Glory By Linda M. Fischer

Glory


By Linda M. Fischer

Finishing Line Press

Georgetown, Kentucky

www.finishinglinepress.com

ISBN: 978-1-62229-327-8

26 Pages

$14.00



Review by Dennis Daly



“Let my voice mingle and drift where it may,” says Linda M. Fischer in her new poetry collection entitled Glory. Well, it turns out that her words drifted over the environs of Somerville Massachusetts and into the Au Bon Pain in Davis Square where Fischer’s chapbook was thrust into my hands by the renowned and bearded Bringer-of-Books.



The collection’s opening poem, Memorial Day Weekend sets out in loving detail the author’s relationship with her mother, her father, and her mother’s garden. Along the way Fischer establishes her bona fides as a nature writer with her apt descriptions, her sensory meditations, and her magical memories. Here is a telling section of that poem,



As I clear away dead stalks, reworking

a weed-blown croft until I can feel its bones,

I think of the gift from my father—a garden to tend—

at five, the scent of stewardship no less sweet

than tips of daffodils and narcissus reaching for the sun.

He contrived the borders that were to limn my world…



Later in the same poem Fischer lives in the moment which she directs according to her own will. Future considerations like ownership are beside the point. The poet explains,



…What I have begun

for her I do as much for myself, to compass

what is possible in the time we have left to us.

She talks about the gardens “enhancing the value

of the property,” glossing over its inevitable sale.

I obsess about the perfect juxtaposition of purple

coneflower with globe thistle…

What’s important to Fischer is not merely the seasons or the anticipation of future blooms, but the memories which fuel her anticipation. Unlike Lot’s wife, she’s not one to look back, her memories are enough. In her poem Leaving she exults,



…I learned to rake—

a seasonal reckoning on the heels of adolescence—

piling up memories to last a lifetime

within a span of only ten years.

when I struck out on my own I never

looked back…



The poet’s green thumb extends beyond plant life to garden implements in her poem The Benches. She refurbishes two cracked and moldered benches from her mother’s garden. These benches had aged just as her mother had. In one sense it was part of her mother that was being brought back. Fischer describes the results,



…by the time

they fell to me who would imagine them rising

like a pair of resplendent phoenixes—new

red oak burnished in urethane, ironwork

powder-coated in its original color, pieces

fitted with identical nuts and bolts—so by

now I can almost credit The Resurrection.



The poem Frankly Ferns charms with its sexually suggestive language and witty puns. Apparently even the plant industry has caught on and markets the various types of ferns coyly. Consider this stanza,



Now, here’s a tempting number—hart’s tongue,

something of a braggart: a hardy “evergreen terrestrial”

tagged as perennially “fresh and erect.” Bearing

little resemblance to its brethren, it reflects a soupcon

of impertinence, likely, I think, to insinuate itself

into any social situation—its abundant foliage

“neatly puckered” as if it had every expectation of getting

a big sloppy kiss. Who could resist?



This poet not only looks at nature in her gardens closely, she also looks at herself looking. The results can be pretty funny. In Cheating the Deer Fischer’s persona dreams a veritable Garden of Eden with sensual stimulations of lilac scent, wayward breezes, diamond showers, and a rainbow of iris. She envisions Monet’s gardens spilling into place. Then the villainous intruding deer nips her beautiful buds. The plot thickens,



thieves, they slip in from the woods to browse,

their stealth footfalls rumored in the soft earth.

She may dream of her iris emerging from tight

cocoons like butterflies on the wing; foxglove

advancing like an armed battalion, lances held

aloft; the peonies swelling like gaudy balloons…

and well she may dream, among other things,

of dressed venison with a nice Bordelaise and fries.



The last two lines neatly transform the poet-gardener into Hannibal Lector.

Fischer’s poem Hubris deals with mankind’s attempt to control his environment. The poet sets up another humorous situation when she goes to war against weedy grass. On her hands and knees she pulls tufts of it out. Her daughter catches her in the act. Even tiny lawns are afflicted by this lighter variety of invading grass. Trust me. I know. Here is a description of her battle plan,



Doggedly she stalks outlying tufts

like a huntress, shrugging off the likelihood

that someone will think her daft—half

stooped, peering interminably over her toes.

She tries to justify expunging one

unruly invader from a host of others,

and can’t—the thrust sufficient unto itself.



The title poem and the last piece in this collection celebrates morning and rebirth and hope and in a sense immortality. The poet gives a pantheistic view of the waking world. She becomes the fox that coughs in the distant wood, the hawk that feels the earth’s living breath and the snake coiling in the sun. As she observes she becomes part of the rhythm of life and with her human awareness she exults in the music and beauty of it all. She sums it up this way,



… I will cultivate my garden

and I will move to the rhythms of the living earth.

I will listen to my heart and I will sing

when I cannot help but sing, and glory—

glory!—for this is the morning of my life,

and this is the way the day begins.



Read this lyrical wondrous collection first thing in the morning. It will make your day.

Interview with Poet/ State Rep. Denise Provost

Denise Provost

Interview with Poet/ State Rep. Denise Provost

with Doug Holder



Denise Provost writes:


"I started writing – mainly, but not exclusively poetry – as a child. I got a full scholarship to Bennington College during my sophomore year of high school, based in large part on a manuscript of poetry. In my senior year, I decided to go to law school, after having decided that I was not suited for a graduate degree in English literature.


I graduated from Bennington in 1971, started law school in 1972, graduated from law school in 1982. I worked as a lawyer for the City of Newton, then was recruited by the City of Somerville, to work for reform mayor Eugene Brune. Working in local government gave me ideas about how government could become more transparent and responsive. In 1993, I ran for Ward Alderman in Ward 5, coming very close against a long-time incumbent.


The incumbent resigned a year and two weeks later, and the Board of Alderman appointed a replacement. I ran against the appointee in 1995, again coming close. After that second defeat, I figured my political career was over. Then, in 1999, the ward 5 incumbent did not run for re-election, and one of the at-large aldermen made the same decision. I ran for the latter seat, and won.


I served on the Board of Aldermen for almost seven years, running for state representative in a special election. I won that election in February, 2006, and have since represented Somerville’s 27th Middlesex District.

As my children got older, I found I was writing more poetry again, and decided that I needed a teacher. I was accepted into Susan Donnelly’s poetry writing workshop in 2010. Since then, I’ve had poetry published in a number of print and on-line journals."



I had the pleasure to interview Provost on my Somerville Community Access TV Show Poet to Poet: Writer to Writer.







Doug Holder: Are there any canonical Somerville poets worth mentioning?



Denise Provost: Sam Walter Foss. Foss Park is named after him. I believe he was a poet during the early 20th Century. He wrote some good poetry actually.  His poem about Prospect Hill is used every Jan 1st when we go up to Prospect Hill to raise the first flag.



DH: In your statement it mentions your poetry manuscript helped you get into Bennington College. What was the theme?



DP: I wrote about ideas, and observations. At one point I did a series of poems about each one of the colors. I wrote about nature. I wrote about ideas I encountered.



DH: What got you started as a poet?



DP: I liked it. And I also think I started because I was very fond of song. One of the things I like about songs is that they have meter. And usually they have rhyme. Early on thoughts would would come to me in the form of metric rhymes' little bits of lyrics. I would make up new lyrics to different melodies. And at some point these turned into poems.



DH: You are a graduate of Boston University Law School. Why did you not stick with a literary career?



DP: I remember the application for Bennington asked me what centuries did I want to specialize in. I was convinced that I wanted to be a Medievalist. And then I got to college and I started reading other material, and I realized I couldn't spend my life with metaphysical poets of the 15th Century.



DH: Do you think you would make a good poetry teacher?



DP: Possible--maybe even probably. I have worked with young people. I have a good eye and a good ear. And I know I am a good editor. I edited professionally for the New England Journal of Law and Medicine.



DH: Are you familiar with any lawyer/writers?



DP: Well of course Franz Kafka was a lawyer for the German Workers Compensation System. Andrew Marvel is a favorite poet of mine. He was a diplomat and in the British parliament.



DH: Do you write political poetry?



DP: Occasionally. Sometimes I am inspired by the newspaper to write poetry. And sometimes it is rather satirical. I love Calvin Trilling. He writes wonderfully, funny political poems. Even when they are not topical anymore they are fun to read.



DH: Has what you write about now changed from when you were young?



DP: No. Every bit of that WOW! response I had as a kid I still have. If my subject matter has changed it is because my world is much bigger now. I have children now, although I don't write about them that much. I write a lot about things I remember. Like once I was at the gym and saw a woman who reminded me of someone I knew years ago. I decided to write a story about her in the form of a sonnet. Sonnet-writing is a challenge for me. I have to say everything I want to say in 14 lines.



DH: The poem is never finished, right?



DP: As Paul Valery wrote: "The poem is never finished it is abandoned."



DH: David Slavitt--a noted poet, author, translator etc... ran against Tim Toomey, a state legislator, and lost by a landslide. He told me that poets would make good politicians because they have built in shit detectors. Your take?



DP: I think that if you are a self-disciplined poet, and you listen very carefully--you have to have one. It helps you hone in on the essence of things.







The Deal

Crafty Bob, and his good friend, Mr. Wynn,



woo Foxborough. They make a solemn vow



that the great Pleasure Dome that they’ll put in



won’t turn the town to Vegas, or Macau.







“Bucolic” is the way Foxborough will stay.



No high rise buildings, or parades of cars



will spoil its home town feel, or Patriot ways,



but make the tax base plump; leave life unmarred.







I don’t live there. It is not up to me



to trust these wealthy gentlemen, or not.



I’ll watch Foxborough’s courtship, and I’ll see



if the Deal can be marketed, and bought.







I’m certain that the one per cent must know



what benefits the rest of us, below.



– Denise Provost







Water Chestnut Pull, Mystic River







There was a time when every day in June



I woke anticipating summer’s fields;



picking wild strawberries; my good fortune



then to enjoy that sweet and fragrant yield.



But this June day another harvest brings



out on the weed-choked river, where we glide,



dragging up water chestnuts’ living strings



of leaf, stem, root, and seed-pods, dripping slime,

pulled up from sulfurous, anaerobic mud.

We pile our baskets with each reeking mass.

Our boat rides lower with this captive load;

we haul in truckloads full; the hours pass.

Though sun-ripe fruit would satisfy my greed

I’m well content, uprooting noxious weeds.

– Denise Provost

Galway Kinnell Reading at Longfellow House Sunday July 28 at 3pm

Galway Kinnnell

                          Galway Kinnell Reading at Longfellow House Sunday July 28 at 3pm


                                                          hosted by NEPC             

by Michael Todd Steffen

Blesser of animals, photogenic wanderer in Calcutta, fasting bear-blood tracker with knives in his two fists, cabin feverer, hush-singer to a daughter woken from nightmares, Galway Kinnell took up permanent residence in American poetry by finding presence of mind and speech in some of the most bizarre (a criterion term Baudelaire digested from Poe) scenarios, situations and personae. ‘He’s as solitary as Thoreau’ –I’ve heard my mind utter after reading one of his singular eclogues.

Kinnell should need no introduction or promotion. He is a sequoia among our living poets, and one of those rare readers who brings the music that you hear when you read his poems to the lectern.

He will be joined by poets Brendan Galvin, Greg Delanty and Daniel Tobin at the Longfellow House, 105 Brattle Street in Cambridge, on Sunday July 28 at 3pm. The event is hosted by the New England Poetry Club (NEPC) under the rubric IRISH AMERICAN VOICES. It is open to the public and free of charge.

He Looked Beyond My Faults And Saw My Needs By Leonard Gontarek

He Looked Beyond My Faults

And Saw My Needs

By Leonard Gontarek

Hanging Loose Press

Brooklyn, New York

www.hangingloosepress.com

ISBN: 978-1-934909-31-7

88 Pages

$18.00



Review by Dennis Daly



Lucifer, God’s favorite, now fallen, angel graciously invites us into his looking glass world made up of perfumes, strange sex, strong drink, idols, and impending death. He does this through the imagistic poetry of Leonard Gontarek. Oh wait, I have this backwards. Leonard Gontarek invites us into his emotionally charged and arty version of hell on earth. The poet does this through Lucifer’s angelic, albeit horny, persona. Hmmm… perhaps I had it right the first time.



Although the movement in these poems is linear, the interjection of dreamlike images and surreal logic beckons the reader elsewhere and leads him into cul de sacs, detours, and neighborhoods off the beaten road.



In Gontarek’s opening poem entitled Autumn Sonata the poet considers Jackson Pollock, a fallen angel if ever there was a fallen angel. According to the poet Pollock saw the world as a burning cruise ship. Sounds about right! Pollock’s work also engendered a strange calm into some of his most chaotic compositions. Gontarek sees equivalent natural landscapes, where shadows deepen on autumn leaves. The poet (or is it Lucifer) is onto something here. He cautions rightly against cavorting with the darker powers. Gontarek concludes with some pretty intriguing lines,



Pollock once sat in a field with an elixir,

after selling his soul to the devil.

A mixture of whiskey and dusk.

It looked like the glass was frothing,

but it was ordinary mist.



Recently I looked at a Pollock painting

which, always sacred to me,

looked like a bunch of paint piled on a canvas.

One of the saddest afternoons.



Even angels walking the earth have second thoughts about their nature and their choices. Gontarek details his misgivings after twenty-five years of writing poetry in Hymn, a short poem, which makes the point wittily. The poet says,



I am stepping out, just now, for stamps.

Terrorists pull up in a silver Mercedes—

the newer, American model—spray Uzis in my direction.

I fall to the ground, riddled with doubt.



I bet that there are quite a few poets out there that can identify with those lines.



A little bit of hell on earth can be a good thing. For instance the poet finds God or at least religion between Little Pete’s Diner and the windy corner of Pine and Quince. Nearby hunger spurs patrons into the inferno. Gontarek lovingly concludes,



…I undo your hair. Here the analogy breaks down.



The line is long at Dante’s Ribs. The leaves exquisite, combust.

A fly lands on the heart. Evening follows.



The poet-angel penning these poems contents himself with love and mysteries rather than seeking meaning in life. He interchanges dreams with reality on a whim or rather as part of his artistic makeup. There’s little sentimentality here. Here’s how he puts it,



…God fingers us, all night long.

Cars skirl the wet streets. Brilliant red cars.

Leaves don’t so much fall, as



are dumped into wet needles.

Difficult to tell dream from the other thing.

Inhabit this world when I damn well feel like it.

Compassion is not a requirement.



Gontarek’s poem Loop is a wonderful continuum of imagery praising the seekers of worldly knowledge and the limits of that same knowledge (think Garden of Eden Tree of Knowledge). The poem opens this way,



The trees are infinite. A particle of bird sits on a branch.



The clouds, scum-caked bottoms of boats.



Heart, dog on a 20-foot leash, awake and restless, goes so far.



Praise, infinite. The trees have made us for themselves.



I want to know death, smear of red, understand.



Anonymity can be a necessity in the environs of hell, especially for an angel, fallen or not. Gontarek sets his poem The Summer in a strip joint. The poet’s persona explains,



Nothing to do, but finish

my Absolut, keep to myself.



Take in a show. Nightclub

gone to seed. Erotic act:



Leda And The Swan. Leda

of course, a woman. The swan,



not necessarily a man.

Try not to look at the others,



On the way in, and out.



The poem entitled Email is made up of ten short erotic fragments of varying intensity, some balanced with a touch of melancholy. The theme seems to be the ambiguity (hell, the excitement) that exists in Gontarek’s infernal regions. Consider this one fragment,



Afterward, I go to hell like a bullet from a sad man.

Beautiful nude women, trees, along the way.

Take off my clothes, you said, so they tear.



Sometimes conferring with fellow angels only confuses things, especially while intoxicated. The poem Notebook V expresses some of the poet’s exasperation. Here’s how the poem opens,



The angel asks if we have thought things over. Close, her perfume on you.

God watches on TV.



Karma ran over my dogma.

Vodka, cocaine, Gap cologne cocktail.



Do I know what I mean? My sister in any windy

Garden, cupping a praying mantis like a green flame.



The Buddha hears all prayers with his big ears. buddha error.



Goddamn Sacre Coeur is everywhere.



And later in the same poem you get this riveting and spot on line,



I wait for the rusty factory gate to open. Drinking in dawn, pitching woo

to archangels.



Artistry brings intensity and forbidden knowledge. And with that seems to come a sense of surveillance. The poet as fallen angel describes the sensation as follows,



… A twig snap, just as expected.

A voice, stern and fatherly, hushes the extras, or has he just imagined it.

Moon, cylindrical-shaped in pond. Everything heightened in crosshairs of God.



Brave fire and brimstone if you must, but buy this book. Leonard Gontarek is a heluva poet.

Flower Map by Deborah Leipziger

  Flower Map

by Deborah Leipziger

© 2013 Deborah Leipziger

Finishing Line Press

Georgetown KY

ISBN  978-1-62229-321-6

Softbound, $14, 25 pages

Review by Zvi A. Sesling

Flower Map simply put is about love—these are love poems and they are sexy, sensual, exciting. Take for example Sueῇo

I sleep inside your sleep

Your touch in my touch

Your hand resting on my side

Guitar curve of my body

In the night you whisper

“It’s like an exotic island”

The moon reclining into the night

Your sweat in my pores

I dream inside your dream

Awake inside your morning

Don’t you long to be the other half of this poem?  Can’t you imagine yourself in the dream?  Ms. Leipziger has a way with her romances as Awaken informs us:

Your body presses against my back

arousing me awake

touching through the golden silk sheath

that falls all around me

Morning hovers over us

like a blanket

You cover me completely—

how you come crashing into me,

each time a new ocean

Your breath bites on my clavicle

Your pulse in mine

Brazilian born she has lived in the United Kingdom and the Netherlands which adds to her distinct imaging.

This book is also about loving her children.

Morning

My little daughter next to me,

her profile luminous

like a painting.

Her skin is like the morning,

warm and softly lit,

not alabaster

like her sister’s,

but golden peach.

Her face is a geography of the places I love,

of everything I know.

I am an admirer of Deborah Leipziger’s poetry for two reasons: first the sheer beauty of her poems and second the ability to make love seem like more than mere physicality, more than base emotion.  When I edited Bagel Bards Anthology 7 hers was the lead poem. 

Finally, the last poem in Flower Map is about making bread, challah to be specific and

it is a metaphor for so many things: poetry, relationships, love, life and family.

Here are some lines from How to make challah which provides insight into her wonderful talent.

Make a well./A deep well to contain the grief./Pour the yeast water into the well./Let it seep in./Add 3 eggs and 3 tablespoons of oil./Take off your rings.

Read the rest of this poem in her book. Read all the poems.  Pick a quiet place where you

will not be disturbed. Turn off the phone. You will want to concentrate and ruminate. Enjoy.

_____________________________________________________

Zvi A. Sesling

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

Editor, Muddy River Poetry Review

Editor, Bagel Bards Anthology 7

Editor, Bagel Bards Anthology 8

Review of CATHERINE REFRACTED

Review of CATHERINE REFRACTED, Pure Slush Vol. 7, edited by Matt Potter, June 2013,
http://pureslush.webs.com/store.htm, 100 pages.

Review by Barbara Bialick

In “Catherine refracted”, the editor and his anthology of chosen authors have fashioned a charming and gregarious biography written as separate story vignettes about Catherine the Great, straight out of Russian history. Catherine, born in 1729 as Sophie, is known for her vast power, ribald party ideas and various love affairs with the men of her court.  Editor Matt Potter writes that “Catherine’s accomplishments are too too numerous and too too varied to mention here…suffice to say that if an accomplishment is mentioned in this book, it’s probably true.”

I would be remiss if I didn’t first quote Susan Tepper, a Boston small press and poetry scene author. Her first-person story is titled “Two Grigorys”, and begins “Onging it is an extremely bitter winter, though all our winters are dastardly cold. My bed is a fortress of misery. Both my
Grigorys have been absent past a fortnight, one off waging battle in the western regions, the other laced in the arms of my French cousin, Isabelle, a haughty princess capable of the worst treacheries…”

In her doldrums, says Tepper, the empress is tired of embroidering seat cushions and drinking Vodka. After her “dwarf minister” suggested she exile both Grigorys to the Isle of Elba, she “sentenced the dwarf minister Soleninkoff, to death by firing squad. As he was dragged away I felt a certain pleasure sensation, similar to the pleasure that I receive from my two Grigorys…”

A funny tale by Sarah Collie is called “Transvestite Balls” and actually describes the various sexy and hairy men in their ball gowns. “Stifling a giggle, she thought the lieutenant’s violet, off-the-shoulder gown was a brave choice, especially since he had so much dark chest hair…”

“The Kings and I” is a well-titled history by Kim Conklin Hutchinson, who writes “Yes, history does repeat itself. From up here, it’s a bit like watching oneself in a play…over and over. It’s fascinating how one little Prussian woman can become the source of so many passionately believed rumours, innuendoes, and outrageous legends…History isn’t fair. Neither is life. My real death was even more undignified, a form of passing that I share with another kind of later monarch, the king of rock-n-roll…” Unfortunately I had trouble deciphering what the death was…

Well, you get the idea. This Pure Slush volume is one of many such Slush literary magazines on intriguing themes such as “obit”, “versus”, “gorge: a novel in stories”, “real Pure Slush”, and “notausgang: emergency exit.”

Editor Matt Potter is an Australian-born writer who keeps a part of his psyche in Berlin, he says. Susan Tepper is the author of four published books. Her most recent title is “From the Umberplatzen”, a flash novel set in Germany. Her novel, “What May Have Been” (with Gary Percesepe), Cervena Barva Press, was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize in 2010.
Sarah Collie has lived in Scotland, Australia and now England.  And, Kim Conklin Hutchinson is an AmeriCanadian living on the border”, she says. Her stories and films have appeared widely.

Assassins Music and Lyrics by Stephen Sondheim July 13-20 F.U.D.G.E. Theatre Company

Assassins

Music and Lyrics by Stephen Sondheim

Directed by Joey DeMita

July 12-15

F.U.D.G.E. Theatre Company

The Black Box at the Arsenal Center, Watertown, MA



Review by Zvi A. Sesling

F.U.D.G.E. Theatre Company’s presentation of Assassins is an interesting presentation of an play from the 1990s. On the Broadway stage perhaps with more scenery, full staging and better amplification, particularly microphones, it is clearly an award-winning play.

Assassins creates a netherworld where men and women who attempted to assassinate U.S. presidents reside. Some of them have been successful and others not. Each assassin’s era features Sondheim-adapted music to reflect what was popular at that time.

F.U.D.G.E. and director Joey DeMita mounted a fine attempt at re-creating the play. Let me get to the shortcoming first: the music overwhelmed some of the voices. In particular, it was difficult to hear Kelton Washington as the Proprietor. While his facial expressions and strutting were perfect for the role, unfortunately the strong singing which he exhibited in Parade was minimized or lost. The same can be said of Jim Petty’s John Wilkes Booth and Jared Walsh’s two roles of the Balladeer and Lee Harvey Oswald. At times laid back and at other times emotional, Walsh was difficult to hear. However, when the ensemble or the assassins sang as a group, the voices were clearer. It also seemed that some of the timing was off. Hopefully, all these negatives were overcome in the subsequent performances because DeMita’s direction usually presents precision and Music Director Steven Bergman usually hits the right notes.

The performers who stood out—all of them good—were Ian flynn’s Charles J. Guiteau, Katie Preisig who portrayed Lynette “Squeaky” Fromme and an over-the-top Patrick Harris as Sam Byck, who caught the tape recording insanity the way one would picture Byck’s insanity. Of course the insanity of all these assassins and the would-be assassins was portrayed the way one would have imagined.

David Lucey’s costume designing was on target, particularly his 1800s designs of Guiteau and President Garfield. The Proprietor’s outfit seemed to fit almost any era, which is a grand accomplishment. PJ Strachman’s lighting helped add a noir like effect and Emily Taborda-Monroe’s minimalist set design helped create the right image.

Overall, the production was a fine effort and with a bit of tightening p here and there it will be a terrific production worthy of F.U.D.G.E.



____________________________________________________

Zvi A. Sesling

Reviewer, Boston Area Small Press and Poetry Scene

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

Editor, Muddy River Poetry Review

Editor, Bagel Bards Anthology 7

Editor, Bagel Bards Anthology 8

Judah Leblang: A Middle-Aged, Jewish, Gay Man Chronicles his life in Prose and a Play.

Judah Leblang

Judah Leblang: A middle-aged, Jewish, Gay Man Chronicles his life in Prose and a Play.

By Doug Holder

  I got an email from a writer acquaintance Judah Leblang. It seems that his department at Lesley University in Cambridge, Mass. (that he worked at for years) transferred to Endicott College in Beverly, Mass.--where I teach. He also told me that he has developed a one man play based on his memoir (My Place: One Man's Journey from Cleveland to Boston and Beyond)  titled One Man's Journey through the Middle Ages. His memoir chronicles his youth in Cleveland, Ohio during the 60's and 70's, his attachment to that down-at-the-heels city-- and his life as a Jewish, gay single man. The show explores Leblang's fear, and loathing in Provincetown, Mass. (A gay mecca) one summer-- his rather sudden hearing loss, and the universal themes of aging and loss.

Here is an excerpt from Leblang's memoir about his grandmother, Cleveland, and the world beyond the broad lawns and narrow minds of the suburbs:

"I knew my parents didn't like to go into the city. My mother saw Cleveland as a cauldron of riots, crime and burned out neighborhoods, a place to avoid. Still, on a sunny day in May 1968, I was an eleven-year-old boy who knew that Cleveland was full of wonders like planes and trains and buildings that pierced the sky, miracles my grandmother and I would share like her warm pastry. And so my grandmother and I stood quietly as my mother drove off, back to the safety of the eastern suburbs.

Waiting for the bus, Nanny's maple tree rustling above us, I thought of other times, other adventures with my grandmother, when I was five, seven, eight. On special weekends, she would baby-sit for my brothers and I, bringing her pastry and her Jewish rye bread, her cough drops and powdery scent into our suburban home. At five, before the accident, I'd sing and dance for her entertainment, repeating rhymes I'd learned in nursery school-"Mary had a little lamb," "Humpty Dumpty," and later, "My Country 'Tis of Thee," which I'd warbled at a school assembly in Kindergarten in my thin childish voice. Later, I'd tell my grandmother she was beautiful, promise to marry her when I grew up. According to my mother, I was a little khnifenik, Yiddish for a "flatterer."

 

  I used to read Leblang's column in the Somerville Journal where he held court from 1999 to 2001. Leblang lives in Medford now, but he was a denizen of Teele Square in Somerville. Presently Leblang is a columnist for Bay Windows- a gay newspaper in Boston. His slice-of-life stories have been heard on NPR and many other radio stations. Leblang counts Somerville writers Dan Gerwitz (Formerly of the Boston Herald) and Randy Ross (Founder of Media Chowder--a networking group for writers) as friends, and the trio used to perform in the area with a piece about being middle aged.

 I asked Leblang why he feels he has a story that is worth being told. He said: “Memoir writers have been accused of being navel gazers. Hey...I am not Bill Clinton, or Nelson Mandela. But I feel I have a story that people can relate to. We all have to make choices; we all grow old; well all have to deal with loses." And Leblang tells his story with a winning combination of humor and pathos. Of being a single gay man

 of a certain age, Leblang said: "I am part of a subculture of middle-aged gay men that belong to a culture that puts youth and looks at a premium. It is challenging to meet someone near my own age for a possible relationship."

 Leblang will be leading a memoir writing workshop this fall at Somerville Public Library in Davis Square, and will be performing  his play in the area--check his website  http://judahleblang.com for more information.

Review of Thurston Moore's Alabama Wildman

Thurston Moore

Review of Thurston Moore's Alabama Wildman
By Ian Thal    

Thurston Moore, better known for his musical output, also writes poetry and prose that are at once both experimental and accessible. Review originally appeared in the 11/20/2001 edition of Ibbetson Street Press Update, a free email newsletter covering small press literature.

alabama wildman, Thurston Moore (111 pages, hardcover. Water Row Press, P.O. Box 438, Sudbury, MA 01776, 2000) $18.95

Thurston Moore, best known for his work with the highly influential and innovative “no-wave” band Sonic Youth, demonstrates the same free ranging experimentalism with words that has defined his songwriting and guitar playing over the course of his musical career.

While much of his writing is concerned with the details of everyday life in bohemia common to predecessors amongst the Beats and the New York School, Moore’s everyday life includes being a iconoclastic figure in an important avant-garde movement that bridged the gap between the youth counter-culture of punk rock and compositional uses of noise, prepared instruments, chaos, and collage.

His unpretentious willingness to play with the sounds of words, typography, and form is constantly entertaining and provides a new experience on every page. Just as music and noise are integrally joined when Moore straps on a guitar or enters the recording studio, his poetry includes its own noise within. A good example is in the poem, “boredoms” which should accurately represent the Osaka, Japan-based ensemble of the same name to anyone who has attended their concerts or heard their recordings:

boredoms are
no-self WORLD sex-free (lanterns) ON
!??!bBOBOBOOBOBOBBBO øø ø ø ø ø øøøøøøøøøØiØØØiØ
tronix to the phew-ture...--
there is no stop sign when intuition is creative JUICE
HARP::::goddblesss:::
smoder(obo)redoms19998

Thurston Moore’s world simply demands more freedom than most writers allow themselves.

Moore’s background as a musician is also reflected in his sense of meter and rhyme as in his portrait of bassist Mike Watt in “free city rhythm”:

Pushing his broom into zoom
Watt comes to terms w/his room
talking-- to plato “the punk”
two fingers to his chest
(+ THE WHO knows to
rest?)

Even when using more conventional forms, Moore’s writing comes across as fresh. In his poem “contents,” which at first sight looks like a table of contents until one realizes that the lines are not titles of the poems but rather a Burroughsian “cut-up” or collage of phrases found on the pieces that follow. One is forced to wonder if the “about the author:” in the back, the “by thurston moore:” in the front, and even the “index” and appendices are also poems.

The prose and interviews that round out the book give a more literal glimpse into the music scene: the author is interviewed for ‘zines, he meets his musical heroes, he describes himself as nineteen year old guitarist in New York during the late seventies. Here we get a glimpse not of Moore, but of Thurston, a music fan who has not quite overcome the thrill that his idols, Patti Smith, Lydia Lunch, Richard Hell, and Lenny Kaye have become his friends.

A particularly engaging prose piece is “in the mind of the bourgeois reader” in which Moore narrates a sexual encounter with a younger musician and fan named Jackie. While the sex and the use of drugs are explicit, there is nothing pornographic or exploitative; instead there is a sweet amazement at the simple joys that can come from a brief encounter. Thurston is not being heroically transgressive, he is vulnerable, and afraid of falling deeply in love with someone he barely knows. This wide-eyed innocence also appears in a number of his poems such as “punks, flagrant”:

“my name is bug” she says wet
in the eyes, fucked, foamed
“clear as mud”
he feels to hisself
(awash’d post-cum soft
‘pon hot basket tum)

Thurston Moore’s writing, like his music, is both experimental and accessible, making him something of a kindred spirit with e.e. cummings (especially the cummings who does not appear in middle school and high school textbooks.) At the same time it is also an important resource for anyone interested in the early New York punk rock and no-wave music scenes.

Ian Thal
Jamaica Plain, MA

These Hands I Know: African-American Writers on Family- Edited by Afaa Michael Weaver

 

These Hands I Know: African-American Writers on Family- Edited by Afaa Michael Weaver
  REVIEW By Doug Holder  
 

These Hands I Know: African-American Writers on Family. Edited by Afaa M. Weaver. 247pps. ( Sarabande Books 2234 Dundee Rd. Suite 200 Louisville, Ky 40205) $16.95 2002.

So often in contemporary literature we tend to pigeonhole writers into categories by ethnicity, race, religion, etc... What we forget is that good literature addresses the whole corpus of the life experience. It is limiting if we view novels, poetry and short stories as denizens of a particular literary ghetto. Poet, writer, and editor of this collection of essays concerning the black family, Afaa Michael Weaver, writes: "African-Americans like anyone else- experience personal trauma within the family, but a trauma that is also complicated by the symbiotic weaving of racism with the familal and personal losses."

The writing in this collection deals with personal, familial, and societal aspects of the black family, with an eye on the effects of racism on this fragile institution. The book examines family on a universal level, on a racial level, and on a personal level. Like most collections of this nature it is a mixed-bag. For instance, Harvard University's famed Afro-American scholar Henry Louis Gate's portrait of his extended family is informative but the writing was surprisingly flat and pedestrian for a man of his generous talents.

Many of the essayists in this work write about strong matriarchs. Gwendolyn Brooks in her piece, KEZIAH, reports of a mother who was not emotive but strong and up to the challenges of an often unforgiving world: "Keziah Corinne Wims Brooks was and is a courageous woman. It has never occurred to her that she should slink away from any challenges of life. The challenges of life-- the agonies, sorrows, the million and ten fustrations, perplexities...she has looked at with a calculating eye, has judged, has catalogued. She has tamed what had to be tamed, what could, what should be tamed." Brooks pens a compelling portrait of an iron-willed mother. The essays in this collection often reflect on strong women who are the glue that keeps disparate parts together.

On thing that " White America" has done to Afro-Americans is to make them ultra-sensitive to their skin color. It is interesting to read what trauma folks went through if they were just a shade too dark. Honoree F. Jeffers reports that her grandmother was less than proud of her Jeffer's mother: " My mother says that from the beginning mother was never proud of her. She was too dark, her nose to broad, her hair too nappy. Grandma found no pleasure in being the mother of a foolish dark girl..."

There is another well-done essay by Alice Walker that deals with the roles Black women and men play, that often painfully mimic the gender roles of white society.

This collection is an informative sociological, and literary study of the black family. More than a few of the essays far exceed the creativity of a standard expository composition. This work will appeal to many segments of a diverse society.

* This review appeared in Spare Change News.

Doug Holder/ Ibbetson Update/ Somerville, Ma./Nov. 2002

Sixty-Seven Poems For Downtrodden Saints. Jack Micheline. Editor: Matt Gonzalez.

Sixty-Seven Poems For Downtrodden Saints. Jack Micheline. Editor: Matt Gonzalez.  (FMSBW, 1999 www.jackmicheline.com) Dist. by The Jack Micheline Foundation for the Arts.  POBOX 30153 Tuscon, AZ.  85751 No
Price.  238pages.

I guess I am privileged. I know, have published, have interviewed and exchanged letters with a well-known North Beach poet, who harks back to the days of Kerouac, Ginsberg, and others of that ilk, A.D. Winans. Winans, poet and friend to the late, great Beat poet, Jack Micheline, sent me a collection of Micheline's poems, "Sixty-Seven Poems for Downtrodden Saints." Charles Bukowski said of Micheline in a letter to A.D. Winans:

" Jack loves the sun...and the horse and the streets, and he loves the strong and the common people. Jack is the last of the holy preachers sailing down Broadway singing the song...He's fought hard...sleeping on people's rugs, sponging, playing the clown for a night's sleep, a piece of stale bacon..."

 

From reading Micheline's work it seemed that the Buk hit it right on the head. His work is generously laced with booze, "broads", the horses and hounds, the down-and-out, the gone-to-seed, the neer-do-well, the wail of the sax and sex, in short, a long funny/mournful  Blues song.

Micheline was concerned with the plight of the common man. He was in the tradition of Kerouac, living as the vagabond-bohemian bard. He never pandered to the academics, and his poetry lacked any hint of pretense.

Jack Micheline (aka Harvey Martin Silver)  was born on Nov. 6, 1929 in the Bronx, N.Y.  During the 1950's he spent years traversing the country and working Blue Collar jobs.

He was everything from a dishwasher to a street singer. His first poem published under the Micheline name was STEPS in Le Roi Jones' magazine YUGEN (1958). He was included in two early Beat anthologies, THE BEATS by Seymour Krim and THE BEAT SCENE edited by Elias Wilentz. He had several collections of poetry published including: I KISS ANGELS (1964) and NORTH OF MANHATTAN: 1954-1975. He self-published his first collection of stories: IN THE BRONX AND OTHER STORIES in 1965. In June of 1997, Micheline's book, SIXTY-SEVEN POEMS... was published by FMSPW in San Francisco, his home for many years. In 1998 Micheline died from a heart attack on a Subway in the same city.

 

The poems in this collection have a stong sense of setting. They take place in mostly urban settings, where the working-stiff and the marginal characters tend to hang. Micheline constantly celebrates the outsider looking in at the absurdities of the mainstream. In POEM TO THE FREAKS, he writes: " To live as I have done is surely absurd,/ in cheap hotels and furnished rooms,/to walk up side streets and down back alleys,/talking to oneself/ and screaming to the sky obscenities.../ Drink to wonder/Drink to me/ Drink to madness and all the stars..."

 

Contrary to popular notions, Micheline raises a defiant cup and embraces the life of an often-indigent poet. IN CHASING KEROUAC'S SHADOW, Micheline again sets himself up as a downtrodden bum, only to come back and celebrate the fact: 

 

" I am the gray Fox some schmuck
The old pro chasing the mad dream
The crazy Jew himself,
I only know when the cock rises and the crow howls,
To eat, to drink, to take a leak,...
Let's sing a song,
For those who chase the night
For those that dance with light...
The road
The vagabond
The dreamers,
the dancers,
the unsung,
Fuck the Gung Ho!"

 

It seems evident in every poem that Micheline knew where he was from, and would not let the reader forget it. He was a street kid from the Bronx, a stumble bum from 'Frisco, and a snake oil salesman. In SOUTH STREET PIERS, the poet describes the setting in where he hopes to have his ashes scattered to the wind:  

"...the red brick warehouse stands
the stevedores haul the rigs to the masts
the kids fight in the streets...
the cleaning girls are scrubbing Maiden Lane,
the smoke pours stacks from the Brooklyn shore--
the fog horn tickles my belly
I hear the drums beat
throw my ashes from the pier when I die."

 

This collection of poems (many of them unpublished before), are not all stellar. Often they are raw, violent and vulgar. Yet, they are a fitting tribute to a man who represented a vanishing breed of poets. Throughout the book are photos of the poet and his friends, and samples of his prolific body of artwork. It is also an important historical and artistic document of an era and a movement, that will be a great interest to scholars, students, and readers in years to come.

Doug Holder/ Ibbetson Update/Somerville, Ma./Oct. 2002

Drunken Angel by Alan Kaufman

 

Alan Kaufman author of "Drunken Angel"

Drunken Angel by Alan Kaufman  (Viva editions. Berkeley, CA. 94710) $18.95

Review by Doug Holder

 I always tell my creative writing students not to be polite in their writing. If a girl steals your boyfriend you don't say: "How dare you-you offended my honor." It's more like " Hey bitch--get your slutty hands off my man."--or worse. To write, to really write, you must be willing to insult your mother as Philip Roth once said. Alan Kaufman, does exactly this with his new memoir "Drunken Angel." He writes about the self-absorbed, abusive monster he once was--fueled with high octane booze. He writes graphically and without apologies about his self-destructive urges, his blind, drunken ambition, his hitting rock bottom, sleeping in the gutters of New York--Tompkins Park in the East Village serving as his bedroom. He writes about being the Bronx child of Holocaust survivors. He portrays his damaged parents and the people in his life brutally and at times cruelly, and at times it was hard to take. Kaufman was a monster. He didn't undersatnd love--he used people as a means to an end--and that end was to drink himself to oblivion. By the finish of the book he comes full circle. He reunites with his estranged daughter, realizes his dream to become an accomplished and respected writer, and stops his drinking. In essence he becomes a human being.

 I was introduced to Alan Kaufman by a few anthologies he edited "The Outlaw Bible of American Poetry," The Outlaw Bible of American Literature," and "The Outlaw Bible of American Essays." I have used these anthologies with good effect with my writing students at Endicott College in Beverly, Mass. and Bunker Hill Community College in Boston. The work by these "outlaw" poets and writers like Henry Miller, Herbert Selby, Norman Mailer, Jack Kerouac, Patti Smith and others reaches these young readers. At a time of their lives where they are searching for identity, and often at odds with society, the works speaks to them in a way the mannered work of Henry James never will.

I have had the pleasure to interview Kaufman and conducted a sort of informal Q and A with him on Facebook. Although I am far less worldly than he, and have no where near his accomplishments--I could identify deeply with him in certain regards. Like him I have lived in gone-to-seed rooming houses, I am Jewish-- in my family there are Holocaust survivors, my father and mother are from the Bronx; I toured Israel as a guest of a literary organization, and I had my severe bouts of depression and serious flirtations with heavy drinking. Oh yes, like him I am a poet. Needless to say I was riveted by the book. Kaufman is a novelist, poet, and memoirist,who was instrumental in the development of the Spoken Word Movement in Literature. He is also the author of the celebrated memoir  "Jew Boy" and the novel "Matches."

On one level  "Drunken Angel" can be read as a delicious collection of anecdotes about the literary life and the folks who peopled it. There are portraits of I.B. Singer, (Kaufman was invited up to his apartment when he was a CCNY student) Bernard Malamud ( Who Kaufman dissed at a lecture at Columbia University- and Malamud dropped dead the next day), the ego of poet Jorie Grahm, Allen Ginsberg( Who Kaufman angered at a reading in Germany), Herbert Selby (A spiritual godfather of the writer) and so many more.

And on another level it can be read as a literary self-help book. The book is sort of like a big A.A. meeting with Kaufman in the center of it all. Kaufman is the guest speaker--tracing his rise and fall and his rise once again. There is a lot of stuff in here about the recovery process, perhaps at times a bit too much-- but then again this is a central concern of the book. Yes the Higher Power is mentioned often--but this is the author's mantra for survival.

Kaufman writes about the young man he once was. In short he was an animal. He threw away opportunities like Columbia Graduate school, editorships at prestigious lit mags, friendship and lovers with acts of astounding selfishness. He abandoned his young daughter for booze--his primal relationship. All this  was to block out his tortured childhood with his dysfunctional family--and the demons that psychically possessed him.

But in the end Kaufmman gets straight, not only through sponsors at A.A. but through the poetry scene of San Francisco (A city he moved to from New York). He frequented the poetry venues in North Beach, and walked in the steps of the poets of a generation before like Di Prima, Ginsberg, Michelene, etc... Kaufman was led to the real core of what he really was about by a wizened old A.A. sponsor by the name of Ray. In this excerpt Ray gives it to Kaufman straight with no chaser:

 " A writer is someone who writes. When you write, when your pens moves on the page, you're a writer. When you talk about writing without doing the work, it is called being a phony."  Ray adds: " The world has...more than enough phonies and critics. But there are too few writers. So why don't you be one?"

And with this clear-eyed insight , Kaufman writes.

As a literary work the book is hugely successful. The detail, whether about his paranoid delusions, his psychosis, his family, the people that made up his tortured milieu is stunning. He gets into the mind of a self-destructing alcoholic that he was and is never far from becoming again. The dialogue was sharp and authentic--for the most part the characters were fully fleshed. Sometimes however I thought his characterization of his female characters was thin--either stock raving mad, or sex addicts. But his description of his relationship with his first true love Ana was masterful.

In any piece of writing there should be universality. And I think all of us have a piece of Kaufman inside us--unless you want to bullshit yourself and deny it. Few of us could survived a life like this--few of us could write a memoir like this--and few us can create art like this.   Highly Recommended.


--Doug Holder/ Somerville, Mass./July 2013

Somerville Artist Jesa Damora Creates and Works in an ‘Asylum’

Somerville Artist Jesa Damora Creates and Works in an ‘Asylum’

By Doug Holder

 Jesa Damora works in an asylum. No, not in a psychiatric hospital like McLean Hospital, where I have labored for thirty or so years. She works in the Artisan's Asylum a huge open space for artists of all stripes, that is located here in Somerville. She is also a consultant for other artists, as well as creating her own acclaimed prints and drawings. Like many Somerville artists of my acquaintance Damora is a refuge from the Republic of Cambridge. She and her husband moved from the rarefied environs of Appian Way in Cambridge to the more egalitarian territory of Prospect Hill in Somerville. Now she owns a home, and has a small carriage house that acts as her art studio. Of our town Damora told me: “We moved from Cambridge because it was so expensive. I love the multicultural aspect of Somerville. I mean in Cambridge where we lived, it was all rich, white doctors and lawyers.” Damora is also excited by the subway coming to Union Square and the changes it will bring. She is a member of the Mystic Valley Task Force and feels that in the end this will help the creative economy in the Square. Damora, by her own description, is not a political animal but hopes that there will be advocacy for low income and moderate income housing so Union Square will not just be a home for high income young urban professionals. She wants Union Square to retain its unique flavor—a very hard task if you examine other neighborhoods that went through similar transformations.

Damora is known for her drawings and limited edition of flowers and seedpods.  Her work according to the website of the Somerville Open Studios consists of "vital, luminous immensely detailed drawings. They are about the wildness both in nature and ourselves, that we think we have tamed."But Damora is not only about flowers; she is also known for her drawings of men's testicles. Damora feels the penis has overshadowed the testicle--so to speak, and she has given it more...well...exposure. And after all, isn't the sacred sac a sort of seedpod...huh?

Damora attended Harvard University and majored in General Studies. She said Harvard was not a good place to study to be an artist because it was too traditional. But Damora came from a rather unconventional family. Her father was a noted architectural photographer, and was friends with Walter Gropius, the founder of the Bauhaus Art Movement. The house Damora lived in when she was a child was designed by Philip Johnson. Her life was filled with unconventional and creative people that has influenced her rather unconventional life.

Because of some physical problems Damora was unable to paint and draw as much as she would of liked. So after browsing Facebook she realized that a lot of artists do not really know how to market their work properly. So she started an artist consulting business titled FunnelCake. Because of her extensive background in the arts and the connections she has, she helps the artist to get the word out about their work, and teaches them how to connect to the markets that best serve them.

Damora is also involved with the Artisan's Asylum  located right outside of Union Square off of Somerville Ave. This is a huge open space that rents sections to any number of artists. Damora is the unofficial tour guide and is heavily involved in the promotion of the facility. She told me: “ We have 3D printers there, a jewelry school, glass work artists, plasma cutters, etc…There is a great cross- pollination of artists here.” The venue was founded by Gui Cavalcanti. Damora added: “There a lot of incredible but unassuming people here.”

Damora is married to John Bailes—a poet of some note, and a protege of the late bard Philip Whalen.  As Damora left the Bloc11, she seemed to be swept away by some creative breeze that graced Bow St- and then out to the wilds of the Paris of New England.  

To find out more about FunnelCake Marketing  contact Damora at jsdamora@gmail.com