderer and find the stolen artwork in time.

“Among Thieves” is an interesting tale told by a highly capable writer who perhaps should have spent a little more time on developing his characters. The City of Boston, as well as one of its most notorious sons, Whitey Bulger, play key roles as events and narrative unwind. The story unfolds crisply, with at times excessive violence, and ends with an interesting, if not surprising, conclusion. Readers of crime fiction will enjoy “Among Thieves” even if it doesn’t make the list of top-tier legal/lawyer thrillers.

A SHEEP IN WOLF’S CLOTHING by Paul Steven Stone

A SHEEP IN WOLF’S CLOTHING
By Paul Steven Stone

For any democrats, progressives or dumbstruck Obama supporters wondering “What the hell happened?” in Massachusetts this past Tuesday, let me offer a few thoughts.
As Pogo once said in a famous cartoon strip, “We have met the enemy and he is us.”

After eight years of Bush-Cheney malign neglect, the American presidency was turned over to a man who promised to change the way Washington worked. To take back power for the people. To curtail the power of the lobbyists and their entrenched special interests. To fight Wall Street for Main Street. To bridge partisan divide. And to restore America’s pride, not just as a powerful nation but a moral one as well.
And where do we find ourselves a year later?
Stuck.
With a president who appears to value comity over fighting for what he believes in. With a president who promised to fight for real health care reform but appeared to quickly abandon the very drug cost containment and public option elements that real reform requires.

We voted for a president who would fight drug companies for the right to import drugs from Canada and who would use America’s colossal bargaining power like a club to lower drug prices. Instead we ended up with a president who negotiated away his power in exchange for the pharmaceutical industry’s collusion in a program that would never threaten either their American monopoly or their colossal greed.

We voted for a president who would fight Wall Street but who quickly brought in the usual suspects to run things, some of them clearly tarnished by their inside involvement in the financial crisis or their initial efforts to make whole the bankers and CEOs whose greed and system manipulation caused the crisis.

This last year we have hungered for a President who would worry less about upsetting the apple cart and more about removing the bad apples. It may have been politically expedient to give Bush and Cheney a ‘Get Out Of Jail Free’ card, but America’s constitution has been bloodied by their cowboy-up approach to starting wars, torturing prisoners, denying constitutional rights and subverting civil liberties.

To not shine a light on these illegal and destructive behaviors is to allow them to eat away in the dark at the cornerstone of rights that others have died to secure.

We voted for a president who, if he didn’t have the heart or courage to pursue these miscreants, would at least have had the wisdom to convene a Truth and Reconciliation Commission. If only to uphold the honor of his office and his somber responsibility to our Constitution.

Over the last year we have watched President Obama repeatedly step back from using the full weight and power of his position to foster policies and programs he was elected to pursue. His willingness to enter into compromise or meaningless negotiation with fanatical Republicans so invested in protecting the wealth and power of entrenched interests they would never meet him halfway on any field, over any issue, will prove to be his—and probably our—undoing.

Mr. President, we elected you to clean up Dodge City, but it appears you’ve settled in far too comfortably, and much more quickly than anyone could have expected.

If your advisors tell you that you are doing a good job, fire them. If you can’t find worthy advisors to replace them, perhaps you’ll have to look beyond the boundaries of Washington, D.C.

That would be change we could believe in.


Paul Steven Stone is a writer/novelist living in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Author of the novel “Or So It Seems” and the story collection “How To Train A Rock”, he works as Director of Advertising for W.B. Mason. He can be reached at PaulStevenStone@gmail.com.

The Bones We Carry Poems and Short Prose by the Streetfeet Women.

The Bones We Carry Poems and Short Prose by the Streetfeet Women. Chris Fadala, Beatrice Greene, Elena Harap, Mary Millner McCullough, Li Min Mo, and Aura Sanchexz. (Streetfeet Press 30 Brastow Ave. Somerville, Ma. 02143) $10.

The Streetfeet Women is a group that was founded in Boston in 1982 by Somerville resident Mary McCullough and Elena Harap.

It is a collective formed to create works celebrating the way ordinary women live their lives. In this collection by the Streetfleet women: "The Bones We Carry," there is poetry and prose by Chris Fadala, Beatrice Greene, Elena Harap, Mary McCullough, Li Min Mo, and Aura Sanchez. The arresting cover image titled: "Night Rider" was created by Bagel Bard Li Min Mo, and included is artwork from Veronique Epiter. This is an anthology that has veteran writers who have perfected their craft over the years. Being a poet more than anything else, I chose to focus on a sampling of poems.

Li Min Mo's "Old Woman" captures an artist staring at her own face and wondering about the passage of time--the way it becomes chiseled in one's face:

" staring at the mirror:
what's behind this old face?
lines, discolor of age,
old tree bark, my cheeks;...
hollows, bags, crow's feet,
disappearing eyebrows, lips,
the neck's fold, three or four times,
because old age just can't decide on one idea of a portrait."

Mo points out later that the vessel may be old but : " one arm dances with sunlight and the other still wraps/
around the moon."

Being a fan of Jazz, and an admirer of John Coltrane, I enjoyed Beatrice Greene's: "Jazz: Listening to Dr. Dr. John Coltrane." Greene examines the transforming aspect of the music and the affect it has on the listener:



"You move in suspended time and space

Reconfiguring our electromagnetic essence.

Our minds, bodies, spirits enraptured;

sometimes dancing,

sometimes in meditative stillness.

Transformed, we find ourselves

breathing as if by the ocean

where we birthed."



And in a study of a daughter bemoaning the state of a mother firmly in dotage and decline, Mary McCullough writes a masterful portrait of the matriarchal shadow the mother is now in: "Assurance":



hands that once braided my hair

rest in mother's lap

she sits in a chair

placed against a drab hospital wall,

converses in monotones

with her invisible listeners.

i search for a niche in her flatness,

proof of her former wholeness.



i, a nonbeliever,

address the guardian angels

of mothers and daughters,

pray for a miracle,

let her remember my name.



Highly Recommended.

Review of VAN GOGH’S EAR, by Pamela L. Laskin

Review of VAN GOGH’S EAR, by Pamela L. Laskin, Cervena Barva Press, Somerville, Massachusetts, 2010, 75 pages, $15

By Barbara Bialick

To Pamela L. Laskin, a good, thinking poetry teacher/writer, is always teaching, even through her poems, including what she learns from her students and other artists, as she treads through her experiences. “Words continue to persist/fleshless/until they take form in a poem/…New epics are born/out of millions of years/of old thumbs and cortexes;/words, who never knew/there was anywhere to go.” (“Evolution”)

Meanwhile, she leaves you with underlying symbols to identify and figure out,
a gift to the reader, such as in the central concept of Van Gogh’s ear…van goes here, Van Gogh’s here...as she divides the book into the following sections: a left ear a right ear, the ears of the self, the ears of other artists.

In “An Education”, Laskin, as teacher, contemplates an essay from a student whose “father beat her up when she resisted rape”. Coming from a life of “Irish oatmeal/two rings on my fingers…” she exclaims “I am her teacher./I have to grade her paper.”

But she is not just a teacher. She has a clear poet’s eye, as well as ear: “Just the other year/my father said, ‘I’ll love you forever’/then died…You enter/like the cave you first discovered/as a child/…Only there’s no way out…”

She also feels for the poor, sad people she’s observed in New York, where she lives. “Things That Are Beautiful” is about an old “crippled” woman “crouched in her wheelchair on a busy street…selling necklaces…” As you read the poem, you realize it’s a sestina, that’s framed on such telling words as beautiful, naked, hands, streets, and so on. “Like everyday, she is naked to the crowd.”

The cover art for this book is a beautiful drawing by Marc Chagall. But even on the back of the book, her photo demonstrates a mischievous Mona Lisa smile.

Laskin is a lecturer in the English Department at The City College, where she directs The Poetry Outreach Center. She’s published five books of poetry, as well as some poetry chapbooks, five picture books, two young adult novels, and edited a collection of fairy tales. She resides in Brooklyn, New York.

I predict there will be more good books to come.

Poems from the Left Bank: Somerville, Mass.by Doug Holder

To order click on title






Poems from the Left Bank: Somerville, Mass.by
Doug Holder


Quarter-page-sized, laser-printed, saddle-stapled poetry chapbook of the people and sights of Somerville, MA.

Release Date:
January 2010


Cover artwork: Somerville Yard by Richard Wilhelm.


Poems by Doug Holder: OLD WOMEN AT MARKETBASKET; PET STORE; TWO OLD WOMEN; BOTTLE LADY, SCHOOL ST., SOMERVILLE; OLD WOMAN OUTSIDE THE FAMILY DOLLAR STORE; HAMLET ST., SOMERVILLE; ROOMMATE WANTED; MODERN LOVERS; THE GRAVEYARD ON SOMERVILLE AVE.; "DADDY, IS HE A MONSTER?"; SPRING ON SCHOOL STREET; SOMERVILLE: WALKING TO UNION SQUARE; MOTHER LEADING HER BOY TO THE WOMEN'S ROOM; A WEED IN THE CONCRETE; DOZING AT THE GRAND CAFE; LOOKING AT A LONE WOMAN IN A BAR; FALLEN CHERUB OUTSIDE A LIQUOR STORE; DICK'S APARTMENT; I KNOW BERNIE, I CAN GET YOU IN; ON THE LAWN.

Interview with Gypsy Scholar Sonia Meyer: An activist and novelist with a dramatic past.

Interview with Gypsy Scholar Sonia Meyer: An activist and novelist with a dramatic past.

Interview by Doug Holder

Sonia Meyer was born in 1938 in Cologne, Germany. Her first memory is not of some beatific childhood scene. It was of her mother dressing her to flee her home after fellow opponents of the Nazis had been strung up by a nearby neighborhood overpass and left dangling for all to see. Mother and daughter vanished into the forests of Germany to escape the Nazis. As a child she learned to throw grenades—she carried messages to Partisan men, who were camped out to fight the Germans.

Meyer has witnessed the Holocaust from two perspectives: the Jews and the Gypsies. During World War 11, in her time in the forests hiding from the Nazis, she witnessed the mysterious Gypsies. They were proud, defiant, and outsiders—perfect targets for the Germans. She remembers a wizened, sage-like Gypsy woman who told her and her mother that they would survive the war. She has drawn on her fascinating experiences in a new novel that she has penned: “Dosha.” It is to be released by the Wilderness House Press in the spring of 2010. I spoke with Meyer on my Somerville Community Access TV show “Poet to Poet Writer to Writer.”

Doug Holder: Sonia—you have told me that you have lived much of your life like a Gypsy, how so?

Sonia Meyer: Well first of all during the War we constantly moved. And afterwords I was rescued from Germany by an Italian uncle. We moved constantly between the States, Italy, and the rest of Europe. When I was first married I lived in Finland. And when I divorced I really travelled all over the world. I had enough knowledge to make a living. I was able to go to one country to another. I had many different professions.


DH: In an article by Susie Davidson in “The Jewish Advocate” you talk about the Gypsies and the Jews during the Nazi era: “Here are two European minorities. They are almost opposite in their culture. But they were both persecuted, albeit for different reasons, and both continued to be viewed as outsiders.”
Describe how the Nazi’s viewed both groups---how are Gypsies and Jews almost opposite in culture?

SM: Jews are a very literate culture. The whole culture revolves around the Torah. Education plays a major role in Jewish life. The Gypsies are an oral culture.—right from the beginning. They never left any traces of their past. They are great poets. But their poetry is for one particular occasion, and then forgotten. There was one famous poet, a Polish Gypsy by the name of: Papuzsa. She was the first Gypsy poet to actually publish her poetry. She became famous but then discarded by the Gypsies. The Gypsies don’t want non-Gypsies to know any part of their lives.

The Nazis viewed the Jews with envy. This is the worst of all hatreds. The Jews were powerful—they were famous in academia—they had famous artists, and frankly I think Hitler needed money for his War. I think this was an excuse to kill the Jews.

The Germans had a romantic view of the Gypsies. They viewed them as free and footloose. They were artistic and their music went straight to the German heart. They especially liked the nomadic Gypsies. The partially integrated Gypsies were persecuted more rigorously. So it was a love/hate relationship with the Gypsies. They lured them—gently-into concentration camps. At first they lured them with call for employment—there was no work.

DH: How many Gypsies were killed?

SM: Estimates vary. Of course many were not registered as citizens. Estimates were everywhere from 250,000 to a million and a half. That was 75% of the whole Gypsy population. There seems to be 12 million Gypsies living in Europe. So they really came back as a population. They have a very high birthrate.

DH: Why is that?

SM: Well, to the Gypsy children are the greatest wealth of all. So they marry very young. The girls used to marry as young as age 12. To the Gypsy, children are everything.


DH: The Russians were liberators—but they were often no better than the Nazis, with rape and pillaging, etc…

SM: The Germans did what they did in a very, cold and calculating way. The Russians had lost 25 million people in World War 11.


DH: You are releasing a novel “Dosha” published by the Wilderness House Press in the Spring of 2010. Can you tell us about it?

SM: Dosha is the story of the Lovara, a nomadic Russian Gypsy tribe of horse dealers. They were considered the aristocrats of the Gypsies, because the horse is holy to the Gypsies. And the Gypsies lived freely in the Soviet Union up to the time of Khrushchev. The book first tells the story when the tribe was roaming freely. Later they were trapped and standardized into the Soviet system by Khrushchev. They planned to escape. This is the story of the tribe. And Dosha is the granddaughter of a powerful Lovara king. By legend she is supposes to be the next leader.

Staircase of Roots by Janet Winans

Staircase of Roots
Janet Winans
Off the Grid Press
ISBN 978-0-9778429-0-30-3
0-9778429-0-3-2
$15.00 2009

Janet Winans opens a window, she gives us glimpses of her observations, provincial observations similar to Chagal’s paintings, the reader can float in and out.

“Balance is immutable. Even-
handedness, punctuality, his lawyer ways.
Brown shoes with brown suit, black with
blue or gray, striped tie symmetrical
boring, I complain. But fair,
no argument. Like truth and time.”

The poems are stable, secure in their presence, yet, can be, “unseated by a smirking boy.” Winans imparts a sense of place without losing what it means to live in a myth or to be relegated to a mythological presence. Winans sees clearly. She writes without having to trick us with sentimentality.

“Our patterns,
chains and circles,
stars, whole constellations.
Muted rose and gray
your shades;
my yellow, red
and blue symmetrical.
As if engraved
the children’s, parents’
births, deaths, marriages
in running stitches,
day, month, year.”

Irene Koronas
Poetry Editor
Wilderness House Literary Review
Reviewer: Ibbetson Street Press

DRIFTWOOD by THEODORE K. STRYKER

DRIFTWOOD by THEODORE K. STRYKER


Reviewed by Manson Solomon



During World War II, American servicemen left their mark in the form of the now famous “Kilroy Was Here” graffiti scrawled on walls all over Europe, wherever the GI’s had been. There is a variety of conflicting legends regarding the origin of the practice, and the places where the drawings of the cartoonish man peering over a wall were to be found, but the essential message was unmistakable: “The Yanks were here, we made a difference, we were real, we were triumphant!”


The fourth story in Theodore Stryker’s collection of Short Stories, Essays and Other Writings, entitled “The Second Sinking of the USS Arizona,” poignantly chronicles the thwarted effort by Jim Healy, a decorated World War II veteran, to honor a fallen comrade who had gone down with the USS Arizona at Pearl Harbor. Jim journeys all the way to Hawaii only to find, ironically, an impossibly long line of Japanese tourists waiting to view the Memorial, and he has to catch his plane back to the States without accomplishing his mission. Subsequently, upon hearing of Jim’s death, the author, himself a veteran, seeks to make amends for his friend’s disappointment by going out to Hawaii and scrawling on the Arizona Memorial wall, with his wife’s eyebrow pencil, “Jim Healy was here.”


The central message of the book, as the back cover tells us, is that the author, Ted Stryker, “though he did not set out to write for publication, as he approached the end of his life . . . felt a need to leave something behind, hopefully something of value.” Such is the spark for many a memoir: to reassure oneself that one’s life had meaning, that one was indeed here.


So what are to make of this collection of short stories (which we are told in the usual front page disclaimer are fiction, “products of the author’s imagination,” but which we are also told in the back of the book “accurately record events in his life”), and essays (which are manifestly the author’s own opinions) and “other writings”?


Firstly, it is clear that the Stories are not pure fiction, but are drawn from the author’s own experience, whether directly personal or overheard or read about. Perhaps the “fiction” disclaimer gave him license to do some creative embellishing, but had they not been based on significant real-world events, what would he be leaving behind? Literature? No, these stories are not the stuff of literature; the professional craftsmanship is not there. As memoir, imprints of the man’s presence in the world, they are interesting and entertaining, and perhaps valuable, as he had hoped, but they are not literary in any sense. To appreciate the stories, and connect with the man’s life, one has to overlook the clichéd writing.


The Essays, being the author’s views on matters of the day, will be of great interest to the author’s children and grandchildren, staking out Grandpa’s claim to have been a living, breathing human being with opinions, telling them what sort of man he was -- but they are not abiding contributions to the debates which will live on in the public mind. Ditto the “Other Writings.”


In short, this poignant memoir, while unlikely to light a great fire in the world of literature, will nevertheless undoubtedly stir the hearts of those who knew Ted Stryker personally, and in that sense he has indeed left behind “something of value”, as he hoped.

Review of TOURIST AT A MIRACLE by Mark Statman

Review of TOURIST AT A MIRACLE by Mark Statman, Hanging Loose Press, Brooklyn, New York, 88 pages, 2010, $18

By Barbara Bialick

Just look at the son’s-eye-photo of Mark Statman on the back of this colorful, well-designed book. He’s a happy man, with good job, wife and son, even translates Lorca! But he’s still looking with the wide eyes of a poet—and a fun dad.

I’d like to see how this smooth but polished poet writes the passion of Lorca… Statman says “the danger is not/that he’ll take over/my poems/but that when it happens/I won’t know/image of cow, of horse…/so when someone points it out/I won’t see—already eaten/devoured”.

I don’t see evidence of devoured by Lorca in Tourist at a Miracle, but rather a pebble-smooth style that you can read quickly from beginning to end, maybe too quickly, without noticing many symbols or startling imagery. But when I go back over individual poems, I definitely find some favorites:

“Changing”: “the stores in/my neighborhood in Brooklyn/are always changing/a flower store/becomes a bookstore/a bookstore/becomes a cell phone store/a vacant lot a drug store/…one change after another/in the changelessness”

“You’re in Love”: “It was worth it/just for when it happened/for the certainty/of how you’ll feel/when it happens again”

“The Happy Problem”: “why do you think/that just because you say it/it’s true?”

“Tourist”: “hubo un milagro, she said/a miracle/…I didn’t know/if I wanted to go/I already knew/I wouldn’t see what she had seen”


Statman has written several other works, including THE ALPHABET OF TREES: A GUIDE TO NATURE WRITING, LISTENER IN THE SNOW: THE PRACTICE AND TEACHING OF POETRY, and he co-translated with Pablo Medina, Federico Garcia Lorca’s POET IN NEW YORK. He taught for many years for the Teachers and Writers Collaborative. Currently he is an associate professor at Eugene Lang College of the New School. He is a long-time resident of New York.

CHINESE CHESS by JOSEPH PILARSKI

CHINESE CHESS by JOSEPH PILARSKI

Sitting here with this book in my lap, I am assailed by the memory of a painful phone call from my son. Last winter he put in a stint in Hollywood at Kennedy-Marshall, the producers of Steven Spielberg’s movies, and of last year’s Oscar-nominated The Curious Case of Benjamin Button. Perhaps the memory was triggered by the fact that Brad Pitt, who played Benjamin Button, appears in the second chapter of Pilarski’s book. (” ‘Look! It’s Brad Pitt!’ Jodie whispered her scream [sic]. . . In fact, it was not Brad Pitt they saw . . . But the differences made for two very different men. Where Brad Pitt had romantically intense blue eyes, Dan’s were dark brown, with an almost metallic sheen, so that when looking him in the eye one only saw a reflection. Where Brad had full lips, Dan’s were sparely chiseled. Where Brad exuded an athletic ease, Dan moved with reserve. But one thing was certain: the man the ladies sighted was about to become one of the most important men in the world.”

More likely, though, the memory was triggered by what caused my son’s anguish. “Dad,” he agonized over the phone, “all these hopeful guys have sweated blood on their scripts, they have put in years, and within just a few minutes of beginning to read, I can tell whether they are any good or not. Some so obviously don’t cut it that I have no choice but to axe them immediately, and they will never even get a second read, never see the light of day. I feel so bad.”

Like my son, when I pick up a book riddled with superficial banalities, flat, cartoon characters, clumsy, implausible, breathless dramatization, I am tempted to just toss it. When one reads lines such as the above regarding Brad Pitt, or the opening paragraph (which, as every novelist knows, must set the tone for what is to come) --

“It was an idyllic summer afternoon as he stood on the balcony of his house in a tony district of New Jersey. He was looking down into a lush valley of green that surrounded a small, beautiful suburban lake. Under a flawless blue sky, here and there a butterfly shimmered as it flitted among the myriad flowers basking in the glorious warmth.”



-- does one really need to read any further?

One already knows that what awaits are such gems as: “The sky turned ominously gray and powdery”, or “Cold fear gripped him . . “, or “The soot was in clumps traveling like torpedoes towards the house . . . spewing darkness in every direction.” (These, by the way, all appear on the first page.) One has to have the courage to delve all the way to page 6 to find “For an almost-60-year-old Jan didn’t look bad at all. In fact his stocky, muscular build gave the impression of a vitality that was more appropriate for a man in his mid-forties.” How about “And, as if on some prearranged schedule, a sailboat would pass and silhouette itself against the melting orange sun that poured itself like shimmering red liquid into the pink-gray horizon.”? Or “When provoked, he used his piercing glare as a weapon. Those exposed to it felt immediately uncomfortable and were filled with a sudden desire to run, to escape.” “Women loved to be around him, especially younger women who, inexplicably, found his confident serenity irresistible.“ “The scent in her wake was the scent of fresh cut pears. His eyes remained on her wake for a few seconds after she’d disappeared around the corner and he smiled, shaking his head. What a woman! And where the hell is this going?” “As he drank her soul through her eyes, he was suddenly taken aback: Those eyes of hers, those irises, they were the ones from his dream.” And so it goes on.

One is soon treated to a parade of unidimensional characters, the requisite beautiful women, rugged men, an Israeli enchantress, Maasai warrior, intrepid, charming CEO (the author’s alter ego), mysterious encounters in hotel rooms and planes, the usual thriller gamut. Within the first 30 pages, one is whisked in and out of Aruba, the Pentagon, Spain, Tel Aviv, Lebanon, Teheran (caricature of Ahmadinejad, who really surely needs no caricaturing), Kenya, Granada, etc etc. And a comic-book plot line, events that could never have taken place in any world that any real human inhabits. What happens next? A car chase, a bomb scare, an explosion or two, an assassination, whateva? You get the drift. This is the stuff of pulp fiction, action movies, airport bookstores.



The publisher’s blurb tells us that “Chinese Chess is an enthralling combination of well-crafted characters and perfectly detailed events. Pilarski masterminds an American investigation that will leave even the highest investigators intrigued.” Huh? Perhaps if you love pulp fiction, you will consider these cartoon characters “well-crafted” and the unreal comic-book events “perfectly detailed,” and as for the “highest investigators” . . . ?

But perhaps I am not the best person to review this kind of writing. Perhaps the best-seller thriller pulp genre should not be judged by literary standards. Perhaps it’s not art, not skill and writerly sophistication that this material should be judged by, but whether it can be turned into an escapist James Bond action screenplay. By that standard, perhaps there is more to Chinese Chess than meets a literary eye. Mine anyway.

-- Manson Solomon

Doug Holder Interviews : Gypsy Scholar and author of "Dosha" Sonia Meyer

CLICK ON PICTURE TO SEE INTERVIEW...

Sonia Meyer on Poet to poet, writer to writer from Steve Glines on Vimeo.

Two New Reviews: How to photograph the heart by Christine-Klocek-Kim and Voyager by Dawnell Harrison

How to photograph the heart
Poems
by Christine Klocek-Lim
The Lives You Touch Publications
P.O. Box 276
Gwynedd Valley, Pennsylvania 19437
Copyright 2009 by Christine Klocek-Lim

Review by Zvi A. Sesling


You remember how the lens squeezed
unimportant details into stillness:
the essential trail of rain down glass,
the plummet of autumn-dead leaves,
your grandfather’s last blink when
the breath moved on.
Your startled hands compressed
the shutter when you realized: this is it
this is the last movement he will take
away from the silent fall of morphine,
beyond the soft gasp of the nurse,
past the sick, slow thud of your heart
moving in the luminous silence.

This is the title poem of How to photograph the heart
Christine Klocek-Lim’s fine chapbook which includes
some language one cannot help but admire. Here are
some samplings (read the chapbook to find them):


** Hollow stalks of grass bend over the wet
dirt like sabotaged fences.

** The soft retreat of chlorophyll asks useless questions

** Now the moon hangs like wisdom

** how once seen, a red moon lingers
with a cinnamon tingle.

** You mention blood, but the phone’s static
insistence swallows our conversation.



Okay, maybe you don’t find these a refreshing as I do,
but they are lines I repeated visually and verbally as I
read them.

Ms. Klocek-Lim’s poetry can be disconcerting in that one
does not always know to whom, or about whom, she is writing.
However, one can cruise through this book and enjoy it, savor
its frequent pleasures and learn a few things about writing poetry
along the way.


************************************************************************************

Voyager
by Dawnell Harrison
Adastra Press
Easthampton MA
Copyright © 2009 by Dawnell Harrison
IBSN10: 0-9822495-3-5
ISBN 13: 978-0-9822495-3-6
Softbound, 22 pages

Review by Zvi A. Sesling


Dawnell Harrison’s first book of poetry, Voyager has a rich and unusual history. In its book announcement, Adastra Press says the poems in Voyager are, “...homages and inspirations from Bette Davis’s movie Now Voyager and from the life of Sylvia Plath...” But it goes deeper than that. The movie is based on a book by Olive Higgins Prouty, the title coming from Walt Whitman’s couplet in Leaves of Grass (Signet Classics, 150th Anniversary Edition, foreword by Billy Collins) entitled The Untold Want
"The untold want by life and land ne'er granted,
Now voyager sail thou forth to seek and find."
Prouty also wrote Stella Dallas, which in the 1940s and 1950s was a very popular radio soap opera. Prouty, who had what in the early 1900s was called a nervous breakdown, spent time in a sanatorium and used her experiences, particularly in Now Voyager.

Dawnell Harrison has captured the flavor of both the film version of Prouty’s novel and of Sylvia Plath, who also had her mental breakdown. Both Prouty and Plath attended Smith College which makes a direct connection to Adastra Press in Easthampton, MA.

Harrison is a native of the State of Washington and lives in Idaho, that is about we learn about her, except that she is a graduate of the University of Washington. Her poetry, however, is ambitious. Writing poems inspired by fiction based on actual mental illness, as well as what one knows about Plath can be not only difficult, but cumbersome.

Harrison, however, seems to have an easy flow to her poetry that permits her to swing between her two subjects with ease and incisiveness. For example some lines from, The World Has Gone Mad:

The world has gone mad.
My only solace, like a sea creature
living its existence in a salty, safe shell,
is to imagine swimming
amongst them as a mermaid in
silky blues and greens

In Little Schizophrenic Girl, there are more lines about madness:

We love our little schizophrenic girl,
talking to cats
and we think they understand her.
They are always meowing back,
so we just assume,
disquieting as it seems.

And finally, a few lines from the final poem in the chapbook, Games and Sparrows:

Today I am counting
sparrows and one
landed on my
back doorstep eaves.
Darting his head around
looking for predators.
Even he is playing
for his life.

What I like about Harrison’s poetry is her 21st century take of 20th century writing, her ability strike at the heart of issues, like an Aztec priest cutting out a heart. Shorty Shorts and Oh Voyager are two that make their point economically and effectively and are two of my personal favorites. Some of the poems in this chapbook have final lines that could be deleted, making those poems stronger, but the poems are still worth a reading, as is the whole book in which Ms. Harrison has taken on two difficult subjects and succeeded.

Finding My Place: One Man’s Journey From Cleveland to Boston and Beyond Judah Leblang.

Finding My Place: One Man’s Journey From Cleveland to Boston and Beyond Judah Leblang. www.lakeeffectpress.com $16.


Take it from me turning 50 can be difficult, your motorcycle needs constant repairs, and your hairpiece never sticks right. It can even be more “challenging” if you are Jewish, Gay—and a man still in search of his identity—for his niche in the world. Have if you will, one Mr. Judah Leblang, a well-known storyteller and writer formerly of Somerville and a columnist for the “farm team”: The Somerville Journal. Leblang has come out of the closet in more ways than one with his memoir: “My Place: One Man’s Journey From Cleveland to Boston and Beyond…” Now if things weren’t hard enough for the kid; he grew up in and around a city (Cleveland) in the 60’s and 70’s that was know for a polluted river that exploded in fire, making the dirty water of the Charles seem benign and Brahmin. Leblang traces his time from that city to his time in Boston, and along the way changes his name, embraces his sexuality, comes to terms with his past, and hopefully is at a better place now as a 50 something guy.

If you are a Baby Boomer you will certainly relate to many of his references—the trappings of his middle class youth—such as nights with the family watching the Ed Sullivan Show, Davy and Goliath cartoons in the A.M., the Zenith Color TV set, and Mr. Ed—the one and only talking horse.

Leblang’s journey takes him from an awkward and shy Jewish boy in the ‘burbs –-to a man-- still a little shy and uneasy in his own skin, but more accepting of himself. Like anyone who has been on the second half of the roller coaster ride he has endured a number of bad relationships, he tries to reconcile with his very straight older brother—and even comes to term with Cleveland—that he has a serious love/hate conflict with..

At the relatively advanced age of 51 he feels the sadness and the levity at the lengths he takes as he searches for lost youth, love, and lust. In this passage that takes place in Provincetown, a summer Mecca for Gay men, Leblang thinks:

“I was a 51 year old man, hearing aid tucked discreetly behind my left ear, striving for youth, lusting after men a decade younger. But the only look I gathered was from a dusty, wizened character about my age, leaning against a storefront. Still, he examined me up and down, with a look that might have been lust or simply curiosity.”

This is an honest account, a very intimate book, that will make you feel uncomfortable, and perhaps a bit red faced. Why?—it will bring you face to face with that poor shlub of a kid that you once were—and haven’t quite completely shaken.

Recommended.

Somerville Native Son Kevin Gallagher: From COMPOST to BOSTON UNIVERSITY

Somerville Native Son Kevin Gallagher: From COMPOST to BOSTON UNIVERSITY


Interview by Doug Holder




Back in 1995 I was published in a unique Boston-based literary magazine COMPOST, and read at an arts center in Jamaica Plain with Boston poets like Sam Cornish, Jack Powers, Joe DeRoche, and others. Kevin Gallagher was one of the founding editors, and some years later I had the privilege of publishing a poetry collection by him. Gallagher, who was born in 1968, is a native Somervillian and his mother taught at St. Joseph’s some 40 years ago.



He is the author of three books of poetry, "Gringo Guadalupe"
(Ibbetson Street, 2009), "Isolate Flecks" (Cervena Barva, 2008), and
"Looking for Lake Texcoco" (Cy Gist, 2008). Gallagher is a professor at Boston University and currently lives in Newton,MA. with his wife and newborn son. His poetry has been published in Harvard Review, Partisan Review, Green Mountains Review, LitVert, Jacket, and elsewhere. His recent books are: Putting Development First: The Importance of Policy Space in the WTO, and Free Trade and the Environment: Mexico, NAFTA, and Beyond.

I interviewed him on my Somervile Community Access TV show: “ Poet to Poet: Writer to Writer.”



Doug Holder: You were a founding member of COMPOST magazine based in Boston some years ago. How did it start, and how was it unique?



Kevin Gallagher: I was an editor, and I was an original member of the collective. We started in the early 90’s when MacIntosh and the computer were in style and you didn’t need a printing press to print something. It was before Blogs and other stuff. So we occupied this ten-year period in which out of our living room we could make a magazine. We were young, bohemian, and revolutionaries in Jamaica Plain in the early 90’s. Now we are over 40, mortgage-owning, adults with kids.



DH: But you still have your idealism, no?



KG: Absolutely. I live it every day. So as I said we started in the 90’s. A group of poets who were upset with the ingrained academic perspective that the publishing wing of Boston was all about at the time. You had to be involved with an academic quarterly-- that didn't look like fun--they didn't have any art and poetry. We wanted to include other genres of art. We wanted to be more inclusive. This was the late 80's and early 90's; the world was opening and Communism started to fade away. We had a global perspective. We also thought that American poetry, particularly in Boston, was very provincial. We focused a lot on the literature of other countries.



DH: You also had an all Boston issue.



KG: Yes. We focused on our own community, we focused on the country, and we focused around the globe. Each issue had a section that focused on Boston area poetry. We had people from all schools of poetry. We had national poets like Alan Dugan and Robert Pinsky. We had a 14-year-old girl from Roxbury. We were the first magazines that did an exclusive section of poetry from North Vietnam. Kevin Bowen was the guest editor--he is the director of the William Joiner Center at U/Mass Boston.



DH: How did it end?



KG: It was different things for different people. One person moved to Manhattan, one person gets married. We held together a little bit, but things changed.



DH: You edited an article for Jacket Magazine that concerned the one time Somerville poet Denise Levertov.




KG: I love to edit poetry. I edited an article for Jacket Magazine--I crafted a feature on her work. I asked her friends, academics, etc... to assess Denise Levertov in the 21st century. Mark Pawlak and others talked about her.




She was originally from England. She started out as a very formal poet. When Robert Creeley gave her a book by William Carlos Williams--it changed things for her. She fell in love with the American idiom. She transformed herself and became one of the core of new American poets. She had several books with New Directions. During the Vietnam War she became very political in her work. She read in front of huge crowds during demonstrations. Towards the end of her life she was an environmental poet.




DH: You are a professor at Boston University now. How does this fit in with the writing life?




KG: My day job is not about poetry. I'm glad--I do a lot of different things. I am an economist that looks at the world economy and tries to see ways to create a world economic system that can make everyone better off. I spend a lot of time in Latin America--my poetry is part of that.




DH: Can you talk about your latest collection with the Ibbetson Street Press:

"Gringo Guadalupe."


KG: To a certain extent my last two books "Gringo..." and "Looking for Lake Texcoco" ( Cy Gist 2008) are story sequences of poems written when I was in Mexico working on environmental issues. Lake Texcoco was a huge lake that was filled in, in Mexico City. A noted poet in the United States translated the collection. This book deals with the contrast between the indigenous people and global forces. There is something about soul and fate in it. The "Gringo Guadalupe" is a book that is a little sardonic. It deals with the birth of Christ. It is a series of sonnets about a husband and wife: Joe and Mary. Joe takes a job in Mexico. While he is in Mexico, an angel appears to his wife in the States, and tells her she is going to bear the Son of God. And she believes it.

DH: The last section of "Gringo..." is titled: "Frescos" These poems are short, tight, with crisp imagery. Some would say it is easier to write a short poem, that a wordy, more elaborate one. Your take?

KG: It is harder in my opinion. As a professor at Boston University--when I ask someone to do two-page paper, it is much harder than twenty. Each word counts more. So in this section, each poem is like a picture that tells its own story. Each poem has to have imagery--a strong lyrical quality--to get across the story.




Drive Bye
by Kevin Gallagher



I sat cross-legged swinging on my swing
feeling less alive than a marionette.
The neighbor’s children danced under the sunset
pulling each other’s hair while singing
songs that had a particular ring
that made them impossible to forget.
So I wasn’t surprised when the bullet
hit my head. I was too busy smiling.
I smiled when they put me in the casket.
I smiled when they lowered me under my stone.
It took my death to bury my hatchet,
the roots around me remind me of my bones.
They shot the living daylights out of me.
I can’t see. You can’t see me. But I be.
Copyright © 2002 by Kevin Gallagher

UpTown TurnAround by Don Alfieri

UpTown TurnAround
by Don Alfieri
blackautopress.blogspot.com
© Copyright Don Alfieri
12/25/09 Limited Edition
Softbound, 10 pages

Review by Zvi A. Sesling

When I was very young I saw Invasion of the Body Snatchers, Don Siegel’s masterpiece based on a Jack Finney (who co-wrote the script) novel. Both the book and the movie were social statements made during the McCarthy era: for individual thought and against communism, that Darth Vader-like force of evil. Pods were placed in a home, when the family slept, the pods took over their bodies and minds.

UpTownTurnAround, Don Alfieri’s very short opening poem brings back memories of
that movie:

HerCloseCall

BerriesShouldComeInPurple
OneOfTheseYears, ThoughtMaryLynn

“CallMeBackInFourHours.
HaveToGetSomeSleep,
JetLag, YouKnow.”

InvasionOfThe BodySnatchers
WasShowingOnTV.

But that’s just the opener. Each of the little poems in Alfieri’s chapbook is a commentary on society: drugs, a dismembered woman, and finally a hybrid poem-story of a relationship.

On first reading I admit I didn’t like this chapbook, probably because of the memories of Body Snatchers, one of the scariest movies I ever saw. It came out in 1956 and has remained embedded in my brain like a bad marriage. But, the more readings I gave these five poems, the more they grew on me. They each have their own truth, their own morality and their own impact. And if you spend time with them they will grow on you.