Review of THE ETYMOLOGY OF SPRUCE, poems by Joyce Wilson

Review of THE ETYMOLOGY OF SPRUCE, poems by Joyce Wilson, Rock Village Publishing, Middleborough, MA, 81 pages, 2010

By Barbara Bialick

THE ETYMOLOGY OF SPRUCE is a longer than usual first book in “the small press” arena, but Joyce Wilson has a lot of talent and promise. She’s already been published in the Harvard Review, Agni, Antigonish Review and other well-known journals. She also publishes her own on-line literary magazine, The Poetry Porch. She’s taught English at Suffolk University and Boston University.

But what really drew me in was the concept of figuring out the etymology of her family, as symbolized by and reflected in the etymology of nature, specifically a spruce-tree-eye-view of death and regeneration.

In the poem, “Spruce Down” she takes inventory of the dead tree, how it lies horizontally, how much its lumber is worth, and like an etymologist, looks backward to its “roots”: “we sorted through the refuse/the way the tree had once/sifted sunlight, playing,/dispersing the emptiness.”

There’s another spruce tree poem, “Armless Spruce”, that comes near the end of the book, after you’ve read about the early death of her father, and its effect on her and her family. It’s obviously a symbol the reader should try to decipher. “These sticks, now brittle stumps, cannot/Be healed, though salved with healing paint./They have no use, but waver, fraught/With grief. This heart, by loss defined…”.

I also like the “Hymn” she wrote where she presents a stanza, then asks a question, to which different flowers give the answer:

“He gave me perfume/that was too strong…a bicycle that I needed/years to grow into…Would he admire the woman /I have become? No said the nightshade,/yes the geranium.”

And I would have to forgive him for dying is the refrain in “The Taxi From Town.”:
“He showed little regard for chronology/arriving at a local movie in time/to see the last scene first: the wound and the blood…the hero riding off as if forever…I suffered with the fear for years/before I saw the value of beginning with the end..”. Hence we have the etymologist…

My main reservation with the book is its length. Through the first half, she maintains an ever-growing line of poems you can analyze in the etymology theme The second half goes in different directions, albeit with some good poetry, but she should have left out some of the less powerful poems. Even so, I recommend this book!

Poet Doug Holder Will Lead Workshop at Leventhal-Sidman Jewish Community Center

Ibbetson Street Press founder, Director of the Newton Free Library Poetry Series, and arts editor of The Somerville News Doug Holder, will lead a three session poetry workshop at the Gosman Jewish Community Center-- a branch of the Jewish Community Centers of Boston. Holder is on the adjunct faculty of Endicott College, and Bunker Hill Community College. He holds an M.A. in Literature from Harvard University, and has read from his work and conducted poetry workshops throughout Israel as a guest of the Voices Israel literary organization.


Poetry Writing and Publishing



This course will demystify the poetry writing

and publishing process. We’ll develop our

poems in a supportive workshop atmosphere,

and the instructor will provide tips for

getting your work published. Perfect course

for the novice or intermediate level poet.

Bring three poems, seven copies of each to

the first class.





Doug Holder




LEVENTHAL-SIDMAN JCC - NEWTON MA ()
Gosman Jewish Community Campus
333 Nahanton Street, Newton Center, MA 02459
Telephone: (617) 558-6522



The Leventhal-Sidman JCC is a branch of the Jewish Community Centers of Greater Boston. JCCGB is an agency of the Combined Jewish Philanthropies.


May 16, 23,30 ( 3 weeks) Sundays 10am-12 pm

JCC member: $90

Nonmember: $105

Register on-line at easyreg.jccgb.org

OR

Call 617.558.6480


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OR SO IT SEEMS by PAUL STEVEN STONE

OR SO IT SEEMS by PAUL STEVEN STONE http://orsoitseemsstone.blogspot.com can be purchased at: http://amazon.com

-- reviewed by Manson Solomon


If the title of Paul Steven Stone’s novel doesn’t tell us that we are about to enter a world in which we are not quite sure what is real, the blind elephant tapping his way across the cover confirms it: something different is about to happen in these pages. The old Hindu legend of the blind men each feeling a different part of the elephant and coming to different conclusions as to what they are confronting is well known, but when it is the elephant itself which is portrayed as blind and groping its way through the world, what’s up with that?

Stone’s view of the world as it might appear through the eyes of a blind elephant will not surprise those already familiar with his wry sense of humor portrayed in his collection of pieces assembled in How to Train A Rock. Serious stuff masquerading as burlesque, Mark Twain meets Philip Roth meets Saul Bellow meets Paul Steven Stone. The hilarity begins very early on with the protagonist being dragged towards a ratty couch by his determined would-be seducer, who, we later discover, turns out to be his nine-year old son’s schoolteacher. Whom he discovered at a bizarre singles dance which he finds himself attending after his disorienting divorce. And then there is the hilarious encounter with the gold-digging single mother whom he picks up at the scouts’ pinewood derby -- where his creative effort to fashion a car from a wooden block – painted pink! -- results in embarrassment for him and his son. Yes, it’s funny, but it’s also serious, since behind the humor the protagonist’s escapades constitute an existential exploration, a quest to find solid reality – what is -- behind the illusion of appearances -- what seems -- and to restore dignity to his life after a debilitating divorce.

Sound like Bellow’s Moses Herzog with a sense of humor, Roth’s Alexander Portnoy without the hysteria? Well, perhaps so, since where Bellow tried to restore his hero’s emotional equilibrium via intellectual scribblings, and Roth paraded his overwrought Freudian ejaculations for help, Stone gives us an ongoing dialog conducted with The Bapucharya, a giggling videotape Hindu guru. Ah, the elephant, the Hindu god Ganesh seeking reality beyond the facade of illusion! But, being Stone, the dialog is laced with wry humor, parody, irony, is never didactic, always offbeat, amusing. How is this possible? Well, you’ll have to read it yourself to find out and to have your sight restored. And if you don’t make it all the way to Enlightenment, at the very least you will be wholeheartedly entertained while engaged in the quest.

The Women Musicians Network takes to the Berklee Performance Center stage on Thursday, March 4th, 2010

*****The Women Musicians Network takes to the Berklee Performance Center stage on Thursday, March 4th, at 8:15 p.m. This will be their 13th annual concert. It has 12 original acts: jazz, Brazilian folk, modern classical, Middle Eastern rock and more. Tickets are only $10, available at the B.P.C. box office: 617.747.2261.

Article by Kirk Etherton


This concert has something for everyone. (Or is it everything for everyone?) One of the most inspired and inspiring annual concerts in Boston is produced by the Women Musicians Network, a student club at Berklee College of Music. “The overall level of musicianship was astonishing,” says Cambridge resident Matthew Greif, recalling last year’s event. “Also, I was impressed by how eclectic the evening was. You never knew exactly what was coming up next—or how it might resonate on a personal level.”

The W,M.N. concert has been featured on WGBH’s "Eric in the Evening," and as a Boston Phoenix Editors' Pick for shows not to be missed. Like last year, the 2010 concert will feature 12 original acts in a wide range of styles—from jazz and R&B, to contemporary classical. Like every year, it will highlight Berklee women students from around the world.

The March 4th show does not exclude men. Lucy Holstedt, W.M.N. Faculty Advisor, emphasizes that “this concert aims for diversity and inclusion. We feature women as arrangers, producers, band leaders, lead guitarists and drummers because there’s so much female talent in these areas that’s under-represented.” Holstedt mentions Julgi Kang, a superb violinist from South Korea who has prepared a funk-fusion arrangement of “Caprice No. 24,” Paganini’s famous composition. “Julgi will be performing this piece with Evan Veenstra, a fine electric bass player from Ontario, Canada. This is a very original and inspired act,” says Holstedt, “and that’s the bottom line.

Ultimately, our concert is about great music.” This year’s largest act is Women of the World—a group that has performed at the United Nations. The group itself represents many nations: its core members hail from Japan, Brazil, Italy, India, South Africa, Ghana, Mozambique, the U.S. and Australia. According to Boston poet Harris Gardner, “this annual show serves up a potpourri of music offerings that will satisfy any palate. I’d even say that if you can go to only one concert every year, make it this one.”

*NOTE: Lucy Holstedt thanks the Middle East Restaurant & Nightclub for their “valuable support of this concert every single year.” The 13th Annual Women Musicians Network ConcertMarch 4th, 8:15 p.m.Berklee Performance Center 136 Mass. Ave., Boston Tickets $10, available only at the Box Office:617. 747.2261www.berkleebpc.com

From the Back Ward to the Blackboard: From McLean Hospital to the College Classroom

From the Back Ward to the Blackboard...

By Doug Holder

Back in July of 2009 I lost a job of 27 years. I had last worked in a community residence program at McLean Hospital and the program folded. During my time at the hospital I got quite an education, clinical as well as literary. Presently I am teaching at Bunker Hill Community College and Endicott College, a decidedly different environment.


I started working at McLean Hospital in 1982. This was before a lot of the land was sold off in the 1990's. The grounds were sprawling, and beautifully conceived by none other than Fredrick Law Olmstead. I worked on a locked, high security ward, that housed psychotic patients who required close supervision...in the parlance they were a threat to themselves and others. I wrote a poem about my first night there that was included in a booklet of poems that was published by a small press in 1998: "Poems of Boston and Just Beyond: From the Back Bay to the Back Ward." (Alpha Beat Press.) It concerned a patient's delusion about me--quite a shock to this nascent mental health worker:

First Night on the Psychiatric Ward

The night seemed perfectly cast
stormy, thunder and rain
the patient was biblical
long hair and a beard
with his staff at his command.

He put a paternal hand on me
and called me his "finest creation"
What could I do
but thank him?
He smiled
with divine
patronization
undoubtedly I was a much valued acolyte.

Then suddenly
a flash from the storm lit the building
in a momentary spectral glow
a clap of thunder howled down the locked ward.

He looked at me like a proud teacher
patting me on the back
" Good work kid, good work."

At the time I was coming off a bender of reading concerning the Beat poets: Kerouac, Ginsberg, etc... and there was a patient on that locked ward who had a written correspondence with Ginsberg--which I thought was great. I heard from the start that Anne Sexton, Sylvia Plath, Robert Lowell and others had "residencies at the asylum." I was intrigued by the poetry groups Sexton lead as well. In 1984 the dye- was- cast. I transferred out of the night shift, and took a day/evening position on Bowditch Hall--the very hall Lowell was housed on. There I saw a framed and signed copy of Lowell's poem "Waking in the Blue"--the famous poem he wrote about his time on Bowditch:

Waking in the Blue
by Robert Lowell

The night attendant, a B.U. sophomore,
rouses from the mare's-nest of his drowsy head
propped on The Meaning of Meaning.
He catwalks down our corridor.
Azure day
makes my agonized blue window bleaker.
Crows maunder on the petrified fairway.
Absence! My hearts grows tense
as though a harpoon were sparring for the kill.
(This is the house for the "mentally ill.")

What use is my sense of humour?
I grin at Stanley, now sunk in his sixties,
once a Harvard all-American fullback,
(if such were possible!)
still hoarding the build of a boy in his twenties,
as he soaks, a ramrod
with a muscle of a seal
in his long tub,
vaguely urinous from the Victorian plumbing.
A kingly granite profile in a crimson gold-cap,
worn all day, all night,
he thinks only of his figure,
of slimming on sherbet and ginger ale--
more cut off from words than a seal.
This is the way day breaks in Bowditch Hall at McLean's;
the hooded night lights bring out "Bobbie,"
Porcellian '29,
a replica of Louis XVI
without the wig--
redolent and roly-poly as a sperm whale,
as he swash buckles about in his birthday suit
and horses at chairs.

These victorious figures of bravado ossified young.

In between the limits of day,
hours and hours go by under the crew haircuts
and slightly too little nonsensical bachelor twinkle
of the Roman Catholic attendants.
(There are no Mayflower
screwballs in the Catholic Church.)

After a hearty New England breakfast,
I weigh two hundred pounds
this morning. Cock of the walk,
I strut in my turtle-necked French sailor's jersey
before the metal shaving mirrors,
and see the shaky future grow familiar
in the pinched, indigenous faces
of these thoroughbred mental cases,
twice my age and half my weight.
We are all old-timers,
each of us holds a locked razor.



For some reason this sparked me to start my first poetry group on the ward in 1986. At a later point I submitted Lowell's "Waking in the Blue" to Robert Pinsky's "Americans' Favorite Poems" anthology, with my introduction to the poem. To my delight I was included in the anthology.

I originally did the poetry group on the ward I worked on, but later on I moved them to other settings in the hospital. There was an article I did for a now defunct magazine "The Boston Poet" about poetry on the wards.

Some years ago Alex Beam of The Boston Globe was informed that I was running poetry groups on the ward. He called to ask me for an interview for an article he was writing about the "mad poets" at McLean for the magazine DoubleTake. The magazine was based in Somerville for a short while before it folded. He interviewed me at my home on Ibbetson Street in Somerville, Mass. It was evident that he was in the seminal stages of his research. Later I was surprised to get a call from a fact checker from the Atlantic magazine, in which another article about McLean by Beam was to appear.

In 2000 I started a poetry group on North Belknap Hall. Later I started to run groups on two separate wards, and expanded to Appleton House, a sort of community residence for long term patients. In 2002 I moved to Waverly House, and my poetry groups ended, although I did set up clients for literary and journalistic internships at "the new renaissance magazine," and "The Somerville News."

Over the years ex-patients to returning patients, to folks I see out in the street stop to talk about the groups. Some have published poetry since leaving the ward; one fellow I run into now and then is working on his English degree; one I lost touch with applied for a poetry program at Stanford. But whatever they took for the experience, I hoped the groups made them feel a little less like "patients" and a little more like a poet.

Something from ‘Nothing Divine Here’, new poems by Gloria Mindock

Something from ‘Nothing Divine Here’, new poems by Gloria Mindock

by Michael T. Steffen


Again and again readers mistake the authorship of writing. When something unpalatable comes across, we’re disinclined to read it. Poetry is a vessel from the old school, one whose techniques for navigating are subjected to the winds that blow, and the crisis which is emphatically expressed in Gloria Mindock’s new book ‘Nothing Divine Here’ in the first poem immediately announces that the dilemma is at the source or well of the inspiration, where a force like greed is being communicated so relentlessly, she can manage little more than to trace the audacity and violence coming at her, in the absence of grace and diplomacy, those gentler persuasions of the struggling heart:

I don’t dream anymore
I’m only a skeleton
thinking about water
cruelly hungering for a
harvest (“Water,” p. 3).

You can fool some of the people some of the time. While these poems from Gloria Mindock aren’t likely to uplift readers, they will convince their readers with their dismissal of foolery from the page.
The contradictions and metaphors that Mindock finds document a frustrated transformation of spirit light, as though now cast on an inalterable, un-pliable clay. The dream of a caring response from the Buberian “thou” of her address can only be reclaimed and reabsorbed in the ceaseless presence of our physical mechanical environment. It is this pervasive.

Sometimes when I sleep
I dream you love me
but when I’m awake your heart
fills with traffic (“Empty Field,” p. 11).

The observation is undeniable and subject to much of the rage which these poems express.
If the artist grasps no pliancy in this inspiration, however, the stuff of art, in poetry language, is itself endowed with nuance and play. By its nature poetry, witty, paradoxical, orchestrates the relationships of its words. To take any of its statements too literally is to be trumped. The apparently pessimistic sense of the title ‘Nothing Divine Here’, while evoking the Divine, to human senses becomes as true of an image as we get when we look, say, into the source of light—an alarmingly damaged perception of a black spot which we hope isn’t permanent. “I am what I am”—much human experience has agreed is the thing the directive mystery at the center of our existence would pronounce of Him/Herself. Mindock virtually makes visible that disappearance with the title ‘(Nothing) Divine…’—Where?


And the “Nothing,” set mimetically as it were beside the Divine’s stubbornness to be, exists by virtue of remaining indefinite. Nothing is also a wink at feminine determination, in the Shakespearean sense, the ribald opposite of something, that physical void which nature haunts to fill, that place of creation, and so the poet’s plangent song, sounding out anger, danger perhaps, but certainly love in the persistence to find and make expressions with this indelible obstacle of our human reflection.
‘Nothing Divine Here’ is a volume of poetry that will yield in measure with the reader’s curiosity and nearness, quintessentially exemplifying what the French critic Rolland Barthes termed the zero degree of writing, from a voice like Philomela’s through the inner ear of conscience.



‘Nothing Divine Here’, poems by Gloria Mindock
published by Usokustampa Press, Cetinje Montenegro & Springfield, Virginia
is sold for $15.00

DO SOMETHING, DO SOMETHING, DO SOMETHING by Joseph Riippi

DO SOMETHING, DO SOMETHING, DO SOMETHING by Joseph Riippi (http://ampersandreview.com/Do_Something!.html) Ampersand Books



-- Reviewed by Manson Solomon



Do Something, Do Something, Do Something, as one might guess from the title, tells three stories. In the space of its 176 pages, we learn of the travails of three separate young people, each in desperate straits and each needing to “do something” to work through their troubles in order to emerge on the other side. The cover illustration depicts a man in work clothes building a chimney brick by brick from the inside, which suggests to us that what these folks urgently need to do is repair their inner turmoil by painstaking reconstruction of their psyches. And the urgency is communicated visually by the fact that the emerging chimney is constructed in the shape of an exclamation point.



The author subtitles his book “a novel”, which it is insofar as style is concerned, being a work of creative fiction. Yet, since the three characters interact only incidentally and not in any way central to the development of the narrative, it is really three parallel stories, gathered together for their common thread of psychological distress brought on by traumatic violence. They each desperately need to “do something” to work through their troubles and they all do so by means of some form of writing.



We are introduced to S (or “the girl with the starfish tattoo”), who has had her life turned upside down by a traumatizing rape, and who has had a starfish tattooed on her breast to remind her that, like a starfish which has lost a tentacle, it is possible to regenerate and become whole again. We meet her stepbrother, Eddie, who has been put into a psychiatric ward for attacking a stripper with a broken glass in a fit of blind rage after the death of his mother. Eddie spends the whole novel trapped in his disturbed head in the ward, with a pile of books by his bedside, trying to deal with his condition by wrestling with the existential perspectives of Sartre, Sontag, Carver, Nietzsche, and others. He records his observations in notebooks all titled “Something About . . . “ and with “Do something, do something, do something” written on the back cover of each journal. (Though Bellow is never mentioned, shades of Herzog?). And thirdly, there is Martin, the playwright, who, when we meet him is totally drunk and throwing up (an all-too-common central condition of these unfortunate protagonists) and whose particular trauma is the loss of his prematurely-born daughter and of the divorce which it precipitated, and who is about to go back to Seattle to do something, do something, do something as a writer-director. So what the three protagonists have in common is being psychologically messed up, being in desperate need to “do something” to fix their lives, and choosing some form of writing as a vehicle for healing -- and a lot of escapist binge drinking and puking.



The book takes us into the characters’ minds in exquisite detail, beginning immediately with the prologue in which the sensitive Eddie is slapped down by his overbearing, brash mother while tenderly engaged with a delicate dead bird. Intimations of what is to come -- which is a deftly painted series of word-pictures displaying the protagonists’ mental anguish, each unique and each in its own context, set out in alternating short chapters illustrated with the three protagonists’ three icons: starfish, pile of books, bridge.



Joseph Riippi has an artistic sensibility, is able to get into his characters’ heads, describe their thoughts and the settings and events in which they are each caught up with sensitivity and in meaningful detail. And he conveys it in a way which draws the reader in. There is some really good material here, and one senses that there is potential for something really exceptional, were it to be marinated, developed, corrected, perfected.



Unfortunately, it seems to have been swept into print before it was quite ready. For some inexplicable reason, the words have found their way onto the page amidst a thicket of malaprops, grammatical errors, incorrect prepositions, and so on, basic stuff which distracts one from the substance of the writing like a spray of impudent little slaps in the face. These should surely have been purged by a competent copy editor before going to print. Some of the best authors have had trouble with grammar, spelling, and so on, but that is why publishers have editors. It is all the more surprising to see this here since Riippi specifically thanks a long list of supporters, including his MFA supervisor (who provides a glowing back cover blurb), all of whom presumably reviewed the material, and especially since parts of the book have already appeared in more than a dozen publications. Writing longhand with pen and paper has gone the way of the dinosaur, but can it be that texting and twittering have already rendered us all thumbs when it comes to basic grammatical facility, even in English departments and even amongst writers professionally plying the craft? Have all the middle school English teachers abandoned their students for hi tech? Sending this otherwise talented author’s first book out like this is like sending a beautiful young girl out to her first prom with acne all over her face. Someone needed to take her back inside and fix it before she got into the limo.



This is a good first effort, with many excellent lyrical passages, which suggests that Riippi will have more to offer in the future, provided he takes care to baste it well before taking it out of the oven and putting it on the table.

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



****Manson Solomon emerged from the womb with a mission to be a writer with a large trust fund. However, since the trust fund turned out to be inexplicably missing from the equation, older and supposedly wiser counselors suggested that a commitment to a life of writing was, under the circumstances, almost certainly a guarantee of debilitating starvation. So he majored in economics.



In addition, he felt early on that a writer needed to have some life experiences in order to have something to write about, such as love and death, fortunes won and lost, conflict and resolution, war and peace, agony and ecstasy, etc etc. (Which, by the way, turned out to be totally false: he has since learned that most writers just make it all up anyway, and the nerdy reading public, not having had much worldly experience themselves, doesn’t know the difference.)



Accordingly, he spent the intervening years exploring reality as an economics professor, an investment analyst, then, seeking wider horizons, a philosophy professor, and, wider, a research fellow in social psychology. He roamed the world, inducing various academic institutions of advanced learning in London, New York, Jerusalem, Johannesburg, Wellesley, Cambridge, etc. etc. to provide funds for advanced degrees and/or research programs and/or teaching positions -- which funds he secretly used to further his hidden agenda of acquiring life experiences to write about. But when children appeared on the scene, with their outrageous requirements of funding for tuition, camps, clothing, food and suchlike trivia, he went back to getting and spending again.



Somewhere in the midst of these explorations, he put in a spell in a hippie commune in Cape Breton, Nova Scotia, where learned first hand about life in a small fishing village and on the side established and ran the largest handcrafts outlet in Maritime Canada. After the commune went the way of the 60’s, he continued to return every summer for the past almost 40 years to witness the rather dramatic changes which are the subject of his presentation tonight.

Best?—Holderest Book Yet: Poems from the Left Bank: Somerville, Mass.

Best?—Holderest Book Yet: Poems from the Left Bank: Somerville, Mass.

review by Michael T. Steffen


None of us quite rise to the poetry we would ideally write. Some of our best stabs at the art in fact spring ironically from that very fountain of failure, as W.H. Auden remembered the salt
and wit of Yeats:

Sing of human unsuccess
In a rapture of distress.

If Doug Holder shies from the empathy of rapture and distress, the subject of the poetry in his new chapbook Poems from the Left Bank: Somerville, Mass., remains “human unsuccess,” shortcoming, such as the “Fellow Cherub Outside a Liquor Store”:

He turned his face toward me—
A smiling mouth
That had turned cruel
Still with the fleshy
Flushed cheeks
Of a choirboy.

Typically the poem’s subject gets caught in the mirror of a choice adjective as from the lit glass window of that store, perhaps with an insular examination that is glaring enough for us his familiar readers to slap a knee at, this humor, which is always at the observer’s and observed’s exchange of expenses. Nothing, the mendicant in front of the store would agree, is free. Above all, Holder’s heart is not going to do the man the disservice of bleeding for him, and the poet is being a little kind to be cruel himself, a little like Hamlet whose street, in another poem in the collection, Holder, with a sketch of drama, ponders, vacillates at and turns from.
The twenty poems from Left Bank (a shifty witticism for these hard times) if less generous in the poet’s consideration and feeling, give us friendlier versions of Holder impersonating the expected Holder that previous books have acquainted us with. It is more Holderesque than poetic, more characteristic than adventurous or traditional. A skirt of heresy for the religious.
A sign of the times. An authentic keepsake for readers. A value for the read.


Poems from the Left Bank: Somerville, Mass.
by Doug Holder
published by Propaganda Press
is available from Alternative Current/P.O. Box 398058/Cambridge, MA 02139
see also alt.current@gmail.com

Interview with Diaspora Poet/Performer/Artist Li Min Mo

Interview with Diaspora Poet/Performer/Artist Li Min Mo
By Doug Holder

Li Min Mo has had a long, nomadic journey as an artist. Born in China, she has lived in many locales, including the Lower East Side of Manhattan where she cut her teeth as an artist. Mo now resides in Cambridge but is a valued member of the Somerville-based artist group the “Streetfeet Women.” She has taught drama, storytelling, and history to children and adults for many years. She holds an M.A. in Theatre and Education from Goddard College in Vermont and an M.F.A. from Emerson College in Creative Writing. In the sixties she worked with Peter Schuman’s Bread and Puppet Theatre, as well as other cutting edge dramatic groups. She has written a memoir "Spirit Bridges" that recounts her childhood in China to her forays in the Lower East Side of New York City. I spoke with her on my Somerville Community Access TV show: “Poet to Poet: Writer to Writer.”

Doug Holder: You endured incredible hardship; from your childhood in China to your time on the Lower East Side of Manhattan. It has been said:” What doesn't kill you makes you stronger." Is this true for you?

Li Min Mo: I actually think that statement has one shade of the truth. Because of my condition, (I was diagnosed with Narcolepsy when I was 18), I became very depressed. Then the doctor prescribed amphetamines. Back then nobody knew a lot about them. I had to school and work a part time job. I walked around like a drugged fool. I don't think that made me stronger just confused and depressed.

DH: Well out of adversity comes art.


LMM: Well, if you have art. If you are passionate and committed to art...which I am. I am because I know this is the vehicle where my "other" part of me...that is not injured...is going to express itself. And I don't think a lot of people see art this way. I don't make a lot of things because objects are not the way I do art. I create art because this will make me whole. So there is another part of myself that can't explain things....I do express myself when I paint or tell a story, for instance.

DH: Your mom was quite artistic.

LMM: My mom was a formidable character. She qualified as a super mom--because she was doing so much. She slept five hours every night had jobs in factories and went to school on weekends.

DH: Why did you and your Mom leave China?

LMM: My dad was arrested by the communists back in 1949. And subsequently he was executed by the government. They wanted to "educate" my mom, or brainwash her. My mom knew that this was not where she wanted to go. Basically she told them "I can't be changed. I am going to remain decadent." So they knew she wasn't going to go through the transformation a revolution requires. They told her she could leave--later we landed in Hong Kong. She had a wonderful job as a writer there. Ever since we left China my mother wanted to come to America. She felt America would give her the best break to raise her kids. I think for us she made the sacrifice. She gave up her writing career and profession, and the community of writers. It took her eight years to get here--and we wound up in New York. My mom kept a journal--she wrote her whole life.

DH: You wrote the opening of one's self is the hardest work the artist undertakes. Explain.

LMM: I think when I look in the mirror what I see is just one face of mine. I also know there is another part of me that is not in the mirror. When you write about yourself you have to write about all these layers. It's like peeling an onion--it makes you cry. It's like taking off your clothes in front of everyone. I can never see my own back, but if I am writing about my back I am forced to look at the imperfection. When you write and write well, you share these scars.

DH: You are a member of an artistic group of women writers the "Streetfeet Women.” Can you give us a little history of the group?

LMM: Mary McCullough and Ellen Harap founded the group. Its former name was the Streetfeet's Children's workshop. In the early 80's I was hired to work with children in the Mission Hill section of Boston, creating a summer art program, as well as producing plays. Our group was doing a lot of theatre. Eventually we went to Africa because we heard there was a women's conference being held there...this was 1985. Before that we raised money to travel to Africa, and wrote our own theatre piece together--we created an ensemble. From there we created and nurtured our own writing. We got together once-a-month. Our first anthology came out in 1998 "Laughing in the Kitchen"--we used to meet in each other’s kitchens. Before that we published small booklets: "On the Road to Beijing." was one such booklet. We chronicled our travels. We travel less now--we all have families and grandchildren.

DH: Can you talk about your involvement with the Bread and Puppet Theatre in the 60's. It had a very political mission, no?

LMM: Peter Schumann, the director of the theatre, started it in the Lower East Side of Manhattan. I was living there at the time. I was babysitting for a filmmaker and she introduced me to Peter. Peter decided to attach my face for his masks for his play against the Vietnam War. So my face became the face of the Vietnamese people. People would wear my mask in marches and in theatre productions. I did quite a bit of writing about Peter's work because he is quite the genius. He currently has a play at the Boston center for the Arts.

DH: China is an emerging power--or has already emerged. Do you think it will have a major impact on the literary world?


LMM: I think Chinese respect writing. Now that more people are educated writing and literature will be more prominent. The government is afraid of writers. They are afraid of what writers say. I don't think there is a good chance they can shut the country off to literature.

DH: Do you think your mother would want to go back to China now if she was alive? Would you like to go back to live there?

LMM: I don't fit there. I am the artist in exile. Right now it is hard for me to blend in. I think my mother would have liked to go back though.


For more information go to: http://www.liminmo.com

Somerville’s Mike Dacey: Publishing History “Repeats” Itself

Somerville’s Mike Dacey: Publishing History “Repeats” Itself

By Doug Holder

The first thing I noticed in Mike Dacey’s studio was a half full bottle of Balvenie Double Wood Whiskey. Now I enjoy a glass of Canadian Club with my wife on these cold evenings, so I was glad to see Dacey has good taste as well. The bottle almost seemed like a prop; it fit so well with the well-worn Letterpress printing machines and the gray winter light that filtered in before a much hyped snowstorm. Mike Dacey is an unpretentious man in his late 20’s, who is devoted to an arcane niche of the publishing and printing world: Letterpress Printing. Dacey describes this old school style of publishing as:

“A method of printing which includes raising up the surface of the plate and type, where as the ink is pushed into the paper... The current methods of printing are done by digital technology and offset methodology. “

Dacey prints beautifully conceived broadsides, chapbooks, and mono types from his space at the Fringe Movement Group, housed in an old factory at 9 Olive Square in the Union Square section of the city. The building is basically behind Sherman’s Café, home to the famed oatmeal scone as well an exhibit of Dacey’s work. His printing machines date back to the early 60’s. Dacey said: “As long as you keep them well-oiled they can last forever.”

As we talked Steve Shinnerev, a denizen of the building, and a talented videographer, traversed the expanse of the loft on a skateboard. The way I am feeling these days I would be more inclined to use a walker…but no matter.

“The Fringe Movement,” that Dacey is a proud member of, consists of young architects, engineers, a Green Roof designer, and others, who make their home here as they make their way into the marketplace.

Dacey calls his business the “Repeat Press” and judging by the quality of his products you would be well-advised to visit more than once. Dacey, a Somerville resident, lives with his girlfriend Alex Feinstein, another well-known name in arts circles in the Square. Dacey explained Somerville has been good to him, “I was awarded a Fellowship Grant from the Somerville Arts Council, and my business has become my livelihood.”

I asked Dacey why he chooses to work with Letterpress printing. Dacey said, looking at the ancient machines with a concerned, paternal gaze:

“I like working with my hands. I have a background in Graphic Design from Hampshire College. I think the end result of what I do is special and unique.”

I viewed some of his creations including, well-designed matchbooks covers, a broadside with the poetry of Devin King, as well as a slew of posters for Somerville’s P.A. Lounge as well as other area venues.

Now his stuff isn’t cheap, but you get what you pay for in this world. You can see Dacey’s craftsmanship and his well-honed artistic sensibility in everything he produces. From his cotton-based papers--to his wood type or metal type print productions--Repeat Press is well worth the price!

For more information go to: http:// repeatpress.com

They’re Dropping Bombs Not Ham Sandwiches by Michael Nash

They’re Dropping Bombs Not Ham Sandwiches
Michael Nash
Cervena Barva Press
www.cervenabarvapress.com
$14.00

Review by Renee Schwiesow

Michael Nash is not a novice when it comes to writing for the stage. A teacher of drama and English, his passion for stage productions shows in his work, which includes “Public Heroes, Private Friends” and the musical “Signs of Fire,” a work about the last year of Van Gogh’s life. Nash’s extensive background in theatre includes twenty productions and this experience is showcased in “They’re dropping bombs not Ham Sandwiches,” which takes place in a hospital corridor.

“We will remember them,” a doctor and nurse proclaim.

“We will remember,” the rest of the cast responds.

As reader, we are reminded to remember as well. Nash’s work offers the opportunity to spend time eavesdropping on a conversation between an elderly gentleman, who served during WW II, and a young man who was the recent victim of a terrorist attack in Northern Ireland. Back and forth we go, bouncing from the conversation and recollections of the elderly man’s war experience to the younger man’s questioning, searching for answers.

The entire cast is comprised of five characters who build the story that affirms the heartbreak of war throughout the two acts. Perhaps it is the sparseness of character and set that add to the starkness of reality, the poignancy of the dialogue that Nash has written. Perhaps it is the white walls that drive us to feel the madness of wars where men are marched “like lambs to the slaughter.”

On occasion we are witness to dialogue that finds us retreating into quiet contemplation. On occasion we leave a work unable to immediately articulate the emotional impact the dialogue has upon us. We are left stranded in thought; we are left holding compassion for the countless others across the world that the characters represent. “They’re Dropping Bombs not Ham Sandwiches,” is one such work. Those of us who have not experienced war first hand, indeed know nothing of the horror. But Nash’s dialogue and his characters draw us into a world that unfolds into vivid picture, and his words:

“Makes you wonder how anybody can treat another human being in such a way. . .used for horrendous experiments. Butchered. And burnt. . .”

resound in our ears long after we have put the play down.

LUKE SALISBURY: A Bagel Bard's Novel Approach to the Civil War.

LUKE SALISBURY: A Bagel Bard's Novel Approach to the Civil War.



Bunker Hill Community College English professor and a member of Somerville's Bagel Bards Luke Salisbury has written a number of books about baseball, as well as assorted novels, etc.... His latest work-in-progress is the novel "No Common War." I decided to use this passage from his manuscript that concerns a Union soldier the night before Antietam as a teaser for you readers and literary agents out there. You can read about Salisbury's impressive background at http://lukesalisbury.com.



The night of the 16th was rainy, misty, cold. Men remember it differently. The Pennsylvanians thought no battle imminent. Black Hats and Yorkers didn’t agree. General John Gibbon remembered the night was solemn, dismal, silent. David Hamer remembered how close the lines were. I remember pickets firing sporadically. Occasional artillery echoed through rain and mist. McClellan could have attacked Tuesday and destroyed the part of Lee’s Army camped at Sharpsburg, but McClellan was McClellan—he waited, finicking with details, laboring with anticipation, parading before subordinates, worrying about his men. The day delay doubled Lee’s Army as Jackson arrived and A.P. Hill started from Harper’s Ferry.


No one forgets the next day. The 17th, the bloodiest day in American history. More men would die on a Wednesday in Maryland than in all the wars Americans had fought. Those remembering, commemorating, making meaning, sanctifying—know the stakes—British recognition of the Confederacy, peace Democrats agitating to settle with the South, the Emancipation Proclamation—the document that gave the war the moral clarity of Lincoln himself. All this was only suspected, guessed or wished for by those shivering and chewing coffee beans the night before. No fires. Food cold. Sleep difficult. Sergeant William Harris of the 2nd Wisconsin—he’d be in the second wave—tried to pray himself to sleep and failed.

I prayed.



Many Yorkers and Black Hats got stomach aches as we helped ourselves to apples in the Miller and Poffenberger orchards. The Rebs had been eating green corn and apples for weeks. Ten thousand straggled—those remaining had a variety of ailments. McClellan, with the help of over-cautious, over-estimating, overpaid Pinkerton, inflated Lee’s number ten times, and decided a phantom army lay in reserve behind South Mountain.


Each army had moments of panic. A Zouave from New York City tripped over the regimental dog, fell into a stack of rifles and two regiments scrambled wildly, banging into each other, cussing and running amok until they discovered they weren’t under attack.


In the West Woods, the other side of D.M. Miller’s cornfield, a line of Rebel horses spooked. Sentries remembered it was quiet, too quiet, when something or Something—it was later described as a Spirit—frightened horses who broke their tethers and ran into the night. Major Sorrel and his men chased horses till dawn.


The night was noises, blunders, palpable fear. Later there was a desperate need to make sense of it.

Dave Christy founder of the Alpha Beat Press Has Passed Away...

I received notice that Dave Christy founder of the Alpha Beat Press has passed away. The press was very prolific and influential in the little magazine and chapbook scene in the 80's and 90's. I had my first chap published by Dave Christy: "Poems of Boston and Just Beyond: From the Back Bay to the Back Ward" May he rest in peace.


From the website:


Alpha Beat Press has been publishing Beat Generation, post-Beat Independent and other modern writings since 1986. Alpha Beat Press had its beginnings in a Montreal flat with the idea of keeping the aesthetics and sensibilities of the Beat generation alive. Our first magazine, Alpha Beat Soup was unique, being the only small press magazine publishing original and current Beat writings. In our new magazine Bouillabaisse and in our other poetry publications we have continued in that tradition, publishing a wide variety of writers and styles, from Bukowski to the lesser known poets. Alpha Beat Press is certainly the best of the small press!

Past Contributors include: John Clellan Holmes, Charles Bukowski, Beatrice Wood, Allen Ginsberg, Diane DiPrima, Carolyn Cassady, Gary Snyder, Carl Solomon, Ken Kesey, Simon Vinkenoong, Kaviraj George Dowden, John Montgomery, Jack Kerouac, Ken Babbs, Bruce Fearing, Ray Bremser, Al Aronowitz, Ana Christy, Gerald Nicosia, Diane Wakowski, Bob Kaufman, Steve Richmond, Janine Pommy Vega, Antler, Herbert Huncke, Pradip Choudhuri, Jack Micheline, Gregory Corso, Joan Reid, Allen Cohen, Yusuke Keida, Barbara Moraff, A.D.Winans, Tuli Kupferberg, Richard Morris, George Montrgomery, Frank Moore, Erling Friis-Baastad, t.k.splake, ruth weiss, elliott, Ted Berrigan, Neeli Cherkovski, Clayton Eshleman, Gerald Locklin, Joy Walsh, Anne Waldman, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Michael McClure, Kurt Nimmo, Ron Androla, Graham Cournoyer, Bill Costley, Jan Kerouac, Jeanne Conn, Stephan Ronan, Christine Zwingman, Chris Challis, Lyn Lifshin, Ulvis Alberts, Lorrie Jackson, Tony Seldin, Judson Crews, Steve Allen, William S. Burroughs, Neal Cassady & Ted Joans.

Review of “emily dickinson” by Irene Koronas,

Review of “emily dickinson” by Irene Koronas, sized 4 X 6 and 1/2 inches, 22 pages, Propaganda Press, Alternating Current, PO Box 398058, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02139, $5, 2010

By Barbara Bialick

When Irene Koronas writes her fine “experimental” poetry—sparsely punctuated prose poems, the reader would do well to experiment with the experimental experimentally.
For she is an expert mentally.

The first poem, “dear emily” reads in one interpretation, “who could know this intimacy with self would become expository tramping through every thought…we find your dogmatic loneliness…not an able companion…You dare not walk across the lawn. Yet book after book are on almost everyone’s bookshelf…”

Or you could say, “know this intimacy…self would become.. .(our) expository tramping through. every thought… trying to partner and lead…stepping on…you dare…not walk…a cross (on) the lawn…”

This handy little book with lovely pastel stripes designed by the author on the cover, can join you in a pocket or purse, perfect for sipping as you sip your coffee. Dickinson fans should find the book tasty as we learn to appreciate Emily the recluse from Koronas’ traveled and knowledgeable point of view. And also our own, depending how we choose to read it.

Many of these poems are numbered and appear to correspond to Dickinson’s poems by the same number. Have fun. Read both.

Irene Koronas is a well-known and published poet in the Cambridge/Somerville time zone and is one of the original members of the group called The Bagel Bards. She is also the poetry editor of the Wilderness House Literary Review.

Gnawed Bones: Poetry by Peggy Schumaker

Gnawed Bones
poetry

By: Peggy Schumaker

Reviewed by: E. Hanson

Peggy Schumaker in Gnawed Bones, writes from an interior landscape as well as one based on nature. Her approach is observational.
Her usage seems to me to be perfect. Her constructs building upon the general, leads us to personal truths with a teaming desert of the universal and is a pleasure to read.
I have many favorites in this admirable chapbook. However, if I had to pick just one poem out of the collection it would be “Mother Tongue”. It has an elemental feel with intuitive knowledge. Her credentials are impeccable. (The only thing missing is a translation.)
I love that she likes to use visual art as a springboard. (i.e. “Deliverance”, “That Painting I Didn’t Buy”, “Upset Woman”, etc.) My other favorite is “Sea Change”. I feel that this writer understands the richness of language but also understands that less is more.
There are wonderful poems in this collection that deal with loss. I especially like “Chickens”, “Ha Ha Ha”, and “Albondigas” which stands out for its sheer pathos.
In Gnawed Bones, the reader will come away with a very personal sense of who this author is and the basic nature in all of us, which makes us what we are.
Thank you for a good read!

Shake Down by Andie Ryan

Shakedown
by Andie Ryan
Lenox Road Publishing © 2009
ISBN 978-1-935365-05-1
Review by Steve Glines


Every Saturday morning our editor arrives with a bag, or on a bad day, a box of books to be reviewed. The poetry books are grabbed first, most of the Bagel Bards are poets and a chapbook is a quick read and an equally quick assessment and review. A quick thumbs up or down. The books that remain on the table are eyed warily. They are large, they are fiction, they are novels. They are daunting. The last book on the table carried the title “Shakedown.” A few picked it up, thumbed through it and put it back down. Some snickered, some just skimmed a paragraph or two, and some read the blurbs on the back. I picked it up. Someone rolled their eyes and said, “It’s about a company called ‘Sledd Payne’.” I put it back down.

As our meeting ended our editor, waving “Shakedown” in the air said, “OK, who’s going to review this book?”

When no one answered I said, “I will.”

It’s an hour long train ride back to my house in the burbs, enough time to get a feeling for what a book’s about:

• A murder mystery set in the 1970’s involving a Sledd Payne employee.
• Someone notices that things don’t add up, is money be4ing embezelled?
• A man named Hollister, a senior executive at Sledd Payne is on the case.
I almost missed my stop. At home I opened the book again, reading through dinner, through the 11 P.M. news, well past 3 A.M.:
• A young rising executive discovers hidden accounts with huge sums that are traded daily.
• She’s mysteriously killed.

I won’t go on. The story is a gripping who done it. We know who the villains are and we think we know who the good guys are but the twists and turns make this novel a great read and anyone who’s followed the ENRON or WorldCom story this story is completely plausible. It makes you wonder what skeletons are hidden inside the boardrooms of America’s major corporations.
This book is recommended for anyone who likes a good light thriller.

Two Somerville presses strut their literary stuff Feb.13 at the Somerville Public Library

(Cervena Barva Press)






Two Somerville presses strut their literary stuff Feb.13 at the Somerville Public Library


Ibbetson Street Press and the Cervena Barva Press will hold a joint celebratory reading at the Somerville Central Library Feb. 13, 2010 -- 2p.m. The two presses are Somerville-based and have prolifically published local, national and international poets and writers. Cervena Barva Press was founded by Somerville resident Gloria Mindock; the Ibbetson Street Press was founded in 1998 by Doug Holder, Richard Wilhelm and Dianne Robitaille.

The reading, held at the central library, is located at 79 Highland Ave. in Somerville. Buses to the library leave from Davis Square and stop at the venue on a regular basis. Open mic and featured readers will be included. Books will be on sale from both of the presses.


The reading’s purpose is to launch the new issue of Ibbetson Street , the literary journal. Ibbetson 26 features poetry from Zvi Sesling, Patricia Brodie, Kim Triedman, Dorian Brooks, Lyn Lifshin, A.D. Winans, Kelly Jean White and others, as well as an exclusive interview with Fred Marchant.


Cervena Barva Press will feature part of its roster of celebrated authors: Francis Alix, Irene Koronas, Tam Lin Neville, and Mark Pawlak

Ibbetson Street publishes the best of the small press and is distributed nationally. They have received notice in The Boston Globe, Harvard Review, Small Press Review, Salamander, PRESA, and other respected journals. Ibbetson’s magazines and books are carried at a host of independent bookstores

Climbing The Family Tree Nancy Morgan-Boucher

Climbing The Family Tree
Nancy Morgan-Boucher
nimboucher @ comcast.net
2009 $7.00

Once I get over the formatting in this self published
chapbook, and try to focus on the poems; when I'm
able to concentrate, because visually it is hard to accept
the machine like centering. Okay, I'm over it,
lets get on with the reading:

"There must be
something, he said that
turns you on, something
that sparks you, that you
once wanted to live
for…"

The poems speak eloquently of family, the poets particular
family and there are often universal instances, phrases
rendered with a knowing, "We are born oozing with thick
wet skin…" The reader is often presented with well written
personal beliefs, "like a witch, with an easy wave of her wand…"
Nancy considers each word and juxtaposes verses in that
same consideration. She gives to her readers a strong
feminine perspective with references that come from her
experiences. These poems are voiced succinctly and may
require an audible understanding to be appreciated more
readily. It is an intimate poetic look at one persons life.

Irene Koronas
Poetry Editor
Wilderness House Literary Review
www.whlreview.com

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.