The Sunday Poet: Emily Pineau

Emily Pineau

 
At the Unemployment Office

Everyone is staring at me,

even though this is everyone’s first day—

I am not the new kid.

But people wonder

if I really know where I am.

I feel their minds turning.

I either look like I should still be

in high school or as though

I should be all set with my life—

Because everything is just

handed to me.

I have never struggled

with anything.

Nothing is wrong.

I am not here.

LinkedIn Blah blah blah,

Networking, networking, you need to

Network better.

A man is leaning back in his chair

behind me—

“Excuse me, I just got offered a job this morning,

why am I here?”

The instructor says,

“I will talk to you after.”

Old man sweaters, glasses and cigarette stench,

Confused and nervous makeup on women,

impossible to guess

their age.

Just like college—

Instructor explains something,

student raises their hand

and asks the question

that was just answered.

“I do not understand the online form,” says the man

at the end

of the table.

He reminds me of someone

I saw at a poetry reading once.

The shape of his face—

He says,

“It isn’t specific enough,

It is too broad.

There was no option

that matched what I am.

I am not just a truck driver.

It is so much more than that.

I can’t select that.

Too broad,

way too broad.”

He whispers to the man sitting next to him,

they nod.

I wonder if they are friends.

When I am leaving, the receptionist wants

to know my life story:

The writer who got a job

at a publishing firm right after graduation,

then got laid off four months later.

She takes notes, explaining they are for

her 13-year-old daughter

who wants to be a writer too.

She doesn’t care that I am unemployed.

To her, I am successful.

She feels the need to say,

 “I will write this down more neatly later.”

--Emily Pineau

 Emily Pineau’s chapbook No Need to Speak (Ibbetson Street Press, 2013) was chosen for The Aurorean’s Chap Book Choice in 2013. Pineau has been featured on New Mexico’s National Public Radio, and her poems have appeared in The Broken Plate, Freshwater, Muddy River Poetry Review (which nominated her poem “I Would For You” for a Pushcart Prize), Oddball Magazine, and elsewhere. She is the director and editor of Ibbetson Street Press’s Young Poet Series, and she is pursing her MFA in Creative Writing at Pine Manor College.

The Testament of Mary by Colm Tóibín

 

Colm Toibin

The Testament of Maryby Colm Tóibín
Directed by Jim Petosa 
featuring Paula Langton
costume design by Tyler Kinney
sound design and compositions by Dewey Dellay
lighting by Matthew Guminski
set design by Ryan Bates
stage manager: Leslie Sears

A New Rep Theatre production 

review by Tom Daley

I just saw Paula Langton’s performance as Mary in the New Rep Theatre’s production of The Testament of Mary by Colm Tóibín, skillfully directed by Jim Petosa at the Arsenal Center for the Arts in Watertown, MA. Langton’s Mary moved with none of the contemplative sweetness, the noble passivity, the enduring patience that we have come to expect in characterizations of the Virgin through the Christian, particularly the Roman Catholic, hagiography. As in Tóibín’s book, Mary fulminates against the notion that her son’s suffering brought about redemption to the world. It wasn’t worth it! she cries after a long, scarifying description of the crucifixion and the events surrounding it, including her escape from Golgotha before her son’s death and his removal from the cross. 

For over one astonishing hour and a half, Langton, the only actor in this play, whirled, cajoled, wept, pleaded, stalked, reasoned, and castigated as she narrated the track of her suffering and fear. At times, the barefoot woman moved with an imperious, almost demented passion that was one part Lady Macbeth, one part King Lear. It was a remarkable performance, one that shatters so utterly the stereotype of the Virgin Mary that I’ll never think of that iconic figure in the same way again,

Langton spent the first few minutes of the play reconnoitering the darkness that surrounded the stage. As she circled, her haunted eyes probed the tiers of seats in the small theater, but her eyes never seemed to land on the eyes of anyone in the audience. She projected a kind of incredulous horror, as if she weren’t sure whether she faced phantoms cobbling together a nightmare or inquisitors scheming before a trial.

Mary’s testament in the Colm Tóibín novella denounces the evangelists who were asking her to re-invent the history of her son’s suffering and her role in it. She has plenty of contempt for them, dismissing them as misfits, losers, men “who couldn’t look a woman in the eye.” Langton conveyed, perhaps too well, the indignation, the dismissiveness, the resentment Mary felt towards these pathetic manipulators and the way her quiet, needy son was transformed into a man who would swagger in finery that he seemed to think he deserved, who could act as if he didn’t know who she was when she begged him to abandon his crusade. Langton kept the pressure of Mary’s terrifying and terrified resentment at full tilt throughout the play, with unrelenting commitment to the purity of its expression. While it waxed and waned in volubility, the cadence of her complaint was unwavering.  

The Mary of Testament is not a one-note singer. Because of the persistently consistent tone, at times it seemed as if Langton was becoming just that. But, blessedly, in a scene in which Mary recounts a shared dream with Jesus’s disciple Mary (sister of Martha and Lazarus), the stance softens. In recounting the dream, the character loses her acridity and turns tender as she recalls the image of examining her son’s wounds and washing the blood from his hair as she holds him. In this sequence, Langton’s Mary was vulnerable, gently stirring and writhing in the joy of the recollection. Her passion seemed to stream from a cooler, deeper rill. Here, the profundity of feeling eased itself into her voice. Here, the fierce attachment achieved its devastating impact without ferocity.

The lighting and staging were complemented the intensity of Langton’s performances with touches subtle and bold. At the mention of a well, a spot with a multi-colored gel was trained on the floor towards the front of the raised platform that served as a stage. Mary sat behind the circle of light and ran her fingers through sand that covered a mirrored surface within the circle. The effect was exquisite—the languid hand uncovering the silver sheen, leaving the wide, tracing arc of her fingers. 

A steel girder, dipped in a ruddy Rustoleum  and slightly roughened with other colors, served as a stand-in for the cross. It was lit garishly, but not so much so that it called attention to itself, except when Mary was regarding it with hurt and awe. An enormous boulder bulked at the center of the stage, and Langton used it to fine advantage when she stood tall on it in one of her more forceful moments of confrontational fortitude. The backdrop of the stage was a wall built of rectangular stones that lent the eerie effect of a prison. In the opening scene the wall suddenly split and shifted into sections, one sliding backwards so that Mary could enter. Before the wall split, blue light the color of a police car flasher nosed itself through the cracks. This was repeated again later in the play, insinuating even more deeply the feeling that Mary was a prisoner of her son’s reputation, and his follower’s attempts to coopt her into their mythologizing. There was an artfully minimal use of music in the play, accentuating some of the more dramatic scenes with slightly jarring percussion and a few discordant notes. Strangely enough, the music from The Full Monte, The Musical (which was playing upstairs in the same theater complex) slid through the ceiling as a kind of distant counterpoint. I like to think of it as the carnival carnality, the far-off rumblings of the crowd of Jesus’s fanatical supporters which sprung dread into Tóibín’s Mary.

At the end of the play, Mary kneels, but not to the memory of her son. As the mother of a controversial martyr, she cannot return to her synagogue in Nazareth. She finds comfort in visiting, with a neighbor, the temple of the Greek goddess, Artemis, even buying a small silver statue of the goddess as an icon for succor. As the lights fade, she importunes the goddess. This blasphemous identification of the mother of Jesus with the pagan goddess of the hunt, of wild animals, of wilderness, of virginity rounds out Tóibín’s wildly successful upending of the myth of the Blessed Virgin. Langton and director Petosa catapulted this upending into a passionate denouement. In the few seconds of dark before the stage lights go up, the audience sat in stunned and enthralled silence.

There is one more performance of the play this afternoon (Sunday, February 28, 2016), rescheduled to 4 pm at the Arsenal Center for the Arts in Watertown. For tickets and more information go to http://www.newrep.org/productions/the-testament-of-mary/.

BOSTON NATIONAL POETRY MONTH FESTIVAL April 7 to 10th 2016

                     

 

 

                       BOSTON NATIONAL POETRY MONTH FESTIVAL

BOSTON NATIONAL POETRY MONTH FESTIVAL

                     Boston National Poetry Month Festival, 2016

                          Boston Public Library, Central Library in Copley Square

                          and Northeastern University, 40 Leon Street, Boston. 

 

     April 7th-10th; FREE ADMISSION to all events.

             High School Poetry Slam Competition. Dozens of Established Poets. Publishing Panel.

              An Evening of Poetry, Music & Dance.  Emerging Poets and two Open Mic's.

 

                                  we are pleased to present our 2nd Annual High School Poetry Slam Competition.

        7:00-9:30pm, six area teams will compete at the John D. O'Bryant African-American Institute,

        on the Northeastern University campus, 40 Leon Street, 1st floor.

 

                               the Festival continues at Boston Public Library with 10 Keynote Poets.  They include 

      winners of the Massachusetts Book Award, the National Book Award and the Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize.

      The Commonwealth Salon, 700 Boylston Street, 1st floor.

 

                              8:00-9:30pm at Northeastern, we present a program of Poetry set to Music & Dance. 

        This 3rd annual event is produced by Lucy Holstedt, professor at Berklee College of Music, and

        features National Poetry Slam winner, Regie O. Gibson plus international poets and musicians. 

        

                   &                at Boston Public Library, you can enjoy over 50 established and emerging poets,               incuding Boston's new Poet Laureate, Danielle Legros Georges, other former and current poets                   laureate, Rep. Denise Provost and professors at area colleges. Open Mic both days!

        Saturday also features a panel on Craft and Publishing. 

 

Boston National Poetry Month Festival is co-sponsored by Tapestry of Voices & Kaji Aso Studio

in partnership with Northeastern University and in collaboration with Boston Public Library.      

FOR INFORMATION: Tapestry of Voices: 617-306-9484. Library: 617-536-5400.

The Sunday Poet: Lori Desrosiers

The Sunday Poet:  Lori Desrosiers

Sofia’s Thumb

Odd how pain rises
in the nerves, wakes
the brain at night.

Muscles grip
cleave to the bone.
In daylight, the body

twists, contorts
stone to the touch.
Doctor signs a pad

sends you driving, hunched over
up a flight of stairs
holding the rail.

With her thumb
Sofia pushes
starts slow, then it hurts.

Sometimes you scream, swear
but as quickly as it came,
release.

Freed from bone’s tug
nerves relax
muscles and mind

exhale a long-held,
long-awaited
breath.

Lori Desrosiers’ debut full-length book of poems, The Philosopher’s Daughter was published by Salmon Poetry in 2013. A second book is due out in 2016. A chapbook, Inner Sky is from Glass Lyre Press. Her poems have appeared in New Millenium Review(contest finalist), Contemporary American Voices, Best Indie Lit New England, String Poet, Blue Fifth Review, Pirene’s Fountain, The New Verse News, The Mom Egg, The Bloomsbury Anthology of Contemporary Jewish-American Poetry and many other journals and anthologies. She won the Greater Brockton Poets Award for New England Poets award for her poem “That Pomegranate Shine” in 2010, judged by X.J. Kennedy and was nominated for a Pushcart Prize in 2015. She is Editor-in-Chief of Naugatuck River Review, a journal of narrative poetry and serves as an editor for several other publications. She teaches Literature and Composition at Westfield State University and Poetry in the Interdisciplinary Studies program for the Lesley University M.F.A. graduate program. She has read her poetry and taught workshops at numerous colleges and conferences. She holds a M.F.A. from New England College and a M.Ed. from Lesley University. Her website is http://loridesrosierspoetry.com. 

Newton Free Library Poetry Series, March 8, 2016 Margot Wizansky, Zvi Sesling, Eric Hyett

Click on poster to enlarge

The Sunday Poet: Lawrence Kessenich

Lawrence Kessenich

Lawrence Kessenich won the 2010 Strokestown International Poetry Prize. His poetry has been published in Sewanee Review, Atlanta Review, Poetry Ireland Review and many other magazines. He has a chapbook called Strange News and two full-length books, Before Whose Glory and Age of Wonders. He has had three poems nominated for Pushcart Prizes. Kessenich has also published essays, had short plays produced at festivals in Boston, New York and Durango, Colorado, and his first novel, Cinnamon Girl, will be published in September 2016.



 

Mortality

It was my job to retrieve the body from the giant cooler.

I’d wheel it on its gurney to the autopsy table, remove the cold

white sheet, slide the corpse off the cart onto the table. It was

part of my job at the hospital near my college. The night before

my first autopsy, I lay in bed terrified, my girlfriend holding me

as I contemplated being alone with a dead body in a basement.

That was what freaked me out, not the prospect of watching

a white-coated man cut someone from breastbone to pubic mound.

One day, that someone was a man I knew, my father’s old boss, dead

of cancer while I was on call. I asked the pathologist if I could leave,

if it got to be too much, but learned a lesson about mortality that day.

The man I pulled onto that table, the body the doctor sliced wide open,

was no longer the man I’d known, the man whose grass I’d cut.

Whoever he had been at the core, whatever had animated

his gruff voice and green eyes, had simply departed. Seeing that

made it difficult for me, a budding atheist, not to believe 

in a soul. The body the doctor and I took apart that day was inert 

as the Visible Man model I’d disassembled as a boy, each organ

tucked neatly against the other as we removed them

one by one. A man is not just the sum of his parts. Something,

goes along for the ride, something that makes us who we are—

until it leaves us cold, ready for the knife and the grave.

Endicott College--Ibbetson Street Press Visiting Author Series Feb. 25, 2016 Sebastian Lockwood/Paul Harding

                                                            ( Click on pic to enlarge)

Hail Caesar! A movie review by William Falcetano

Hail Caesar!  A movie review by William Falcetano

As a big fan of the Coen brothers I was looking forward to seeing their latest film – Hail Caesar!  a parody of the old Hollywood studio system and the kind of movies they mass produced back in the day.  Though the film takes place in the 1950s the movies they are making at Capitol Studios seem to be from the 1930s; but that’s not the worst thing that can be said about this unfunny comedy, which brings together the old team the Coens used with such great success in Burn After Reading – George Clooney, who plays Baird Whitlock, the hapless, empty-headed star of a sword-and-sandal epic, Tilda Swinton, who plays two roles, twin sisters who are both Hedda Hopper-type gossip columnists, and Francis MacDormand, who has a bit part as a film editor who is almost swallowed up by her machine in a scarf fiasco – a sly allusion to Isadora Duncan.  They add to this team the considerable talents of Josh Brolin in the lead role of Eddie Mannix, a front-office studio fixer who is at the center of the whole 3 Ring Circus, Ralph Fiennes, the director Laurence Laurentz (you can imagine how much fun they have with that name), Scarlett Johansson as an Esther Williams-type bathing beauty, with bit parts by Jonah Hill and Dolph Lundgren.  With a roster of talent like that you should be able to hit a double if not a home run; but the Coen brothers strike out with this big-production loser.  The worst thing you can say about this film is that it’s simply not funny.  And there is nothing worse than a comedy that not only doesn’t make you laugh, but makes you wince and squirm in your plush reclining seat.  Of course humor is relative; I was accompanied by a friend who grew up in the Soviet Union, and who found the whole movie incredibly funny.  She attributed it to growing up in a country in which everything was fake – the Potemkin Village effect, one might say.  That was actually the Coens’ point – that American popular culture was (and still is?) mass produced by a studio system that was little more than a vast network of factories and offices, exploited writers, and was only too happy to throw good taste and fine art under the bus so long as the yahoos and goobers kept buying tickets.  “People don’t want the truth – they wanna believe!” Brolin says to Tilda Swinton in perhaps the best line of this ambitious, silly flop. 

For an example of just how unfunny this film gets, imagine a meeting of the movie mogul and 4 clerics – a rabbi, a priest, a minister, and a patriarch.  Sounds like the raw material for a joke but they are there to discuss the theology of the new film which stars Baird Whitlock – a cross between Charlton Heston and Kirk Douglas – as a Roman soldier who has a life-altering encounter with Jesus, “the Nazarene”, the Rabbi keeps saying.  Eddie Mannix just wants a pass from these censors – he doesn’t want the film to offend anybody.  The ball gets kicked around the table about the nature of the godhead, the unity-in-division of the trinity, and the prohibition against representing god directly (“but we don’t think he’s God; so it’s OK”).  The meeting is a kind of a “who’s on first” parody but it’s anything but funny. Could it be the Coen brothers didn’t get the memo that theological discussions don’t make promising material for screw-ball comedy?  They definitely didn’t get the other memo that arcane disputes among communists of the 1950s also don’t tickle the funny bone.  Warning: whenever the word “dialectic” is used in a joke it is sure to flop, even if delivered by a guy doing a reasonably good send-up of Herbert Marcuse crossed with Sigmund Freud. 

            For a satire to be effective its target must be vulnerable and deserve the drubbing.  But each big-budget set-piece takes aim at a whole genre of movie-making – the cowboy western with the rodeo star miscast in a dinner-jacket society drama (Alden Ehrenreich), the Busby Berkeley aquatic fantasy of perfectly synchronized swimmers, the tap-dancin’, singin’ sailors with framing shots straight from On the Town, and finally the corny religious epics of yesteryear that look so campy today.  What was entertainment then, what was considered believable drama in an earlier age, is depicted today as laughable and silly, overacted or pretentious.  It’s interesting to see how the history of film reveals the way in which the art of acting and the methods of drama have changed over the decades.  Who could look at the silent pictures with their wide eyes and exaggerated gestures as anything but laughable today?  Marlon Brando complained that the actors who came before him were tediously predictable – you always knew what you got when you saw Clark Gable or Mae West.  He is widely credited with introducing a different style of acting, one that was more life-like and surprising.  Generally, we think that things have gotten better, that our arts and dramas are superior to those of yesteryear.  Yet this way of thinking misses the obvious point that things are bound to appear that way since we are the consumers of today’s products, and so naturally we prefer them to yesterday’s stale bread.  Yesterday’s confections were created for yesterday’s consumers, who had different sensibilities than our own.  When today’s snark meets yesterday’s camp the results should be funny; but sadly they are not in this latest of the Coen brothers’ efforts.  I guess you can’t hit every pitch out of the park.