Like Poems by A.E. Stallings

 

Like

Poems by A.E. Stallings

Farrar Straus Giroux

175 Varick Street, New York 10014

New York

www.fsgbooks.com

ISBN: 9780374187323

137 Pages

$24.00

Review by Dennis Daly

Alexander Pope famously defined “true wit” as “what oft was thought, but n’er so well expressed.” More than any other contemporary poet, A.E. Stallings, an American expatriate living in Athens, Greece, exemplifies this pedigree of versifier. Her poems make that which seems quite ordinary or just everyday sing.

Stallings’ new book, Like, doubles down on what she has done before in her three earlier volumes of original poetry— identifying and, on occasion, inviting irony, tragedy, and most of all, a deeper understanding of human nature into her formalist domicile. Her narrative conclusions can be biting.

The meditations of Stallings often include domestic objects such as a pair of scissors, a cast iron skillet, a pencil, a pull toy, and colored Easter eggs. Her descriptions for each of these sedentary items or groupings create both a great depth and an array of un-tranquil perceptions. For instance Stallings describes the common careening of a pull toy this way,

It didn’t mind being dragged

When it toppled on its side

Scraping its coat of primary colors:

Love has no pride.

 Or consider Stallings’s piece Dyeing the Easter Eggs, the pun firmly placed on “Dyeing,”

… Resurrection’s in the air

Like the whiff of vinegar. These eggs won’t hatch,  

My daughter says, since they are cooked and dead.”

A hard-boiled batch.

I am the children’s blonde American mother,

Who thinks that Easter eggs should be pastel—

But they have icon eyes, and they are Greek.

And eggs should be, they’ve learned at school this week,

Blood red.

Other sorties into nature, the classics, and even current news headlines by Stallings amass a hoard of well-expressed insights.  With her poem Little Owl, the poet engenders a world of predation observing human organisms stroll through their habitual landscapes or seascapes along life’s way. Danger also exhibits its warnings in equal measure. Stallings, speaking of her subject owl, says,

A drab still vessel attuned to whatever stirred,  

Near or far:  

Hedgehog shuffling among windfall of figs,

Gecko, mouse.

Then she swiveled the orbit of her gaze upon us

Like the Cyclops eye-beam of a lighthouse.

Pure irony flows, line by line, out of Stallings piece entitled Parmenion. The title is taken from the name of an air raid test. Originally, however, Parmenion was the second in command of Alexander-the-Great’s army. He was wrongly accused of treason by his own son and executed. Stallings connects the false alarms, which in turn excite and puzzle the populace, to this historical breach of justice. The poem begins as if describing a god’s pontifications and builds into very earthly anxieties,

The air-raid siren howls

Over the quiet, the un-rioting city.

It’s just a drill.

But the unearthly vowels

Ululate the air, a thrill

While for a moment everybody stops

What they were about to do

On the broken street, or in the struggling shops,

Or looks up for an answer

Into the contrailed palimpsest of blue.

Centered by serendipity (The poet arranges her titles in alphabetical order), the collection’s masterpiece, Lost and Found, sprawls over eighteen pages and thirty-six stanzas. The poem is wonderful. A mother, frantically and unsuccessfully looking for a child’s plastic toy, continues her search into a metaphoric dreamtime. Arriving in the Valley of the Moon, she peruses continuous landfills of mindlessness and lost opportunity. Along the way this protagonist-seeker and Stallings’ persona is guided by the mother of all muses. Here the poem becomes a parable on creativeness and artistic choices. Some stanzas have a very specific point to make, like this one,

Not water, though, I knew as I drew near it—

It was a liquid, true, but more like gin

Though smelling of aniseed—some cold, clear spirit

Water turns cloudy. “Many are taken in,

Some poets seek it, thinking that they fear it,

The reflectionless fountain of Oblivion.

By sex, by pills, by leap of doubt, by gas,

Or at the bottom of a tilting glass.

Empathy, the most emotionally efficacious poem in Stallings’ collection, rewrites the plight of today’s northern African emigre into a more familiar interior venue. Stallings’ family-centric verse is as personal as it gets. The poet concocts a thought experiment with her own lineage. She posits them precariously adrift and then gives cosmic thanks that this scenario is not so. She explains,

I’m glad we didn’t wake

Our kids in the thin hours, to take

Not a thing, not a favorite toy,

And didn’t hand over our cash

To one of the smuggling rackets,

That we didn’t buy cheap life jackets

No better than bright orange trash

And less buoyant.  

Amazing as a poetic tour de force, perfect as the title poem, and outrageously funny as an angry rant, Stallings’ Like the Sestina moves determinedly to its droll facebook-like conclusion. The ride alone is worth it. The poet ends each line in “like.” She enumerates every cliché type (or most) that uses “like” as a space filler. And finally she initiates a versified crescendo,

…Like is like

Invasive zebra mussels, or it’s like

Those nutria things, or kudzu, or belike

Redundant fast-food franchises, each like

(More like) the next. Those poets who dislike

Inversions, archaisms, who just like

Plain English as she’s spoke—why isn’t “like”

Their (literally) every other word? I’d like

Us just to admit that’s what real speech is like.

But as you like, my friend…

For those readers who, incongruously, still believe that the medium is the message, or at least a good part of it, don’t miss this Stallings’ collection. Like may be her best book yet, her opus supreme. For those others, who aren’t formalist aficionados—read it anyway; you’ll more than like it, you’ll love it.

Doug Holder Interviews Kirk Etherton about the Boston National Poetry Mo...

P O E T R Y R E A D I N G S Presented by The Hastings Room Reading Series Wednesday March 27, 2019 at 7pm

P  O  E  T  R  Y    R  E  A  D  I  N  G  S

Presented by The Hastings Room Reading Series

Wednesday March 27, 2019 at 7pm

At First Church Congregationalist, 11 Garden Street, near Harvard Square

f e a t u r i n g

Joyce Wilson, who has taught English at Suffolk University and Boston University. Her first poetry collection The Etymology of Spruce and a chapbook The Springhouse both appeared in 2010. She is creator and editor of the magazine on the Internet, The Poetry Porch (www.poetryporch.com), which has been on-line since 1997. Her poems have appeared in many literary journals, among them Poetry Ireland, The Lyric, and Salamander. Her profiles of the poets Eavan Boland, Julia Budenz, Etel Adnan, and Diana Der-Hovanessian (TBA) can be seen at the Women Poets Timeline Project at Mezzo Cammin (www.mezzocammin.com). Her chapbook The Need for a Bridge is just out with Finishing Line Press in 2019. A full length collection Take and Receive is scheduled to appear with Kelsay Books in August 2019.

Ben Berman, the author of two books of poetry, Strange Borderlands and Figuring in the Figure, and the newly released small book of short prose, Then Again.  Ben has received awards from the Mass Center for the Book and New England Poetry Club and fellowships from the Massachusetts Cultural Council and Somerville Arts Council. He writes a regular column for Grub Street about Writing While Parenting, and teaches in the Boston area, where he lives with his wife and daughters. Visit him at www.ben-berman.com

Steven Brown, cofounder of The Hastings Room Reading Series. Steve will be giving a presentation of the poetry of his friend Henry Morganthau III, who died in July 2018 aged 101. Morganthau graduated from Princeton University in 1939. He served in the US Army during World War II. From 1945, he was involved in the television business, at various times working as an author, producer and manager for the larger national institutions like NBC, CBS and ABC. From 1955-77, he was a chief producer of WGBH (Boston). Morganthau came into his poetic gifts at the age of 98.

How to Become a Writer

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MNp4ScNv3dY

Peaches Goes It Alone by Frederick Seidel.

Frederick Seidel

Peaches Goes It Alone by Frederick Seidel. $24.00.

REVIEW BY ED MEEK

Frederick Seidel is now in his eighties so he can’t be an infant terrible anymore but he still has the ability of shock, delight and offend. He is a wit and a skillful one. He is urbane and well-read. He is sometimes a little silly and his use of easy rhymes can be annoying but he isn’t afraid to tackle big issues. He is in the group of those poets who, as Frost said, want to be understood. That is, he is accessible. From “November 9, 2016” (you remember what happened that November):

I’ll use a cleaver to cut my hair.

I’ll wear asparagus for underwear.

I took the elevator to the thirteenth floor

To find the fiends.

They opened the door.

A couple of stanzas later:

My country, ‘twas of thee.

Sweet land of one, two, three

JUMP

Into the swamp…

Trump ran on cleaning up the swamp. That’s kind of like a pathological liar promising to tell it like it is. Oh, wait… So, Seidel is not afraid to take on Trump and those enigmatic followers of his. He really is not afraid to write about anything. He seems to enjoy the role of provocateur. Here is the beginning of “Abusers”:

Every woman who wants to be spanked should be

Spanked for wanting to be.

It’s for excitement and as punishment for her ascent.

She should be put on a pedestal so you can look up to her

From below and get outstanding news and views

From beneath and see what you want to see.

Look at her clean machine, her beautiful guillotine!

A few lines down:

I’m interested only in the power of their flesh.

I turn the fire hose on them when they protest.

Seidel is happy to dive into the #metoo movement in a way that is at once supportive and offensive. He appears to be alluding to the civil rights movement and making fun of the #metoo movement in comparison, but doesn’t that make light of the civil rights protests? He’s also not afraid to confess his own transgressions. This might be the time to note that one of the roles of art and comedy is to go after taboos. Our current era provides plenty of material to work with including the oppressive aspects of political correctness, trigger words and personal pronouns of choice. Is there anything more ridiculous than someone choosing z’s own pronoun? Well, maybe professors who kowtow to students who choose their own pronouns. Seidel’s poem ends surprisingly with:

The world is nearing war.

The homeless clog the streets.

It certainly does feel that way, doesn’t it? With our trade wars and our corruption and conspiracies and the rise of the strong men! Or is he just talking about the war between men and women?

Most often though, Seidel is self-deprecating and funny: “I had a girlfriend who dumped me for a better job---Which, frankly, made me laugh so hard I started to sob.” He writes poems to Athena and to Aphrodite. He quotes Sappho in Greek. He knows French. Here is another poem about “Trump”:

I look past the big face of my computer

At what was once New York

Outside my window

And now is a plateau

Of smiling bra-less

Breasts of the contestants.

It’s time to wake

From this cryrogenic sleep

In which I’ve been preserved, and vote.

The endlessness of America ends.

And what an ending.

A few lines later:

I turn the TV off

Which comes back on

All on its own.

It’s all about climate change

And fracking girls.

And every bidet is transgender

Or ought to be.

Trans is the time of day.

Many people these days are Trump or trans or gay.

On Emotion Avenue in Queens—

Near Trouble Street—

Cops on horseback clatter

In their yellow slickers

through the springtime drizzle

Toward Black Lives Matter.

White Working class

Clouds of tear gas

Cloud emotion.

You can see how Seidel got into trouble offending various groups. He has had prizes taken away. He’s been accused of being anti-Semitic and anti-Catholic. Jesse Smollet will accuse him of being anti-gay. Andrea Dworkin would call him anti-women. Or you could just call him funny. His lines are often surprising, his word choice imaginative. In any case, he provides an artist’s perspective. He combines wit and non-sequiturs a la John Ashbury with a taste of the erudition of A.E. Stallings and his poems are about something. They have content. In the age of truthiness, Seidel is a welcome voice.

Hesiod Works and Days Translated by A.E. Stallings

Hesiod Works and Days

Translated by A.E. Stallings

Penguin Classics

Great Britain

ISBN: 978-0-141-19752-4

52 Pages

$9.00

Review by Dennis Daly

Just the polish from A.E. Stallings new translation of Hesiod’s Works and Days can blind. Only momentarily, of course. But certainly the well-wrought formality of each couplet causes the reader a certain hesitancy and a loss of verbal sense as he or she marvels at the architectural details and pinpoint verbiage embedded by Stallings in this brilliant rendition of a fountainhead epic.

Hesiod’s persona, through Stallings, reaches out from its ensconced eighth century (BCE) sanctuary with unmistakable antique connections cocooned within a surprisingly modern ethos. Born in the boondocks of Grecian Boeotia, Hesiod was a child of emigres. His father had fled the hardships of a sailor’s life and re-established his family inland, in the farming village of Askra, under the loom of Mount Helikon. This farming background frames and informs the structure of Works and Days. Starvation, according to Hesiod, is only one failed harvest away and worldly riches needs only a god’s nod and hard work. In fact Zeus has sent a twin of Strife to prod men on. She impels human kind with envy and competitive juices. Hesiod explains the power of this second sisterly Strife this way,

…This Strife, high-seated Zeus

Set in earth’s roots—for this one has a use:

She spurs a man who otherwise would shirk,

Shiftless and lazy, to put his hands to work

Seeing a rich man plough and plant and labor

To set up house—then neighbor envies neighbor

Racing to reach prosperity. This Strife

Is boon to man. And that’s why in this life

Potter hates potter, builder has no regard

For builder, nor beggar, beggar; bard loathes bard.

“Bard loathes bard. “ Hmmmm. This may shock. Except, of course in Boston Massachusetts and its surrounding environs, circa 2019, where groups of poets and other elites muster ostensibly like militia into armed camps. I suspect other geographical poetry hot spots offer the same dynamic. Nor are these contributory ills the only ones inculcated into human nature. Works and Days significantly contains the first account of Pandora’s Box (or in this case jar) of mischief and needling woes. Actually Pandora herself, the gods modeled from clay making her also a receptacle of many vices and a few virtues. Yet another gift from the gods.

Considered the architype of a long line of self-styled poets, still prevalent in today’s 21^st century prosodic circles, Hesiod neatly provides his name (from the Theogony) and his Bio (from Works and Days). He speaks of himself in a way that his contemporary, Homer, could not. Hesiod even advertises himself as a prize-winning poet and poet laureate. He won a three legged caldron (a not insignificant prize) at a funeral games competition on the island of Euboea, apparently his only sea-going trip. He had earlier received his laurels, a laurel staff--not wreathe, awarded by the Muses themselves, on the slopes of Mount Helicon. How, one wonders, did the Muses introduce themselves to this young sheep herder? Hesiod had pretty obviously needed to establish his bardic authority and, with these props, he did so—dramatically.

Hesiod had a younger brother named Perses, who seems to have jilted him out of part of his inheritance. Much of Works and Days is addressed to Perses and the magistrates involved in the case. The poetic work itself is a didactic disquisition on the evils in society and the importance of an all-encompassing cosmic justice system that promises (or should promise) fairness to hardworking and decent folk. Although the poet seems to lament his own trials and tribulations, especially his brother’s actions, Hesiod mainly focuses on the resolution of worldly conflict, both within his family and without. His suggestions of future probity to his wayward brother appear well meant and sincere. Hesiod addresses his brother reasonably,

So Perses, mull these matters in your mind,

Give ear to Justice; leave Force far behind.

For Kronos’ son gave justice to mankind;

The fish and beasts and winged birds of the air

Eat one another—they don’t have a share

Of law and right—he made the law for man,

And this way is by far the better plan.

Far-seeing Zeus will grant prosperity

To him who speaks up for the truth…

In the same way that Alexander Pope made Homer’s Iliad his own masterpiece, Stallings has made Hesiod’s Works and Days her own signature piece. She retrieves Hesiod from the ancient mists of Western Civilization, as the oral traditions were dying and as the written word slowly gained credence and immortalizing legitimacy. She translates Hesiod’s original unrhymed dactylic hexameters, a mix of Ionic Greek and Aeolic, into rhymed English iambic pentameter. The rhyme she adds as an extra hurdle because, as she explains it, “I can’t fudge through something puzzling if it must also rhyme and scan. Also, rhymed iambic pentameter couplets can have, in the twenty-first century, a slightly old-fashioned feel to them… as Hesiod’s Greek would have had a quaint ring even to classical authors.” Consider these timeless lines of Hesiod via Stallings that summarize the gift of especial days with mnemonic persuasion and elegant delivery,

These days are gifts to those who dwell on earth—

The rest, haphazard, with no special worth,

Fateless. One praises one day, one, another;

Few know: a day can go from stepmother

To mother. Blessed and rich is he, who’s wise

In all these things, who works, and in the eyes

Of the deathless ones is blameless, one who reads

The omens of birds, avoiding all misdeeds.

For clarity and class and prosody that sings through its print, Stalling’s Hesiod is unrivaled. Endear yourselves to the immortals and read this compelling translation that introduces with a formalist literary flourish that fragile Western Civilization which still, to this day, nurtures the best of artistic creation.

Querencia Poems and Stories by Allie Hastings. ( Ibbetson Street Press/Endicott College Young Poet Series)

( Allie Hasting --Center)

Querencia  Poems and Stories by Allie Hastings. ( Ibbetson Street Press/Endicott College Young Poet Series) ($12)

REVIEW BY JO JO LAZAR

When Doug Holder asked me how I was enjoying Querencia by Allie Hastings, I told him immediately "I was much more committed to being mysterious in my poetry as a teenager!" I'm complimenting her adept voice so early in her career, as the clarity and conservation of symbols doesn't detract from the range of experiences and feelings in the work. I compare poems in this collection to the feeling I get reading Baudelaire (see, "An Umbrella for Two") and in the nature-centric pieces, some Mary Oliver. This is a fun, witty, generous collection, with scenes unfolding a petal at a time from a unique bouquet of life experiences and imagination. You walk London streets, beaches, take forest-strolls, and maybe get your heart stomped on a little at music stores, and coffee shops. These poems and stories are vibrant post cards from the heart of poetic moments, gifts still raw with "the thing itself" coupled with the balm of the narrator's wisdom.

The weather was cool enough to see the air of our breath when either of us spoke; I left my jacket in your car because I had fooled myself into believing autumn wasn't quite over yet--the sun was shining over our heads... The woods, at first glance, appeared a glorious fall wonderland, but very quickly upon our walk did I feel its brisk embrace tickle my shoulders, the shivers sending goosebumps to the surface of my fragile skin.

I almost asked you if we could turn around and go back so I could get my jacket out of your car.

But I didn't want to be that girl.

(-The Deceptive Nature of Love)

In the margin I wrote "real minutiae of womanhood and dating," I related with the hyper-awareness and hyper-analysis of these things. All the while the story is assonant, lyrical, layered like watercolor strokes in Jane Kenyon or Mary Oliver, and poignant because of too many thresholds of reality occurring all at once. My first takeaway from this story was the autobiographical narrator-fallacy-magic feeling that surely I had read something true! based on writer's felt experience. Hours later I realized it was another huge layer of liminality, perhaps the entire book Querencia's meta-theme too is "thresh-hold overload." Too many changes or possibilities occurring to the mind at once, so we become a slower camera, absorb every detail. All this crept up on me hours after reading, and I am still admiring this story (prose-poem) as a favorite in the collection; what could have been an easy cliché/play-scene, (a forest walk, a break-up or not? conversation is about to unfold) is unpeeling in a slow-reveal hours later in one's mind.

This lovely book boasts a wise and open "beginner's mind" as one says in Buddhism. The work is self-aware and not embarrassed to tell us in the more straight-forward lyrical poems that the narrator/writer is eighteen, but feels much older. Yet there is honest impatience to have lived more already, the act of nostalgia is literally tried on in poems like "Nostalgia." There's also a youthful sense of the number of times something has happened --tally feel, a mindset that any writer/journaler may not shake in a lifetime. The enclosed unit of only so many memories and references never detracts, I am still thinking about a girl's raincoat and boots, and another's forgotten jacket in the back of a car. I was taken to many childhoods, on foreign adventures, and became empathic tourist to universal and unique scenes of heartbreak. I feel privileged indeed to remember what poetry can do, to remember how to report back from the very sparks (scenes/memories/dreams) that make one want to write at all.

 jojo Lazar (jojolazar.com, @poetessS)

Lynne At the Foghorn Folk Club, 1964 by Lynne Viti: A Tribute to the Late Boston Poet Laureate Sam Cornish

The Late Boston Poet Laureate Sam Cornish

I recently met poet Lynne Viti at the Sam Cornish Memorial Reading at the New England Mobile Book Fair in Newton, MA. Both Viti and Cornish were both born and bred in Baltimore. Here she writes about an encounter with him back in 1964.

Lynne At the Foghorn Folk Club, 1964

Tall awkward boy, a transplant from Oregon,

always carried a beat-up paperback copy

of On the Road, strap-hanging on the # 3 bus

asks me, You like poetry? I nod,

he tells me, go hear this cat read his stuff.

Black dude, he’s real, man. Get there

before the show, before the folksingers,

down on West 22^nd Street, you dig?

I want to roll my eyes at this farm kid from the west

who thinks he’s cool but I take note:

The Foghorn—I check the listings in the Baltimore Sun,

below the flicks, above the Gayety Burlesque ad.

I tell my mother I’m going to a poetry reading,

as if in a college lecture hall, on a schoolnight.

I’m the youngest there. People sit around

Drinking beer or spiked cider—

A young man, bespectacled, dressed in brown corduroys,

crewneck sweater, steps onto the stage,

cheers and foot stomping greet him—he’s here to be heard

by the faithful. He recites his poems, declaims them.

I’ve never heard a poet, not in real life—the nuns

have played records of Dylan Thomas, of Eliot

in English class but nothing like this, a real

poet, not a dead white one—standing so near

I could shake his hand—he is mesmerizing,

he looks at us through thick eyeglasses,

he speaks in the vernacular.

I came for his poetry, and when he was done

I went home to make curfew. I didn’t

come for the guitars and banjos,

the mandolins and Woody Guthrie tunes.

I came for Sam Cornish. I came for the poetry.

--Lynne Viti

**** You can find out more about Lynne and her writing at:  http://stillinschool.wordpress.com

Orphaned Words: Forgotten Poems From A Haphazard Life by R.D. Armstrong

R.D. Armstrong

Orphaned Words: Forgotten Poems From A Haphazard Life by R.D. Armstrong http://lummoxpress.com

By Doug Holder

 I have known R.D. Armstrong, the founder of the scrappy California-based small press-- LUMMOX for a number of years. I have contributed to a number of his publications, including an anthology of Bukowski-inspired verse, and a huge--poet filled anthology that included many Boston poets. In his latest collection "Orphaned Words," he uses poems of his that didn't make it into his other collections, either because they were not ready for prime time, they were lost, etc...

Armstrong has lived a hardscrabble life in Long Beach, California, and many of his poems speak to his dark, ontology of the streets. They also tell you in no uncertain terms about the failing state of his health--and his diminished horizons.

Armstrong is respected for his honesty, and his refusal to paint a pretty picture--where this none.  The poetry at times can feel like a quick, kick in the groin. Sometimes-- dear reader-- you may recognize yourself and quickly turn the page. In "Benediction 11" the poet chews and spits the angry words and memories of a dead end life,

" I want to fill my mouth
With your angry words,
That hover like stale smoke-
Laden air, chewing on them,
Mixing the broken syllables and
Violent vowels with my own saliva....

From them I spit the
Dead bones of this absurd
Hatred to the ground
To shatter and turn
To dust and blow away...."

I share Armstrong's love of  the late, jazz vocalist and musician Chet Baker. I love how Baker's  horn coolly moves you on that metaphorical cloud, and lets you drift in the ether. In his poem, "Chet Baker," Armstrong captures Baker's sensibility, "horn and it's sadness,...weaving a tale of wistful melancholy... you were my Mother Theresa/touching me there// in my hour of depravity/giving me back my dignity..."

Some of these poems don't make the cut--and Armstrong is not shy about saying that.  But when they do-- they cut you, and you are wide awake.

In A Moment We May Be Strangely Blended Poems in Four Sets By David Giannini

Poet  David Giannini

In A Moment We May Be Strangely Blended

Poems in Four Sets

By David Giannini

Dos Madres Press

Loveland, Ohio

www.dosmadres.com

ISBN: 978-1-948017-30-5

85 Pages

Review by Dennis Daly

Sucked into the circular stir of worldly playtime and metaphoric toads, the reader of David Giannini’s new collection of poems, In A Moment We May Be Strangely Blended, seeks out objects of solidity like a book or a sofa or a bed or an arctic poppy for balance in the midst of indeterminacy. But to no avail. Giannini is just too good at what he does.

Joy emanates from these poems in classical cacophonies and word waves. In addition, this poet appears to actually like what he does. He amuses his audience with mortality’s imaginings and historical absurdities. Some of these poems need to be bottled and thrown into the space-time sea for other generations in other universes to grimace and chuckle at. That is, if there ever are future generations. The poet seems to entertain some doubts on that score.

In his very first poem, Process At the End of Winter, Giannini, after sorting out his sense of cosmic time with an absurd opening irony-- a metaphoric (and amusing) semantic slip, relates a self-to-self conversation in which he beautifully describes the creation process. The poet says,

…I talked and insisted

to the man inside, in his plot,

let’s make some progress, you know,

a seed toward sequoia, an imp

into cougar, chimneys refusing

carcinogen-ghosts, or map-

lessness an actual destination,

and then just got gobsmacked

by the imminent task—I sat

at my desk and sensed the fangs

of something stalking.

Giannini’s extraordinary poem, In Defense of Magic and Black Hats, Transcendent Illusion and Delusion, an Assay, rises up from the murky waters of the past, both literary and naturally rooted, with a paean to wonder and mysticism (at least the rabbit-pulling kind), holier-than-thou snollygosters not included. Religions that spark human imaginations enter this worldly magic show with good intentions, at least at first. Giannini considers Christianity in context here,

People sensed rain. Saw streams. And that lake, the Sea

of Galilee. Many black days. They entered Galilee, hatless

in that capital of fish, their doubts cast, until that

magician pulled one, then another and another, rare bit out.

Before and after that, many magicians pulled worlds

from the World, each with different hats. Orient

and Occident. Black cats of worship. Scylla

and Charybdis swirled. The Romans. Rumi. Full World.

As his protagonist-skeptic bemoans humanity’s position and weed-like commonality and comeliness in his piece entitled The Cynic’s Daily Bell, Giannini welcomes the exhilarating freedom that accompanies the meaningless of one’s life. His pessimism in the face of unchanging biology goes over the top a bit, but he does have a compelling point to make, as did poet John Donne and novelist Ernest Hemingway. He makes it this way,

I’m not chary of crash blossoms

or asemic texts which make me laugh and give

delight even as I hear the tocsin toll its toxic tell:

in the past 10,000 years or so next to nothing

has been learned well enough to truly implement

ourselves as better beings. Await cells to change?

Every perception blights the thing perceived. Hell,

it’s likely too late for genes, so ringeth the bell.

Word repetition and alliteration, among other verbal mannerisms, serve the poet well in many of his poems. Giannini obviously loves wordplay and appreciates both the sophisticated and childish sides to such play. Boy of Pilgrims, a piece that mulls humanity’s rush to adulthood in the face of brutish barriers and an often shortened life, emblemizes Gianini’s rhetorical romping. Here the poet, with grimness, charms his reader,

… ice up his sleeve,

a knee he skinned

slipping on rock.

And he wasn’t

even someone

not anyone, not

yet, not set

with so many,

so many bled

from the harshness,

so many dead.

Giannin lacks a logician’s knack for knitting disparate things together by their shared traits in order to show a sense of transcendental oneness. Worse, or perhaps better, he has found an outlet in Dadaism. This poet seems to enjoy tearing into nature’s comfortable fabric to see the abysmal truths that lie behind. It’s not pretty, but sometimes it’s very funny. Giannini’s poem Great Dane begins with a police officer interviewing a woman while she restrains Wallace, her very protective and very large dog. The woman sensibly explains her position as a matter-of-fact fait accompli,

Well, my husband, his name was Wallace, too,

used to beat me, a real abuser, a skinny brute.

He was only skin-and-bones, you know, so one

day our dog felt encouraged and carried him

off. No one stalls in ecstasy or its prospects, not

even a dog, right, officer?

“Where is your husband?”

I don’t know, said the wife, prob’ly buried

somewhere in the yard. I fought the flaw but

the flaw won.

“You’re under arrest, mam. You have the right

to remains, I mean remain…

Gianini’s poems are a perfect antidote to the humorless, self-important troubles thrust upon nature’s once simple, now befuddled, plan for the incremental happiness of our species—not. Instead read Giannini for the marvelous fun of it.

A Fundraiser for the Boston National Poetry Festival: Sunday March 3, 2019

Doug Holder interviews Daniel Kimmel--film critic,and novelist

Newton Free Library Poetry Series-- Tuesday, March 12, 2019--7PM

( Click on to enlarge)

Doug Holder Interviews Belle Brett author of "Gina in the Floating World"

"The Patient" by Lawrence Kessenich Presented by Playwright's Platform (Newton, MA)

Playwright Lawrence Kessenich

"The Patient" by Lawrence Kessenich
  Presented by Playwright's Platform (Newton, MA)
  Adapted from a short story by Doug Holder
  Feb. 10, 2019



Congratulations to Lawrence Kessenich (playwright) and Doug Holder (memoir author) for the 26 minute actors’ reading of THE PATIENT: a wonderful story brought powerfully to the stage. I loved the contrasts between monologue, where the young writer character, appeals to audience sympathy for his lonely and hardscrabble life; and dialogue, as he is upstaged by a restrained and sedated mental patient, whom he’s supposed to watch all night—his miserable job. Where the writer has been appealing to “us” to listen and commiserate with his situation, the patient reads his character, even in silence, all too well, and berates him for self-pity: no girl, shacked up in some “suicide suite.” Get a life! Finally a nurse sedates the patient, leaving him silent, while the writer’s eyes fill with tears. I was reminded of that scene in Richard Yates’s REVOLUTIONARY ROAD, where the self-doubting Frank Wheeler is critiqued and exposed by a mental patient on family furlough--arguably the best scene in Sam Mendes’s film version, with Givings, the patient, played by Michael Shannon.---DeWitt Henry


*** DeWitt Henry is the founding editor of Ploughshares Magazine. His latest book is a collection of essays  titled,  SWEET MARJORAM.

A Conversation with Lloyd Schwartz: Somerville's New Poet Laureate.

By Doug Holder


I have seen Lloyd Schwartz in various venues over the years. I read with him once, and had the occasion to talk to him a few times. Of course, I knew of his many accomplishments, his poetry, his body of work, his Pulitzer-Prize winning music criticism, his Elizabeth Bishop scholarship, etc... Over the years I had lobbied for the creation of the Somerville Poet Laureate position, and finally Greg Jenkins, the director of The Somerville Arts Council, Harris Gardner and myself created the position--got the mayor's blessings- and formed a committee. As it so happened I wound up on the committee that voted for Lloyd Schwartz for our third poet laureate. On a balmy day in February--the very day the Patriots marched through Boston with another Superbowl win, I met with Schwartz at my backroom table at the Bloc 11 Cafe in Union Square, Somerville.

Schwartz is easily recognizable with his shock of white hair, a slight scholarly stoop, and a flowing white, biblical beard. But if you look behind your initial take you will notice a man with child-like eyes, seemingly receptive, amused, and full of curiosity.  They are not glazed over from that "been there, done that"  of someone with a long and distinguished career.


Doug Holder:  First off you had a poetry column in the Boston Phoenix for a number of years. This inspired me to have my own in The Somerville Times.

Lloyd Schwartz:  Yes. I had that in the book supplement, the Phoenix Literary Section, for four or five years. I thought that this was the best book section in Boston. I was the poetry editor and I picked the poems. Years after the supplement closed people were still submitting poems.

DH: You have had a long and illustrious career--why now did you decide to apply to be the Somerville Poet Laureatre?

LS: That's a good question. It is nice that I have the title. I think I have lived in Somerville now for over thirty years, and it feels like home. It is such an interesting community--such a changing community. Somerville is probably the most densely populated city in the USA--it has been voted an All-American city three times. A lot of poets live here. Somerville has had two previous poet laureates, like Gloria Mindock, Nicole Perez Dutton--each of them very different from the other. It means something to me to represent the city. I thought why not give it a shot? I told the committee that I have devoted my life to poetry, and teaching poetry. I have tried to convey my own passion to students. I thought, " Why not do that with my neighbors?" It is a new adventure--maybe I can make a difference.

DH:  Part of your vision for the poet laureate is to have elements of former U.S. Poet Laureate  Robert Pinsky's "Favorite Poem Project," in which the regular, non-poet kind of men or women can talk about and read their favorite poem.

LS: Yes. I have been advised to get a space first and establish dates, and then bring it to the mayor's attention. I really want to have the mayor part of this. I bet anything that the mayor has some poem or poetry that has been important to him. I don't want poets to be a part of this, at least not initially. I want people who are not necessarily part of the poetry community. I want regular folks to read a poem that was important to them, and explain why the poem is important to them. We need something like this.

DH: Your are known as an accomplished music critic and poet. What did you start out wanting to be?

LS: I wanted to be an actor when I was a kid. I was acting in children's theater from the very start. One of the things I liked about theater was how much team effort was involved. Everyone connected for a show, working together for a successful event. Later I went to Queens College in New York City. One of the first things I did was go to a meeting of the drama club. I was really shocked that everyone there seemed incredibly self-important. This was not the kind of theater that I wanted to be part of. The following week I went to a meeting of the literary magazine. The magazine was titled  "Spectrum." There were some remarkable writers there-- some of whom went on to be fairly well-known. I felt a sense of community there that I didn't feel with the drama club. Later I became editor of the school magazine. I was also part of the more radical school magazine, "New Poems." Actually, I wasn't interested in poetry until my senior year in high school. I had a great English teacher--who loved poetry--and did everything he could to get us interested. I remember he used to leap on his desk and recite Shakespeare.

DH:  You grew up in a working class family in Brooklyn. You said it was fortunate you had the option of a city college.

LS: Oh yeah. My father worked in a sweatshop in the garment industry. He was from Romania. He never learned to read or write in English. He was an extremely bitter man. My mother stopped working in the 1940s.  Queens College, a city college, was essentially free. I couldn't have gone to college otherwise,  because we didn't have the money. I got a Woodrow Wilson scholarship to go to graduate school at Harvard.

DH: Was Harvard a culture shock for you?

LS:  Yes and no. But it was a great adventure for me. You know I always loved music. I used to go to shows with my mom--I took it all in. I remember I moved into my first floor room on Oxford St. near Harvard's Natural History Museum. It was a hot day in August--my window was opened, and I heard a passerby whistle a theme from  Bartok's Concerto for Orchestra. I thought this was fantastic. The best thing that came out of graduate school was the friends I made, especially other poets, like Frank Bidart, and later the poet Elizabeth Bishop.

DH: Did you take a workshop with Lowell at Harvard?

LS:  I never took his official workshop. I was a regular member of what was called his "office hours." This was opened to anyone--whether you were from Harvard or not. People came off the street to share their poems. It was an amazing group of people. I went every week for years.

DH: How did you meet Elizabeth Bishop?

LS: I met her through my friend Frank Bidart. I loved her poems. In 1970 she replaced Lowell and gave a reading at Emerson Hall in Harvard Yard. Frank asked her if he could introduce his friend Lloyd Schwartz. I said to her,  "I really love your poetry." She replied, " Oh, thank-you," and walked away.  She was very shy, also self-conscious. She also had a drinking problem.She was an odd alcoholic. She would go on binges. If she had one drink--she was over-the-top.  When she wasn't drinking she was fine--very caring.  At the time I had been struggling with my PhD thesis. So I decided to change my topic. So I thought, "What about Elizabeth Bishop?"  I think we became friends around 1974 or 1975. I called her up and asked, " How would you feel if I write about you?" She said, "There isn't much to write about." I said, " Let me worry about that." I had to promise that I would finish my thesis."

One thing Bishop couldn't stand was talking about herself. But she agreed to meet with me as long as I finished the thing. When I met with her she would talk about the circumstances around the poems but she would not talk about interpretation. She never got over the feeling of not being an academic. She questioned the worth of poetry itself.

DH: Did you ever meet Denise Levertov when she lived in Somerville, Ma.?

LS: I never met her. She did teach at U/Mass. One of my first professional reviews was in the Boston Herald. It was a review of a new book of hers. I thought it was awful. I hated to do it but I panned it.  But this is the critic I think I am--I have to say what I think.  Her poetry in this case was very political and I thought it didn't succeed as good poetry. I went out of my way to avoid meeting her because of that review. It is hard to write good political poetry.

DH: What do you find unique about Somerville?

LS: Somerville has changed a lot. I bought my house here in 1984, in East Somerville. I used to live in Cambridge, and I loved Cambridge. Eventually I lost my apartment. Then I came into some unexpected money. I found a house I could afford. The whole neighborhood was Italian and Irish. A resident told me that you could tell the difference between an Irish and Italian household by looking at their front yard. An Italian family would have tomato plants next to their  Madonna statues; the Irish family would not. Way back then Vinny's Restaurant opened on Broadway. Great Sicilian food--I still eat there today. But the community has changed. Now I live next door Haitian minister and his family. It is a much more inclusive area---just look at all the varied new restaurants that line Broadway. Somerville has changed radically. We now have the Assembly Row Mall. If you had told me in the past I would someday be able to walk to a Brooks Bros. store from my  house--well, I wouldn't have believed you. I just find the city so much more interesting--with all the young folks coming in--all the ethnic groups in the mix.  I am lucky to be here. I would never sell my house--unless they had to cart me away to some nursing home.