Outside the Lines Studio: A place outside the mainstream that fosters outsider art.

Outside the Lines Studio: A place outside the mainstream that fosters outsider art.

By Doug Holder

 At a recent meeting of the Somerville Bagel Bards, I met with artist Anne Johnstone and Tufts University student Libby Schrobe. Both Johnstone and Schrobe are involved with the Outside the Lines Studio near the Tufts University campus. The studio is a sort of clubhouse serving people from Somerville and Medford area with mental disabilities. Schrobe, an intern at the studio said they offer classes in art, cooking, and other activities for members. The studio has hosted shows of various students’ artwork at local coffeehouses like True Grounds in Ball Square, and others.

Johnstone a teacher at the studio, is an accomplished artist and she works with clients often using papier-mâché to create puppet characters. She also works with members through painting and creating structures with chicken wire, and other media.

Johnstone studied at Brown University, and U/Mass Boston. She has had her own exhibits at the Salem Art Association, the Ga Ga Gallery in Swampscott, Mass. and other venues. She has a space at the Mt. Vernon Street Studios in our town, and lives in the Davis Square area.

Schrobe, who has many duties at the studio, told me: “The studio gives folks a place to pass time in an interesting way—rather than just sitting around. It gives them a sense of accomplishment, self-esteem.”

Schrobe said she is a clinical psychology major at Tufts, and often helps running the art classes.

Schrobe has many projects on the burner for the studio including an exhibit at the Tufts University Art Gallery, and a subsequent art auction.

Both Schrobe and Johnstone agree that there is a lot of raw talent among the artists they work with. This is yet another layer of talent that adds to our rich milieu in the Paris of New England.

 http://www.outsidethelinesstudio.org/main.html

Review of A CHILD TURNS BACK TO WAVE, POETRY OF LOST PLACES by Peter Neil Carroll

Review of A CHILD TURNS BACK TO WAVE, POETRY OF LOST PLACES by Peter Neil Carroll, winner of the Prize Americana, The Poetry Press, of Press Americana, Hollywood, California:  Americana, The Institute for the Study of American Popular Culture, 7095-1240, Hollywood Boulevard, Hollywood, CA 90028, www.americanpopularculture.com, 79 pp., 2012, $15.

Review by Barbara Bialick

This book, A CHILD TURNS BACK TO WAVE, POETRY OF LOST PLACES, which inspired a Hollywood publisher of Americana, is a visual image-filled volume which pivots on the theme of degradation and the fading away of any sign of certain Native Americans and others. This visceral knowledge came from traveling extensively in Western America where he observed how people, buildings, roads, vegetation and rocks crumbled or disappeared under other layers through time, both naturally as well as from the holocaust against Native Americans in the Old West’s history. The ensuing metaphors leave the poet with a deep feeling of loss as he continually came upon remnants of almost magical appeal.

An example of this phenomenon can be seen in a list poem called “Names”:

“Names bleed through dusty brick./HEN & BEN/THE SHOE MEN/MARTINGS DEPARTMENT STORE/Here for you yesterday/here for you today/

And gone last week. Names/that ran the river towns/…Windows in deserted shops post/names of jobless girls who stuck around,/got pregnant, chilled on pills, fell in/and out of love, and too young died…”

In “Waiting for the Moon” he writes, “…Time then to enter shaman country—/gypsum dunes white as snowfall, wilderness of yucca and violet roses/bedded on crests slippery as the sea./The full moon’s expected, first/night after the longest day. How/the ancients marked this celestial/coincidence is lost. I’m on my own…”

As Crazy Horse of the Lakota said, “The Great Spirit gave us this country/as a home. You had yours.”

The author of this collection, Peter Neil Carroll, has written about place in America as both a historian and a poet. This is his second poetry collection. He is also the author of RIVERBORNE: A MISSISSIPPI REQUIEM. He has published in many journals such as Pacific Review, New Mexico Poetry Review and Monterey Poetry Review. He has taught creative writing at the University of San Francisco and history at Stanford University.

He hosted “Booktalk” on Pacifica Radio and edited the San Francisco Review of Books. Born in New York City, he lives in Belmont, California.

Clangings by Steve Cramer

Steven Cramer

Clangings


Steven Cramer

Sarabande Books

ISBN 978-1-936747-46-7

2012 $14.95



Clangings is a poetry book open to mystery. Each poem

is titled and paginated in the table of contents and with each page

devoid of the poem title. At first I imagined the poem as one

or several long poems with a blank page separation. Interesting

how I came to understand the poems as individual and also as one

poem, by studying the reasons for Cramer's intention. The cover art,

image by Johann Fournier, with three exact heads, reminds me of a

Buddhist statue and also requires closer attention. There is a movement,

an adjustment and concentration to the details in the way the poems read

and the cover image portrays. Often as in a concrete poem the reader

needs to be open to the many layers a word may contain. The one

word concrete poem lends definition to the word, being itself as it

is scripted, but it is also a reflection on the many meanings it brings:

...

“Dickey says we're born in a reek

kind of ammonia, sort of a Comet

paste thickened with piss. The wet

crimps your nose and stinks if we kick.”

…



We are brought to an immediacy, the birthing, as a poem, as metaphor,

images in a particular reality, lends to the imaginings a poem may

utilize, or not use. In this segment of the larger parts, in this verse our senses

are used so that we may recognize the poem as birth. All the poems therein

are about truth, a surreal, dada truth, an experimental truth, born from one's

reality and the way the mind often may perceive. The poems live on the page:



…

Forks can't solve it any more than a kettle.

Forks and kettles are found in the gospel

where they go horn to horn with the devil.

Look, here's his hide, bristling in a bottle.”

…



The rhythm carries the words. The perfect separation, the line breaks

sing into the next line. Meaning is constant in the images and metaphor

and what the image may conjure is plainly seen and I accept their meanings

in a real and in a poetic sensibility, “he overshadows the light divided,”

as if the poem becomes a gospel, each word thought connection then

flowers and thistles each verse, thus making reality dance with all the

meanings and their concrete connections:

…

“I could clang wish-bells, break out a dish,

but I know he's the headache at the base

of my throat. He's left ice in my voice,

foam round rocks where we used to fish.”



The word journey continues on every page we encounter

“a finch in my chest flinches to get heard” the poems engage us

in conversations about our own thought process, on how to read

poetry, or write poems. Cramer's poetic form is impeccable;



“Dickey my door, I'm seeing. Yesterday

I can tackle after all, and I feel like it

opens an ocean view from my parapet

of mountains and moons of Mercury.

…



This is a fantastic read and an enormous gift for anyone who appreciates

good poetry and perfected four line verse.



Irene Koronas

Poetry Editor: Wilderness House Literary Review

Reviewer: Ibbetson Street Press

An Affair of Concoctions‏ by Eamon Loinsigh

An Affair of Concoctions

Eamon Loingsigh

Shanachie 51 Press

$10.99 on Amazon

Review by Rene Schwiesow

If you’re expecting the usual trite template for a work of fiction, you will not find it in this first novel by Eamon Loingsigh.  The work is short, a novella, and offers readers a refreshing change of pace from the tired standard fare.  “An Affair of Concoctions” is intriguing.  According to Loingsigh in a 2009 interview, “. . .I knew that the story couldn’t be told in a traditional format. At least not to the effect I was looking for. It needed to be sparse, obscure and it needed to say a lot with very little words. It needed to be written in a way that would leave a lot to the imagination.”

And the work certainly does say a lot with few words. 

An Affair of Concoctions bears the fingerprints of many authors, perhaps most poignantly the existentialists.  In “The Stranger,” Albert Camus writes, ““I looked up at the mass of signs and stars in the night sky and laid myself open for the first time to the benign indifference of the world.”  Loingsigh’s protagonist, Jonathan Piltdown, realizes the world’s indifference too:  “Wasn’t it Camus,” Loingsigh writes, “who said the horror of indifference is that the universe doesn’t care about our struggles?”

Two pages later, Piltdown’s daughter dies.

The name of Loingsigh’s male protagonist is no coincidence.  Piltdown was the name of a hoax perpetuated from bone fragments declared to be the remains of an early human.  It was 40 years before the forgery was exposed.  Piltdown, a seemingly typical corporate suit, may also be other than he appears.  However the reader may interpret Loingsigh’s characters and story, it is evident that Piltdown and the female protagonist, Maison, suffer from existential angst.  Throughout the book they experience a pervading spiritual fear and a struggle to get back to and be more responsible to God.

The relationship between Piltdown and Maison is the heart of the story.  If you are at all interested in the psychology of relationship, the pair will present you with plenty fodder for examination.  An online connection leads Piltdown to attempt a real-world tete a tete, which becomes more a game of cat and mouse than functional meeting.  From this reviewer’s perspective, curiosity ensnares you page by page as Pildown’s motives, psyche and emotional stability are questioned.  Exactly what is his attachment to the idea of Maison?    Throughout the book we are left to wonder whether the relationship is really as it appears.  The subjectivity inherent in “An Affair of Concoctions” will give book club members the opportunity for lively discussion.

If you swoon to predictable series like “Twilight,” “An Affair of Concoctions” may not be the book for you.  But if you prefer not to be spoon fed plot and enjoy the avante garde in a story; if you are looking for attention to craft and detail; if you long for something that will feed your desire to delve into the psyche of the characters and, perhaps, even make a connection to this postmodern world, then Loingsigh’s “An Affair of Concoctions” is definitely the book for you.

Loingsigh, who at one time was called “New York’s shanachie,” is an author to watch.  Though he no longer appears frequently on New York’s literary circuit, he remains a master at telling a tale.  Give yourself an early holiday gift, drop by Amazon and order your copy of “An Affair of Concoctions.”  Loingsigh’s story weaves an amazing, intricate web.  Become entangled.

Rene Schwiesow is co-host of the popular South Shore Poetry venue, “The Art of Words.” She writes a column for the Plymouth Center for the Arts in The Old Colony Memorial and when she is not writing can be found reading, cooking, or searching for amazing shoes.

Boris Pasternak My Sister Life and The Zhivago Poems Translated from the Russian by James E. Falen

 

Boris Pasternak

My Sister Life and The Zhivago Poems

Translated from the Russian by James E. Falen

Copyright © 2012 James E. Falen

Northwestern University Press

Softbound, 164 pages, $17.95

Review by Zvi A. Sesling

Translations from some foreign languages with which we have some smattering of familiarity are less difficult for the translator-reader relationship.  Spanish and French come to mind.  Other languages, because of multiple meanings of words (or characters) leave a reader to wholly depend on the translator. Russian and Chinese jump out, as do some Eastern European languages, Hebrew, Arabic, where the reader cannot connect in any way with the original, even when it is printed on the facing page.

Once, a long time ago, I owned a book of Boris Pasternak’s poetry.  Most people remember him as the author of Dr. Zhivago, but it is his poetry that brought him fame in his native land.  My copy was borrowed by some forgotten person and never returned. That was one of the books that “disappeared” and led to my “do not lend” policy.  

Anyway, I discovered a brand new translation of Pasternak’s My Sister Life and The Zhivago Poems in one volume, translated from the Russian by James E. Falen.  Falen has previously translated Pushkin and Akhmatova, two very difficult writers to translate, so I was not worried about Pasternak being hacked up.

In fact, I was pleasantly surprised at his ability to bring what might be considered archaic words and forms to the page with ease and elegance.  Even the rhyming schemes, when used, work well. Falen has done an excellent and enjoyable translation of Pasternak’s work. One of the book’s strengths for me is the lack of facing page original language.  That leaves 164 pages of English translation and a totally readable book.

One example from My Sister Life is “How Well You Played that Role” in which the poet bemoans a past, unfaithful love:

How well, how well you played that role!

While forgot my cues!

Forgot that you’d sing other roles,

As someone else’s muse.

Along the clouds the boa sailed on

Through field of new-mown hay,

And oh, how well you played that role,

Like sighing ripples play!

And leaning low above the oar,

A swallow on one wing,

You played that role far better, dear,

Than all the rest you’ll sing!

From the same sequence is another of Pasternak’s love poems.  Though one would gather from the novel Dr. Zhivago that there exists deep passion in him, it is the poetry which reveals his most passionate writing.  

Crossing The Oars

Rockaway boat in a somnolent breast,

Willows sweep down over collarbones kissing

Elbows and oarlocks … but, oh, take a rest,

This is what nobody sensible misses.

This is a song for more than a few.

This is a song … of ashes of lilac,

Splendor of chamomile crushed in the dew,

Lips upon lips to be bartered for starlight!

This means embracing the vault of the sky,

Wrapping your arms around Hercules, clinging …

This means to squander—and never day die—

Night after night on the nightingale’s singing!

In The Zhivago Poems, the second part of the book, we find Pasternak still writing about romance and love.  Take the first two stanzas of “White Night” for example:

I dream of a far-distant time,

Of a house on the Petersburg quai.

A landowner’s daughter from Kursk,

You came as a student on day.

You were charming and had your admirers;

And the two of us all the white night

Found a place at the window enclosure,

Looking down from your skyscraper height.

Or there is this stanza from “Autumn”

At one we’ll sit, at three we’ll go—

I with a book, you with your knitting,

And in the dawn we’ll never know

What time it was we left off kissing.

Clearly, for me, Pasternak is a poet of passion. His subtle metaphoric references of love and romance, love making and separation, the elegance of his writing is what many poets who toss a cup of it in your face, or let it spill out to expose themselves and most often former spouses or lovers leave little for the imagination.  No, there is nothing explicit here like those who write about body parts, bones, sexual prowess, cheating, etc.

Pasternak, who lived from 1890-1960 is more closely aligned with the Romantic poets than with our confessional poets, though in his own way, Pasternak’s confessions unfold in a more alluring manner.

__________________________________

Zvi A. Sesling

Author, King of the Jungle (Ibbetson Street, 2010) and Across Stones of Bad Dreams (Cervena Barva, 20110)

Reviewer, Boston Small Press and Poetry Scene

Editor, Muddy River Poetry Review

Editor, Bagel Bards Anthology 7

Jared Smith on the late small press icon Harry Smith: A MOMENT IN THE MAGNIFICENT TIME WE SHARED



A MOMENT IN THE MAGNIFICENT TIME WE SHARED By Jared Smith To even begin to understand the scope and power and dignity of Harry Smith, you have to understand the social and intellectual maelstrom that he rode the center of in the 1960s and 70s onward in New York City.  Rage.  Vietnam.  Women’s rights: Our Bodies Ourselves. Civil Rights.  Gay pride.  All piled against the vast complacency of the mainstream media, initially unfocused  through a rising up-swell of tortured voices that were easy to ignore in the beginning. And there was Harry Smith moving into the center, a bear of a man rolling boisterously with the passions of the time and focusing all that power through his own words and actions, and also through organization of the un-organizable, his giving voice to The People, his own majestic poems that included both formal verse and open jagged dashes into the solar plexis of complacency.  And his publishing.  The small press world we draw our writers from today would not have existed without the work of Harry Smith and only a handful of others who worked with  him.  Harry was the poet and publisher I sought out and pursued diligently through eight years between his inclusion of my early work in an anthology of young poets and his finally accepting my first book of poetry in 1983.  Harry Smith, who brought together Menke Katz, Poet Laureate of Lithuania, with the likes of Sid Bernard, Tom Tolnay, H.L. Van Brunt, and the heart of the dissatisfied New York writers into a powerhouse of revolutionary cultural change that he combined with the voices and machinations of Len Fulton and Hugh Fox to create a full cross-country counter-culture of change through his work at COSMEP, CCLM, the Pushcart Awards, and other ventures. But what right did I have to even approach Harry Smith, I thought, as I walked into the beehive of activity that comprised the offices of The Smith at Beekman Street in Manhattan? Stan Nelson was rushing out the door.  Sid was dripping cigarette ashes over a pile of manuscripts, having just stopped in from his work as a freelance writer and a roving editor for Smith.  Lloyd had a phone clutched in each hand as he strode up and down the office.  And Harry sat calmly in the middle of it all, his high forehead and white mane of hair reminding me in that first moment of Melville’s blank white wall—whether of good or evil, impervious and containing massive power that came from something indescribable that transcended our beliefs and wove them together.  I found myself at a complete loss of words, merely mumbling and scraping and lowering my own eyes in order to merely be around Harry and these other men, and listen as intently as I could in the time given me to the words they had to say, knowing those words would become a part of me. I was young and very small, but Harry was magnificent and welcoming and generous, bringing me into the center.  He took me to Suerken's a restaurant  (near his office)  where he maintained a table famous among the New York literati, introduced me to mid-morning Bloody  Marys, and offered a very generous advance for what was after all a first book of poetry.  I see him to this day, with the broad dark round table set before him with white napkins and a rose in a vase upon it along with “whatever food  you would like,” his arms opening wide with welcome repeatedly as ideas took shape and were tasted between us..  Here was the ferocious man who played passion into the poetry of his time in the same way that William Packard was playing control and craft into the same scene through his work at The New York Quarterly.  Here was the writer of Trinity and so much more, an intellectual magnet, and we were there together at the center. We moved our separate ways again as time moved on, though Harry published a large number of my poems over the years since.  And we remained the closest of friends even after I moved west.  I would visit him in his  brownstone years later in Brooklyn, and we would exchange poems and ruminations and praise for the natural world after he moved to Maine.  But that center, that Suerken's  where we sat and had our fill of literary alcohol has always been at the heart of my most cherished memories. Harry, we would not have had the world we live in now—would not have had the freedom of choice over words and actions that we have—had it not been for you, your strength, generosity, philanthropy, and creative majesty.  I think that we all wish that we could have given you more. Bio.Note: Jared Smith is not related to Harry Smith, though he wishes he could claim the connection.  Harry published Jared’s first book, a book-length poem, Song of the Blood, and it is reprinted in full in Jared’s Collected Poems: 1971-2011, published by NYQ Books,  and available through Small Press Distribution at http://www.spdbooks.org/Producte/9781935520511/the-collected-poems-of-jared-smith-19712011.aspx?rf=1  THE WORDSMITH (for Harry Smith in Memoriam) "And how from all death life is reborn" Louis Aragon We remain here forgetting little of your departed life full of winds of mirth and reverie of burning nights in attics for restless exiles and new arrivals sacrificing time for others who struggle to locate the right phrase from the ephemeral, Harry,always colliding with idealism often with the young, outcast and invisible, in a protective fate of keeping your Word and us alive on cerebral tongues as a warm inner light for generations. --B.Z. Niditch

A letter to Kathleen Spivack: With Robert Lowell and His Circle

A letter to Kathleen Spivack:  With Robert Lowell and His Circle

By Irene Koronas

Dear reader, I will review this book, initially, by addressing

it to the author, Kathleen Spivack. Please be reminded that

it is a review and I bring the review back to you as a reader.

Dear Kathleen

Last night, I first made my way to the bookstore,

and with some effort the young sales person helped

me find your new book, “With Robert Lowell and

His Circle,” on the shelf under the L's. Then I traipsed

off to a poetry reading with the book in my mind, anxious

for its story. I had to separate myself from seeing your image

as we greeted each other at the Saturday morning Bagel Bard gathering.

Once I left my own images and concentrated on the words

on the page and when much later I was open to the

newness of this book, I found myself engrossed with the

historical, instead of “an invert” relationships a new book

might offer.

By the time I left the poetry reading, with your book

still in a plastic bag begging me to open to the clean pages,

anxious to read about what I perceived as a glamorous time,

(from all the talk about Lowell and Plath and Sexton),  and

the supposed glamor of suicide, depicted in other books. I was

interested in your writing, your participation during those times.

Waiting down under in the subway, for the 77 bus, I opened the book

and read the introduction. Realizing we are from similar circumstances,

how we relate to the immigrant way, the accented language, the need

to be an American success story, brought me closer to understanding

the way the book is written. I read the beginning of the first chapter,

“Family” and then slipped the book back into my bag. When I have

more time I will read more. The book mark is on page twenty.

Dear Kathleen

“If pulled into the sexual orbit of this extremely

attractive person, one would be burnt to cinder.

Lowell, with all his genius and madness, would

make sure to survive. A girl would not.”

Kathleen, your intellectual life was on its way to maturity. The

beginning of the 60's was (and even now) a time of inequality

of circumstances, which lent to your feminine innocence.  Lowell

seemed entitled, (or what I perceive as entitlement) juxtaposed

with your young student's innocence, became a recipe for disastrous

consequences. Your writing presents this focused and broad under-

standing about Lowell, out of context, or in context with the times:

“at that time Millay was out of favor. She

was considered too romantic, too direct and

“out there” - a girl might have a passion for

her poetry. But I was in the land of oblique,

incomprehensible words, words one had to

struggle to understand. I was in Boston, the

Land of Harvard, with sophisticates who

spoke of poets I had never heard of.”

Lowell, being a multilayer character and teacher,  with his approach

to teaching, dogmatic and gentle, lends to an interesting read.

This is so clearly shown in the way you depict his everyday posture and presentation..

Your portrayal of the great poet Lowell is masterful. Your book is written

to be understood. (I thank you for that)

The poets become real and not a romantic rendition of who the reader

might want to think they are. This then gives the reader real under-

standing. Poetry is also the way a poet lives and thinks and all the

different ways a life may  lead to writing poems. Your writing

captures the nuances in the details. Their lives are perceived by your

discerning eye:

“On a particularly lucid day, Lowell passed out copies

of Sylvia's poem “sow.”

 I can still recall his somewhat nasal Southern-Virginian-

New England voice, oddly pitched, as if starting to ask

a question, saying to Sylvia and to the class “This poem

is perfect, almost.” A slight breath-gasp, nasal and out-

ward, as if clearing his sinuses silently, “There really is

not much to say.”  A kindly but bewildered look. Long,

struggling silence. Lowell looks down at the poem, brow

furrowed. The class waits. Sylvia, in a cardigan, does not

move. She listens. No one else moves either. “it appears

finished.” Long silence. Lowell looks agonized, but then

he always does. Anne fidgets. Realizing that her arms

draped with charm bracelets are making noise, she stops.

Sylvia leans forward, dutiful, expressionless, intense,

intelligent.”

Dear Reader:

The descriptions of Lowell as teacher send goose bumps.

I think about my own reactions if I’d of been there. My youth

and inexperience would've caused my shyness to take a seat

in the back of the room. If I’d been an older student I would

scream obscenities and been thrown out of class. Spivack has

an acceptance. She has the vocabulary which enables the

reader to experience what she experienced, an acceptance

in being able to be herself even if it is shyness, she will take

her seat and observe. It is remarkable how the reader will

be able to relate to this book because of Kathleen's observations and note

taking. She is able to bring the events to life. Chapter after

chapter we read from this awesome book:

"How did Lowell manage to train so many poets?

perhaps it was the fact that if one survived those

classes, one felt tough enough to survive the outside

world, even as a writer. these classes were more in the

nature of an ordeal, a fascinating one, to be sure, than

in the nature of entertainment."

This book needs to be in every classroom of higher learning:

"Poems were often submitted to Lowell without

names on them; most of us preferred to remain

anonymous as much as possible. but of course,

being slyly, Lowell would flush out the unfortunate

author. passing out those smeary carbon copies

with a seemingly tentative bend of the head, a

kindly smile, he would somehow get the author

to confess ownership."

The writing pulls me into,  each page until I’m lost in Lowell's

circle. The sentences carry me beyond myself. I feel the intensity

of being in this poetry class:

"While many of Lowell's women-writer friends were

kind, if slightly patronizing, Anne Sexton, irrepressibly

exuberant, was genuinely warm. She had a way of

drawing me right in."

Spivack has the capacity to write about Plath, Sexton and Lowell

and all those people in the circle friends and family come to life ;

the way a good novel has the ability to bring them into our life.

"Her (Sexton) hands shook when she read her poems aloud."

Sexton was a formidable person in writing as in her life, she was

immediate, present, seemingly self assured, perfect in manner,

open to friendships and dedicated to her poetry and poetic friends.

"Don't let the bastards get you" was her refrain about rejection notices

and she had a drawer full of them. This was her refrain to her close

poetic friends, Kathleen, Kumin and Lois Ames. Plath had a magnificent

attitude, supportive to the women poets, writers in a world where women

were still trying to please their male teachers/partners/editors, yet both

Sylvia and Anne were focused on themselves, in an (almost)

pornographic sense, meaning, not minding being public, being

able to do what was wanted and also, taking advantage behind

closed doors or in the open class room:

"But Anne was something of a renegade. She broadcast her

messy personal life, rather than hiding it beneath a veneer

of polite and tightened fury. So Anne, by virtue of her lack

of formal education and by her "excessive" emotionality and

obvious vulnerability was a lightning rod for criticisms. She

inspired controversy."

The focus of the book remains centered on those poets who were in

Lowell's class. Kathleen seems destined to write about Lowell. I

came to this conclusion  by the references Kathleen makes about

how she came from her fellowship at Oberlin and was “chosen”

by Lowell for private study with him, and later attending a class with so many

soon to be famous poets:

“After my initial few months of terror, I relaxed. It seemed,

once I settled in to the armchair across from Lowell, surrounded

by books and words, that I belonged there, had always lived

in that world where poetry had such power. I had been waiting

all my life for these conversations. Now they were upon me,

in that Lowell read and led me to read and inquired into my

thoughts on what I read...”

The reading moves quickly, not too quickly, yet, in an absorbing manner.

I move from one page to another with great interest. I'm beginning to

find it difficult to continue reviewing, when all I want is to sink

into the pages without the distraction of having to stop and write about

what I'm reading. There are so many phrases I want to capture, to quote

that even if I'm not writing this review, I would be slipping the note

paper out and jotting down passages for my own future reference.

Dear Kathleen, you have written and important book. Your writing

has opened a door into the world where many great writers and personalities,

live. Your writing opens as a great novel opens, with a mind to history

as well as imagination and a sense of place that will remain eternal

because, “With Robert Lowell and His Circle” we come to see clearly

through a dark glass.

A Full Life Selected Poetry of Joseph A. Cohen

A Full Life  Selected Poetry of Joseph A. Cohen 

Review by Pam Rosenblatt

In 2005, Joseph A. Cohen published his first collection of poetry called A Full Life  Selected Poetry of Joseph A. Cohen by Khoni Bindery, Lowell, Massachusetts. And it is to the advantage of people young and old that his book has been published! It was reprinted in 2011.

            Poet Joseph A. Cohen is currently 95 years old, lives in the Metro Boston area, and has lived a life that makes books, so it was probably a natural step for him to take to write these poems that tell us the readers about his family, his friends, his acquaintances, his places where he lived and/or visited, and the war in which he was a soldier.  In a down-to-earth, matter-of-fact, musical and lyrical style, Cohen has written an autobiographical poetry book that many people can relate to and/or learn from.

             The first poem in the book’s opening chapter named Jewels is about Cohen’s wife, or as he writes in the beginning of the book “his lover of 64 years”. It’s titled “My Sonia”:

To see her is to behold a flower in bloom.

Radiating, glowing with charm and beauty,

her smile reflects the song of a sunlit rose garden.

Music has nurtured her being

from early childhood. Now still composing,

teaching and playing piano with one

hand, her quiet hours are spent listening

to the classics as she did when she was young.

Her eyes reveal all that she is.

A serene smile upon awakening,

a gleam at breakfast time,

a flash of energy as she

speaks by phone to friends,

her solid determination when

doing endless post-stroke exercises.

Her home mirrors her taste in art whether

paintings, sculptures or exotic vases.

Surely, this sustains her will to live.

On awakening, the blinds are flung open to sunshine

and a view of tall trees shading a lush lawn.

Schumann’s “Davidsbunder Tanze”

pours forth to give harmony to the sunrise.

She has shown that health problems need

not be the end, but rather the start

of a new and still creative life.

With years to go, her current birthday reveals

that growing old does not always

dull the spirit, the thirst for the good life.

                                               

                                   

In “My Sonia”, Cohen has let us into his private world. A world filled with a loving wife whose “smile reflects the song of a sunlit rose garden”, whose music is vital to her as “her quiet hours are spent listening/to the classics as she did when she was young”, whose “eyes reveal all that she is”, whose “home mirrors her taste in art whether/paintings, sculptures or exotic vases”, whose “health problems …/[and] her current birthday reveals that growing old does not always/dull the spirit, the thirst for the good life.”  Such wonderful descriptions for a woman who seemed to love life as much as her husband still does, as seen in the one hundred and four pages that follow.

Just as Cohen writes about the happier times in his life, he has the ability to write about his not-so-happier experiences with war as well. His versatility shines in the poem “I Promised to Write” found in the chapter At The Touch of Love:

Waving adieu from the bus window,

I pledged to write daily.

How was I to know that daily

was to be for three whole years.

War swept me oversees

into holes of mud and clay.

Fear of the unknown unsettled

and scattered my thoughts.

Here was no spacious and gracious

desk to write on.

With only stubby pencils to use,

I wrote on scraps stained by the earth,

dyed by green grass.

The beat of thunderous gunfire

tapped  a somber cadence

as words formed for the V mail.

The old world was fresh to my eyes.

Olive and free trees bent low

by the weight of luxuriant yields.

Farms, fences, foliage

lay in pastoral settings.

From afar, words served poorly.

Amatory moods can best be woven

by presence.

Colors and hues of dawns and sunsets

fill the pages with painterly images.

Always, intimacy and passion

are chilled by censors scanning the mail.

The first letter was written on a

ship pointed east,

the last on one headed west.

In “I Promised to Write”, Cohen writes with wit and a freshness of style.  He shows how love for a woman can pull a male soldier through hard times, as he remembers years later, “I pledged to write daily./How was I to know that daily/was to be for three whole years.”

The troubles a soldier who is a writer of letters has during wartime is depicted in the lines: “Here was no spacious and gracious/desk to write on./With only stubby pencils to use,/I wrote on scraps stained by the earth,/dyed by green grass” But at the same time Cohen overcomes these technical problems through a love of words, art, and a solid relationship with his one-true love, a love that lasted “64 years”.

            Cohen writes not only of his relationship with his wife, but he has created poems about each one of his children – and his parents and his grandchildren as well. In “Andrew”, “Beth”, and “Fathers and Sons”, Cohen describes his three children in a kind, loving, and understanding light. His son “Andrew” is  “Now in his early fifties,/mature with graying temples,/ he shares California’s love affair/with cars of every horsepower.//Dashes to auto markets in Europe/and American car shows rate high/in his schedule of appointments./Tennis along with biking on the/Pacific Coast Highway keep/him fit and ruddy.” While his daughter “Beth” often “As a child she held my hand/swinging as we walked./We skimmed flat rocks over water./She read poetry to me./Holding her half-size violin proudly,/she played music from her last session.” And in “Fathers and Sons”, Cohen writes that he “pushed for cello, he wanted drums./We wanted David to be a brain surgeon,/but playing with a jazz combo/was more his thing.”  What wonderful memories Cohen has described in intricate detail without creating embarrassment.

            Joseph A. Cohen’s A Full Life is a pleasure to read not only for its fine poetic qualities but also for the way that the readers can understand with clarity what makes this poet’s life click – his parents, his wife, his children, his grandchildren, his friends and acquaintances, the war he fought in as well as the places that he lived and traveled to.

A photographer and a poet, Cohen has given us the readers “pages with painterly images” that will remain in the minds of his readers for a long time after reading A Full Life.

A. D. Winans’s Wind On His Wings

A.D.Winans

A. D. Winans’s Wind On His Wings 

Reviewed by Pam Rosenblatt

A.D. Winans is a poet who tells life as he sees it, as he lives, and as he knows it. Mr. Winans has published over 50 poetry books over the past 50 plus years.  His name is well-recognized around  United States poetry circles. It’s no surprise that Wind On His Wings is another successful read by A.D. Winans.

                Published by Presa Press in 2012, Winans’s Wind On His Wings is a 41 page chapbook that contains poems that are easy to understand, to the point, and reflect what’s on the poet’s mind at the time of the write. Often times his words are humorous, often times his words are political, and sometimes his words are distasteful. But all the time, Winans has maintained his status of “poet”.

                In his opening poem, “Aladdin’s Lamp”, Winans speaks his masculine mind in a light, sexual tone that carries the reader’s interest – that is up until the final stanza that reveals his ability to show the distastefulness of the aging process in a humorous light:

I push my way through the old

Wild West barroom doors

at the Saloon

the oldest bar in San Francisco

I order a boilermaker

eye the swamper with a wheel barrel belly

who pays me no attention

I down a shot and beer

in less than five minutes

pull out the key

to the upstairs hotel room

walk up the stairway

fit the key in the lock

the young woman I picked up

the night before

still naked on the bed

I climb in beside her

a fire lit in this old man’s body

as I rub my cock

like Aladdin’s lamp

hoping there is one more wish left

Winans has the ability to write in a sensitive, more caring tone as well, as can be read in his rather political poem, “POEM FOR ROBERTO VARGAS AND THE NICARAGUAN FREEDOM FIGHTERS”:

this poem is for you Roberto

and for Ed “Foots” Lipman too

this poem is for every poet

who ever paced the cellblocks of San Quentin

Folsom, Attica, and Neil Island

or fought the people’s struggle in Chile

Cuba or Nicaragua

this poem is for those who walk

the dream of freedom

with guerilla visions

in their hearts and eyes

this poem is for those

who gave their lifeblood

to wash the streets free of oppression

for those who rest in heroic

and not so heroic graves

in the  struggle for human dignity

I sit here in my seventy-sixth year

thinking of young boys

who have fought the real war

thinking of grieving mothers and widows

of young women in black suspender belts

and knee high leather boots

with revolutionary roots

thinking of how the words come too late

and never say enough

knowing that in the Buddha Temple of life

all things must die

knowing there is no survival

no tarot cards horoscopes or incantations

to bring back the dead

I walk the midnight supermarket of death

thinking of Lorca and that long dirt  road

thinking of the execution wall

the hangman’s noose

ethnic cleansing ovens and genocide

hearing the gypsy ballad

that sings to the heavens knowing

there is a strange code

to this language we are addicted to

as Gene Fowler pointed out  to me

evil spelled backwards is live

being made into a State automated

robot is evil

but dying is not evil

for it is in its whole

the disintegration

the bacterial feeding

which in turn is a live process

and so the fight goes on

and must go on until

every street has been cleared

of assassins until

every newborn

in encircled in a poem

the spirit lives on

in those who passed the baton

the vision cannot be killed

even as we retreat into

the depths of our being

listening to the blood

beat solid against the walls

of the heart knowing

there are secrets in the bones

that cannot be denied

or sold out to the whims of others

sleep well my comrades

only the flesh is gone

your strength lives on

in those who dared

to reach out and kiss

the sun

               

A.D. Winans has written a complex chapbook that reads easily, though sometimes he makes the readers painfully aware that “the spirit lives on/in those who passed the baton/the vision cannot be killed/even as we retreat into/the depths of our being/listening to the blood/beat solid against the walls/of the heart knowing/there are secrets in the bones/that cannot be denied/or sold out to the whims of others.”

In his aging years, Winans seems to have come to the conclusion that “your strength lives on/in those who dared/to reach out and kiss/the sun”. If these words are true, then A.D. Winans has lived a full life, and his poems reflect his own inner “strength”.  

A.D. Winans’s Wind On His Wings is an excellent year 2012 read!

MARGE PIERCY AT ENDICOTT COLLEGE

 

                              MARGE PIERCY AT ENDICOTT COLLEGE

     By Emily Pineau

      
   "These are the tracks I have left on the white crust of time."  This is a line that poet and novelist Marge Piercy read from her poem “Tracks”.  It is true that Piercy has, in fact, left many tracks along her way throughout  her career as a writer and as a social and political activist.   I had the honor of  introducing Piercy  at her reading at Endicott College, Nov. 13,  2012.  Prior to Piercy’s appearance at the college's chapel, I had conducted an online interview with her for the literary magazine,"Ibbetson Street," which made it possible for me to gain insight into the inspiration behind her writing and to obtain an understanding of how she came to be the successful writer she is today.  

            Many of the poems that Piercy read contained humor, ideas about body image, and nature.  When Piercy read her poem, “My Mother Gives Me Her Recipe”, many people were laughing in  recognition  because of how  universal the subject matter is.  In the poem, the mother is not giving straightforward instructions when she is describing how to make something, and is instead adding in her own little commentary to every detail.  Piercy read, “Take some flour. Oh, I don't know, like two-three cups, and you cut in the butter.”  This poem truly captures what it is like to try to get a recipe from a relative.  Also, in Piercy’s poem, “What Are Big Girls Made Of”,  Piercy uses a  familiar subject, although this one is more on the serious side.  The media puts so much emphasis on the importance of body image, and Piercy writes about the effect that has on women.  “Here is a woman forced into shape,” Piercy reads.  It seems to have become natural for women to hate their bodies, which is a very unfortunate occurrence in our culture.  Piercy also writes about things in nature that she finds to be intriguing and comforting in her life.  In her poem, “Colors Passing Through Us”, Piercy says, “Orange is my cat running live through the high grass,” and “Blue is the eyes of a Siamese cat”.

           After Piercy finished reading, Professor Doug Holder asked her what it is about cats that draws her to them.  “They are very sensual,” Piercy explained.  I can relate to this because I am also a cat person, and I feel like they are very inspiring creatures.  Their mysterious, yet calming demeanor is extremely captivating.”  Nature in general influences my writing as well.  I hope that one day I can incorporate humor, and brilliant metaphors like Piercy’s into my own writing.  

EMILY PINEAU--is an English major at Endicott College in Beverly, Mass. Her poetry and prose have appeared in Ibbetson Street, Muddy River Review, Lyrical Somerville, Endicott Review and elsewhere.