Israeli Poet Karen Akalay-Gut: An orphan who has found a home.

Israeli Poet Karen Akalay-Gut: An orphan who has found a home.

Interview with Doug Holder.





In an email from Poet Karen Akalay-Gut she writes:





"When I was just beginning to feel at home in the Israeli poetry scene, the author and editor Ben Zion Tomer was looking over a piece of mine he was going to publish and said, “You know, you were born an orphan.” The shock I felt was one of recognition not insult – for the first time someone had understood the basis of my writing more clearly than I had. The idea of exile, of perspective, was something I had carried with me from the days of my childhood, when my parents, long-term refugees and now new immigrants to the United States, chose to share their freshly acquired dwelling with displaced persons and concentration camp survivors. The religious education I was given in a Jewish Day School which emphasized Judaism as its center and Israel as the new home for the Jews was balanced by the afterschool Yiddish Farband Classes which focused on socialism and community. Home in other words, was always relative. But when I first came to Israel as a teenager I understood that for me there was an emotional absolute, that no matter how much it might be strange, and no matter how much I could argue about its directions, this was where I belonged."





Karen Alkalay-Gut was born in London in the Blitz (March 29,1945), and was educated in the United States. She received her Ph.D in English literature at the University of Rochester. In 1972 She moved to Israel, and has been teaching poetry at Israeli universities since then. In 1977 she joined the faculty at Tel Aviv University. In addition to a biography of the poet Adelaide Crapsey, Alkalay-Gut has published numerous articles on modern American poetry, Victorian literature and fiction, and studies of poetry and popular culture. In addition to over twenty books of poetry and a number of CDs with pianist Liz Magnes, Roi Yarkoni, and others, new work scheduled for 2010 include: a compact disk of her poetry with Panic Ensemble; a dual language collection, Belly Dancing in Tel Aviv, will appear with Edizioni Kolibris in Italy; and an edition of Selected Poems will be appearing in Hebrew translation.



I was suppose to meet her in Israeli and talk to her class in 2007, but the University was on strike and it never happened. I met her a couple of years later at McLean Hospital when she was researching a book on Sexton, and Plath. Gut is planning a trip this Winter in 2001, and hopefully will make a trip to the promised land of Somerville and a meeting of the Bagel Bards.





Do you think being born in London during the Blitz had a subliminal effect on you as a poet and writer?



I was born on the last night of the buzz bombs, so in a way I brought the peace, but the real effect on me came through my parents: for them, the blitz in London was a relief. They were refugees, had been fleeing for years before WWII, fled from Lida in Lithuania to Danzig in 1930, were persecuted for my father’s communist background in Danzig, and escaped that city on the night before Hitler invaded, on the last bus out. By the time they got to England they must have been wrecks, but the tragedy of the war only came to them when I was born. It was then that my mother learned that all of her family had been killed in the war. That must have influenced the way I was raised, and the expectations my parents had for me. I think the enormous tragedies that were uncovered at the time of my birth had more than a subliminal effect on me – they are part of my identity.



In your poetry and in your life--you exhibit the feeling of being an orphan. Literally you are not--but metaphorically you are. Explain?



In a way I wanted to be an orphan, to grow up without the burden of my family’s past. To grow up without the past of my people, without the imperative of my gender, without the rules that seem to dominate the way we think. I was always breaking out of traditions, even while I was enjoying my own versions of traditional things. For example, when Isaac Bashevis Singer’s book, Satan in Goray, came out in English, I was sixteen, and I devoured the book. He wasn’t famous yet, and was invited by my parents’ in Rochester to lecture in Yiddish. His lecture was wild, rowdy, nothing like any Yiddish literature the cultured Yiddish audience had experienced, and the audience was appalled. Afterward, my mother brought him to me, and said to him, “Here, SHE will be interested in what you have to say!” That was meant as a little insult to both of us, but I was overjoyed to be coupled with my new hero.

You moved to Israel in 1972 from the States. Israel is a place where many people go to find themselves--they are disconnected where they presently live--and are looking for meaning--a sort of existential crisis. Was that how it was for you?

I was perfectly happy in Rochester, New York. There were many ways in which the city, the schools, the centers, the university nurtured me in a way that is rarely available to people. For years I had saved up to go to Europe, but when I was 20, and had enough money, my parents “strongly urged” me to go to Israel instead. I wasn’t interested, but being a good girl, went along, thinking I’d catch a flight to Greece from Tel Aviv. The moment I landed in Israel I fell in love, and continued to fall in love with every single person I met, every place I encountered. So the first chance I got after I finished school I moved to Israel. It wasn’t easy, and I have political conflicts all the time, but existentially, I’m where I’m supposed to be.



You use this quote in your collection of poetry " Miracles"

From far away everything looks like a miracle,

but up close even a miracle doesn’t look like one.

- Yehuda Amichai, “Miracles”





Is this a call to you for immediate experience--the tangible over conjecture?



I thought I was simply referring to the fact that there are millions of miracles that occur every day – and we usually don’t notice them because we’re so involved in our own survival.



Like the Israelite in Amichai’s poem who is busy watching the back of the man in front of him on the way out of Egypt and doesn’t realize that the parting of the Red Sea has taken place. Medicine seems a miracle to me – the stuff that makes you better when you’re sick. But for Amichai the real miracles are the ones we experience all the time – little amazing details, remarkable in themselves, and of which poetry is created.







You have written a great deal about Slyvia Plath and Anne Sexton. They both seemed like orphans in the context of their tragic lives. Is this what attracted you?



My initial attraction was to their boldness and daring, but the more I read their poetry the more I saw what wonderful artists they were, asserting madness and freedom but with such control and craftsmanship that their art is often invisible. The drama attracted me, and the art keeps me attracted. My ‘orphans’ have the freedom determine their status. Even though my heart breaks every time I think of what Anne Sexton’s treatment should have been, and how much damage her mistreatment did, that isn’t what calls me to her. I am drawn to their pinpoint analysis of the social imperatives that were imprisoning them, and their desire to create their own destinies.







There is no one right way to write a poem. How do you go about it?



When I was nine or ten, a wise Yiddish poet was boarding with my family, and when he saw that I was making some efforts at composition he gave me this advice: “Never write if you can sleep without it.” I have thousands of ideas and phrases in my head all the time, but most of the time they will dissipate if I can ignore them, but when the words start to overwhelm me I jot them down and then begin to work on them, to hone them into the poem that reflects the original thought, and/or to develop them into what they could be.







What school of poetry are you in or have been expelled from?

Orphans don’t go to school.



I’ve been teaching poetry for forty five years. Shakespeare, Chaucer, Tennyson, Rossetti, Wilde, Williams, Stevens, Roethke, Lowell, Pinsky... I learn from them, from my students, from my research. There’s also my rock group – for a few years I was performing with them and in the past few years I’ve been writing lyrics for them. It makes me more aware of the sound of words, how they fit together to make their own meaning. Maybe the whole world is my school. There are a group of poems pasted on the wall in my bathroom – they were written from contemplation there – but they are about how it feels to be a sink, the responsibilities of soap, what is hiding behind the shower curtain, stuff like that. Was the bathroom my school?



A summer dress hangs on two pegs


The sash flutters out, like a butterfly
Who knows where it belongs
and the wind fills out the flowered bosom
as if spirit alone
was enough to give it life



-----Karen Akalay-Gut

“Redneck Poems” by Rusty Barnes

“Redneck Poems”
Rusty Barnes
MiPOesias Chapbook Series
http://www.magcloud.com/browse/Issue/118221
$4.25 Holiday Sale

Edge. Rusty Barnes work will walk you out to the edge, ask you to look over, and consider whether you feel your stomach drop or your eyes water as you read. This is the real thing. Barnes grew up in rural Appalachia and his words are shot through with those Appalachian roots. Barnes creates an image that arouses all the senses in the opening of “When the Wrong Words Get Said”

Car tire on gravel,
rough smell of beer
and roasted corn. . .

the low of cows,
moonshine slips in like a tongue
through the treeless hedge fence

His pen inks imagery onto the page that cannot help but offer us a clear and vivid picture. In the opening work with the killer title: “Hollywood Appalachian Noir: A Lesson,” his description of taking a fist to the jaw is fluid motion

Vaughan turns round and strokes my jaw loose on its strings with his hard-
working fist. . .

Soon I am ass-over-teakettle and not even Patrick Swayze
can save me now. . .

How can one consider putting a book down that opens with a poem that scores being on the wrong end of a fight with such lyricism?

“Redneck Poems” never loses its edge. Later in the book a poem entitled “Cutter” will reach your ears with the echo of a soulful mandolin

Between the witching hour and its successor
I caught her with my utility knife in the open closet

all sound ceases when in a few lines we read

. . .I grasp her by the forearm, press the brachial artery and try
to ignore her pleading, I just want to die, then Daddy,
then Daddy again.

There is only one thing wrong with this poetry book. It’s over too soon. This Holiday Season treat yourself to “Redneck Poems.” You will not be disappointed.

Rene Schwiesow is the co-host of Poetry: The Art of Words in Plymouth, MA.

Somerville Poet/Writer Cam Terwilliger: From the Nursing Home to the Atlantic Magazine

Somerville Poet/Writer Cam Terwillger: From the Nursing Home to the Atlantic Magazine







Cam Terwilliger is a tall man and holds one mean pen. This Somerville poet and writer is equally adept at verse as well as fiction, and has the credits in top tier magazines to prove it. He teaches at GRUB ST., Emerson College, and has an MFA from that same college. He is the author of the short story collection Man & Machine, and stories from that manuscript have appeared in The Greensboro Review, The Mid-American Review, and The GSU Review. I talked with Terwillger on my Somerville Community Access TV show: " Poet to Poet : Writer to Writer."



Doug Holder: I first heard of you when I interviewed several elderly poets at THE SOMERVILLE HOME. They told me that you ran a memoir workshop.



Cam Terwilliger: The program was held during the winter/spring of 2009. We met every Thursday morning. I got a small grant from the Somerville Arts Council. It really went well. We had a range of folks who would appear. We had a number of regulars. Some who were quite young--in their 50's and 60's--one woman was in her 90's. Often my students told me that they had nothing to write about, but we would have these prompts that were very specific to the memories they had. I was invariably surprised that at the end of these prompts they would conjure up these vivid stories about childhood, the Great Depression, or the trials and tribulations of living in a nursing home. I was always stunned by the level of detail and imagination that was displayed in their writing.

DH: What were the prompts?

CT: Stuff like " Write about your first memory of riding a bicycle." One woman wrote this memorable story about the first time she witnessed her mother riding a bike. She had never seen a woman ride a bike, and she thought this was the most magical thing.

DH: Did you ever print an anthology?

CT: No, but we did have a public reading. The Boston Globe covered it. The group members had great stuff that we would revise at the end. I always tried to get them to have that great sense of voice.

DH: You have worked as a reader at top shelf literary magazines such as: the Atlantic and Ploughshares. How much of a chance does an unsolicited manuscript have of getting in these magazines?

CT: I am going to be perfectly honest--the chances are very small. The top tier magazines have a flood of submissions. But they all are read--that was my job at the time. It was very difficult for a fiction manuscript to make it up from the slush pile. You have a better chance with poetry--perhaps because they are shorter, and people are willing to take a chance on them. Half the submissions at Ploughshares are solicited by the editors, the other half are collected by staff.

DH: What qualities do you look for in poetry submissions?

CT: Each poet has his own style. I am looking for that level of surprise. Some poems surprise you but then they falter. In that case you often write a letter to the poet and encourage him to keep submitting. It takes a long time for a poet to perfect their craft: the line breaks--the sound, etc...If you have the desire to perfect your craft you can but it takes a long time. There is not one answer as to what makes a good poem

DH: You got your MFA at Emerson College in Boston. A lot of great folks teach there. I've interviewed writer/poet Richard Hoffman, Tracy Strauss, the late poet Sarah Hannah, and I have had the opportunity to publish Daniel Tobin in the latest issue of Ibbetson Street. Who did you study with?

CT: For poetry I studied with David Barber, the Atlantic's poetry editor. I also studied with Bill Knott. He is different from Barber, but brilliant as well. Knott has some real problems with the way the publishing industry works. I studied with fiction writer Pamela Hunter--a great writer of Flash Fiction.



The Extinct


I see them at museums—arrayed
as the animals they must have been.
Steel rods force their bodies together.
Their faces assemble like jigsaws.
Because no one alive has ever seen them
one missing bone changes their message.
Without the ankle: No one outruns
the asteroid. Without the jaw: Hunger.
It doesn’t matter. All bones are synonyms.
No species can outlast its fossils.
Skeletons totter around their case
like antique alphabets, longing to collapse.
They long to disband the characters
for disease, for ice—whatever composed
the irresistible song: their last evolutions,
the chorus of silence we are not required
to understand, only required to join.

----Cam Terwilliger

Attention Somerville Poets... The Mass. Poetry Festival....May 13

By Doug Holder

I am excited to be on the Advisory Board of the Massachusetts Poetry Festival to be held this Spring in Salem, Mass. I have spoken several times with the Director Mike Ansara, and have attended meetings with poets from around the state about this exciting event that was previously held in Lowell, Mass. I hope to involve Endicott College, Beverly, Mass. (where I teach writing) in this state-wide venue for the art of poetry. Here is quote from the website for the festival that will provide further details.





"MassPoetry has chosen historic Salem as the location for the third Massachusetts Poetry Festival to be held on May 13 and 14, 2011. A two day festival features poetry readings, slams, workshops, a day of poetry for high school students, and a small press fair highlighting published poets. The event is coordinated by founder Michael Ansara, and by a variety of poetry partners, including Salem State University, Salem Mayor Kim Driscoll, Destination Salem, local businesses and poetry enthusiasts. The Massachusetts Poetry Outreach Project, also known as MassPoetry, sponsors this flagship event and also coordinates outreach programs to bring poetry into schools and communities across the Commonwealth.

The Massachusetts Poetry Festival will bring a blizzard of verbal beauty to Salem, a city with a rich literary history and vibrant writing community. It will connect generations, and it will give the city and university a leadership role in building culture in the Commonwealth,” said J.D. Scrimgeour, poet and Professor of English at Salem State University. ‘The Poetry Festival is evidence of the vitality of the fundamental, central art of poetry,” said Robert Pinsky, the former Poet Laureate of the U.S. and the Honorary Chair of the Poetry Festival.


Mayor Driscoll declared, “Salem is proud of its own unique literary tradition and offers many exciting venues for such an event. We look forward, with great enthusiasm, to hosting a successful Festival in May, 2011.” Provost Kristin Esterberg from Salem State University also commented, “Salem State has been engaged with the Massachusetts Poetry Festival since its beginning. We’re delighted to continue the tradition which began in Lowell, and we welcome the festival to Salem, another proud literary city in Massachusetts.”


Friday, the first day of the festival, is devoted to high school students and teachers with workshops at Salem State University. Among the featured readers will be Salem State Alumni, poet Tom Sexton, who has published more than 10 books of poetry and has won numerous regional and national awards for his writing. He is the former poet laureate of Alaska, where he spent much of his life since his childhood in Massachusetts. Day two of the festival will be open to the public and will include readings, workshops, performances, poetry and dance, Shakespearean sonnets, and slam poetry. These events will be held across downtown Salem’s cafes, restaurants, historic buildings, churches, museums, and Old Town Hall.


“Given its long literary traditions, Salem, the home of Hawthorne, is an appropriate site for the 2011 Poetry Festival,” Congressman John Tierney said. “Salem State University’s involvement and the Festival’s educational focus for young students will continue to foster creativity and energy across our community.” The festival brought over 1000 poetry lovers to Lowell in 2009, and the May, 2011 festival is expected to be even larger."




I hope folks from Somerville will make the relatively short trek to Salem to participate in this valuable venue for the spoken and written word.

Poena Damni by Dimitris Lyacos

Poena Damni
Z213: EXIT
Dimitris Lyacos
Shoestring Press 2010
translation: Shorsha Sullivan
ISBN: 978356-05-6
info@shoestring-press.com


Lyacos's trilogy, Poena Damni; in reverse, Z213: Exit is the completion
of the trilogy. If the translations of the poems are exact, these poems
are light years beyond our contemporary poetics. It reads like Homer,
in that it is an epic poem taken from the sea in other words almost forcing
a perpetrated history, each poem connected by heritage. The poems
connect without a consistent use of punctuation; it all reads like an epic
and the epic is intellectual as well as experiential imparting:

"these names and that's how
they found me.And as soon as they brought me I stayed
for a while and then they took me it was a building of
four wards large yards and rooms the rest of the people
were there four wards separate not far from the sea.
And we would eat together sometimes and in the middle
a log with cut branches on top over it an opening for the
smoke, and ashes spread out on the floor black stains
and ashes.And from the pores in the walls a little water
would come and sometimes you could ask go upstairs
and visit somebody else and when sometimes in the
evening the power was out and we were sitting silent in
the dark…"

And these references:

"This is continuity, you travel,
perhaps in your mind, a paper world real, God reeling up
and down landscapes and buildings, knocks down, opens
new roads, doesn't like it, changes again, but there isn't
a seam, His world is onefold and you perceive neither
seam nor contradiction, continuity only…"

Some of Lyacos's poems carry cultural inclinations:

"The slow bells from the church which must be near me
I stopped for a while and waited and now they were
chiming again.And here where I sat, like stains below
the slabs as if blooded.Who was there ringing, guess-
es confused not made clear, who was there ringing the
bell waves going down the dome, the echo of an ocean
that licks on it and drips here.And the flashes through
the window from the one to the other like a search-
light turning around seeking me out.Here, in a flooded
pit full of bodies, branches that cover and float leaves
that float on faces unknown funerary gifts on the side,
phrases by him and the Writ mixed on this page, and
further down sea tombs and then something between
the frozen palms…"

With the exception of a few poems the poems read like quick fiction
enjambed with little punctuation, "Or other marks, or his own parts
that you were reading"

The poets' contemporary writing position is fused with or steeped in
oral tradition and tradition is not a dirty word it is a knowing or
an unknowing, a passing on, where influences come, even when those
influences may come from a lending, or continental cafes, Lyacos is a
master craftsman steering his way through tons of immediate information
or any candle lit for the dead or the coffee house philosophers or mothers'
dire warnings, "This too for a pillow, on top of the bible." or "Remember
to write as much as I can. As much as I remember. So that I can remember."

I love this book, the bringing together, the collage of differences, the
intense focus, the separation of pages, "And then stone yellow gleam
the stones that light up, matches flare again in the room." Every page
inspires a conundrum of thoughts.

Get this book for all your up-to-date-friends who read experimental poetry
or read the master writers. I strongly recommend!

Irene Koronas
Poetry Editor:
Wilderness House Literary Review

The Immaculate Conception Mother’s Club by David R. Surette

The Immaculate Conception Mother’s Club

by David R. Surette
Koenisha Publications
Hamilton MI
Softbound, 85 pages, No Price Indicated
Copyright © 2010 by David R. Surette
ISBN-13: 978-0-9800098-6-6

Review by Zvi A. Sesling

There are far too many poets who simply are not accessible, whatever that means. Perhaps it what down south they call “high falutin’ language.” Perhaps it is what some
consider “academic poetry,” “obscure” poetry or “confusing” poetry. With David R.
Surette, none of these apply. He is easily accessible and straight to the point.

I have had never read Surette before, nor had I see him read. Now I am sorry that I
had not done both. Surette lives and teaches in southeastern Massachusetts, but his
poetry in this volume is based in Malden, Massachusetts. It is down to earth, gritty,
honest, capable of making a reader whose past is similar associate quite readily with
his poetry. In fact, the poetry is a series of vignettes, incidents from the poet’s life,
experienced like a Mark Wahlberg movie. The best part is, you don’t have to be
Catholic to dig him and his poetry.

And if Catholic means universal, then Surette can universally touch readers of every
persuasion, even atheists.

Here is one page from a book of 85 pages:

The Boston Arena

It was another penalty in a career of penalties.
He chopped the forearms of a winger speeding by.
“Two minutes, slashing,” barked the ref.
He snapped. He choked up on his stick, cocked
it, and with all his strength, sent it
helicopting through the air,
clearing the boards, the glass,
climbing higher and higher,
until pausing at its apex, descended,
still spinning, cracking a woman in the head,
knocking her out.
The woman was the kid’s mother.
What are the odds?
He had sent his stick spinning into the stands,
all 4,000 waiting seats, maybe 200 occupied,
and hit his own mother.
The ref tacked on a 10-minutes misconduct.
The rumor spread that, after school, he hooked up
with the mob, collecting, leg breaking, but that
was the rumor for every tough Italian kid we knew.
Maybe he believed he was fated for the work
foreshadowed by that day when
even his own mother didn’t love him.


If there is a weakness in Surette’s poetry, some of the poems have last lines that perhaps should have been deleted, but the poem itself is still worth the read. In fact, this is a book
one should keep, put on the bookshelf and periodically open to read some of the poems.

REVIEW OF “GUD, GREATEST UNCOMMON DENOMINATOR” MAGAZINE

REVIEW OF “GUD, GREATEST UNCOMMON DENOMINATOR” MAGAZINE, biannual, Issue 6, Summer 2010, 206 pages, fiction, poetry, artwork, produced by Greatest Uncommon Denominator Publishing, PO Box 1537, Laconia, NH 03247,$12
perfect bound, $3.50 electronic copy, http:gudmagazine.com, editor@gudmagazine.com

Review by Barbara Bialick

I’ll get this fact out right away. GUD is very good, but I’m only reviewing it from the poetry perspective. There are only 12 poems in this issue. But they fit in visually with the other genres mentioned. A good-looking magazine with a surrealistic, yet contemporary theme, it is not so dark that it’s inaccessible to general readers. It’s strong on imagery and symbolism as in the poem, “Whale on the Roof” by Rose Lemberg:

“My roof is flat, and /there was once a whale on it, red with the dawn,/toothlessly grinning—and grass grew on its back...”.Not wanting to mow the lawn because that was “bad for the environment”, she still had to live with the city coming to mow “the hippie grass down…”

Another strong poem—actually they’re all strong poems—is “Again” by Molly Horan:
she thinks back to a younger age—around September 11, 2001—when she wondered if only she’d not done certain things maybe it wouldn’t have happened. This combination of superstition and imagery is compelling. “Maybe if I’d been younger/hadn’t let my bangs grow out/hadn’t bought the lipstick/too dark to be a Kool Aid stain…” The school sends home a “crumpled” note with her sister about not watching the news: “Every time the clip plays/your child will think the planes are crashing again.”

On it’s website the magazine reveals that it comes out twice a year and requests you submit online. They call themselves an award-winning print/pdf magazine that is also available on Kindle. They are currently reading for their summer 2011 issue.

It looks like an intriguing magazine to publish in, but it better be good, as the pun goes. I’ll close with some lines from “Crumpled Receipts” by Bryan C. Murray:
“I took my vitamins today, by alphabet,/the way my Centrum dictates…Like most people, I don’t trust return clauses…people always get carried away: men exchanging/ex-wives/doctors calling patients back, reinserting tumors…” And so on.

Give it a read and try to get read if you can.

Chava Hudson: An artist adept with the pen and the paint brush.

On Chava Hudson's website it states:

“After working as a graphic designer, an art teacher, and then designing and producing her own line of outerwear for the boutique market, Chava became smitten with the Internet. In 1998, she studied web design and since then has created sites for universities and non-profits, but mostly designs websites and graphics for small businesses, artists and writers.

As an offshoot of her web design career and interest in writing, she started zingology.com a literary blog in 2007 which has evolved to a just for fun collaboration with a cartoonist and a comedy writer.

As an artist, Chava produces limited edition prints which are currently in private and corporate collections and has taught graphic design and digital painting at Endicott College in Beverly, MA. She's completed four novels, many short stories, and still publishes Zingology.com a blog.


In 2009 Chava began producing and hosting a monthly local cable show for BevCam entitled Out and About, produced by Film North in Beverly, MA. The show features interesting musicians, writers, filmmakers, an occasional foray into cooking, and even a psychic reading by the official witch of Salem, MA. In 2010 she won the BevCam Producer of the Year award for her show. She co-founder of the North Shore Jazz Project and is about to launch a second cable show, Live From Chianti, featuring live music from the Beverly jazz club.


She's published two books Sarah's Secret and The Closing through Zingology Press."

I talked with Hudson on my Somerville Community Access TV show "Poet to Poet: Writer to Writer."


Doug Holder: Your novel "The Closing" deals with (among other things) a murderous real estate agent. Have you had any experience with "Closings" such as this?

Chava Hudson: My father, when he retired, became a real estate agent out in California. So this isn't really related to my feelings about real estate agents. I got the idea for the book when I was walking around Beverly and I saw a FOR SALE sign in someone's house, and the realtor's name was Kevorkian. So I got the idea for a realtor who helped elderly people close the deal or checkout so to speak.

DH: Can you talk about your online magazine zingology?

CH: I am a web designer. I started the magazine originally for myself--for play. But then I realized I had so many friends who were artists and writers. So I started getting submissions from a lot of people. At one time I had 10 people who were on staff. I was printing hard copies. But it all became too much work. So I whittled it down again.

DH: You started the North Shore Jazz Project with Henry Ferrini, the nephew of the noted poet Vincent Ferrini. Have you always had an affinity for jazz?

CH: Not always--I didn't like it when I was young. My entry into jazz was sparked by listening to Billie Holiday. Then I got into Miles Davis. And then it was like "yeah-there is a whole world out there of this music..." Now I like more off-the-wall kind of music. This will be the second year of the Jazz Project that is held in Beverly, Mass.

DH: Let's say I am a writer--(well I am aren't I?)-- If I wanted you to design a website for me, describe the process you go through to come up with something.

CH: I look at it as some kind of painting. I try to get to the essence of my clients. Like a therapist I speak with them for an hour or two. I try to find out what they are trying to communicate.

DH: You taught digital painting at Endicott College in Beverly, Mass. What exactly is this?

CH: It's done on the computer. I think there is a lot of prejudice by people who think the computer is not a legitimate tool to create art. But the fact is software is just another medium. I mean, you still have the ideas in your head. You move in colors and shapes--and you manipulate your images. It is becoming much more legitimate. It is just another medium and it is versatile. I painted on canvass but I prefer digital.

DH: Any new projects?

CH: I have a novella "Dates Out of Hell" coming out. I am reworking a novel I wrote five years ago. It deals with two women who have met for coffee over they years--and how they deal with all their struggles.

Jack Powers, founder of Stone Soup Poets, will be honored at the 15th Annual Richard Cardinal Cushing Christmas Tree Lighting

The late poet Jack Powers, founder of Stone Soup Poets, will be honored at the 15th Annual Richard Cardinal Cushing Christmas Tree Lighting-- Saturday Dec. 11, 2010 6PM One Bowdoin Square. West End, Boston. 617-869-7001. This year’s tree lighting will also honor Richard Cardinal Cushing, John Henning, and Bobby Christofore.

Poetry/Literary Arts Collection at Endicott College

(Beverly, Mass.)


I had discussions with the director of the Halle Library,Brian Courtemanche at Endicott College about starting a poetry/literature arts collection at their facility. We are planning to slowly develop a Literary Arts and Poetry Center that will include a poetry collection, and will be a venue for workshops and seminars, etc....I am asking poets and playwrights, and other writers for donations of their own written works for this effort. Your book will be listed in the Endicott College collection on the NOBLE CATALOGUE. Endicott's books are lent and shipped out internationally. We hope to have an extensive collection and we would love for you to be part of it. Send your donations to :


Endicott College
Halle Library
ATTN: Brian Courtemanche
376 Hale St.
Beverly, Mass.
01915


*** You will receive acknowledgements for your book... and hey... you can say your books are archived in the prestigious poetry and literary arts collection at Endicott...just look it up!

Endicott College/Ibbetson Street Press Visiting Author Series-- Spring 2011

Endicott College of Beverly, Mass. and the Ibbetson Street Press of Somerville, Mass. launched a Visiting Author Series in Oct. 2010. The series premiered with Boston Poet Laureate Sam Cornish, and followed with award-winning poets Bert Stern and Miriam Levine. The Spring 2011 featured writers for the Series have been announced by Doug Holder, founder of the Ibbetson Street Press and Dr. Mark Herlhy, the Chairman of Humanities at Endicott College.

**For more information contact Doug Holder dholder@endicott.edu



On Feb 24, 2011 at 4PM at the Halle Library on the Endicott Campus noted Poets/Publishers Gary Metras (Adastra Press) and Mark Pawlak (Hanging Loose Press) will read from their poetry and discuss their work as editors and publishers.




On April 14, 20ll at 4PM at the Halle Library noted fiction writer and baseball afficando Luke Salisbury will read from his work and chat about America's favorite pastime.














Gary Metras is the editor, publisher, and printer of the Adastra Press which specializes in handcrafted chapbooks of poetry. The American Book Review said of Adastra: “As long as fine literary presses continue to handcraft handsome books like these from Adastra, serious readers can rest assured that the book is alive and well.” Metras has worked with such renowned poets as: Thomas Lux and Ed Ochester, but has published many debut collections as well.



Metras is a well-regarded poet in his own right. Recently the Pudding House Press released his collection “Greatest Hits: 1980-2006.” He has been the subject of a feature story in "Poets and Writers" magazine; he has been widely published in the small press, and has been a featured poet in a recent issue of the literary magazine: “Ibbetson Street.” Metras has read at the Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts, and he teaches writing at Springfield College in Springfield, Mass.









Mark Pawlak is a longtime editor of the respected small press Hanging Loose, http://www.hangingloosepress.com , and the author of the poetry collection “Official Versions."


His poetry and prose have appeared in “The Best American Poetry 2006,” “New American Writing,” “Off the Coast,” “Pemmican,” and “The Saint Ann’s Review,” among other places. In addition, he is editor of four anthologies, most recently, “Present/Tense: Poets in the World,” a collection of contemporary American political poetry, featuring work from some of the country’s best-known writers. Pawlak is Director of Academic Support Programs at the University of Massachusetts Boston, where he also teaches mathematics. He has been the recipient of two Massachusetts Artist Fellowship awards. He lives in Cambridge with his wife and his teenage son.








Luke Salisbury is a professor of English at Bunker Hill Community College in Boston. Salisbury, 64, is a man with a gift for gab, and the well-turned phrase. Eclectic in his tastes, Salisbury, with his signature rapid - fire cadence and disarming laugh, regales you with his anecdotes, his impressive knowledge of baseball, and his “alternative” universe of film, books and political intrigue he has spent many years pondering and writing about. He is the author of a number of fiction titles including: “The Answer is Baseball.” (Time Books, 1989), “The Cleveland Indian” (Smith, 1992), and his novel about the great filmmaker D.W. Griffith “Hollywood and Sunset” (2007). His writing has appeared in such publications as “The Boston Globe,” “Ploughshares,” “Cooperstown Review,” "Pulp- smith,” and others. Salisbury received his M.A. in Creative Writing from Boston University and lives in Chelsea, Mass. with his wife Barbara.

SARX, Poetry by Nancy A. Henry

Review of SARX, Poetry by Nancy A. Henry, Moon Pie Press, Westbrook, Maine, 2010, 127 pages, www.moonpiepress.com, $11.

Review by Barbara Bialick

To begin with I want to apologize to the author, in that I did not read SARX cover to cover as I ordinarily would. She is a sensual, lightly erotic poet who can turn good phrases, but there’s simply too much of this collection to go around. Sarx, which apparently means “flesh” in Greek, means not only lovers loving, but nature naturing. Here are some examples that I enjoyed:

“Husband came spinning and sparkling/out of the brilliant powder of the earth,/his magnificent reason full of glory.” (“A Genesis”)

“These brainy types,/listen to them dissect our souls/they don’t need God/they need more pricey booze” (“Undergrad Waitress Serves Faculty Cocktails”)

“In midsummer, the turtles would stage/their silent siege, heads like dried prunes/just beyond the razor weed…” (“In Midsummer”)

“I am waiting/for you to seep into me/the liquefied silver permeating/all these fractures/in the hard brittle glass of myself/till your shining grace spiders/through every vein,/rings every cell./…I am waiting Lord/step here/into this gray dusty room/make every dust mote sing/and bloom.” (“Noon Prayer”)

According to George Wallace on the back of the book, “Sarx is a book of poems that is, at its core, reverential of its subjects, whether they are sensuous, funny or sacred or mundane; a praise poem to that which is flawless, but also to ‘the erotic power of flaws.’ Once again Nancy Henry gives voice to a heart that swallows things whole. These are poems to cherish, as one might an ‘Ironic secret…this tenderness nearly unbearable.’”

To her credit, Henry lists around 50 known and little known journals these poems were previously published in. She teaches English and humanities courses at Central Maine Community College, Thomas College and University of Southern Maine. She’s published two previous full-length collections of poetry and several chapbooks.

Somerville’s Jane Sherrill: An artist who likes to tear paper….

( Seascape by--Jane Sherill)


Somerville’s Jane Sherrill: An artist who likes to tear paper….

By Doug Holder

Artist Jane Sherrill is on a big tear these days…literally. On her website she writes: “I tear paper. That is what I do. It frees me and opens up possibilities. I’m interested in breaking out of habitual ways of thinking …”

Sherrill tears old drawing and paintings into strips. She then weaves them together to form new collages. She then applies her colored pencils to her creations making for an evocative affect.

Sherrill is an accomplished artist who has lived in Somerville for the past 20 years. Originally from New Jersey, she started out as a poet in New York City publishing her work in a variety of small press magazines and journals. As a resident artist in the Vernon Street Studios in Somerville, she juggles teaching jobs with her artistic work to pay the bills. Sherrill who has worked as a psychotherapist, special education teacher, and a social worker, decided to give up the steady income that came with her profession to pursue her passion—her art.

Sherrill told the News that she regularly participates at the Open Studios at Vernon St. Each November she opens her studio to the public. The Vernon St. Studios is housed in a historic 19th century industrial building (“Rogers Foam Facility’), and is comprised of two buildings. Somerville artists such as Gary Duehr, Emily Hiestand, and Tova Specter have studios on the premises.

Sherrill's paintings, etc… have been exhibited in many Somerville locales, such as: Somerville City Hospital, Willoughby Baltic Gallery, Tufts University Art Gallery, and Baltic Fine Arts to name a few venues.

Besides the collages Sherrill has painted a collection of beautifully rendered seascapes inspired by a week in Truro on Cape Cod, as well as many other works-in-progress. Sherill said: “I love the sea; its constant movement, its colors changing all the time, the transformation of its surface by nature—in short it has the energy of life.”

Jane Sherrill has worn many hats in her long career. She has developed her own monologues for the stage, and has been involved with graphic design. She is like many of the eclectic and talented artists who ply their trade in the “Paris of New England.”


For more information go to http://www.janesherrill.com

Leo Racicot recalls Ted Kennedy/Katherine Hepburn

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"Meeting Katharine Hepburn" by Leo Racicot




The legendary Katharine Hepburn was indeed, notorious for refusing to sign autographs but must not have considered correspondence as "autograph" because I have many letters and notes from her (signed) as well as one cherished autographed photo.


She was interested in doing a screenplay of mine back in theearly 80s, "Walking Song". She liked it but kept demanding I "cut it down "because it was "too long". I cut it and sent it back to her. "Too long",came back the reply. "Cut more!"So I cut and cut and cut.


This went on awhile until the happy day when I was summoned to 244East 49th St. in tony Turtle Bay to meet her. She was much shorter than I pictured, maybe 5' 7", stunning face, very self-centered. It seemed, for the longest time, to be about homemade brownies and tea with Hepburn doing little calesthetics in between ("Opens the pores"). When I finally worked up the courage to ask about the play, Her Majesty waved a dismissive hand, said, "Oh,that play's too short", gave her housekeeper a look that said, "Get him out of here" and ascended into the nether sphere.


HAHAHAHA!!!!! I was crushed. About a month or so later, I received a photo of Hepburn in the mail. On it she wrote, "Sorry.You whittled that thing down to a nub."






"Meeting Ted Kennedy"

by Leo Racicot

Back in the 1980s, I was working
for UMass Lowell Libraries (then
called ULowell) when the Senator
came into O'Leary and headed up
the stairs with his entourage to
the director's office. My colleague,
Marge Ryder, said, "Darn! Now we
won't get to meet him!" A little
while later, Marge nudged me; the
Senator was coming down the stairs
by himself and went into our faculty
lounge. Marge grabbed my arm
and said, "Here's our chance!!"

But once inside the lounge,
we found hide nor hair of Kennedy
and Marge yelled out, "Where the
HELL is he??? He was just in here!!"
No sooner had she said this than
the toilet in the Men's Room flushed
and the Senator emerged. He barely
had time to zipper up when Marge
torpedoed herself at him and introduced
the both of us. In spite of the embarrassing
moment, Ted was more than gracious
and kind. Soon, we were joined in the
lounge by other staffers and the Senator
regaled us with his instant wit and charm.

In all the excitement, I lost track
of the conversation and did not realize
it had turned to talk of the conflict
in Northern Ireland. Innocently, I
piped in, "Did something bad
happen in Northern Ireland?",
thinking some new development
had occurred. Ted's face took on
an air of disbelief and in his full-on
Kennedy accent he said, "YOU
don't KNOW about the TROUBLES
In NORTHERN IRELAND???
dad silence fell on the faculty room.
Then he pointed at me and
ordered, "String this man up
BY THE BALLS!!!"



******Leo Racicot's work has appeared in CO-EVOLUTION QUARTERLY, UTNE READER, MOTHER JONES, SPIRITUAL LIFE, FAITH AND INSPIRATION, GAY SUNSHINE JOURNAL, TOBIAS, THE POET, POETRY MAGAZINE, YANKEE MAGAZINE. Two of my essays were included in BEST OF....anthologies, and I is the recipient (1988, 1992) of the SYLVIA PLATH POETRY FORUM AWARD.

Author Joan Leegant: Novelist of the wandering Jew in search of connection...

Author Joan Leegant: A novelist of the wandering Jew in search of connection...




With Doug Holder



Joan Leegant is the author of WHEREVER YOU GO, published July 2010, and AN HOUR IN PARADISE, for which she won the PEN/New England Book Award, the Wallant Award for Jewish Fiction, and was a Finalist for the National Jewish Book Award. Formerly an attorney, she taught at Harvard University for eight years. Since 2007, she has lived half the year in Tel Aviv, where she is the visiting writer at Bar-Ilan University and lectures for the U.S. State Department. When not in Israel she lives in Newton, Massachusetts. Her latest book WHEREVER YOU GO portrays three lost souls in the Israel--each in their own way trying to find themselves. I interviewed Leegant on my Somerville Community Access TV Show “Poet to Poet: Writer to Writer.”





Doug Holder : I heard you once shared a pastrami sandwich with Allen Ginsberg, the iconic Beat Generation poet?



Joan Leegant: What I recollect of it—I was a teenager, but I was in awe. This was in the mid 60’s. And he had just completed a performance—he was sort of in his guru stage. He was chanting, etc... So I was sort of surprised when he asked my father Bernie, who was a cousin of his, to get him a pastrami sandwich. This was a serious disconnect for me. I didn’t expect him to be so down-to-earth. He was a very regular guy. He asked how the family was, etc... He was an object of curiosity of course for the family. He hadn’t the huge reputation he would make later on. By-the-way the pastrami was excellent--it was N.Y. pastrami of course!



DH: When did you first go to Israel?



JL: My first trip to Israel was in the 1970’s. I was 27. I stayed for a few years and I was enamored with the country. I really admired its spunk and its community at the time. In the late 70’s I had come out of an anti-war period. Israel had just been involved in two wars in 1967 and 1973, and I was used to the sight of soldiers. I speak the language and have Israeli friends—so I am quite comfortable there.





DH: The three young protagonists in "Wherever You Go" seem like lost souls--they are looking to define themselves. They come to Israel. Is Israel a good place for this?



JL: That basically is the theme of the work. People are seeking to connect to the divine or something larger than themselves. They want to find one little corner of happiness. So people do come to Israel seeking something...and sometimes they find it is available--whether it is religious, political activity, or a sense of belonging.





DH: There are two sisters in the novel Dena and Yona. Dena is a staunch ideologue living in a settlement in the desert. Yona lives in New York (and travels to Israel), is an adulteress, and is trying to reconcile with her estranged sister. Who are you more sympathetic to?





JL: Yona is the character who has a lot more compassion, and she is far more vulnerable. I have more compassion for her.



I do admire but I don't agree with the politics at all of the sister Dena. She is a very principled person. There is a part of me that really admires people who want to live by their principles, and are passionate about that. But this can turn into fundamentalism. And that is the point of the book.





DH: There is a lot of hostility in the book towards American Jews. Do you feel that when you are in Israel?







JL: I don't feel it. But I have observed it. I think there is a level in which they are more cynical. The people portrayed in the book are fundraisers for the right wing settlements. And they are aware that the American Jews who financially support the settlements are not going to live there or send their children there. They are not prepared to make the sacrifice to live there. But they will offer their financial support. The people who are willing to accept the money are cynical and that's who I am portraying. One of them says that the Americans come here and help them out but go back to live in their affluent communities and big houses. I guess some Israelis feel that Jews in the diaspora are not living their destiny in Israel.





DH: You teach writing in Israel at Bar-Ilan University in Tel Aviv. You have also taught writing at Harvard University Extension. How do the students differ--what are the writing about? How do your courses unfold?




JL: I do two things. We do alot of reading and discuss other authors work. Then we have workshops. Students work is discussed.


Like the Extension School my students in Israel are of an older population. I teach in an Master's program in Israel--most of the students are native English speakers who are either in the country for the program or live there. This is a program in the English Department of an Israeli University. They are often from South Africa, the United States, Great Britian, etc... Like Harvard Extension they come from diverse backgrounds.



The subject matter they write about is different. Some of my Israeli students come from the army and write about their army experience. Some people have lived in the country for twenty-five years or more and write about their immigration experience. There is a Jewish women in my class from India, and she writes evocatively about the Jewish community in her native country. So often people write about immigration--the tapestry of the immigrant experience, the Jewish experience, Jewish identity, etc...






For more information about MS. LEEGANT go to http://www.joanleegant.com

Dosha, Flight of the Russian Gypsies by Sonia Meyer

Dosha, Flight of the Russian Gypsies
Sonia Meyer
Wilderness House Press
www.wildernesshousepress.com
$24.95

The atrocities inflicted upon cultural groups have existed for centuries. Roma have been hard hit by the full impact of prejudice and persecution. From pre-Third-Reich Germany to Stalin’s reign of terror, to the illusion of Kruschev’s thaw, Rom and Romni have been captured, tortured, left for dead or murdered. Still today, Roma are faced with torment. Sonia Meyer, author of “Dosha: Flight of the Russian Gyspies,” knows the threat of persecution first-hand. At the young age of two, Sonia fled with her parents from the Nazi regime, taking refuge with partisans and Gypsies. By the age of 7 she knew no other life beyond that of war and death. Sonia grew up reassured by the howl of the wolf, for at that moment she knew that she was safe, that the forest could, once again, awaken to its own sounds, following the cacophony of bomb droppings and the crack of gunfire.

From the memories of the nomadic life Meyer was forced to live hiding out in forests, abandoned houses, inns and barns during and post World War II, the story of Dosha, Russian Gypsy, has been given Roma wings to fly. And “Dosha: Flight of the Russian Gypsies,” does soar from its pages, each of its three parts a mixture of action, intrigue, and romance blended seamlessly into harmonious balance.

While the story of Dosha as a Lovari woman is fictional, the historical perspective of Russian Gypsies on the run from the Nazis, from Stalin, and from Kruschev’s Roma round-ups has been successfully and accurately woven through the book with a deftness that slips around factual ennui as silently and mysteriously as the Roma navigate their beloved woods. This is the beauty of Meyer’s ability to bring to life the way of the Roma amidst war and post-war oppression.

In 1941 Dosha is a small child facing life in a war-ravaged country. Days, months, years lived on the move, sharing family around campfires, sleeping soundly in caravans, and becoming one with her horse courses through her veins. It is a life that captivity can never truly separate her from. Later, drafted by the Soviet government as a horsewoman, she and her stallion are trained in Russian dressage. Employed by the State behind the Iron Curtain, Dosha knows the constant pull of longing to be free again, the ever-present threat of death, the inevitable entanglement of lives ordered into service, frightened into silence.

Meyer has put pen to the page in a lyrical movement of literature with a European flair. Her personal knowledge of gypsy life and the time spent in historical research have served this story well. There is richness to her images, depth in her characters, and fluidity in her narration. The swish of a Gypsy skirt, the camaraderie of the Gypsy men, the laughter of their children, and the Roma’s ability to understand and intuit the hidden forces of this world will stay with you long after the last word of this story offers its hush to your soul.
Rene Schwiesow is a Massachusetts poet and writer, co-host of Plymouth’s Art of Words, she thrives on bringing words to life behind an open mic.

Endicott Students at the Somerville News Writers Festival, Nov. 13, 2010

Endicott Students at the Somerville News Writers Festival Nov. 13, 2010

As you know Endicott College ( Beverly, Mass.) is now affiliated with the Ibbetson Street Press. So a bunch of creative writing students lead by professor Dan Sklar attended the festival.


Below the students are with Boston Poet Laureate Sam Cornish, and poet Ifeanyi Menkiti( Wellesley Professor of Philosophy, poet, and owner of the Grolier Poetry Bookshop).





(click on pic to enlarge)


(Sam Cornish center/ Ifeanyi Menkiti far right)





(click on pic to enlarge)

Review of BEYOND THE STRAITS by Marine Robert Warden

(PRESA PRESS)





Review of BEYOND THE STRAITS by Marine Robert Warden, Presa :S: Press, PO Box 792. Rockford, MI 49341, www.presapress.com, $13.95, November 2010 (reprinted from 1980, Momentum Press)

By Barbara Bialick

Last year I had the good fortune to review Dr. Warden’s previous of ten books, FINDING BEAUTY (Bellowing Ark Press, 2009). He must have agreed, for I found my own review quoted on the back of this current, worthwhile reprint from 1980, BEYOND THE STRAITS. This book takes us from the straits of Seattle to the open seas to Asia, and back to the U.S. with wide lyrical lines in lower case, no punctuation, with subtle hints of Whitman but visiting many more places than did the bard of New York.

As Eric Greinke remarks in the introduction, “The search for (Warden’s) voice was something like ten days.” Certainly this book is just as broadly painted, and experienced in viewpoint as the previous one, possibly because he didn’t become a poet until he was 48 years old, and had already experienced the military, marriage, and the practice of medicine, but with a poet’s vision.

In Kansas, he declared, he sensed how out of a “great ground swell off the coast of Asia” our country could emerge, as his wife emerged to him. In the poem “The Great Ground Swell”, he wanted America to experience “what the land could mean for us…a healing process, a rebirth out of rocks with the blades of grass that bend their endless moan across the prairies…” At the same, this sea man looks beyond that which we daily experience: “the continents are merely rock extrusions of the sea’s bed.”

In “Thanksgiving Day 1946”, he writes “today the rain falls over all our land/it falls on the ships in “Frisco Bay…/it rains into the eyes of our dead at sea…” But the men marching by “still don’t realize/there’s a generation waiting for birth/that expects them to make a new land/out of dreams they hatched across the ocean…”

I’d say Dr. Warden deserves to be noticed along with the more widely known poets of the modern and contemporary periods. I will end by quoting the last poem, “Taking Leave”, which speaks for itself: “animals know nothing of this/the real meaning of flowers or love/beyond the crushed petals that excite their senses/…how the industrial city that was destroyed/became a garden of flowers/how my ship pulled away from that harbor/with its cargo of haunted faces/how we floated outward like slow glass/over a sea of fire”. This book deserves its reprint status, and should be read by people today who are watching our country in distress and need a historical context for hope and action, which seems so hard to come by.

Review of A NORTH ATLANTIC WALL BY Donald Wellman

Review of A NORTH ATLANTIC WALL BY Donald Wellman, Dos Madres Press, Inc., PO Box 294, Loveland, Ohio 45140, 95 pages, 2010

By Barbara Bialick

This book-length literary journey would appeal to those who like medieval travel mixed with travel in the present, but largely through intellectual allusions, history, and what the author called “transhistory.” I didn’t notice any particular poems that would stand out distinctly without their book, yet it is interesting reading and written smoothly. As literary analyst Don Byrd notes on the back cover, “Don Wellman maps a remarkable geography. The deeper interest of this poetry, however, belongs to places that are not on the map.”

There is a literal map at the beginning of the journey.—the Spanish Kingdoms, 1210.
There are also some notes in the back, should you want to study more closely all the allusions and opinions. But the author observes on page 39, “The canon urged the poet to wed fabulous lies with the understanding of the readers so as to facilitate impossibilities and join admiration with delight. Does this justify Quixote or make transparent an underlying purpose?”

An example of the metaphorical travelogue reads, p.46, “From the stone bed of San Guillarmo, draw an east west line/the sacred stones lead to the summit on a north south axis/and all of this at the time when a pagan queen ruled the/headlands and the Milky Way was thought to be the celestial colure…”

But the present intrudes into the intellectual fantasy, on p. 47: “Later the poets discussed roof construction after/the Arabic fashion…Families arrived in black Mercedes to visit the spa…”

The quote that most interested me was his philosophical idea about God, page 74:
“So I say, as it is impossible that what has happened has never happened, and so it is impossible too that what will happen shall not happen. And above all, in God, who understands and knows from the beginning what has to happen, even before it comes to be, so it was and is then without a doubt necessary that the future has been completely determined in his thought already, given that he knew and understood always, what causes are necessary for the consummation of what has to happen.”

Donald Wellman lives in Weare, New Hampshire and has written two other books of poetry. For many years, he edited O.ARS, a series of anthologies about post-modern poetics. He has been a translator in several languages.

“Tales Of The Troupe” by Robert Dinsmoor

A BagelBards Book Review

“Tales Of The Troupe”
By Rob Dinsmoor
Zingology Press, No price listed

Reviewed by Paul Steven Stone

“Tales of the Troupe” is just what its title suggests, a series of stories about a comedy troupe named Chucklehead that performed blackout skits and guerilla theater in New York City towards the end of the 80’s. The author, Rob Dinsmoor, who makes his living these days as a science and medical writer, focused more acutely on the funny bone back then as one of the troupe’s onboard skit writers.

“Tales of the Troupe” offers a wry often bemused look at the struggles (many) and triumphs (few and short lived) that await any group of dedicated performance artists who are long on enthusiasm and short on visible means of support. The stories are connected by theme, time and characters but, alas, not by any sense of a building or compelling narrative. They are often humorous, always well written, but too reflective of life itself, which never fails to end its subplots with a dull thud rather then a resounding chord.

“Tales” has much to offer the self-motivated reader who might be interested in off-broadway theater, or Greenwich Village lifestyles, or the perils and pitfalls of the quest for fame and popular success, or who just might enjoy spending a few hours with an enjoyable group of comics and their cohorts. But fiction readers hungering for more story in their short stories, will find themselves wishing the author had allowed himself a little more literary license in conveying the times and adventures of Chucklehead.


**** Paul Steven Stone is the Creative Director of W.B. Mason and the author of "Or So It Seems."

“Midsummer Night’s Dream” presented by F.U.D.G.E Theatre Company –

“Midsummer Night’s Dream” presented by F.U.D.G.E Theatre Company –
Arsenal Center for the Arts, Watertown – November 5th -13th


Review by Adrienne Drobnies



As we slip closer to the winter solstice, F.U.D.G.E Theatre Company brings to the stage Shakespeare’s play of magical realism, “Midsummer’s Night’s Dream.” Joe DeMita’s innovative direction is the greatest strength of this production. The stage is set up with long monochrome strips of hanging fabric, a mirror to one side, and two rotating platforms on the floor, all of which are used effectively. The draped fabric evokes variously trees in the forest, bed covers for the lovers, and the tug-of-war between characters. The music (Debussy, Saariaho) fits well with the minimal and contemporary feel of this staging. The most interesting directorial choice was to divide the part of Puck into two, where the actors echo and mirror each other. And in the dreamscape of the forest scenes, the characters of Lysander, Hermia, Demetrius, and Helena have “shadows,” whose silent choreographed movements seem to represent the pure emotion of the young lovers. The depth and seriousness of those emotions balance the comedy of the characters’ immature actions. The effect of the extra players, enhanced by the stage mirror, is to create a kaleidoscope of altered and divided consciousness. The two Pucks, played by Anne Olmsted and K. Bevin Ayers, worked exceptionally well together. The actors were energetic and professional, with Richie DeJesus outstanding as “Bottom.” The cuts made to the script maintained the beauty of the language, humor, and fantasy in this enjoyable production. At a time of year when some fantasy and laughter is welcome, it’s worth the trip to the Arsenal Center to see this entertaining “Midsummer Night’s Dream.”

Elegiac: Footnotes to Rilke's Duino Elegies by Elaine Terranova

Elegiac: Footnotes to Rilke's Duino Elegies

Elaine Terranova

Cervena Barva Press

2010 $7.00

　

Within this chapbook of longing, grief finds release, "It's true,

life reminds us of death and time, isn't that how life comes

to you…" The poems take flight, yet, grounded in history,
Elaine Terranova

they swim on the surface of the wide blue ocean, yet, the poems

sink into our psyche:



"…I was cold

I was in the iceberg of myself.

wringing my hands,

washing my face without water.

Having forgotten each rhyming wish.

Every word is a word of praise,

even a curse, a word of praise.

Utter it, and you are a beggar…"

　

By the end of the reading the reader realizes it is a journey influenced

by Rilke and completely the poets own experiences and her references

become personal tributes, the mythology of carnival, angels,

female deities:

　

…"The soft contours of an old photo.

Fine lines etched into a hill.

Motion stops. Smile locked

before it is imagined. A trip you didn't take,

bags you let go by without claiming.

There was the window, the line of light

that came between so we were separate.

What dawn pulled away, leaving us

to the normal operations of the world…"



Clearly this is the writing of an accomplished poets, with much to impart.

Cervena Barva Press gives us the most current writers, internationally as

well as our local voices. This is one of the chapbooks that implores us

to invest in our small presses.

　

Irene Koronas

Poetry Editor:

Wilderness House Literary Review

Reviewer:

Ibbetson Street Press

Inventing God by Robert Pringle

Inventing God

Robert Pringle

Pudding House Chapbook Series

ISBN 1-58998-657-1

$10.00

　

"A school of Protestant fish

boats down the Ulanga

aboard Tuesday evening Bible study

pouring gillfuls of Gordon's gin

on the rocks of free will…"



'Inventing God' poses "on a console TV, stares at the finishing touch."

Robert Pringle deconstructs his relationship with established religion;

looking for his own god, "God should have stayed, adjective and phrase."

The poems present all the 'things' god is not. I think the poems are protesting

but I'm not entirely convinced of what is being presented as protest, except the

poems do protest very well:



"A man and a woman

have knocked on the door.

Ten a.m., near freezing,

I hear the shifting

of leaflets and feet.

They knock again,

brood in close voices.

Wonder what they think

of my custom Harley

parked in the driveway.

I knock in return -

a chatter of teeth

and cross-purposes,

unwilling, it seems,

to trust their senses.

"We can lead the way

to His Heavenly Kingdom,"

quiet, a jangling of keys.

"I'm here to enjoy

His earthly Paradise,"

quiet, imagining that hot=

throated roar. "Are you

on the road to Armageddon?"

They could be easing

down the steps. "We know

the prophecy of Route 666!"

"I offer the joy of His

open road - hope the fuel,

charity a fair weather,

faith leaning into every turn."



Some of the poems read like a christian person on LSD



"Eagling from slits in spires, then race round

desks to shake His maiden-splitting penis,

flutter next the cloakroom coats as if

skirts in the face of Mrs. Spence

for all her harangues, hyperbole, finger-pointing…"



or:



"She LISTENS

to the test pattern

on a console TV, STARES

at the finishing touch to a delicate hand

of The Galapagos Madonna,

clay homologue

to Darwin-in-Drag effigy

hanging from a Dollar Mark Cross."



Pringle experiments with word play, uses language poetry and sometimes

the poems are metaphysical in their meaning, in presenting the truth as

omnipresent; the poet references ubiquitous themes, trying to corral

individual thought, reflections on society; (Donne?) or the modern poet lament

(Ferlinghetti?) All this is written with religion and social issues as subject matter

(mostly).



"…Late in the game…"

"We could be sucking in sulphur fumes

right now, straight from Satan's inflamed

nostrils…But, Revelations in extensor

" 'To him who conquers, I will grant…life

in paradise'." "We conquered! and every

particle of 'them' is now our cannibal bodies;…"



Where the poetry fails is in the conjunctions. There is a disconnect that

might leave the reader wondering what one phrase or line or verse has

to do with the other. Forget what I just wrote: I can't find a good

enough example from the poems to substantiate or to make a clear

connection:



"…Molten curse of earth

perpetual, black land sinking, senseless

with good and evil,…

Kind of the boatman guide,

nodding in place of my name."

The writing is powerful and I recommend supporting this fine small press,

'Pudding House,' by investing in this chapbook or any of their books.

'Inventing God' is a book that will call you back to read again and again.

　

Irene Koronas

Review:

Ibbetson Street Press

Poetry Editor:

Wilderness House Literary Review

Review of POETS FOR HAITI, An Anthology of Poetry and Art, Edited by Kim Triedman

Review of POETS FOR HAITI, An Anthology of Poetry and Art, Edited by Kim Triedman, Preface by Paul Farmer and Ophelia Dahl, Yileen Press, PO Box 2828,
Vineland, NJ 08362, www.yileenpress.com, $20 donation benefits people of Haiti, ravaged by the earthquake in Port-au-Prince, of January 12, 2010, through Partners in Health (pih.org)

By Barbara Bialick

With its striking red cover on which a mysterious and mystical blue man made of geodes and straw, strides proudly, this exquisitely illustrated and classy collection of poetry, grew out of a benefit of poetry readings by 18 Boston-area poets held on the Harvard University campus last February, 2010.

This book is a testimony to the power of art and poetry to respond wherever the need is great and emotional. All the colorful, symbolic prints in the book are by prominent Haitian artists. The poems are written by American and Haitian poets, some about the horrors of the earthquake itself, others chosen for the way they speak to God, life and death, history, and the will to survive.

Some of the 30 poets included in the book are former poet laureate Robert Pinsky, Rosanna Warren, Gail Mazur, Afaa Michael Weaver, Daniel Tobin, Danielle Legros Georges, all from the U.S. as well as Haitian poet Marilene Phipps-Kettlewell, Patrick Sylvain and Haitian-American poet populist of Cambridge, Massachusetts, Jean-Dany Joachim, to name a few. There are 18 gorgeous, full-color glossy art prints, including the cover. Here’s an enticing sampling of poetry:

A compelling poem, called “Ports of Sorrow” by Patrick Sylvain, brings you right in:
“Early Afternoon, I stand in my own port of pain…/Port-au-Prince has become an archipelago of open tombs,/Consumed slowly by the sun and forming an everlasting covenant./…Port-au-Prince has neither port nor prince…”

In “Earthquake” by Marilene Phipps Kettlewell, a long, powerful poem, she writes about how the Church of the Sacred Heart of Jesus had an “immense Christ/who stood on top of the steeple, weightless,/…God’s son now lies/face down, open arms embracing dirt./…All hearts bleed as one heart.”

Robert Pinsky contributed his poem “Ginza Samba” from The Figured Wheel: New and Collected Poems 1966-1996 where he writes about “the trading of brasses,/pearls and ivory,/calicos and slaves,/ Laborers and girls….”. that he himself becomes historically connected to through an old saxophone.

But as Jean-Dany Joachim wrote in the last poem of the collection, “This evening I will not cry for my Dead/…I give my tears in exchange for LIFE…”.

On that note I urge you to get this wonderful, sad, yet hopeful collection of art and poetry.

A Tribute to Jack from his friend Sidewalk Sam

At the memorial service for Jack Powers, the founder of Stone Soup Poetry of Boston, Mass., the famed street artist and Power's close friend Sidewalk Sam, made an eloquent tribute speech about Jack. A few years back I worked with Sam to organize Jack's 70th birthday, along with Margaret Narin and the the Rev. Louise Anderson. Sam graciously sent me the text of the speech.




A Tribute to Jack from his friend Sidewalk Sam 10/24/2010


Jack Powers spent every waking moment of his existence devoted to noble intentions and noble pursuits. He lived a noble life by practicing hundreds of little acts of nobility on a daily basis. He was a humanist. He was concerned with the condition of human-kind.

I was in awe of him for his devotion to the noble idea of poetry and for his absolute belief in the noble idea of Mankind. I worked with Jack constantly over the years on poetry and other artistic projects.

Let me tell you a story … Jack was the main person I relied upon when my wife, Tina, and I undertook a vast project to ennoble a loathsome passageway from Haymarket into the North End. Remember it? It was the Freedom Trail, a pedestrian footpath that meandered under the elevated expressway and was the principle entrance into the North End from Boston, before the Rose Kennedy Greenway was built. Rusty, decayed, filthy and forlorn, it became a dungeon-like flophouse for homeless people who panhandled tourists passing through.

Jack, Tina and I decided to turn the block long space from a dungeon into a noble medieval Italian cathedral that would provide an appropriate welcome to tourists into the North End. Jack helped us clean up three dump truck loads of trash that we containerized for the City to haul away. We installed trash barrels and Jack swept the block and cleaned up the area many times a day. Nancy Jameson built seven flower boxes, which Tina and Jack painted with Tuscan motifs and planted with flowers and then maintained daily. We got a lift from Modern Continental Construction Company for the entire summer. Jack donned breathing gear every day, raised himself up to the underside of the overhead highway two stories above us and cleaned and scraped away decades of filth, rust and debris.

Hardly any metal held that highway up when Jack finished. He removed tons of rust! Once cleaned, we painted the beams and supports that held up the highway to resemble ornate marble church pillars. The entire block long underside of the highway was painted like a royal-blue cathedral ceiling - a painted "heaven." Jack placed hundreds of gold stars in it. We painted dozens of cherubs flying among gold laced clouds in the blue, star-studded sky. We read poetry daily. We had violinists perform and singers sang arias along the walkway.

Jack thrilled to the whole enterprise and devoted himself entirely to it. It consumed five years of our lives. It was a celebration of the streets! It took one of the worst examples of public spiritless-ness and turned it into an exalted expression of high art.

It was what Jack was about. He was a poet … but he was so much more. He believed in people. He acted like a high priest of people in daily life. He believed in Boston. To him Boston was his temple. He tried to make daily life in Boston a holy experience. He was high-minded. He believed in the power of the little guy, you and me, to exalt ourselves and make of daily life a paradise.

Jack thought immense thoughts and lived an immense life and was completely undaunted by poverty and class disadvantages. He went about the City as a humble street servant, doing common day labor – like a serf, like a peasant, like a ditch digger, like a grape picker. He was proud to be identified with them. And as he grew more and more into that role, I thought more and more that he was like St Francis of Assisi and I was in awe of the hundreds of tiny corporal act of mercy that he would bestow on Boston streets daily. As he went about his appointed rounds, Jack was a holy man. He lived his last years a misunderstood saint, a downtrodden seer; sweeping our streets. His broom was like Demosthenese 's lantern – instead of looking for an honest man, Jack cleaned the pathways of Boston for us, because we were all honest men.

He saw our beauty and our worth. He saw beauty in the mundane. He was a Johnny Appleseed of the streets. In his character as Jacques DeBris, he collected trash trophies and set them on little stages like sculptures. They were beautiful! They were wiser and kinder than anything Marcel Duchamp ever did.

Wisdom, vision, insight, hard work, deep down goodness, great humor, unending love… Jack was so beautiful.

Jack had no faults, or none worth mentioning. Certainly none to be mentioned on the glorious level on which he lived. His spirit… ah, that is his story! And we all have a story about Jack ...

The Great American Poetry Show edited by Larry Ziman, Madeline Sharples, Nicky Selditz

The Great American Poetry Show
Volume 2
Poems by
Edited by Larry Ziman, Madeline Sharples, Nicky Selditz
The Muse Media
West Hollywood, CA
Volume 2 Copyright © 2010 by Larry Ziman
Hardcover, 157 pages, $35

Review by Zvi A. Sesling

This book of poetry really is a “show.” It is 8x10, hardcover
and provides 157 of poetry, followed by a bio of every
author. Moreover the authors are presented in alphabetical order
which is especially useful if you want to find the poem or author
again.

As for the poetry, it has some old poetic friends like A.D. Winans,
Lyn Lifshin, Alan Catlin, but for the most part I am not familiar with
the poets, though their poems are of high quality and belong in “the show”
which is baseball talk for the major leagues.

Of the many poems a number caught my eye let me name just three: To My Daughter on a Fine Fall Day, by Carol Carpenter, Big Daddy by Carrie Jerrell, Remembrance by David Parke about a lost love which closes: At night when I stand in the chilled desert breeze/ and feel it lightly kiss my face,/I close my eyes and feel the phantom of your lips against mine.

The magazine has a penchant for personal poems as a good many of them are first person, though Lois Swann’s short poem (8 lines) is quite enticing:

Thanksgiving

The frost has left a simple beautiful pattern
on the black car roof
Like stars clustered or marcasite
threaded with silver.

Shivering, undressed, I find such marks sparkling
on the skin of my inner thigh,
The sign of you I am loathe to bathe away,
fearing to squander diamonds

To be sure there will be poems you do not like, but in 157 pages can you really expect
every poem to grab you? No, but in The Great American Poetry Show my guess the
majority (probably more than a simple majority) will be enjoyable, and since every reader is different, many readers will connect with a number of the poems and poets.