Doug Holder, Paul Steven Stone, Steve Glines and Andrey Gritsman to read at KGB Literary Bar in NYC June 9, 2010

The Event is "Boston Small Press Poetry Scene"



BOSTON SMALL PRESS POETRY SCENE
KGB Bar, 85 East 4th StreetNew York City, NY
June 09, 2010
7:00 pm - 9:00 pm

Doug Holder is the founder of the Ibbetson Street Press. His poetry and prose have appeared in Rattle, Long Island Quarterly, Endicott Review, Main St. Rag and others. Doug is the author of many books and chapbooks. He teaches writing at Bunker Hill Community College in Boston, and Endicott College in Beverly, Mass. He holds an M.A. in Lit. from Harvard University.

Paul Steven Stone’s writings have appeared in a boatload of newspapers and magazines. His comic masterpiece, Or So It Seems has been called “A rollicking spiritual page-turner!” His story collection, How To Train a Rock, was culled from 25 years of genre- and mind-bending columns. Stone lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts and works as Director of Advertising for W.B. Mason.

Andrey Gritsman is a poet, essayist and translator, born in Russia. He writes in two languages. His works have appeared in multiple magazines and anthologies. Andrey is the author of several collections and recipient of an honorable mention in the Pushcart Prize Anthology, and his current book of poems Live Landscape has just been released by Cervena Barva Press.

Steve Glines is the founder and Editor of Wilderness House Press and WHLReview. He is the author of Seven Days in Fiji a literary travelogue and the poetry chapbook Opuscula (Cervena Barva Press). His works have appeared in Ibbetson Street Press, four Bagel Bard Anthologies and elsewhere. Steve is also editor-in-chief at ISCS Press.

Host: Susan Tepper

Hanging Loose 96

Hanging Loose 96
Hanging Loose Press
ISSN #0440-2316
2010

Review by Irene Kornas

What is happening in poetry being written presently? There seems, (to me) to be a blunt force; words mean exactly what is intended. There does not seem to be an under belly, metaphor, or a play with words. The writing feels like reality television. The spectator thinks, what is being shown as immediacy, an on the spot reaction to a situation; in reality the shows are scripted, similar to the poems being presented, presently, to the reading audience. This says to me, "any one can write poetry." Right? I'm making judgments about poetry today and I'm sorry for using this wonderful magazine as the scapegoat, but, here are some of the first lines from poems in this journal, that substantiate my premise, a scripted immediacy that perpetrates itself as poetic reality, but then again, it is a reality, story telling:

1. A woman sells expensive lotion
2. My mother does this thing
3. She stood between blacktop
4. I woke in my own bed
5. lowered myself into the small bluish

Here are five last lines from other poems:

1. and Jesus answering, "Everybody pays"
2. Blistering line drive
3. My father was a hard act to follow
4. Eager to fulfill a consumer need
5. Where the resolution seemed a good deal less than clear

In supposing these lines are poetry, when taken out of context, I might read them as an opening and closing of a newspaper article, and with this need to present reality as real, like a reporter reporting what happen yesterday, and what's wrong with that? now, that, newspapers are switching to computers, one will be able to take a manageable paper book and read while on the way to work.

The challenge for me is to stay realistic while reading prose, poetry and essays, by trying not to think for myself, but to read what is written as the Gospel truth of what is being told.

There are twenty four men and thirteen women represented in this magazine and I applaud the diversity of cultures and gender. This alone keeps my interest even when those differences, 'blur' in sameness:

"Man is a verb
Meaning to staff
Or people

Woman is not a verb
You cannot woman
Nobody knows
What will happen
If you try" Mac Barret

I understand there is an over all theme, a purpose to the sameness in this issue, yet/still, I am reminded of the sameness in poetry, 'out-there' and Hanging Loose 96 offers me an opportunity to express my distaste for such ness:

"Render, oh render, render me asunder with your scarlet blooms. Startle me awake and wide to be gifted in purposeful ways. Why am I so fascinated by you? This is all I know about, to come to grips profoundly within the drama of family and raw feelings. Do I really want to call you up from within and inherit what is so hard to dislodge? One reason I try to figure these things out, I hear you whispering to me, is so as not to figure myself out. One image after another in this ultimate writing, stems from that dream image, and the message it leaves you to wander through, you devoutest of pilgrims. To say the word love, out loud". Pansy Maurer-Alverez

This magazine is worth the read and reads like quick fiction; each page tells a story. Don't pass over this issue or you'll miss the telling.

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

Family Photo: My brother Donald Holder and family at the opening of " Promises, Promises."

(Click on picture to enlarge)

This is a picture of Donald Holder, his wife Evan Yionoulis (A prominent director and on the Yale Drama Faculty), and my niece Sarah and nephew Josh--future Oscar winners and acclaimed artists.

They are at the opening of "Promises, Promises" on Broadway, where Don is the lighting designer. Don has won the Tony for lighting for the Lion King and South Pacific, among many other accolades.

---Doug Holder/ Boston Area Small Press and Poetry Scene

Bringing Poetic Vision to the Blind

Bringing Poetic Vision to the Blind



By Doug Holder


A friend of mine the novelist Paul Steven Stone, submitted a poetry collection I wrote “The Man in the Booth in the Midtown Tunnel” ( Cervena Barva Press) to Robert Pierson, the director of the Olive W. Lacy Recording Studio at the Perkins School for the Blind in Watertown, Mass. On a late April day, I drove out to the school, a sprawling and bucolic campus in the middle of a congested semi-urban area.

Pierson met me at the studio that is housed with the entire Braille and Talking Book Library on the school grounds.. The building includes a large warehouse for audio books that are shipped across the state and to the National Library Service for the Blind, which is under the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C. According to information that was sent to me the studio and the library were founded:

“on the belief that people who are visually impaired or print disabled must have access to as many materials that are available in the public libraries as possible. Therefore the studio produces recreational and informational readings to augment the Perkins Braille collection. The books range from novels, biographies and poetry, to children’s books and poetry.”

Because the library basically services Massachusetts residents, they look for local authors. The books submitted are viewed by a committee or panel, and if the members feel the book is worthy both for its general interest and the quality of its writing—they will record them on digital flash drives. Usually trained narrators read the books, but on rarer occasions the actual author does.

Before my seminal session I was handed a packet by Pierson that explained some of the finer points of reading. There was a discussion of the use of well-appointed pauses, how to animate your voice so you won’t talk in a dry monotone, how to take on a female voice if you are a male and vice-a-versa.

The narrator sits in a sound proof booth and reads from his work, while the monitor is outside the booth, working a computer, and watching for errors in speech, background noise, etc….

Pierson has worked as studio director for the past 14 years, and evidently has a passion for his work. He said the program is funded by the state, and in spite of the dire financial straits of late, their funding has not been cut.

Some of the titles that have or will be recorded are: Bunker Hill Community College professor Luke Salisbury’s novel “The Cleveland Indian,” “Shock” by Kitty Dukakis, “The Sins of the Father” by Ronald Kessler, “How to Train a Rock” by Paul Steven Stone, and many others.

The library and studio is presided over by Director Kim Charlson. Charlson, a nationally and internatinally recognized library director for the blind, told me that the library has over 110,000 titles in audio,and Braille. She proudly reported that the library was voted best library in the nation for the blind in 2008. I asked her how many Somerville residents use the library, and she told me that she has a list of 175.

Charlson lost her vision at 11, and has been living a full and active life ever since. She said one of the biggest challenges for her is to get people to take advantage of the services they offer. " For every one person we serve, eight to ten are not served." I asked her if any Somerville authors have been recorded for the library, and she came up with former Somerville resident Steve Almond, author of "Candyfreak" as well as other titles.

Charlson said audio books are more popular than Braille, and that like any library she has to be on top of the latest cutting edge technology.

After speaking with Charlson I went back to the recording studio. I heard my voice on a playback on a practice audio. I noted its clean and pristine quality—so unlike recordings of my work in the past. I left feeling good about my work and the chance for it to do some good in this world.


***Perkins School for the Blind‎175 North Beacon Street, Watertown, MA 02472(617) 924-3434‎ – (617) 972-7285‎ Perkins accepts charitable donations.

Last Night at the Wursthaus by Doug Holder

(Photo by Rachel Cunningham)

(Click on picture to enlarge)

(This is a picture of my poem " Last Night at the Wursthaus" on the window of the Grolier Poetry Bookshop in Harvard Square ( Cambridge, Mass.) The Wursthaus is a now defunct eatery, much loved by locals and others.

EAT NOT THY MIND by CHARLES PLYMELL

EAT NOT THY MIND by CHARLES PLYMELL (Glass Eye Books/Ecstatic Peace Library


Review by MANSON SOLOMON








Just as it takes a certain sensibility to, for example, dig New Orleans jazz a hundred years later, so it takes a certain frame of mind to relate to poetry harkening heavily back to a bygone era. Does that mean it takes a particular, even peculiar, mindset to respond wholeheartedly to Keats or Wordsworth or Shelley? Perhaps. But perhaps not. After all, are they not assigned to every schoolchild as examples to be appreciated, esteemed and emulated? Still and all, not every contemporary poet or consumer of poetry is at ease with strict rhyme and meter: to many it is a confining and distorting formal straitjacket which hinders and diminishes. We have evolved, they say, the past provides stepping stones not prescriptions.



So one can argue that it is inappropriate to criticize the styles of bygone times – it is what people did then: they made the most of the clay of the day. After all, Bach was not rendered passé by Beethoven and Beethoven is not the worse for having antedated Schoenberg or Stravinsky or Copeland. Chaucer and Raymond Carver were different writers for different times.



So what are we to do about writers who continue to write today in what is by now a bygone style? If it was valid then, spoke to people then, why not continue to produce in that vein? If it once was hot, why not? What’s wrong with composing a new St Louis Blues? Nothing, I suppose, if people today want to hear it, or read it. (And, of course, if it is good.)



We may not write like Keats any more – (hopefully) no one would think to try to produce another La Belle Dame Sans Merci -- but his truth and beauty are still relevant. So what about beat poetry? Are there still folks out there who can groove on the kaleidoscopic imagery of a bygone era? Well, why not? Allen Ginsberg, for example, is part of the accepted canon. His stuff happened in its context and we can appreciate it as an earnest expression of that context.



So here we have Charles Plymell – loose hanging far out tripper buddy of Kerouac, Ginsberg, Cassady et al -- writing beat poetry in 2009. As if to confirm his point of view, the frontispiece (as it used to be called) of his book comes fully equipped with a peace symbol and a psychedelic eyeball. Any child of the 60’s can understand where he is coming from, but is that enough?



And so, the First Question: who out there today will appreciate Charles Plymell’s new volume of beat poetry? What contemporary reader will trip along with lines such as these:



In the paradise of what was once the basin of angels

Sappho found without her cell phone popping a pill

under the olive tree and palm leaves swaying in L.A.



- or to the opening lines of the first poem in the book:



Stone locked savant harmony turn to wounded dust

near us the Monument Rocks in Grove County Kansas

where we heard the voice leveling the wind howling

from ancient shrieking calendars of fiery tent rituals

form violent hoof beats into the plains of autistically

unplugged grumpy Osage where the dominant Sioux

many Navaho came north before Black Kettle’s band

perished in tragic psychic fire of final transformation

cyanic voices gray faces beneath melancholy brown.





Is this poetry which can speak to universal human experience or solipsistic self-absorption? Will today’s readers dig it, or will they dismiss it as anachronistic drug-induced word salad, freely-associated disassociated half-images generated by an unfocused, overly distracted, mind? Is it creative improvisation or a soloist gone off on a random riff playing his own private non-harmonies? Far out is fine, but who’s driving?



Not all the pieces are free association enjambed poetry, however; some of them are essentially prose:



Stardust trapped at the bang became dehydrated, gave off methane gases in the deep

waters gradually through microbial flesh selves, reaching oxygen. Under high

pressure, methane insinuates itself into water around ancient microbes such as

archaea that do not have a nucleus and lack bacteria.



- or –



When anchored, yelled the captain to keep the ship from dragging or waggling at the

same angle from the sun the flower flicker after the waggle dance stops. Hmm said

old Nils about the natives. Their God seems good and true, so I guess we’ll have to kill them.



-- and so on.



And so, the Second Question: Is the poem-like beat stuff really poetry or an acid flashback – or both? Are the prosey pieces actually prose poems or just prosaic? In other words, even if you can dig it, does it really groove, is it any good?



Beats me.

“The Habit of Art” by Alan Bennett

“The Habit of Art” by Alan Bennett

Reviewed by Lawrence Kessenich



The Coolidge Corner Theatre has hosted four NT Live productions from Britain’s National Theatre this year—not live theatre on stage, but the next best thing: high-definition presentations of currently running plays, which are often sold out in London. The most recent is “The Habit of Art” by British playwright Alan Bennett, author of “The Madness of King George,” “The History Boys,” and a dozen other plays.



Poet W.H. Auden and composer Benjamin Britten, who were good friends, once collaborated on a choral piece that was staged in New York. It failed miserably, and Britten blamed Auden’s libretto for the failure. He apparently blamed Auden in a very personal way, because he also ended his friendship with Auden and, as far as anyone knows, they never saw each another again. Using the time-honored “what if?” fictional device, Bennett imagines what would have transpired if the two had met once more.



But this is only the core story of “The Habit of Art.” Bennett puts the play about Auden and Britten within a play about actors at London’s National Theatre rehearsing a play about Auden and Britten. The set is a reproduction of a rehearsal space at the National Theatre, and the actors are suitably “dressed down,” both in their clothing and their attitudes—particularly so at this rehearsal, where the director has been called away and the stage manager (marvelously played by Frances de la Tour) is running the show. They frequently stop in the middle of the action to question what their characters are doing, often addressing the playwright, who (to the dismay of some cast members, and often to his own dismay) is in attendance at this rehearsal.



We’re meant to feel that we’re getting an inside look at a playwright and actors at work. Mostly it is quite successful and entertaining, though, once in a while, what the actors say about their roles, or question the playwright about, seems a bit forced (witness the play-within-the-play’s narrator, who, fearing his character won’t make a strong enough impression on the audience, “tries out” cross-dressing and a blowing on a tuba). But for anyone who has never acted or seen actors at work—and perhaps even more so for someone who has—it’s fascinating to hear their concerns as they try to figure who the people they’re playing really are.



One also gets the sense of how personally involved actors become with their characters. This reviewer, having acted himself, has experienced the enmeshment with one’s personal life that inevitably seems to happen when playing a role. The actors in “The Habit of Art” convey this convincingly. We also see actors picking instantly picking up the roles of other actors who couldn’t make the rehearsal, displaying their versatility (Jennings and de la Tour are particularly good at this).



There are some entertaining “naughty bits,” too, as the English like to call them, when Auden and Britten interact with a “rent boy” (read male prostitute) who Auden has hired to come to his home.



But the stand-out portion of the performance for this reviewer was the play-within-the-play itself—especially when Auden and Britten finally confront one another. Richard Griffiths is, of course, not in make-up for his role as Auden during this putative rehearsal of the play, and he’s also a much more obese man than Auden was, but one feels that he’s captured Auden’s physical presence, mannerisms, and vaunted eloquence. One never doubts that one is hearing the voice of a poet when he speaks, whether he’s being profound and insightful or playful and sarcastic—though he’s never overbearing, either.



Alex Jennings as Britten is the perfect foil for Auden—much more circumspect, though no less self-centered and egotistical. Britten has come to Auden seeking support for his latest project, an opera based on Thomas Mann’s novel “Death in Venice.” Besides the project itself, the two discuss their respective lovers and respective views on how they handle being famous and homosexual—a much dicier prospect in their day. They discuss their respective arts, music and poetry, and make the occasional dig at one another. Jennings and Griffiths truly convey the comfort/discomfort of old friends who’ve quarreled getting back together after a long hiatus. It’s sad, moving, frustrating, and amusing.



Anyone interested in theatre, music, or art in general, and anyone who simply enjoys being entertained by superb actors, will find “The Habit of Art” well worth seeing. There is just one more screening of the play, on Saturday, May 8, 2010 @ 1:00pm. Tickets are available at the Coolidge Theatre box office or online at: http://store.coolidge.org/WebSales/Pages/TicketSearchCriteria.aspx?epguid=?guid=615521cb-c61a-41c9-abd2-f75643670013&&evtinfo=2641~3c2614bd-0781-48b8-a8a2-e21eaa37e962&.



The Coolidge Theatre will also be hosting an additional NT Live play, which has recently been added to the series: “London Assurance,” set in Victorian England, which is also sold out in for its entire run in London. Watch the Coolidge Theatre website for information on when the play will be shown.

Novelist Paul Steven Stone and Poet Doug Holder to read for the Perkins School for the Blind

Novelist Paul Steven Stone ("or So it Seems," "How to Train a Rock") and Poet Doug Holder ("The Man in the Booth in the Midtown Tunnel--Cervena Barva Press)have been asked to read from their work at the Perkins School for the Blind (Watertown, Mass.) in the school's ongoing project to record books for the visually impaired. Here is a history of the Clive W. Lacy Recording Studio (at the school) and the valuable work they do. The Studio Director is Robert Pierson.





HISTORY OF THE CLIVE W. LACY RECORDING STUDIO

The recording studio was established with funds left to the Perkins Library by Clive W. Lacy. A patron of the library for many years, Mr. Lacy was often frustrated by the lack of “significant” materials in the book collection. His generous contribution enabled the library to establish a professional recording studio environment where narrators could record books to be added to the National Library Service (NLS) collection.
Planning and research for the establishment and installation of the recording studio began in mid 1987. Bill West, Audio Book Production Specialist with the National Library Service for the Blind and Physically Handicapped, and Ray Fournier, a Braille and Talking Book Library patron, were instrumental in this process. Their willingness to give guidance and to share information was invaluable.
The original Lacy Studio was located in the lower section of the Howe building and had two analog booths. At the end of 1999, the entire Braille and Talking Book Library relocated across the Perkins campus to a newly renovated building. Additional funding made possible the purchase of four new recording booths and the hiring of the first full time studio manager.

PHILOSOPHY
Like the Perkins Braille and Talking Book Library (BTBL), the Clive W. Lacy Recording Studio is founded on the belief that people who are visually impaired or print disabled must have access to as many of the materials that are available in the public libraries as possible. Therefore, the studio produces recreational and informational reading to augment the Perkins BTBL collection. These books range from novels, biographies, and poetry, to children’s books, books on travel, history, and cooking.
Because the Perkins BTBL primarily serves residents of Massachusetts, the studio produces many recordings of books on local topics, and/or by local authors. In addition, the studio records English and United States literature of lasting value. To serve the most Perkins BTBL patrons, we record books that will interest many rather than just a few.


MISSION
The purpose of the Clive W. Lacy Recording Studio is to provide high caliber recordings for the listener’s enjoyment and enrichment. The studio strives to produce recordings that are accurate reproductions of the text and faithful renditions of the author’s message, while paying careful attention to sound track quality.

An Audience for David Ferry

An Audience for David Ferry, at the Suffolk University Poetry Center, Thursday May 1 2010
by Michael T. Steffen

Though I’ve been more a visitor to than a citizen of the “country that his poems made”my acquaintance with David Ferry’s work and name predates my particular awareness of him as a master translator and honored poet in his own right. Before I’d unwittingly enrolled myself in the singing school of translation, focused on the poet Pierre de Ronsard (which interested and required a lot of attention to Horace, a magisterial influence for the young French lyricist of paradoxical loves and apostrophized odes) I’d read Mr. Ferry’s rendering of Gilgamesh, little thinking in those days that the epic of ancient Mesopotamia would root into the earth of my memory to hold as it has.

For most of us Homer is as tangible a great father of poetry to be located, and the alpha of his Andra, if not mu of his Manin —will seem lunar enough of an island of origins for the milling young poet to plant his flag and say, From here I mend my sails. Let us go.

But David Ferry outdistanced most, if not all, English language poets in the archeological voyage, with the help of Professor Moran, by giving us the story

of him who knew the most of all men knew;
who made the journey; heartbroken; reconciled;

who knew the way things were before the Flood,
the secret things, the mystery; who went

to the end of the earth, and over; who returned,
and wrote the story on a tablet of stone.

Lost in translation, in thoughts thereof, and of the rare accomplishment of Gilgamesh, I waited for David Ferry to begin his reading.

Considering the span of personal notoriety and the great ancient names Ferry crosses (not long ago I’d read a passage from his translation of the Æneid in Poetry magazine), my mind was hardly prepared to see just a normal human being stand up to the podium. I may have been expecting a hovering spectral aura (behind a curtain to shield us) echoing with cavernous voices from the deep past to a murmur of fountains. That is the kind of ambience imagination can imbue an atmosphere with, I guess—as the man himself, not half as scary, on the contrary warm, welcoming, much admired, stood before us all, reading to us each, even to me. Or from where I sat, especially to me, as I remembered how I’d included in the introduction to my translations of Ronsard some comments on how the Renaissance poet transformed the phrases of his classical models to make new resonant language. “Cueillez dès aujourhuy les roses de la vie” to this day in most French ears remains as proverbial and familiar as Horace’s carpe diem, spread still around most of the western world.

Of so many readings from inspiring poets one is likely to attend in the area, a few will be especially remembered. This past Thursday’s reading at the Suffolk Poetry Center will be memorable for more than just myself among the standing-room-only gathering, including Fred Marchant, and the student and poet Mitch Manning who gave Mr. Ferry an insightful and impressive introduction.

Kathleen Spivack: A friend to Robert Lowell and a Ping Pong companion to Elizabeth Bishop.

Kathleen Spivack: A friend to Robert Lowell and a Ping Pong companion to Elizabeth Bishop.

Kathleen Spivack was a close friend of Robert Lowell, played Ping Pong on a regular basis with Elizabeth Bishop, and attended workshops with Anne Sexton and Sylvia Plath. Still, she is one of the most accessible poets I know. She goes out her way to help people, she has a slew of adoring students, and has an abundance of energy that seems to have not abated over the years. Spivak is the author of The Break Up Variations; The Beds We Lie In, Robert Lowell, A Personal Memoir; among other works. Spivack directs the Advanced Writers Workshop, an intensive coaching program for advanced writers. She is a permanent Visiting Professor of Creative Writing/American Literature at the University of Paris, Sorbonne. I talked with her on my Somerville Community Access TV show " Poet to Poet: Writer to Writer."

Doug Holder: You wrote a memoir about your time with the poet Robert Lowell.

Kathleen Spivack: I was very close to Lowell. I have also know Plath, Sexton and poets from what are now called the "Middle Generation." I came to the Boston area on a fellowship when I was seventeen to study with Robert Lowell. Lowell forgot that I was completely green and he pawned me off on these other women who happened to be Anne Sexton and Sylvia Plath. He had me sit on that early workshop at Boston University with George Starbuck. So I became his close friend and sort of teaching assistant for 20 years of his life to his death. One of the things he did was ask me to come to his house ( on Marlborough Street in Boston) for tutorials two or three times a week. I thought he asked me because he thought I was just so stupid in comparison to the other students. I thought he going to teach me so I could catch up.

I chose Lowell because nobody understood his poetry, and his stuff was sufficiently obscure, that nobody would mind me studying with him, as opposed to the highly visible and controversial Allen Ginsberg. When I came to Boston Lowell was sufficiently obscure. So I went to his house . Eventually I moved into the Lowell household. His wife was Elizabeth Hardwick. Lowell was a complete advocate for me in every way. He took my work to publishers, etc.... He took my poetry to The New Yorker...that was my first publication. I don't know if he liked my work or not. But he was such a loyal friend. He wrote me these wonderful letters.

D H: You teach in France part of the year. Tell me how you got this gig. Are the French more receptive to your poetry than here in the States?

KS: I have taught all over the world. The way I got this steady gig in France was interesting. I was pregnant, and my husband had left me. I was living in Somerville in one room. One day I picked up a couple of hitchhikers. They were some kids on the street my age. They were trying to find a youth hostel. I was living in one room in Somerville, it was hot; and I was very pregnant. I told them they could come back to my place for a night or two. One night ended up becoming their entire vacation. And twenty years later I got a letter from them inviting me to become a professor at the University of Paris. So they were students that fell in love with American Literature. They went back and became directors of American Literature at the University, that wasn't even a "filed" at this point. America was still considered a savage tribe; and nobody was interested. But this young group was interested and they headed the selection committee some twenty years later. The original appointment was for 6 months, but now it has been twenty years. The French don't believe that creative writing can be taught, That is starting to change though.

DH: You have collaborated with musicians and composers. Does poetry enhance the music or does music enhance the poetry?

KS: Poetry naturally goes with music. I went to Oberlin and I had a double major in music and literature. I wrote a poetry book titled "The Jane Poems" that was based on American music history. The words and music came together--it was an anti-war book. I performed with those with the jazz saxophonist Stan Getz all over the place. Then a composer put something together and we performed it in the American Place Theater. I also performed in France. I have had other works set to music as well. I worked with a young composer Eva Kendrick.


DH: What is your poetry teaching philosophy?

KS: I don't only teach poetry. Right now I am working with the Huntington Theater Fellows in Boston, and the A.R.T. Fellows, at the American Repertory Theater in Cambridge.

I think people hold back when they write poetry. They save the best for last. I say start with your best--and write upward. I always push for that. I create a sense of process and keep outside of the product until I feel they are ready. But when they are ready I know they are going to win prizes. If you are on your path, in your process, I will protect that.

DH: You have written about the different approaches Plath and Sexton took to their poetry.

KS: I got to see their first drafts. I also saw Lowell's response. I think Sexton was the more natural poet. Slyvia was more controlled. Sylvia was very self-protected. Lowell couldn't access her work as well as Sexton. Sexton was a natural; it just flowed out of here.

Lowell wrote how surprised he was that Plath wrote "Ariel," because he could not have predicted it from the very staid, and perfect poems of her past.

I would like to see the mature work of both, but they both died young. Stanley Kunitz for instance, had a whole second flowering after he was 70.

DH: You were a regular Ping Pong partner with the poet Elizabeth Bishop.

KS: Lowell introduced me to Bishop when she first came to Harvard. She had arthritis. I went to her place three times a week to play ping pong with her. Believe it or not I was good in racket sports then. We talked about her problems, we had lunch, and at times she would read to me.

DH: Do you have a new book in the process of coming out?

KS: Yes. "A History of Yearning." It concerns my new way of seeing things when I got back from Europe. I am a child of European refugees. It is about history, art. It should be out in May 2010.

Somerville Playwright Colleen Hughes Writes a Drama Set in Teele Square.

Somerville Playwright Colleen Hughes Writes a Drama Set in Teele Square.

By Doug Holder

Somerville playwright Colleen Hughes walked into the Au Bon Pain in Davis Square on a cold and rainy April Saturday morning and navigated the maze of chattering poets of the Bagel Bards, so we could conduct an interview.

Hughes, 27, is a native of Somerville, and is working on her MFA in Playwriting at Boston University. Her first public presentation of her work will be at the Boston University Playwrights’ Theatre April 23, 2010 at 7PM. The play is titled “The Prayer Bargain.”

Hughes has lived all her life in Somerville, and currently occupies the attic apartment in her familial home in Teele Square. She attended high school at Arlington Catholic, and is a graduate of Holy Cross. Like many artists, native or not, Hughes has had a long love affair with our artist-friendly city. And for her immediate future anyway, she plans to stay put.

Hughes has been influenced by playwrights as diverse as Samuel Beckett, and August Wilson, and has studied with the likes of Kate Snodgrass and Melinda Lopez. Hughes wrote “The Prayer Bargain,” with Somerville as the setting. She told me: “ I wanted to partly deal with the way Somerville has changed over the years, and the issues that surround that.”

The play is set in the Teele Square area, and the players are a mother, father, daughter, and three boys. The girl comes home because of a broken engagement. She falls into the family web of problems: booze, unemployment, and stuff of that ilk. It all comes to a boiling point on Christmas Day. The daughter finds herself in the vital role of helping her dysfunctional family.

Although the play is not strictly autobiographical, Hughes knows her characters well, and certain elements are gleaned from her own life.

Hughes, who works as an editor of the “Cell Press” in Cambridge, plans to keep writing after she graduates. She will keep the day job, hopefully do some teaching, and submit to festivals… all the things young writers do to cut their teeth in the competitive arts market.

One evening, late at night, you might see a light burning in an attic apartment, perhaps in Teele square, and that might be Hughes—burning the midnight oil.

Announcing the 48th Writers Conference of the CAPE COD writers CENTER

Hey folks been speaking to the new Director of the Cape Cod Writer's Center Nancy Rubin Stuart--this is what she sent me...



Announcing the 48th
Writers Conference of the
CAPE COD writers CENTER

Books, Bytes and Beach
August 15-20, 2010
Craigville Conference Center • Centerville, Cape Cod, Massachusetts


Fiction • Nonfiction • Poetry • Screenwriting • Online Communications
Guest Speakers • Publishers • Authors • Agents • Editors • Publicists
Faculty Reception • Manuscript Evaluations • Mentoring Sessions

A Writer’s Retreat and Resource Center
For the Twenty First Century
Our Most Exciting Year Yet!
Featuring Famous Keynote Speakers and Authors
Brochure and Full Web Announcement Will Appear Soon

Pulitzer Prize winning author Elizabeth Strout speaks to Emerson College Students at Paramount Theater--Boston.

(Boston – April 15, 2010)

Article by Steve Glines


– Elizabeth Strout, Pulitzer Prize winning author and Ploughshares guest editor answered questions today for Emerson students. Mrs. Strout won the Pulitzer for her novel “Olive Kittredge” which takes place in a small fictional town in Maine. For those wanting the Cliff Notes version, “Olive” is a series of not necessarily connected short stories that either feature Olive Kittredge or where she makes a cameo appearance. We learned that the author wrote each story independently and that while all of the stories took place in that small fictional town, Olive was written into some of the stories at a later date.

The author told her audience that the ordering of the stories was by gut instinct and not by any conscious plan. That was a disappointment to this writer because in analyzing the story he had come to the conclusion that Henry, Olive’s long suffering husband, was the initial star and only after their ordeal at the hands of a bank robber does Olive come into her own as Henry fades away. That was not the author’s intent; Olive was the intended star from the beginning. The author said she had “found” Olive in unfinished stories and only after rewriting did Olive emerge as a unifying character to this collection of short stories.

In the question and answer session with Emerson students Elizabeth Strout said she could not imagine a life without writing and that she wrote throughout law school which she attended to please her father who had just wanted her to be normal. She said that literary success came as a surprise and that she didn’t really understand the business aspects of the publishing industry. When it came to marketing she only did as she was told.

When asked about her writing style Elizabeth Strout said she wrote everything by hand, often at her kitchen table, sometimes at the library and even on the subways of New York. She spoke of the importance of having a trustworthy reader providing guidance and feedback while writing. Early in her career she only had one reader, then many, but preferred the input of just one trusted person. The synopsis for Olive Kittredge was sold to the publisher with just 1/3 of the book complete. When asked if the editors or her agent had any input to the book the audience was treated to an emphatic “NO!” She then admitted that the publisher had given the book its current title which in the manuscript had been “Olive’s Story.” When asked what was special about small towns her reply was, “I have nothing profound to say about small towns. Having grown up in a small town I guess I needed 30 years perspective to write about it so I suppose I’ll eventually write about New York.”

At the reading that followed Elizabeth Strout read an abbreviated chapter from Olive Kittredge. Authors often complain that reviewers “don’t get it.” When listening to Elizabeth Strout read, the story carried an emphasis that was just as compelling but different from the story as read. The story read as a dialogue between Olive and her son, as heard by this listener, the story was a dialogue between Olive and her daughter in law. There are a million ways to read a good book. As one author commented recently on his own work, “I didn’t know I was that brilliant, I don’t remember writing all that but what do I know I’m just the author.”

Elizabeth Strout was the first reader in a new literary series by the guest editors of Ploughshares, Emerson’s literary magazine. The next event in the series will be in October 2010 with Ploughshares' next guest editor Jim Shepard.

Wave and Metronome by John Flynn

Wave and Metronome by John Flynn (Pudding House Chapbook Series 81 Shadymere Lane Columbus, Ohio 43213 http://www.puddinghouse.com)



Review by Doug Holder



John Flynn is originally from Boston and his poetry like that of the late Dave Church, has that well-honed, griity, and studied urban feel to it. Flynn wrote me he has been rejected by a slew of Iowa Writing School type publications, but his work has found a home in the very respectable Pudding House Press, and a great number of fine small press magazines over the years. We have had the pleasure of having Kevin on "Ibbetson Street" our literary journal, a couple of times as well.



In his new collection "Wave and Metronome" Flynn appreciates the beauty in the ugly, the mumblings of old stumblebums over cheap shot glasses of bourbon, and the sanctuary of the " Diner." Flynn captures the vernacular of townies reminiscing about the "old days," as evidenced by his poem "Mulcahey's Pub Under the Merit Sign." Here the pub is a focal point and a balm for a regular Joe pontificating:



Millbury street was a canal once,

and White an amusement pahk.

Bet youz didn't know that.

What's gone?

Well, a lotta things.

Two words come to mind: manufacturing jobs.

otherwise, it's still there, in a way,

except the Big Boy statue

and the musty Webster Square pool hall

a dark basement full of trimmed Brunswick tables.



I healed in dat place, so many nights.





Highly Recommended.

Witch Dance: New and Selected Poems by Glenna Luschei

Witch Dance
New & Selected Poems
Glenna Luschei
Presa :S: Press 2010
$13.95 ISBN 978-0-9800081-7-3

"our ashes left before us.
Who said we couldn't fly?"

Confession and cowboys, despair and crisp reality serve the poems in clear presentations with a touch of emphatic sympathy, "It's all there, the gingko tree loves pollution…" Luschei empties her voice onto the page and lets the reader hear verses steeped in a message which declines an invitation. Yet at the same time we are partakers because of the writing. Luschei creates poems like witnesses, a settler who carries everything they own to a promised land and finds hard work, loss, and:

"When I wake up
with sand in my wrist
I know
I've crept again to the sea
searching for your hand"

The beauty of being placed alone on an open page, an area with succulent flowers and words that form blankets against what has been inevitably the result of a larger plan, nature gives comfort and can also become warring winds, notions sewing each poem together, effecting the verses until the reader is immersed in their energy, feels the exposure to the elements. The poet lives within and also resides outside:

"The mica I bring you
scatters in my pocket,
but the Hunter Moon
tracks it to the tarmac.

Why scan the moon's two continents for love?

Our friends shout, "look around!"

It's here beside us
on the dark side.

We fold the linen with lavender
and sage."

We meet the poems head on without frills or foolish rambling. The dance of words is infectious and the poet's personal freedom opens each page.

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

Seasons of Defiance by Lance Lee

Book Review: Seasons of Defiance by Lance Lee (2010); Birch Brook Press

Review by Reza Tokaloo



In his second book published by Birch Brook Press, Seasons of Defiance, Lance Lee offers another collection of nature based poetry. Vivid images of nature exchange metaphors with memories of his travels, family life, and his youth. The chaotic beauty of nature repeats throughout the collection in: lightning, thunder, from tumultuous seasons to calm scenes; dunes, beach sands, bending trees, and rivers. Animals play an essential role in creating imagery as well: ravens (“Les Corbeaux des Bonnieux”), horseshoe crabs (such as the one pictured on the books cover; rendered nicely in pen and ink), cardinals, and swooping and soaring sea birds. Mr. Lee carefully and eloquently uses this geography (flora and fauna) and documents their value in his examinations and travels through life.

There are signs within some of the poetry of familiar disruptions crackling and booming like the storms in nature we all have to endure. Nature’s storms and the storms of our personal lives as necessary evils which have to face: dissolving of a family, hardships, and loss.

In the poem “William James to a Friend in Trinity Church, Boston,” we get a decidedly New England feel from Mr. Lee as he attests to the Boston summer with the line, it is “better to fan myself in Boston’s humid air.” A clever metaphor is also (potentially?) slipped in to his poem “Mining Cornwall” as an ode to British literary history through “lanes that twist and leap” (a reference to Tristan’s Leap and the Cornish legend of Tristan?). I found this to be very clever if so.

In summation I found this recent collection by Lance Lee to be a very easy read. The poetry is written in a consistently steady form using great visual language. My only issue with this book is in its title. After reading the collection carefully, I was wondering where the Defiance was? Save for a poem about war and another entitled “Killer Bees” (a morbid piece and hardly a glowing review for these buggers by the author), much of the book is dedicated to his travels through various landscapes and memories. The passage of seasons mirrors the passage of time with reminders of life and death.

Poet Melissa Guillet: Poetry and Art Come Into Play

Melissa Guillet writes on her website:

"I have performed my work at libraries, coffee houses, and bars across the U.S. and Canada. I feel poetry should work on the page and aloud, and would describe it as narrative and often lyric. I have appeared on "Places", Youtube, CCTV, and other local access cable shows. My work has appeared or is forthcoming in Appleseeds, Ballard Street, Bloodroot Literary Magazine, Caduceus, The Cherry Blossom Review, GBSPA’s City Lights, Cyclamen & Sword, Dos Passos Review, Fearless Books, Imitation Fruit (winning poem), Lalitamba, Language and Culture, Lavanderia, Look! Up in the Sky!, New Muse, Nth Position, Public Republic, Sangam, Scrivener’s Pen, Seven Circle Press, Women. Period., six Poets’ Asylum anthologies, and several chapbooks. I am the chief editor and founder of Sacred Fools Press, which has produced three anthologies. I teach Interdisciplinary Arts in Rhode Island."

I talked with her on my Somerville Community Access TV show " Poet to Poet: Writer to Writer"

Doug Holder: You write that a poem should work aloud and on the page. Could a great poem on the page translate badly on the stage?

Melissa Guillet: Sometimes if you are doing a play on words or a pun--you might not get that hearing it. But I like my poems to be very lyrical, so I am always looking at sound. So the only way for me to be better is to read it out loud. When you hear it you get so much more out of it. When you read it sometimes you get something else. Sometimes you can only get the full meaning of a poem by reading it several times. But you also want it to be accessible so that is speaks to many people.

DH: You are the editor and founder of the Sacred Fools Press. Is a Sacred Fool the same as a Holy Fool?

MG: The title or name was inspired by a friend of mine Tony Brown. He used to host a poetry venue in which each month there was a different theme. One month it was the Sacred Fool. I thought that was an interesting concept. Sacred Fools break the rules; they make us look at each other and society; they makes us laugh or leave us aggravated. I used a logo for our press reminiscent of Don Quixote.

Our first anthology was about comic books. Everything to Peanuts to Superheros. Our next issue was Americana. I picked poems from the last fifty years of American history. And I called that "Appleseeds." That got me very interested in how society has changed in the past 50 years. We have come out of the Industrial revolution and have gone into consumerism. We are now in the consumer and computer era. Our new collection "Feast of Fools" deals with the clowns, the tricksters, etc... who break the laws, the rules--we either laugh and enjoy them or they annoy us. But they provide a mirror for society.

DH: How did the press start?

MG: I wanted to publish people both well-known and unknown-- I just wanted to get the work out there--I wanted to make people think about a certain theme,and open their minds to it. The first edition was collaborative, the second and third editions I did on my own.

DH: You teach interdisciplinary art in Rhode Island. What exactly is this course of study?

MG: The national standard of education rules have a number of guidelines. One is to integrate the arts with other subjects. This is what I felt drawn to and this what I did my Master's thesis on. I worked with other teachers and developed a textbook so they could learn about the arts through other subjects.

DH: How did you start out in the poetry scene?

MG: I started with open mics in Providence. I then became involved with the SLAM. I helped organize events--and one thing lead to the other.

DH You are an artist as well. Your work seems to be nature-based and abstract. How does this fit in with your writing?

MG: It fits because I feel that people interact with nature whether they know it or not. I recently did a series of prints that had bones weaved with trees. I am also an avid gardener. So poetry nature, and my art mix very well for me.


Aubade


There was no need

for Phoebus

to whisper in my ear when

the lark would do,

or the alarm, your way

of sighing as you turned,

the loudness of my dreams.


Rising, Phoebus wags his finger,

scolding our denial,

yet hopeful as a dog

sooner aware of day.


The dishes done,

the kids away,

our only charge was

to keep the sheets warm.


Nothing was to be done today.

We could just miss it entirely,

“X” it out on the calendar.


I reach for you blindly,

curled up and squinting.

The day has not begun yet.

We have all day to rise.



Sankofa


Sankofa:

Was that the metaphor looked for?

Almost a heart, divided

into two selves, medicinal snakes

spiraling in on themselves

for self-knowledge.


Then the triple-base, the three sides

to the story. The two facing snakes

that speak to each other

across the past.


High school was over,

and who would want to go back?

But in our busy, self-recoiling lives

the third wheel turns us back

and an internet spot pages old friends.


Cut off, your arm grew into its own

starfish, and you find, out

of that tiny sea, your friend

has become a starfish too.


You needed a Beowulf to slice off your arms,

to be faceless and bodiless and reach

past what everyone else had known,

only to grow everything back and reclaim

an identity to call your own.


In excavation, old photos define us,

yet we deny how we were.

We were never perfect.

We return to the source to fetch

the threads of our cocoons,

the molted shells of goofy haircuts

and all-important cliques.


High school was as far away as Africa,

as close as keys under your fingers.

Doors were closed on that life’s chapter,

but windows were open.


Friend, each of us is five parts of ourselves:

Future, Past, Present, Private, Public,

seeking same. Classified

by who we were, who we are, who we want to be.


Turn and take the egg off your back.

Neither one came first

when one needs the other to exist,

to exist one needs the other.

Review of two for a journey by Carol Frith

Review of two for a journey by Carol Frith, David Robert Books, Cincinnati, Ohio, 95 pages, $18, 2010

By Barbara Bialick

I first reviewed Carol Frith for her chapbook Looking for Montrose Street in 2009. I called it “a good and powerful little book”—This full-length collection is not only good, great and powerful, but highly ambitious with it’s mixture of deep, image-packed lyrical lines of free verse about her “journey” through life with her husband, poet Laverne Frith, and its amazing set of 15 sonnets interwoven together in “The Neighbor’s Rose.” There are other formal poems as well. However I have to admit I was frustrated toward the end of the book when she presented more sonnets and more sonnets. These weren’t as masterfully woven into the marital love story and should have been left out in my opinion. Too structured for the the “two-getherness” of the rest of the book, and dull in comparison.

I’ll just give some examples of good poetry… “It is morning. The wind is gone. Pink sailboats/flutter on the blue bay. There are wrecks/everywhere, you tell me, submerged and dangerous/I am confused by the flickering pink scribbled/in the sky and water: Little candles of paint…”

Or, “All day tomorrow, on a narrow path/near water, you will button/and unbutton your shirt, bringing/full sentences outside into/the air…”

And this lovely line: “We live inside of each other’s closed eyes.”

It is difficult to just pick a quote from the sonnets called “The Neighbor’s Rose.” Everything is interconnected: “the air begins to seethe inside the room…”. On the other hand, perhaps she caged the couple into this intense structure just when they were having marital structure problems. Between the “formal” and the “free” works in this book, I think a lot of poets would do well to read what Frith is doing. It is interesting and fresh.

Carol and Lavern Frith live in Sacramento, California where they edit the journal Ekphrasis, which publishes poems addressing works of art. Clearly someone would do well to write a poem about the work of art called two for a journey…

Nick Jehlen and The Davis Square Tiles Project

Nick Jehlen and The Davis Square Tiles Project

By Doug Holder

Nick Jehlen is a dyed–in-the-wool Somervillian. His mother is Pat Jehlen the state senator. He grew up here, graduated Somerville High, Tufts University, and currently lives in the Davis Square section of Somerville. He works as a graphic designer for a number of non-profits in the area.

Jehlen and Katie Hargrove, along with the collaboration of two social action consulting agencies: “The Action Mile” and “The Think Tank that is yet to be named” have developed: “The Davis Square Tile Project”.

According to the history provided on the project’s website:

“During the 1978-79 school year, Jackson Gregory and Joan Wye of the Belfast Bay Tile Works worked with children aged five to thirteen at Somerville's Powderhouse Community School to create 249 tiles that were later installed in the Davis Square T stop. These tiles, part of the Arts on the Line program that placed art in and around MBTA stations, present a unique opportunity to look back at how Somerville has changed since the opening of the Red Line extension in 1984.”

Jehlen feels that these small, square bursts of art can act as a catalyst for conversations about where the city was in 1984 when the Davis Square T Stop opened, to where it is now, and to where it will be with the new Green Line extension in Union Square.

Jehlen told me that he has mixed feelings about the Davis Square T. On one hand the new T stop revitalized a stagnant square, on the other it displaced a large community of folks who could no longer afford to live there. Jehlen bemoaned the fact that many of his contemporaries who produced these tiles cannot afford to live in Somerville now.

Jehlen and his band of cohorts, as well as interested volunteers, are collecting stories and anecdotes from the creators of these tiles. A few still live in Somerville, but most, like flighty spores are spread all around the country. By capturing their stories Jehlen hopes people will better understand the history of Somerville.

Jehlen said there will be a number of exhibits of the tiles around town:

“There will be an opening reception for the tiles at Diesel Cafe on
Friday, April 16th at 6pm. Diesel is hosting about 20 of the tiles,
and there will also be on display at Johnny D's, Redbones, Sessa's
Italian Specialties, Magpie, and Downtown Wine and Spirits starting
this week of April 4, 2010. The tiles will be on display until May 23rd.”

The tiles are depictions of things you might expect from kids. There are pictures of their homes, creature features of dinosaurs and such, and even renditions of science experiments, to name just a few themes.

Jehlen told me a poignant story about one of the tile makers Brian Davidson. Davidson was a student at the Powder House School and he made these wonderful and detailed models of buses, trains and train stations. He died at the tender age of 31 at the Alewife T station from a heart attack. His teachers wrote Jehlen to tell his story.

Jehlen, 38, said even though he has lived in places like Madison, Wisconsin, he has kept a well-heeled foot in Somerville. He said Somerville feels like, well, home. He concluded: “The pastures are not greener elsewhere.”

King of the Jungle. By Zvi A. Sesling 2010 review by Hugh Fox

King of the Jungle. By Zvi A. Sesling 2010; 73pp; Ibbetson Street Press,25 School Street, Somerville, MA02143.$15.00.


Low-key, meditative, deep insights, accessible,personal, revelatory, as you’re reading through King of the Jungle you are brought very intimately into Sesling’s inner world: “I am sitting in my old rocking chair/on my lap is a solid book, thick with words...//the moon is scimitar shaped//offering little light, just a big grin in the gaping mouth of the night sky...//I sit in the rocker and watch he imperceptible movement toward darkness//or light wndering if we or some other civilization has made a base by which/the evenual control of the Earth becomes a reality rather and the material of//science fiction.” (“Moonlight,” p.6)


Everyday beginnings that slowly turn into bibliophilic musings about ultimate realities, a strange combination of Low Key and Ultimate Key, a strong sense of aloneness that triggers deep musings on historical-philosophical realities: “Morning consists of lying in bed/with talk radio...//Weekends in bed with talk radio/listen, listen//No one to talk to.” (“As Good as Dead,” p.50).


A very satisfying combination of the everyday and historical here: “The dust of bones has mingled with/Sand, and the wind whistles a funereal/March of the ancients who rise from/Graves to tell their lives...//king and slave/Equal in a future neither would have dreamed.” (“Archaeology,” p.51).Playing with irony, ultimately Sesling is both a personal story-teller and a prophet who sees his own life/world in the context of all-time and all-place.