The Sunday Poet: Llyn Clague

Llyn Clague is a poet based in Hastings-on-Hudson, NY.  His poems have been published widely, including in Ibbetson Street, Atlanta Review, Wisconsin Review, California Quarterly, Main Street Rag, New York Quarterly, and other magazines.  His seventh book, Hard-Edged and Childlike, was published by Main Street Rag in September, 2014.  Visit www.llynclague.com

Hunger In A New Yorker Poem

Visual, sensual, genteel,

the poem “Quahogs” in this upscale

mag jogs forward in a tide-steady

rhythm, measured, controlled,

describing clamming by the sea.

Auditory, olfactory, tactile,

in verbal as well as physical

markers, the verse progresses

from tidal flats to rake tines

to the character and color

of the shells: “Opal or pearl …,

their whorls and purple stains.”

Compact, concrete, picturesque:

it’s a best-of-friends evening

scene, with the “sky blazing,

its sinking orange fire.”

With even “the air in savor,”

delightful “precious butter”

drips on “the succulent

of the freezing dark sea.”

Sandily gritty, precisely

specific, grandiosely

the poem raises its sights

from one night’s appetite

for clams and friends by the sea

to the notion of a durable,

universal human hunger,

a “domain immeasurable.”

Delicately, tastily, prettily

worded, its private hankerings

lead to yearning for meaning,

universal, noble, eternal.

To the hunger, very measurable,

of people not clamming by the sea,

this verse avoids allusion,

artfully, assuredly, gently.

Poet Laureate of Somerville Gloria Mindock in The Somerville Times

The new Poet Laureate of Somerville, Gloria Mindock writes, " I will serve the Somerville community with regular office hours, hosting a poetry round table open to all writers, workshops and readings for the elderly, poetry with puppets for children, readings and an informative talk about El Salvador’s civil war and the Salvadoran writing today in our community, and the giving away of free books throughout Somerville as part of Read America Read. I look forward to representing the city of Somerville for the next two years.

The Sunday Poet: Zachary Bos

Poet Zachary Bos

"Zachary Bos studied poetry in the graduate creative writing program at Boston University. He is editor of nerobooks.org. 'Conscious Explanations' by Mark Schorr was the first book published by his Pen & Anvil Press."

Lascaux Massachusetts

                i.m. Mark Schorr

Now look with me away from this screen where

I have just read my friend this morning died.

Let us look through this window, through the air

that carries the scent of marsh mud and salt

as it combs across the marsh at low tide.

We are high here, and on an upper floor,

and down away from us the rows of hills

melt into the distance, becoming more

soft and gray the farther away they are.

Fog softens them too, removes their features.

The winter rain rubs them smooth. All nature

winds itself down as it moves. Years of rain

wash the gilding from the grooves of the names

carved into the stone of our monuments.

What we leave out gets lost, erodes away

and decays. What does remains are stories.

Their gold is renewed with each retelling.

They are kept safe in the confines of all

we sing or say with sincere meaning. They

are beyond the reach of rust, just as safe

as the dancing aurochsen breathed upon

the caverock walls by those ancient painters

who knew we must keep inside what we want

to save from weather and oblivion.

                                                [ January 3, 2017 ]

An Emigrant’s Winter By Pui Ying Wong

An Emigrant’s Winter

By Pui Ying Wong

Glass Lyre Press

www.GlassLyrePress.com

Glenview, IL

ISBN: 978-1-941783-23-8

90 Pages

Review by Dennis Daly

Small moments in the starkness of infinite space create their own palace of eloquent imagery in Pui Ying Wong’s An Emigrant’s Winter. Stringing a plethora of similes together, Wong constructs her architecture of muscular arches, lyrical spires, and exquisitely positioned lattices within her picture-perfect stanzas and flowing icicle-laden lines. Indeed, each multi-sided poem seems to defy gravity by rising above us into the frigid atmosphere of faceted and timeless exhilaration.

Something about the color pink on walls forewarns of troubled distractedness. Wong’s collection opens with The Pink Apartment, a piece set in Sai Kung, a Hong Kong township. The author’s persona considers with telling clarity her geographical relationship with her native environs. Here she confronts the ambiguity of origination,

I was a stranger at home.

I walked among

the neighbors, quiet

as an unstrung guitar.

I waited for the bus, greeted

by commuters wary like moles

caught in the sun, nothing

could assuage them:

not morning’s pure light,

not their own dreams.  

Mnemonic wanderings in the dreams of emigrants both unsettle and reassure their hosts. In the title poem, An Emigrant’s Winter, Wong visits the phantoms of her past in a land frozen in dream-time. At the heart of the piece the poet observes from an intellectually connected, but emotionally isolated angle,

Icicles teethed along the power line,

I opened my mouth and my speech stuttered.

The entire city lived in a snow globe,

even big men trod timidly in the wind, hiding their faces

like shamed felons caught by the TV camera.

The market sold out of everything,

a young boy the last pack of meat.

Sleet fell all night, tapping

on the windows the way the dead might.

In my dreams I went back to the house

that had forgotten about me,

no one there asked how I’d been.

But I sat with them just the same

Wong’s poem Elegy For The Snow Country alludes to the power of literature on a young, uncluttered mind. The poet recalls images of pure desperation from Yasunari Kawabata classic Japanese novel Snow Country that she had once read. Snow falling endlessly, she drifts into thoughts of her own and her son’s first snow experience in a new country and then follows her own musing into an earlier, albeit internal, setting. Interestingly, she describes herself as “like a pilgrim” on a road of pure language. Wong concludes her piece this way,

What other road if not language

that can take us back to these moments,

to childhood, that first country,

surrounded by savage blue and steep inclines?

What burns cannot be touched but remembered.

What burns in this enigmatic life speeds before you

like a train trundling out of the tunnel

into a valley cold with stars.

Small Moments, Wong’s lovely poem of emblematic images, details in miniature what the rest of her collection does painted large. Her clarity of language and polished similes are particularly striking. Her pieces, like a charm bracelet, seem to be independent from one another except for a framing image of a girl learning to ride a bicycle, which she divides into two separated stanzas. The tone and the outcomes that Wong delivers remind me of the imagist poets Hilda Doolittle, Amy Lowell, and even a bit of Ezra Pound. Consider these sections,

At dawn, the train collects

the commuters like debt,

returning them in the evening

gleaming of sweat.

Noon, young mothers

sip coffee in outdoor cafes,

united by their fidgeting babies,

lack of sleep and

a distraction that has no name.

On the ground of the VA hospital

the gardener with a hose

harbors a spray of rainbow

as if it were a love letter

from the front.

My favorite poem in this collection Wong entitles The Search. The piece daubs one with a strange duality of tone. The narrative background appears claustrophobic and bolted in place, yet the lyrical overlay soars with magic. This tonal counterpoint works really well, even as the poem ends darkly. The middle stanza conveys a mix of faith and abnegation,

Moonlight falls like a bolt

of silk. On the moon’s face

the blotches are the ones

we see all our lives.

No longer do we believe

in the moon goddess

who night after night 

mixes potions to make us

well. What good is her benevolence

if it won’t return the ones we lost?

Wong’s master poem, In the Shadow of Pagodas, astonishes with its narrative pull and lyrical lift. The poet tells the story of the first emperor of China, Qin Shihuangdi, and his doomed court with versified aplomb. Man’s divine pretenses in the form of art rise off these pages and flit before us in a wild pre-blizzard warning. Illusion breeds dream breeds illusion. Replicas become more real, more permanent than their creators. Wong describes the emperor’s terra cotta army that accompanied him into the presumed afterlife this way,

Without armies there would be no empire—

generals, warriors, archers,

bowmen, infantrymen,

even if they were made of clay.

Figures varied in size, poise,

painted in resin, lacquer,

their color bright,

their faces individual

as if each were bestowed a spirit,

each could breathe, could kill.   

Not only does the poet deliver philosophical depth and original images in this collection, but she also gives us an emigrant’s perspective on traveling to and from her new homeland. Wong’s poetic journeys shake us from sleep with their wintry briskness. Truly, it’s eye-opening to travel with her.

   

Poet Gloria Mindock--New Poet Laureate of Somerville

New Poet Laureate of Somerville--Gloria Mindock

 I am pleased to announce that Gloria Mindock, will succeed Nicole Terez Dutton as Poet Laureate of  Somerville as of Jan. 2017. The Laureate Panel, that consisted of Harris Gardner, Doug Holder, Kathleen Seward, and Glenn Ferdman, had a hard choice to make, but we are confident that longtime Somerville resident/poet/publisher/activist Gloria Mindock is the best choice. The notable runner ups were Kirk Etherton and Ralph Pennel. Mindock has a long history as a significant literary figure in Somerville, and has provided venues for readings for many years.  In terms of outreach, publishing, and promoting, she has few equals in Somerville.  I would like to thank Greg Jenkins of the Somerville Arts Council for making this happen.

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 Whiteness of Bone, La Portile Raiului, translated into the Romanian by Flavia Cosma, Nothing Divine Here, and Blood Soaked Dresses. Widely published in the USA and abroad, her poetry has been translated and published into the Romanian, Serbian, Spanish, Estonian, and French. In 2014, Gloria was awarded the Ibbetson Street Press Lifetime Achievement Award and in May 2016, Gloria was the recipient of the Allen Ginsberg Award for community service by the Newton Writing and Publishing Center. Gloria recently was published in Akadeemia (Estonia), Poetry.com, Gargoyle, and her work is forthcoming in the We are You Project Anthology. Mindock runs the Cervena Barva Bookstore in the Somerville Arts Armory, as well as running, and co-running two reading series in the same facility.

 Laureate Panel, back/ left to right--Harris Gardner, Glenn Ferdman, Doug Holder,  front left to right-- Kathleen Seward, Linda Conte.

The 40th Issue of Ibbetson Street magazine to be celebrated Jan 11, 2017

 

Front cover photo by Jennifer Matthews  http://jennifermatthews.com

Ibbetson Street--a publication of the  Ibbetson Street Press was started in 1998 on Ibbetson Street in Somerville, Ma. by Doug Holder, Dianne Robitaille, and Richard Wilhelm. We have a great lineup of poets in Ibbetson 40, including Marge Piercy, Kathleen Spivack, Mary Buchinger Bodwell, Brendan Galvin, Ted Kooser and many others.

 The potluck and reading for Ibbetson Street #40 will be held at the central branch of the Somerville Public Library on Highland Avenue, Somerville, next to the high school. It will be in the "auditorium" on Wednesday, January 11, 2017. Potluck is at 6:00 P.M. Reading begins at 7:00 P.M. We will be finished and out of the library at 8:45 P.M. There is free parking on-site. Also, you can get the #88 bus from Davis Square. There is a bus stop almost across the street from the library. Everyone who has a poem in Ibbetson Street #40 can sign up to read their poem. The room has seating for about fifty people.

 

                In poetry and in friendship,

                             Doug Holder

                             Publisher

                             Harris Gardner

                             Poetry Editor

                             Ibbetson Street

**** Ibbetson Street is affiliated with Endicott College, Beverly, Mass.

Poet Kevin Gallagher: Poet of the Loom and the Lash

Poet Kevin Gallagher: Poet of the Loom and the Lash

with Doug Holder

LOOM is concerned with the history of our divided country, a violent division preceding civil war and by now embedded in our cultural landscape. The non-sentimental poems are cool, clear and literal. They are narrated by white Americans who position themselves in relation to “slave power” and cotton as “lords of the loom” and “lords of the lash”. Boston is central to the story, and the cities of Lawrence and Lowell. It’s a valuable collection, as it puts the focus back on the white male where the distortion of vision begins and is occasionally resolved.

—Fanny Howe, winner of the Ruth Lily Poetry Prize and National Book Award Finalist

I spoke with Kevin Gallagher about his new book of poetry “Loom” on my Somerville Community Access TV show “ Poet to Poet: Writer to Writer.” Kevin who has roots in Somerville, Mass., was a founding editor of COMPOST magazine, and currently publishes spoKe magazine. He is a professor of Global Development at Boston University.

Doug Holder: Were you spurred on by the context of the times, Black Lives Matter, etc... to write these poems?

KG: Yeah. 100%. But I didn't want to rage about it directly. I didn't want to resort to sloganeering. I was really inspired by the writings of Charles Olsen, Seamus Heaney and others. They were confronted with different issues—but they didn't want to go at it directly—so they went to history. I thought this was the best way was to write about Boston merchants, and industrialists, and how they helped to empower slavery.

DH: I was reading a review of a new collection of letters of T.S. Eliot. Eliot commented about “Boston Society.” He basically wrote that Boston society was very insular—they cared about their own—not others. It seems that in your book the abolitionist North was really interested in cash by cotton to increase their own coffers...the immorality of slave labor be damned.

KG: Charles Sumner branded the North as upholding the unholy alliance between the Boston mercantile class and the Southern cotton interests. Guys like Francis Cabot Lowell, and others of “society” were culprits in slave labor. Their insatiable need for cotton kept slavery going.

DH: But Amos A. Lawrence, a textile manufacturer, had an epiphany—didn't he?

KG: It happened when he witnessed the plight of Anthony Burn—a slave. Burns was from Virginia-- and escaped to the North. Under the Fugitive Slave Act, if a Southern slave owner, etc... captured him—they could bring him back. Burns was captured—abolitionists stood outside the courthouse in Boston demanding his release. They even killed an Irish cop Ultimately they failed and Burns was marched through the streets of Boston by the Southern Cavalry -- back to slavery and the South. Amos A. Lawrence wrote that was the moment he decided he would become a dyed -in- the- wool abolitionist. One of my poems was inspired by this. I used many journals and letters from folks who were involved in all this .I really tried to get inside people's heads.

DH: Where did you get the subtitle “ Lords of the Lash and the Loom?”

KG: Of course Charles Sumner dubbed this unholy alliance between the gentry in the South and North, as such.

Dh; Did Francis Cabot Lowell steal the plans for the Power Loom from the British?

KG: Yes-- this Lowell—related to Amy Lowell, and Robert Lowell—was tarnished forever by his theft. It seems that Lowell was importing textiles from the U.K. but he realized he could make more money if he had the Power Loom in New England. He memorized the plans to the Loom-- much to the chagrin of the British who gave him a look at the new machine, when he was visiting there. Paul Moody ( Moody St. in Waltham is named after him) set up the original factory in Waltham—he recreated the Power Loom.

DH: You were a founding editor of COMPOST magazine in the early 90s. Now you edit s spoKe magazine. How did this new venture come about?

KG: Well I wanted to do another magazine. I was doing editing for the online magazine JACKET—so I kept in the thick of things. I have great resources at Boston University where I teach. I had a lot of help from students from Christopher Rick's Editorial Institute, and elsewher. The theme of sPoKe is much like COMPOST. It is an American-based international magazine. We have a wide variety of local poets, ancient Chinese poetry, etc... Ben Mazer is going to doing a translation of new Romanian poets in the next issue.

The Blood of ’76

Amos A. Lawrence, 1854

Three years ago I offered my support

to protect U.S. Marshals from the mob.

This time I prefer to see the court

razed than see this man’s newfound freedom robbed.

They marched him down State Street in procession.

Cavalry, artillery, and cannon.

U.S. troops before him and behind him.

He held his head up and marched like a man.

The windows on houses were filled with faces,

though the streets and alleys had all been cleared.

We thought Boston the safest of places,

that here freedom could never disappear.

We cannot stand that this was not a crime.

I have to tell you that it is high time.

The Sunday Poet: Bridget Galway

Bridget Galway

Bridget Seley- Galway is an artist/poet. Her art has graced several covers of Ibbetson Press, and Bagels with the Bards, as well as Doug Holder’s, “Eating Grief at 3AM”, and Molly Lynn Watts', “On the Wings of Song- A Journey into the Civil Rights Era.” Her poetry was published from 2001-2002 in Provincetown Magazine’s Poetry Corner, 2011-12 Popt Art Magazine, 2009-2014, 2009-2016, Bagel with the Bards, Ibbetson Press #34, 39, and in 2016 Poetry Porch online poetry journal. Her art has been exhibited throughout New England. She was arts editor/curator for Wilderness House Literary Review 2009-2012. In 1990 she co-founded/ directed El Arco Iris, free youth arts center in Holyoke, and in 2014 procured funding to established and facilitated Youth Arts Arise, a free after school program at Arts at the Armory in Somerville. Ma.

       

New York Tompkins Square 1980  

He disappears between worn out buildings,

Where darken corners supply a needles relief.

He wears me from this moment to a knot.

In my usual taciturn,

Benched under the grand Oak Tree.

Again I feel its reproach,

Rising up from its roots.

Once it was valued for its beauty.

Now it shades the broken and wretched,

Garbage tossed and blown.

And I,  

Still innocent

Molded from this familiar circumstance of

Loving a poet whose damage comes first.

This is the slipknot of my childhood:

A frayed strand woven by hip conversations,

About books and revolution.     

 The brilliant guided me.

 Some drunks and junkies,

Tolerated and adored.

 I harbored by their words,

Tossed and turned in their shifting currents,

 Loss and gain,

  Loss and gain,

 A constant anticipation of better

 Now,

Scathed again in the waiting. 

 He emerges,

 Moves towards me

In slow stride,

 This lion to his den,

 Pulls me to him,

 Dips me into a kiss.

 I am collected,

As the flower

Archived in a glass paperweight

 That settles on his words.

 He says

     He says 

        He says

“You know Geeta,

These are great old buildings.

if I just had some money,

I could get a nice space,

Make it fine and write.”

  And I

 Scribble in my notebook over unfinished poems,

 Advertised phone numbers

“Renting Option to Buy”

  In this want I am

Again

Adopted undone!

                

Gifts from Samarkand By Ed Meek : Review of Twenty-One Ghazals translated by Dennis Daly

 

Gifts from Samarkand
By Ed Meek


Twenty-One Ghazals by Alisher Navoiy
Translated from Uzbek by Dennis Daly
Cervena Barva Press. $18.00

Poet and translator Dennis Daly combines beautiful middle-eastern illustrations with twenty-one ghazals from a well-known Afghani poet of the 15th century, Alisher Navoiy. Navoiy wrote when the Timurid Empire, begun by Tamerlane, was in control of central Asia including Iran, Afghanistan, India, Southern Russia, and Mesopotamia. Like Chaucer, he is known for combining formal and informal language, in this case, Persian and local dialect. Ghazals are written in metered couplets with refrains; they focus on romance and unrequited love.

For a couple of thousand years, people turned to poetry to express their love. Today, love and romance are areas that still seem to fascinate us. Despite the lamentations of the young that romance has died, we seem to long for it more than ever. Today popular music, movies and television, and Hallmark cards are where people usually find their romance fix, yet poetry remains the best vehicle for the expression of ineffable emotions.

Combining the poems with the images of 15th Century illustrations adds to the reading of Navoiy’s poetry. Navoiy included illustrations in his original books, perhaps because poetry has a close affinity with painting. Take this line: “Sunsets sear across the sky, touch the earth with fire.”

In many ways, poetry is closer to painting and photography than to other written forms with its emphasis on imagery and metaphor. At the same time, ghazals have a post-modern element to them. At the end of each poem, the writer brings himself in. “Navoiy, Navoiy, pour out a glass of wine./The sadness of lovers fill up the night.” As for unrequited love: “Isolation robs me of all true happiness.” Therefore, Navoiy advises us: “Take this lesson, avoid the cruelty of love.” Yet he won’t take his own advice. “But in the feast of life, we intone love’s joys.”

Put Twenty-One Ghazals on your list of books to buy this year, or order a copy as a romantic gift for the love, or unrequited love, in your life.

Interview with Poet Martha Collins: Author of “Admit One...” a lyrical exploration of scientific racism

Martha Collins

Interview with Poet Martha Collins: Author of “Admit One...” a lyrical exploration of scientific racism

With Doug Holder.

Martha Collins is the author, most recently, of Admit One: An American Scrapbook (Pittsburgh, 2016), Day Unto Day (Milkweed, 2014), White Papers (Pitt Poetry Series, 2012), and Blue Front (Graywolf, 2006), a book-length poem based on a lynching her father witnessed when he was five years old. Collins has also published four earlier collections of poems, three books of co-translations from the Vietnamese, and two chapbooks . I spoke with Martha Collins on my Somerville Community Access TV show “Poet to Poet: Writer to Writer” about her new poetry collection “Admit One...” that deals with the scientific racism of the early twentieth century, including the Eugenics Movement.

Doug Holder: You use as your starting point the St. Louis World's Fair of 1904. Why?

Martha Collins: Because it was the starting point. (Laugh) I was thinking of it because it was a family story. My mother's mother went to it when she was pregnant with my mother. My mom talked about it—although not from direct experience. I knew about the story for years. I heard about how the fair illuminated for its audience the wonderful scientific progress that was made at that time—the fake marble palaces, the splendor of it—but I also heard about the human exhibits. There were over 3,000 humans who were exhibited—Native Americans, Filipinos, Japanese, backwater African tribes, on display in their natural habitat. The “civilized” people could view them at a safe remove.

DH: Define scientific racism.

MC: It is a distortion of Darwinism. It became an even greater distortion as things moved to the Eugenics Movement. It is the belief that we (“civilized people”) evolved, and we are quite different  (or superior) to primitive people, and it was “our” responsibility to foster the most “fit” human beings, and let the others not survive.

DH: This sounds like Nazi Germany.

MC: The interactions of Nazis and Eugenicist were many. Madison Grant was a major figure in this movement, with his book “ The Passing of the Great Race.” Hitler owned the book and claimed it was his bible. The Eugenics Movement was very popular at the time of the World Fair. Eugenics courses were taught at over 300 colleges. People from the North-- Nordic countries were considered the best of the white race, all others were inferior. There was a huge amount of anti-immigration sentiment, advocacy for the sterilization of “unfit” people, etc...

DH: Poet Kevin Gallagher—the author of the poetry collection—Loom--wrote about how the Boston elite—empowered slavery for their piece of the cotton trade. He told me he did a lot of research. A lot was from primary sources. Your poetry collection “Blue Front”dealt with the plight of the black man. How much research did you do?

MC: In “Blue Front” research became essential. This book was spurred on by my late father who witnessed a lynching. I had to do a lot of documentary work. I used the internet—and many other sources.

DH: Do you feel that “ Admit One..” is even more important in the context of our times?

MC: I believe we have to understand our history, so we won't repeat it. We need to remember.



Alien, Part Three

Then Madison Grant met with Congressman Albert Johnson
again to devise a formula for the 1924 Immigration Act,

which was based on the earlier census of 1890 (when there
were fewer immigrants from eastern and southern Europe),

thus reducing to 12% the influx of Jews, Italians, etc., from
a pre-World War annual million to (as it turned out) 20,000.

Seven eugenicists testified, including Harry Laughlin,
who in 200 pages of testimony cited analyzed Army IQ tests

with Nordics on top, Jews on the bottom, and said the formula
would favor Nordics over non-essential members of the community.
 
Grant, too ill to testify, wrote that the scientific and just formula
would keep out lower types who could displace native Americans
 
and wrote an article targeting immigrants as criminal     insane
while the Saturday Evening Post and NY Times argued for passage.

Suddenly, said an opposing congressman, a new word made its way
into the English language—Nordic, Nordic—everywhere you turned.

But the Eugenicists lobbied congress members, bombarding
them with letters    telegrams    telephone calls    —and after a long

debate on a clause excluding the Japanese (which led a Japanese
publicist to predict eventual collision on the Pacific), the bill passed.

-- From  Admit One /Martha Collins