The King of Second Avenue Book and Lyrics by Robert Brustein

The King of Second Avenue

Book and Lyrics by Robert Brustein

Muisc by Hankus Netsky

Directed by Matthew ‘Motl’ Didner

July 12-15

New Repertory Theatre

at the Arsenal Center, Watertown, MA

Review by Zvi A. Sesling

My wife Susan absolutely loved this musical enjoying its world premiere at the New Repertory Theater in the Arsenal Center, Watertown, MA. In fact, she loved it so much she went twice and I understand.

The story is based on “King of the Schnorrers” by Israel Zangwill that takes place in early 20^th century England. Robert Brustein has transplanted the play to New York’s Lower East Side in the format of the long dead Yiddish Theatre. It also throws in a bit of Brustein’s affection for Shakespeare in the form of a “Romeo and Juliet” theme, which when you add music and disagreeing tribes of Jews instead of Puerto Ricans and whites, harks on the Leonard Bernstein-Stephen Sondheim masterpiece of “West Side Story.” Many Yiddish words and Klezmer music add to the atmospheric by-gone days.  What has been created is a 1920s time piece that takes place in the 1960s.   Go figure.

The play is a comedic gem, especially appealing to the older Jewish audience the evening I attended. It also provides a window into what – more than a century ago – was a schism between Ashkenazi and Sephardic Jews.  In the Zangwill/Brustein view the Sephardic in the persona of an out of work actor named Da Costa is a kinder, gentler, smarter man than his Ashkenazi foil named Lapidus.  In the  course of the play Da Costa outwits Lapidus conning him out of his pants, his food and especially his money. 

The play has a many one liners, catchy songs and dance numbers with Klezmer music, often called Jewish Jazz. The orchestra is perfectly matched to the performance and actors. The music by Hankus Netsky, who is founder and director the New England Conservatory’s Klezmer Conservatory Band has served up a plate of music that had the audience clapping and toe tapping to the hypnotic tunes. 
Matthew ‘Motl’ Didner’s direction was precision perfect, bringing out the best of the actors.He also assured exactness of the timing between actors and orchestra while using the scenic designs of Jon Savage and costume designs of Frances McSherry to portray the rundown areas of the Lower East Side along with the schnorrers (beggars), fishmongers, early 1900s police.

As for the actors, Da Costa, played by Will Lebow was excellent, his con man-schnorrer convincing and humorous.  His singing was well done and even his attempts at Eastern European dancing did nothing to distract from the action on stage.  The same can be said of Jeremiah Kissel’s Joseph E. Lapidus who played the snookered foil as if he were one himself.  Kathy St. George as Lapidus’s wife Rosalie played her dual role – she was also one of the schnorrers – flawlessly and her take off on a torch song would probably be a show stopper on Broadway.  Dolores, Da Costa’s daughter was finely portrayed by Abby Goldfarb, Ken Cheeseman was a funny butler, perfect “ nothing, see nothing” policeman, fishmonger and schnorrer.   Remo Airaldi (Schmuelly), who kept reminding me of Danny DeVito was one of the highlights of the evening with his singing and acting.  If there was one disappointment it would be Alex Pollack as Joseph E. Lapidus Jr. in that he was hard to understand and, while his character was not likeable, one felt he was not up to the task.

The play has proved popular enough to have several performances added to its stay at the New Rep and if you can find a ticket to this mostly sold out run, pay the money and go see it, on one of these cold, snowy days. It will bring you warmth, perhaps make you qvell.
___________________________________________________

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

City of Somerville: Official Notice of the New Poet Laureate: Nicole Terez Dutton

 City of Somerville, Massachusetts
Joseph A. Curtatone
Mayor

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE                 February 24, 2015

NICOLE TEREZ DUTTON NAMED SOMERVILLE’S FIRST POET LAUREATE
Somerville resident and accomplished poet, Terez Dutton will serve two year term.

SOMERVILLE – Last month, the City of Somerville gained its first-ever Poet Laureate in Nicole Terez Dutton, a Somerville resident with an impressive literary background. A teacher at the Solstice MFA Program at Pine Manor College, Nicole’s work has been featured in Callaloo, Ploughshares, 32 Poems, Indiana Review, and Salt Hill Journal. She has been awarded fellowships at the Fine Arts Work Center, Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, Cave Canem and the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts.

“Somerville has so much creative energy and power, and we are well known for our vibrant arts scene. Similarly, we have a talented, well-educated, and thoughtful writer’s community that needs a voice. In Nicole Terez Dutton, Somerville gains a tremendous advocate and partner for the writing arts, and I am proud to welcome her as our City’s first Poet Laureate,” said Mayor Joseph A. Curtatone.

The City announced in late 2014 that it was seeking candidates to enhance the profile of poets and poetry in Somerville and surrounding communities. The Poet Laureate is expected to bring poetry to segments of the community that currently have less access or exposure to poetry: senior citizens, youth, and schools. The Poet Laureate will serve a two-year term, appointed by the Mayor, and will be provided an honorarium of $2,000 per year.

“Nicole’s work is poised and insightful, and I think it will really resonate with the Somerville community,” said Greg Jenkins, Director of the Somerville Arts Council. “She conveyed a thoughtful perspective on her approach to this new position, and has a passion for promoting poetry through collaboration with youth, elders, and community groups. We’ve gained an impressive ambassador in Nicole Terez Dutton.”

The Poet Laureate was chosen based on a series of criteria, including excellence in craftsmanship, professional achievement, and creating a vision for the position.

“I am thrilled to have been chosen as Somerville’s Poet Laureate and am excited to collaborate with the very talented and passionate members of our community to make poetry more accessible,” said Terez Dutton. “It is an amazing opportunity to share what I love, to connect with writers and readers, and to bring poetry into wider conversation.”
-END-

Thursday, March 5th, will be the hottest night of the year. Women Musicians Network 18th annual concert.

Thursday, March 5th, will be the
hottest night of the year.
Women Musicians Network
18th annual concert.

By Kirk Etherton

    The Berklee Performance Center is the place to be. You'll see 11 original acts: Jazz, Latin, spoken word, funk, pop/R&B, rock, and more. The focus is on Berklee women students and their bands from around the world. 25 countries are represented (including the U.S.).

    This year's special guests are Berklee faculty Melissa Ferrick (acclaimed singer/ songwriter who's released 17 albums), plus Helen Sherrah-Davies and Vessela Stoyanova. (Vessela on midi-marimba and Helen on five-string violin; they play a unique Balkan/jazz.)

    This high-powered, eclectic show is always memorable, and always different. It's directed by Berklee faculty Lucy Holstedt and Christiane Karam.

    Student standouts include Cuban pianist Zahilli Zamora, Mexican poet Joaquina Mertz, and Thai singer/songwriter Prong Praison (to name just three).  NOTE: men are not excluded; you'll see plenty of very fine, non-female musicians.

    Tickets are only $12. Go to www.berklee.edu/BPC

Women Musicians Network
18th Annual Concert, 2015
Thursday, March 5th, 8:00 pm
Berklee Performance Center
136 Massachusetts Avenue, Boston

Cindy Hochman: Habeas Corpus

Cindy Hochman

Habeas Corpus

Glass Lyre Press, LLC

Glenview, IL

© Copyright 2015 by Cindy Hochman

ISBN-10: 1941783023

ISBN-13: 978-1941783023

Softbound, 27 pages, $12

Review by Zvi A. Sesling

This is a book about body parts.  Before you say yuk, let me tell you it is very entertaining. Let me also, for disclosure say that Ms. Hochman published my poetry in her magazine, First Literary Review - East and I will be publishing her this fall in Muddy River Poetry Review.  Having confessed, I can now say that I did judge this book objectively and of the body parts she writes about I have never thought of in quite the same way, except one, which you will figure out if you read this short (27 pages, 13 poems) book.  She writes about the womb, legs, tongue, mouth, liver, fingers, eyebrows, heart, mind eyes, ears, ears (revised), breasts and full body scan.

Yes, she has really written these, and they are quite personal, and all as prose poems, some half a page long, some only one line or two.

Hochman also is prone to puns such as “Eve didn’t know her asp from her elbow because she was too busy tendon her garden.” (from “Womb”).

“Tongue,” on the other hand, is a one line touching tribute to both religion and her father:

“This tongue has said hello to God—and good-bye to Dad.”

Her poem “Heart (a sonnet)” is a hysterical take on former vice president Dick Cheney, and unless you are fan of his or his former boss, you will enjoy her take down of this forever politician. 

And when you read “Full Body Scan,” you will wonder whether it is all true, and I believe it probably is, given she lives in Brooklyn, NY and has survived all these adventures, years and people she has encountered.

Hochman has her own style and way of saying things which is very enjoyable and easy to read.  She is, however, more difficult to classify.  Is she a confessional poet, a dramartic poet or a humorist?  Maybe all of them—sometimes in one poem.  

I really did find the book not only funny but serious – a dichotomy, yes, but nonetheless one which I recommend to all.  You can probably get it by emailing the publisher, Glass Lyre Press at publisher@glasslyrepress.com or you can order directly from the poet by emailing poet2680@aol.com. 

Enjoy.

_______________________________________

Zvi A. Sesling

Reviewer for Boston Small Press and Poetry Scene

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

Publisher, Muddy River Books

Editor, Muddy River Poetry Review

Editor, Bagel Bards Anthologies 7& 8

New Poet Laureate Wants to Inspire: Somerville's Nicole Terez Dutton

Nicole Terez Dutton

 

 Interview with Laura Onyeneho    Somerville Community Access TV


 

Somerville, MA, Feb. 11 – Somerville recently opened its arms to the city’s first new Poet Laureate. Poet Nicole Terez Dutton hopes to expand poetry through various venues and programs around the city.

“For me personally, it means I have the opportunity to bring attention and to bring my passion to more people,” Dutton told Somerville Neighborhood News (SNN).


With the help of the City and the Somerville Arts Council, Dutton will have support to network and build programs, but she must be the one to carry out projects.

“The first thing I want to do is to implement an apprenticeship program so that youth have the opportunity to have workshops and tutelage in poetry. My hope is to implement poetry into the schools and implement a mentorship program where I work with,” she said.

At a very young age, the Cleveland, Ohio native was impressed by Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Mary Oliver, whom first met while in grade school. Dutton recalls the experience to be “incredibly inspiring.”

“Mary Oliver is a fantastic poet who came to my school,” she remembered. “She’s from Ohio and she sat with us and read her poems and she talked about her life as a poet and that was incredibly inspiring. I remember as a young person how you can be really compelled by someone just taking the time to share themselves. I hope to bring other poets into schools to do that as well.”
\
Dutton began her teaching career in 2007 and currently works at the Solstice MFA Program at Pine Manor College. It’s one of the programs Dutton takes pride in, mostly in part of helping writers build their poems through their life experiences.

“It’s a treat and a privilege for me to work with people who are really invested in their own growth as writers, to have those types of intensive conversations with them and be able to watch them grow and learn and work so hard towards their own goals,” she said.

In 2011, Dutton won the Cave Canem Poetry Prize for her collection If One of Us Should Fall. She has recited her collection in open mic events, poetry slams, and poetry salon series. Her work has been well respected among those in poetry in creative writing.

“I have always felt that her poetry reflected a greater imagination, a greater capacity for the kind of use of language that to me makes for a great poem, the kind that cracks the reader into a new understanding of reality and teaches a reader how words can be used in new and breathtakingly innovative ways,” Tom Daley, poetry writing instructor at the Boston Center for Adult Education, told SNN during a “Round Robin” Poetry evening in Boston.

Dutton was the featured poet in January meeting of salon series, led by Daley. The event gives the opportunity for poets to recite and discuss thought-provoking poems. Her participation in the series sparked another goal for her to accomplish as Poet Laureate, and that is to expand the salon series in Somerville.

Somerville resident Jason Henry Simon-Bierenbaum was at the evening.
“I have read her books a few times; I’ve used it to teach. It was just really nice to see her reading from it, and her warm presence and just hearing some of her approaches,” he said.

 Dutton  is happy to be in a community that supports “growing young poets.”

“I want people to know that I am open and I am available,” she said. “I am an accessible person and I’m really interested in working with people to get things accomplished, so if people have ideas or if people want to invite me to come to the classroom or they have a notion for other poets to come to where they are to set up events, we can make that happen.”

Joanna Fuhrman’s "The Year of Yellow Butterflies"

Joanna Fuhrman

Joanna Fuhrman’s "The Year of Yellow Butterflies"  ( Hanging Loose Press-2015)


Review by Amanda Gnau

Joanna Fuhrman’s "The Year of Yellow Butterflies" takes profound elements of surrealism accompanied with a feeling of pure nostalgia, that allows for a mind boggling read. Each poem in this book is able to captivate the reader and create a desire in their mind to understand the purpose and motive. Each poem tells a part of her story growing up and figuring out what life is all about. At  first glance, the meanings and messages hidden in the work can seem uncanny and improbable to grasp. Fuhrman’s writing  displays a large command of vocabulary and unconventional ways of describing people, events, places, and objects around her. 

Fuhrman’s poetry in this book represents the impact of technology, gender stereotyping, and varying cultures on people. The subjects written about in this collection are aspects in life that typically have a strong effect on the mind and the body in various ways. The bouncing back and forth between the mind and body can be seen in Fuhrman’s style of writing, evidenced when she turns back and forth from reality to a sort of illusory world. In an untitled poem she writes, “So many people forgot their babies that year they needed to open baby libraries across the country…I liked to go to the baby library at my lunch break. Under the mounds of congealing drool, I could finally remember my own lost babyhood – how blurry it was, how loud.”  Her diligent choice of descriptions and images is able to lure the reader in to learn more about these issues. With the use of repetition, consonance, outstanding imagery, and personification, this book can be seen as one of Fuhrman’s best. Her poems such as “New Eyes for the New Year”, “The Letter”, and “Dear November”, are just a few examples in which Fuhrman uses these literary devices in order to create a read that is enjoyable in terms of  the sound it creates in the reader’s mind. Fuhrman’s choice of utilizing euphemisms for serious topics so that the reader feels more comfortable addressing important issues is a wise choice that has worked to her advantage.

The middle section of this collection, with the same title as the book, is what makes The Year of Yellow Butterflies exceed any set expectations the reader may have had before diving in. Fuhrman twists from childhood to the more serious times of her life where she tried to be a mature adult. Her poems reflect her years in existence when perhaps she was not able to grasp or cope with certain issues occurring right before her eyes, and was left to produce these pictures and zones that seem to be derived from some sort of make believe era in time and space. Her interpretation and ability to place conflicts in a light that is easier for the everyday person to understand is one of her strongest traits as a poet and author. One untitled piece in the collection compares the layers of the life that we are all living, to the layers of clothing a woman would wear, “holes revealing leggings,…little rips, glimpses of neon paisley tights…through the holes we could see little patches of perfect skin-colored knee-makeup…a gap where the real skin would peek out…another hole and in it a surgically implanted transparent window reveling veins…muscles, predictable bones”. This comparison, although unconventional, is considerably concrete and hits the reader abruptly with a feeling of grief and confusion.

It seems that this book is a complete success for Fuhrman and will grab the attention of a wide range of audiences. Her style of writing can be best described as fresh, innovative, suspenseful, and most importantly, thought provoking. The Year of Yellow Butterflies is recommended to those who wish to have their opinions and minds altered with while enjoying a systematic syntax of poetry.


**********************************************************************************

Amanda Gnau is a sophomore English major at Endicott College. She has taken courses in advanced poetry, creative writing, and literary criticism and interpretation. Along with having a passion for new and contemporary works, Amanda also enjoys earlier poets such as John Milton and Alexander Pope. Her plan for the future is to continue writing poetry in her spare time and attend law school in the near future.

Bouncy House by Michael Estabrook

Michael Estabrook

Bouncy House

by Michael Estabrook

Green Zone Editions

Copyright © Michael Estabrook

softbound, no price given

Review by Zvi A. Sesling

This poem in the middle of Michael Estabrook’s new poetry chapbook made me laugh when it should not have, which is a positive indicator of his poetry.

The Boston Strangler

I’m at my desk at work

finishing up a poem about frogs

(everything in my life ends up

in a poem it’s a sad yes

but what can you do?)

when one of my co-workers

sticks his shiny bald head

into my office and says

“hey I heard this great joke

on TV last night about a frog…”

of course I’m stunned by the coincidence

but can’t say anything about it

because nobody at work knows

I’m a poet when I’m not at work

like the Boston Strangler was a strangler

when he wasn’t driving a cab

I get how Estabrook thinks. Some of these poems are nostalgic and other humorous. Each is based on something in his experience. The poem “Flashback” for example begins with a young engineer explaining something that reminds Estabrook of his father in a kind, warm way, while in “Bigfoot” there are a dozen other names for the legendary character and Estabrook writes from Bigfoot’s perspective.

Then there is his poem “Peter Sellers” which speaks for itself:

When I woke this morning

I was surprised to see how much

my wife looked like Peter Sellers.

Maybe it was the way her nose

came out from her face

or the way her hair lay flat against

the side of her head or maybe

it was because the light

was so dim. I’m not certain

but I was worried because I know

peter Sellers is dead.

Okay I’m not supposed to laugh at this one either, but couldn’t help myself because

if anything, Michael Estabrook has a terrific sense of humor which he is able, unlike

many poets, to make leap off the page and slap you silly.

He has also written one about himself, his grandchildren, earlobes, feeding ducks, eating lobster rolls and a number of other subjects any reader can breeze through and enjoy – hopefully as much as I did.

_______________________________________

Zvi A. Sesling is author of King of the Jungle (Ibbetson Street, 2010), Across Stones of Bad Dreams (Cervena Barva, 2011) and the soon to be published Fire Tongue (Cervena Barva). He is Editor of Muddy River Poetry Review, Bagel Bards Anthologies #7 and #8.

He regularly reviews for the Boston Small Press and Poetry Scene

Endicott College-Ibbetson Street Press-Visiting Author Series

( CTRL +  .... to enlarge)

Stitched with Gossamer: A Review of Jennifer L. Freed’s These Hands Still Holding

Stitched with Gossamer: A Review of Jennifer L. Freed’s These Hands Still Holding

Reviewed by Kimberly Pavlovich

            In Jennifer L. Freed’s poem “Almost Never” she writes, “But our lives are stitched with gossamer / in any case. Details shimmer / and then drift / away”. These lovely lines from a poem in These Hands Still Holding make memory tangible through subtle imagery and concrete detail. Freed’s poems indeed capture the gossamer—the shimmering moments and details that might otherwise drift away. As she explores themes such as nature, childhood, parenting, and loss, the poet takes deceptively simple moments and transforms them into ones more thoughtful and complex.

            One poem that demonstrates Freed’s deft ability to transform the everyday is “Joshua the Basset Hound,” the first poem in the collection. Freed begins with a relatable image of a dog leaning against its owner: he “presses his thick length against my leg.” This image, however, quickly becomes more meaningful. The dog reminds the speaker that “this / is the point of all the rest: to lean / with one’s whole being / into the life of another, / … even if, unlike the dog, / we are afraid of falling.” Freed depicts the basset hound with its owner in order to communicate a message about trust, life, and love.

            “Dandelions” also demonstrates the thoughtful quality of These Hands Still Holding. In this poem, the speaker discovers a bouquet of dandelions left by her daughters. Freed writes that the daughters “are still young enough to see / bright beauty in spring lawns flecked with yellow, / to want to clutch that beauty in their hands.” These lines portray the innocent, excited nature of children while at the same time hinting how aging changes one’s perspective. While the children are “still young enough to see / bright beauty” in dandelions, the parent speaker may no longer have this same point of view. In this way there is a quiet wistfulness to “Dandelions,” especially as the speaker later reflects on the dandelion down:

            loose and lifting in the breeze,

            as though each flower, knowing

            the nearness of death,

            had spent its last force willing

            its whole being

            toward its young,

            so that some beauty of its life

            might yet live on.

These lines reveal the parent’s nostalgic perspective and life’s inevitable cycle.

            Freed further gives depth to this theme of parenting and childhood in her poem “Grace.” The speaker describes her daughters helping earthworms from the asphalt: “delicate fingers lift limp strands / of pink and brown, / return them / to sunburned grass, dark garden soil.” As in “Dandelions,” this vivid image demonstrates children’s innate curiosity and concern. The last stanza of “Grace,” “I watch, / and then kneel down / to help,” is powerful in its brevity. The stanza illustrates the simple but poignant moments spent with one’s children. Perhaps there is something for parents to learn from their children’s actions.

            “When You Are Not Here” stands out. Freed skillfully turns an “O X” signed in a note the speaker writes to a loved one into oxen: “Let them let you hear, in their broad, barreled chests, / the thrum and swell of their beating hearts, in which / you will also hear / my heart.” This vibrant depiction of oxen conveys the speaker’s love and sense of longing for the person to whom she writes. She transforms the simple letters into something much more, something living and breathing that leaps off the page—something Freed herself accomplishes gracefully in each of her poems.

            Although the content of Freed’s poems imaginatively explores the everyday, equally expressive titles would have only strengthened the collection. The titles of Freed’s poems are plain and straightforward without the compelling meaning that might unite them more coherently with the text. Freed’s collection brings to mind the poet Marie Howe, who also reflects upon the everyday. For example, in “Hurry” Howe writes, “Hurry up honey, I say, hurry, / as she runs along two or three steps behind me / her blue jacket unzipped and her socks rolled down.” This distinct image of a child running to catch up with a parent evokes Freed, whose own poems elegantly infuse the everyday with unique perceptions that intensify the reader’s own view of the world around her.



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Kimberly Pavlovich is a junior at Endicott College majoring in English and minoring in Communication. She is the author of You Carry the Woods (Ibbetson Street Press). Her writing has also been published in FamilyFun and the Endicott Review, as well as online articles affiliated with Small Beer Press and the Boston Area Small Press and Poetry Scene. She is currently the editor-in-chief of the Endicott Review and plans to pursue a career in the publishing industry.

The Dollhouse Mirror Poetry by Frank Watson

The Dollhouse Mirror

Poetry by Frank Watson

© 2014 by Frank Watson

Edited by Boris Komatina

Plum White Press

ISBN-13: 9781939832122

Sofbound, $12.95, 105 pages

Review by Zvi A. Sesling

Frank Watson has written a short (and short poems) volume of poetry which are easy to read and comprehend. There has always been something about short poems that has attracted me to them and Watson’s repertoire succeeds where many I have seen do not.

Here are a few examples of Watson short stuff:

we kiss

in silence

our memories

a journey

that ended

not long ago

------------------

floating in

the midnight smoke

I fade like

the howls of a wolf

on a long, blue night

--------------------

dust in the wind

on the day

we parted our ways

----------------------

the forest

curled up

into a story

of stranded souls

away from city lights

These poems are short, to the point and reveal something of Watson’s thought process and a perhaps unhappy romantic life. It also shows that somewhere buried in the past or present is a touch of depression or insecurity as in these two poems:

he waits

in the crevice

of earth

to sail out

on a gentler day

---------------------

he looks around

but the enemy

is within

And the final poem in the volume which I find sad and I prefer happy endings to poetry books:

there is time

enough for weeping

as the dust settles

and all the books

remain closed

Now while I interpret these poems to be about himself, it possible Watson is observing others and writing down his impressions. Either way they can be so true that a reader

finds himself within these poems.

Not quite haiku, Watson’s micro poetry is most likely eastern based and can be enjoyed as a quick read or a thought provoking set of poems. Though I must admit as one who likes titles, even when a poem’s title is “Untitled” the lack of any titles is a bit disconcerting to me, though probably not to many readers who will enjoy these poems for what they are.

________________________________________________________________________

Zvi A. Sesling

Author, King of the Jungle (Ibbetson St., 2010) and Across Stones of Bad Dreams (Cervena Barva Press, 2011), Editor, Muddy River Poetry Review,Editor, Bagel Bards Anthology 7& Bagel Bard Anthology 8.

Theatre@ First: A Nurturing Arts Organization in the heart of Somerville

( Left to Right: Andrea Humez and Elizabeth Hunter)  photo by Jason Merilll)

 There is something to be said about sitting at your favorite table, beside a fireplace, having a bagel, with the requisite smoked fish--tomatoes and onions, and a dark roast. Of course I am talking about my favorite haunt Bloc 11 Cafe in Union Square, Somerville. My guest on this cold winter's morning was the founder of Somerville's Theatre@First, Elizabeth Hunter, and playwright Andrea Humez.

 Hunter, a gregarious woman somewhere in her 40s, moved with her husband from the hinterlands of Arlington to the Paris of New England a couple of years ago. She lives behind Davis Square, and finds Somerville " An intense city, interactive, with a strong sense of community." Hunter started Theatre@First in 2003, and their first production was " Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead," by Tom Stoppard.

Besides producing plays, Hunter and director Andrea Humez have started a new program FirstWorks that provides workshopping opportunities for playwrights to receive feedback on their new scripts from experienced directors and actors, and from the audience itself. Their first staged reading is titled:  That Night in the Field, by Christopher Lockheardt , that is described on the website as a play that involves: A black envelope, a visit from a summer fling,... recriminations at a family gathering, etc..."

According to Humez  First Works has a reading committee of theater professionals who review and vote on the most important manuscripts. The program provides the playwrights with help with drafting, the play, rehearsals, etc...

Hunter told me that the organization is a non-profit, but the get most of their their funding through ticket sales. They perform at a number of venues in Somerville, like the: Elizabeth Peabody House, the Unity (church), the Somerville Theater, and elsewhere. They have extensive experience performing Shakespeare ( As You Like It, Winter's Tale, etc...), and have received press coverage in The Boston Globe and other media outlets.

Hunter is a graduate of Wellesley College, and has acting and directing experience in college and community theater settings. She had an acting role as the psychiatrist in Equus-- a role traditionally played by a male. Hunter reflected:" Being a woman changed the relationship with the protagonist. It brought in a maternal element-- a relationship with a sympathetic woman."

Humez is an educational researcher, and is finishing up her PhD. She had her first directing experience at MIT in 1997, and has been involved in theatre ever since.

Hunter is excited about doing theater in Somerville. She said " There is a huge explosion of play-- writing--conversation--engagement, and audiences that are willing to pay attention to all of this."

On Feb. 27, 2015 Hunter and Humez will be presenting the play  Mousetrap at the Unity ( church).

For more information go to:  http://www.theatreatfirst.org

Keepers Meet Questing Eyes Poems by John Michael Flynn

Keepers Meet Questing Eyes
Poems by John Michael Flynn
Leaf Garden Press, 2014
ISBN 978-1-49964-1530
120 p., $6.00

Reviewed by David P. Miller

John Michael Flynn’s publications include two previous poetry collections, published in 1997 (Moments Between Cities) and 2013 (Washing Apples in Streams), and at least one chapbook, States and Items, published recently by the same publisher as the present collection. Of the 98 (by my count ) poems included in Keepers Meet Questing Eyes, many were previously published in 40 different journals and anthologies. It really not possible, in the length of a review, to survey the different voices and subject matters included in this ample selection, so I will focus on a sample of those poems that speak most directly to me. These feature nuanced, detailed representations of specific people, or a kind of cognitive-dissonant relationship between the present situations of the poems’ speakers and their memories or backgrounds.

“Thanksgiving as L’Ultima Cena the Year I Am Seventeen” presents a suspended moment of family dynamics at what can be the fraught scene of Thanksgiving dinner.  The family is compared with Da Vinci’s Last Supper, “Two symmetrical groups of three on each side of my father, / depth of perspective and vertical lines of walls and ceilings accentuating the scene at our table.” In contrast with Dad’s grounding presence – “the serenity he feels centered in his family, his mission / not even looking up, yet so powerful in his fatigue and wisdom” – Mom emerges with the food that moves time forward, animating the painting – “those noises of our meal sustaining a timelessness, each passing second mythical yet true.” It is surprising, then, to learn how the speaker sees himself in the picture: “a high contrast between lighted upper-left walls / and the soft shadowed light and me, / puzzled betrayer and teen seated in his Judas spot, /an angry confused face craving a vision for his shadows.”

This sense of neither here nor there, out of alignment, haunts many of these poems. In “Sanguine in Worcester,” we see a “him” finding himself in the real flow and sense of life in that city, like a Whitmanesque saunterer:

    He walks Millbury Street
studies the hard faces of a new tide of immigrants
in the smokestack windows from the Wyman Gordon plant
that like so much of the landscape used to be there.

    He watches Kelly Square gridlock trap a blaring ambulance,
laborers bundled for brutal cold with hoods up,
Cor-Tex gloves, Patriots logos and pocket change,
lugging lunch pails and plenty of wishes.

His silent meditations teach him that “he’s still a somebody in the making,” and though he might wish to escape, he can still find nourishment while immersed in this hard-bitten place: “a fortress of blood in iambs, meters and images / resilient as any three-decker on the city’s seven hills.”

However, the ability to align himself in an affectively equivocal setting in one case is challenged in others. In “Class Envy on Constitution Road,” the writer perhaps wants to settle his art into what seems the periphery of an upper-middle-class “mountainside estate”:

I could spend days here hidden behind my sunglasses,
court ways to describe the cleverness of light,
the roseate essence in cedar bark
where they’ve been planted equidistantly
on both sides of an entry road.

With some irony, although that passage itself comes close to actually doing what he says he would like to do, in the end the situation is simply too alien, as he contemplates:

this parcel of heavenly domestication
its white manse seen through a cleft
in a high furry green-gray ridge
each window saying no, no, no,
not mine to covet.

Using condensed images, “Yesterday, Today, City” represents the speaker’s constant movement toward becoming in a more benign light, but still with a full acknowledgement  of what he carries forward. Whereas previously he was “a drop of sweat in the scuppers of an oil barge. / Jets thundered out of my temples”, he now finds himself “a white horse / Sunshine fills my modest room.” The room, though, also contains his “losses” arranged “in a straight line …brought out from my private crate of horrors / so many closets, so many other cities.” Still, these are treasured, “each one like it’s a found object.” If he has found some redemption, or positive transformation, it is not at the price of discarding his deeper ground.

As mentioned, many of the poems here give us the texture of specific  people, the fruit of close and sympathetic observation. Although “Albert Conant” begins with “Friends warned me he was off his rocker,” this easy judgment is challenged the more we find out about him. Yes, it is true that
One day he just started walking out of the valley,
mumbling to himself. He was on his way back to Maine,
his home-state, the only place he’d ever felt wanted
– leaving his wife “hysterical, missing him.” This is the same man, though, that reverently buries roadkill, calls phlox “a lavender blessing” and knows the natural world in depth:
    We watched a hawk one time and he said, Need more hummingbirds.
    The whole darn valley is thirsting for flowers.

“Millwood Ennis and Chester Garland” presents two portraits in one, in the course of it unexpectedly flipping one of the pictures. First, a barber and “the mayor of our village, one Don Millwood Ennis / who I always thought of as the original swamp Yankee / told me over his oily and busy and loquacious shears / a story about Chester Garland.” The latter “had blown his brains out with a Winchester 30-30.” As critical as that is, as the poem unfolds we learn something more central: Chester, classmate of the speaker’s mother, meant more to him than a rural suicide story. For example:
He showed me my first bird’s next.
Having taken it gingerly from one of our trees
he’d said to me before looking at it,
A robin will always lay four eggs.
Sure enough, there were four of them.
It’s the simplicity and clarity of these details that tell of the complexities of a real life and allow us to extend ourselves with empathy.

These poems represent only the lightest suggestion of what is available in this volume, but I hope indicate the interest I sustained while reading it. At the same time, I could not help but feel that there is so much work presented here, it was difficult for me to have a sense of the book as a whole – of its particular shape or focus. Too, the book’s title puzzles me. The word “keepers” suggests two things to me – either a person in some position of authority (e.g. zoo-keeper) or a particularly valuable find (a “real keeper”). After finishing the book, I still cannot connect either of these with an image of “questing eyes.” Nor did I find the title included as a phrase in any of the poems, although I may have missed it despite deliberately reading for it. Nevertheless, I am glad to be introduced to John Michael Flynn’s poetry and look forward to more.

from The Hastings Room ( Poetry Series) Gloria Mindock ( Ibbetson Lifetime Achievement Award winner -- 2014), and others....

from The Hastings Room:

 

The Battle of Hastings in 1066 was to bring about a dramatic transformation to the English Language. At The Hastings Room Reading Series we do what we can by hosting a quarterly poetry reading at First Church Congregationalist, 11 Garden Street (across from the Sheraton Commander) off of Harvard Square…

This coming Wednesday, February 4th, at 7:00 pm, we will be featuring Gloria Mindock,

the winner of the 2014 Ibbetson Street Press Lifetime Achievement Award. (See flyer for this event at the end of this announcement.)

Irene Koronas, poet, painter and multi-media artist, was a reader at our debut reading in May

of 2014. She is a member of our planning committee, and has been a devoted attendee at the readings. Irene has written a very thoughtful memoir of Franz Wright’s evening with us on Wednesday the 19th of November 2014, which we are grateful to share here:

F r a n z  W r i g h t

by Irene Koronas

“The sun shining no warmer than the moon.”  Michael Steffen, hosts, Hastings Room Poetry Reading, Cambridge, Ma., he reads Galway Kinnell's poem, 'For Robert Frost," before he introduces the poet Franz Wright who asks Mike for the date the poem was written. The audience remains quiet when Mike asks if anyone knows. I don't know. I've never read Kinnell's poetry. Sometimes I feel like a an alien, a foreigner at a poetry reading, not knowing certain references written or spoken of in poems. Franz is at home, poetry is his home. He is comfortable enough to ask. He seems grateful to be approached by admirers. He's different. Changed. Illness transforms people, for better or not.

For many years I've attended poetry readings. Franz continues to draw me to his readings. I listen with a keen sense to how his poetry takes life, squeezes what lives, drains out experiences, how he can not live any other way. He is (for me) a poetic super star. He lends to his own legend, what we might consider, creative anger, loss, abstract thoughts peppered with loneliness. He often uses accusation to reference contemporary life. Whatever he writes, Franz Wright comes across. He spits three times like a Greek priest during baptisms, wards off evil. I always appreciated the Greek in him. Profound, feisty,  unlike people who please, he meets his own weaknesses. He stares down other people's weaknesses. His poetry is his way of life. This is evident in all his writing. We encounter the way he has lived and how he has lived. His poems slip off pages and remains in our blood. More human than evidenced in some poetry, he is in those phrases which allow us to enter and to be there.

My age teaches me there's not enough time to day dream any more. With my hearing loss,

I keep trying to pay close attention, knowing I might not be privy to his voice again. His voice has softened, it is difficult for me to hear. I watch his breath, the roll of sound, like low tide. Words lap the sand. Foam traces recede. Another wave. This time wet words soak my mind, I listen anyway. 

He asks, if there are any poems we would like him to read. I'm immersed in his presence and I fumble through my bag for his F book. “Elderly Couple” written at Mt Feake Cemetery 1990. This is the second poem in his book. It brings me to my knees. My first thought on reading the poem was, if only I could write like him. By the time I fish his book out of my bag, Franz is on his way back to his wife on the red Victorian couch. She moves aside his black cane. My head leans on his movements, still musing on his poem. How all or most of my American family from the 1930's are buried at Mt Feake. My mother being the most recent. She died this summer and I still cry at my loss. “rapidly graying, dissolving into one substance with the dusk, they are so still they tremble.” His poem, Elderly Couple, leads me into the rest of  F book. Too late to ask him to read the poem. I tremble at my own weakness.

People ask him to sign his books. I watch his long gentle fingers write my name. His hand writing reminds me of the quick notes mother used to leave me. Her notes shake my grief. I stash them in my bureau draw. Wright's book is back in my cloth bag. Still I can't leave.

Paper cups strewn under seats. I'm reminded, service helps relieve sorrow. I pick up the cups, stack them in an empty plastic cookie container. I repeat this task until I find the courage to leave the room, walk to the subway train and return home wanting more poetry from Franz Wright. “this one whom habit of memory propels to the ground of his making...” Kinnell

   Poetry Reading to Celebrate

   Gloria Mindock

 2014 Ibbetson Street Lifetime Achievement Award 

                           

HASTINGS ROOM at FIRST CHURCH CONGREGATIONALIST

11 Garden Street, off of Harvard Square

Wednesday February the 4th at 7:00 pm

Gloria Mindock is the founding editor of Cervena Barva Press, and one of the USA editors for Levure Litteraire (France).  She is the author of La Porþile Raiului (Ars Longa Press, 2010, Romania) translated into the Romanian by Flavia Cosma, Nothing Divine Here (U Soku Stampa, 2010, Montenegro), and Blood Soaked Dresses (Ibbetson, 2007).  Widely published in the USA and abroad, her poetry has been translated and published into Romanian, Serbian, Spanish, Estonian, and French. Her fourth chapbook, “Pleasure Trout” was published by Muddy River Books in 2013. This past December 2014, Gloria was awarded the Ibbetson Street Press Lifetime Achievement Award. 

Gloria will be joined by co-readers—

Jaime Bonney received a Master's of Divinity from Harvard Divinity School in 2012, concentrating her work in languages and in a pastoral theology of the arts, especially investigating the consolations of Fyodor Dostoevsky's Brothers Karamazov. She is a member of the Bethany House of Prayer poetry group in Arlington, MA, led by poet Kimberly Green. In addition to writing poetry, Jaime is a singer and painter. She lives in Jamaica Plain.

Brother Nicholas Bartoli n/SSJE is a monk in the Episcopal order of the Society of Saint John the Evangelist, having joined the order in August of 2013. He is originally from Brooklyn, New York, and most recently lived in Boulder, Colorado where he practiced psychotherapy and attended seminary. Nicholas is a beginning writer of poetry whose inspiration comes primarily from poems arising from mystical traditions.


---Michale Todd Steffen ( Co-Director and Founder of  Hastings Room)

Interview with Mike Basinski: Curator of the University at Buffalo Libraries' Special Collection.

Mike Basinski ( Curator of  Special Collections at the University at Buffalo, N.Y.)

I caught up recently with my friend Mike Basinski, curator of the University at Buffalo Libraries/ Special Collections. The University at Buffalo website states that the poetry collection is ".... the library of record for 20th- and 21st-century poetry in English. Founded in 1937 by Charles Abbott, the Poetry Collection now holds one of the world’s largest collections of poetry first editions and other titles, little literary magazines, broadsides and anthologies; a substantial collection of artworks; and more than 150 archives and manuscript collections from a wide range of poets, presses, magazines and organizations."

The collection has just about every Ibbetson Street Press title we published, and provides a huge service to the literary small press. I interviewed Mike about ten years ago--so I wanted to revisit him.

Doug Holder:  So, if you are game, tell me what is up for you for the past decade—professional and personal

Mike Basinski:  Well, I take care of the realm of the poem. As the world should know, libraries are changing. I don’t mean just the digitizing of certain materials. What is digitized is always somebody’s selection and things are selected for… money, power, prestige, and politics, for example. There is a selection process so democracy always at the end of the line. Not to gloom. I don’t. Libraries are changing and there is less publicly supplied funding for libraries. But what I am saying is that poetry and the poem is still small, relatively, and still lives in a book. Care is about funds to buy poetry books, subscribe to poetry magazines, secure poetry broadsides.  The State of New York only funds 11% of the University at Buffalo, so poem funds have to come from someplace else and it comes from friends of poetry and the poem.  I beg. Tin cup in hand. The priority for the Poetry Collection is expanding. Always I wish to maintain first our first edition collection but to do that we need friends. I have lots of ties, around my neck and in the community, community of art, the realm of the poem, anywhere. I say, this is a public institution so this Poetry Collection is the public’s collection and by facts we are all curators of this collection. So, what do I do at work: Keep the doors open so in may waltz and walk the poem. These are strange times. Fear not, I have my finger in the dike!

And, well, I am happy to say, I am on guard. And we have friends and more friends each day. A friend a day keeps the apple away. I am not just being old time. Tis a modern world. I don’t blame the State or the University. I also pay taxes, too many. But I also call to arms. Being a poet is being responsible for the world of the poem. Be poetry’s friend – write me and will work it out: basinski@buffalo.edu

I keep making the poem with real letters and visual letters as has been my form forever. Each day the poem summons and I respond. I am thinking of a poem of just end lines. A poem that is a text for pure improvisation.  I keep thinking of one phrase in Ulysses, which is “a form of forms,” which is in one sense jazz but should be the poem. There is where I am happy. I am looking for the right combination of sounds which will be the spell that introduces magic back in this sometimes very stale and sour world. I know it is there.

What else? My wife and I have a home near some woods, some of which is ours, and there are deer and fox and such, and provides else viewing. I sit in the heaven of the woods. What more! 

DH:  Any poets you have your eye on?

MB: Eye Catching poets? I am at the stage of rereading. H.D., Pound, Basil Bunting. Like listening to old records – great. Kerouac. I like reading myself.  I like reading new books by Lisa Jarnot, Dodie Bellamy, and Susan Howe. I always stop and read them. And I found the poems of Ruth Fainlight – all wonderful moons. And the poet – Patrick Riedy. He is a real poet – he is the Keats of Lackawanna, New York.

DH: Any magazines that strike your fancy?

MB: I am a local guy, so I like local literary magazines. Our freshest in Buffalo: Yellow Field . Edric Mesmer molds each issue. It is NEW! Yellow Field, attn.: Edric Mesmer, 1217 Delaware Ave. – Apt. 802, Buffalo, New York 14209. yellowedenwaldfield[at]yahoo[dot]com

DH: Your philosophy of poetry and good writing?

MB: I like all poetry. We have to join together and forget our camps and agendas and I am this poet and your write like that. We are all Ring Tailed Lemurs and the society is cutting down our Madagascar. All of this your kinda poem and my underground and ivory tower – poets, watch the hell out! We are one big union and have to think that way. Or it’s over the edge.

Good writing? I have no woRms of wisdom.

Misery Islands By January Gill O’Neil

Misery Islands

By January Gill O’Neil

CavanKerry Press

Fort Lee, NJ

www.cavankerrypress.org

ISBN: 978-1-933880-46-4

78 Pages

$16.00

Review by Dennis Daly

Some islands bask under an equatorial sun, massaged by gentle trade winds and tickled by turquoise water. Others offer stony, unforgiving shores, dangerous channels, and wreckage of grander days, with only the icy winds of desperate hope and final survival to mitigate the landscape.

It’s these “other” islands and their human iterations that January O’Neil dwells on in her dolorous but passionate new book of poetry, Misery Islands.

Opening the collection O’Neil audaciously fleshes her persona out in Whitmanesque fashion as everyman and, even more emphatically, everywoman. She identifies with those left behind and challenged by difficult circumstances, those storm tossed isles navigating daily life. Her persona drops words onto the page from a whirlwind of transitory motion. The poet says,

I am every mill town and boarded-up factory,

the assembly line disassembled, the layoffs,

layaways, and laid to rest.

I put the depressed into depression

I am America reconstructed; I am a force at work.

I dig a ditch, I fill a ditch.

My collar is white, my collar is blue.

I am missing 23 cents out of every dollar

a woman is supposed to earn

but doesn’t.

I am every God damn it and Lord have mercy.

O’Neil’s poem Rent To Own follows the routine of an older guy with bad knees as he cleans used furniture, removing the unsightly detritus from the bottom strata of human life. Her bigger theme that we are all just passing through in this life bolts up, volcano-like, through the messy details. Here’s a pretty telling section,

You’d be surprised how many people

pick their noses and leave the evidence

under the arm of an armchair, he tells me.

Roaches, bed bugs, pet hair, dander—

you name it, it’s there, in the fibers,

the polyester pillows and dense cushions.

Steam vapor removes almost anything,

even tar from a chaise owned by a guy

who works at an asphalt company,

working his ass off in 10-hour shifts

to afford his slice of America.

Tension between the roles of mother and child settles into an intimate and singular series of motions. The business-like care giver unfurls not only a washcloth but a sense of profound gratitude and love. O’Neil conveys the scene with affecting sentiment and dignity. Individuals, islanders, in other words, do make a difference. I really like the piece. The poet concludes this way,

She reaches around for the cloth

with slow and deliberate movements

as if not to admit pain, not to convey need—

the caregiver needing care, the care taker

not taking as she usually does. Not today.

I want to tell her I love her

but I don’t. I cover her with a towel

and some small talk, try not

to notice what’s missing.

No words, yet I listen

like a stethoscope

for her to say something. 

Putting into words the carnage of a marriage breakup confounds many of the best writers, most especially over sensitized poets. I can think of a recent Pulitzer Prize winner for instance. O’Neil handles this subject with just the right touch as her warmed up words chill and disappear into a midwinter’s frigid air. Her sentiments court despair with humor and astonish with tight artistic control. The poet aches out her feelings in an touching conclusion,

I can’t compete with the failing light

from your voracious heart

burning us both into nothing.

Something has left us.

Every droplet of joy evaporates

to sky. When will melt come?

How could anyone blame you

for wanting to escape

the coldest month of the year?

Like Homer’s Penelope, O’Neil weaves heartbreak and metaphor into one composition. Her title poem, Misery Islands, opens with a narrative description of two wondrous and tenuously connected islands off the coast of Salem Massachusetts—Great Misery, and Little Misery. Both are now uninhabited. Each island has its own personality and its own geologic traits. The poet also splices in other historical, tidal, and climate particulars of the islands which strangely magnify the emotional discomfort of the interwoven and parallel marital distress narrative. Consider the following juxtaposition. First the historical, set on Great Misery in the “roaring twenties,”

Imagine a pier, a club house,

a swimming  pool filled with salt water,

guest cottages to the horizon line,

a tennis court and tournaments,

a nine-hole golf course with caddies

dressed in pressed white linens.

So elegant, so glamorous a setting,

You can almost see a couple

Looking out over a balcony,

Hands entwined, the moon

Hanging over them

By the thin thread of midnight.

Now the equally compelling glory days before the marriage collapse,

I loved. You loved. We loved

with our whole selves—

lips first, then the tumble of skin

pulling each other down,

caught in the tangle and swirl,

closer to terror, closer to ourselves

the way we became something else

as soon as we were in it

the way our bodies displaced truth

through the depths of anger,

the way it changed us

and we were changed by it.

We were poor swimmers

Too far in the rip to be saved.

Late in the collection, another favorite of mine, the poem A Mother’s Tale appears. The poem whispers easily a harsh truth—life’s ephemeral nature. The poet’s persona speaks to her son and offers an interesting antidote to the human condition and its concomitant isolation. She says,

I tell my son

that the best poems

are written in the sand

and washed away with the tide.

I say the moon controls the waves,

uses the wind to rake the shore.

It is an open invitation to fill

The world with words…

O’Neil clearly follows her persona’s sage advice. She fills the world with her extraordinary poetic words, and we get to read them.