“the whole, lovely, kit n’caboodle” A Review of Elizabeth Gordon McKim's Lovers in the Free Fall

 

“the whole, lovely, kit n’caboodle”

A Review of Elizabeth Gordon McKim Lovers in the Free Fall, Leapfrog Press, Freedonia, NY, 2020

They don’t call Elizabeth McKim, aka e/liz, the Jazz Poet of Lynn for nothing. The 3 R’s she so skillfully employs aren’t the ‘reading, ‘riting, and ‘rithmatic’ we learned in grade school. Hers are rhyme, repetition, rhythm. Listen to them as in HEY DANGER she insouciantly calls “Come on in/We’re waitin’ for this dance to begin….” repeating her invitation

“So come on in darlin’

And rev up my engine

Some call it poetry

Some call it legend”

It’s poetry, the vernacular diction of ‘rev’ mixed with the unexpected formality of ‘legend’ with its slant rhyme ‘engine’.  In The show down is soon is a dance of her embodied voice, urgent and strong, as she rollicks

The hour is late

The music is blue

The rhythm is fate

The deceptive simplicity of the short lines lets the craft in her repetition and rhyme, the music in her assonance seduce us and our bodies move with hers because in her jazz poetry the insistent ‘rhythm is fate’.

McKim is fascinated with the way words fit together, hide inside each other, create sound variations and echoes. Consider just this section ofthe poem MOTION/COMMOTION

I like to mosey

You like to mill

You like to rumble

I like to spill

I like to gallivant

You like to gamble

I like to sally forth

You like to ramble

Her use of words like ‘mosey’, ‘gallivant’, ‘sally forth’ gives the poeman old-fashioned ambience. The back and forth of ‘You’ and ‘I’ has a playful, rocking rhythm. Triplets like ‘rumble’, ‘gamble’, ‘ramble’, change only one vowel or one initial consonant out of three; again word play. But the prize goes to ‘sally’ hiding in ‘gallivant’.

The book’s title, Lovers in the Free Fall, indicates two large, interconnected areas. The Free Fall could be everywhere we are, where we roam, boundless, unexpected happenings, destinations, endless possibilities. Many of McKim’s poems are about movement with images of roads, highways, cars, trains, freeways, their subject matter less playful, their lines longer, their shape sometimes formal as in the sestina REFUGEES. These poems about migrants, refugees, point to desperate situations and, no matter when initially written, are relevant to current issues. Some of the wanderers are persons from McKim’s life experience, like Dave who wants to get out of cold, wintry Lynn and head for Flagstaff. But then Odysseus, as seen by his long-suffering wife Penelope who sings the blues, shows up, as do other mythic characters whose travels land them in places they didn’t want to be--Icarus, Persephone.

McKim presents dire situations and does not shrink from misery’struth. While honest about suffering, fear, loss, unfulfilled longings,her mantra, as presented in her DEDICATION, is ‘No despair/no despair/ no despair’. Human misery neither obliterates nordominates her acceptance of life’s yo-yo fullness. She’s one of the lovers in the free fall; like them she has ‘slapped down and wised up/Wised up slappedslapped down’.

Like her wanderers, her range is wide, not only in subject matter, butalso in her poetic craft. From the oral tradition, she chants, sings a ballad; from European formal patterns, creates a sestina; from her own musicality performs jazz. Consider the pulse, lineation, eccentric word choice of the opening lines of CALL

You can call me cormorant

And I will call you stranger

You can call me consonant

And I will call you danger

Contrast it with the shaped arc, the deliberately irregular length and placement of lines on the page, the imagery drawn consistently and narratively from nature in her contemporary lyric STAND STILL

Coming to a stand-

still

a heron

situated

and observant

follows

lost light

into land’s end

translates autumn air

into silence

stands

poised

while

wanton and wild

golden rod suddenly nods

harbor seals

disappear and dip

gulls

veer

sails

billow

tossed in the hollow

heron

in the shallows

holds

onto

a one legged

stand still

The dancerly movement on the page is McKim’s transfer of motionfrom the rhythm of sound to pictorially shaped image. We can feel the heron’s leg as a rod holding the center of the poem from top to bottom. Her title might be a private pun, a tease to her jazz poems, or her need to do that.

As the poet is in the free fall with all of us, so she is also one of the lovers. She speaks most often ‘in the numinous luminous name of love’ Sometimes she speaks from ‘these blazing discs of memory’ of her parents, her sisters,of those gone from life, but never from her memory, and of those still in her life and precious.

Some of her love poems present an intensity of intimacy, her language simple, direct and so strong we can feel it in our own bodies. From ‘the cusp/ of loving’ in WATCH

I watch you

from up-

side/ the head

from water-

bed, ……………..

………………….

from when you look at me

from when I look at you

from LETTER

I want to know the sound of your steps

In the city where you survive

I want to know how you breathe

from WHEN WE LOVE

We love strongly

We come as guests

And we don’t know when to leave

and, finally, from the beginning and the ending of IF I ASK

If I ask you to come home

Will you? ………………

………………….I will go

Anywhere you are going.

Wherever you go, take Lovers in the Free Fall with you.

***Karen Klein poet/dancer, founder of teXtmoVes poetry/dance collaborative, former member Prometheus Dance Elders Ensemble, retired faculty English,Humanities. Women’s Studies. Brandeis University

Doug Holder Interviews Literary Outlaw Alan Kaufman

Thea Paneth: An Artist who paints her life, and paints to live.

 

Thea Paneth is one of the many talented artists I have interviewed for The Somerville Times. And like many she works hard to make the daily nut and continue to produce evocative painting and photographs. I caught up with her recently.....

Somerville has been described as the '"Paris of New England" because of all the creative stuff going on. You have been here a long time. How have you seen things evolve or devolve in our city?

I have known Somerville to be a creative mecca - hundreds of artists and musicians thrive here.  Over my decades in the ‘ville, it has become a younger city.  I’ve seen a lot of changes, certainly Davis Square has changed a lot. I still miss the Supreme Deli, where I used to see the mayor all the time back in the 1980’s. I love the Burren, great music (was) happening there all the time.  Housing is ever more expensive, and I worry that when the GLX comes in, a lot of artists will be priced out or our studio buildings will be turned into housing.  There is such a need for housing near public transportation, but the real estate goes up in value and that has consequences for artist communities.  

You have written that "I paint my life."  Do you paint to live?

So it seems.  I found long ago that if I went any length of time without doing artwork, I would feel very low. Whenever I worked on a painting, I immediately felt lighter and as if I could breathe better.  Realizing that was big, and then I had to figure out how I was going to live in terms of it, by continuing to make art.  Sometimes the realization is absolutely staggering - I’ve managed to eke out a living, raise a child, and keep doing my art.  It’s day by day and all of a sudden, the years add up.   

You are known for evocative paintings of nature. But you are much more than that. For instance, you have a portrait series of folk/rock musicians that includes Patti Smith, Bonnie Raitt, and others. Did you ever have a subject pose for you, or do you work from photographs of the individuals?

I spent a number of years drawing and painting from life, from models, so that hand-eye training forms the foundation for all the work I do.  My mom drew and painted, one of her teachers would tell her class “Go for the model,” and she’d talk about it.  As I grew up, I interpreted “go for the model" to mean seek the essence of any subject whether I paint a person, a tree, a still life, a landscape. I ask myself why I want to paint it, and then my job becomes bringing the sensibility forward, whatever it is, into an evocative work, that is my own.  

I work from many photographs of public figures, so any portrait painting is composed of a number of different photographs.  I listen to music all the time, specifically WUMB 91.9 out at UMass Boston.  The music is the best, the announcers are all wonderful, they all have so much knowledge about the music and interesting stories that they share on the air.  Over the years I began to incorporate my love for folk music and an admiration for iconographic musicians into a number of paintings.  Some are portraits, some are visual representations of a line from the song which becomes the title of the work.  

When you do a portrait, I am sure you try to capture the subject's essence. Could you talk a bit about your process?

There is always something magical about creative work. There is the quiet space of the studio, the blank canvas in front of me, the relationship I have with my materials. I use palette knives a lot to move paint around on a canvas, small width sable brushes and paper towels, I try very hard to let my hands take over and not have my conscious or dictatorial mind oversee or analyze  what I’m doing as I work.  The time for evaluation comes later.  I step back from the canvas and look at it carefully in a non-judgmental way, but trying to see what might pop out at me in a way I don’t like, or an area of the work that maybe is not as realized as another area.   In this way, I find a work comes to life in as free as way as I am able to achieve, through me, but not controlled by me or my conscious mind thinking it out.  

I do research into a subject, getting books out of the library, seeing films about the subject. For paintings that spring from music, I listen to the music a lot, and let the music bring feelings out of me, down the arm, onto the canvas.  

Working on the painting Rock and Roll Women with Patti Smith, I saw that I painted her hand as if it was a claw.  That bothered me for a while, but not enough to change it.  Then she put out a new album and was interviewed on the radio so I tuned in, (I think it was the program World Cafe).  She was talking about how sometimes after playing a lot or doing a long set, her hand felt like a claw…so that was the magic.  I did not have that knowledge, but when it happened on the canvas, I let it be. It turned out to be meaningful in an unexpected way some time later.  

I have found over the years, that several things are true for me as a painter, one is no matter how many times I make a painting such as a winter tree, which are very simple-seeming paintings, each one demands its own identity on the space of a canvas and is just as hard to make as if it were the only one.  There is no formula.  

Another thing is that sometimes a painting won’t work, and I don’t know why.  I’ve found that if I set the unresolved work aside and don’t try to make it work, that often I learn something from it down the road that is quite valuable and often leads to more resolved, different work down the road.  

And of course sometimes there’s no hope at all and I paint it out and do something else.  That is important to be able to do, to let go and start over.  

There’s a great interview with John Lennon where he’s speaking about creative work and says: "start over."  Each blank canvas (or page) is starting over.  There is tremendous freedom in that, it’s yours for the taking.  

You have been involved with Somerville Open Studios for a long while. Can you briefly describe your experience?.

SOS is a great organization.  When my daughter was an infant, I heard about an Arts Council meeting to vote on whether to bring SOS into being and I made sure to get myself there to raise my hand in favor!  We organize the citywide open studios event every year, we artists, not an event company. It’s a labor of love.  Some visitors come every year. I’ve had folks in my studio tell me that SOS weekend is the best weekend of the year!  I think so too.  Artists are part of the life of the city, artists have been embraced by the community, we’ve embraced the community in return, it’s a beautiful thing.  

I’ve headed up traditional media publicity a number of times, it’s one of those chores that has to be done and it turns out people are uncomfortable about taking it on.  My philosophy is we work hard all year on our art, we work hard for months to make SOS happen, and we’ve got to get the word out!  I’m hoping to put together a team next time to pass the skills along.  

If someone was to ask you, " Why should I look at your work?" What would your answer be?

Be curious about everything.  One does not have to like everything but be open to it.  When people visit during SOS, I like to let them engage with my work so I keep to the background and just offer to answer any questions they may have, in as welcoming way as I’m able.  I have no wish to push anything on anyone.  Looking at art is a very personal thing; a viewer brings all kinds of associations and knowledge of their own that should be respected.  And, of course, there are those visitors who talk about the window in my space, and that’s ok too.  

How are you handling the Pandemic?  How has it influenced your art. Does great pain, bring great art?

The past eight months have been extremely difficult.  We had to cancel SOS, we are unsure if we will be able to hold it in 2021.  So many people have been ill and died, I’ve been especially upset about the medical people we’ve lost, all that training lost.  All this against the backdrop of government incompetence and malfeasance at the highest levels.  I’ve been hanging in and hanging on, doing the best I can, but I know we need real relief for folks across the country and I hope that we see it happen in the new year.  

I’ve been able to get to the studio most days and have found myself experimenting, doing more abstract work than usual, which is very interesting to me.  I’m lucky in that I’m working remotely at my day job and still have my health insurance.  

Does great pain bring great art - yes, but probably down the road a bit, not in the moment.  I’ve done paintings that dealt with grief and sorrow for beloveds who died, but in my experience, a creative resolution came after I lived through the worst of the crisis.  

Disquiet and Quiet in Brian Mooney’s debut book of poems, Unbidden

Disquiet and Quiet in Brian Mooney’s debut book of poems, Unbidden

article by Michael T Steffen

The poems of Brian Mooney win our skeptical confidence, singing songs of Experience:

Helicopters lift above, pissing red tracers to earth,

as Charlie dives deep underground leaving

one conical hat floating in a rice paddy. [page 20]

Mooney braves that censor, also, risking songs—genuinely cadenced, lyrical—of Innocence,

as in the opening poem:

GREEN WOOD STOOL

(in memory of Grandma Mooney)

I’d climb onto the green wood stool,

my boost to reach the kitchen sink.

She’d take my little hands in hers:

long, thick fingers, an amber ring.

With lathered soap she’d gently rub,

the dark stone bobbing through white suds.

A cool rinse then and dry them nice

on the embroidered Dutchman towel.

It’s important, then, that Mooney’s verse is also capable of happening onto the numbing neutral ground of weirdness in the familiar, getting a haircut from his father:

Sometimes when my father touched my head,

a shock would strike my neck and spring down my back. [page 33]

Son of a mother who recited the verses of Emily Dickenson and Walt Whitman to him,

a Catholic monk for a year in his coming to age, a scholar and teacher of languages and literature, then a soldier in the Vietnam War, coming home to become “intensely involved in the Anti-War movement,” Mooney presents himself with a wide experience, spiritual and worldly, to poetry in his 2020 debut collection, Unbidden (ISBN 978-1-7923-4926-3, self-published and printed by the Harvard Book Store, available for $15).

Along with the undeniable lyrical soul of the poetics comes some artistic and intellectual shrewdness of slanting at the present through the past. Our current national divide between nature and its minimal needy aspect vs society and sophistication and wealth– which is perhaps global – is deftly sketched by Mooney in terms of French philosophy:

My classmate would hold his picture

close to the side of his desk,

and whisper to me “Rousseau”

and I would reply “Voltaire.” [page 20]

Yet managing the particular argument is short of Mooney’s greater purpose. Fred Marchant has generously and perceptively commented: “the unbidden in these poems is most often an earned glimpse of a mystery at the heart of things.” Heart of hearts: the startling realization that the world of experience dawns on our consciousness as—unbidden. In the philosophy of Martin Heidegger the term finds its correspondence in our “being thrown” (geworfen) into this world.

It strikes us as unsettling to the great extent that the makeup of our lives is ultimately beyond our individual control. It precedes and encompasses us, leaving even the most familiar of our surroundings to the scrutiny of questions:

Is it in the backyard where I learned to ice skate,

pushing away from the apple tree?

Is it in the window of the garret room where

the great elm showed its seasonal faces? [page 19]

Yet along with this terrible awakening there is also the grace, despite our ego’s proneness to the delusion of the totality of itself, of finding and knowing how we rely and are bound to a world of otherness and its beckoning to us, in the mergence of the individual and the spherical:

WHISTLES

With two fingers and rolled tongue

she’d send out a piercing call,

the signal for her kids at play to drop the bat and ball.

Sometimes a Red-Tailed Hawk would circle in the sky,

matching mother’s whistle sound with its high-pitched reply.

Whose territory is this, the raptor seemed to ask.

Could it be a brother hawk concealed in human mask?

As the children scurried home to wash before their meal,

both whistles blending in their ears

in Mother Nature’s weil.

The poems in Unbidden by Brian Mooney sing to us with the welcome of spiritual eagerness while, full of the unexpected and at times unsavory, for the differences they make, keep our eyes watchful line by intentional line. Reading the book leaves us both lighter and deeper, better than when we first opened it.

To order a copy through Harvard Bookstore, click on this link: 

Unbidden - Harvard Book Store.

Newton Free Library Poetry Series Nov 10. 2020

Doug Holder Interviews Poet Marcus Breen: author of Twenty Days by Twe...

Somerville Artist Jaina Cipriano: Captures the pain within....

"Jaina Cipriano is creating visual metaphors for emotions she has trouble defining. Without the help of Photoshop, she builds physical environments that open her subjects up to become part of something bigger. This primes the space for an authenticity that is so visceral it brings the viewer back to their own memories. " (From her website)

Her photos and films are not for the faint of heart. They go to deep to the marrow-- and slap us with their often visceral imagery. They bring experiences of trauma to the forefront. They explore the painful transition from childhood to adulthood. I was glad to catch up with this Somerville artist.

How has it been for you in Somerville, as a creative person?

Somerville has been great, there is a lot of thought put into artists in this city. Times are tough right now but I feel Somerville has been working hard to support its artists and I am grateful for that. I love the energy of the city - bright and open while also calm somehow.

From what I have seen, a lot of your photography reveals inner turmoil. Do you feel compelled to delve there--is that your artistic essence?

It is the most effective way I have found for working through and processing my turmoil. Terror loses its power when you name it. It loosens its grip when you show it’s face to the light. It’s a process but it’s worth it.

Does your work speak more to women--or is it more universal than that?

Women are universal. As a woman a lot of my work is through the lens of womanhood but I believe a lot of my themes - entrapment, childhood, religious and romantic trauma - are understood and felt by people across the gender spectrum.

I saw a clip of your movie " You Don't Have to take orders from the Moon." The clip had a rather large rat scurrying across the bed. Was that rat a Somerville rat, we have a great supply of them? How does this imagery fit within the full context of your film?

I wish I could say I wrangled some authentic Somerville rats but no, those rats were my sisters pets. Their names are Miso Soup, Sticky Rice and Dumpling and they were very sweet and well behaved. The rats in my film are messengers, helping the audience connect the dots. You’ll have to watch the film to see what the dots are!

Did you formally study film and photography?

I went to NESOP (New England School of Photography) and studied photography but I have no formal training in film - I just jumped in back in 2019 and haven’t looked back. I love learning new things and my favorite way to learn is by doing - getting my hands dirty, failing, trying new things - it is exhilarating and rewarding!

Is your work therapeutic for you?

Absolutely. No matter how dark things get, my work is always there. It’s a home of sorts. I can come back to it whenever I need. It helps me process and connect to myself and the world around me.

If I were to ask you--why we should view your work--how would you reply?

Connection is essential, especially in the COVID era. I have poured my entire essence into my work - I want to connect with you through it.

Any new projects in the works?

I start pre-production for my next short film Trauma Bond in a few weeks which is exciting! It’s about three women, a secret, and an intense night. I am also in the midst of opening up a new artist space - so stay tuned for more information on that!

http://www.jainaciprianophotography.com/

Somerville Photographer Emily Falcigno: Takes inspiration from the neighborhood, people's essence, and even the sexist remarks of Trumpism

 

Emily Falcigno is a photographer who is about making a strong statement-- she boils people and things  down to their essence. She is not after the sizzle but the steak. I was glad to catch up with her.

 DH: First off-- tell me about your experience as a photographer--here in Somerville. How does it compare to other places you have lived? One person told me if you are taking pictures in the streets of Medford--they think you are an insurance person or a real estate agent--in Somerville they think " Hey just another artist."

EF:Ha ha ha! I never knew that about Medford. My association to Meffa is Italians, fig trees wrapped for the winter, and wine making. I can totally relate to the Somerville analysis.

My first real foray into photography was photojournalism and as they say in that industry, “if you wanna shoot a good story, look in your own backyard.” As a local photojournalist in my hometown, one of the hardest assignments we had was to shoot “enterprise photos”. We had to go around and look for single filler photos for the gray space in the paper. One time I hopped in the back of a landscaping truck to get a shot of the landscapers on the move. Another time, I was walking through a state park, and a ranger who could have been Hagrid’s brother, was carrying a fawn he found alone in the woods. To see the soft side of this huge guy with a little tiny wild animal was so moving. The day was really foggy so it made for a beautifully moody photo.

Somerville is chock-full of eye candy, like the DPW during snowmageddon, unicyclers, School of Honk parading on a snowy day. Festivals galore! Honk and The Independent Film Festival are tied for my favorites. I have been volunteering for IFF since 2011 and got to photograph Dennis Leary, Miranda July, Jason Segel, MIT researcher, Joe Davis (look him up!), etc. It’s a great opportunity to see films people care about deeply, and rub elbows with filmmakers in your own backyard.

I learned that no matter where you are: the more you look around, the more you see.

DH: In my research about you, I read you viewed a sexist video and this propelled you to create " In her Words: A Collective Diary of  Everyday"Women." Tell us about this project?

EF: Yes. In Her Words Diary started the day I heard about Trump’s pussy grabbing video back in 2016. I refused to watch it, I was so angry. Instead, I pulled out my camera, and asked myself, ‘How do I show disgust and anger in a self portrait?’ I have a whole series of me flipping the bird. After that, I decided to illustrate small battles and triumphs of other everyday women to tell a bigger story. We illustrate tiny things that go unnoticed and women brush off. The problem is, those little issues build up and trigger us when they’re not acknowledged and healed. What started as a venting project, became an inspirational one through women’s stories of sisterly support.

We took the project to new heights in 2018 when I got a billboard in Times Square; and photographed AOC and Ayanna Pressley for it.

For 2019’s Women’s History Month, Heather Balchunas and I collaborated on “Visible Voices” for the Inside OUT gallery in Davis Square. We collected battles, triumphs, and supportive stories from all genders around the city to display on paper dolls alongside IHWD photos. Anonymous stories included one on collecting breastmilk for a baby who had lost his mother, and another was about a guy who got a job, had no idea what he was doing, and relied on a female colleague to teach him what she knew. We heard countless stories of body issues. And one of an older single woman who never married and felt outcast from society’s norms. That one hit home for me.

DH: You are the founder of Savvy Singles. You photograph single people for the digital dating era, According to material I read you want to capture people in a natural way. How do you go about capturing the essence and energy of your clients?

EF: Savvy Singles Studio started as a way to help people with their dating profiles. People were posting car selfies. Frankly, those kinds of selfies talk behind your back. All they tell me is: You wear a seatbelt, and you drive distracted.

Remember the point about photographing the story in your own backyard? We help singles pull out the real story they want to tell about themselves, not the story they think they should be telling because it’s convenient.

Over quarantine I deepened my clients’ Roadmap to Savvy by creating The Visionary’s Journey workshop (and podcast on IGTV). I teach people how to get back to their core values, build a vision of their ideal lifestyle, and teach them how to manifest it. By giving singles permission to break society’s rules and make their own, we help them cultivate confidence and enthusiasm.

I specialize in photographing people who don’t typically like how they look in photos. We don’t do styling makeovers, we do soul makeovers.

DH: Do you define yourself as a feminist?

Yes, however, I don’t like to put myself in a box. I don’t like labels. If you ask different generations, you’ll get different responses to what “Feminism” means. I like Gen Z’s definition: Feminism is the equality of all genders.

A Black Lives Matter member once said to me, “Feminism: the White is silent”.

Intersectional Feminism is important to keep in mind. This refers to one person who belongs to more than one oppressed group. For instance: Black + female + LGBTQIA + other-abled. When we do the work to lift up the most oppressed of us, everyone is lifted up.

In all of my work, I lead with compassion, and promote the acceptance of feminine values in our society. Balancing feminine energy (empathy, community, fluidity) and masculine energy (pride, action, efficiency) in our bodies will help us find balance in society.

DH: Did you formally study photography? What photographers are your role models?

I was obsessed with my mother’s Kodak camera in the 80s. I picked up my first photography class in high school, and in college I couldn’t wait to get into the dark room. I was the photo editor on my paper for three years, and started learning Photoshop as soon as it came out. I was mostly interested in photographing people.

When I moved to Boston, I started photographing rock bands. I really loved Liz Linder‘s work, and 13 years later I got to work for her which was incredible! I also loved Annie Leibovitz’s work for Rolling Stone and referenced her in an homage photo I did for In Her Words Diary. I spent a long time with Lorna Simpson’s work at the ICA too.

I am a painter first, so I look to Renaissance painters for inspiration. Caravaggio’s dramatic lighting makes my heart sing.

DH: Any new projects in the works?

EF: I’m really excited about The Visionary’s Basecamp (an intro to TVJ) coming up on November 14th. I’m teaching people how to manifest new opportunities - like I manifested my billboard, my pop up at Bow Market, and small miracles every day. One client got her dream job after piloting TVB. It really is a game changer when you change your mindset.

Beyond that I’m mastering the art of the remote photo session. I am happy to help people who are curious and willing to do the work to upgrade their lives over quarantine and beyond!

Emily@SavvySinglesStudio.com

https://www.instagram.com/savvysinglesstudio/

http://savvysinglesstudio.eventbrite.com/

High Tide By Ed Meek: Review by Carolynn Kingyens

High Tide

By Ed Meek

Aubade Publishing

www.aubadepublishing.com

ISBN: 978-1-951547-99-8

$14.99

Ed Meek’s latest collection of poems, High Tide, is an exquisite reckoning with one’s self; between one’s past and present, a sort of home coming without a home. There’s a beautiful vulnerability along with a palpable sadness in High Tidethat speaks directly to the human condition. For example, in the poem, “Talking to Yourself,” Meek writes:




You can’t get up, can’t look away, you’re

uncomfortable in your own skin, like a dog in a drought –

if you could move, you’d get a drink or take a bath. Your

throat so dry you can’t swallow. You can’t swallow it all

anymore, the strangers who occupy your house – your wife

and children – as distant as the relatives who raised you.

You knew them all once, long ago, in another country you

called home.




Continuing with the same theme in “Gypsy Moth,” Meek compares the quiet desperation of the moth to our own distress:




Now they’re stressed like the rest of us,

susceptible to fungus and disease.





thwacking into window screens

desperately searching like the rest of us

for the light.







There are political poems, too, that lend thoughtful perspective to the state of American politics.In the poem, “Encomium for the God of Nothingness,” Meek reminds us:




This is where we are – on the verge.

Just over the edge – chaos.




But in the poem, “Make America Great Again,” he examines the disconnect between Trump’s notorious motto, and the reasons why some Americans take offense to it, offering a reminder how problematic earlier times in American history authentically were:




Let’s take America back

to the straitjacket

of the 1950s –

when women knew

their place

and cops let

domestic abuse

slide, divorcees

were outcast

and the church

lied for priests

who brought altar boys

to their knees.




……The good old days

when no women

or Jews were allowed,

Blacks were happier

with their own kind

and America could do

no wrong.


Some poems connect to each other faultlessly such as with “The Poetry Motel” and “In the Poetry Motel.” With these two poems, in particular, there is a slight dread reminiscent of the David Lynch film, Mulholland Drive:




You drew the drapes and sure enough – a view of the mountains –

hazy blue in the distance, peaks lost in white mist. You

had been here before you felt suddenly, as the first rays of

sunlight cut through the haze.







And “In the Poetry Motel,” the plot thickens:




You hear in the back of your ear a faint strain

of music – something so familiar. It seems to be

coming from the back of the room. Then you

notice another door.




You try the key and it opens. A radio on

the desk is playing the music you heard. In the

corner in the shadows someone sits. She beckons

with a crooked finger, come closer. She has

something to tell you. You bend down to listen.

She is old and frail. She whispers in a foreign

tongue. It could be Latin or Greek. You seem to

know some of the words. When she waves you

off you return to the desk in your room. You try

to make sense of it.







Throughout Meek’s book, there are nautical undertones, little reminders that high tide is coming in – fast. It’s when we call it a day at the beach, and begin to pack up all the gear – those old patchwork blankets, rainbow-colored umbrellas, and black scuff coolers with lids that don’t seem to ever want to close.




In the poem, “High Tide,” a young Meek relishes his limited time with his young parents on the beach, before his brother and sisters are born, calling them “those uninvited guests,” who “crashed the party.” He writes:




Before we left we’d weave along

the shore, heads down

in search of shells.

I walked between them –

one on each hand. The three of us

happy as clams at high tide.




In his poem, “Drifting Home,” he resides in a dream state – you know the voice of the clock/ is an echo in a vacuum/ and what’s lost hangs like a broken door. Meek continues:




But it is your mother the ocean

who drifts in waves in your sleep

and years pass by in a dream. The Sioux

called this the shadow world.




In his poem, “Praise for Ponytailed Girls Who Run,” Meek becomes the acute observer:




And the hair, lovely,

surely not dead

but vibrant with life and light

as it sways and bobs

like a rope swing in the wind

above the water.




I read Ed Meek’s High Tide the same day I’d received it. I wasn’t planning to read his latest collection in one sitting, but once I began, I could not put it down. Curled up with his book and a soft, gray blanket, my blonde, beagle-lab mix resting at my side, I could’ve easily been on a New England beach instead of on my bed in Brooklyn. Time and place didn’t matter as I read each poem slowly, savoring one delicious line after the next.




*****Carolynn Kingyens’ debut book of poetry, Before the Big Bang Makes a Sound (Kelsay Books), can be ordered through Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Greenlight, Book Culture, and Berl’s Brooklyn Poetry Shop. In addition to poetry, Carolynn writes narrative essays, book reviews, micro/flash fiction, and short stories. She resides in New York with her husband and children.

Owen Lewis’s Field Light (Dos Madres Press, 2020), reviewed by Gregory J. Wolos

 

Owen Lewis’s Field Light (Dos Madres Press, 2020), reviewed by Gregory J. Wolos

Owen Lewis’s Field Light is more than a collection of thematically connected poems. Using not only verse, but also photographs, historical notes, and dramatic dialogue, Lewis, a doctor of psychiatric medicine, escorts his readers through swirling gyres of time, place, and memory as he explores issues of individual identity. Throughout the volume Lewis examines his personal thirty-year connection to a summer home he rents, then owns, in the Berkshire Mountains of western Massachusetts. This home, which over time has become known as the Dormouse (a diminutive of “dormered house”), inspires Lewis’s contemplation of the area’s history. Historical figures abound: writers like Herman Melville and Stanley Kunitz, artists like Daniel Chester French (sculptor of Abraham Lincoln’s memorial statue) and Normal Rockwell, even heroes of social and racial justice like W.E.B. Dubois established roots in the region, and Lewis reflects upon their lives in juxtaposition to his own.

The collection opens with a poem describing the author waiting in his car at a rail crossing at what we are to take as the present. Yet even in the moment’s intimacy, Lewis portrays himself from a distant third person: “A lone driver stopped in his auto./ . . ./ Stalled, the flashing arm/ before him, he’s held up by the train/ and held in place, this place, how long/ he doesn’t know.” The volume’s next poem moves to first person, as the poet, still waiting for the train to pass, considers his New England surroundings, “White churches and pointed/ steeples of thudding bells” as his “darker light/ drops into the Berkshire air.” Ever more introspective, the poem concludes with a parenthetical, “(And I still think about her), which the reader comes to understand as a reference to Lewis’s ex-wife, whose presence—or absence— haunts the volume.

Central to Field Light is a photograph on the porch of the Dormouse, dated 1922, introduced in prose by the lonely poet: “Dog days of August, the back porch lulls, hours nap-drifting. Dr. Lewis spends the month alone, a sort of sabbatical. He should be used to this un-familied state by now, but he’s not. Not visitors. Not one. His only companions, an old photograph.” Throughout the volume Lewis returns again and again to this photograph, listing the figures within it, searching out their histories, bringing them to life with anecdotes both archival and imagined. Still, the photograph resists him as much as it invites: “He studies the photo, a moment century-old, in the very place he now sits. A town full of history, and he's not part of it. Not even part of his own history. He tries to squeeze into that summer of ’22.”

Lewis recollects his and his young family’s first trip up to the house during a summer thirty years past: of his three children “strapped in” to car seats, listening to Beauty and the Beast ad nauseam; of exiting to Route 23; of contemplating landmarks dating from 1761. Later he recalls narrating Native American creations myths to his vacationing children as bedtime stories. In “(photo as Rorschach)” Lewis contrasts his own identity as a Jew with the Anglicans pictured in the 1922 photograph, concluding that he “would have been barred from colleges of medicine in Boston or New York,” before reimagining a meeting between Freud and Jung in Worcester, where Freud is heard by Jung to whisper, “Wherever I go, a poet’s been before.” As for the figures in his porch photograph, “This group might have envisioned their history conjured in poetry but not by a Jewish physician; this group who saw themselves as history: Greeks, Romans, countrymen, and their crowd. To admire their history, to deny his own?”

Even as Lewis considers the history of the area through figures like W.E.B Dubois, Patty Hearst, and Arlo Guthrie, he returns to thoughts of his own losses, particularly of the dissolution of his marriage, even as he listens to Tanglewood concerts featuring orchestrations based on the poetry of Whitman: “Oh past! Oh happy life! Oh songs of joy!/ In the air—in the woods over the fields,/ Loved! . . . / But my mate no more, no more with me./ We two together no more.” Later, as his ex makes her way into a “dream fragment,” “I dare/ her memory./ It won’t be dared.” The trauma Lewis experiences as a result of his divorce is evident in “(August, 2011)”, which records the courtroom scene of his marriage’s dissolution: “why is she smiling? Lawyers marshal me out of view, advise/ to avert eye-contact five-year flashback: Dr. Lewis’s self-diagnosis:/ Courtroom PTSD , in public, a pilloried sinner . . . (I flee to the house/ in Massachusetts, a great tradition of marital bliss there—/ . . . / She’ll get the city apartment. Am I getting gypped with left-overs,/ a run-down Dormouse?” Though he has nestled himself in a location steeped in history, Lewis cannot escape the fracturing of his personal life—nor can he disconnect himself from his identity as a writer, capturing his divorce in literary terms: “In New York, ‘no fault’ divorce. I do, I do, now and forever/ absolve her not. Vows and ows. A manic raven. Nevermore.”

Lewis depicts his search for self in dramatic dialogues in which he relocates himself in history, imagining himself to be a consulting doctor for those connected to the 1922 photo on the Dormouse porch. But in the process of self-analysis, Lewis comes to realize that his “calling” comes as both a doctor and a poet as he summons the voices of America’s poets through the last centuries: “Call me Whitman/ calling Lincoln all across the country/ . . . / Call MacLeish, lawyer/poet/ public servant/ . . . / A poet should not be mean, but be!/ . . . / Calling Frost calling Kunitz calling Ginsberg/ doctors calling poets calling doctors calling poets/ Call me Williams Call me Gilbert Call me/ doctor-poet/ calling across the field/ call me crazed in this need to write/ call me/ ands I beg the word.”

What awaits the poet-doctor Lewis, he who finds himself bound to duel callings? Perhaps there is hope in the future, he muses as he contemplates the remains of the orchard on the furthest reaches of the Dormouse acreage: “two leggy pears, barren/ except for the year after the Great Divorce. Heartache.’ It was then this pair of trees gave out bushels of fruit, saying/ ‘Sweetness for your unpaired self,/ one day, perhaps, another pair.” And so Field Light ends where it began, Lewis having cycled back to the train crossing, where “The train’s last echo slows, and beyond/ the field, sky, I, he/ walks on, if into the sky. / Closer to. Visions of./ Pulled up, lifted through./ Rise up and hear the bells/ . . . / Get on with you!”

Somerville's Ally Sass: A Playwright Who Thrives in our "earthy, queer and very artful" city.

 

Interview with Doug Holder

I have always loved the theatre, and over the years I have interviewed a number of aspiring and  accomplished playwrights, actors, directors, etc.. So it was a pleasure to connect to Ally Sass, who despite the pandemic--keeps on keeping on.

Q:  You are originally from Cambridge, but you have lived in New York and now "The Paris of New England," Somerville, MA. As a writer, how has your Somerville experience stacked up?

A: I think Somerville is a really special part of Boston. It actually feels like the Cambridge I grew up in in the late 90s/early 2000s; earthy, queer, very artful. I live near Union Square and love everything the area has to offer. During my first year of grad school, I wrote late at night and as a form of procrastination, I would go to the Somerville Market basket and buy a few different exotic fruits. I don’t know why, but that became a highlight of my first year. I was excited to really explore the area now that I’m in my third year of school and not taking classes, but because of the Pandemic, a lot of the fun stuff has shut down. Finding community is harder right now, but I can still appreciate the liveliness of Somerville.

Q:  Do you feel it is still true that Boston is a tryout town, and a playwright has to go to Broadway to make a name for oneself?

A: Returning to Boston for my MFA in Playwriting, I was actually delighted to experience a really thriving theater scene. Through my awesome professors, I go to see a lot of shows in the area that really blew me away. I know plenty of Boston theater makers who are constantly working here, and feel no need to relocate. And because of the size, you can form community really quickly. That said, one can also take advantage of how close Boston is to New York. The theater scene in New York is of course much bigger, and one can certainly make a name for themselves in both cities. While having a play produced on Broadway is a fun goal to have, Broadway itself it really only one facet of the American theatre and can actually have some limitations in terms of what kind of work can be produced, how “marketable” it is, etc… Some of the best plays I’ve seen have been outside of that community.

Q: You will be on a Zoom conference for the Boston Playwright's Theatre that is based at Boston University. What is this about, and what will you talk about?

A:Yes, on November 24th I will be chatting on Zoom with BPT Artistic Director, Kate Snodgrass, as well as with my thesis director, Erica Terpening-Romeo, about my new play, Very Good Boys, and Other Myths. This is part of a series called “BPT Talks,” where each BU MFA Playwright is given an opportunity to discuss their thesis play, and also present a short excerpt from the play.

Very Good Boys and Other Myths is a story about a mother named Elaine, and her son, Avery. After Avery leaves his high school due to bullying, he takes refuge through online through World of Warcraft, Youtube, and the “incel” community. In attempt to get through to Avery, Elaine makes her own account on World of Warcraft, only to become fixated by the game herself and get lost in the realm that Avery finds himself in. The play then explodes into a modern, mythical journey deep into the underworld of a mother and her son. What starts as an exploration of various internet communities, becomes a surreal exploration of masculinity, gender, and the internet. This play is a continuation of an ongoing fixation I have with masculinity and all that it imposes on a society.

Q: In one of your plays--a pedestrian meatball sub is the smoking gun for conflict among a group of vegetarians. Do you find that the most banal of objects can seed a play for you?

A: Yes, that play was a lot of fun. That was The Cleanout, a one-act play about four vegan artists living together, who essentially implode as a community when someone finds a meatball sub in their fridge. That play stemmed from a prompt I was given to write a play where the central object is a refrigerator. Immediately, this story came out, which I guess was a response to a certain culture/elitism surrounding food that I observed while living in Brooklyn. The meatball sub of course was a metaphor for the the things that aren’t on-brand about us that we keep hidden away. I would say that every-day-objects can spark a lot of inspiration for me. They typically tap into something that I didn’t realize was on my mind, but once I start writing about them, I can’t stop.

Q: My brother Donald Holder is a Tony Award-- winning lighting designer--so I have to ask-- how important is lighting in your plays?

A: Lighting is crucial in any play! One of the best classes I took as an undergrad at the University of Vermont was “Fundamentals of Lighting” taught by John Forbes. We had to make a 10-minute performance just by lighting a certain object to music, and it was one of the coolest projects I had ever partaken in. So many components of technical theater must fuse together in the right way to make a play compelling. Lighting can set the tone in these inexpressible ways—it’s definitely the facet of technical theatre that I’m most interested in.

Q:You are working on your MFA at Boston University. Have you worked with Kate Snodgrass? How has the program fueled your growth as an artist?

A: Yes, I often refer to Kate Snodgrass at the Fairy Godmother of Boston theatre. Kate is amazing. She works endlessly to make this program run smoothly, to give us the opportunities that will help us grow as artists, and has some of the coolest shoes I’ve ever seen. Kate is extremely knowledgeable about the American theatre, and there are many artists in Boston who would say that they are very much indebted to Kate. I certainly feel that way. I have gained an immense amount of knowledge from this program, both artistically and professionally. The opportunities that Boston Playwright’s Theatre provides to graduate students, including our extensive in-class writing workshops, collaborations with professional actors, and most importantly, our third-year thesis productions, are unparalleled. What I consider to be the most impressive aspect of our playwriting program is that, while having only transitioned from an MA to a fully-funded MFA program in the past six years, it’s gained a level of national recognition and alumni success comparable to top MFA programs that have been around for decades. This program has helped me understand who I am, what I write and how I write.

Q: How has the pandemic affected you, and your work?

A: It’s been a bummer. But also weirdly a gift? First, the part of it that has been that hardest is that since this is the third year of our program, our thesis year, we were each set to have a full production run for two weeks; actors, set, costumes, director, everything. These shows of course had to be cancelled and rescheduled for next year (let’s pray). This was a major shock to all of our systems. Much of our schooling was preparing us for these productions in some way or another. We each have spent months sitting with these scripts, priming them for the stage. It’s also unnerving not know what the future looks like for theatre on the whole, but my guess and my hope is that it will be absolutely come back, and stronger than before. I know I personally have been deeply craving the opportunity to sit and absorb a live performance again. I will say though, the extra time to sit with my script has been really illuminating. I’ve had new, unexpected time to dive deep into the story in a way that only this precarious period could have evoked.

Q: Tell us a bit about new projects coming up.

A: Very Good Boys, and Other Myths, which was previously scheduled for January 2021, will happen sometime next year, 2021-2022. I will have a workshop of this production in this spring though, and I believe there will be a Zoom reading of the play, with actors. I’m also working on another play titled, Zygote, which dissects a modern Jewish-American family’s relationship to the Israel-Palestine conflict. I’ve also begun writing a TV pilot. We will see where it all leads!

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