Somerville's K. Gretchen Greene: An artist happy with soot in her face and steel at her feet.

K. Gretchen Greene

 Somerville's K. Gretchen Greene: An artist happy with soot in her face and steel at her feet.

By Doug Holder

 In Gretchen Greene’s artist statement she writes: “ I am a sculptor; and in that work I see all the other things I am, all the other things I have done. As I carve and twist steel, face covered in soot, scraps of golden steel at my feet, I know I’m home.”

Forty something Gretchen Greene does not look like someone who works with steel. Tall, slender, with a slight build—she seems like someone who is cerebral rather than physical. Yet, this accomplished woman is both. Greene was educated at Yale, Princeton and Oxford among other institutions of higher education. She also has a work history that includes work as a government mathematician and  a corporate lawyer for the tony Boston firm Ropes and Gray. But Greene left the corporate world  to pursue a career as a  sculptor of steel. She often includes fragments of poetry to soften the hard surfaces of her medium.

Greene has a small studio at Somerville’s Artisan’s Asylum, an innovative warehouse of artists and creators in the Union Square section of our city. Of Somerville Greene says: “ I love the mixed zoning aspect of Somerville. By this I mean the mix of shops, residential space and industrial space at reasonable rents. I love the concentration of creative people who live in this area, and their impressive educational backgrounds. Of course this might change in a couple of years with the gentrification of Union Square. In that case people will have to move to cites further away from the hub of the action.”

Greene told me that she left the Brooks Brothers- corseted world of law to pursue the development of her own business. While she majored in math at UCLA, she also took courses on sculpting on the side. When she attended Yale Law School she took classes in printmaking as well.  She told me that she uses her mathematical and legal analytical/ research skills she picked up from her education in her work. Such challenges as how to bend and manipulate forms are met with her knowledge of Geometry and other skills in her formidable knowledge bank.

I asked Greene about the process of making her abstract steel sculptures. She said: “ First I get a 4 foot by 8 foot sheet of steel, which is only about a sixteenth of an inch wide. I then take it to a welding bay and use a plasma cutter to heat the surface. Then on the surface I sort of make an abstract painting on the steel. I have been trained in traditional brush painting and I need to have a very fluid motion to make it work." The text or poetry she places on her pieces are abstract, fragments of her memories. One work is titled "Tide Tables." Greene said: The poem concerns the ebb and flow of the tide. I used to live on the coast of Rhode Island with my partner. The poems are visceral reflections of my memory."

Greene said that the Artisan's Asylum is a great place for her to make things; it provides the resources and access to creative people essential for her business, as well as media exposure. All of these are elements needed to fertilize the seed of her nascent enterprise.

Greene has had exhibits in Somerville at the Nave Gallery, Artisan's Asylum, Brooklyn Boulders, as well as the Todd Merrill Gallery in New York City, and other venues across the country and internationally.

Greene said her works go from anywhere from 500 dollars to 6,000. She feels this a range  that people with some disposable income can afford. Greene had to leave our table at the Bloc 11 Cafe in Union Square to unload a shipment of steel that was to be delivered to the Asylum. She will undoubtedly use her well-honed skills to create something enigmatic and beautiful here in the Paris of New England.

Alchemy by John Yamrus

 
Alchemy
by John Yamrus
Alchemy© 2014 by John Yamrus
Epic Rites Press
Woodbridge, Sherwood Park, Alberta, Canada
softbound, 188 pages, $13.50



The author of a foreword to Alchemy by John Yamrus invokes the names of Han Shan, Bukowski, William Carlos Williams, Frank O'Hara, Ezra Pound, Keats, Charlotte Smith, George Barker, Wallace Stevens and Jack Gilbert. Yamrus is none of these. What he is, however, is a fun poet, easy to read, not easy to forget.


Some poetry books, while not great are just plain worth reading. Simple, straightforward, Yamrus’s work is one of those – worth reading. And here is a short review of a long book
with short poems.


Here are some examples, in which there are truths, humor or whatever else you might uncover reading them:


she

had
a
power
that
made
other
women
seem

unimportant.



after my colonoscopy

the
doctor
came in and
said he found nothing

that was funny…

if you believe my critics,
I thought for sure
he’d find my
head.



i’ll

tell you one thing
for certain…

i’ve got a lot more
yesterdays

than tomorrows.

the
only thing

good
about that

is they
all were spent

with you


And so on and so on go. These poems will make you think about yourself or others you know. They awaken old memories, some good, some not, but for some reason they make
you keep on reading because they say something with which you will associate. Isn’t that the wonderful part of poetry?




Zvi A. Sesling
Author, King of the Jungle and Across Stones of Bad Dreams
Editor, Muddy River Poetry Review
Publisher, Muddy River Books
Editor, Bagel Bards Anthology 7 & Anthology 8

Israel Horovitz: Heaven and other Poems.

              
 

Israel Horovitz

 


 Heaven and other Poems. Israel Horovitz. (http://www.threeroompress) $15.95

             Review by Doug Holder

 Recently I received an advanced copy of Israel Horovitz's collection of poetry Heaven and other Poems. I know of Horovitz from his plays such as: The Indian Wants the Bronx, The Widow's Blind Date, as well as his screenplays. And this past summer when I spent time at the Rocky Neck Artist Colony in Gloucester, Mass. I passed by the Gloucester Stage Company that he co-founded years ago. But I never thought of him as a poet. But after reading his new collection, there is no doubt that he is. I have read the collected poems of Tennessee Williams, but those seemed to be sketches for his plays--character studies that were out of context. In this collection Horovitz gives a powerful bone to marrow account of his life as a man and world class artist. He encompasses so much: the brooding poet, a walker in the city, another member of another lost generation in Paris, the wanderlust of a wandering Jew, the older lover, and the man in his 70s with the specter of death over his shoulder.

It is said in poetry circles that every word counts. And it seems that Horovitz practices what this statement preaches. Many of his poems are on the short side with the exception of  "Stations of the Cross," a wonderful narrative poem about the fun-loving and erotically charged relationship between a brother and sister. When the sister dies, the brother, in memory of her iconoclastic sensibility sprinkles her ashes in such unlikely places as: a sailor on the River Trent, in a bald man's bowler hat, etc... But what makes this book special is the way Horovitz in a few lines and with the accuracy of a proton beam--hits the core. Have if you will " For Loleth, Two Days Too Late,"

  When every love we've loved has died

  And we've long wept our last

  The Seine will sob a single tear

   And overflow its past.

"This poem made me cut myself when I was shaving"--I paraphrase from the old master   Auden, who told his readers what happened when he reads a great poem.  Our losses, what means so much to us, the unexpected death, will not stop the dog from lifting his leg on our pedestrian street. Horovitz lays it out so well here--with the sob of the Seine--the poem reminds me of Whitman's rivers, carrying the past, and present in its flowing waters.

  Camus wrote, and I paraphrase: " At a certain age we are responsible for our own face."

Universality, is a necessary attribute of any fine poem, and haven't we all looked at our face in the mirror at say 50, 60, 70, and beyond and asked ourselves: "Does this sorry physiognomy do me justice?" We look at our face that carries its weight on the geography of our brows, our cheeks, and the folds of our necks. The poem: "Is This the Face I Deserve" says it all:

   Is this the face I deserve?

   After caring for parents

   After marching in Newark

   On poverty and oppression;

   Consider the countless letters

   I have sent to congressmen;

   Not to mention scores of women

   I have treated decently!


 And the playwright in Horovitz is evident in his work exhibited by how he captures a scene, the realistic dialogue, and makes an ordinary place, a place of significance. In the poem  "Mangia-Mangia" the poet stops in a cafe in the North End of Boston and looks with a gimlet eye, listens intensely, and feels:


"You've lost a lot of weight!"

 A disembodied voice shouts out to Cook,

 Who counters back with prideful " 42 pounds, 8 weeks!"

 " What's your secret?" begs a

  Podgy Prince Street bag lady.

 "Stress," confesses Cook

 " Stress and endless grief!"


  The new ones enter like comic relief in an early O'Neill,

  Commencing on such complications as

  Cold air in winter, or the puffy price of cigarettes.

  A cop in brilliant orange shakes a postman's hand.

  Both black, they share a colorful word on red long johns and

 Truthlessness of white weathermen.


 Any vague attempt at humor

 Brings a gaggle of giggles, but,

 Not a single word is heard on lonliness,

 Our lives as empty as a wallet..."

 It is funny, my cat MENOW often casually sniffs the new poetry books that scatter my apartment. But with this book he circled it cautiously, sniffed it with unusual curiosity, and placed his discerning paw on the author's face on the front cover. Perhaps this feline has some literary instinct. Just as he is drawn to the endless prey of birds and sad sack  mice, he maybe equally drawn to work of literary merit. I for one would highly recommend this book of poetry from this accomplished playwright and man of letters.                        

                                         


                                           
       
                                            
                                            

                                               

                                           
                                         

                                       


                      

Review of Reckoning by Rusty Barnes

Review of Reckoning by Rusty Barnes

By Ralph Pennel

At every turn, it is easy to forget that Reckoning is author Rusty Barnes’s debut novel. From page one, the book is as emotionally complex and engaging as it is suspenseful and artful. A coming of age tale that takes on all the shape and guise of a more sophisticated literary narrative but for short breaths and gasps, the novel succeeds where many coming of age tales fail their less cautionary, more discerning readers. That is, it exposes the human failings of all its characters, both young and old, with the same unapologetic honesty, and it does so against the critical examination of the novel’s rural Appalachian setting, which serves as a lens into the failings of the broader, restrictive patriarchal culture at large.

In the opening scene of the novel, Richard, the main character, who is fourteen, is shooting at woodchucks from the cab of his employer’s truck. However, because of his poor aim—a recurrent theme explored throughout the book—all he manages to accomplish is to rouse the small Appalachian town from its rural slumber into a conflict each one of its members will not soon forget. In the wake of his poor shooting, Lyle, the man by whom Richard’s own humanity will be tested personally and physically, emerges from the underbrush accompanied by a naked woman, Ms. Neary. Ms. Neary, the mother of Richard’s eventual love interest, Katie, is the first naked woman Richard has ever seen, and he is forever changed, made too aware of his own emerging (albeit controversial) masculine identity.

Even before that, though, Barnes draws the reader into novel’s primary theme immediately in the very first line of the book: “The sun was bad” (7). As all “sons” are. Especially the “sons” of Richard’s hometown, where patriarchy and misogyny are not just the predominant modeling behaviors, they are the only ones. Even those characters, who seem to know intuitively that this type of behavior is wrong, can’t bring themselves to fully disengage from it. It is a commentary on the main character’s doomed future, where he will have to discern between what he is to become and what he has already unwittingly allowed himself to become. And, from that point on, from the very first line, Barnes never once takes his foot off the gas.

Through much of the novel, Richard is berated, admonished and regarded with ambivalence by his father until it is evident to his father that Richard is involved with Ms. Neary’s daughter, Katie. It is at this point that Richard’s father, who “Still in his work clothes, looked like he could handle about anything . . . replacing an engine, putting in a toilet, cutting wood, hunting, driving anything with a motor” (97), treats him as an equal. Richard, at this critical moment in the novel is tired from having stayed up late the night before and from having walked home early in the morning. His father admonishes him proudly, and even remorsefully, stating that, “Chasing women will do that to you” (98). Or, in other words, welcome to manhood, you will feel this way the rest of your life. Richard is now part of “the club.” He now knows, according to his father, that it is the only thing that can save him, that love will save him and all men by making him defenseless to it, by taking away what makes him a “good” man. He is powerless against it, but made more powerful by defending his desire to have it. He has discovered the paradox of “manhood,” that it is a “man’s” prerogative to show that he can defend without fail the one thing that threatens his masculinity.

Ultimately, however, it is in stumbling across the body of Misty, who has been left for dead, lying naked and beaten by the side of the brook, that Richard’s life is steered directly toward his truest test and final confrontation. It is eventually revealed that Misty is in the sex industry and in this way somehow linked to Lyle. Richard befriends Misty, who is taken in by Ms. Neary, and it is through this allegiance that Richard becomes a threat to Lyle. This is because Lyle has no interest in treating women well, especially a woman like Misty who, according to Richard’s father is, “going to end up toothless and five times pregnant before she’s thirty” (100). This is an obvious detriment to Lyle’s character and the defining difference between him and a man like Richard’s father. Though both men resent facing their weaknesses, Richard’s father owns up to his, however rudimentarily, whereas Lyle takes it out on that which reveals his weakness.

It is this same allegiance with Misty and Ms. Neary that, for all intents and purposes, costs Richard his job shooting woodchucks for Old Man Thompson and lands him in a fight with Lyle on Richard’s uncle’s property. In this fight, Lyle breaks Richard’s arm in order to keep him “out of his business” because the two (his business and Misty and Ms. Neary) are, from what Richard can tell, one and the same, and he has become irreversibly emotionally invested in the lives of these women, Katie included, to back out. Even after Lyle threatens Richard at the end of the fight stating, “I’ll kill every fucking friend you have. I’ll start with her mother. Katie. Misty” (107), and it is clear that he means this, Richard cannot un-invest.

Richard’s passion is ultimately put to the test, as he slowly sees that the fight he has taken on personally on behalf of his new friends is far larger than himself, and quite possibly unwinnable:

            It was something he should have known. He was fourteen, and it was only now he         realized what that meant. He had all the things—the size, the brains—that men had, but          there was a certain set, the knowledge of the way Lyle and his father behaved, not to          mention the presence of mind and power of even someone as obviously limited as Karl             Nickson. Karl wasn’t smart or anything like it, but his instincts in telling Richard how      bad it would get, way back at the beginning of it all just a few days ago, seemed like the       slow-powered decision of a king. (229)

Richard decides once and for all that he not only has to make this right by defending the honor of his friends, but he has to get back at Lyle personally for breaking his arm and for humiliating him. And, even though Richard is still just a kid, “he deserved to have the chance to get back at Lyle, to make it better in his head. It wasn’t revenge . . . It was everything he’d been taught in school and by his father and by all the men in the world who truly cared about the kind of person he would become” (206). It is this decision, to take matters into his own hands, that leads him to the final showdown at novel’s end and to deciding whether this is a world he can bear to make himself vulnerable for.

Reckoning is a work of considerable literary merit, and it is unequivocally prescient in its tackling of the subjects of patriarchy and misogyny, which have gained hold of the national consciousness in the wake of current events. Furthermore, whether it is a remarkably vivid description, or the way the dialogue strategically reveals the truest natures of the characters, the novel is very artfully crafted and the language is rich and dense. This in combination with the compelling narrative that pulls the reader through page after page, makes it is easy to wish for the novel to continue in order to lengthen our stay in Barnes’s dysfunctional Appalachian town. But this sense of withholding definitely leaves us desiring for more and eager for this author’s next full-length work.

La Far Eric Linsker

Eric Linsker

La Far

Eric Linsker

Copyright © 2014 by Eric Linsker

The Iowa Poetry prize

University of Iowa Press

Iowa City, Iowa

95 pages, $19, softbound

Review by Zvi A. Sesling

“Linsker’s poems splice and complicate realms and modes and sensory domains with

wit and acute musical edgework. They are deeply, quixotically enjoined in the hard and

essential ‘grief of eternal joy.’” –Emily Wilson, judge, 2013 Iowa Poetry Prize.

Do blurbs and the poetry they are about have to be inexplicably obtuse?  Perhaps in Iowa, out among the cornfields it is the thing during long sessions of boredom watching corn grow or a long winter of dealing with snow blowing across buried fields.

So many good accessible poets and this book by a poet who, “holds degrees from Harvard and Iowa Writers’ Workshop” is picked, perhaps because of the degrees

or perhaps for its incoherence.

Now perhaps readers of this review have a better take on what the author is saying

than I do, but let’s look a “Love Streams.”

He was choosing colors, sounds

Of clouds, that year he was

Troubled with his room,

Through what philosophers

Of clouds, that year he was

Housed and thunderous, wet

Through. What philosophers

He read, he hid

Housed, and thunderous, wet

Windows, differently pulled,

He read he hid

By time, a glass hand.  Through

Windows differently pulled

The rain like school to where

By time, a glass hand through

His hair brushed back

The rain. Like school to where

Sits a desk, the chair that had been

His hair brushed.  Back

At the window now a clearing

And so on and on this poem continues, three pages worth of tedium, like watching corn grow or snow in mid January blow across an empty Iowa field. 

I would apply the same to the “Land of Reasoning” which begins with more forgettable lines:

In the clutches of song the survivors

Enter the earth no longer looking

For those they have lost that was

Another time even the underworld changes

Quite frankly I did not find this a redeeming volume of poetry despite winning The Iowa Poetry Prize and who needs to say that just because it won the prize that it is a prize winner?   Does this book truly represent great talent or  rather who one knows? 

So here are some opening lines with titles in parentheses and with which I present my case:

What else would we want if we were

good am I here  (The Unities)

In the verdure of the word smoke

A manhole opened outside her

None in her family read   (In the Raid Instances)

red trillium

It starts to snow shut.  (A Place Where Everything is Visible)

All I know is that when I sit down to read a book of poetry I seek the accessible, the sensible, the enjoyable, the book I want to remember.  I did not find any of these here,

though for many of you it may be the opposite experience. I hope it is.

___________________________________________________

Zvi A. Sesling

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

Editor, Muddy River Poetry Review

Publisher, Muddy River Books

Editor, Bagel Bards Anthology 7 & Anthology 8

Artisan's Asylum: A Warehouse of Creativity in the Old Ames Envelope Building

Artisan's Asylum: A Warehouse of Creativity in the Old Ames Envelope Building

By Doug Holder

The last time I was at the Ames Envelope factory building in Somerville, Mass. it produced envelopes and such. But the times have changed and it is now occupied by the Artisan's Asylum. In the lobby of the Asylum I was met by Molly Rubenstein. She is an intelligent, hard -working, 20-something Yale graduate with a gift for expression, and a lot of energy. Rubenstein has been at the Artisan's Asylum for three years and for much of that time lived in Somerville, but recently defected to the Republic of Cambridge. The Artisan's Asylum houses 150 studios, of 50 to 250 square feet. They are demarcated by low barriers, so people can readily see each other. This according to Rubenstein fosters community and communication.  The Artisan's Asylum was in the forefront of the “Makerspace” movement of the past decade, where craftsmen, engineers, artists, writers and others share a large space, share resources, and create within a supportive and creative milieu. Rubenstein told me: “25% of the people here have active businesses, and another third are developing businesses.”

Within this building are state of the art computers, tools, and a whole array of material and resources members of the community can draw from. The Asylum is for the most part staffed by volunteers. The exceptions are Rubenstein, Robert Masek—the operations manager and Jessica Muise—the member services director. Gui Cavalcanti, the founder, is not part of the administration anymore but he maintains a studio where he works on robotic projects.

Rubenstein is a very adept guide, and showed me around this high- tech and low-tech maze of studios, work spaces, tangles of arcane equipment, the gangly arms of robots, the twisted beauty of metalwork pieces by Gretchen Greene, a common space inspired by the TV show “Dr. Who”—a veritable carnival of ingenuity and creativity.

Being an “old school” kind of guy I was glad to have Rubenstein act as a translator for this new world. One place she showed me was a bike shop which consisted of reconstructed bicycles, with things like Barbie Dolls and Voodoo heads attached to the handle bars. Bikes are often constructed from parts found in scrap or junk yards and old, discarded bikes. The shop is run by long-time Somerville group named the "SCUL”.When driving home at night you may see this group in a fleet of  eccentric tall bikes and their owners traversing the streets of Somerville.

Rubenstein also showed me the studio for the “3 Doodler” project invented by Maxwell Bogue and Peter Dilworth.   This project, that was funded by a successful Kickstarter campaign developed a 3D printing pen that creates intricate paper and plastic images. Rubenstein showed me a lovely 3D representation of the Eiffel Tower and something decidedly more abstract that this gem of a pen created.

Later I was introduced to a gangly fellow, with skinny arms and legs—no—not me--but a robot named “Stompy.” This denizen of the Asylum looks a bit like an elevated metallic crab that has been developed as part of “ Project Hexapod.” It can be used for entertainment purposes, but it also has possible applications as a walking terrain vehicle to transport material-and according to Rubenstein can prove to be helpful with the many natural disasters we face today.

Rubenstein also showed me their impressive woodworking shop, their welding spaces, their advanced computer center, where I saw a couple of youngish engineers working on various projects. The center is sponsored by a number of concerns including: AUTODESK, MATHWORKS, SOLIDWORKS and others. Rubenstein also told me about the impressive number of courses that are offered in the Asylum and that are open to the public.

Of course the subject of the gentrification of Somerville reared its ugly head. The city is increasingly expensive and in spite of what the powers-that-be say—if you been around the block a little you know the drill: a lot of folks are going to be displaced. Rubenstein said: “We have a 5 year lease. We are a non-profit, but we have outside funding. We are looking to get long term support as our rent will likely double. “ In that case, and many others, unique and creative enclaves that have given the city an enviable cache will be forced to move out to places like Lynn and Malden—further away from the center of the city.

The Asylum is open to all of the community with just a very few exceptions, like people who work with toxic substances, etc… Rubenstein said to get a space here may not seem cheap, but it is if a person thinks of the resources: tools, computers, material, machines it offers it is a bargain.

Hopefully with its hunger for reinvention the city will not eat its own, and leave Union Square just another place with trendy restaurants, and luxury condos. And that my friend—is the way it is-in the “Paris of New England.”