The Boston Globe: Jack Powers founder of Stone Soup Poets-- Obit.

(Wendy Maeda/Globe Staff/File 1987)

Jack Powers, 73; helped poets bring verses to life


Jack Powers, who grew up in and near projects in Roxbury, founded Stone Soup nearly 40 years ago.

By Bryan Marquard
Globe Staff / October 16, 2010

Poems were more than just words on a page for Jack Powers, who believed that verse needed to be freed from the confines of musty books and the stuffy halls of academia.
Mr. Powers, who died Thursday in the North End, founded Stone Soup nearly 40 years ago. Young and old, beginners and accomplished writers, the ever-changing collection of Stone Soup poets met every Monday night to recite in a series of venues before an attentive audience that was not above voicing its opinion. The readings gained a national profile as he persuaded poets such as Allen Ginsberg, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Gregory Corso, and Robert Bly to participate.

The performances, Mr. Powers insisted, were part of the poetry.

“You translate yourself when you speak a poem,’’ Mr. Powers told the Globe in 1992

“I think the most important thing for a writer to recognize is that this on the page is one thing. The delivery of the same is a translation. There are a lot of nuances, and lots of times I’ll change words. I’ve never read a poem the same way twice.’’

An activist who gave away everything from the coats he wore to uncounted hours helping the poor, he was a poet and publisher, a teacher and organizer, a man whose great height still seemed too small to contain his frenetic energy.

A series of strokes over the past several years slowed Mr. Powers, then silenced his voice and constrained his mind. He had lived in the North End for many years and was 73 when he died in the North End Rehabilitation and Nursing Center of complications of dementia.

“Boston is full of elite universities and institutions, often very exclusive, where if you don’t have an academic pedigree you’re out of the scene,’’ said Doug Holder, a poet and teacher who at one point worked with Mr. Powers on the Stone Soup readings and founded Ibbetson Street Press. “What Jack did was bring poetry to the people. He published books and had a venue where all kinds of people came through. He opened it up in Boston, which was old and stodgy until Jack brought a populist flavor, a new flowering of poetry.’’

Years before poetry slams made open mike nights fashionable, Mr. Powers insisted that poetry should be an event, something to add to each week’s calendar.

“He really did devote his life to keeping poetry as part of the public discourse, and he did it with great verve and enthusiasm,’’ said poet Gail Mazur of Cambridge. “He wanted to gather everyone into the performance of poetry. In that way, he was a little ahead of his time.’’

The oldest of six children, Mr. Powers grew up in and around housing projects in Roxbury and graduated from Cathedral High School in the South End. A semester studying chemical engineering at Northeastern University was enough to show him his path lay elsewhere.

He traveled to California, spent time in San Francisco, and returned to New England to write about sports for a New Hampshire newspaper. Then he came home to Boston, where he worked in a bookstore and launched a life of social activism.

At various points during the late 1960s and ’70s, Mr. Powers founded a free school on Beacon Hill and started free suppers for the elderly in the same neighborhood. He helped launch free concerts on Boston Common and taught remedial reading at the Columbia Point housing project, where he also organized a food co-op.

“I’m very solid on volunteerism,’’ he told the Globe in 1987, “because the extraordinary weight of problems that visits the modern industrial society can’t be met with dollars alone.’’

Eric H. Sorgman of Randolph, a nephew who acted as guardian for Mr. Powers, said his uncle was known among his relatives for, among other things, donating his coats or gloves to those who were cold or in need.

“He was a philanthropist in the truest sense,’’ Sorgman said. “He didn’t have anything, really, but what he did have, he gave away, and he didn’t want praise or recognition. He felt good about helping other people.’’

Chief among those he helped were other poets. Some wandered into Stone Soup readings at places such as TT the Bear’s and Out of the Blue gallery, its previous and current homes in Cambridge. Others he found at home.

“He taught me about life and how to treat people,’’ said his son Andreas of Boston. “He inspired me to create and was a big influence on my writing. I would always run my writing by him, and he would write things for me. We would write back and forth.’’

Sarah Jensen, a Boston poet who began reading at Stone Soup nearly 20 years ago, said Mr. Powers made the gatherings “a welcoming place.’’

“No matter what level of poetry you were writing at, it was a comfortable place where you could have your moment on stage and be just as welcome as anyone else,’’ she said. “And he would tell stories about meeting and being friends with Lawrence Ferlinghetti and Allen Ginsberg. It was a passing down of his experience to the newer poets, a passing down of history.’’

In addition to his son Andreas and nephew Eric, Mr. Powers leaves his wife, Tamara Oraschewsky of Boston; another son, John Kolya of Boston; two sisters, Cecelia Sorgman and Maureen Daniels, both of Quincy; and two brothers, Colin of Carver and Michael of Florida.

A memorial service will be held at 10 a.m. Oct. 24 in the International Community Church in Allston.

On Monday, Stone Soup will award its second annual poetry prize, named for Mr. Powers. A week later, on Oct. 25 at 8 p.m., the regular Monday gathering at Out of the Blue will be a memorial reading honoring Mr. Powers, who estimated that he stood up thousands of times to introduce poets. The beauty, he said, emerged from the unpredictable mix.

“Our readings are open,’’ he told the Globe in 1993. “A nightingale may come in and sing the most beautiful song, or a bat could fly in and scare everyone. You take some chances, but our audience is ready to listen.’’

Bryan Marquard can be reached at bmarquard@globe.com.


Comments...



Oh, what a loss...a very great loss. I met Jack in the mid-90s. I don't know where he'd heard of me, but he called me to invite me to read for him at the Cantab, I believe it was called, in Central Square. He introduced me, and gave me about 20 minutes. Weeks later, he saw me on the street, recognized me, and said he wanted me to read for him once more. Alas, we never got in touch with each other again, and that I much regret. To me he seemed an unassuming guy who got things done---he promoted poetry in the area. He left a positive impression on me, certainly, for he was always willing to give established poets, fledgling poets, would-be poets, and diverse and variegated wordslingers and wordsmiths an opportunity to read from their work at his venue. He shall be missed.

Tino Villanueva




So passes a literary giant!! Jack Powers was one -of-a-kind spirit; a force of nature
to whom many of us owe our beginnings in the poetry world. Many of us would not be where we are today if it weren't for Jack's encouragement. In his own way, he achieved greatness but never actively sought it; yet recognition found him. It is amazing how much he accomplished living on a shoestring and a prayer. He was not perfect, but, according to some stories, many saints lacked perfection in their lives. In his way, Jack was the patron of the small press and numerous poets, not of the Academy. He was, despite himself, larger than life. Now he is legend as he joins those who made their literary mark over the generations. As a poet, he was spiritual , yet earthy; erudite , yet simple; profound, yet plain-spoken. He was also prolific in his out put. He had his issues; so do most of us. What artist doesn't have issues?
Jack has left us; however, I suspect he will continue with us in spirit. G-d rest him; G-d Bless!
Warmly,
Harris Gardner



.....I recall Jack back in the '70's or was it the '80's when he would swing by the Annual Greek Festival sponsored by the Holy Trinity Greek Orthodox Church on Park Drive in the Fenway with his young son perched on his shoulders.....you cld never mistake Jack with that unruly shock of black hair.....I also remember him from the time that the Stone Soup Gallery was in full swing just around the corner from MGH on Cambridge Street altho regretfully, I never attended any sessions....& I further remember him telling me about the free suppers that he organized at the Old West Church on Cambridge Street for the poor & his constant attempts to scrounge food around town for them.....& about him telling me about trying to get a job with the City to work on their Annual Arts Festival or Arts in the Park (or something like that).....I believe he did work for the City on some artistic endeavors, back then.

........I wonder how many young & not so young poets, poor & not so poor, were inspired, encouraged & supported by him over the years........I wld not be surprised if they number well into the hundreds & more... ....he was an icon in certain literary circles in Boston.....he will NEVER be replaced, he was unique among men, in so many ways.....

.......helen cox, 11 Park Drive, Fenway section of Boston.........


There was no sexism, no racism, no ageism at Stone Soup- and no favoritism. I remember when Chronicle visited T.T.'s, giving Jack some long-overdue and too-rare major media publicity. Who did he send up to read as scheduled? The most outrageous and least prime-time friendly poet of all, Lee Litif. Lee was scheduled to be #2, and Jack was not to take the scheduled spot away from anyone. Fair and balanced? That was Jack Powers. That's why he was the first to let the Slam in to his venue before deciding that competition was not right for Stone Soup. Jack was the patriot of all poets.

--- Susie Davidson

EVERYTHING HAPPENS SUDDENLY by Roberta Swan

Review of EVERYTHING HAPPENS SUDDENLY by Roberta Swan, Cervena Barva Press, PO Box 440357, West Somerville, MA 02144, 2010, $15.
Bookstore, www.thelostbookshelf.com

By Barbara Bialick

For poets or other poetry lovers, part of the fun of reading a good book is to look for its hidden meanings. I’ll let the readers draw their own conclusions, but given that this book was praised by the great poet Mary Oliver and is written by the co-founder of the American Jazz Orchestra, I first looked for jazz riffs and rhythms and themes about nature. Where Mary Oliver’s nature is very mystical, I would say Roberta Swan is not a spiritual writer but one with a keen eye for observation and a love for even the smallest, cutest wildlife, such as a family of chipmunks outside her window.

Not being a jazz expert, I can’t really break down the rhythm that way, though I did note recurring themes about her similarities and differences with her husband, and also, the sense of suddenness that can occur in the most regular times of personal events, such as the overnight change in her mother’s status as an aging go-getter to a proud, but physically collapsed woman in a wheel chair.

On the back of the book, Mary Oliver is quoted: “Roberta Swan’s poems have a welcome vivacity; they are deft and full of charm and humor. But not entirely…It is the mixture of light and dark—the embrace of all of it—that is her special gift.”

The first section of the book, where she interacts with her elderly mother, is my favorite. “I want her to live forever,” Swan writes. At age 80, she “doesn’t want to call it quits,” but at 90, she “phones long distance/to report her TV went kaput/and wonders if death is like that.” In the poem “Hawkeye” she says “I should have been prepared, but old age happened overnight.” Still, Swan relates a story about her mother’s good sense of fun, when she could get around, of accidentally finding her daughter in her Victoria’s Secret
underwear looking for a hidden box of chocolates in the middle of the night. She asks for some chocolates and comments, “Nice lace. Get me one…”

In a different batch of poems that relate some of her husband and wife interaction, Swan writes in “Another One of Those Days” that a tombstone in a cemetery “says a husband and wife/died on the same day./a good thing I’ll tell him.” In “One Kills, the Other Doesn’t,” she excuses killing flies by saying “I’m doing something holy,/hastening resurrection/pushing them up the insect ladder…” But some of her word usage is lacking in originality, such as an overused phrase like “Getting Lucky.” or “In a Nutshell.” On the other hand, in “For the Birds,” she produces such a good lines as “Goldfinches spill around House For Sale.” and “Mr. Takala stands in his garden, looking at nothing, mourning his wife,/wearing a windbreaker/she would have talked him out of.”

Roberta Swan was program director of Great Hall at Cooper Union, and also taught there. She has taught at Indiana University, The New School, Baruch College and at the Bennington Writing Workshop.

North From Yaounde by Jim Beschta

North From Yaounde

Jim Beschta

Adastra Press 2010

ISBN: 978-0-9822495-6-7

$18.00

"…through the shrinking mimosa."

North From Yaounde is substantial in its collection of gathered poems,

by the skilled poet, Jim Beschta. His ten poems are hand sewn on 14 pages,

with small illustrations on a few of the pages, including the cover, from

Cameroon folk art. This handcrafted book is a pleasure to behold

as well as mindful. I recommend buying a few for friends,

it is the perfect gift.

The poem's experiences are considered and gentle in that their insights

give us a sense of place and people, "to the boom and chatter of drums

from Bikil…" Once we have read the poems we then travel back into

their lucid appeal and find the metaphors rolling throughout:

Night Travel

"Thieves," Issa spit

into the West African night

toward a solitary light,

some erratic bobbing

alongside the isolated road.

"Thieves," his disdain of bandits

and scorn for lean gendarmes

as strained as his grip

on the wheel,

as suspicious as Maroua

uncertain in the distance.]

Although he claims brothers

as far north as Garoua

and spoke the Fulfuldi

of markets and artisanats,

even though he waved

to stock boys herding cattle

and stopped to pray

when required,

in the pitch of night

he grumbled, "Thieves."

In this dark land

where no ambulance arrives

after an accident,

where people slide

into the night

for beer and sex,

even conversation,

Issa fled the small light

fading in the rearview,

skeptical of anything

but intimate darkness."

　

　


irene koronas
poetry editor:
Wilderness House Literary Review
www.whlreview.com
http://artamust.blogspot.com
xperimagazine@gmail.com

BECAUSE OF WINN-DIXIE, by Kate DeCamillo, review by Susan Major-Tingey

GIRL LOVES DOG WITH PATHOLOGICAL FEAR

BECAUSE OF WINN-DIXIE, by Kate DeCamillo, review by Susan Major-Tingey

Move the brothers Grimm aside, skip over saccharine rhymes and put another check in the column under realistic children’s literature to represent the well-crafted style of author Kate DiCamillo. Her first book, Because of Winn-Dixie, has been awarded numerous accolades, including the coveted Newbury Book Honor and it was the inspiration for the successful movie by the same name.

Because of Winn-Dixie came to my attention when it was first released. I was browsing in a library, chatting with a librarian who recommended it as the new book that was popular with children, parents, and teachers. She said it was flying off the shelf because not only was it witty and endearing, but also it dealt with important issues like sorrow and loss without being too sad. And if that were not enough, the author has taken care to feature characters from different backgrounds and social standings without being judgmental -- an enormous plus.

Between the hard covers (which are child-friendly at 5 ½” by 7 ¼”) ten-year-old Opal goes to the supermarket for macaroni and cheese and ends up saving a mangy hound from the pound. Opals was ready for something to love and the skinny, balding, limping, smelly intruder seemed just right to her when he skids to a stop and smiles right at her. It helps that she can read his facial expressions and body language so she always knows what he is thinking. She reasons that the imperfect dog probably is just like everyone else in the world.

This story helps readers see people and animals as complex, multi-faceted individuals with weaknesses and strengths. It addresses issues that children can relate to and apply to their lives. For instance, Opal calls her father Daddy, but most of the time she thinks of him as a distracted man dedicated to his work. She describes him as a turtle that does a lot of thinking but does not relate well to the world.

All of the characters in Because of Winn-Dixie are imperfect and that’s okay because the way they deal with predicaments impacts their lives and alters relationships. One of the characters even says that she has made mistakes on the way to learning some of the most important things.

Sometimes the characters handle difficulties in a roundabout way, but it is their different responses that reveal their thoughts and feelings, their personalities, that special part of them that makes them unique. It is to the author’s credit that readers come away with empathy, wondering how they would feel in similar situations.

Opal is afraid to ask questions about her mother, who left them when she was three, but she faces her fear and finds it is not as hard as she thought. The bonus is that she realizes there are plusses to her positive action that she did not anticipate.

Opal and Winn-Dixie find that people of all ages, even people with very different backgrounds and reputations can get together to enjoy a party where Dump Punch is served and the youngest attendee contributes to the festivities by decorating the yard with pictures of dogs she had cut out of magazines. That sounds like my kind of party.


Title: Because of Winn-Dixie, Author: Kate DiCamillo, $15.99
Reviewed by Susan Major-Tingey, September 2010, tombrants@yahoo.com
Proofread and edited by Heather Campbell
Pages: 182, ISBN #978-0-7636-0776-0, first edition 2000
Candlewick Press, 99 Dover Street, Somerville, MA 02144

Review of HIGH COUNTRY, chapbook by Arthur Winfield Knight

Review of HIGH COUNTRY, chapbook by Arthur Winfield Knight, Presa:S:Press, Box 792, Rockford, Michigan 49341, www.presapress.com, 32 pages, cover art by Ronnie M. Lane, $6.00.

By Barbara Bialick

I’m so glad I have a copy of Mr. Knight’s HIGH COUNTRY. I can stash it away with my favorite poetry “refer to” books. You should grab one, too, and try to figure out how he could present such perfect, narrow poems, only 20 lines or more, story teller vignettes that keep his clear voice of the historian, artist and observer of Nevada and California always fitting that guy in the picture wearing a cowboy hat and a big, snide smile.

This chapbook is the author’s first collection of poetry in ten years. But just to pick it up and check the compliments on the back of the book and to stare at that mystical green cactus on the cover, it starts you out with positive feelings before even reading it.
He’s apparently an expert who’s published more than 3,000 poems, short stories, and film reviews that “chronicle life in the old and contemporary west” that have been translated into Chinese, French, German, Italian, Japanese and more. His bio claims “Knight’s poetry remains one of the most distinctive voices of his generation” in the small press. (He was born in 1937).

The book opens as he and his wife Kit have just moved from California to Nevada. How could you not want to read a poem called “THE WHOREHOUSES AND THE CHOCOLATE FACTORY.” He writes, “We’ve driven past them/for thirty years, but it’s different now./We moved from California to Nevada/two weeks ago. Everything’s different./Slot machines are everywhere: in grocery stores, gas stations, whorehouses, chocolate factories,/Laundromats and strip joints…/and the owner of Casino West/runs ten thousand head of cattle…”

One of my favorite poems is THE TUMBLEWEEDS. He took some of that rural Nevada plant and mailed it to an American West buff in England. The post office charged eleven fifty and stamped it “Fragile”. Two weeks later the English man said it was tumbling well in his back garden. The poem concludes: “it’s stamped all over FRAGILE,/but it’s Tough as Old Boots,/and has been bouncing across the desert/for Donkey’s Years./What’s wrong with those people/at the post office?”

Some the other poem titles include, MORGAN FREEMAN COMES TO SACRAMENTO, BIBLE THUMPERS, WYATT EARP, CROP DUSTERS, DUELING PIZZAS, and WEED HEIGHTS, NEVADA. The only problem is it’s just a little chapbook. On the other hand, that’s part of its magic. Read it fast and realize that now as even an easterner you sort of get something of the flavor of the American West from a western point of view

The Somerville News Writers Festival--The Poster

( Click on picture to enlarge)

Moments Around the Campfire With a Vietnam Vet

Moments Around The Campfire

With a Vietnam Vet

Thom Brucie

Cervena Barva Press

2010 $7.00

　

Brucie introduces the reader to what appears to be a ghost,

poems hidden in script, wrapped in a worn out leather satchel,

a gift which many still try to brush aside as a 'then thing.' The

reader is brought into the presence of verse, given an opportunity

to receive what is given, or to reject what was:

…"Harold liked to watch

the war across the bay,

tracers arching under the moon like

the 4th of July,

reflecting orange along the tongues

of the waves

in rhythm to the sounds of gunburst.

It calmed him down.

Sometimes he'd doze a little

and wake up before sunrise

and pick up

right where he left off."

The poems stark realities carry the veteran's voice deep into what

'surpasses,' why we expect a soldier to fight without an understanding

of the actuality of meanings and all the many ways to lose:

"There was a kid from Spokane named Quincy.

He went to church and didn't cuss.

He loved his girlfriend named Alice

since high school.

He stayed away from the whorehouses,

but he would drink a beer

sometimes on a real hot night.

When his "Dear John" letter arrived,

he cried.

He asked for emergency leave,

but nobody gets leave for love,

so he took an R&R to Hawaii

and got on a commercial plane in Honolulu

headed for Seattle.

He figured if he could talk to Alice

he could fix everything,

but the Mps arrested him before

he got out of the airport.

They put him in the stockade for six months

and later sent him back to Da Nang

for another tour.

By the time he got home,

Alice had two daughters and a station wagon."

Each lasting story works as part of a unit, bringing the same conclusions;

coming back from disastrous 'situations' is daunting, is life altering:

　

…"The explosion flung his body in a somersault,

and a piece of angle from the frame stuck in his forehead

like a piece of glass might penetrate a piece of soft wood.

When he hit the tree, the impact broke his hip

and the recoil broke his jaw.

He felt pretty bad when he passed out."

…"They flew him back to the states in a commercial airplane

which landed in Oakland

on a day some protesters were demonstrating.

One of them threw a rubber filled with urine

at Mark,

and when it hit him, it broke

covering his face and jacket.

One of the other protesters called to him,

"welcome him, baby killer."

Tightly wrapped in clean narratives, Brucie records: "the hissing, acid

steam of monsoons…"

This is the best chapbook of the year 2010. It cuts close to the bone

with healing portraits of a real war and peace; stark, sharp, shadows…

and within the shadows of each poem is forgiveness. Bravo…Thank You

Welcome Home.

　

Irene Koronas

Poetry Editor:

Wilderness House Literary Review

Reviewer:

Ibbetson Street Press

Review of A Prayer for Everyone by Tomas O’Leary

Review of A Prayer for Everyone by Tomas O’Leary

Review by Lawrence Kessenich

Broadly speaking, most of the poems in Tomas O’Leary’s new collection fall into two categories: idea poems and story/character poems. Most of the idea poems occur in the two earlier sections of the book, “What One Has Said” and “Confession on a Tight Budget.” Most of the story/character poems occur in the final section, “A Sorceress of Rate Note.”

I find the idea poem daunting, but O’Leary takes on the form with unbridled gusto—and often with humor. In the section’s title poem, “What One Has Said,” he examines “truth” and “candor:”

I speak now only that I not be lying.
If I should die before I wake, well, hell,
at least the light is on. The darkness drops again
each time I hesitate. I train my tongue
into orbit around silences.

Even a poem about a cat named Ashes ends up a Buddhist meditation:

The cage of consciousness is not hers to pace
As she flattens down to refuge in the Buddha.
Lordly, they take the sun together,
Fur and stone – the ravager
And the holy one, fast friends…

O’Leary has a clever way of personifying ideas, so that they’re not just dry thoughts, but things that move around in front of the reader, as in “Hands Without Pockets,” where the contrast between what men and women do with their hands says much about the differing natures of the two sexes:

So often have women turned
their hands into grace, through gesture
or occupation, without

misgivings all will come out
right, they clearly manage
naked. Men, though, are lost, their hands

determined to hide deep in their pockets…

I was so enamored of O’Leary’s ability to manipulate ideas in his poems that I wanted more, so my less enthusiastic response to the story/character poems probably reflects that wish. It’s not that the cast of characters isn’t interesting and colorful: “The Perfectionist’s Midlife Crisis,” “Dick Cheney on Iambic Truth Serum,” “A Monk Gone Larking,” “The Alehouse Lion Rises and Orates.” The book’s first and title poem, “A Prayer for Everyone,” which might have served better as the introduction to this last section, captures O’Leary’s appreciation for the wonderful variety of human nature:

Blessed are the saved and the damned, for both
are born to blessing;
Blessed are the best and the worst, the wisest,
the most foolish;
Blessed are the fallen, the risen, the reverent,
and the ghoulish.

And he delineates these characters, tells their stories, with great enthusiasm. The “Monk Gone Larking” is not actually a monk, but the thumb of coast-to-coast hitchhiker who meets a lovely lass along the way:

…as I pass her the blackberry brandy.
She takes a belt that’s neither

greed nor daintiness and passes
back the bottle. Does she mind
if I smoke? Hell no,

go right ahead, do I have
any hemp, ha ha? I do ha ha.
Now the Chevy’s on air jets five feet

above the highway, in perfect gear…

“The Book of Shite” pillories a mythical landlord, Lord Owen Shite – I’m assuming he’s meant to be an English landlord in Ireland – and the ass-kissing Irish priest who convinces the Irish, represented by Doug MacDeep, that serving Shite is an honor:

In jags contumely strove
the florid pigwit Doug MacDeep
to caution tenants by the drove
they’d Christwise best contain their peep,
scale down the larder and eke out
the doubled rent since sunset last
they must be paying Owen Shite,
who suffers them to till his dust.
…

The priest was circumspect and pure,
a man of God who loved a story:
Spreading his subject like manure,
he harvested a Shite of glory!

Though certainly bold and enthusiastic, these story/character poems don’t quite have the impact for me that O’Leary’s idea poems have. He’s clearly a man of profound thought, even when he’s making ideas do cartwheels for us. In fact, it’s those cartwheels that help us reconsider ideas in a new light – and how many writers of poetry or prose are capable of making us do that?

Somerville Renaissance Women Yani Batteau: An artist who believes in transformation through the arts.

( Batteau--front right)





By Doug Holder


I met Somerville artist, musician Yani Batteau at a recent meeting of the Bagel Bard's in Davis Square. She was wearing a big cowboy hat, and carrying a banjo case. She is a woman with optimistic, bright blue eyes and a down home manner about her. She is an artist who believes that art has the power to transform people--the power to change things. More than once she has involved folks in one of her many projects and they came away with a new sense of their potential.

Batteau is decidedly a renaissance woman. She is an accomplished banjoist, vocalist, and even has a flip art book published about the Statue of Liberty titled: " The Statue of Liberty Takes a Dive" that is housed in the Museum of Modern Art in New York City. She has worked as a graphic artist, college instructor, and has won Somerville and Mass. Arts Council Awards. One memorable project she undertook was the " Living Statue" project at South Station in Boston. She painted live humans in bronze body paint. These statuesque humans motionlessly postured amidst the din and rush of commuters as they made their way to yet another work day.

Batteau also plays the five string banjo. She describes her music as mountain style, or "vintage country" She said: " My voice and my music meld together well." Batteau has played Club Passim, Johnny D's in Davis, and The Somerville Theatre to name a few venues.

Batteau often works with the Somerville Arts Council. Although she admires Gregory Jenkins the current head and thinks he is a great organizer, she looks fondly back to when her close friend Cecily Miller was at the helm.

Batteau loves being in Somerville with its "quirky people" and its decidedly artistic vibe. But like many artists she looks to the time she won't be able to handle the high rents and stringent parking regulations.

Batteau who is of French and Puerto Rican descent does house painting on the side to help keep food on the table and the wolves from the door. She remains optimistic and very busy, and in spite of these "post-recessionary" days she still believes that art can truly change things.

Jewish Book Festival Nov. 21, 2010

The Jewish Book Festival will be Nov. 21, 2010. I am glad to say Steve Glines, Doug Holder, and Paul Steven Stone will be on a publishing panel at this gala event. Read details below:


JCC Boston Jewish Book Fair




The JCC Boston Jewish Book Fair is a series of literary events featuring an eclectic line-up of notable authors. Programs include panel discussions, readings and workshops by some of the best voices in Jewish literature.

JCC Boston Jewish Book Fair




The JCC Boston Jewish Book Fair is a series of literary events featuring an eclectic line-up of notable authors. Programs include panel discussions, readings and workshops by some of the best voices in Jewish literature.



Some featured writers:


Barney Frank

Hank Philipi Ryan

James Carroll



Miriam Goldman Authors Fund presents
BE YOUR OWN PUBLISHER!
A Workshop on Publishing-on-demand • 3-5:30pm

Print–on-demand and self-publishing remain avenues whereby authors can get their books out into the market without costing a fortune, providing they do their homework and don’t get carried away by dreams of best sellers. Paul "Steven" Stone, author of Or So it Seems and creative director at W.B. Mason; Steve Glines, founder of the ISCS Press; and Doug Holder, founder of the Ibbetson Street Press, will introduce this brave new world of publishing.

Pre-registration required
JCC members: $25; Nonmembers: $30

Register online.





Leventhal-Sidman Jewish Community Center (Newton)
333 Nahanton Street
Newton, MA 02459
(617) 558-6522
www.lsjcc.org

Bunker Hill Community College: New Perspectives/Now Perspectives Reading

FEATURED READERS:

Doug Holder
Jean Dany Joachim
Tony Bee
Luke Salisbury



New Perspectives/Now Perspectives –
Books/Words/Reading/Learning
Featuring Local Writers and Poets
Thursday, October 14 • 6:30 – 8:00 p.m.





250 New Rutherford Avenue, Boston, Massachusetts 02129-2925
617-228-2093 • www.bhcc.mass.edu/artgallery
The Bunker Hill Community College Art Gallery is free and open to the public.
We are located at the Community College stop on the MBTA Orange Line.
Gallery hours: M/W/F 11 a.m. – 4 p.m.; T/Th 1 – 6 p.m.; Sat. 11 a.m. – 2 p.m.

The Boston Globe: SOMERVILLE: Literary Partnership

SOMERVILLE
Literary partnership
September 26, 2010

This month, Somerville’s de facto poet laureate Doug Holder announced a partnership between Ibbetson Street Press and Endicott College in Beverly. It’s running on a test basis for this academic year. “It’s kind of a joining of Somerville and Beverly,’’ said Holder, who has been teaching at Endicott and Bunker Hill Community College for the past year since losing his 27-year position at McLean Hospital. The relationship is a classic win-win, he said: Ibbetson, which publishes a quarterly poetry journal as well as books, gets funding, prestige, and an office, and the college gets attention and student support. “They want to promote their arts program — they have a new arts center,’’ Holder said. In addition to publishing the journal, Holder will start a reading series and send students into the community for literary internships. The college is supporting only the journal, not Ibbetson’s poetry book line. Holder will still maintain the press’s primary office in Somerville. Learn more at dougholder.blogspot.com. — Danielle Dreilinger

Where Sanity Begins by Hugh Fox

Where Sanity Begins
by Hugh Fox
Cervena Barva Press
copyright 2010
www.cervenabarvapress.com

Review by Lo Galluccio


Hugh Fox is one of the most prolific and genius voices on the poetry scene in America. His writing spans generations, cultures, cosmos and concepts of time and self. With a deeply subjective eye he manages to orient us as the compass of his heart would, toward people, places and things that flash through his awareness. His poems read like little short stories sometimes, or flash fiction snapshots of the real. There is also a journalistic flavor to some of his best poems, disjointed or elliptical as they may be, a sheer and jumbled travelogue of this wondrous man's life. In “Where Sanity Begins.” he has put together quite a fine collection of these poems and the picture on the title portrays the irony of it. Sanity is important to Hugh Fox, the everyday sanity of childbirth, of worldly transactions, of chit chat, and his grandchildren, but he has his demons too and they edge his poems like the angular play masks on the cover of the book. Sanity is really multifaceted and manifold. And it means seeing things your own way, from different perspectives. What any poet or songwriter must do to succeed.

First, there is the generosity factor of the poet's big heart, in “The Invisible Woman,” who he describes as having “a look of stark terror on her face, like she's face to face with a King-Kong sized spider.” And furthermore “the old lady and her terror totally invisible.” So what does he do but befriend her by picking her up for ice-cream every afternoon at 2 pm? And in a typically beautiful and dissociative way, the poems ends with “as I walk to the top of midnight and over down to dawn.”

And memory. There is much remembrance in these pieces, of a sage older man looking back through time. At one point he remembers how, in his youth, he would marshal a culture brigade in his family to hit the theatre and concert scene, putting these excursions before even the money at hand, “I feel that we're all pulling together toward the cooperative kibbutz realization of The Circle of Light, educated, enlightened, knowledge = Power DREAM..” p 12

Hugh's poems resemble hyper-journal entries replete with lists and sub-dubbed with precise and colorful details of city streets and familiar places. Often threaded in is a movie title like “BONNY AND CLYDE” OR a sign like “CHAMBER OF COMERCE OF GREATER JACKSON AREA.” These are both fixed and moving markers of pop culture, and landscape. All parts of a travelogue of his life where people, places and things are collected, recollected and indemnified.

I love the way he interjects a drop of dialogue in the center of a descriptive-narrative piece, this one not so disjunctive, but following the thread of taking his 1 and half year old grandson (or is it his son?) out to the sandbox in the autumn. The kid sees leaves and wants to eat them. “You don't eatum for god's sakes” cautions the narrator to his beloved boy and then off onto an aria of earth bits: “lilac seeds, pieces of acorns chewed on by squirrels...” Called “The Lowest Layer” Hugh Fox seems to be reaching down through this fragmenting hearth, to see the earth as a home and to tell his legacy that “you'll have a feeling when Fall comes and you're in a place like this, that someone loved you,” “look at things, don't just run away, but stop....” p 21

Another charming poem about his grandson is “Tantric Moon.” Together in the bathtub he “scrambles after the big white soap...” And then “I take him out into the cold late-October dark, the first time I've ever showed him the moon, “Look at the moon!” And the ending, again, pieces on an ethereal wonder: “I'm teaching Night too, Water, doesn't want to go in, dying. Awe.” A bulleting through description of the states he moves through at that moment looking at the moon after the bath.

One fine poem is Irdische/Earthly wherein he defines himself as an “I-Robot remembering when I was a man,” he conjectures “She must remember too. When the girls were born and her body flooded in all the good hormones, centered, the center of love, flowing out, flowing toward her, current and counter current.” It unravels with “sails/gloved/domed/the dew inside continuing skin...” A lyrical treatise on how again and bodies changing remains a constant in our impermanence but how the time of succulence and love-making still hovers by from when it was manifest.

In another portrait poem called, “Fireworks” the poet watches a woman dressed up with “an onyx medallion around her neck,” “trying on flowered pants and holding earrings up to her ears” – in this Fellini-like flashpoint of an image of beauty, there is “only the burst of light in the black Time sky.” In “Houdini Returns” the poet plays escape artist with the illusion or dream of life, its many rooms and the juxtaposition of timelessness and time with the human condition: “the petty but painful “individual neurosis or perversion” – “to walk into the jaguar forest to meet the gods.”

The gods, the moon, Kali, time, seasonal shifts all enter into Fox's poetry as it is in touch with the primordial and cosmic aspects of civilization as well as the contemporary antics of modern man. In an aside in a poem called, “The Light” he writes “I always wanted to write a book about the migration of the morning star symbol out of Asia to the Americas....” p.37 A magnificent poem of many threads, Fox begins with “The light goes so early, fugaz,” and ends with a meditation on the Nazis: “instead of killing the Jews, the Germans should have said LETS DRINK WINE, DO BUSINESS, AND EAT WELL AND BUILD HOMES AND BE JUST AND LIGHT CANDLES AND PRAISE GOD.” p 37

Fox's hunger for life and for loved ones is curdled sometimes by depression. – his consciousness haunted by the great ones who've gone before him. However, in “In the Moment” he writes: “The last fine day before the herds of Winter come and I feel like I've died and almost come all the way back, a spider thread between a dead pine tree and the Design Studio, a bright sag for a moment, then invisible, then bright again, invisible.” p. 40. It is an almost Puck like persona that can flicker back and forth from visible and invisible on the heels of the hell-frost. It seems to refer back to the theatrical masks on the cover of the book, to a man whose real and imaginary lives remain in great balance, neither eclipsing the other, both vivid, devoted and compelling.

The Ibbetson Street Press/Endicott College Visiting Author Series launches Oct. 6, 2010

(Sam Cornish)








There is a new series on the North Shore at Endicott College directed by Somerville's Ibbetson Street press founder Doug Holder. Its title: "Endicott College/Ibbetson Street Press Visiting Author Series. " It will be held at the Halle Library on the beautiful, sea-breeze infused Endicott College campus in Beverly, Mass. The series is part of the new affiliation that the Ibbetson Street Press of Somerville has formed with Endicott College. The first reader will be the first Boston Poet Laureate Sam Cornish. It will be held at 4P.M. Open mic to follow. Open to the public. Help launch this new literary series at the "Hub of the Arts" on the North Shore.


For directions to Endicott go to the website http://endicott.edu




http://samcornish.com/interviews.htm his website is http://www.samcornish.com


Sam Cornish, poet, essayist, editor of children's literature, photographer, educator, and figure in the Black Arts movement. He is the first City of Boston Poet Laureate.

Cornish served in the U.S. Army Medical Corps (1958–1960), then returned to his native Baltimore, where he published two poetry collections—In This Corner: Sam Cornish and Verses (1961) and People Beneath the Window (1964). While working at the Enoch Pratt Free Library, he became part of Baltimore's political and literary underground, self-publishing a sixteen-page pamphlet entitled Generations and Other Poems (1964). A subsequent edition of Generations (1966) appeared when Cornish was editing Chicory, a literary magazine by children and young adults in the Community Action Target Area of Baltimore. Lucian W. Dixon and Cornish edited a selection from the magazine entitled Chicory: Young Voices from the Black Ghetto (1969). In 1968 Cornish won the Humanities Institute of Coppin State College Poetry Prize for his “influence on the Coppin poets” and a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts. Soon poets as diverse as Maxine Kumin, Clarence Major, and Eugene Redmond would acknowledge Cornish's significance.

By 1970 Cornish was represented in the LeRoi Jones (Amiri Baraka) and Larry Neal anthology Black Fire (1968) as well as in the Clarence Major collection New Black Poetry (1969). He reconsidered his early poems of black historicized kinship, restructuring them into the Beacon Press's Generations (1971). After a brief stay in Boston, Cornish returned to Baltimore to work in secondary school and college writing programs. While there, Cornish published Sometimes (1973) with Cambridge's Pym-Randall Press. Teaching poetry in the schools led to several children's books: Your Hand in Mine (1970), Grandmother's Pictures (1974), and My Daddy's People (1976).

Returning to Boston in the mid-1970s, Cornish worked with the Educational Development Corporation and attended Goddard College in Vermont. He appeared in a host of new anthologies, from George Plimpton and Peter Ardery's American Literary Anthology (1970) and Harry Smith's Smith Poets (1971), to Ted Wilentz and Tom Weatherly's Natural Process (1972) and Arnold One Hundred Years of Black Poetry (1972). Sam's World (1978) continued the historical and genealogical project of Generations.

Since the 1980s Cornish has divided his time between bookselling and teaching creative writing and literature at Emerson College in Boston. Songs of Jubilee: New and Selected Poems, 1969–1983 (1986) recasts earlier work into sequences of a historical and biographical nature. His autobiographical narrative, 1935: A Memoir (1990), blends poetry and prose into a montage of twentieth-century history. The poems of Folks Like Me (1993) offer political and cultural portraits of African Americans from the depression to the early 1960s. Current projects include the next volume of his autobiography, 1955, and a critical study of Langston Hughes. His latest collection of poetry is an "Apron Full of Beans"

Ibbetson Street Poetry Award Winners..... Announced 2010!

We are proud to announce the winner of the Ibbetson Street Press Award, poet Kim Triedman. The winner will be given her award at The Somerville News Writers Festival, Nov. 13, 2010. The runner up and honorable mentions will also be announced at the Festival.


About Kim Triedman:












Kim Triedman began writing poetry after working in fiction for several years. In the past year, she's been named winner of the 2008 Main Street Rag Chapbook Competition, finalist for the 2007 Philbrick Poetry Award, finalist for the 2008 James Jones First Novel Fellowship, semi-finalist for the 2008 Black River Chapbook Competition and, most recently, semifinalist for the 2008 Parthenon Prize for Fiction. Her poems have been published widely in literary journals and anthologies here and abroad, including Main Street Rag, Poetry International, Appalachia, The Aurorean, Avocet, The New Writer, Byline Magazine, Poet's Ink, Poetry Salzburg Review, The Journal (U.K.), Asinine Poetry, Poetry Monthly, Current Accounts, Ghoti Magazine, IF Poetry Journal, Great Kills Review, Trespass Magazine, Mature Years, ART TIMES, Literary Bird Journal, and FRiGG Magazine. Additionally, one of her recent poems was selected by John Ashbery to be included in the Ashbery Resource Center’s online catalogue, which serves as a comprehensive bibliography of both Ashbery's work and work by artists directly influenced by Ashbery. This poem has also been included in the John Cage Trust archives at Bard College. Ms. Triedman has been nominated for the anthologies Best New Poets 2009 and Best of the Web 2010. She is a graduate of Brown University and lives in the Boston area with her husband and three daughters. Her first poetry collection -- "bathe in it or sleep" -- was published by Main Street Rag Publishing Company in October of 2008.





Ibbetson Award 2010



Winner: Kim Triedman: "(Captiv)ated"




Runner Up: Linda Larson: "Sweet Dixeyland, Early Sixties"



Honorable Mentions:


Pamela Annas: "Saturday Sock Hop, 1959."


Rose Scherlis: "Poker Circle"


Marilyn Jurich: " My Lost Mothers."

Review of PROFANE UNCERTAINTIES by Luis Raul Calvo

Review of PROFANE UNCERTAINTIES by Luis Raul Calvo, Translated from Spanish into English by Flavia Cosma, Cervena Barva Press, Somerville, Massachusetts, USA, 2010, poetry, 48 pages. Bookstore: www.thelostbookshelf.com

By Barbara Bialick

The book PROFANE UNCERTAINTIES by Luis Raul Calvo, is intriguing in its fascination with things universal, especially considering it’s written profanity-free by a man from Buenos Aires, Argentina and translated by a woman, Flavia Cosma, born in Romania, who lives and writes poetry, children’s books and TV documentaries in Canada in North American English.

Calvo’s philosophical wondering about life and death flows like a river in the tradition of other Latin American writers I have read but am not an expert in. “Real Life”, the first poem in the book starts you thinking right away: “Real life is nothing but a carroded/priesthood/in magnificent cities…But you who disowned the dogma and the customs/and chose the freedom of the blind…/you wander today/…wavering, your head bent/and staggering with your hands tangled/…in a dubious banquet.”

What does this mean? isn’t even a question I asked right away. Rather I just kept reading the book from beginning to end in its gentle language ironically frought with diatribes on death and memory. “When we think we have everything, something reminds us that the void also exists,” he writes, in “Nomadic Beauty (Fragments”). “When we start asking ourselves about love, we have ceased to be in love.”

Then he brings us into “Bajos fondos del alma, The lowest depths of the soul”, a long series of poems. In XIV, he notes “We were obliged to reach an understanding/that neither the world or our parents/resembled our primitive sensations.” In XIX, he says, “There are no memories/that can survive with dignity…the business of living becomes something similar to a fleeting/and fickle absence.”

A poet’s poet, Calvo is someone whose work you’d want to read when looking for inspiration. Indeed, he is a well known poet and essayist who was born in 1955 in Buenos Aires, Argentina. He is editor-in-chief of “Generation Abierta” (Literature-Art-Education), a prominent cultural magazine founded in Buenos Aires in 1988. He’s also director of the weekly radio show “Generacion Abierta”, president of Literary Café Antonio Alberti, and a member of the Directorate of Argentina para la poesia foundation.
He has published more than six other books and his poems have been translated into English, French, Italian, Romanian and Portuguese.

At the End of Time: The Incomplete Works of Richard Krech

At the End of Time

The Incomplete Works of Richard Krech

Volume II Poems 2001 - 2009 $20.00

Sunnyoutside Press Buffalo 2010

ISBN: 978-1-934513-27-9



There are seven sections in this book of self realization, of how

worldly interruptions may effect the creative life. Krech breaks

out of his self imposed retreat from poetry, because…



"The statue with no face and broken legs

no longer stares out at the long green valley.

The frightened men have shattered their own

image. They

diminish themselves as they step beyond

their banal legacy of oppression

and turn to destroying the very history of the world.

The statue no longer stares out at Bamiyan valley,

the enlightened gaze takes in the reflection

still."



The collection of poems is a mixture of Buddhist thought, political

treaties, and biographical sketches. The poet places himself outside

the portraits and renders in fine lines the intentions of those he writes

about. The poems are mannered, concise, and full of insights…



"I have accomplished several remarkable

feats in poetry, I thought,

after coming off a 25-year line break.

I wrote a poem about the vibrate mode

of a cell phone;

another about Valerie Solanis

and Enver Hoxha.

I saw old friends and made new ones.

I found out that my spelling

has improved."



There is a stillness within the poems, and are often pulled up from the

ground, gritty, earthy. Krech uses form to express his word play.

The reader can relax with this worthy book, with its sense of history,

personal references and experiences, the poet/monk/activist/teacher,

writes with a wider audience in mind…



"…as yesterday's sun flattens out

and sinks into mountain ridges,

lights twinkling on

in West Oakland,

first evening breeze,

and the adventure continues."



　

Irene Koronas

Reviewer:

Ibbetson Street Press

Poetry Editor:

Wilderness House Literary Review

Somerville, Mass Independent Press Ibbetson Street Forms Partnership with Endicott College in Beverly, Mass.

A New Literary Partnership: Endicott College and the Ibbetson Street Press





(Beverly, Mass)



Endicott College of Beverly, Mass. and the Ibbetson Street Press of Somerville, Mass. have announced a literary partnership the other day. The two organizations have agreed to establish an affiliation between the 12-year-old well-regarded independent literary press and the college. Doug Holder, publisher of the Ibbetson Street Press said in regards to his plans for this new partnership: “I hope to bring a number of prominent poets and writers to take part in a reading series we are going to launch. The first Poet Laureate of Boston Sam Cornish will lead off the proceedings, other features will be Gary Metras of the Adastra Press, Gloria Mindock of the Cervena Barva Press, Luke Salisbury, the author of “The Answer is Baseball,” poet Miriam Levin, Bert Stern and others. “I also want to play a mentor role to aspiring poets and writers.” Holder continued: “I want the literary community and the community at large to know about the vital literary and arts programming at Endicott." Holder has published a number of Endicott faculty members including the poetry collection “Bicycles, Canoes and Drums,” by English Professor Dan Sklar, as well as the poetry of Margaret Young, an instructor on the English faculty of the College. Holder also expects to have his brother Donald Holder, a two-time TONY AWARD winner (“Lion King,” South Pacific”), and Paul Stone, Creative Director of W.B. Mason and novelist to be guest speakers at the college.



This initiative will be on a trial basis for the Academic 2010 to 2011 school year. The school has a solid reputation for its business program, nursing, human services, and education, and the college wants to make sure the public knows Endicott as a destination to study the arts and literature. The student who graduates from Endicott College will be literate, well-informed and well-rounded, as well as being highly sought after. This affiliation will be just one component of the mission at Endicott. Doug Holder, who is an adjunct faculty member at Endicott and also the Arts Editor for The Somerville News as well as the Director of the Poetry Series at the Newton Free Library, said “This is a wonderful opportunity to be aligned with a rising academic institution. And with their new Arts Center and their commitment to the arts in general, I am hoping to be involved in the creation of the Hub for the Arts on the North Shore.”

Michael Knoblach: An Antiques Dealer Who "Drums" Up Business, Music, and Poetry.

(Knoblach--far right)



Michael Knoblach: An Antiques Dealer Who "Drums" Up Business, Music, and Poetry.

By Doug Holder


Michael Knoblach met me at my usual table at the Bloc 11 Cafe in the Union Square section of Somerville, Mass. He is a big man, with thinning shoulder length hair, and a deep but somewhat muted voice. He is what I would call a renaissance man, a man with an eclectic range of interests and sensibilities. A graduate of Tufts University, the former Somerville resident still conducts much of his business in the 'ville. Among other things Knoblach is an antiques dealer and used to do a lot of business with " Poor Little Rich Girl" when it was still in Somerville. He deals in a wide range of antiques, but it has turned out his specialty is drums. Vintage drums to be exact. Knoblach started pounding the kettles when he was a mere lad. Since then he has collected over 1,000 drums, from Arabic hand drums to Indian drums, all stored in his cramped Medford condo. I asked him why he is so enamored with this percussion instrument. He said: " I can walk down the street and find a piece of garbage to drum on and it would sound good." And indeed Kornblach has made drums out of things like old artillery shells ( let us pray they are not live!).

Although Knoblach has performed on drums with the group Mission of Burma years ago, to working with members of the Dresden Dolls, he now is basically into the recording of music. He is currently working with Eric Dahlman, a trumpeter, and other artists. Over the years, Knoblach has performed in venues like: Johnny D's, the defunct Club 3, the Paradise, and many others.

Knoblach, ever the renaissance man, also has an interest in poetry. He has a large book collection that is feed by his scouring of yard sales, estate sales, flea markets, all part of his daily routine as an antiques dealer.

Although not widely published, he is working on a poetry collection titled: "Mice Have Been Eating My Poems." The idea behind this was that when the drummer got back into poetry he went to the place he stored his dusty manuscripts. It seems the mice literally ate up his poetry!

During his undergraduate years Knoblach studied with the likes of Deborah Diggs, who tragically committed suicide several years ago. He counts his influences as Robert Bly, Antonio Machado, and Carl Sandburg. He describes his own poetry as dark and moody.

Knobloch said one of the reasons he left Somerville for Medford was that he could not afford to buy a condo in town. The other reason is the new parking regulations. He said many artists are leaving because it is a huge hassle to feed a meter every 15minutes, and when there are gatherings at studios it is next to impossible to park your car for any length of time due to the stringent laws.

Knoblach still hangs in Somerville, and pines for the days of the Someday Cafe. He is a loyal denizen of Davis Square, a customer of the coffee shops, and to use a cliche one of the many artists who contribute to the " Paris of New England."





Mice Have Been Eating My Old Poems





Mice have been eating my old poems.

Once cut crisp,

straight white edges

have tiny tears.

The smallest of holes in words.

What does a vowel taste like?

What part of my poems

were a paper crib

for a litter of mice?

Little millimeters of life

growing between sheetrock,

behind milk crates

crammed with books.

Delicious!

Mice eat all poets,

good and bad alike,

and their teeth are always growing.



So here’s a poem for a mouse

or mice (there are always more in hiding).

Poems keep being written

and time is always hungry.

All skittish creatures

seek shelter,

tiny comforts and distraction.

Every mouse dreams small dreams.

The Norton Anthology of Latino Literature, edited by Ilan Stavans

*****Tino Villanueva, Boston University professor and one of Somerville's Bagel Bards is included in this new anthology of Latino Literature. Tino presented the book at a recent meeting of the Bards. I asked my old friend and retired University of Michigan professor Hugh Fox to review it. Here is the review of this important work:



The Norton Anthology of Latino Literature, edited by Ilan Stavans, W.W. Norton and Company, 500 Fifth Avenue, NY, NY 10110, $59.95.


The perfect book for right now when most Americans are totally confused about the Latin presence in the U.S. What we have here is a gigantic two thousand, six hundred and sixty-six page volume that overviews the Latino presence in the Americas going back, back back to colonial (and then some) times. It begins by going back to the sixteenth to nineteenth centuries works of the Latino (Spanish) explorers themselves, people inside the whole colonization process, part of it, like Fray Bartolomé de las Casas, Alvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca, Hernando de Sota, “El Inca” Garcilaso de la Vega...on and on, a real trip back into the exploratory colonial past seen through the eyes of the colonizers themselves. Then we move (“Annexations: 1811-1898) into Spanish America becoming independent, breaking with Spain, so it’s not colonial Spain any more but its own independent world. Stavans doesn’t really get into South America much here, but concentrates on the Caribbean, Texas and California. Then Stavans, just as you’re getting to feel you’re inside a totally scholarly-historical work, starts bringing in creative writers like Eusbesio Chacón from Santa Fe who turns it from objective history into personal experience. Lots of writers like that, like Fabiola Cabeza de Baca Gilbert who wrote a book called "We Fed Them Cactus" (1954), which present’s a Latina’s vision of how it was, history seen through a Latina’s eyes. Really bringing it all personally alive, alive, alive.So the book isn’t just libraryish history, but personal-artistic visionary too. And you get some idea of how the whole Latino-American problem looks through Latino eyes. As in José Dávila Semprit”s poem “The United States”: “A sublime document that proclaims/the rights of man,/a star-spangled banner,/history that begins/with roar rebelliousness/and ends up smelling of imperialism..../an ally of passions, prejudices,/and entrenched arrogance....” (p.516.) A ton of visionary creative work (like René Marqués’ play The Oxcart) that looks at the whole migrant problem through (in this case) Puerto Rican eyes.


For a while the book becomes an enormous anthology of Latin American creative work, bringing you from the colonial into present time. So you get to see the evolution of the Latino point-of-view from colonial to contemporary times. And Stavans’ commentaries are gems in themselves. Like his comments that preface the section of the book called “Into the Mainstream: 1980-Present”: “In the United States, the civil rights era generally led Anglos to display energetic good will toward both blacks and ethnic minorities...for Latinos, the racism, xenophobia, and anti-Hispanism widely evident in the United State since the mid-nineteenth century remained ingrained...Changes in Latino life were slow in coming.” (p.1461).The book eventually evolves into an anthology of Latin American writing itself, fiction, plays, poetry, contemporary writers like Abraham Rodriguez, Rafael Campo, Manuel Muõz, María Teresa “Mariposa” Fernández, bringing in Latino-American writers who see the whole thing not through “foreign” but Latino-Gringo eyes: “I am the / Meta-morpho-sized/The Reborn/The living phoenix/Rising up out of the ashes/With my conquered people/Not the lost Puerto Rican soul in search of identity/Not the tragic Nuyorican in search of the land of the palm tree/Not fragmented but whole/Not colonized/But free.” (p.2423).

Then at the very end, just so you don’t forget we’re dealing with Big History and not Hip Hop, Stavans brings in a chronology of the whole historical overscene,year by year,from colonial to contemporary times. And throws in some treaties, acts and propositions out of the history book, so the overall context remains serious history.Beautifully done, the single most impressive book I’ve ever read on one of my main interests. I can see it as volume one of a series that next moves more into South America, then back into pre-history and the invasion of the Spaniards. It’s a book that makes you cry out for infinitely more, more, more.