Airstream, by Audrey Henderson

Airstream, by Audrey Henderson

Homebound Press, 2014 $16.95


Review by Denise Provost

The cover of Audrey Henderson’s first published collection of poetry, Airstream, speaks of motion – the bulbous aluminum trailer halfway passed; metallic surface of a distant lake, clouds and light moving into sunset formation. The poems within take the reader on as fine a set of journeys as can be fitted between an opening and final line. Airstream seems to defy the laws of physics – like Dr. Who’s Tardis, the poems in this book are bigger on the inside than one would guess from their modest physical proportions.

The book is divided into three sections - with, tellingly, geographic names. The first, “Finisterre,” is filled primarily with poems about quests. These are propelled by the varied personal motivations or exigencies that send individuals out to visit – or settle upon – various lands’ ends.

We meet Mr. Peterson, of Field Guide fame, for whom, “there’d be too many/ questions for an old man/ with a suitcase full of flowers….” The Lichen Lovers, we learn,
           
…met with blank stares mostly
            as we crisscrossed America
looking for clean air.
            You corrected book text on your
            sick bed as we reminisced
            about tundra—how I shot the lichen
            through a cloud of mosquitoes
            while you beat the air with a glove—

St. Kilda Sunday makes reference to a Scottish island so remote that, when it was ultimately evacuated in 1930, its inhabitants reportedly did not know that Queen Victoria had died. Its narrator muses that Jesus “seems kind/ although he forbids us/ to tend our animals/ on Sunday….” It’s a poem that measures the distance between the pre-Christian past and its transition to the age following it. Similarly, The Elders Lament describes a world “[a]fter the monks arrived,” where

[t]he elders grew silent, fearing in their hearts that no-one
would carve the stones that tether the sky to the land,
or burnish mirrors where people see their faces in the stars.


One truly breathtaking poem is Lammermore, with its dazzling compression of time and distance. It tells a three-generation family story between lines of conversation with a neighborhood grocer who happens to be an opera fan:
            Tony’s butcher shop is pristine—jars of tomato paste
            Along a shelf, jaunty cans of Pastene, the whole place
            Painted red and white to go with the meat. A sign in magic
            Marker on the cash register says bacalao $8.99 a pound.
            I ask him how to cook it.  When it comes out I’m from
Scotland he hands me a CD of Lucia de Lammermoor,
A picture of Italian men in kilts on stage at La Scala….

For me to reveal any more of this tale’s details and digressions would require a spoiler alert.

The second section, “The Continent and the Levant,” offers a mixed assortment of meditations: on paintings and artists; on art historians (like the one in The Tempest, “listing to one side
like a monument about/to topple, his expression blissful,”); poets, and other characters; some of whom have perhaps stepped out of paintings. The Baptist, the eponymous John, roasts locusts “on a makeshift hearth/ and hastily/ getting wings in his teeth—“The Shepherds,” one realizes, are those drawn to the nativity of Jesus, seen from Mary’s point of view: “crude and toothless. They stank/ and hoarded cheese in their pockets….”

Behind these schemes, there are also places, so full of personality that they asset themselves off the page, and into timelessness. In Hacksilber, one such location reveals its magic, both hidden and revealed:

            She brought all her suitors there
            to see if they went with the scenery – the castle,
            a river, the valley where the swan sleeps…

            They ran on it as children in their cable sweaters
            and once a man looked out from a tower
            to which there was no staircase….

There is also National Library of Scotland, a poem so rich in detail and side observations that its perfect arc of narrative seems to encompass an entire world:

            We could have guessed the size of it because
            George IV Bridge is actually a bridge, and you can peek
over the edge beside Baumeisters, where Escher-like
eighteenth century facades recede down to the Canongate
and you can gauge the fathoms of the NLS….


“Eastern Seaboard,” the third and last section, might seem to bring us to more familiar territory. We find it, too, however, to be riddled with mystery and surprise. Simply getting ice cream at the Dari-Joy becomes a rather gothic adventure, where there are “many, many enormous black flies, mutant neon-eating flies, all over the plate glass window which/ reflects our mint chocolate chip with rainbow sprinkles….”

In Creatures and Beasts, we watch vicariously with the narrator, who observes that:

            It was a lean time, month of the hunger moon
the world run out of food, only a carcass from
            beneath the snow to be picked clean. The grass
            was flat and brown, wobbly with water, the hill
            a jelly, turned out from the mold too soon. First
            a turkey vulture came unfurling the black curtain
            of its wings like a Victorian photographer….


Even in the settled places here, there is constant movement: in Indigo Bunting, where an old man is distracted from his woes and injury: “He came into the house full of wonder and asked/could it be that he had seen an all-over blue bird.” In Fireflies, a hospital patient sees these insects for the first time:

            Flashing semaphore in the last light.
            You’re transfixed, can’t make sense of
            what you’re seeing, having no experience….

Girls.Birds  presents us with an unpromising scenario:

            I tell the delinquent girls anyway, about the warblers….
            They listen to me and talk through tongue studs,
            their lycra abdomens bulge….

Yet the description of long migrations, nests In spruce forests, and “damp leaves, yellow and pointed and tropical” pierces the feigned boredom of even this audience: “The girls smoke/ hastily, for they are defenseless against this information/ and they never suspected the world was surrounded by wings.”

If your world could use some wings, pick up a copy of Airstream, and glide away on revelations and delight.

A Newton, Mass. Writing and Publishing Center for the Diehard Somervillian

Somerville offers many opportunities for writers and other creative types. There are a plethora of writing groups and organizations where the aspiring poet and writer can hone their skills and network. But just beyond our borders, I found yet another place, the Newton Writing and Publishing Center. This nascent Center, has many writers  on its board that I have worked with and know, such as Somerville's Timothy Gager, a stalwart of the literary community. Robin Stratton, whose poetry has appeared in the Lyrical Somerville column in The Somerville Times, is the founder of the said organization, and is a force of nature in the local writing community. In addition to publishing my new lyrical memoir Portrait of an Artist as a Young Poseur... through her affiliated Big Table Publishing  press, the center will be awarding me their first Allen Ginsberg Poetry Award, with a ceremony this August.



The Newton Writing and Publishing Center will be hosting a Grand Opening on Saturday, May 9 from 1:00 – 4:00. According to Robin Stratton, director and long-time writing coach in the Boston area, “We’ll be giving workshops and putting on special literary events, but we’re so much more than that. Our affiliation with Big Table Publishing Company and Boston Literary Magazine gives writers the opportunity to explore our publishing options, too.” Stratton says she came up with the idea for the center when she had trouble finding venues to promote her clients. “For a while I was booking open mic gigs at the new Whole Foods in Wellesley, and I kept thinking There has to be a better place.” She shrugs. “But there just wasn’t. So some of my colleagues – Timothy Gager, Christopher Reilley, and Michael C. Keith (all well known in the local writing community) and I decided to start one.” Writers and poets are welcome to contact the center to set up their own readings and book launches free of charge. “And they get to keep 100% of the profits of book sales,” Stratton adds. “That’s very important to us. We’re all writers, we’re all trying to sell our books, and we designed the center to be what we’d want–a place that wouldn’t charge us for the use of their space and wouldn’t take a percentage of sales.”

So how can they do this for free? By offering a variety of membership levels for those who wish to support the center, ranging from “The John Steinbeck” ($600 a year for free admission to all their workshops, free merchandise, and a year’s subscription to Boston Literary Magazine) to “The Jack Kerouac” ($120 a year for 25% discount on all workshops.)

For all the details, please visit www.newtonwritingandpublishingcenter.com

Portrait of An Artist as a Young Poseur: Boston 1973-1984 by Doug Holder

New Release Coming This Spring from Big Table Publishing!




http://yourlisten.com/doug.holder1/portrait-of-an-artist-as-a-young-poseur-part-2-boston  ( Listen to an excerpt)

Portrait of An Artist as a Young Poseur: Boston 1973-1984 by Doug Holder( Big Table Publishing)

Advanced Notice:


“Doug Holder is a poet of the old city, the city of our fathers, of the 1950s and later. Mr. Holder writes poems like notes in a diary. I found myself struck by their economy, wit, and urban melancholy... He has a voice unlike that of any of his contemporaries. Holder is a poet of the street and coffeehouses, an observer of the everyday. He writes of old Marxists, security guards and his relationship to his deceased father—themes of the common life. I am drawn to these poems as I am to the poetry of Philip Levine and the prose of James T. Farrell. But Holder’s poetry is deeper than that. He sees the world not for what it is, but on his own terms. He is living in the poem rather than in poetry.”
~ Sam Cornish, First Boston Poet Laureate 

“This book is a jewel; multifaceted, scintillating, and completely unique. There is not a wasted word within the covers of this printed gift... instead, a complete, complex text pointillism capturing the era and place perfectly. If you lived within a thousand miles of the scene when it was happening, you will smile more than once at the memories of things long forgotten. Do yourself a favor and buy one for a loved one's future present.”
~ Christopher Reilley, Breathing for Clouds and Grief Tattoos

“Doug Holder’s Portrait of an Artist as a Young Poseur has the immediacy of film, pulling the reader in: ‘I lived in a room on the top floor ($38/week), bathroom down the hall–a stairway to the roof–cockroaches...’ The writing is pointed, unpretentious and honest, providing snapshots of rough-edged jobs and unvarnished people, places in Boston that have vanished, historical snippets on the street, in restaurants and subways. Whether he’s describing experience as a young man, or painting transience itself, the writing feels sensitive and authentic, something to read and reread.”
~ Nina R. Alonso, Founding Editor of Constellations Magazine


“The echoes of Doug Holder’s footsteps are felt in this exploration of Boston and his nascent self. With reflective humor, he unfolds moments of insight amid vernal uncertainty. The vignettes are enticing, fondly resonating time and place.”
~ Richard Fox, Time Bomb: Poems

“Portrait of an Artist as a Young Poseur is a unique memoir, in poetry, of a real Boston artist looking back at a distinct point in time at a city I love. The man, the city, the book are all completely unique, wonderful and original.”
~ Timothy Gager, The Thursday Appointments of Bill Sloan

Doug Holder writes about the old Boston, before the city changed, before gentrification. With a knack for storytelling, he brings to life, all the characters who crossed his path from 1974-1983, while living in Boston. This book is humorous, charming and Holder’s descriptions are intriguing of city life at that time. This is a film waiting to be made.
—Gloria Mindock, Červená Barva Press

"What can be said of someone who has lived such a life as described in this book, where no person, place or situation is considered off-limits, where the everyday is invoked as a kind of miracle— such a person being Doug Holder: poet, teacher, publisher, editor, interviewer and advocate of writers and writing. Portrait of an Artist as a Young Poseur is a stunning read."
Susan Tepper, author of The Merrill Diaries and From the Umberplatzen







http://bigtablepublishing.com

                                       

A Life of Celebration: Sidewalk Sam Memorial May 17th

Click on to enlarge
 
For Sidewalk Sam
So many brushstrokes
perhaps a purple flourish
across the stolid
unforgiving asphalt.
His paint dripping
from yogurt cups.
He brushed off
the gum,
the discarded cigarette,
the tumbleweed of newspapers,
for beneath
he saw a canvas.
He needed to feel his brush
where so many pounded
the pavement.
The poseur,
the pundit,
the plaudit,
the pol,
the stumblebums,
the flash-in-the- pan.
All those men
in gray flannel suits,
the women in
their Delman heels.
The dead drunk
perhaps falling
on his art
after a sucker punch
or a child staring
down in wonderment.
The mayoral smile of Kevin White
a reproduction of a European master,
perhaps someone will stop to look
as our world spins faster and faster.

----- Doug Holder (First appeared in Oddball Magazine)

X.J. Kennedy and Diana Der-Hovanessian: “A Uniqueness That Hasn’t Been” (A Recent Reading at Endicott College)

X. J. Kennedy

Dianna Der-Hovanessian

X.J. Kennedy and Diana Der-Hovanessian:

“A Uniqueness That Hasn’t Been”

By Emily Pineau

“Words are not lifeless. They live in houses,” read poet and translator Diana Der-Hovanessian at Endicott College, as part of the Ibbetson Street Press/Endicott College Visiting Author Series.  Der-Hovanessian has been building houses for words ever since one of her editors asked her to translate Armenian poetry. Not knowing Armenian well enough to comfortably do translations, Diana studied Armenian at Harvard and Boston University, and sought help from friends and poets. She is now the author of 25 books of poetry and translations. Der-Hovanessian is an inspiration for poets, writers, and anyone learning a new language. She has “brought a new soul” to both Armenian and English with her translations, and has touched the souls of her readers.

Following Diana’s reading, X.J. Kennedy, children’s author, poet, and translator, took the stage. He said, “When you are writing a poem you have to pretend you are Jesus Christ and can do no wrong.” It was evident right away that he has just the right mix of humor and sensitivity in his personality to create a timeless voice in his work.  From his poem, “You Touch Me,” he read, “You touch me and each cell of my body, one at a time, a hearth comes on.” Deep, concrete images and feelings are revealed quickly in his poems, and they have the power to stay you.

“Poems have to be concise whether they are long or short,” Kennedy explains. It is clear that he follows this philosophy in his own work, because each line of his has the ability to speak volumes alone. In a poem Kennedy wrote about he and his wife going to The Guinness World Records, my favorite line is when he says, “A uniqueness that hasn't been.” Even in just this short phrase, there seems to be a whole story written here. This quality is especially important in children’s poetry because children are engaged by vivid images and strong emotions created in a short space of time. Kennedy’s poems also have a musical quality to them, because of the smooth sounding words in each line. In fact, Kennedy sang after he read his poems. “I have to sing my songs, because if I didn't, who would?” he explained. Though, the truth is that Kennedy’s words of wisdom, his poems (both children’s and otherwise), and his spirit, move the soul to want to do just that—sing.


*********************************************************************************

--- Emily Pineau will be graduating from Endicott College this May ( 2015). She is the author of No Need to Speak ( Ibbetson Street Press/Endicott College Visiting Author Series) and has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize.

Lorna Crozier “The Wrong Cat”

Lorna Crozier “The Wrong Cat” Review

By  Victoria Pulvidente


Lorna Crozier’s The Wrong Cat takes on a couple of themes that are displayed throughout her poetry in this new collection. These themes are nature, animals and relationships. Each theme that is explored has some repetition (of some) of the same images that are revealed in the different poems. For nature there are the repeating images of the moon, rain and body, for animals there are the crows, cats, and other random birds. The poems here seem to have a "relationship" theme. They are either between a man and a woman or a man and an animal or man and something in nature.

Crozier’s poetry is captivating; she draws the reader in with all her descriptions and imagery. In her poem “Book Of Small Mistakes” there is so much description that the reader can literally  picture every single flaw of her husband down to a tee. She writes, “...he leaves crumbs on the breadboard every morning, doesn’t tighten the cap on the toothpaste tube, doesn’t replace the toilet paper when it runs out.” This description among others in her poetry attracts the readers’ eyes and minds, through the minutiae of everyday.

Crozier effectively divides her poetry into four different sections with a poem written in italics before each section begins. She also presents poems in both long and short form throughout each section of the book. Along with themes and repetition she also uses similes and personification. In her poem “The Beginning Of Abstractions” she writes, “Raindrops shivered as they touched her face…” this line portrays both simile and personification all in one little line. This line jumped out the most since it is a unusual and original  way to describe rain hitting someone’s face. Another example of simile and personification in the same line is in Crozier’s poem “January”. She writes, “It tips and spills a wash of rose, each tree in the grove flushed like skin from a bath, the heat held minutes later.” She successfully uses these literary devices to bring the reader into another world through her poetry.

 “The Wrong Cat” is recommended to others that enjoy a well-written book filled with poetry, striking images, and great detail . It will appeal to a great range of audiences and seems like it will definitely succeed in the literary marketplace.


***********************************************************************************

 Victoria Pulvidente is currently a sophomore English major with a concentration in creative writing and also a minor in Internet Studies Communications at Endicott College. She is an editor on the Endicott Review the school's literary magazine and she also writes creative pieces for the Endicott Observer the schools newspaper. She loves to read and write and hopes to work in the publishing industry and write her own novels in the near future.

Doug Holder Wins Allen Ginsberg Poetry Award-- 2015 -- Newton Writing and Publishing Center

Poet Doug Holder

For more information go to:   http://newtonwritingandpublishingcenter.com/awards.html

A review of g emil reutter’s Carvings

A review of g emil reutter’s Carvings

Paperback: 144 pages

Publisher: StoneGarden.net Publishing (November 20, 2010)

Language: English

ISBN-10: 1600761895

ISBN-13: 978-1600761898

        Review by P C K Prem

A collection of verses, Carvings (Stonegarden.net Publishing California, USA 2010) celebrates life’s experiences picturesquely and underlines universal viewpoint.   

            g emil reutter is effortless and placid as he thinks, writes, and excavates the trajectory of life, its little experiences, happenings and words. He talks of feelings and tiny thoughts and recognizes familiar patterns in trivial happenings, otherwise infusing meaning to life. He looks at life, its wrecks, uproars and triumphs, losses, childlike promises and pains, paints pulsating and striking word pictures, clings to the soil of experiences and hides a few truths and half-truths. g emil’s lyrics dig deep, thrill, coax and abandon in between somewhere or possibly nowhere, and you still breathe in lyrical sparkles. He charms, haunts and taunts with the objet d'art.  Like Anne Ridler, g emil’s lyrics focus on experiences is significant and it highlights modern perspective with subjectivity in narration of tiny incidents constituting life.

  If a man aspires for more, life is miserable. Limiting desires enriches and world looks worth living even in chaotic settings. A petty man often does not boast but speaks truth in great lingo. If one humiliates a little poor man, even if wisely pragmatic it repulses. Men hide intrinsic flaws and inanity. Adoring man lives with a rationale ‘Brief Moments’ conveys. A man is hardnosed and uncaring to others’ sufferings. Ambulance and police car are symbolic of fake tragic anxiety- a paradox.   ‘Sirens in the night’ is a wakeup call to get up, help the suffering, bring innovation and avoid a beaten track, for stupor and passivity immobilize an impotent shrunken age. Visiting and collecting remnants of past turns out a possession 26 he thinks.

            A figurative reprimand in ‘Puddle in the dust’ pierces as thoughts of absolute void reoccur in ‘Rain and Linear Lines.’ Emptiness confronts a man with a lost objective. It is atypical when g emil raises eternal questions in ‘Ever So slowly’ 29, as destiny puzzles.   

Pull up the shades open the window,

Fresh air fills the room venture out.

The time when one is alone,

Reality sets in, choices made,

A new home, time to move on.

            Man takes birth, wakes up, works hard, grows bald, belly protrudes, and abruptly, he faces the enigma of redundancy from failure to success amid agonized tang.

                                                        ****

 Invoking nature for interpreting love is a strong weapon men pick to enhance intensity. ‘Nature’12 avidly talks of created beings as sunrays pierce and instill life. He recalls old romance as beauty and vastness of love of the beloved electrifies.  

 I know the myths of great

power, emotion, seduction; all that pale when

I look into your eyes…

I had forgotten long ago; your soft touch surreal

until your lips meet mine, my hands cup the

small of your back and reality takes hold.

Love-feelings seize in ‘Eliot and Love’ 15 as a beloved eternalizes a joyful experience. Magical feelings travel in ‘The Waters by New Hope.’ Time spent in love carries an ineffaceable impress –the eyes, the red cheeks and a warm embrace charm and thrill ‘as hope continues to /be restored each day I am /drawn closer to you’. To resurrect intensity defies portrayal and sharing, an exclusive experience that trickles in ‘Yellow Pages, Concourse and Shopping’ and speaks differently of love-tale-time gone, as memoirs revitalize thrills and pains.

Recognition of the eyes never seems to leave us

Histories exchanged we said our goodbyes

She as beautiful as that first day in junior high…

                                                (Shopping)

  Intimacy continues undefined as a slow collapse in relations cautions. A voice known and still anonymous, perhaps an old love with unstipulated identity, turns an instant, sensitive.

Façade of elegance and grace

gives way to words

that draw me near

to bask in the radiant smile

eyes I cannot look away from. (Not an Old Testament Psalm 39)

            Debris from past refresh old bonds lived and cherished passionately make running away edgily irresistible and create an aura of supernatural experience when a fanatical lover (Orbit 139) loves words dipping from the lips of a beloved…and takes a lover to unfamiliar land of ecstasy. 

                                                         ****

Ironically, experience of a night wasted proves acerbic. People drink but it offers no pleasure. A man enjoys life if sane or else stimulants dishearten and renounce. ‘Beer and Marlboros’ 13 signifies feral life wasted. In many verses like ‘Stormy Night’ 48, a night of drinks, passions and joys appears vain and sordid. A thought of joy flows in Blue Jay 17 narrating a strictly private experience.  When one watches nature alone, one cannot share fulfillment. ‘Nature’ fills man with an experience of hugeness and stunning depth.  

I cannot for if I do the flow will turn to a trickle the ocean will not be met.

Sun showers break out, droplets caress my skin and I envy the Atlantic.

                                                                                 (Envy the Atlantic 34)

 A man is a merely a droplet, a trickle before the huge ocean. Awfully engaged in various pursuits, ‘City’ paints a picture when roads bubble as ‘Sweat beads drip along her arching spine, / chest heaving forward—/moaning and alone./The homeless guys /wear coats in the summer’ 38.  The kids run about and play mischief and worn-out women sit to relax without ever thinking why the cops run around. Everyone is busily hectic and lives in safe restricted dwelling.  Anxieties of a father for a daughter who travels on an errand are genuine, for security perturbs in a difficult age and women’s safety worries parents.

“I see

you and remember all those things a father never forgets about

a daughter; you are with me, safe from your travel.” Travel 55

In an age of crisis, each one wants an identity.  To leave footprints and identity in a period of convolution overwhelm. Man exists and still appears nonexistent. Life between yes and no, with no specifics, torments in contrasting mind-sets.  Man thinks people love but hate governs life as he suffocates in stifling emptiness and builds shelter in a hollow carrying philosophic strain. He talks of pragmatic approach, warns against meddlers in life, for they do nothing but only talk, suggest and advice, gossip and run away from responsibility.  

                                             ****

Nostalgia lengthens out, as one looks at the frames pegged on walls, opens windows but looks at the world inside.  

people in frames hang on wall

shelves full of memories…  (Window open, 14)

            Breathing in reminiscences, offers contentment. Everyone goes back and back to reconstruct cheery meadows. ‘Snowstorm’ 27 is reliving ‘and I savor this small memory /of those who have passed on to another place.’ Man vibrantly recalls days spent in the warmth of mom, now dead but the house breathes in mother’s aroma.  In Carvings 40, a common wish finds expression. Somewhere, a man wants people to remember or may be, if he comes back, he revisits areas of shared memories.

It makes one wonder

where these people have gone,

and if they are standing

as tall and proud as the tree.

Memories of dead relations stay refreshing. A man without feeling for human relations is almost dead, for among bonds one lives a happy and definite life. (Emil 79) Past opens a photo album, a journey begins and one finds the dead alive the moment one touches…for little memories are tiny ‘pieces of life’.  A man ignores the living and enjoys in memories of the dead –a hypocritical, perhaps an unwise outlook.  ‘Open Hearth’ relates to frightful tomblike experience. When man experiences death so near, he fears, tastes, defeats death to relate an experience and goes back, and observes a melancholic strain in depiction elsewhere in ‘At the Station.’

In a slightly different vein, ‘Leather Couch’ 43 talks about the mental state and gives feelings of hell and heaven. “in this moment of silence so much is said and I know/ what heaven is like, not what the pious say it is,/ just what it is when I sit on the couch holding you.’ A man lives in false awakening, false youth and dreams and as old age dawns he resurrect jaunts.  

  Curiosity rises each moment as one sits on the steps and finds a girl next-door smoking even as pleasantries excite, an old woman looking questionably at the man flinging glances and at another corner, old women’s talks barely interest adolescents, creates a scenic marvel. None is prominent, nothing happens ever and still ordinary people stay central. A few loving, warm and passionate moments offer unique stimulation. One rejoices in impish feelings as coffee, cigarette and smoke define movements of words, lips, feelings and passions.

The telephone rings and I hear

your voice, extinguish the smoke, the coffee goes

cold. I sleep in the warmth of your voice.  (Warm January Night 44)

It speaks of the state of mind, a bare truth. Engaged in various pursuits, a man visits graveyards and pays floral tributes…in many verses he evokes tepid loving moments.  

Plastic flowers can be as cold as granite

even when the intention is warm…  

 In that strange way, cemeteries are for the

living not the dead…  (Resurrection 45)

   He speaks of depth, of reluctance in expression and love unlimited and the strain of love continues.

“Do you think we will live that long?”

“Yes,” I say

And we will make it look dam good

            Again ‘the beauty that is you/draws me near each day/the smile/that took away darkness’ (You 75) speak of love, earthily and ethereal. ‘A Day without You’ 81 demonstrates passion as the lover waits for the beloved and glorious time.  Elsewhere, he requests to understand life, for each little episode or occasion is noteworthy. Genuine efforts to value the mysterious flow of life reveals rationale and import. In ‘Re-creation’ 122, the poet is thoughtful and talks of a botched, withered life, wishes to restructure life and trim ‘infected’ weeds to recreate a lost man.   

                                                        ****

He talks of a routine human attribute. One reads a newspaper, and observes most of the words provide irrelevant gratification and joy. Papers speak of incidents, events, politicians, persons noble and scoundrels, films and actors -hot and frigid that in nutshell constitutes psyche of society. Soldiers’ death somewhere does not create a stir. Families suffer but none worries.  Men are inhuman and cold but sympathy looks false, a two-faced attitude. News about the price of rice, gas, oil and daily necessities attracts interest. A man lives in cocoons of self-image, and death of close relations creates little noise and so a man lives secure in self-built cubicle.

You won’t read about families

grieving, devastated by loss

of never being complete again

those complaining about

the price of rice, gas and parking

of global warming

of how bad your day has gone. (News 18)

Greatly stressful yet warm, agonizing but pleasure giving strain travels in a few verses. Life in routine offers no pleasure. One meets people, talks, smiles, separates and forgets but life moves with a motif and still without purpose. Everyone looks at life through a window and experiences joy of a large park, a mere thought.

            One is mechanical in acts and words, and acts even when none watches. Engaged in monotonous matters without inkling, a man feels focused.  He starts with an objective and ends up without any purpose as vanity stares.  ‘It is Just the Nature of Things’ 116 that a man grows and, ‘…sees the real nature of things, /‘as I move toward the noon of my life/ with these eyes that have witnessed the/ worst in the human condition…’ speaks of life’s experience in bits and in whole but a man reaches everywhere, and still nowhere.

 He is graphic, vivid and genuine. ‘It’s Tuesday’ 133,  a wonderful lyric tells about the business and jokes aged men indulge in, speaks of the puffs and dreams of youngsters at some isolated corners, of pastors getting ready for prayers… nothing escapes him -an observer par excellence. Bitter and unsavoury experiences and encounters educate. Time, place and persons do not always favour and gratify. Even adverse happenings offer a lesson but adversity also exists without a rider, for ‘Everyone has something nice to say.’

‘Smell of Pines Oak Canopy’ 59 sings song of beauty and charm. He is realistic- ‘winters are tough /energy drained /natures’ renewal/ fills me /a seedling/ canopy above.’ Love for nature thrills in ‘Boom Boom Boom’ with a different strain. He is disturbed when ‘gray clouds above weep/ and you/ can’t stop thinking …  and ‘You can’t stop thinking/ as water beads streak across/ windows that surround you/ joining the gray clouds’ ‘Gray Day’ 123. A man relates pains and anguish to the objects of nature and nature sympathizes with the man in suffering, ‘April sun stands behind dreary/ clouds with no intention of casting/ streams of light, rainbows, just the/ melancholy of mist, gentle wind/ drizzle sprays the soggy ground,’ ‘Melancholy’ 124.  

Melancholy haunts a sensitive poet and in contemplative moments, man tries to seek relief in nature, a perennial truth.

g emil experiences life in little bits and pieces and presents a rational viewpoint. He looks at life, paints fantastic word-pictures, and connects each one to everyone without philosophic stress. As one reads verses, one enjoys a pleasing fragrance without intellectual hang-ups and encounters enlightened realization in love despite balmy ennui life offers. Through seemingly little and often unobtrusive incidents and innocuous experiences, he builds a structure of thought and creates a favourable audience response and here, g emil demonstrates poetic strength.

                                             ****

An author of more than forty books in English and Hindi, P C K Prem (p c katoch)   post-graduated in English literature from Punjab University, Chandigarh in 1970, taught in different colleges before shifting to civil services and then served as a Member, Himachal Public Service Commission.  With three books on criticism in English, seven novels and two collections of short fiction, he has brought out nine volumes of poetry.  Katoch Prem (a winner of several awards) is a poet, novelist, short storywriter and critic in English from Himachal, India

Where I Sit, poems by Donald Lev

Poet Donald Lev

Where I Sit, poems by Donald Lev, Presa Press, P.O. 792, Rockford, Michigan 49341, 88 pages, $15.95.

Review by Barbara Bialick

The first thing I noticed about the book Where I Sit was the appealing cover painting of a young woman sitting alone in a restaurant with a glass of red wine.  This collection must be by someone who knows a lot about life, I thought. Then I felt the paper, the paper of the book itself, which was so smooth, I could easily turn from poem to poem. I did not however, pick up sensuality as a theme, however. More like thoughts from a craggy, older, male journalist who writes for a living, never at a loss for a word he thinks will be a zinger.

“Spring has come,/With a lot of wind and sun/And rain./Pain, too,/To rhyme with rain./Not that I needed the rhyme. I just/Wanted it.” 

Such are these poems. The author writes them short and quick because he “wants it” that way.

His style then is like in the poem “One Brick at a Time”—in which he steals bricks from a shopping mall construction site that seems to be overly loaded with them. The shopping mall long built, he still hasn’t built anything with the bricks he took.  He’s still “working on it”…

But Lev has thought a lot about time.  He’s older than us baby boomer poets who think we know it all. When President Franklin Delano Roosevelt died, in 1945, he was already nine years old and “had known no other president…I thought I’d tell you this,” he wrote.

So if you buy this book you can probably learn a few ideas. In “All Art” he says, “I always begin with the frame./All art is limitation.”

He may say he’s “clueless” that he’s had a “long, clueless life”, but that is his “boast.”

He’s not really clueless at all…  Donald Lev, born in 1936, lives in High Falls, New York, where he publishes The Home Planet News, which he founded with his late wife, Enid Dame in 1979.  He went to Hunter College and worked at both The Daily News and The New York Times. He is the author of eleven collections of poetry including A Very Funny Fellow, NYQ Books, in 2012. He has coordinated poetry readings at many venues and hosted “Open Poetry” on WNYC Radio.