The River Within By Ann Taylor

 River Within

By Ann Taylor

Ravenna Press

www.ravennapress.com

ISBN:  978-0-9835982-8-2

65 Pages

Review by Dennis Daly

Heraclitus, the pre-Socratic Greek philosopher, exclaimed “no man ever steps in the same river twice.” Ann Taylor goes one better and internalizes the river, punctuating each bend and turbulent eddy with her own riveting memories and graceful musings. Her faith in the legitimacy of her singular vision and her ability as a passionate observer sustains a measured tempo and delights with intelligence and occasional twists of wry humor. 

 

In Jenny and Charles, Taylor portrays the historical obsession that Charles Darwin once had for an actual monkey named Jenny. As the poem progresses the monkey’s actions become comingled with the human observer’s. Darwin in fact is introduced into the piece as a “cagemate.” The cagemate is observed by the monkey scratching incomprehensible markings into a notebook. This neat twist the poet accomplishes in a seamless fashion. Jenny seems to evolve right before our eyes into a child. Here are the last three stanzas:

Darwin was entranced with Jenny,

housed himself with her, smiled, and wrote

when she threw a tantrum for an apple,

placed his gift of a mouth organ straight

to her lips, astonished herself

with her own image in a mirror.

At home, he was happier still to record

whatever she and his children had in common—

their monkeyshines, her humanness.

Jumping into history’s river again, unhesitant, Taylor grabs hold of Cleopatra, Queen of the mighty Nile and remolds her into a model of excess and consumption. Antony is left in the background with plain pancakes and peasant fare. Taylor’s queen knows her magical power and uses it,

She removes her huge pearl earring,

the largest in history, a king’s treasure,

richer than all roman banquets combined,

dropped it into her cup of wine vinegar,

and as it sizzled

drank it.

Again the poet dares history in a poem entitled Annie Taylor takes the Falls. Here we are presented with another river queen, the poet’s namesake. Over sixty this schoolmarm took a terrifying chance and found fame tumbling in a four and half foot barrel over one hundred and seventy feet down Niagara’s magnificent Horseshoe Falls to find her place in this world. A true artist: Taylor the daredevil. Coincidently, this reviewer composed your present reading material standing in the mists of those same falls and he does attest to the crushing power of Taylor’s metaphor exhibited in the water’s cataclysm, first hand. A true artist: Taylor the poet.

The poem concludes by quoting the daredevil Taylor cautioning,

“No one ought ever do that again!”

She warned, quaking,

Propped from rapids across a shaky ramp—

A “Queen of the Mist,”

Numbered forever in the company

Of daredevils.

Maybe. Or was she just scaring off potential rivals who might diminish her feats by their future accomplishments, in other words protecting her immortality.

Sigmund Freud famously said that sometimes a pencil is just a pencil, nothing more. Our poet makes the opposite case in her poem, Pencil. Here this writing tool brims with generative powers. Taylor intimates,

I read that a pencil can write 45,000 words,

draw a line thirty-five miles long—

consume itself

with its own verbosity.

The poet clearly makes this pencil, snatched from her river of memory, her own. Her first confession, a traumatic affair to begin with, as every Catholic child knows, included the theft of pencils.  And now her husband’s personal use of them tie past and present together in her memories. The poem ends with very little ambiguity this way,

Less hungry, I love them still—

my glittery red stocking- stuffer

rolling to me across the desk,

my husband’s just sharpened

hexagonal yellow at the phone,

the one touting in green script

down its side a challenging

Dixon Ticonderoga 1388-3H, HARD

In the poem So much of my journeying has been with you, Taylor beautifully describes discrete incidents in her travels as if they were flowing past her, river-like. Each incident she reconstructs with details defining her companion more than the geography. It is, of course, a love story. Her lover leads her though the darkness in Oxford. He provides the cheese and wine in the Alps. The Taj Mahal exists only in shadows without the presence of her lover. The Great Wall of China exists only as her lover’s running course. Her lover in the heart of the poem appears as her classic protector against life’s physical threats. Speaking to her lover she remembers the scene this way,

My memories of Kenya bring you

Tugging my camera from the robber monkey,

Your breadknife protecting our tent

From the lion roaring just feet away.

In short the river of reality has been changed forever for this intertwined couple and the objective details of life have become, at least in this one poetic iteration, wholly personal and unique.

Lucky couple.

Terrific poet.

Confucius Say by Martha Boss

Confucius Say


By Martha Boss

BOSSPRESS

22 Pages

Price: negotiable



Review by Dennis Daly



Each unpretentious poem in this amazing little chapbook by Martha Boss sneaks up on you and pulls you in to its seemingly surface world of charming stick characters and humorous observations. But there is something else here too: an unusual texture that produces depth in a hologram-like fashion.

Boss infuses her books with mystery from the moment of manufacture. The cover of each book is fringed off-white canvas held together by three staples and common brown twine. The author illustrates each chapbook with an original drawing. Mine has a primitive sketch of a rather angry and protective bird, a mother I think. The pages are cream-colored sturdy paper stock with retro lettering. Boss uses a Hermes Rocket portable typewriter, circa 1987. Occasional production errors are corrected with the use of white out fluid. The occurrence of imperfection only adds to the three dimensional quality and a comfortable feeling of accessibility.

The title poem, Confucius Say, is also the first poem in the collection. It sets the stage for what comes after with witty observations as well as a hint of something deeper. After comparing the actions of a young woman in the midst of a tai kwon do workout and six resting ducks that are getting fat and therefore fit to eat. Confucius, the observer, then notices a ripple on the water’s surface. The poet continues,



Confucius have cell phone.

henot just sit there

like a duck.

he have number

he call number.

he say something.

he say: ah, ripple on top

of water

come from

under water.



Boss’ poem Let Them Eat Cake shows off the poet’s sense of timing and wit. She says,



… sodium aluminum phosphate

propyleneglycolmono esters

mono&diglycerides

sodiumstearyllactylate

xanathan gum

polysorbate 60

tetra sodium pyrophosphate



now you know

why it’s called

marble cake…



The poem ends with some laugh out loud irony. The baker apologizes but he apologizes for the trace nutritional ingredients that the cake mix contains. And thusly does the poet accurately describe thepresent state of poetry.

Both breathtaking in its simplicity and profoundly sad, the poem Mother’s Work dazzles. Boss’s persona brings new life to the old term describing life’s mortality: dust to dust. The poem is relatively short. Here is the better part of it:



…2 hooked rugs



i made one.

my daughter made the other.



the one she gave me had

her dust in the yarn.

the broom scattered it.



it’s looking for her ashes.

we scattered them years ago.



the ashes, somewhere,

have been waiting

for the dust.



i hope they find each other.



Did I say “profoundly sad.” Well okay, but it’s also a sadness tempered by acceptance and a touch of hopefulness. I like this poem a lot.

In her poem Peace Boss delivers a meditation on the title word suitable only for grown-ups. The poet sees world peace as a quaint expression hiding within more modern slogans. She then fleshes out her own understanding of peace in very personal terms.She says,



i remember the cradle

presumably soothing

to& fro

to& fro

back& forth

back& forth.

there are echoes

of motherly screams

in passive rocking.

blips on the radar.



peace.

a strange word.



Indeed a strange word. In its very essence the seeds of disquietude grow. The poet makes that very point this way,



peace.

it’s like dust

settling down

in the afternoon sun

as calmly

as wars are planned.



Another poem by Boss reinforces this theme of connections within opposites. In the poem The Battle In Surrender, she sees the adult world as a bit more complicated than some would have us believe. She says,



…the good

in the harm



the chink

in the armor



the enlightenment

in capital punishment



the hug

in the closed arms…



Boss in the poem entitled The Old Moviesmeditates on yesteryear’s popular habits as portrayed in film. But, of course, the sum of the poem is much more than that. She begins,



in the old movies

smoking was popular.

almost everyone smoked

especially when they were

angry. They just lit up.

literally.



slapping was big too.

all the women slapped

all the men.

love, hate, it didn’t matter.



The poet’s observations then zero in on the toothy smiles which have apparently replaced cigarettes but not necessarily slaps. We are talking about artists now and artistic fads and it’s quite funny. Boss comments,



if you look closely tho,

doesn’t that smile look

weirdly hostile?

i mean look near the nostrils…

there’s a little bit of grrr…



To read more of this wonderful poet you must find her and her books, a selection of which she carries with her. She reads regularly at the Stone Soup venue at the Out of the Blue art gallery in Cambridge on Monday evenings, and often meets with the Bagel Bards Saturday mornings at the Au Bon Pain in Davis Square Somerville.

Ibbetson Street Press/Medicine Wheel Productions/ Small Press Celebration

                                                                                                                                        






Small Press Festival Sept. 29, 2012


( Boston, Mass.)

Medicine Wheel Productions in collaboration with the Ibbetson Street Press is proud to present A Celebration of the Small Presses at the home of Medicine Wheel Productions in South Boston on Sept. 29, at 7PM. The event is free and open to public.




This event is conjunction with Medicine Wheel’s Spoke Gallery’s exhibition, Terrain. The Spoke exhibition is based on the word Terrain and all of its meanings- although maps and mapping will be key the thread of investigation. Many small presses are named after the sites where they were founded. The event is also in conjunction with the annual international event, 100 Thousand Poets for Change which is also occurring on September 29th.




The small presses and little magazines have long been the life blood for the literary community. Many poets from Walt Whitman to Allen Ginsberg got their start in the print and now online literary subculture. The Small Press has been there to give a voice to the emerging, the iconoclast,, the experimental, the mad man, the holy fool, all of whom would not have a chance with mainstream publishers.




Participating local presses will included the Cervena Barva Press http://cervenabarvapress.com/
Wilderness House Literary Press http://www.wildernesshousepress.net/

South Boston Literary Review

Off the Grid Press http://offthegridpress.net/

Ibbetson Street Press http://ibbetsonpress.com/.



There will be a reading from authors from the said presses as well as a student readers Samille Taylor and Kara Bonelli from Endicott College that is now affiliated with Ibbetson. Books will be available for purchase, and a small reception will follow.




"Ibbetson Street Press is a unifying force in the Boston poetry scene, and the most viable way for poetry lovers to keep in touch with what's happening. There's nothing sectarian or cliquey about Ibbetson, and I think the variety of its poets...reflect the breadth of its community." (Peter Desmond- Cambridge, Mass. poet and winner of two Cambridge Poetry Awards)




Medicine Wheel Productions (MWP) is a nonprofit organization whose mission is to transform communities from the inside out by inviting all members to participate in the healing and transcendent power of public art. MWP’s Spoke Gallery is an innovative new program that seeks to act as a hub for artists of all disciplines who want to join the conversation.



Medicine Wheel Productions and its exhibition programs are supported by the Massachusetts Cultural Council, a state agency, and in part by a grant from the Boston Cultural Council, a local agency which is funded by the Massachusetts Cultural Council, administrated by the Mayor’s Office of Arts, Tourism, and Special Events.


Medicine Wheel Productions



110 K Street – 2nd floor, South Boston, MA 02127



(617) 268-6700, http://www.mwproductions.org/ , Email: dougholder@post.harvard.edu  617-710-0163 MBTA: Redline Broadway Stop- no 9 Bus to K St.

The Custom House by Dennis Daly

The Custom House

© 2012 Dennis Daly

Ibbetson Street Press

Somerville MA

ISBN  978-0-9846614-1-1

Sofbound, $12.95, 105 pages

Review by Zvi A. Sesling

Dennis Daly has been there, done that and the poetry in Custom House takes you there: ancient foreign lands you have dreamed about, places of the heart where we all want to be and the love-hate relationship with work place. Daly is a master artist painting portraits of places and people, telling stories and in the end revealing himself as a sensitive soul whose poetry we will not only enjoy, but ultimately associate with and let enter our hearts.

That is what I wrote for a blurb of Dennis Daly’s book of poetry and a second reading has not changed my opinion. In fact, it may have reinforced my feelings about his poetic prowess.  This is a book one can thoroughly enjoy for the images they conjure, for the imagination they ignite.

Take for example the title poem which could be a movie scene, but is poetry that brings you to the moment of action:

Another age: our greed-governed ancestors

Venture forth, significant super cargoes

Compelling the twins: speed and economy

They bounded oceans

We watch for their return with telescope

Of brass: pennants streaming, hull stowed with teas

And silks.  We dream them into our harbors.

Long doldrumed – their ships in need of repair:

Sails split and rotting, spars sprung.

There is also The Dogs of Mazar-I-Sharif where you are taken to a place where past and present converge in a picture of present into modern horror in the last two stanzas:

…They ordered blood-barbarity

Against Mongol Hazareas. The outrage began

As door to door they slaughtered them where they stood,

Dragging them into the street like firewood

and there they remained by decree. No Afghan

Could touch the on pain of execution.

The starved city-dogs came out and feasted.

The howling that I’d heard was the cry of those cheated

Animals, recalling their lost fortune

In The Violinist shows musical insight and how music plays on the heart:

The action of our hearts

In your instrument’s fire,

Sounding in soulful parts

Celestial: a string choir

The examples exhibit just a bit of Daly’s depth and breadth of observation, imagination and poetic reportage.  His book is well worth a read, but be warned,

reading between the lines or rereading lines or stanzas yields even more satisfaction.  Highly recommended.

Zvi A. Sesling

Author, King of the Jungle and  Across Stones of Bad Dreams

Editor, Muddy River Poetry Review

Editor, Bagel Bards Anthology 7

Marge Piercy To Be Visiting Poet at Endicott College--Nov. 13, 2012

Beverly, Mass.

 Endicott College Professor Charlotte Gordon and Creative Writing faculty member Doug Holder are pleased to announce that Marge Piercy will be the Endicott College Visiting Poet on Nov. 13, 2012, at 4PM at the  Chapel on the main campus.  Her biography on the Poetry Foundation website states:

"Marge Piercy was born in Detroit, Michigan, into a working-class family that had been hard-hit by the Depression. Piercy was the first member of her family to attend college, winning a scholarship to attend the University of Michigan. She received an MA from Northwestern University. During the 1960s, Piercy was an organizer in political movements like the Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) and the movement against the war in Vietnam, an engagement which has shaped her work in myriad ways. Perhaps most importantly, though, has been Piercy’s sustained involvement with feminism, Marxism and environmental thought. An extremely prolific writer, Piercy has published 17 volumes of poetry and 17 novels. Her novels generally address larger social concerns through sharply observed characters and brisk plot lines. Though generally focused on issues such as class or culture, and usually written from a feminist position, Piercy’s novels have taken on a variety of guises, including historical fiction and science or speculative fiction. Her novel He, She, and It (1991)—published as Body of Glass in the UK—won that country’s prestigious Arthur C. Clarke Award; an earlier novel of speculative fiction, Woman on the Edge of Time (1976) has been credited as the first work of cyber-punk.



Piercy’s poetry is known for its highly personal, often angry and very emotional timbre. She writes a swift free verse that shows the same commitment to the social and environmental issues that fill her novels. The Moon is Always Female (1980) is considered a classic text of the feminist movement. Early Grrl (1999) collects Piercy’s earliest work and includes some unpublished poems. Of the autobiographical elements in her poetry, Piercy has said that “although my major impulse to autobiography has played itself out in poems rather than novels, I have never made a distinction in working up my own experience and other people's. I imagine I speak for a constituency, living and dead, and that I give utterance to energy, experience, insight, words flowing from many lives. I have always desired that my poems work for others. 'To Be of Use' is the title of one of my favorite poems and one of my best-known books." Piercy has also written plays, several volumes of nonfiction, a memoir, and has edited the anthology Early Ripening: American Women's Poetry Now (1988). Increasingly interested in Jewish issues, Piercy has also been poetry editor of Tikkun Magazine.


In 1971 Piercy moved to Cape Cod where she continues to live and work. She and her husband, the novelist Ira Wood, run Leapfrog Press."

Also the Visiting Author Series at Endicott directed by Doug Holder will feature award-winning poets and writers Fred Marchant and Richard Hoffman. Hoffman, according to the Poetry Foundation: 


"Poet and teacher Richard Hoffman earned a BA in English from Fordham University and an MFA in creative writing from Goddard College. He is the author of the poetry collections Without Paradise: Poems (2002) and Gold Star Road (2007), which was selected by Molly Peacock for the Barrow Street Press Poetry Prize and won the Sheila Motton Award from the New England Poetry Club.

Hoffman is also the author of the memoir Half the House (2005), chosen as Book of the Year by the Boston Athenaeum Readers’ Group, and the collection of short fiction Interference &; Other Stories (2009).

A writer-in-residence at Emerson College in Boston, Hoffman also teaches for the University of Southern Maine’s Stonecoast low-residency MFA program."



Fred Marchant is the author of Tipping Point, winner of the 1993 Washington Prize in poetry. His second book of poems, Full Moon Boat, came out from Graywolf Press in 2000, and House on Water, House in Air: New and Selected Poems came out from Dedalus Press, Dublin, Ireland, in 2002. He is also the co-translator (with Nguyen Ba Chung) of From a Corner of My Yard, poetry by the Vietnamese poet Tran Dang Khoa. This book was published in 2006 by the Education Publishing House and the Ho Chi Minh Museum in Ha Noi, Viet Nam.

He is a Professor of English and the Director of the Creative Writing Program, and Co-director (with Robert Dugan) of The Poetry Center at Suffolk University in Boston. A graduate of Brown University, he earned a Ph.D. from The University of Chicago’s Committee on Social Thought. He is also a longtime teaching affiliate of The William Joiner Center for the Study of War and Social Consequences at the University of Massachusetts-Boston. He has taught creative writing workshops at sites around the country, ranging from the Robert Frost Place in Franconia, NH to the Veterans Writing Group, organized by Maxine Hong Kingston, in the San Francisco Bay Area.

In 1970 Marchant became one of the first officers ever to be honorably discharged as a conscientious objector from the United States Marine Corps. Recently he has edited Another World Instead: The Early Poems of William Stafford, 1937-1947. This collection of poems, to be published by Graywolf Press in April 2008, focuses on Stafford's time as a conscientious objector in Civilian Public Service camps during World War II. Fred Marchant's new collection of his own poetry, The Looking House, was published in June 2009, also from Graywolf Press.


Fort directions go to http://endicott.edu

Ronnie’s Charger A Play by Lawrence Kessenich

David Brooks Andrews/Correspondent  -- metro-west news --Playwright Lawrence Kessenich (front left) discusses "Ronnie's Charger" with director Jess Viator (front right) and actors Frank Bartucca and Kate Blair.

Ronnie’s Charger

A Play  by Lawrence Kessenich

Peformed at Hovey Players

Waltham, MA

also 9 other plays

Review by Zvi A. Sesling

The concept of the Hovey Players is wonderful: ten 10-minute plays by talented playwrights

blended with experienced and new actors. The play I was to review was Lawrence Kessenich’s Ronnie’s Charger, which was recently a prize winner in Chicago.   It was ably directed by Jess Viator.  Frank Bartucca and Kate Blair are the  parents whose grief thirty years after their son was killed in action in Vietnam has not abated.    Both actors portray their thirty years of suffering realistically and Kessenich has dialogue that is perfectly believable, portraying anger and heartbreak at Ronnie’s death. The Charger, of course, is the auto that Ronnie owned and was proud of, which has become a metaphor for life, death and rebirth: the car at first serving as Ronnie’s life then as it rots in the driveway, symbolizes his death and finally, after the car is vandalized and the trunk popped open, raccoons move in to raise their ones and the final symbol of resurrection culminates the play. 

There are five dramas, all of which in one way or another are didactic. The first Life Choice is about abortion, a mother (Kate Forrestall) and her daughter (Kate Blair), argue about life, death and abortion. It is written by Andrea Clardy and directed by Jesse Strachman. The second, It Doesn’t, is about a Good Samaritan-like counselor (Jon Nuquist) and a young man (Richie DeJesus). The latter, who has been outed in school as being gay wants to commit suicide and calls the counselor who tries to talk him out of suicide.  The play is written by George Smart and Directed by Kaitlyn MacPherson.  The third is entitled Fork in the Road and has a wonderful concept of four women – all one person? speaking about cancer survival. The four women are Sami Malnekoff, KC O’Connor, Nicole Pavol and Tristyn Sepersky. The drama is written by Eoin Carney and directed by Mike Haddad.

The final drama is Rosie the Teddy Bear acted by Tristyn Seperksy. Written by Steven Bergman and Liz Fenstermaker it is a sad monologue by a teddy bear who has been discarded and waits for its child to return. It is also about abuse and abandonment, and like the others is didactic and attention getting.

Of the five, however, Ronnie’s Charger stands out as being the best acted, least didactic and most easy with which to associate.

Hovey Players also performed five comedies, Diamonds & A Girl’s Best Friend is a very humorous play with some great lines, well acted by Stephanie Grinley, Kimberly Truon, KC O’Connor and Sami Malnekoff.  Clever writing by Katelyn Tustin and well directed by Kristine Mackin. 

The theme song to the movie and TV show M.A.S.H. was “Suicide Is Painless.”  Playwright John Greiner-Ferris and director Katelyn Tustin show us that while suicide is not painless, as acted by Kimberly Truon, Ron Gabrielli and Matthew Hathorn, suicide can be funny.

Dan in the Lion’s Den is clumsily funny. A family watches as the father-husband enters a zoo’s lion area and emerges intact. Cody Tustin, just out of high school plays the son, Kristin Riopelle, the daughter and Carolyn Cafarelli is the mother. 

The Change along with Ronnie’s Charger were clearly the night’s best.  The Change is about a man entering a hospital for an appendectomy and waking to find they made him  a woman. Written by Peter Floyd and acted by Kate Forrestall and Robin Gabrielli, it is extremely funny

especially when discovering his/her plight Ms. Forrestall provides the audience with the ultimate

look of horror.

Not Funny lives up to its name.  It is the final “comedy” but as conceived by playwright Chris Lockheardt and director Mike Haddad it is more of a serio-comedy, perhaps more drama and

well performed by Kristie Norris and Andy Leburn.

JONES AV. XVI/4

JONES AV. XVI/4

Oel Press
88 Dagmar Av.
Toronto, Ont. M4M 1W1 Canada

Review by: Samille Taylor







Showcasing a variety of poets such as Neil Wilgus, David Huebert, Blair Ewing, Chantelle Rideout and a few others, Jones Av. is a journal of poetry that takes simple concepts and allows readers to think more deeply about them. Being a first-time reader of Jones Av. I was disappointed that this would be the last issue created. As stated before, each poet has found his or her own way to crack the hard exterior and find the inner core.

The collection starts with a very simple poem, two stanzas consisting of only sixteen lines total, by Neil Wilgus.








Classics



A billion light-years

away

a poet writes

what I just wrote

and what I just wrote

may see print

in the nanosecond

of my life

and be forgot.





Whereas that alien poet

may be forgot

for nanocenturies,

then be rediscovered

and live forever

in the minds of those whom

we’ll never never know.







The concept of no thought being original was the first thing that came to mind while reading Wilgus’ words. This idea, represented in the first four lines of the poem, is one constantly touched upon in my literary studies at Endicott College. Therefore, the fact that Wilgus has found a creative way to reiterate this concept leaves me smiling. Wilgus’ word choice is original and caught my attention.The “alien poet” (line 10)  could be interpreted in various ways. It could represent the poets that disregarded the social norms and refused to conform to what was seen as popular for his or her time, and or it could symbolize the poets that some readers are unfamiliar with simply because of where the readers are coming from.- -be it locale, state of mind, or period of time. Neil Wilgus’ poem “Classics” has a very fitting title that brought writers such as Thoreau, Poe, Dickenson and Kafka to mind; alien poets who constantly thought outside of the box and refused to conform to societal norms.







As an English Literature major, when reading Blair Ewing’s poem “One Way” I was itching to deconstruct it. Here we have yet another poem that takes something so ordinary and allows it to sink in and consume one’s thought process.



One Way





Voices burning low like embers

below the dawn line, dream residue

ebbs & gives way to a fevered sea.

Buildings emerge from the mist

like concrete spears.





Still need wood

to shape those towers.

Still need money to name a crime.

Still need poets

to write the verses.

As we will

till the end of time.



Ewing uses powerful metaphors such as, “Voices burning low like embers” (line 1). Also: “Buildings emerge from the mist / like concrete spears” (lines 4-5). When really examining Ewing’s word choice the vocabulary packs a mean punch that leads readers to reevaluate their view on the way everyday society functions. By comparing the voices to embers Ewing gave the impression that the voices, that were strong at one time, are now weak and dying down. Also, by combining the words “concrete” and “spear,” two very dominant words, concrete being almost indestructible and spears being a form of weapon, Ewing creates an image of indestructibly dangerous buildings that could represent anything from industrialization, consumerism, the high dependency on technological advancement etc... Yet, no matter how fast paced and ever changing the commercial world may be, some things will always be the same, like the need of for a poet to write what the masses feel but can't express. This makes the last stanza extremely valid. This poem, like Neil Wilgus’, is short yet full of wisdom. Through Ewing’s work readers can understand that the world will continue to spin and nothing really changes, especially because no one is speaking up to make these changes.

Overall, I enjoyed reading Jones Av. XVI/4. As a young poet I was able to view different poetic styles and appreciate the poets  and how they crafted their work.. This chapbook is a quick and satisfying read that will keep you re-reading and finding new meanings with every turn of the page.

.....Samille Taylor is 21 years old. She is a budding literary scholar, and a senior at Endicott College.  She is also a poet, and of course, an English major. Her work both poetry and prose have appeared in the Boston Area Small Press and Poetry Scene, Lyrical Somerville, Endicott Review, and other publications, both online and print.

100,000 Poets For Change

                                                          ( Click on pic  to enlarge)

Somerville Writer Maria Judge Tells The Story of her Uncle: Legendary Jazz Drummer Jake Hanna

 

Somerville Writer Maria Judge Tells The Story of her Uncle:  Legendary Jazz Drummer Jake Hanna

By Doug Holder

  It was not an ordinary Saturday morning at the Bagel Bards meeting at the Au Bon Pain in Davis Square. A disgruntled artist sat down with us. The very one who is pursuing a lawsuit against one of our members who just happened to be present at the time. You could cut your bagel and the tension with a knife. So I was glad to go to a separate table with Maria Judge to discuss her new book.

  Judge is a member of Somerville’s Bagel Bards, lives in the Ball Square vicinity,  has worked as an administrator at the Fletcher School at Tufts University, and a few non-profits groups for decades. She is also a member of the Somerville Community Chorus. Judge said of Somerville: “ I love the diversity of Somerville—there are so many different types of people from all parts of the world here.”

  Judge has also written for The Somerville News, The Irish Reporter, MIT Tech Talk, and other publications. Judge told me that most of her writing is memoir, personal history and personal essay.

  In her new book: Jake Hanna: The Rhythm and Wit of a Swing Jazz Drummer she tells the story of her late uncle’s sixty year career as a  jazz drummer. Hanna’s story is told through 189 friends and fellow musicians, including Charlie Watts, Warren Vache, Marion McPartland, and others. Hanna was a drummer for the big bands of Harry James and Woody Herman. He also had a ten year gig with the Merv Griffin Show. When he went out on his own he worked with Bing Crosby, Oscar Peterson, and many other notables.

Hanna passed away in 2010. Judge recalled: “ I didn’t see him often over the years. I sort of reconnected the last 10 years of his life. Judge continued: “ It was the opening night of the Olympics when I got the word that he died. So I experienced the Olympics through a veil of tears. At his wake musicians got up and told wonderful stories about him. Guys like saxophonist Harry Allen, and trumpeter Randy Reinhart. They all fondly recalled things he said and did.

  Judge felt if she didn’t save these stories they would disappear. She decided to get them down on paper. What started out as a booklet became  a book. And she found a publisher: Meredith Music Productions.

 Judge told me that after working on the Merv Griffin show he free-lanced. He worked with Rosemary Clooney, Tony Bennett, and others of this ilk…and toured the world.

 Evidently, according to Judge, Hanna was quite the wit. When Carl Reiner appeared on the Griffin show and his cohort Mel Brooks showed up late, Reiner told Brooks that he had a lot of nerve.  Brooks countered that he was at his doctor’s. “I got arrhythmia!,” he said. Hanna chimed in “Who could ask for anything more?,” quoting from the Gershwin tune titled:  I Got Rhythm.

Judge has a few book launches planned for the near future. One is at the Berklee College of Music, and the other is at Porter Square Books. She plans to promote the book and is not afraid to press the flesh.

Judge recalled that she wrote part of the book in the Diesel Café in Davis Square, and at True Grounds in Ball Square.  She usually went with a friend and like yours truly can create and be productive with all the white noise of a busy café.

 As Charlie Watts, the famous Rolling Stones drummer told Judge when she was researching the book: “ I loved Hanna since the first time I met him." I ask you “ Who could ask for anything more…”

**** For more information go to:  http://jakehanna.blogspot.com

Ways We Hold By Jennifer Arin

 

Ways We Hold

By Jennifer Arin

Dos Madres Press

www.dosmadres.com

ISBN: 978-1-933675-71-8

59 Pages

Review by Dennis Daly

Memento mori! Yes, but remembering death as an intellectual construct brings with it unrelenting despair and crushing anxiety. Our metaphysically canny species needs to reach out and hold something or someone when facing the abyss. The acceptance of reality needs a counterbalance. Here, on cue, enters the magician, who passes the wand over the stove-pipe hat and pulls the inevitable rabbit out by his long ears. Behold art. Behold poetry. Behold Jennifer Arin’s poetry.

In the poem Reason for Being an Emperor on Horseback the poet flashes us a snapshot of her internal spirit crashing through the dense forests of ignorance, defeating the old ghosts and demons plaguing our world. The story line charges in, unabashedly romantic, and the tone feels self-assured, stark, and stubborn. It’s a short poem and here is a good part of it,

…I navigate;

to clear a path through the expanse,

to chase away ghosts and demons

from the heavy, hanging branches;

ride swift

from where I am to where

I wish: take in

the shaded world ahead.

The poet’s persona, in a piece entitled Love Poem for a Larger Scheme of Things, uses the most common chores of human connections, laundry and food shopping, to cope with death while, at the same time, facing the unpleasant details of its occurrence. She says,

…We fold

each other’s sheets, match corners,

and turning edges

of a page in the journal for Chris

I have the same sense of something

missing needlessly…

She then describes Chris’ death under an 18-wheel truck. There’s no flinching here. An altar in the cereal aisle concludes this unusual but effective matching of images,

At the neighborhood store

where he worked, friends place

a book of thoughts like these,

though more heaven bent, near

an altar on the cereal shelf, stacked

boxes of Life beside it…

Perhaps the most provocative poem in Arin’s marvelous book, Forces of Nature, rubbed me the wrong way the first time I read it. I mistakenly thought it overly sentimental, self-absorbed, and ultimately cruel.  Wrong on all counts!  This formal poem of seven stanzas is beautifully lyrical with an aabb ccdd rhyme scheme. The poetic structure ups the tempo and carries the story line to its frantic and seemingly feel good conclusion. The poet finds an injured sandpiper struggling in the surf, obvious prey for predatory birds or the incoming tide itself. As if that isn’t enough a pit bull makes a bid to dispatch the bird. But our poet will have none of it. She next delivers the creature into the hands of a veterinarian who, reasonably enough, offers to put the bird to sleep. Note the phraseology. The poet revolts and the poem ends this way:

Mad as the new rain, I try a desperate last plan;

the aviary, refuge from all predators, can—

and will—care for this fragile life.

Witness: it survived nature’s ready knife.

A new reality has been set up by this writer—an aviary of art. Her struggle against nature and fate comes close to madness. But it’s not. Here she seems intent on sculpturing the curves and angles of a new kind of being, who continues to battle, knowing the war is lost but choosing to ignore that fact.

In Giving Up the Ghost {Writing} Arin’s persona swears off euphemisms for death’s finality. She says,

…whether passed or defunct,

gone, expired, retired—should be debunked;

they offer no more comfort than the other side,

rest, departure, quietus, or Great Divide.

Such evasions should be our permanent loss,

should bite the dust, buy the farm …

So far— humorous and clever— but no more. Then Arin hits you with this last couplet,

Each term, despite itself, is a memento mori—

Just as no verse can reverse what isn’t transitory.

Pretty neat!

The poet also makes use of time to hold on.  In the poem Keeping Time, measuring time and the awareness of its divisions gives humans a sense of control. Maybe there is an eternity between two points. Starting with a 37,000-year-old calendar bone found in Africa, Arin gives her own little history of man’s attempt to control the march of time and thereby postpone death. She concludes it this way,

..If I only had one

more day, a friend says will be his

epitaph. All of ours if we can’t better

measure our presence in this world,

the timeless part of us hungry

to count itself: I’m here, I’m here!

Time’s an escape artist anyway.

Arin broadens this theme in the poem Unified Theory. She insists that understanding our universe and its continued expansion gives us a better foothold on it. It matters how things fit together. She puts things in perspective,

In ancient Greece, they understood

multiplicity, mere appearances

of a single truth.

It is our place

to remember that the many

stem from one.

There is no place

not ours.

Within Jennifer Arin’s poetry her well-wrought measures span out, seem to bridge the shaded abyss to the forested chaos beyond.  I hope they do. That’s all any poet can hope for.

Somerville Poet Afaa Michael Weaver: From the mean streets of East Baltimore to a road paved with literary acclaim

                                                      

Somerville Poet Afaa Michael Weaver: From the mean streets of East Baltimore to a road paved with literary acclaim.

  Interview with Doug Holder

     I asked poet Afaa Michael Weaver how he would  define himself or like to be remembered. He told me: " The kid Michael from Federal Street in East Baltimore with the funny looking glasses and big wingtip shoes. He grew up to write poetry". And indeed Weaver, 60, has written poetry, plays, essays, and is currently working on a memoir. This longtime Somerville resident is an English professor at Simmons College in Boston, a winner of the prestigious Pushcart Prize, a winner of the New England Poetry Club’s Mary Sarton Award, an NEA, not to mention the Ibbetson Street Press Lifetime Achievement Award, as well as many other accolades.. His papers are now archived at the Howard Gotllieb Archival Research Center at Boston University. I talked with him on Independence Day at the bustling Bloc 11 Café in Union Square, Somerville.

Interview with Doug Holder

Doug Holder: The last time we touched base was probably in 2010. What has been happening?

Afaa Michael Weaver:  I had a book of poetry translated into Arabic. The translator’s name is Wissal Al-  Allaq.  The title of the book in English is “Like the Wind.”  They are mostly original poems I wrote for the Kalimah Project. It is a project based in the United Arab Emirates. They publish, in their words: “Significant contemporary work.” Wissal-she is a good translator. The book itself is beautiful looking—and it is in hardback.

DH: Any books in the works?

AMW:  I signed a contract in 2011 with the University of Pittsburgh Press. The book is titled: The Government of Nature. It concerns childhood, and spirituality. The title refers to the Daoist metaphor of the interior of the body being a microcosm of the external world. The world of nature exists in the interior of the body.

DH: You are fascinated by Chinese culture and literature.  You started the Simmons College International Poetry Conference several years ago. How is it going?

AMW:  The structure is there but no money. I may try it again in another year or two. I want to get my memoir done. That’s what I am working on now.

DH:  What gave you the impetus to undertake a memoir—turning 60?

AMW:  I turned 60 last year. People have been asking me to write one. They say my past is unusual. I have worked in a factory, a warehouse, for many years, and at the same time I wrote for The Baltimore Sun.

DH: Don Aucoin of The Boston Globe described you as a Poet Forged in Heartbreak.

AMW: I was from a poor, poor working-class background. I worked 15 years in a factory as a laborer. I was diagnosed with Congestive Heart Failure in 1995, and that June I was admitted to a cardiac unit. They gave me 5 years to live. That’s when my book Timber and Prayers came out. After that I started to confront my abusive childhood. I had three marriages and three divorces. In the first marriage I lost a child. That was bad—I had a complete nervous background. The child had Down Syndrome. I dropped out of the University of Maryland after this and worked in a steel mill. I was in the military. I was a cook for military intelligence. I was never deployed. But basic training breaks you down, my child died, and I was all of 19 years old. Things like this happen to young veterans today. I have a number of veteran students that I teach at the William Joiner Center at UMASS Boston every summer. I want to support them as much as I can.

DH: Do you have a publisher for your memoir?

AMW: I have a few people who are reading it. Poets Martha Collins and Danielle Georges are looking at it. I hope to turn into my agent before I go back to teaching.

DH: I know you live in Somerville, right up the block from me. You refer to it as the cave.

AMW:  I live directly across from city hall. The house is actually built on a hill. So I live in a cave of sorts. It is modest. Very Zen-like. It is affordable. I was traveling back and forth to Taiwan and China so the low overhead allowed me to spend money for airfare. Every trip I take there is out of my own pocket.

I like living in Somerville more than I did than when I first moved here in 1997. It is more diverse and cosmopolitan. It was a little hostile when I first moved here. Union Square was dead before but now it’s alive…it has an Asian Grocery,  an Indian Market, Sherman’s, Bloc 11 Café, etc…

DH: I know you studied playwriting at Brown University. Have you written any theatre pieces as of late?

AMW: I haven’t written a new play in quite a while but I really want to get back into it. I got my MFA from Brown. When I went there with my poetry book and a NEA, I met George Huston Bass; who was literary secretary to Langston Hughes. He and Paula Vogel talked me into playwriting. They thought I had talent as a playwright. I was anxious to try. So when I came out of graduate school I had two professional productions in 1993. I got glowing reviews in Philadelphia and in Chicago. At that time I had better luck with my plays than my poetry. My first play was named Rosa. It concerned a Blues singer in Ohio—it was a love story. The director was Trazana Beverly. She is the first African-American poet to win a Tony Award. She won it for her role in For Colored Girls…”  In Chicago  I won a PDI theatre award. But my life in theatre sunk my third marriage. The theatre is a funny world. You have to know yourself—a good playwright knows himself. When I was at Brown University Paul Vogel was just starting her play writing program. I was one of her first students. Lynn Notage was another student. Two or three years ago she went on to win the Pulitzer Prize for her play Ruins. I was close with Vogel. We both shared an abuse history. I think she believed in me more as a playwright than a poet. After my marriage broke I retreated into poetry. After this experience came my collection Talisman.

DH: You are now in the older generation of African American Poets. I was reading about the generation after you  in Poets and Writers magazine, the Dark Room Collective. How does the younger generation of poets differ from your generation?

AMW: They are all in their 40’s now.  The original Darkroom was peopled with such poets as Kevin Young, Major Jackson, Thomas Sayers, Natasha Trethewey ( Now U.S. Poet Laureate), Danielle Georges, Patrick Sylvan, Sharon Strange and others. When I was coming up we did not have a collective. I was very influenced by Lucille Clifton. In Baltimore, Andre Codrescu introduced me to Surrealism. I was also influenced by Baltimore poets James Taylor—no, not the singer!—and John Strasburgh, a fiction writer. The Darkroom Collective was all black. The people I cut my teeth with were all white. Melvin E. Brown was the only other Black poet I knew. Baltimore, back in the day was centered around Codrescu. I was basically the only black poet.

DH: How about the African American writers’ organization Cave Canem that you were involved with?

AMW:  I started out on faculty at Cave Canem with Elizabeth Alexander. I had a falling out with Cave Canem and I resigned. They asked me to come back as the first elder. Later I asked that Lucille Clifton to be a second elder. I am always there for Canem fellows. I never deny them.

DH: How would you like to be defined—remembered?

AMW: The kid Michael from Federal St in East Baltimore, who used to wear funny glasses and big wingtip shoes. Later he grew up to write poetry.

DH: That’s you?

AMW: It is Doug, it is.


 

When I Think of Vietnam

Thinking of what is new, how nothing gets

beyond being already done, I stare at a decimated

apple seed, some unnamed rascal having made off

with the real fruit, my last hope for a spring

that is real, not the juggernaut of artificial corn.

I am perplexed, thinking perplexity is the door

to writing something new, a brave metaphor

or the last teenage dream I had in East Baltimore

before the naive wish to be thought worthwhile

by the grand machine, to become a soldier.

Then comes the sober sense of dogs roaming

streets where there is only a blank starvation,

and the awful stench of having eaten the planet

where we live all reminds me this poem must resist

all things that kill, things that add to war's breath.

The life that smothers and gluts us makes it tough

to see how love grows through a bitter humility,

the barely audible whisper of people too wise

to believe the lies we Americans tell ourselves

about who Americans are and what belongs to us.

Afaa Michael Weaver 蔚雅風