I finally got a caricature "The American Dissident" http://theamericandissident.org put me in their series of Lit Toons. I have been mocked with the best, Including Harold Bloom, Martin Espada and a host of others....

Mark Pawlak is a longtime editor of the respected small press “Hanging Loose,” http://www.hangingloosepress.com , and the author of the poetry collection “Official Versions.”
His poetry and prose have appeared in The Best American Poetry 2006 (Billy Collins, ed.), New American Writing, Off the Coast, Pemmican, and The Saint Ann’s Review, among other places. In addition, he is editor of four anthologies, most recently, Present/Tense: Poets in the World, a collection of contemporary American political poetry, featuring work from some of the country’s best-known writers. Pawlak is Director of Academic Support Programs at the University of Massachusetts Boston, where he also teaches mathematics. He has been the recipient of two Massachusetts Artist Fellowship awards. He lives in Cambridge with his wife and his teenage son. Mark was a guest on my Somerville Community Access TV show: “Poet to Poet/Writer to Writer.”



Doug Holder: Marc, you have been at Hanging Loose Press for some twenty-six years. Tell me a bit about the press and your involvement.

Mark Pawlak: Forty years ago Hanging Loose was literally loose sheets of paper inside of an envelope with a cover on it. It literally hung loose. We used to advertise that if you wanted to edit the magazine, you could throw the pages you don’t like in the garbage, and the ones you like you can tack on the wall. Over the years it has evolved to perfect bound.

Doug Holder: What is your press run?

Mark Pawlak: 1500.

Doug Holder: How did you get involved with Hanging Loose?

Mark Pawlak: I got involved through the poet Denise Levertov. She was a contributing editor. She taught a poetry class at MIT, when I was a student. She published a supplement to issue No. 12 in 1970 that included her students’ work. That’s how I was introduced to “Hanging Loose,” through her. Subsequently, I met Ron Schreiber, another of the founding editors, at U/Mass. Later the editors invited me to join them, when on member stepped down.

Doug Holder: This is the 40th Anniversary of Hanging Loose. What keeps the press together?

Mark Pawlak: This year is our 40th. Many small presses are one person operations, and it is a labor of love. We have four different people editing Hanging Loose so when one of us is ill or doesn’t have the energy, we just pick up the slack. That has helped us through the difficult years. Presses with only one or two people might have folded.

Doug Holder: You say this is a labor of love. You don’t make much or any money from your efforts. What keeps you keeping on?

Mark Pawlak: I am a “holy fool.” It has become a community of writers for me. There are people I have never actually met who I consider dear friends. It does distract me from my own work. It took me three years to complete “Official Versions.” The press distracted me.

Doug Holder: You teach math at U/Mass/Boston. How does this fit with the art of writing poetry?

Mark Pawlak: It does and it doesn’t. It does in the sense of the esthetic of math—getting to the solution, much like knowing you finished a poem. There is a formal precision in poetry and math.

I was a math geek as a kid. I did read some poetry on my own. I discovered Whitman one summer and fell in love with him. I am from Buffalo, NY—a really provincial, working class place. I wasn’t until I encountered Denise Levertov at MIT; during my final year at college did I try my hand at poetry.

Doug Holder: I know I use the newspapers as fodder for my poetry. How about you?

Mark Pawlak: I read The Boston Globe and The New York Times. I pick up the METRO on the train, and if I am really bored I read The Boston Herald. I am always foraging. The language, human interest stories interest me, as well as the political pronouncements of the government, all sources of my poetry. I also have used Billboard’s Best Song titles. I did a poem that involved Hallmark greeting card clichés. I am interested in language out in the world and how it is used and abused.

Doug Holder: It has been said that your poetry cuts through “political doubletalk.” Do you consider yourself a political poet?

Mark Pawlak: I do. In the sense I want to empower people to think critically how language is used. I would like them to understand the disinformation of the headlines. I want to speak plainly.

Doug Holder: Some people say that political poetry is no more than polemic disguised as poetry..

Mark Pawlak: It certainly can be. Political poetry has been accused of being too much of the moment. But what’s more permanent than war, oppression and injustice?

Doug Holder: I characterized you as a “lyrical junkman,” in that you sort of forage through newspapers, ephemera, etc… for words and phrases to flesh out a poem. Is this fair?

Mark Pawlak: Poetry can be conservative. I want to take what’s around me—basic language, and put it together in informative ways.

Doug Holder: Is being an editor drudgery?

Mark Pawlak: It can be drudgery. As you get more practice, you are able to read a few lines—by the energy and language—you can decide where a poem is going or not going. So you can minimize drudgery. There is always the excitement of finding unexpected things. It happens a lot. The thing I am most proud about is that we have a special section in our magazine for high school writers. They are not jaded. High school students are very open to experience and language.

Doug Holder: Is it necessary to have a higher education to be a poet?

Mark Pawlak: You have to be able to read and read deeply. I don’t think a PhD is necessary. Denise Levertov said that poets who became grad. students needed a number of years to shed their skins to get back to their “work.”

Doug Holder

Eric Greinke

Up North. Harry Smith. Eric Greinke. ( Presa S Press http://www.presapress.com/ ) $6




Presa Press has released a chapbook of poetry by Harry Smith and Eric Greinke. Harry Smith is well-known in small press circles as publisher of "The Smith," and a founding member of COSMEP, ( a seminal small press organization). Eric Greinke was the publisher of "Pilot Press Books" in the 70's, and recently founded the Presa Press. Both Smith and Greinke choose the territory of northern/rural/wilderness environs to set their poems. In Smith's case it is Maine, and in Greinke's Northern Michigan. Being a dyed-in-the wool city boy, with a need for the smell of asphalt to keep me honest, I approached the work with trepidation. But these two poets welcome the inspiration, respite and solace the hinterlands seem to offer. In Smith's poem "Paths." the reader gleans something about the journey of life from a wilderness trail:

" When I was young, I made my paths...
I saw my paths as metaphors
for all my art and thought, and now
the forest and the bog reclaim my toil
I keep no trails; I blunder on
through thickets green beyond conclusion."

Greinke's poem "Green Wood," is sort of a "This Old House Poem." The house at first is made from unformed green wood, and later becomes something more solid. In this poem we learn about the life of a house, but more importantly the man:

"The wood was swollen,
Heavy and green
Sap bubbled
Around the spikes
As I drove them in.

I burned through
Two sabre-saws
cured through
The wet, green wood.
A year later
When it cleared,
It was so hard & dark
That no nail could penetrate."

Hey... if you ain't out of the woods yet, you will be well-served by these two trail blazing poets.

Doug Holder/ Ibbetson Update

For Immediate ReleaseLiterature:

New Issues ReleaseMay, 2006Mary Curtin, Events Coordinator, 617-241-9664, 617-470-5867 (cell), marycurtin@comcast.netPeter Coyle, Store Manager, 617-629-4840, info@mcintyreandmoore.comDoug Holder, Ibbetson St. Press, 617-628-2313, dougholder@post.harvard.eduMcIntyre & Moore Booksellershosts theIbbetson Street PressIssue No.19Reading and CelebrationSaturday, June 10, 3:00 pm(Somerville, MA) McIntyre & Moore Booksellers hosts the Ibbetson Street Press: Issue No.19 Reading and Celebration. Saturday, June 10, 3:00 pm at McIntyre & Moore Booksellers, 255 Elm St. in Davis Square, Somerville, near the Red Line. Free and open to all, with an open read and reception following; wheelchair accessible. 15% book discount* for all those attending [*discount available for day of event only]. For information call McIntyre & Moore Booksellers (617) 629-4840 or log onto www.mcintyreandmoore.com.Somerville's Independent Poetry Press, the IBBETSON STREET PRESS, will have a poetry reading in celebration of its recent release Issue No.19. Featured readers include Doug Holder, Marc Goldfinger, Lainie Senechal, Steve Glines, Robert K. Johnson, Dorian Brooks, and others. The Ibbetson Street Press has published award-winning books of local and national writers for about eight years. Recent issues of IBBETSON STREET were picks of the month by the Small Press Review.Founded by Doug Holder (http://www.authorsden.com/douglasholder), along with Dianne Robitaille and Richard Wilhelm, the press is dedicated to publishing poets from all walks of life. Poets such as Lyn Lifshin, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, X .J. Kennedy, Jack Powers, Diana Der-Hovanessian, Hugh Fox, and historian Howard Zinn have praised Ibbetson's books. Each issue of IBBETSON STREET has a large sampling of local poets. For further information on the press, see www.ibbetsonpress.com.PAST AND PRESENT CONTRIBUTORS INVITED TO READ!McIntyre & Moore Booksellerswww.mcintyreandmoore.comOn the Red Line, in the heart of Davis SquareGreater Boston's best source for scholarly used booksOpen for browsing 7 days a week until 11 pm###--submitted by marycurtinproductionsc/o Mary CurtinPO Box 290703, Charlestown, MA 02129617-241-9664, 617-470-5867

(cell), marycurtin@comcast.net"dedicated to staging insightful entertainment, particularly in non-traditional venues"http://www.marycurtinproductions.com

"Way, Way, Off The Road." by Hugh Fox edited by Steve Glines
(Ibbetson Street Press-2006)

To order go to: http://www.lulu.com

Introduction

Several years ago the “Ibbetson Street Press,” publisheda Hugh Fox poetry collection: “Angel of Death.” I had neveractually met Fox in the flesh, but I was aware of his substantialcontributions to the small press over the past 40 years. Foxwas a founding member of the “Pushcart Prize,” a foundingboard member of COSMEP, (a seminal small press organization),edited the groundbreaking anthology “The Living Underground,”to name just a few achievements.One day, in my apartment on Ibbetson Street, inSomerville, Mass., I was just about asleep when I heard mydoorbell ring. I went to answer it and this man of a “certainage,” with long gray hair sprouting from the sides of his capand a heavy Bronx-like accent said: “ Hi Doug, what do ya’have in there, a Blonde?” I said: “Well my wife is here, she’ssort of blondish.” I asked him in but I guess he sensed I was inno condition for company. He declined and promptly took acab back to his hotel.Since then I have had the opportunity to meet him on acouple of occasions. Fox is full of anecdotes about many of thestumblebums, poets, poseurs, players, publishers, editors, withall their infinite variety, on the small press scene. I am glad thismanuscript has seen the light of day. And when you read ithopefully you will see the ‘”light” too.

Doug Holder/ Ibbetson Street Press

Dick Lourie Brings The Blues to the “News”


Somerville poet, publisher and Blues musician Dick Lourie, is a man who is never without a project. Currently he is working on a collection of poetry: “Overdue At The Crossroad,” that deals with the vibrant Blues community in Clarksdale, Mississippi, that Lourie visits frequently. Lourie talked to the “News” staff at our regular contributors meeting. Although Lourie has been a Somerville resident since 1981, he feels equally at home in Clarksdale. Clarksdale, although much smaller than Somerville, is similar, in that it has a large and vibrant population of musicians. Deep in the south, Clarksdale has an unusual degree of sophistication because according to Lourie, “Many international visitors pass through for the Blues Festival and the plethora of blues clubs.” Lourie said he has an “obsession,” with the town, and has become friends with many of the accomplished musicians and singers who reside in this burg. He hopes to have the poetry book out next year, and is currently soliciting a number of University presses.

Meanwhile Lourie remains active in a Doo-Wop group, and performs regularly with “Weeping Willy”, a Blues musician in the Boston area. Currently, Lourie and his wife Abbey Friedman (a documentary filmmaker) are working on a film documenting a Boston-based Afro-American singing group the “G-Clefs.” This group has been performing together for well-over 40 years, in such venues as the “Apollo Theatre,” in Harlem, to name one.

Lourie, who considers himself a poet first, and a musician a close second, told the “News” reporters that he continues to be intimately involved with the “Hanging Loose Press” that is based in Brooklyn, NY, with former Somerville resident Mark Pawlak and others. Lourie has several poetry books to his credit, most recently: “Ghost Radio Blues” that brags an accompanying CD.

Lourie, who played his 60 year old sax at the end of the meeting, said that his poems are often related to the 12 bar Blues form. Lourie said that poetry and music have always been related. Their separation has only been a relatively recent development in modern cultural history. Lourie, ever the iconoclast, ended the meeting with an unexpected remark: “I realized I was never going to make a living in music, so I went into poetry.” Spoken like a true artist!

Doug Holder

Author Steve Edington Sees “The Beat Face of God.”



Steve Edington is the author of “The Beat Face of God,” a book that explores the spiritual aspects of the “Beat” generation of writers who emerged on the American literary landscape in the 1940’s and 1950’s. Among the poets and writers in this rebel group of writers were Jack Kerouac, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Gary Snyder and Allen Ginsberg, to name a few. Edington, a Unitarian Universalist minister and “Beat” Generation Scholar, argues that these writers were religious, but not in the conventional sense. I spoke with Edington on my Somerville Community Access TV show “Poet to Poet: Writer to Writer.”

Doug Holder: You are a minister. How does being a religious leader fit with your love of “Beat” literature that often glorifies drugs, promiscuity, and things not usually associated with the religious life?

Steve Edington: Writing the book was a way to bring together two of the worlds I move around in. Unitarian Universalist is a very liberal form of Protestantism. My other interest was with the “Beats” that I had since I was in theological school in the 1960’s. The way I saw them coming together is a theme in the book. A colleague of mine offered this thought and definition of the nature of religion: “It’s our human response to the reality of being alive and knowing we will die.” It is a way we find meaning and purpose in death and life in the face of our mortality. I really took a look at the writing of the “Beats,” and decided this is what they were really trying to do. This was beyond some of the more self-destructive behaviors that they were engaged in. Jack Kerouac said that the “Beat” generation was a religious generation. When Kerouac was on the “Steve Allen Show” and was asked why he wrote: “On The Road,” he said: “Well, I wrote the book because we all are going to die.” This caught a lot of people off-guard. What he really meant by that harks back to the definition we discussed. There are two sides to “On the Road.” One is the America of the 1940’s, and the other is the soul of Kerouac, in the person of Sal Paradise ( a character in “On the Road”). He was trying to answer the question: “Who am I?” “Where do I belong?” Kerouac said on a radio show: “I want God to show his face,” hence the title of the book.

DH: So you choose to concentrate on the positive spiritual quest of the “Beats.” You don’t advocate all the other stuff attributed to the “Beats,” like using drugs, etc…?

SE: I have a twenty-two year old son. I have tried to give him an appreciation of these people. I would not want him to live the life that some of these people lived. Interesting. He has one more year of college to go. He and his friend want to drive across country this summer. How can I say, no? He has been hearing about “On the Road,” all his life, and now he wants to do his own road trip. I would never be an advocate for these people’s self-destructive behavior. I would ask that people try to look at what they were searching for. Try to find some meaning in life. The “Beats” tried to find meaning against the backdrop of cultural conformity.

DH: Were “Beat” generation writers like Jack Kerouac, and Allen Ginsberg, religious people?

SE: I would say so. Kerouac was a life-long Catholic. He was born a Catholic and he had a Catholic burial. He tried to embrace his Catholicism, later her embraced Buddhism. Kerouac was very captivated by the concept of the tortured Jesus. There was something about that suffering that really attracted him and caused him a lot of trouble.

DH: Did Ginsberg wrestle with his Judaism?

SE: Ginsberg went easier with his Judaism than Kerouac did with his Catholicism. I don’t think Ginsberg ever renounced his Judaism, he just sort of added Buddhism on to it. His poem “Kaddish” ( Kaddish being a Jewish prayer for the dead), is an incredibly moving poem. His poem “Howl,” is a walk through the demonic in search for the holy. The “Beats” they felt were walking through the demonic aspects of the society they were in. They were in the end looking for a divine dimension to life.

DH: In 1948, Jack Kerouac, the author of “On the Road,” wrote: “In America today there is a claw hanging over our brains, which must be pushed aside or else it will clutch and strangle our real selves. Is that still true today?

SE: My last chapter of my book is built around this quote. That grabbed me. I thought: "What was the claw he saw in 1948, and what is the claw right now? Some of the claws today are consumerism and anti-terrorism.

The Backdrop the “Beats,” were writing against was a country that wanted to get back to normal after the Depression and Second World War. The “Beats” were what I call “holy misfits.” They were the people that could not fit to where the culture was going at the time.

DH: Who are the “Beats” today?

SE: I find the “Beats” on a local level. I don’t know of any big names. Young poets find their own venues. Places like “Squawk” or “Stone Soup Poets.” I see the new “Beats” at mostly smaller venues like these. I can them at the poetry slams we have at the Kerouac Festival in Lowell, Mass.

DH: Can you tell me about the “Scroll” that will be exhibited at the Kerouac Festival in the summer of 2007?

SE: What is referred to as the scroll is a 120 foot roll of paper that Kerouac wrote the original manuscript of “On the Road.” on. I believe that was in April of 1950. Kerouac was a “stream of consciousness” writer, and didn’t want to break his chain of thought. He could type so fast and he didn’t want to stop to change paper.

The scroll will be on display in Lowell at the “Blue Cotton Mill Museum,” in Lowell. For more information go to: http://cultureiscool.com/

DH: Who has the best archive of “Beat” literature?

SE: Stanford University has the Ginsberg archive. The New York Public Library has the Kerouac archive. Stanford paid Ginsberg a million dollars for his papers before he died.

DH: Which “Beat writer speaks to you the loudest?

SE: On the East Coast-- Kerouac. On the West Coast-- Lawrence Ferlinghetti. Ferlinghetti is a businessman/poet, as he needs to be to run the “City Lights” bookstore in San Francisco. He has become the grand old man of the “Beats,” and is now in his 80’s. He is an amazing guy. He was in World War ll, and his transformation came (according to him), when he was stationed in Nagasaki shortly after the Atomic Bomb was dropped. He realized the potential destructiveness of humans. My main “Beat,” now is Ferlinghetti. His poetry is wonderful. It has a whimsical quality—but it will zap you too.

DH: Is the “Beat” body of literature best read when you are young?

SE: In a way it is. I first read ‘On the Road” when I was in my early twenties. You read it in different stages in your life and you see different things. You read it later and you see a counterpoint to the joy and excitement—an undertone of sadness and tragedy.
Kerouac picked up on this in his twenties. He was able to write on all levels.
--------------- Doug Holder

One Art. Juliana Bures. Cheryl Reed Devitt. A.S. Henderson. George Locke. Cam Terwilliger. Edited by Julia G. Henderson. http://jgalhenderson.etsy.com $12.


Julia G. Henderson, the editor of the poetry anthology “One Art,” writes in her introduction:

“This anthology was conceived based on my hope to highlight the work of five talented twenty-somethings. The voice of each writer is unique, and reflects a wide range of emotions and beliefs, and the images are modern and striking. With the anthology, I also hope to pay homage to the art of the small press publishing and self-publishing, as a forum in which the thinkers, philosophers, artists and writers of our time can let their voices be heard.”

Being a long-time small press publisher and editor myself, I was like a dog on a meat truck when I read this introduction. Henderson, a graduate of the Emerson College (Boston), writing and publishing program, has created a winning- looking book complimented by the abstract artwork of George Locke.

In any anthology there is a mixed bag of work. In “One Art,” there are more than a few choices morsels to whet a poetry-lover’s appetite.

Somerville poet Juliana Bures in her poem “”Determine The Source,” writes of our world of chaos, and the façade of control:

“The sky is an endless layer upon the world,
a blanket to the wild.
Clouds come to cover,
but the sun burns above, always,

The procession is constant,
forward is the way the water flows.
Slants stretch out the afternoon,
without any purpose other than to begin again.

The world is an endless layer
cradling what cannot be controlled.”


Cheryl Reed Devitt has a simple but evocative poem about the sweet and not so sweet mystery of love, titled “i used to.”

“love a boy with blue eyes,
but he moved away. and
he didn’t know what to do
with me, nor i him,
i suppose.

i used to be sure
it was all figured out
it was all a done deal
‘til these past couple days
came and ripped the threads out…”


To have a book published is thrilling; which I am sure is the case with these young poets. And to have a book published with such high production values is even more thrilling. “One Art” is a welcomed addition to the world of the small press, and showcases the work of these talented poets admirably.

Doug Holder/Ibbetson Update

Dead Stars Have No Graves: A Poem. Joseph Kerschbaum. (http://www.pathwisepress.com/) $6.

“Dead Stars Have No Graves… ” is a long-poem that dives deep in the black hole of a dying or dead relationship. There is a touching mix of fragile, dashed hope and resignation, to this work. Here is a heated riff that explores the road from infatuation to the morning-after reality in a long relationship with the perquisite could-of, would-of, speculation:


“She could have been
anything. She could have been
a philanthropist who works with disabled children.
The way she talked, her slow drawl, sharp wit, could have
sustained conversations for hours. I could have
talked with her for days in those months when I was talking
with no one. Her smile could have been
the most alluring I’ve ever seen. Her walk could have
led me to cliffs ready to leap from upon command. Her perfume
could have fogged my mind till her eyes became color-less.
She could have been all this. Her mouth dispelled
all the myths I constructed.
I woke to find her smile simply composed
of teeth, not diamonds. Roses were not planted
in her mattress, just sweat.”

Kerschbaum, an award-winning poet from Bloomington, Indiana, rages against the dying of the light in a relationship, and does it with style and deeply layered use of language.

Doug Holder/ Ibbetson Update

Lee Briccetti: The Woman Behind “Poets House.”

I met Lee Briccetti executive director of “Poets House” during the “Poets House Showcase” this April (2006). “Poets House” is located in the SOHO section of New York City, and offers classes, lectures, readings, a library with thousands of poetry books, chaps, broadsides, etc… for the benefit of poets, writers, publishers, editors, and the general public to study and enjoy. Briccetti graciously agreed to be interviewed via the internet .







Doug Holder: “Poets House” was started in 1985 by Stanley Kunitz and Elizabeth Kray. Their vision was to create a “Place of Poetry.” They felt this was lacking in American cultural life. Do you think things have changed in the last twenty years?

Lee Briccetti: My work as executive director of “Poets House” convinces me that the whole culture of reading is in evolution. Desktop publishing has democratized the means of production, giving many more Americans, and a wider range of voices, access to print.

There is much poetry in this nation, and in many ways that poetry is being experienced—as text in books and magazines; on the internet and the radio; and in reading series in libraries, bars and bookstores, which continue to provide a social context for the exchange.

Finally, I would like to say that I do believe Poets House has made a contribution by creating a more visible presence for poetry in our culture. Initiatives like our poetry installation at the Central Park Zoo, a permanent addition to the Zoo’s signage near the dazzling animals, surprise audiences with a discovery of the pleasure of poetry in unexpected places. Also our “Poetry in the Branches,” program has become a national model for librarians who learn how to make their sites centers of poetry. My real point here is that for love of the art to thrive, first there must be exposure. And many more organizations and presses are working together to create these points of public contact.

DH: Poets House has over 45,000 items including books of poetry, chaps, biography, criticism and anthologies. You say you are the most comprehensive archive. How do you define “most comprehensive”? Are you more comprehensive than say the poetry collections at Buffalo and Brown Universities?

LB: Our Poets House Showcase gather’s the entire year’s harvest of poetry books—nearly 2,100 this year. Through this program we have become one of the most comprehensive collections in open stacks, open to the public. We need and love many university collections—but Poets House exists to reach out to the unmatriculated and unaffiliated—to poets and readers at every level of learning.


DH: You have a “Password Series.” It invites poets to read and discuss the work of other poets. How do you pick your guests? Why do you have them discuss other poets, instead, say, their own work?

LB: The “Password Series” celebrates poetry through the enthusiasms of contemporary poets who focus their presentation on the oeuvre of some other writer. One of the great interests for me is the match: watching two literary imaginations engage with and inform each other, in the dialogue of reading.

Most frequently we determine the match through long conversations with poets to learn of their literary loves.

The beauty of this kind of programming is that it communicates, here in our magnificent library, that readers and listeners are in a continuing conversation with all the poets who have ever lived. Indeed, I think that opening this conversation that crosses barriers of place and time for everyone, makes for a lively experience of the art.

DH: You have created an “Online Directory of American Poetry Books.” Can you tell me a bit about this?

LB: The Directory is a compilation of records documenting each book that has appeared in the Showcase since its inception nearly fifteen years ago. The Showcase is open annually to all publishers with new books of poetry who submit their books to us. There are forms on our website: http://www.poetshouse.org/

DH: You are a poet with a new collection out: “Day Mark.” Are you part of any “school,” of poetry? How do you define yourself as a poet?

LB: Temperamentally, I am well suited to the democratic embrace of the Poets House. I love getting the overview of what is out there each year; and there are many poets whose books I look for and whose “projects’ I want to keep up with. I think of myself as interested in experimental writing but I am foremost a devotee of Shakespeare, Keats and Dickinson. These are the poets I memorize devoutly so that I can carry their words with me.

DH: How do you find time to write? Any major influences?

LB: Discipline is my only hope in terms of getting writing time. I dream of whole days alone to read ten books at a time and think and enter a writing trance. But for now it is the local Café and a few mornings a week before work.

The whole idea of influence is tricky, no? Since as artists we are always making and articulating new connections between everything in our experience; but okay, oh well… the writers I hope I am most influenced by this year are Borges, Calvino, and Mandelstam.

DH: Poets House will move from the SOHO to Battery Park City. You will have a rent free space for many years. What other advantages will there be?

LB: As we move to the new permanent home, we aim to find ways to keep the intimacy of our current space while professionalizing the library and its services. The new home will give us room to grow our programs and services:

--comfortable reading and writing places where one will be able to lounge with books of poems or listen in the Multimedia room;

--exhibition space

--an expanded Children’s Room where school classes can visit in the morning and families can visit in the afternoon.

--expanded classrooms spaces for writing workshops or reading seminars

--Doug Holder

For more info. On Poets House go to http://www.poetshouse.org/

INTERVIEW WITH DOUG HOLDER appearing in http://www.cervenabarvapress.com
Write a bio about yourself.

I was born July 5 1955 in Manhattan. I graduated the State College at Buffalo in 1977 with a B.A. in History. Later, in 1997, I got an M.A. in American Literature and Language from Harvard University. I have worked at McLean Hospital since 1982, and for many of those years I have lead poetry workshops for inpatient psychiatric patients. I have been an editorial assistant for the Boston Review, assistant to the poetry editor at Spare Change News, and former president of Stone Soup Poets. I am currently the arts/editor for The Somerville News, director of the Newton Free Library Poetry Series, and host of the Somerville Community Access TV Show: "Poet to Poet/Writer to Writer." I founded the small independent poetry press "Ibbetson Street," in 1998. My poetry and articles have been widely published in the small press, and my books and taped interview with contemporary poets are archived at Buffalo, Brown, and Harvard University libraries.

Describe the room you write in.

I do a lot of my writing at the Sherman Cafe in Union Square, Somerville. I've written poems in many settings: from the comfort of my toilet seat to the back of a cab. Whenever the spirit moves me, as the saying goes.

What are you working on now?

I am working on promoting "Wrestling With My Father," a collection of my poetry, and "Inside the Outside," an anthology of American Avant-Garde poets released by the Presa Press that I am included in.

Your chapbook, Wrestling With My Father, was just published by Yellow Pepper Press. It is a beautifully written chapbook and tribute to your Father. Please talk about this chapbook.

"Wrestling With My Father,"was compiled after my father's death in April 2003 at age 86. Before his death I had written a number of poems about our relationship. I also wrote a few after his death. I completed this collection first for myself. I wanted a sense of closure. I wanted to be honest ...I wanted to deal with the ying and yang of our relationship. I hope other fathers and sons can relate to this collection. I feel its themes of conflict and love are universal. Of course I wanted to pass this book on to my family in memory of my Dad.

I read that one of your biggest influences was Henry Roth. Explain why?

I wrote my graduate thesis at Harvard on Roth. It was titled: "Food in the Fiction of Henry Roth..."You can find it at Harvard's Gutman Library. Roth wrote a classic novel: "Call It Sleep," that dealt with a Jewish boy, David Schearl's, assimilation into the New World of the Lower East Side of NYC in the early part of the 20th century. First off I have always loved writing about food. Food is very evocative, and I include it in a lot of my poetry. Second, Roth wrote about a milieu that my older relatives were part of, and would always talk about when I was a boy, often in Yiddish. I was always fascinated about what went on back then: the smells, the taste, the textures...

What writers do you read over and over?

I have so much new reading to do: poetry, books for reviews, etc...that I have very little time to read the same book over and over.

You founded Ibbetson Street Press in what year? Talk about your vision for the press. Have the other editors Diane Robitaille and Richard Wilhelm been involved from the beginning?

I founded the press in 1998, with Richard Wilhelm and my wife Dianne Robitaille. Richard and Dianne have been involved in one degree or the other since its inception. Richard and I are fond of saying we found the Press over "bagels." We had been discussing starting the press at our usual breakfast meeting at Breuger's Bagels in Porter Square, Cambridge.
What type of work do you look for as editor?

Any thing that hits me on an emotional or gut level.

You have done so much for the community of Somerville and the surrounding areas. I would like to start out this section of the interview asking you to talk about the Somerville Writer's Festival you founded.

I founded the festival with Tim Gager, a local writer and literary activist. We have put on three festivals so far. When The Somerville News was taken over by the Norton and Tauro families they wanted to improve the image of the paper.Tim and I thought holding a writers' festival would do just that. So for the past few years we have put on a festival held at Jimmy Tingle's Off- Broadway Theatre or The Somerville Theatre. We have had such readers as Franz Wright, Afaa Michael Weaver, and novelist Robert Olen Butler, to name a few.

For "The Somerville News", you are the Arts Editor. How long have you been writing for them? Every week you interview a writer, this must be so rewarding and interesting. Talk about your experience so far. Adding to this also mention your Poet To Poet/Writer To Writer Program on the Somerville Community Access Program.

I have been writing for The Somerville news for about 5 years now. I love interviewing people. It gives me the opportunity to talk to people I normally wouldn't have the opportunity to. I have always loved interview shows. I grew up listening to Barry Farber, Long John Nebble, and other radio personalities on WOR radio in NYC. On TV I watched David Susskind, Dick Cavett, and Alan Berk. Now I have a chance to do what they did, granted, on a much smaller scale. I love to explore the creative process, and I love to be surrounded by interesting people who have something to say.

Every Saturday in Davis Square, Somerville, at the "Au Bon Pain" cafe, a group of writers from all over meet at 9:00AM, hence the name "Bagel Bards. Since I have been attending this, I have met so many wonderful people. I look forward to going every week. Please talk about how you and Harris Gardner came up with this idea. Attendance Saturday morning has been growing and more people are becoming involved. This must be so exciting for you and Harris to see. What is this like for you?

My idea for "Bagels with the Bards" came from comedians. I was reading that for many years a group of comedians met informally at the "Stage Deli," in NYC for years. People would come and go, just shoot the breeze, talk shop, whatever. I thought this would be great for poets. A poet, Doug Worth, had written me about how cliquish he found the poetry scene in Boston and Cambridge. So I approached my friend Harris Gardner, and we came up with the name, and launched it in the basement of "Finagle-A-Bagel" in Harvard square, where we met for breakfast for awhile. I love it...its like having a secret club or something.

There are other magazines you are involved with. Discuss your role. You are also on the Board for The Wilderness Retreat in Littleton, MA. Discuss this.

I am the Boston editor for Poesy Magazine http://poesy.org/, a regular contributor to the Small Press Review, on the advisory board of 'the new renaissance " literary magazine, http://tnrlitmag.net/ , a fairly regular contributor to "Spare Change News," and the book review editor for the online journal: The Wilderness House Literary Review http://whlreview.com

The Wilderness House Literary Retreat was started by Steve Glines on a nature reserve in Littleton, Mass....a short drive from Boston. Steve asked me to helpout with publicity and literary guests. We have had the late poet Robert Creeley, Atlantic fiction editor C. Michael Curtis, Hallie Ephron, Afaa Michael Weaver, Suzanne Berger, Lois Ames...to name a few.

I am amazed at all your energy. You have heard me say that a zillion times now. You have given so much to the writers and community. Would you like to mention anything else here.

I am blessed with an abundance of energy. I also don't have kids, so I have a lot more time to devote to this. I find by giving to the community you reap rewards too.

Thank you so much for the interview Doug.

Buying A Suit on Essex Street. Ed Galing. ( Iniquity Press./Vendetta Books POBOX 54 Manasquam, N.J. 08736) No Price. iniquitypress@hotmail.com
http://www.iniquitypress.com/


Ed Galing writes of lost worlds. Approaching 90, he recalls The Lower East Side of NYC, the great Jazz players sensuously dancing with their axes, the joys and bountiful flavors of Moishe's Café, the memories of the great and obscure men and women he knew, the prize of a shiny new suit from an Essex St. shop, a boy looking at the riotous streets from a tenement fire escape, and all these images are rendered simply and evocatively. In "Jazz Man," Galing recalls a musician in a cold underground subway station in NY, who transforms the rather unforgiving environs:

eyes closed
his sax intruded
on the din and noise
of a cold subway
station where the
only music one
heard was the
screeching of a
train.

and suddenly the
bland, cruel world
of unseeing non-
caring people became
a paradise where the
only thing that counted
was the beautiful music
he was making,
a solo on sax
both sweet and caressing
in such contrast
to the shrill cacophony
around him.

And here we have Galing as a young kid in The Lower East Side viewing the world from the confines of his tenement building . From: "Fire Escape":

Mine was on the
fifth floor

A small iron
cage....

Down below I
could see pushcarts:

Crowded streets
people pushing and
shoving,

Screams and mutterings:
shouts of despair.

Up here, when I sat
outside the window
in my fire escape
refuge

I was six years old:
and already I knew
what if felt like

To be caged in
like
some wild animal.

Ed Galing and I have been friends for awhile; keeping in touch on the phone and in letters. Ed does not do email! Long ago I told Ed I would publish a poem of his in Ibbetson Street for as long as he is around. To this day Ed Galing goes to "Jack's Deli," in Philadelphia, plays his harmonica, and regales folks with stories of the "old days." The letters he writes me are full of the fears of old age and mortality. And I can tell you this: I love Ed Galing ,and so do many others in our small press community.

Doug Holder/ Ibbetson Update

The Powow River Anthology
Edited By: Alfred Nichols
Ocean Publishers, 2006
Soft cover ISBN 0-9717641-0-7 $11.95
reviewed by Amy Brais amy.brais@gmail.com

The product of over a decade’s worth of meeting, collaboration, and creativity centered in Newburyport, The Powow River Anthology accomplishes one of the great feats of any anthology of poetry – while each poem remains a strong entity of singular import, the pieces all fit together to form a cohesive whole, joined not only by thematic similarities but by their painstaking attention to language and structure, with no one poem eclipsing another. And the best part about that whole is that it’s a book you can live with, think about, and share. Perhaps the most notable experience I had with the book while carrying it around was when I passed Rhina Espaillat’s "Weighing In" to a co-worker, who had been complaining about recent weight gain, in what was admittedly an overly dramatized effort to comfort her. Espaillat writes:
"What the scale tells you is how much the earth/has missed you,
body, how it wants you back/ again after you leave it and go forth/
into the light."
In a final stanza that is both warm and dark, the speaker concludes:
"But look at you now, body, soft old shoe/ that love wears
when it’s stirring, look down, look/ how earth wants what you weigh,
needs what you know."
It’s no surprise that the poems in this anthology deal with the themes of love, death, and spirituality, but the ways in which the poems explore these familiar subjects are inventive. Brian T. O’Brien’s Pantry Mouse takes a seemingly mundane encounter between a man and a mouse in his kitchen and applies the dynamic of the encounter to the loss of love:
"You slid with whatever dignity/you could muster down a vertical/
partition, and I threatened and swore/ like a man—though without
conviction. / It was very much like when love departs. / There will be
no traps or poisoned bait. / I put a brick in front of your hole, / as I did
another time with my heart."
A. M. Juster’s Cancer Prayer is a modern sonnet that beautifully captures small wishes to make a terminal situation more bearable. The speaker prays:
"Please smite that intern in oncology who craves approval from
department heads. / Please ease her urge to vomit; let there be/ kind but
flirtatious men in nearby beds. /…Surround her with forgiving family/ and nurses not too numb to cry."
Len Krisak’s What of the Night? recalls a scene of love often overlooked – a father’s nighttime ritual of locking the house to keep his family safe, and wonders of the father, "When he’s townsman of the stillest town,/ Who will I be to set his burden down?" Noah’s Wife by Nancy Bailey Miller tells the Genesis story from the wife’s perspective and shows how, in the midst of all the other animals boarding the ark two by two, she boards alone. And James Najarian evokes loss and the passage of time through reminiscences of life on a goat farm, in his at times whimsical Goat Song.
Countless poems in the anthology are replete with striking, sensual imagery and language. Of particular note are Bill Coyle’s Anima, Alfred Nichol’s Sunday, Robert Crawford’s The Whole of It, Michele Leavitt’s Ladies Night, Karen Nelson’s Flamenco Dancer, and Deborah Warren’s Elizabeth’s Dress, which cleverly describes through claims of not describing.
With a blend of appropriate gravity and wit, the poems of The Powow River Anthology have tremendous resonance with the reader, long after the anthology has been put down.


Reviewed By: Amy Brais /Ibbetson Update/ April 2006/Somerville, Mass.

Why I’m Still Married. Women Write Their Hearts Out on Love, Loss, Sex and Who Does the Dishes. Edited by Karen Propp and Jean Trounstine.

Although the title of this collection of essays: “Why I’m Still Married,” is not posed as a question, it would be a good one to ask. And the writers in this evocative anthology answer it with a warts-and-all account of their “successful” relationships. When we are young, and even not so young, we let ourselves imagine that marriage will be angst- free, a union of undying love with our much desired mate. Ah! But then reality rears its ugly head! The ladies in this anthology, expertly edited by Jean Trounstine and Karen Propp, have a wide range of stories to tell, and they ain’t always pretty. Often many of our partner’s flaws reveal themselves after the wedding ceremony, and tolerance, compromise, compassion, and accommodation have to come into play. According to statistics many couples today are quick on the trigger for divorce as soon as they see a few red flags. The testimony of the women in this book is that in spite of the problems a relationship can present; it is worth it to try to make a go of it.

The celebrated poet Marge Piercy has had multiple relationships, open relationships, affairs, the whole spectrum of liaisons. Finally, in her later years, she married a man 13 years her junior, the writer Ira Wood. Piercy writes about what she feels is the secret of a good marriage, and how it often fits us better as we age:

“I need to know that my partner has my back, is on my side, can be trusted out of my sight; Ira needs that also. He had to learn to live with cats in order to live with me. I had to learn to follow and understand football in order to live with him….

“You learn where your real boundaries lie as you make your way through a marriage, where you can give away, and where you cannot. When you are young, it’s no particular advantage to be married unless you are having a baby and want help and support. When you’re older, it is much more valuable to be in a marriage. Who has time or patience to date over forty unless you absolutely have to. We need each other more as we age, not less. Growing old together is, in part not forgetting to grow.”

Kathleen Aguero, a poet and educator, writes about her relationship with a man who had a very hard time controlling his explosive anger. But she stuck by him, and has not lived to regret it. Aguero writes:

“Describing the tender disciplines and pleasures of marriage is difficult for me. The pleasures of our relationship are mundane—shopping together for kitchen linoleum at the Home Depot, reading together in bed… He buys me flowers for no particular occasion. I buy him espresso beans covered with dark chocolate….All that anger and shouting, all those tears had bound us in good ways as well as bad. We’d seen the worst of each other and still on balance wanted what we saw. We love each other. But that’s not it, not enough. In the end I can’t explain why I didn’t divorce any more than I can explain why I married. I wanted to/I didn’t want to. At the core of my deepest commitments is something mute, a koan.”

This book is written by women, but this man got a lot out of it. I saw myself in many of the men portrayed here. When I read some passages to my wife of 12 years, she laughed in recognition. The women in this book are not pointing fingers. They admit to flaws and multiple mistakes themselves. What this book provides is a “true” account of what a relationship is: its ups and downs, its ying and yang,

For these women the right move was to stay in their marriages. But the point is clearly rendered that there are no definite answers in matters of the heart. In the end it is your decision to stay…or go away.

Doug Holder/ Ibbetson Update/ April 2006.

The book is $25 from Hudson Street Press. ( Penguin Group)

David McNamara: For this Somerville, Mass. publisher it is always: “sunnyoutside.”

David McNamara founded and operates “sunnyoutside,” (http://www.sunnyoutside.com/ ), an independent literary press located in Somerville, Mass. McNamara studied literature at Long Island University, Ohio State, the “Poet’s House,” in Ireland, and Farleigh Dickinson University, where he earned his B.A. David has been widely published in the small press, as well as being the director of the magazine “ism,” that was based in Seattle in the late 90’s. He still is writing and has a collection of poetry coming out “Or,” from Hemispherical Press.

Doug Holder: “sunnyoutside” was founded as an online literary journal in 2000. In 2004 you went to print. Why did you decide to make the change?

David McNamara: “suunyoutside” online folded because I was unable to keep up with submissions. I basically just submitted and wrote for awhile. Later the creative urge to start publishing came out. “sunnyoutside” had a logo, a website and somewhat of a following. It just seemed logical to stay with the name.

DH: Can you tell me about the Emerson College (Boston, Mass.) publishing program you graduated from?

DM: The program is basically 12 months. They break it up into four modules. It is a crash course for publishing in the ‘real world.’ Most of the people in it are looking to get editorial and publishing positions with trade publishers. The modules were editorial, marketing, business and production. I’ve been working in publishing for 10 or 12 years. I really didn’t have a good grasp of the business side of things. So the program prepped me to run a business and to market it.

DH: Small press publishers of poetry rarely if ever make a profit.

DM: There is a couple out there. One is the University of Pittsburgh Press. Of course they have university funds to depend on. “Black Sparrow,” made money on Bukowski and other authors.

I hope to expand from poetry to fiction. I also have an interest in non-fiction.

DH: Is there a mission statement for “sunnyoutside?”

DM: That’s a tough one. I think I changed it a few times. I want to publish works that are crafted and skilled on the contemporary literary landscape. From a production standpoint we really emphasize the quality of the product. We want to create a visual format that represents the text well. The presentation should not detract from the text. It should accenuate it.

DH: You describe your press as a “Fine Book,” press. What is that?

DM: We are an ‘aspiring’ fine book press. Fine presses usually work with a letterpress. They are not going to use digital reproduction. The technology that I use goes back to Gutenberg.

DH: Do you think the physical book is threatened by the internet?

DM. Threatened? I can’t dispute that. Readership for books has and will go down. I don’t think extinction will happen. There is too much value with holding what you are reading. We are still seeing more and more books on the market.

DH: Are production values as important as the actual content of the book for you?

DM: Yes and no. Only once did I publish something based on what I thought I could do with it. The text really has to stand out by itself. It still has to be good.

DH: Reviewers don’t often comment on production value. Is this frustrating for you?

DM: It’s at times loveless work. It is kind of frustrating. I put in a lot time into something like paper and soliciting an artist to do the work. Then the review comes out and says what a great job the artist did. And the artist did do a good job, but the reviewer doesn’t see behind the scene. There is a part of me that wishes I got more attention.

Dh: You just published a book by the San Francisco poet William Taylor, Jr. titled: “So Much is Burning.” What attracted you to his work?

DM: Everything I accept has to be accessible and more than one dimension. With Bill’s work, anyone who reads it, can appreciate it. He writes about the downtrodden of society in a way in which anyone can enjoy it. He explores the dichotomy of beauty and ugliness in a skillful way.

DH: Where are your books carried?

DM: “Powell’s” in Portland, Oregon, hopefully the “Trident,” in Boston, hopefully “Porter Square Books,” in Cambridge, Mass. and “City Lights,” in San Francisco. The cover of William Taylor’s book is modeled on the “City Light,” books style. We also have books at “Logos Books,” in Santa Cruz, California.

DH: You publish in other formats, right?

DM: The first publication we did was a broadside (one sheet of paper- published on both sides) I am going to start a postcard series, and we also have produced mini-chaps.

DH: Talk about the writers you published?

DM: We have done a few things by William Taylor Jr. We have published a couple of things by the poet Nate Graziano. I have four essays by A.D. Winans that might be our first work of non-fiction. Winnans founded the “Second Coming Press,” in the 70’s in San Francisco. The press was well-known for publishing Bukowski, among other things.

DH: What do you think of Bukowski’s work?

DM: I respect it. Bukowski is Bukowski. There are a lot of spin-offs in the small press by people who are trying to write like him. This is a paradox because, again Bukowski is Bukowski. He was one-of-a-kind.

DH: Do you need a formal education to be a poet? Do you need an MFA?

DM: Not necessarily. My education has definitely helped me as an editor. There are a lot of writers out there whose work I like, who don’t have their MFA. On the other hand there are a lot of people who have them whose work I like. I think if you are going to write novels what you learn in an MFA program is invaluable. This is being said by a person who does not have one.

DH: What are your ambitions for the press?

DM: I’d love to do trade publishing. It’s hard when you are dealing with relatively obscure writers. I would like to transcend the small press yet still be in it. I want to do trade publishing as well as fine press publishing.

Doug Holder for more info. About sunnyoutside go to: http://sunnyoutside.com/

Endicott Review. Spring 2006. (Endicott College Beverly, Mass.) No. Price.

Having been a visiting poet in Nov. 2005 at Endicott College I can attest to the fact that the college has an active poetry community, as evidenced by their literary mag: “The Endicott Review.” Don Sklar, poet and head of the Creative Writing Department acts as a faculty advisor, along with Ruth Henderson. There is a lot of good stuff by students and people some way connected to the college on these pages. “At Sixty-Five,” (a poem by John M. Freiermuth), is a lyrical guide to the “stages of man.”

“At forty-five, I admonished my parents, “Don’t ever get old!”
But like the kids they had become,
they didn’t listen to the parent in me. Now I can hear
the faint whirring of Grimm’s scythe…”

In “Leaving Lansing, 1945,” Jack Murray brings us back to our seminal foray into the world-at-large. In this poem he uses detailed, evocative writing to capture an eighteen year old would-be artists’ first trip to Chicago:

“Chicago
a big dirty city
windy cold place,
hot like a steam-bath
in July…gangsters and thugs too
neighbors warn me.

yet I pack
my favorite things,


“new suitcase
with straps and brass buckles
rests on the rack above me
…a graduation gift.
light in the cars
is semi-darkness
occasional shuffling and snores.
I hear the porter call
Valparaiso, South Bend and Gary.
in blackness the train speeds
towards dawn and Chicago.”

There is also fine work by Sean Teaford, Betsy Retallack, and others. Included are photos and artwork. I would have included a bio section…but you can’t have everything. This digest-sized journal joins the ranks of student magazines like “Watermark” (U/Mass Boston), “Dudley Review,” (Harvard University), and “Clarion,” (Boston University), and does itself proud. Dan Sklar tells me Endicott is starting an MFA program so stay tuned for other developments!

Doug Holder/Ibbetson Update

Day Mark: Poems by Lee Briccetti: ( Four Way Books POB 535, Village Station N.Y. 10014) http://fourwaybooks.com/ $15.

During poetry month in April 2006, I went down to New York City to attend the “Poets House Showcase,” and reception for poetry publications for the year 2005. Housed in the SOHO section of the city, “Poets House,” a venerable resource for poetry and poets for decades, is going to move to the Battery Park section on the lower tip of Manhattan. At the reception I had the pleasure to meet Lee Briccetti, the executive director of “ Poet’s House.” Later I received a copy of her first poetry collection: “Day Mark.” Being somewhat of a poetry activist myself, it is always heartening to see a fellow activist come out with a book of his or her own work. So often we promote other “stuff” and let our own work hang in the wind. Briccetti’s “Day Mark,” definitely will leave its mark. The poetry is vivid, ethereal, and has a deep emotional investment.

Personally I love poems about collections of any sort. Poems that are lists, artfully done can illuminate the textures of our lives. In “Apartment Archive,” Briccetti, who oversees a large archive of books at “Poet’s House, uses an archive of concrete images with evocative affect:

“ Moving to the 36th floor, facing south, I had the illusion of living in open
sky, in two rooms of things around me. And because I had packed
my dead father’s house,

I imagined my posthumous life refracted in the implicit intimacies of my
collected thing…

--blue airmail letters, buried bones I alternately dig up or bark at;

--and the rabbit fur hat my best friend gave me in third grade, glamorous
awaitedness of womanhood;…

--Modest and lucky, it’s the view of the river I still love, blue-gray abundance

spread out like the ancient silvery times I live by


And in the title poem: “Day Mark” we have an enigmatic and moody piece concerning the post 9/11 aftershock:

“… There is a blister on my mind.
I agree to that.

Moment as the plane, four blocks away,
Turned, angling in—and I knew

They would be dead but I would live.

And so it is.

Time, a membrane
We both slipped through, into the next
Moment when I could scream.


Personality swallowed itself to a nerve:

Live.

I live
Above the pit, river
A gorgeous frame

For abundant new morning light.


This is an accomplished first collection by Lee Briccetti.

Doug Holder/ Ibbetson Update/ April 2006/Somerville,Mass.

Interview with Poet Sarah Getty: A Poet who mixes the concrete, with metaphors and emotions….

Sarah Getty is a poet who believes that concrete imagery, as well as being in touch with one’s emotions, are necessary to write poetry. And indeed, Getty’s poetry is full of both, and her work has a descriptive and evocative abundance. Getty is an award-winning poet and fiction writer living near Boston. Her most recent collection of poems is: “Bring Me Her Heart,” (Higganum Hill Books, 2006) Getty is the recipient of a “Cambridge Poetry Prize,” and won the “Barbara Bradley Prize,” from the New England Poetry Club. Her wok has been in such journals as: “The Paris Review,” “The Massachusetts Review,’ ‘The Larcom Review,” and many others. I talked with Getty on my Somerville Community Access TV Show: “Poet to Poet/Writer to Writer.”

Doug Holder: In a review of your new poetry collection “Bring Me Her Heart,” the reviewer writes that your work indicates to the reader and other writers that they ought to learn more. Why do you think your work is so informed?

Sarah Getty: I have a PhD in English so I have a rather broad range of knowledge.

Doug Holder: Is it arcane knowledge?

Sarah Getty: No. I wouldn’t say it’s arcane. I use some of the best known Greek myths in my work. I have always been a big reader and I have a good memory.

Doug Holder: But don’t you think most poets have a broad range of knowledge?

Sarah Getty: Well… It’s partly because of my age of course…. I mean I have a lot more time as a writer. When I was in school there was probably more attention paid to traditional literature. I think this is now lacking in public education. Education today seems more concerned with boosting the student’s self-esteem.

Doug Holder: You have a new book out: “Bring Her My Heart,” by Higganum Hill Press. Richard Debold, the publisher told me his editorial board shies away from work that is “self-referential.” How would you define your work?

Sarah Getty: Some of it is self-reerential. I think he means “just,” writing about yourself. My poetry deals with issues like death, by putting it in the context of Greek myth, etc…My editor wants work that refers to more than the poet himself.

Doug Holder: But isn’t the poet’s experience part of the common bond of humanity.

Sarah Getty: Indeed this is true. You can write things that are universal without referring to Greek myth. The more specific you can be, the more universal you will be.

Doug Holder: In your poem: “Leonardo’s The Coition of a Hemisected Man and Woman,” you brilliantly dissect a DaVinci sketch of the anatomies of a man and woman. You write that DaVinci started the search for the “essence,’ of man…” but we hapless humans still…hop about hapless and hopeful/ as the half Chick, creating fictitious forms, to fulfill speculative functions. Explain.

Sarah Getty: (Laughs) That was quoted from a scholar’s writing about DaVinci. Although we credit DaVinci with being one of the first people to dissect cadavers, he made a lot of mistakes. He created fictitious forms of speculative function. I meant we blunder around in our lives just as people did 500 years ago. In matters of the heart we are still speculative,

Doug Holder: In the poem “Late Day,” in your new collection, you recreate a scene that uses a rural pond as a backdrop for a reflection on death, or perhaps our ultimate divorce from nature. You write:

“When three Mallards glide by, green heads
gleaming. When sound sleeps. When,

for an hour, there is nothing to wish for.
When the air cools and the water

darkens. When gray geese raise a ruckus,
saying you cannot stay.”

Do you think we are drawn to images like the sea, the sunset, because they are in effect dramas about the cycle of life and death?

Sarah Getty: They are natural symbols. Yes. You sit in lake, during a golden afternoon…everything is beautiful…everything is perfect. But these geese are making a noise that implies: “you cannot stay.” On the first level it means: “I have to go home and make dinner.” But on the other it signals mortality. There is a lot of thought about our mortality in the book.

Doug Holder: You run workshops for poets. How do you approach the novice?

Sarah Getty: I basically have a two-sided approach. One is to concentrate on concrete images in the poem. Concrete images are important. I also encourage them to expand their vocabulary. I have them use the dictionary, and use words that they don’t know.

Doug Holder: Why is it important to expand their vocabulary?

Sarah Getty: It’s like you have a small wardrobe and you want to expand. The other approach I use in my workshops is for the poets to get in touch with their emotions. I make them imagine something they encounter, the ghost of their mother, etc… Something evocative.

Doug Holder: You are a singer. How does that fit with your life as a poet?

Sarah Getty: I am a member of the “Master Singers,” that perform in Lexington, Mass. for the past 30 years. I do think there is a connection between poetry and song. Poetry is about sound and rhythm.

Doug Holder: How hard is it to get a poetry book published?

Sarah Getty: It is very hard. It helps to be in the area for a long time. I have and I built up a large personal network. Both of my books were published by people I know. You have to get a practical approach or you are going to put your poems in a drawer like Emily Dickinson.

--Doug Holder. For more info. On Sarah Getty go to http://www.sarahgetty.net/

Roetzheim, William H., _Thoughts I Left Behind_. Jamul, CA : Level 4 Press.
179 Pages. Softcover, Perfect Bound. $14.95 US plus shipping. For
ordering information visit www.level4press.com.

Review of _Thoughts I Left Behind

Fertility Doll

Returning home I brought my wife some gifts,
among them was a carved figure—an ugly
woman with huge breasts and bigger belly.
Hawaiians said her name was Hi’iaka.
She stood beside our bed and watched, her eyes
reflecting red in candlelight, her shadow
dancing with obscene and naked joy
to hear Bolero by Ravel, to hear
the primitive music of need and want.
And in one month my wife told me that she
was pregnant after trying for so long.
We loaned her out to Loni, who was pregnant
that same month. And then the breathless call
when Hi’iaka had the same results
for Betty Lou, after four years of trying,
crying, clinics too. but now my laughing
wasn’t easy, now I found that I
was queasy when I thought of Hi’iaka’s
naked dancing, watching with those eyes
that seemed to glow.
I know, I know she’s just
a doll and not a god, not like my god,
the western god that toppled her and all
her kind two hundred years ago, although
she dances on our wall, her shadow leaps
and falls, and quietly she plants her seeds
of pagan thought, of faith in ancient gods.

Those of you who have followed my reviews by now have most likely learned
that I’m a relatively hard critic. Were I to put a book of my own out into
this shark pit, I’d probably be the last person I would want to write on it.

Another thing that may or may not have been evident in reviews that I have
formerly written is that I seem to have developed somewhat of an abhorrence
toward metered or formal poetry. It often doesn’t have so much to do with
the pieces themselves as it does with having so many momentarily inspired
pieces cross my desk by students who have just been reading Wordsworth’s “I
Wandered Lonely as a Cloud.” In three separate classes I have assisted, I
have heard no less that five would-be poets exclaim “I think in rhyme! It
just comes naturally to me.”

So when I open Roetzheim’s _Thoughts I Left Behind_, my initial response is
one of horror. All those old memories of workshop failures come to life,
and a teeny, meter-loving tapeworm starts doubling me over. If I’m to bide
my time reading formal, metric poetry, it had better be damn good.

This book is. Very good in fact.

Roetzheim’s critics have praised the poetry of _Thoughts I Left Behind_ for
its honesty (Gene Auprey), its personal nature (Stephen Scaer), and its
humor (Jackleen Holton), amongst other things. What takes me by surprise
mostly is that in Roetzheim the reader finds perhaps one of the few poets
who has ever picked up a pen and been able to write in form without sounding
trite or forcing rhymes. Where other poets have modified the sonnet form
and called it the “New Sonnet,” and pretty much classified any 14 line poem
as such, Roetzheim is able not only to maintain original Petrarchian form,
but also to do so without making the reader hear somewhere in her head “duh
DAH duh DAH duh DAH duh DAH duh DAH.” It’s subtle, it’s iambic, and in the
few moments where the toughest of critics could go so far as to call it
forced, the emotion and timing is so poignantly accurate, so aptly placed,
that it takes more nitpicking than this reviewer is capable of to point it
out, or let it detract from the poem.

Another thing that greatly impresses me with this book is that Roetzheim
remembers that poetry does not always have to be sullen and serious. There
are two sections of the book titled “Responses to the Dead” that portray the
poet’s reactions to several of those archaic, beastly poems that got us all
writing terrible poetry in high school. Such poems as Rossetti’s “When I am
Dead, My Dearest,” Byron’s “She Walks in Beauty,” and Donne’s “Death be not
Proud” are critiqued and parodied in such accurate and cynical wit that I
found myself quoting them to friends the next day at work. In a response to
Hardy’s “A Broken Appointment,” which is a melancholy piece about the
speaker’s lament that his date never showed up, Roetzheim borrows the meter
and writes:

I mean, I like this piece, its poignant mood,
And poetry to get revenge is cool,
But nowadays we say, “Get past it, dude!”
And real friends tell you when you are a fool, [lines 3 – 6]
I am there with the speaker of this poem. I have my tongue in my cheek
along with him. Moreover, I was thinking the same thing when I read Hardy’s
poem in the first place.

The first notes I took as I began to read this book and prepare for review
read as follows: “Unless you are a lover or meter, specifically iambic, and
are not opposed or put off by rhyming poetry, this book is not the book for
you.” Now having completed reading the book a second time, beginning
through it a third, emailing fragments of the material herein to friends,
jotting down stanzas on the back of notebooks, I can say this: If you buy
one book of poetry this year, make it this one. Tired of being beaten over
the head with Hallmark rhyme? Here’s a book that proves that there is at
least one poet left who can still write in meter without making you feel
like someone’s banging a cast iron pot near your head. But regardless of
your stance on metered poetry, herein lay fine poems of content, emotion,
and universality. The shear grace with which Roetzheim writes proves that
he is a master at this craft. _Thoughts I Left Behind_ is a journey that
you won’t want to miss.

Dave Anderson
Ibbetson Press Update /Somerville, Mass.

Wilderness House Literary Review # 1/1
WHLReview
145 Foster Street
Littleton MA 01460

The Wilderness House Literary Review is a publication devoted to excellence in literature and the arts.

The WHLReview is published online quarterly with a best of annual print edition.

Deadlines are as follows
March 1 - Spring
June 1 - Summer
September 1 - Autumn
December 1 - Winter

The annual edition will be published in May.

Editor & Publisher
Steve Glines

Poetry Editor
Irene Koronas

Fiction Editor
Julia Carlson

Nonfiction Editor
Steve Glines

Book Reviews Editor
Doug Holder

Arts Editor
Steve Glines

Poet in Residence
Tomas O'Leary

The Wilderness House Literary Review
is the result of the cooperation of the
Bagel Bards,
and the
Wilderness House Literary Retreat.

Submissions

Poetry may be submitted in any form.

Short fiction may be submitted in three formats:

1. very short stories less than 500 words in length
2. short stories less than 1000 words in length
3. Short stories that don't fit the above should be less than 5000 words.

Non-Fiction is just that so lets see some interesting footnotes.

Book Reviews should be positive unless the author is a well-known blowhard. Our mission is to encourage literature not discourage it.

Non-fiction should be short, (a lot) less than 5000 words.

Any form of art may be submitted with the constraint that it must be something that can be published in 2 dimensions. It's hard to publish sculpture but illustrations together with some intelligent prose count.

Published works are welcome with proper attribution.

Please submit all works electronically.
Welcome to the first edition of the Wilderness House Literary Review. WHLR is a result of the collaboration between a group of poets and writers who call themselves the Bagel Bards and the Wilderness House Literary Retreat, itself a cooperative effort between the Rotary Club of Littleton Massachusetts and the New England Forestry Foundation. All of the stories, articles, poems and examples of art have been presented as PDF files, Portable Document Format. This is a format that allows for a much cleaner presentation than would otherwise be available on the web. If you don't have an Adobe Reader (used to read a PDF file) on your computer you can download one from the Adobe website. The files are large and we hope you will be patient when downloading but we think the beauty of the words deserver a beautiful presentation. Enough housekeeping.
It's always a pleasure to present a new collection of art and literature. When we started to assemble this issue none of us expected the volume of submissions. It was a pleasure making this selection. Since this is our spring issue and we are hungry for sunshine after the drab confines of winter we begin with a poem by Tomas O'Leary, our poet in residence, titled 'Sermon on Sun Worship.' We hope that warmed you up.
Essays
When you get to a certain age many of us discover that we are living in an age of regrets, not for what we have done but for what we left undone. How many of us wish we could go back and tell our first love what they still mean to us. Charles Campbell tells us in two essays about the first two meaningful relationships of his adult life. He's asked us to post his biography lest some think he is stuck in the past.
Charles Campbell is a man who reached 60 years of life managing to accomplish nothing of note but a happy marriage of 34 years, so considers himself an extremely successful man. He has not written anything except a check for most of those decades. He currently resides in Georgia.. "If Lou Gehrig is the luckiest man on the face of the earth, he must feel my hot breath on the back of his neck."
We start with 'Red Sky at Night' followed by 'Red Sky in the Morning.' We secretly hope he finds a very wide audience.
On the literati of Philadelphia
Meeting at the Pass by Afaa Michael Weaver
Mathematical musings by Irene Koronas
Ellipse and Parabola
Zero begins end
Friends, family and reform school by John Hildebidle
Strict Objectivity
A New Relationship
Mathew
The Class Struggle
Winter musings
Urban Orchard by Steve Glines
Fiction
October Run in Danehy Park
By Sarah Merrow
28th Century Milky Way Conference on Hieroglyph Philology. Paper 27-09:
By Edward Abrahamson
Over life (about my dead aunt)
By Irene Koronas
THE QUIET ROOM
By Doug Holder
Poetry
Modern life is fast. None of us have the time to .... fill in the blank here. Where once the literary inclined might have written a serialized Victorian novel now we find the poet and chapbook. This is not your grandmother's poetry, the standard measures of poetry, meter and verse, still exist and are thrilling to hear when well executed but most modern poetry is what the classic academics might condescendingly call experimental. Filled with blank verse and prose, poetry is illustrative, gestalt filled, post-post modern expressions of short fiction, short essay, short .... It is Picasso to Rembrandt, e. e. cummings to Shakespeare. How often have you read a short work and exclaimed metaphorically, "Wow that's poetry." Today it is poetry. America is experiencing a vibrant literary renaissance. We offer a sampling of it here.
A D Winans
Afaa M Weaver
Alan Catlin
Barbara Bialick
Bill Costley
Carolyn Gregory
Chad Parenteau
Clara Diebold
Deborah Priestly
Diana Der-Hovanessian
Doug Worth
Ellaraine Lockie
Eric Greinke
Francis Lemoine
Harris Gardner
Howard Lee Kilby
Hugh Fox
Jennifer Matthews
Joanne Vyce
John Hildebidle
John Mercui Dooley
Julia Carlson
Kelley J White
Kevin McLellan
Lainie Senechal
Lo Galluccio
Marc D Goldfiner
Matthew Silver Rosenthal
Molly Lynn Watt
Pat Brodie
Patrick Carrington
Philip E Burnham
Richard Wilhelm
Robert K Johnson
Sarah Merrow
Stephen Morse
Taylor Graham
Tomas OLeary
Visual Art
We take pleasure putting our logo on top of interesting works of art. For our arts section we have chosen to place out logo on top of an exceptional work of art by Jenny Lawson Grassl. A version of the original art may be found here.

The masthead (at the top of this page) is our logo placed on a work by Irene Koronas who is also a writer and out poetry editor. If out masthead was a teaser here is a further sampling of Irene's work.
For some reason many poets are also visual artists and Deborah Priestly is one of them. Her poem 'tree of cats' may be found above in the poetry section. We thought it fitting to show off a sampling of her art with a painting of a cat.
We know we said no 3D art but photograph of this sculpture by architect William Turvelle somehow fit.
That is it for out Spring 2006 edition. The deadline for out Summer edition is June 1. No doubt there are errors and omissions. Please bring these to our attention.
As we said when we started this is a joint production of Wilderness House Literary Retreat and the 'bagel bards'. The 'Bagel Bards' have just published their first (and we hope of many) anthology. You may purchase it here:





A new and exciting travelog:



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