Journalist, Poet, Wendell Smith: From the Cambridge Phoenix, Spiro Agnew, Wounded Knee, Kent State and all points beyond…

Wendell Smith

 Journalist, Poet, Wendell Smith: From the Cambridge Phoenix, Spiro Agnew, Wounded Knee, Kent State and all points beyond…

By Doug Holder

 Recently I had the pleasure to speak to Wendell Smith, a Somerville Bagel Bard, poet, retired physician,  and one of the first reporters for the old Cambridge Phoenix (a predecessor to the now defunct Boston Phoenix) on my Somerville Community Access TV Show, Poet to Poet : Writer to Writer.

Doug Holder: So tell me how you got your first writing gig?

Wendell Smith: Shortly after I arrived in Boston I was unemployed; so I went down to this unemployment agency and they gave me this card—it was about a job to write a book with the founder of the Academy of Applied Sciences, Houston Branch. He was a Hollywood screenwriter who said he made millions of dollars and then lost it all. He told me he wanted to write biographies of inventors, so these inventors would fund the Academy of Applied Sciences. Branch had an interesting background; he was a roommate of John Reed (the famed journalist who covered the Russian Revolution) at Harvard. Our first book concerned the man who invented power steering. So this was my first real gig when I arrived in Boston.

DH: You wrote for the Cambridge Phoenix at its inception, in the fall of 1969.

WS: Yes it started in the late fall of 1969; the other alternative newspaper at the time was Boston After Dark.  Boston After Dark was mainly concerned with entertainment and dating ads. The Phoenix was funded by Jeff Tartar, who claimed he had a rich uncle who was going to provide for it. He wanted something similar to the Village Voice. It was conceived as a weekly newspaper that essentially covered the Anti-War Movement. Eventually Steve Mindich bought it out, and it became the Boston Phoenix. When Mindich took over—we formed the “Real Paper” collective. The Real Paper was in the black from the start. It lasted for about five or six years. Eventually I was fired, and I would have fired my younger self. I was too stoned and manic.

DH:  Who did you work with—what was the setting like?

WS: It was very freewheeling.  Peter Simon was our photography editor. I shared a front page with Joe Klein (he later wrote for Rolling Stone and The New York Times) in 1973. My piece was about the 1973 Indian rebellion known as “Wounded Knee”, and his was about a school for the disabled in Western Mass.

DH: You wrote a piece about the student protests and shooting at Kent State. You told me the reports of students throwing rocks were largely fabricated.

WS: Yes.  There was a little pile of rocks near where the event happened. And the rocks were flat, split limestone, too big and awkward to be thrown. These were not fist-sized stones. There was evidence that a local newspaper reporter was a F.B. I. operative, and he instigated the student shooting by firing the first shot.

DH:  Tell me about your coverage of the Indian insurrection, Wounded Knee.

WS: The liberation of Wounded Knee was in 1973. The American Indian Movement was run by Russell Means. The Indians occupied Wounded Knee, and stood down federal marshals who were sent to quell the rebellion. I was in San Francisco at the time. I had been hitchhiking and riding freight trains across the country and writing about my experience in the Real Paper. I went to Wounded Knee, and saw a lot of energetic and, and dedicated people  who were part of the movement. The Indians mostly had small arms, hunting rifles, etc… In the end the Indian Movement reclaimed Wounded Knee.

DH: You were covering an event in Boston, where Spiro Agnew, vice-president to Nixon spoke. You were arrested at that event. Can you tell me about this?

WS: This was at a Lincoln Day dinner. It was hosted by the Middlesex Republican Club—the oldest Republican club in the nation. It was being held at the Sheraton in Boston in the Prudential Center. Agnew addressed the dinner. There were a lot of protestors and police outside on Boylston Street. I was covering all this. The dinner got started, and I walked to the floor of the banquet and got a seat. I had long hair, a Ho Chi Min beard and denim bell bottoms.  Al Cap got up and said: “You know, I think they ought to chew up all those protestors on the street.” And Agnew said: “The problem here is the press.” At that moment I stood up in protest and two guys who looked like football linebackers caught me by the elbow, and escorted me out. As I was led out I heard some Republican women, like a Greek Chorus, pipe up and say: “ Kill him; they ought to kill them all.” I was herded into a Boston Police and the cops said that they wished they could put my feet in cement and take care of me properly.

DH: You are a champion of the late poet Ramon Guthrie, author of “Maximum Security Ward.”

WS:  The book’s setting was in a hospital ward where the poet was dying from bladder cancer. He always wanted to write a major piece. So when he had a drug-related delirium after he came out from anesthesia, he began to write this poem while he was in the intensive care ward. I came to know him when I was at Dartmouth, and he was part of a group called the “Thursday Poets.” He and the group were great, supportive, and they had none of that academic affectation.  He was definitely an influence on me and he should have more recognition, and I am working on that.

The Endicott Review Spring 2015

The Endicott Review

Volume 32, Issue 1

Spring 2015

Copyright © 2015 by The Endicott Review

Softbound, 60 pages, no price provided

Review by Zvi A. Sesling

The first thing you notice about The Endicott Review (Endicott College in Beverly, MA.) is a cover photo of a bleak broken pier, snow and cold water, a bleak reminder of what is behind us and ahead  of us as well. The next thing is the quality of the writing.

So let us begin with Emily Pineau whose work I always enjoy, enough so that I once nominated her for a Pushcart Prize for a poem she published in my online journal, Muddy River Poetry Review. Ms. Pineau has an easy going style, a degree of truth mixed with insight and a story to tell that is often intriguing, and sometimes a bit mysterious.  Her offering in the ER  is “Tone it Down”

Sleepovers used to be dance music,

movie popcorn,

small sips of

Oh-My-God-I just-tried-beer

and trying to forget

what it tastes like.

Sleepovers used to smell like

makeup and body sprays, and

feel like leather purses

we would wear to the mall

at night.

Sleeps had 2AM secrets, and

“Pleas tone it down, girls” laughter.

Sleeping bags were rolled up

with “I think I might love him,”

and braided hair.

Now sleepovers are nights

we sleep in the

same bed, watch a bad

TV movie, and coax the cat

to sit between.

We turn the lights out at

11, and turn on our sides.

Back to back, body to body.

The feeling of your own outline

being colored in by

your best friend sleeping

next to you.

In the morning there is the

good morning yawn

that is more like

“Nice to see you again.”

We lay there and stretch –

the cat is on me.

“I actually like that movie,”

she says to me

“Ya know, I did too.”

Jacqueline Llerena’s ADD is not about mathematics, and again there is an inner truth being presented to the outside world. It would be nice if people who are not familiar with ADD read this poem and then did some research into it to get a better understanding of it.

ADD

Attention Deficit Disorder

Everything is worth having a thought about.

Anything will grab your attention,

But only something better does.

Distraction everywhere,

A truly hidden gift.

Multiple thoughts a once.

A mind that never stops thinking.

Full of wonder and curiosity.

The best excuse for procrastination.

Creativity in its finest.

If only it could all be put to use.

There are a number of excellent poems in the this semi-annual magazine, Katey O’Hara’s “Squeeze” is one, so is Cristine A. Gruber’s “Listening to a 92-Year-Old Woman Discuss the Process of Pain.” “Football Players” by Julia Cirignano is an interesting take on boy-girl relations, sex and love. Also take note of “Sunday Evening” by Kendra Czernicki, “Our View” by Andrea Mountford and Jane Dutcher’s “Crime TV,” which pretty much summarizes more than 50 years of detective stories and murder mysteries in their various forms.

Of course my selections may not  be your choices, which is why you should get a copy of The Endicott Review’s 2015 Spring Issue and discover poetry and poets you like.

And while you are at it, look at the many very fine photographs in this issue.

Finally, kudos to the editorial board: Kimberly Pavlovich, Editor-in-Chief, Victoria Pulvidente, Alex Munteanu, Ariana Mackey, Brenna Shanahan and Quinn Waddell.

Also to the Faculty Advisory, Daniel Sklar, Faculty Editor, Doug Holder, Photography Editor, Michael Miller and Cover Art, Kelsey Drought.

__________________________________________

Zvi A. Sesling

Reviewer for Boston Small Press and Poetry Scene

Author, King of the Jungle (Ibbetson St., 2010) and Across Stones of Bad Dreams

(Cervena Barva, 2011)

Editor, Muddy River Poetry Review

Publisher, Muddy River Books

Editor, Bagel Bards Anthologies 7& 8

Book Launch: Portrait of an Artist as a Young Poseur: 1974 to 1983 By Doug Holder July 9, 2015 7PM

 Doug Holder will read from his lyrical memoir of Boston in the 1970s and early 1980s, Portrait of an Artist as a Young Poseur ( Big Table Publishing) The reading will take place at the Newton Writing and Publishing Center in Newton, Mass at 7PM. Sam Cornish, first Poet Laureate of Boston wrote of Holder:

 

  “Doug Holder is a poet of the old city, the city of our fathers, of the 1950s and later. Mr. Holder writes poems like notes in a diary. I found myself struck by their economy, wit, and urban melancholy... He has a voice unlike that of any of his contemporaries. Holder is a poet of the street and coffeehouses, an observer of the everyday. He writes of old Marxists, security guards and his relationship to his deceased father—themes of the common life. I am drawn to these poems as I am to the poetry of Philip Levine and the prose of James T. Farrell. But Holder’s poetry is deeper than that. He sees the world not for what it is, but on his own terms. He is living in the poem rather than in poetry.”

Hear Doug Holder read at his old rooming house at 271 Newbury Street in Boston:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M1DPFF3A8hc

To order the book go to  http://lulu.com/ibbetsonpress

Newton Writing and Publishing Center
289 Elliot Street Newton Upper Falls MA 02464 
Newton Writing and Publishing Center ( Click on)

Talking with Michael C. Keith, author of the memoir “The Next Better Place”

Talking with Michael C. Keith, author of the memoir “The Next Better Place”

Over the past year or so I have become acquainted with Michael C. Keith, a professor of Communications at Boston College, a scholar of talk radio and other media, and the author of the memoir “ The Next Better Place” ( Algonquin Books). His memoir, as described in a review on http://www.ew.com/ is: 

... a heartbreaking memoir of staggering mileage. In 1959, 11-year-old Keith and his father set off from Albany, N.Y., for the shining El Dorado of California, hitchhiking, hunkering on Greyhounds when they could, sleeping in cars, rooming in boarding houses (and skipping town without paying the rent). Keith’s adventure quickly degenerated into babysitting his alcoholic dad, pushing the boundaries of personal hygiene, and flirting with the law. It’s the shabbier side of America, but the sense of freedom Keith tasted comes through loud and clear, as does his affection for his father.

Keith is a prolific writer in many genres. He is also on the board of the Newton Writing and Publishing Center in Newton, Mass. I plan to use his memoir in my creative writing seminar at Endicott College this fall, and have him lecture as well.

Q: Why did you use first person narrator?

A: I mulled it over for quite a while, but in the end I felt it would be the most authentic way to convey the account. I believe a memoir works best when it is told in the present tense. That is to say, not from the faraway past. It also occurred to me that it would be the most colorful way to tell my story. I selected an 11 year-old narrator because at that age a person understands a lot but certainly not everything. So it struck me that the naiveté’ or innocence of the kid could work to enrich the perspective of the dominant character. Eleven year olds are very quirky. I was very quirky at that age. I wanted to capture that.

Q: How hard was it to capture the voice of the 11 year-old as a middle age adult?

A: Surprisingly easy. I believe I had retained that 11 year-olds’ voice in my head my whole life. From the beginning, it was just there. It came effortlessly. It wasn’t something I really had to work at. I never did try to write the memoir from the POV of an adult. I think that would have been much more difficult and less effective.

Q:   Malachy McCourt advised memoirists to stretch things and not to get caught up in exact facts. What are your thoughts on this?

A: The writer Tony Early observed that: “A memoir is a combination of memory and imagination.” I agree with that to the extent that one must first and foremost recall things as clearly as possible and when there are gaps in one’s recollection, invention may be acceptable and necessary. However, that invention should be confined to specifics and details and not the manufacture of things that never happened. Let’s say the invention part should be confined to coloration (perhaps modestly enhancing the quality of a character’s personality) and the reconstitution of names and dates that elude memory. A memoir should never be fiction, not even partially fiction. I think that is a corruption of the genre. Tell it like it was, was my mantra and she should be so for any memoirist. If you have to fictionalize a memoir, call it a novel, because that’s what it is.

Q: How would your father have reacted to the book?

A: I think with mixed feelings. He would have resented the parts wherein he was depicted as a drunk or con man. On the other hand, I believe he would have been pleased that the story had been captured in book form. He would have been somewhat in awe that I had published it. Still, he would have had many gripes, just as he did when he was alive.

Q: Explain the book’s structure, the short chapters, for example:

A: It’s chronologically framed to reflect our hitchhiking odyssey to California from Albany, NY, and back. The book’s narrative is spread across 15 months but is really a compression of 12 years of road travel. This took some consideration, but for the sake of plot and tension, condensing the dozen years into several months made the best sense. The memoir consists of some 69 mini-chapters and 7 sections. Each chapter depicts an incident of some sort. It made sense for me to structure the memoir this way, since I like to write in increments––short bursts. The idea, too, was to reflect the passage of miles––to create a feeling of motion/movement. Early on, I was taken with 70s counterculture author Richard Brautigan’s use of short (micro) chapters and the titling of each of those chapters. For me, this approach allowed for greater creativity. Each chapter title serves as a sort of précis for the content of a particular chapter. Holding with the idea of movement, the titles are road markers, if you will.

Q: Why the movie references?

A: Movies were an integral part of my life on the road. Whenever I could, I took in a movie. In many respects they became my classroom, since I spent little time in actual school. They primarily served as an escape from the hardships of the road. In the movies, everything was perfect and all things seemed possible. They had a profound influence on me. I wanted to be like the good and righteous heroes depicted in the films, and the heroes were typically people of accomplishment. I took great inspiration from the stories and their plots, and I think they had a profound impact on the direction I took as an adult. For the two hours I spent in the darkness of a theater, all seemed right with the world. Movies also fanned my desire for adventure and kept me longing for the next better place that may exist down the road.

Q: How many times did you rewrite the memoir?

A: It took a numbers of years to produce the penultimate manuscript. I’d write a few pages and then move on to something else. A year or two later something would motivate me to begin again. At one point, I thought I’d write it as a screenplay, but that was a genre essentially unfamiliar to me as a writer, so I’d return to the book form. The first version of the manuscript was 320 pages. It contained a prologue and epilogue. The first section was kind of an account of my early adult leading up to the recollection of my days on the road with my alcoholic father. The epilogue attempted to convey the rest of my life up to now. In the aggregate, the two sections accounted for about 40 pages of the manuscript, with the mid-section numbering about 280 pages. It still didn’t seem right to me at the time, so I set it aside yet again. I’ve always read a lot of memoirs, and it was the reading of “Angela’s Ashes” that caused me to return to my memoir. I had an epiphany that clarified for me the problem with my manuscript. I realized I did not need the prologue and epilogue; that the manuscript’s mid-section was the book and as such complete and perfectly organic. It ended up being the book Algonquin published and with virtually no changes or revisions. The diamond had been there all along but obscured by unnecessary pages.

Q: What does all the reference to open space symbolize?

A: The potential of God, I could say––although I’m not religious. The high plains with their unobscured vistas filled me with a sense of sublime freedom and possibility. In a story I wrote about the power of the high plains, the protagonist observes, “It’s like standing on the forehead of God.” I really did feel like I could make contact with the cosmos . . . touch the heavens. That feeling has never gone away.

Q: What makes your book cinematic?

A: It’s highly visual and the characters are unusual and, to a considerable extent, pretty fascinating––two things important to any film. Furthermore, it’s the story of a unique relationship, one possessing universal themes. It also mixes humor with pathos to give it great texture.

Q: What are the 5 most important elements of a memoir?

A: 1.) A good story, 2.) engaging narrative, 3.), colorful description, 4.) clear theme(s), 5.) satisfying outcome/conclusion/resolution.

Immigrant Model By Mihaela Moscaliuc

Immigrant Model
By Mihaela Moscaliuc
University of Pittsburgh Press
Pittsburgh, PA
ISBN: 13: 978-0-8229-6334-9
94 Pages
$15.95

Review by Dennis Daly

Like mythological werewolves rising from musty crypts, these passionate poetic lines of Mihaela Moscaliuc’s Immigrant Model prowl over page warmth feeding from the flesh of grim fables and drinking the metallic blood of modern mechanistic life.

Moscaliuc mixes unfortunate history, the unhappiness of others, and bleak folklore in her labyrinthine journey into the heart of gothic darkness. Along the way her persona develops a survivor’s surreal logic of alternating stoicism and fear, tempered by acute powers of observation. The poet’s major pieces are cosmopolitan in nature, set in Madagascar, Romania, Spain, the Ukraine, America, and even Ireland.

The first poem after the introductory piece Moscaliuc entitles Self-Portrait with Monk. She describes a monk festooned in garlic and pushing a wheelbarrow. Then the poet invokes that strange novel of murder and mysterious mayhem, Umberto Eco’s The Name of the Rose, for atmospheric effect. The narrative quickens, alters its flight, and changes into something wicked or wonderful that comes our way. The poet describes her ownership of the action as follows,

He cooks and feeds and scrubs but never eats, my monk,
spends lunch elbow-deep in suds or scratching the bellies of cats.

No wonder he’s so famished by the time Cassiopeia arrives.
Then black chiffon and ivory flesh stream upward,
shape-shifting in flight: raven, whiskered bat, pricolici, varcolaci.
At dawn, he lands between two rose bushes, soot in his mouth,
weeping who knows why, my celestial monk,
torn cassock glistening with spent saliva, rapture in upturned eyes.

In Turning the Bones, Moscaliuc uses straightforward narrative to relate a seemingly ghastly ritual practiced by villagers in Madagascar in which the shrouded bones of relatives are temporarily disinterred and danced with. The occasion calls for good food, local brews, and colorful dress. Carthusian monks would understand this ceremony of remembering death and examining mortality. Here is the heart of the poem,

… bundles heaved up
onto woven straw mats, names coursing the cheering crowd.
Perfumed and swathed in new damask, bodies are invited to dance.
In this hummock of tall grass, in the eye of the Indian Ocean,
the living and the dead reclaim themselves, flowery skirts
flapping against the bouquet of bones, bones reshuffling
as they warm to the tunes of trumpets and clarinets.

The lengthy poem Ana to Manole reinterprets a chilling Romanian folktale that certainly rings true in the art world of today. Eyes wide open, the artist—here a mason—sacrifices his family to the needs of his patron, his ego, and his audience. He walls his pregnant wife up, betrays her for the ephemeral, only to be destroyed himself, turned into a cheap tourist destination. The poet describes Manole’s fate through the eyes of Ana,

You raised the wall till it cinctured me whole,
silt shored against carcass, and for the glory of what?
A toe ring in the god’s trinket box, this masterpiece
you then bragged you could outshine.
I say it was the jaded gods having fun.
To think you could win their grace
with gilded turrets, dream yourself
a welder of shadows.
You fashioned the voice out of fear
you’ll stay a mason, master bricklayer
instead of Creator, so here we are:
you, water fountain fed pennies by tourists
too sated to invent their own myths

For harrowing detail and lyrical fury very few poems can touch Moscaliuc’s sectional poem entitled Radioactive Wolves: A Retelling.  Divided into two major parts the poem first relates the Chernobyl catastrophe of 1986 and its aftermath and then tells a fictional tale based on real events that occurred at an infamous Romanian orphanage. Both sections deconstruct misery into detail packed with dread, often lyrical. Consider this comment from the Chernobyl section on government helpfulness,

All books disappeared, all important ones,
on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, on X-rays.
The medical bulletins too, vanished.
Those who could took potassium iodine.
For that, you really needed to know someone.

A sign we could follow, live by:
as long as there were sparrows and pigeons in town
we could nest there.

My favorite poem in this haunting collection, Memoir, combines righteous anger with passionate celebration. Nothing surreal here, the nerve endings are too raw. Moscaliuc portrays the despicable and wealth-besotted dictators of Romania, Elana and Nicolae Ceausecu,  after twenty–five years of terrorizing their people, denying the obvious. Dragged before a firing squad of machine gunners they collected their well-deserved rewards. And, yes, Elana, did indeed actively participate in the countless atrocities. Both the abbreviated show trial and the execution were filmed. The piece ends in catharsis and relief,

You may have understood the story of the firing squad,
how, fearing clones, we measured and re-measured the corpses,
shot and reshot them. We each craved a bit of dried blood,
a frayed cuticle, an eyebrow stump, a finger
on the trigger, so we replayed the execution all through Christmas,
kissed our informers, broke bread with strangers,
stopped stoning strays, begged Gypsies for forgiveness.
We loved as only people who cannot get enough of death love,
we loved unconditionally for one long day that Christmas of 1989.

Immigrant Model, the final and title poem in this collection works wonderfully. The poet infuses her protagonist with mystery and sensuousness. Models, at least the very best of them, channel natural processes in ways unknown even to them. They connect with an artistic perception and stoke it further. Add in the immigrant’s complex and sometimes fluctuating identity and an interesting, often darker, dynamic occurs. Model perceives her artistic interpreters and then seeks to judge them in these lines,

… as students sketch, she re-roots:
the desiccated belly of her Moldavian village creek
toothed with rocks, eyed with shriveled minnows,
but she can still feel their eye, the hammock of her body
swayed by the screech of charcoals’ smooth incisions.
Tonight she steals in to see herself in various stages
of completion, looks for the hand knowing enough, kind enough
to release her…

Bats flitting in from the night sky, Moscaliuc’s poems may startle. Mornings after, one remembers only their magic.

The Aurorean (Spring/Summer 2015): The Weight of the World We Hold

The Aurorean (Spring/Summer 2015): The Weight of the World We Hold

“They fall like an uncountable rain/on the field of remembrance,/and here you are again/ old friend of fabric and pole,/ keeping me dry,” Gus Peterson writes in his poem “Tent,” featured in The Aurorean’s Spring/Summer 2015 issue. Peterson’s poem, rich with images of rain, love, and the feeling of yearning, is a prime example of what this issue of The Aurorean encompasses as a whole. Each poem, no longer than a page, tells a story, captures a scene, and makes us think differently about nature.

In the poem, “To A One-winged Owl in a Cage,” George Young creates such a sharp, intense feeling and image. Young writes:
I know you can’t row

a boat
with one oar, old Yellow Eyes.

But nights

do you still

soar
over fields sparking with frost, wear

your cowl of moonlight?

By comparing the one-winged owl to a boat with one oar, Young makes it possible for us to see ourselves in this disadvantaged being. We don’t just feel sympathy for this owl—our hearts completely ache for this owl. Whether someone has a disability, a disorder, or is going through a hard time, everyone feels like a one-winged owl at some point in their life, and dreams of being able to fly again.

    One of the showcase poets in this issue, Ellaraine Lockie, writes about observing nature, and shows how its simplicity is enough to move someone’s soul. In her poem, “Imposter on the Prairie,” Lockie writes:

By my feet on the graveled roadside
a line of ants carries a grasshopper
beside an empty aluminum bottle
A five-hour extra strength
grape energy drink
with painted mountain scene

In this instance, nature is moving around an unnatural, man-made item. It is moving how creatures that are as tiny as ants can work together, and become a larger force that is strong enough to carry a grasshopper. It’s interesting to think how humans drink energy drinks and rely on caffeine for fuel, when ants can carry 10-50 times their body weight with their own strength. The mountain scene that is painted on this energy drink makes nature feel artificial, and like it’s just a piece of aluminum. Yet, next to this drink the ants are experiencing a moment of ecstasy—dinner is on its way home.
    At the end of this issue, there is a collection of haikus written by Creative Writing students. James Lautermilch writes:

    summer day
    a bee looking for pollen
    searches my ear

In this haiku you can feel and hear the bee, and imagine the tight knot in your chest as you try not to breathe, hoping you don’t get stung. In just three lines, Lautermilch is able to create strong emotions and a vivid scene. Like all of the poems in this issue, this haiku leaves the reader thinking about how nature and humans interact with each other, and what role we play in the world.

“Somerville writer Lan Samantha Chang to become Iowa Writers Workshop director.”

****  The summer is a time to look back at my archives and pull up some interesting interviews I have conducted over the years. Lan Samantha Chang is the head of the Iowa Writers Workshop, but before that she taught at Harvard and lived in Somerville. Here is an interview I conducted with her in the offices of The Somerville Times, when we were based in Davis Square.

Lan Samantha Change

 

“Somerville writer Lan Samantha Chang to become Iowa Writers Workshop director.”

I remember leafing through the “other” paper, “The New York Times,” when I came across a story that reported a Somerville writer by the name of Lan Samantha Chang was appointed to head the noted Iowa Writers Workshop, at the University of Iowa. Chang, 40, is a resident of Davis Square, a lecturer at Harvard University, as well as a well-regarded short-story writer and novelist. Her own work often deals with the Chinese immigrant experience, and the problems assimilation into American society presents.

Chang, who first took writing courses at the Cambridge Center for Adult Education and later attended the workshop in Iowa, will be replacing Frank Conroy as director. The Iowa Writers Workshop is probably the most prestigious in the country, and has trained writers like: T.C. Boyle, Jane Smiley and others of that pedigree. I spoke with Ms. Chang in the offices of The Somerville Times in the heart of Davis Square.

Doug Holder: Were you surprised that you were selected to be director?

Lan Samantha Chang: I certainly did not go into the process expecting to get the job. There were so many qualified people. The finalists were all quite good. I did know going into it that I care enormously about the program; having been a fairly recent graduate.

DH: Is 40 a young age to head this workshop?

LSC: I think it is. I’m not sure who was the youngest. I know 40 is relatively young. I think Frank Conroy began when he was fifty.

DH: How do you find the Somerville writing community?

LSC: A lot of writers live in Somerville. It is very rich. Elizabeth McCracken lived here for years and years. At this moment James Wood and Claire Messud live in Somerville. There is a sense of community here. There is a sense of laissez-faire that every writer needs in order to feel productive. In Somerville I don’t get the feeling that I am being bugged. I can walk down the streets of Davis Square and nobody will bother me. In that way it is like a big city. I have many friends who live around here, so I feel at home. I live right down the street from a bowling alley and for some reason it is a real pleasure to know that many people go there on a regular basis.

My sister visited last summer and we stopped in the Square for ice cream. There was a festival going on. Tons of people were in Davis Square; they were relaxed and having a good time. Everyone seemed alert, smart and happy. My sister said:" I can see why you want to live here.” It’s similar to Iowa City. It’s a relaxed, literary community.

DH: You were the managing editor of the Yale Daily News. I know that Hemingway, Crane, and others started out as journalists. Do you think this is valuable experience for a budding writer?

LSC: One great thing about being a journalist is that it makes you aware that much of the struggle of writing is sitting down and producing words. That can be comforting and enlightening to a beginning writer.

DH: There was a documentary out recently titled “The Stone Reader,” that concerned an Iowa Writers Workshop graduate, who wrote a great first book, had a breakdown, and disappeared. How hard is it to be a writer? How hard is it to be a writer in America?

LSC: You know what I thought the movie revealed? It is the amount of heart it takes to write a really serious book, and how it can drain a person. I don’t think people realize this. I think people think writers sit around and words flow out of them in some sort of inspired process.

DH: It is felt by some people that in Europe the government supports the artists to a greater extent than the States. What’s your take on this?

LSC: Government could do a lot more. The government underestimates the importance of the arts in our society.

DSH: Detractors of writing programs often say it produces technically proficient, but uninspired writers. How do you answer that?

LSC: Going for my MFA was the best thing I ever did. I came into Iowa and I was immersed into this rich and inspired literary culture. I learned enormous amounts about writing and reading. I had wonderful peers, many of whom are still my readers. I was given time-- seemingly endless time, in which to think and dream about what I wanted to do. It was really great.

It’s easy to criticize any sincere endeavor. Writers give up their lives for two years to devote themselves to art.

DH: Any favorite Somerville writers.

TSC: Steve Almond. I think he is great actually. I saw him read at the “New England Art Institute.” Poet Peter Richards, and D.A. Powell, are others who I admire.

Doug Holder

Book Review: Portrait of an Artist as a Young Poseur 1974 to 1983. By Doug Holder

 
Book Review: Portrait of an Artist as a Young Poseur 1974 to 1983. By Doug Holder ( Big Table Books) $12

  Review by Ed Meek

Doug Holder is a force in Somerville. His press, Ibbetson Street, publishes local poets. He interviews writers and artists on his blog and on SCAT—the local television station. He is the Arts Editor for The Somerville News where he introduces and publishes a poem each week, and he is the founder of Bagel Bards, a group of poets who meet Saturday mornings in Davis Square at Au Bon Pain. He teaches writing at Endicott and Bunker Hill Community College and still finds time to dedicate to his first love: writing. It’s kind of surprising how many people actually still write poetry in our digital age surrounded as we are with entertainment, sports, movies, television, music and video games. As one of those people, I was excited to hear that Doug Holder had published a short memoir in the form of prose poems with Big Table Publishing Company, a new local press whose Acquisitions Editor Robin Stratton is another force in the local writing community.


Portrait of the Artist as a Young Poseur covers the years of 1974-1983 when Doug Holder had just graduated from college. As a contemporary of Holder, I know those years in the mid-seventies were hard times to find jobs. The market was flooded with baby boomers and many of us found ourselves using our college degrees to tend bar or like Holder, flip burgers behind the counter as a short order cook, barely getting by. But in those days, you could find a room for $38 per week on Newbury Street! There he’d run into luminaries like the great Richard Yates, author of Revolutionary Road, or the young, but just as rumpled, Barney Frank. 

Though his parents told him to “Get the hell out of there!” Lucky for us, Holder stuck around and eventually found a job at McLean Hospital, whose famous “guests” included James Taylor, David Foster Wallace and Sylvia Plath. Famous people are not the focus of Holder’s book though. He’s more likely to zero in on details. “The croissants from the Savory Bakery in Audubon Circle were flaky concessions, the dark beers and the dark cavernous bar at Browns, my balm. And the elevated tracks on Harrison Avenue—elevated me—I was a transcendent blur cross-town.” Whether you’d like insight into what it was like in Boston back then or you’re someone who appreciates good writing, you might want to pick up a copy of Portrait of the Artist as a Young Poseur by Doug Holder


---- Ed Meek  is the winner of the 2006 Blue Light Book Award~~~~ Ed Meek has published poetry, fiction and articles in The Paris Review, Yankee, North Dakota Quarterly, Cream City Review, The North American Review, The Boston Globe, etc. His most recent poetry collection is Spy Pond  (Prolific Press)

Somerville Writer Sarah Ignatius: Remembering the Armenian Genocide.

Somerville Writer Sarah Ignatius: Remembering the Armenian Genocide.

By Doug Holder

Somerville’s Sarah Ignatius met me on a warm spring morning, at my unofficial office in the backroom of the Bloc 11 Café in Union Square. Ignatius is the Executive Director of the Political Asylum/Immigration Representation Project in Boston, and also a Somerville Arts Council Grant Fellow, who presented a talk and visual presentation at the Somerville Public Library entitled: “ Remembering 1915: The 100-Year Commemoration of the Armenian Genocide.” She is also the author of a young adult (not yet published) novel “The Devil’s Kaleidoscope.”  The novel concerns a 14 year old Armenian boy caught up in the genocide.

Ignatius has lived in a carriage house in the Union Square section of Somerville since 1992. She was born in Boston, but has lived in many other places. She told me: “I love Somerville—the community events—the special dynamic that the city offers. Some of the homes here are so beautiful—and I love the public spaces.”

Ignatius, in her role of the Executive Director of the Immigration Representation Project helps immigrants from Africa, the Middle East, and elsewhere to achieve asylum in this country. She claims she has a 90% success rate. Prominent law firms like Ropes&Gray and others send their young lawyers to train at the project, and in turn they provide valuable services for asylum-seekers.

The Armenian Genocide, Ignatius’ focus as of late, occurred in 1915 when 1.5 million Armenians were slaughtered by the Turks. Ignatius told me that she was delighted with the Pope’s decision to call the Armenian Holocaust a “genocide;” a word that has been quite controversial as of late. Ignatius’ presentation at the Somerville Public Library consisted of a Power Point presentation, along with a slideshow—which is meant for the Armenian and non-Armenian.

Ignatius’ young adult novel “The Devil’s Kaleidoscope”, has as a 14 year old boy as the protagonist, who is caught up in the genocide. According to Ignatius:  “The book does not focus on violence, and is geared to promote peace in a world that is often filled with blood lust.” Ignatius said she had a great deal of help with her book from teachers at Grub Street in Boston. And indeed, Ignatius has another novel in the works that concerns two girls, 18 years old, Berkeley, the 70s—well you get the picture.

Ignatius wished me a quick goodbye, because like most of us in the Paris of New England, we always have a lot to do, people to meet, and many miles to go before we sleep.

ESTHER HANIG: The New Executive Director of Union Square Main Streets talks about changing the face of Union Square

Esther Hanig

ESTHER HANIG: The New Executive Director of Union Square Main Streets talks about changing the face of Union Square

By Doug Holder

I met Esther Hanig, the new Executive Director of Union Square Main Streets at my usual comfortable perch at the Bloc11 Café in Union Square, Somerville. As head of Main Streets, Hanig will oversee the continued advocacy and promotion of the Union Square business district and neighborhood. The organization’s mission is to preserve the vibrancy of Union Square and promote dialogue between business owners, landlords and residents.

Although Hanig is from Cambridge, she told me she has a lot of friends in Somerville, and loves the vibe in the community. She also loves the diversity of the neighborhood, and hopes the Square will maintain its feel of a Jane Jacob’s- like urban village.

Hanig brings a wealth of experience to her new position. She was the deputy director of the Massachusetts Non-Profit Network, a member of the Central Square Advisory Committee in Cambridge, and Executive Director of the Allston Brighton Healthy Boston Coalition, and the list goes on.

When I asked Hanig about gentrification, and how she would help maintain “diversity,” when history has clearly shown that gentrification brings big rent increases, displacement of mom and pop and their stores, as well as low and moderate income tenants, and artists—the very people who created this vibe that has made it so attractive to developers, Hanig said, “There are no simple answers.” Hanig rattled off the standard talk of inclusionary zones, and other zoning to protect innovative venues like the Artisan's Asylum, and other  artist  enclaves that dot the Square. There was talk of tax incentives for landlords to keep the rents down for merchants, efforts for businesses to cross market and cross sell, and a strong effort to bring outsiders to the Square to shop, etc…

 According to Hanig, the new demographic in Union Square are the millennials, and to a great extent these new initiatives, this new “vision” will be geared to them in the form of hip new venues like Union Square Donuts, tony shops, cutting-edge eateries, etc…  with international cuisine, all this altering the face of the 'Ville.

Hanig talked about the upcoming FLUFF festival that Union Square Main Streets promotes, as well as SNAP, a program that helps folks on food stamps get more for their buck at the farmer’s market-- if this population even exists here in years to come.

Hanig is early in her tenure, and she is still in the seminal stages in the process of figuring out her game plan—a plan that many of us await with hope and not a little anxiety—here—in the—Paris of New England.

Somerville’s Actor ‘s Shakespeare Project: Henry the Vl, Part 2

Somerville’s Actor ‘s Shakespeare Project: Henry the Vl, Part 2

Review by Doug Holder

After having a beer at my old haunt Jacob Wirth in the theatre district of Boston, I chased it down with excellent seafood Chou Fun at some Vietnamese joint on the edge of Chinatown. But I still had a hunger, and that was for theatre. So with my press ticket in hand I walked down Washington Street to Suffolk University’s Modern Theatre to take in a performance of Shakespeare’s Henry Vl, Part 2, as presented by Somerville’s Actor’s Shakespeare Project. The first review I got of the play was by an earnest young usher by the name of Xavier Harvey who assured me that the play was well-worth my while. He opined “It starts out slow, but it really gets going.”   Harvey said he hopes to be on stage someday and I think he may well—or at the very least he will be a critic.

The play is directed by Tina Packer, a world class director and interpreter of the Bard’s work. Henry V, Part 2, is the middle of a trilogy of Henry plays written by a very young Shakespeare. It concerns the Earl of Suffolk (played by Craig Mathers) and his calculated power play in the court of the young and untried King Henry Vl ( well-played by Jesse Hinson).  Suffolk hooks up Henry with a French Princess, Margaret  (played by Jennie Israel), who looks old enough to be Henry’s mother. The other feral nobles of Henry’s court don’t like this, and a bloody power play ensues. Henry, who in this production resembles a long blonde-haired hippy, seems to have an airhead affect at first, as if he had too much of the royal Ganga.  But throughout, he is a blonde fame to the darkness displayed by many of the sharks in his court.

The play is a real probe into the dark night of the soul, as the players on stage jockey for power and position. The greed evoked by the accomplished actors in this production is opened like a fresh, flesh wound. The set is simple but evocative. It lets the darkness unfold—punctuated by hopeful light that breaks through the slats.

Since my brother Donald Holder is a multi-Tony Award winning lighting designer—I always look at the lighting in a play.   Lighting designer Daniel H. Jentzen illuminates the tension, isolates the players in their private moments of sorrow with the unforgiving spotlight, and frames much of the play dramatically.

Many of the actors here play multiple roles. Allyn Burrows, the artistic director of the company, plays Gloucester, an uncle and protector of Henry. He gives the character gravitas and a sense of decency amidst this ship of fools. Steven Barkhimer, with is rubbery face and his Vaudevillian missteps, provides a great deal of comic relief in many of the roles he plays. There are many accomplished performances in this winning production.