Interview with Poet Ellaraine Lockie with Pablo Teasdale

Interview with Poet Ellaraine Lockie

By: Pablo Teasdale


Pablo: I'm very glad for the opportunity of interviewing you, Ellaraine. Your audience is rapidly growing, and I'm not the only one who wants to know how you think. So. . . Femininity is very evident and strong in your poems. Could you please express how your beauty and femininity translate into thought and word?

Ellaraine: Thank you, Pablo, for doing the interview. I'm smiling at this first question. The last person who bought a copy of my chapbook, Finishing Lines, was a woman medical doctor from Russia who is well-read in poetry. She said after reading it, "You write like a man."
And the judge of the recent Elizabeth Curry Award from SLAB at the University of Slippery Rock, in writing the analysis of the winning poem (which was mine), referred to the poet throughout as "he." (The contest entries were anonymous.) I think this was because the poem reflected a realistic look at Montana farm life, and it also used the word "bullshit."
But okay, two of my collections (Midlife Muse and Crossing the Center Line) have dealt with a most feminine issue--that of menopause. The poems in them have struck a cord with many women because I openly address experiences that they are either too embarrassed to talk about or sometimes even to think about. And I have quite a few poems about sexuality, one collection in particular about illicit love affairs (Coloring Outside the Lines). Another in progress is a collection on electronic love. These are all written from a woman's viewpoint, either my own or others', mostly women's.
I feel more qualified to write from a woman's stance for the obvious reason. When I do so, as I do with every poem, I try to strip the layers away of whatever subject I'm addressing until I'm down to the core of it. This requires an unflinching look and a willingness to write what I find there, no matter what is revealed. These are truths as I either experience them or observe them. That's what poetry should do I believe--deliver the truth. And I do think that the truth is perhaps harder to communicate sometimes for women, especially of my generation. We were brought up not to say the word fuck, for instance, when men said it all the time. But there are scenarios that can only be described by using the word. I have a poem, in fact, about how my daughters taught me that it was okay to use it. It's a very effective word, as long as it's used sparingly.

Pablo: How do you define truth in poetry? How factual are your truths?

Ellaraine: Poetry by definition is creative writing. Many poets and readers forget that and put poetry in a memoir or diary category. In the workshop that I teach, "From Picture Books to Poetry," I've started having students write "lies" just to get them feeling comfortable with the creative aspect of poetry, because sometimes we have to write non-factually, either to get at core truths or to make our poems the best they can be. The term "poetic license" didn't become cliché for nothing.
For me, the excellence of the poem is the only criteria for honesty. Of course I'm not advocating telling lies about particular people in poems. In fact, that's one of the great things about creative writing--being able to change say, from first person to third person at will, thus protecting everyone's privacy--including my own. I often write someone else's experience in first person and my own in third person. Also, many of my poems are composite poems--ones that utilize multiple people and/or experiences but then tie them all together in one voice. And I never tell which poems, or which parts of a poem, are factual. It's a question I get often at readings, and I have to clamp my mouth shut in order to avoid giving a lecture.
Sometimes, too, poems inherently demand deviations from facts in order to read musically or to follow a particular form. And what difference does it make if a dress is red instead of blue or if the experiences in the poem really happened to five people instead of one? The only thing that matters is that the poem reads true, and the readers will know when it does.

Pablo: Do you have any expressible thoughts regarding writers (and poets in particular) using opposite gender pen names or about the use of pen names in general?

Ellaraine: Oh, for sure I do. First of all, pen names no matter what gender, are great fun, and they have a way of becoming alter egos. For instance, I often use mine in public. Everyone at the local Starbucks where I write every morning knows me as the first name of one of my pen names. (It's so much easier to remember than Ellaraine.) And let's face it, there are times in life that maybe we don't want to use our real name.
Writing-wise, having pen names has allowed me to get poems published that wouldn't be copasetic with the image of a children's picture book writer, a market that I wish to enter. Publishers aren't likely to want a picture book writer, at least until she/he is established in the picture book market, to be known for sometimes writing sexually explicit poetry. This type of conflict of interest is all the more relevant because of the Internet.
I've also found the made-up names to be handy in protecting others' privacy. For instance, I just wrote a poem about an experience my daughter had touring Europe as a member of a fairly famous rock band. To use my name, the last of which is also her name, would identify her and this band. She would be furious, and I wouldn't blame her.
Then sometimes we poets just want to pursue several different styles of writing, and for me it works to have different personas holding the pen. Oh yes, and it intrigues a fair percentage of editors/publishers. One of my pens has an ongoing correspondence with one of my editor's pen names. It's belly-laughing hilarious.
I have three pen names. The first one originated back when I was first writing children's picture book manuscripts. I'd sent seven, one at a time as they were rejected, to a certain publisher when she wrote back and told me not to submit any more. I was green then as a writer, and this upset me terribly because I felt that all of my children's stories were vastly different from one another, and I had several more to send. So I made up a name, used a friend's address and sent the rest. She didn't take one, but at least I had the satisfaction of knowing they were read.
Now I tell all perspective editors in my submission letters when I'm using a pen name. That's the right thing to do, and the right thing for them to do is to protect my privacy, which they've always honored.
My two additional pen personalities were born when I wanted to enter twelve poems in a contest with a theme, but the publisher's rule was one entry of three poems per poet. So I wrote and asked if three pen names could each enter three poems in addition to mine (paying of course the entry fees for all entries.) The answer was yes, and subsequently all but one of us were published in the winners' anthology.
And did I mention the romance or mystique of having a made-up name or two?

Pablo: Now I thought we'd deviate from the usual interview questions and go a little deeper. Let's start with this one: Why are men still ruling and running the planet?

Ellaraine: Brute force. In the end, after all discussion about women's rights and equal opportunities, men are still physically more powerful than women. In many parts of the world men are legally allowed to use physical force against women--to go even as far as killing them. And in parts of the world where it isn't legal, it still not only happens, but the fact and the threat often stand between the sexes as an unconscious force that influences not only relationships but community, state, national and international policies.

Pablo: How are you affected by your dreaming life?

Ellaraine: I love having dreams--even the nightmarish ones, because they mean that I've been able to get into a deep sleep. I've battled insomnia for twelve years and have tried every remedy out there, I think, including two extensive stays at the Stanford Sleep Clinic.
Before that, most dreams seemed like a continuation of my life, some euphoric and some horrendous but most rather day-to-day-like. I've never spent much time analyzing them, but one particular and reoccurring dream fascinates me enough that I recently wrote a poem about it. It involves flying, or perhaps floating in the air above every earthly thing. I'm often in the form of an eagle. This is an incredibly happy experience and leads me to suspect that I've either been an eagle or that I will be one eventually. The closest awake feeling to this that I've ever had is when I do Tai Chi, where I sometimes feel like I'm floating through clouds. I didn't reach that state until I'd practiced Tai Chi for fifteen-plus years.

Pablo: I find it more and more difficult to think of God in terms of gender. I won't elaborate. What would your thoughts be on this?

Ellaraine: I stopped thinking of God as a kind-looking man with a beard when I stopped attending church after I left home for college. God, for me, rather has evolved into a force. I find this force in everything--people, animals, trees, rocks, the earth itself. It's all connected. Nothing affirmed this more for me than attending a writers' retreat called "Writing the World" two years ago in the Sonoran Desert with Harvey Stanbrough at the helm. Harvey is one of my poetry mentors. I'd like to add one of the resulting poems from his retreat at the end of this interview if there is space. I think if we all adhered to what Harvey teaches in this retreat, there wouldn't be any more wars. I wish its attendance were required for all world leaders.

Pablo: For this question I must loosely paraphrase the poet William Everson. He believed that there was a "mantle" the poet could put on (if it fit) that endowed the poet with authority and that this was not to be taken lightly. What are your thoughts on this?

Ellaraine: I'm not familiar with William Everson or his stance on this subject, but my definition of a powerful poem is generally one that is written by someone who comes across as an authority on that which she/he has written. Fakes usually can't pull off a good poem; the mantle just isn't going to fit.
As for a poet having this kind of authority, who better to have it other than a person who is committed to write truth? Is there responsibility on the part of the poet? Tremendous, but it's to the poet him/herself. Readers are free to choose the impact the poem has on them.

Pablo: If a complete stranger were to trust her infant to you to nurture until the child was three years old, what single thing would you feel was most important for that child?

Ellaraine: Security, in all it's facets: To be fed when hungry, to have its thirst quenched, to be physically held and emotionally nurtured, to be kept as safe and pain-free as possible and to be taught that someone loves it enough to enforce gentle, consistent and nonviolent discipline when the age/stage requires it.

Pablo: What in your opinion is the biggest source of trouble in the world today and what do you think can realistically be done about it?

Ellaraine: I don't think there's any all-encompassing answer to this; the questions are much too complex for the space I have, not only on paper but in my mind.
I've been lucky enough to travel extensively, and the happiest people I've encountered are perhaps those in cultures that put the least emphasis on material things that money can buy and who put a big emphasis on family and community. It seems to me that status quo gets out of kilter, even in these societies, when part of the people get overly greedy--for things, money or power.
What to do about it? I might know more about what not to do about it, and that's not to force one's government or religion on other countries or cultures that have functioned in their own ways since the beginning of time. (I believe this comes under the "power" part of greed.) Of course, we could try to send everyone to Harvey's "Writing the World" retreat; but there I go, trying to push my own beliefs on others.

Pablo: Imagine with me please. If you were marooned on a remote island with two strangers. . . a world class female athlete and a female astrophysicist, what synthesis of thought might the three of you produce?

Ellaraine: Boy, you weren't kidding when you said we were going to skip the usual questions and go a little deeper. This is about the strangest question anyone has ever asked me.
Okay. I know a bit about survival, not from fighting for it myself but from hearing about it through those close to me who did: my parents and grandparents, who homesteaded on the Montana prairie in the late 1800s. And that's what we're talking about here--survival.
My grandparents, when they were dependent upon the land for their livelihood, had little time to synthesize their thoughts in any way that didn't involve feeding and clothing themselves and their families.
And that's what the three of us marooned on a remote island would be strategizing too. The thought of it makes me squirm with how little I'd be able to contribute--perhaps the spinning of yarn from wild animals that the athlete would capture and then the knitting of those yarns into warmth to cover with and wear for insulation from exposure. I could make paper out of natural fibers, one of my true craft talents, and sew clothes from the bark of trees.
I would likely be the one to do the killing for food after the athlete hunted down the animals. I can mercy-kill, again as a result of growing up in Montana, so I could kill to stay alive. I might be able to make a fire from two sticks of wood, as a result of an excellent demonstration in a Masai village in Kenya recently.
As for the astrophysicist's contribution, she'd probably entertain us at night with her extensive knowledge, as we lie gazing at the stars. I could fictionalize and poetize what she said and record it using natural plant dyes on the handmade papers. Eventually, we'd probably discuss lesbianism.

Pablo: The world is ending tomorrow at noon. What will you do between now and then?

Ellaraine: I'll gather up my family and anyone we love who chooses to come, and we'll cook and eat a last meal together, incorporating everyone's favorite foods and wines. (Mine will be popcorn, any Caparone wine, homemade bread and Ben and Jerry's Coffee Heathbar Crunch Ice Cream.) Then we'll make music together. (My family is very musical.) Then we'll break into privacy, with partners or vibrators or magazines or whatever works, for a final sexual encounter. Lastly, we'll all hold hands, tell stories about each other as though we were attending our own funerals, and then we'd vow to meet in our afterlives.
Of course, this is all idealized. Maybe I'll just be immobilized by fear of pain and death or crazy in anguish that children and grandchildren, all of them all over, won't have a chance to live full lives. Who really knows how any of us will react in outrageous situations?
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Ellaraine writes poetry, nonfiction books, magazine articles/columns and children's stories. She is a well-published and awarded poet who has received ten nominations for Pushcart Prizes in poetry and has three published chapbooks: Midlife Muse, Poetry Forum, Crossing the Center Line, Sweet Annie Press and Coloring Outside the Lines, The Plowman Press. She also teaches school and community poetry workshops.
Her nonfiction books are All Because of a Button: Folklore, Fact and Fiction, St. Johann Press; The Gourmet Paper Maker, Creative Publishing, and The Low Lactose Kitchen Companion and Cookbook forthcoming in 2007.
Ellaraine has recently been to Kenya on a poetry fellowship and to Centrum in Port Townsend, WA, for a poetry residency. She has just received the Elizabeth Curry Award from SLAB at the University of Slippery Rock in PA. Forthcoming is a chaplet, Roadtrip, from the Rooftop Chaplet series and a chapbook, Blue Ribbons at the County Fair, from PWJ Publishing.
_______________________________________



Writers' Retreat

. . . observe the things that were and watch them pass, not rushing them along nor holding them too tightly.-- Great Expectations, Harvey Stanbrough

He speaks of writing the world
Of sensing the wholeness first
While we sit on hay bales
Pens in hand
Near the edge of an Arizona night
Our mentor encircles the gift of knowledge

His words unwrap it
Ribbons of preconceptions
fall to the Sonoran floor
Sharp observations cut away the clothes
that seam our separateness
from sand, saguaro, hawk
grasshopper and sunset

He casts a last ray of sun
on the continuous web
that weaves us all together
The spider who snares a butterfly
in a creosote bush
Whose seeds feed a kangaroo rat
The two toads who have enrolled in the retreat
And me watching a beetle spin in circles
fighting its own fading light
on a picnic table just out of reach

We're all related says our mentor
Cousin Coyote, grandfather owl
His words soft now in the silk of night
Brother beetle has flipped onto his back
Legs beating against the darkness
His dirge in baritone buzz
is steel wool that scours the sage's waxed words

While the other listeners lean into enlightenment
I curl up in confusion's shadow
Words of patience and intimate observation
waft by in the grey zone
The buzz is bright white and the beat of legs blinding
I want to yank that connecting web
Hang the beetle with Hemlock Society blessing
But I wedge my hands and their traitorous twitch
between butt and hay bale

Our mentor's final message for the evening
comes on sound waves so round and full
they overflow the soul with ancestral memories
And of the branch from which the flute was formed
Even the beetle is silent
But suddenly propelled by unexplained energy
onto the plate of leftover vegetable wraps
landing up-side down and mute
His legs still moving

The man of wisdom and music sits down as I leap up
Sledge a book of poetry onto the plate
The web snaps like a rubber band
and the entire Sonoran Desert winces
But I'm the one with the welt
that stings and reddens my cheek

_______________________________________

Pablo Teasdale’s first interview was with Raquel Welch when he was a sailor and she was a new star. Since then, he has interviewed many artists formally and informally. . . both well-know and unknown. Among the notables: Anais Nin, Bob Hope, Lyn Lifshin, James Leo Herlihy and Brian Morissey. His drawings have been published in the U. S. A. and Germany. His synthesizer compositions are used by poets and dancers in live and broadcast productions internationally. Teasdale has been the subject of four documentaries and lives in Santa Cruz, California. He is currently writing a memoir titled, "Let Me Tell You About My Redundancy Again."

Somerville Poets Will Be Well-Represented at the Boston National Poetry Festival

SOMERVILLE POETS WILL BE WELL- REPRESENTED AT THE BOSTON NATIONAL POETRY FESTIVAL

A highlight of April/ Poetry Month is the Boston National Poetry Month Festival that for the last seven years has been held at the Boston Public Library (Copley Square). This brainchild of poet Harris Gardner will be held April 14 to 15 this year. Among the over fifty readers there will be several accomplished Somerville Poets who will make their appearance on the stage. Afaa Michael Weaver, whose work was recently featured in Poetry magazine, Gloria Mindock, the founder of the Cervena Barva Press, Tim Gager, the co-founder of the Somerville News Writers Festival, and Lloyd Schwartz, U/Mass Boston English Professor, C. D. Collins, as well as yours truly, Doug Holder, will strut their poetic stuff. Every festival includes an open mike if you are brave enough to read your own work, and a book table with books ready to be signed by the featured readers.

Every year at the festival I have hosted, read, and manned the book table. During this time I have met an incredible array of poets of all stripes: including: X.J. Kennedy, Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Franz Wright, as well as well-known and lesser- known regional poets. This year the festival will include former National Poet-Laureate Maxine Kumin. I can’t think think of any event of its kind that attracts so many folks from the academic, non-academic, Slam, and traditional spoken word schools or venues. If you are new to the community and want to familiarize yourself with the scene, or if you have been away awhile and want to have a reunion of sorts, or if you simply want to be the proverbial fly-on-the-wall, then this event is exactly what the doctored ordered.



For more information go to: http:www.tapestryofvoices.com or call 617- 306-9484.

Former Grolier Owner will read from her favorite poems at Newton Free Library!

FORMER OWNER OF FAMED GROLIER POETRY BOOK SHOP TO READ POETRY FROM HER
FAVORITE POETRY PATRONS!

Newton Free Library 330 Homer St. Newton, Mass. April 10 7PM



The Annual Poetry Festival Features Martha Collins, Louisa Solano, Joan Houlihan & Open Mike
In honor of National Poetry Month, the Library will present its 34th Annual Evening of Poetry, sponsored by the Friends of the Library. Martha Collins, Louisa Solano ( former owner of the Grolier Poetry Book Shop in Harvard Square) and Joan Houlihan will read on Tuesday, April 10, 7:00PM, followed by an Open Mike with a one-poem/ person limit. Refreshments will be served.

This festival and the year-long series are coordinated by Doug Holder, publisher of Ibbetson Street Press.

Collins is the author of a book-length poem, Blue Front, as well as four other books of poetry: Some Things Words Can Do, A History of a Small Life on a Windy Planet, The Arrangement of Space, winner of the Peregrine Smith Poetry Competition and The Catastrophe of Rainbows. She has also edited a volume on Louise Bogan and co-translated two collections of poems from the Vietnamese, The Women Carry River Water by Nguyen Quang Thieu and Green Rice by Lam Thi My Da. In Blue Front, Collins dissects a horrific lynching that occurred in her hometown when she was a child. Booklist, writes: “Collins employs a staccato, matter-of-fact tone that strikes like a sledgehammer at persistent, if hidden, hate. More than worthy as poetry, Blue Front is also a powerful statement about America and a potent reminder of humankind’s terrible potential.”

Solano owned the Grolier Poetry Bookstore from 1974 until 2006 when she retired. Virtually everyone in modern American letters came through the Grolier’s doors in Harvard Square. Founded in 1927 by Adrian Gambet and Gordon Cairnie, it is the “oldest continuous book shop” devoted solely to the sale of poetry and poetry criticism. Solano, a 1966 graduate of Boston University and bookstore habitué since 1955, took over operation of the store after Cairnie’s death. She will read from her favorite patrons’ poems.

Houlihan is the author of Hand Held Executions and winner of the Green Rose Award from New Issues Press for The Mending Worm. She writes “Boston Comment,” a series of essays that focuses on contemporary American poetry and appears regularly on Web del Sol. Founding director of the Concord Poetry Center, she is editor-in-chief of Perihelion and senior poetry editor of Del Sol Review.

Advanced Praise for "Of All The Meals I Had Before..." and "No One Dies at the Au Bon Pain" by Doug Holder

(Doug Holder)

I will have poetry collections released by http://sunnyoutside.com and the http://www.cervenabarvapress.com in April and May 2007. Here is some advanced commentary:

"No One Dies At The Au Bon Pain" ( http://www.sunnyoutside.com)

Bones and humanity--reflections and stone- passion and tears from a glass eye... Inside, upon these pages you'll find Doug Holder has strapped you upon his back and has taken you for a ride in mortality... and beyond...these poems are poignant paintings of life and the depth its decades imprint upon a man's soul and the catacombs of its joy and pain. This one of his best works yet."

Jennifer Matthews/ author of "Fairytales and Midemeanors" http://www.jennifermatthews.com

" Doug Holder's poems take you on a dream mind ride with the common moments and things in life. The images and angles of thought and language are at once familiar and plain and odd. They are the dreams of dreams you think you remember, the thoughts you had before you remember something. They are flashes of insight and snapshots of time, and place and humanity. The poems have the sense you feel when you have an idea for a poem just before falling asleep and you say you'll write it down in the morning, but it drifts into dreamland and you forget. Reading the poems of Doug Holder, you feel as though you remember that great poem you forgot."

Dan Sklar/ Head of Creative Writing/ Endicott College

"With confidence and ocassional flashes of humor, these are poems ( lamentations/ meditations) on what was, is, and ultimately will be. They are strong and unapologetic in both their rage and acceptance, offering up a clear view of the truth--that no one gets out of here alive."

Gloria Mindock/ Cervena Barva Press http://www.cervenabarvapress.com

"Doug Holder's poems from his new collection NO ONE DIES AT THE AU BON PAIN are psychological studies delivered in spare, elegant lines. Though often located in the most quotidian of settings, they explore the heights and depths of the human soul. And when we, as readers, find hm standing before the mirror in the public restroom, we look up to find the visage reflected is our own."

Richard Wilhelm/ Arts/ Editor Ibbetson Street Press

"This book is a gift, the silhouette of restlessness as Holder studies the way things end and sees there is no real ending. He celebrates " ... a standing chant, a prayer for the common man." Holder understands compassion as generosity in tender poems carved from the quickened wood of the moment."

Afaa Michael Weaver/ Professor of English/ Simmons College / Boston

"Of All The Meals I Had Before..." ( Cervena Barva Press)

"Some poems make you hungry, and some poems want to make you throw up. These food poems are served up spicy like Italian cuisine. Read them before dinner or after desert, either way like Chinese food, you'll be hungry for more."

A. D. Winans

"A delightful and delicious collection of poems, whetting the appetite for more. These are the kinds of witty, Jewishy poems I envision Woody Allen would write, should he ever take to writing poetry. "

Helen Bar-Lev, Artist, PoetEditor-in-Chief Voices Israel Anthology
author: Animals are Nature's Poetry
co-author: Cyclamens and Swords and other poems about Israel

Praise for "Wrestling With My Father"

Robert Olen Butler (Pulitzer Prize Winner- "A Good Scent From A Strange Mountain") commenting on Holder's collection of poetry: "Wrestling With My Father:" "I’ve been greatly enjoying your poems. You have a major league talent, man."

Martha Collins ( Professor of Creative Writing-Oberlin College, and author of "Blue Front," (Gray Wolf Press) commenting on "Wrestling With My Father.":--so I did get this, at Porter Square, (Books) and found it wonderfully moving. My one and only chapbook is about my mother in her final years: more about those years than, as in yours, a whole life with a parent--but the emotions surrounding parental loss are near and dear to my heart. Thanks for heading me that way."

In the Soho at Poets House

Well I am back from the Poet's House showcase in New York City. This is the last year it is going to be held in the SOHO section of Manhattan. This poetry center, with 45,000 volumes of poetry, will be moving in 2008 to Battery Park City. While there I spoke to a number of folks, including Donald Lev the publisher of the "Home Planet News" http://www.homeplanetnews.org, poet Stanley H. Barkan , publisher of the "Cross-Cultural Review Series of World Literature and Art in Sound, Print and Media," Lee Bricetti, the director of Poets House http://www.poetshouse.org among others.

I also met an English banker who regularly reads in venues on the Bowery,an elderly poet from France who kept asking me the difference between "there" and "here," a poetry lover who produces a show on Manhattan Cable Access TV and other interesting characters!I also looked at all the new poetry books on display. Fortunately or unfortunately Ibbetson Street Books were located on the shelf next to Poet Laureate's Donald Hall's new book. Of course Hall's book got very prominent space. But our books were there including:

cyclamens and swords by Helen Bar Lev, and johnmichael simon
The American Wives Club Patricia Brodie
Poem for the Little Book Tomas O'Leary
Shadow People Molly Lynn Watt
Bagels with the Bards Molly Lynn Watt
Louise Solano: The Grolier Poetry Book Shop Holder/Glines

(all these books were included in a printed catalogue handed out to the many guests)


I also noticed Bagel Bard Mike Amado's book: "Unearthed from Ashes ( Dorrance Publishing) was there.I was told by the online archivist that all these titles will be listed in the online directory by the summer. Also: a number of taped interviews I sent will be listed as well.Of course I gave out samples of current and back issue of "Ibbetson Street" and talked up the Bagel Bards...

POETS HOUSE SHOWCASE

The only event of its kind, the annual Poets House Showcase is a free exhibit featuring all of the new poetry books and poetry-related texts published in the United States in a single year—with more than 2,000 titles on view (including volumes by individual authors, anthologies, biographies, critical studies, CDs and DVDs) from over 500 commercial, university and independent presses. Established in 1992 by Executive Director Lee Briccetti, the Showcase reflects Poets House’s mission to make the range of modern poetry available to the public and to stimulate public dialogue on issues of poetry and culture.

During the course of the Showcase, Poets House offers a series of readings, workshops, and receptions, which are designed to provide insight into some of the trends in poetry publishing, to illuminate the often difficult path of the poetry book from poet to reader, and to celebrate the range and power of the American poetic voice.

Each year, Poets House adds the bibliographic records of all the books exhibited in the Showcase to its free, fully-searchable online database, the Directory of American Poetry Books. With over 20,000 titles, the Directory contains the most comprehensive information about U.S. poetry books and publishers from 1990 through 2006.

Doug Holder/Ibbetson Update

Interview with poet, publisher, playwright Diana Saenz

Diana Saenz: A playwright with the soul of a true ‘Boston Poet.”


Diana Saenz is the author of 15 plays, and at least 3 books of poetry. Her plays have been performed across the country and abroad. A former resident of Somerville, Mass., she founded the literary journal “The Boston Poet,” from her home on Putnam Street. Later Saenz went on toCreate the online journal:” BostonPoet.com,” and most recently the “The Boston Poet Journal” which can be purchased on http://www.lulu.com/. I talked with her on my Somerville Community Access TV Program: “Poet to Poet: Writer to Writer.”


Doug Holder: In an essay you wrote about a fictitious argument you had with your cat; your cat argued that he gets unmitigated joy from his art, while you countered all art comes with a certain amount of suffering. So do you feel there is more pain than joy in your writing?

Diana Saenz: That’s a big question. Let’s face it if there was no pain or sorrow then we would be relegated to writing Hallmark Card verse. I don’t think everything we write about is about suffering. Somehow it’s around even when one writes about joy. Everything I write is about a celebration of being alive. But without suffering how would you measure absolute happiness?

If we were to reach a utopian society Poet’s might go out of business. You can only listen to wonderful things so long. There are always going to be things to complain about. Poetry is an art that doesn’t bring in a lot of money, so poets more than any other artists remain honest.

Doug Holder: You are a poet and a playwright. Do the mediums of poetry and theatre compliment each other? Which one do you identify with more?

Diana Saenz: They both compliment each other because they are both oral arts. There is so much poetry in plays. I’ve been a poet since I was fifteen. I am above all a poet. For many years I wrote plays, and for a long period of time I wasn’t able to write poetry. I wrote a play about Lorca, and I had Lorca write a poem in it... But both are definitely connected because they are oral arts.

Doug Holder: Are your plays a vehicle for your poetry?

Diana Saenz: I wouldn’t say that. They are very different mediums. I think being a playwright makes me a much better writer. You are subject to criticism. It’s one thing people saying that they don’t like your poetry, it’s another to read it in The San Francisco Chronicle.

Doug Holder: Were you reviewed in the Chronicle?

Diana Saenz. Yes. Not favorably. But that was one play. I did other plays that got standing ovations and big audiences.

Doug Holder: Did you study Theatre with anyone, or attend a certain school?

Diana Saenz: No. I read a book that was probably written in the 1930’s. I still see that book for sale. I can’t remember the title but it was all about designing a play. I was very involved with the San Francisco theatre scene.

Doug Holder: Why did you leave San Francisco?

Diana Saenz: I had to get out of town. It’s a tiny town. It is a very different town than Boston. San Francisco is a town you can walk from one end to the other.
You run into the same people all the time. It’s a very small pool and I got tired of it. In California people see me as Mexican, and they want me to write Mexican things. Sometimes I do but I am really am an American. I really want to talk about the big questions. Here, in the Boston-area you don’t have a huge Mexican-American presence. People just take you at face value. I like the level of writing—people are a lot more educated here. In San Francisco the “Beat” poetry scene is pervasive. There is a lot of writing about drinking and really being on the outside.

Doug Holder: What is your take on the “Beat” writers like Ginsberg, Corso and Kerouac? They were known to mistreat their women—relegate them to second class citizens—props for the men.

Diana Saenz: One day I decided that I was going to learn everything I could about the “Beats.” I think they drove their women crazy. That’s what I got in my early readings. That women were there to support the male geniuses.

As for their writing I liked “On the Road,” like everyone else. But some of the works I read I wound up throwing them against the wall because I was so irritated about it.

Doug Holder: Somerville has a rich history of small presses. Describe the milieu you were in when you cut your literary teeth in Somerville?

Diana Saenz: I came from San Francisco in 1994, and I was shocked that there were no magazines that listed all the events and venues that were in the area. So I founded my own, “The Boston Poet.”

Doug Holder: What venues did you frequent?

Diana Saenz: I am proud of being part of the open mike scene. I would go to Jack Power’s Stone Soup Poets at T.T the Bear’s. I went to the Cantab Lounge in Central Square, Cambridge.

Doug Holder: Why did you give up “The Boston Poet”

Diana Saenz: It was just so much work. I wound up losing my day job. Bit it was so much fun to do. At the same time I met my husband. He wrote the scholarly articles for the magazine. I wanted to bring the open mike and the academic together.

Doug Holder: Do you think Latina poets are getting more attention now as opposed to when you cut your teeth?

Diana Saenz: There is a tremendously vibrant community of Latin playwrights out there. There is a huge community of Cuban writers from the East Coast. In California there are numerous Latin-American theatres.

Doug Holder: Your play “Dream of Canaries” takes place in an oppressive, fictional Latin American country. Why fictional?

Diana Saenz: I wanted to make the analogy to the United States. I used a Latin American country because of the pressure to write Latin American stuff. The play was commissioned by Teatro de Esperanza in San Francisco. I’ve seen that play produced in Argentina, Guatemala, and yes, even in Poland.

Doug Holder/ Ibbetson Update/ March 2007/ Somerville, Mass.

Two Poets: Two Memoirs: Richard Cambridge/Lo Galluccio

CLICK ON PICTURE TO ENLARGE: Two Poets: Two Memoirs





Poet Lo Galluccio, author of "Hot Rain ( Ibbetson, 2004) ( Pushcart Nominee 2006) and Richard Cambridge ( Curator of the "Poet's Theatre-Club Passim) will read from their anything but coventional memoirs about the artistic life.....

Thursday March 29 7 to 9PM

Emack and Bolio Poetry Series

2 Belgrade Ave. Roslindale

Host: Marc Widershien http://marccreate.com

Hugh Fox the third's new novel "Half Square"

Hugh Fox 's son has a book out that can be downloaded for free at: http://www.lulu.com/content/720329



INTRODUCTION

“Doctor Delta: This is the most dangerous meme in the transcript. The virulence level is very dangerous (6.45). The meme is also highly contagious (7.4). The reader may consider not reading this section of the transcript. Follow memetic infection countermeasures immediately after reading this session. Infected hosts fall into a nihilistic depression and require immediate treatment or the condition will become permanent.
FS: Yeah, the life stages of God are the big determinant of the overall pattern of the universe and have a direct impact on the macrostructure of the universe. The fusion of cosmology and theology is an understanding of the life stages of God but you left out the Anti-God.
DG: The Anti-God?
FS: Sure, each new Big Bang tends to create a duplicate of the last universe but randomness enters into every system and the duplicate is just a little bit different than the last universe. This is because nothing is certain.
DG: That’s for sure.
FS: I don’t mean this as some sort of saying but that literally nothing is certain. A fundamental property of being is uncertainty.
DG: Huh?
FS: This is the materialistic basis of the existential statement that existence precedes essence. The only way you get certainty is to stick with nothingness. Each time the universe is reborn there is a chance that a slightly different God will be reborn that just isn’t into the whole cosmic density management mission.
DG: So you think this can happen?
FS: God like every being generally wants to survive and have progeny. In the case of God having progeny means taking on the whole cosmic density management mission and making sure there is a duplicate of him in the next universe but there might be God that doesn’t want to have progeny and just wants to have fun.
DG: A slacker God.
FS: Right but a lazy God that doesn’t want progeny isn’t so bad since after billions and billions of Big Bangs life will emerge again randomly and the process will start all over again. What you need to watch out for is an Anti-God.
DG: Anti-God? Sounds heavy. What does this Anti-God do?
FS: It is heavy. The Anti-God decides its just time to end the whole Big Bang nonsense and use cosmic density management to make sure there are no more Big Bangs or being of any sort and just end the whole thing i.e. follow the credo “nothing is certain” to it’s logical extreme.
DG: Literally cosmic suicide.
FS: Right, Old man God invariably has these suicidal thoughts as his body i.e. the universe starts to contract during the last 10 billion years of the universe but generally dismisses such thoughts.
DG: So the universe will ultimately end?
FS: Maybe, but since God is a survivor and this is sort of the essence of the personality of God, the emergence of the Anti-God is very unlikely. Unfortunately, it takes billions upon billions of Gods to keep the living universe going. It only takes one Anti-God to stop the whole show. ”
Dear Reader,

Has the above excerpt from this document left you totally confused? Okay, here is the explanation; a graduate school classmate gave me the manuscript you now hold in your hands. We were fellow graduate students at Texas A&M University were we both received a Master’s. We were taking a class in educational psychology about learning theory. I was getting a Master’s of English with a specialization in TESOL. Gamma was getting some sort of educational psychology master’s and was the favorite student of the teacher, a Dr. Castle. A very intelligent and attractive professor but that is neither here nor there.

My classmate went on to get a doctorate in psychology at Harvard. I was under the impression from reports, by fellow classmates, that he had a brilliant, if slightly mysterious career in psychology. He worked at some sort of military think tank in San Antonio. Years later, my classmate arrived at my apartment talking wildly about some sort of conspiracy and gave me a floppy disc that contained this manuscript. I teach English as a foreign language (EFL) at a university in Taipei, Taiwan. Taiwan is fairly far away from the US and I was very surprised my friend came all the way out to Taipei in order to see me. He explained that he came to Taipei in order to put some distance between himself and his mysterious pursuers. I share this manuscript in the hope that the truth of the nature of this manuscript is eventually discovered.

I have no idea if this Dr. Delta is a real person or a delusion of my friend Gamma. As soon as I got the document I did use Google to try to find the Meta-psychology Institute and found a site dealing with the institute but the computer immediately shut down. I turned the computer back on and when I tried to revisit the site I got a 404-error message. I have no idea whatsoever what a 404-error message means. The first Google search yielded about ten references to meta-psychology. A second search using Google was fruitless. All references to meta-psychology that showed up in my first search had disappeared by the time I did my second search. Gamma is of course not the real name of my friend but he wanted me to use this code name and I have decided to respect his wishes. The document follows a transcript format and I have gone ahead and added notes I made as I read the document. The document is not always the easiest read but I assure the reader well worth the time and trouble. There are many interesting and novel ideas in this document. I am positive there is no such thing as memetic infection or a memetic infection control law. I would ignore the warning against reading the document without appropriate security clearance. I would also skip the memetic infection counter measures nonsense at the end of each chapter.

Hugo Ungaro

Letting Go Poems by Robert Collet Tricaro

Letting Go Poems
© 2006 by Robert Collet Tricaro
ISBN 0-89002-385-9 ($16.95)
Northwoods Press


Reviewed by Steve Glines

Most of the poems in this book are not thematically connected to letting go, at least not that I could tell, but there were just enough hints of the catharsis of “letting go” that forced me to read this volume from that point of view. Letting go includes morning past loves as well as past loved ones. The title and the first few poems got me thinking about the nature of immortality.

Our collective conscience knows everyone alive today and we remember many of what could be loosely called the last generation. We no longer have a collective memory that includes what it was like to be at the battle of Gettysburg, to pick a spot at random. Out collective conscious let go of those memories with the passing of the last Civil War veteran. We do have descriptions of events, many poetic, of the people and places of that era. The catharsis of letting go involves the emotional draining of the swamp of past relationships. For a writer with the talent of Robert Collet Tricaro, letting go creates the immortalitzation of places, people and events. That is what I take to be the meaning and purpose of this little volume.

The book opens with a commentary on life:

Carousel

Faro seems bigger than the others,
harness and reins bejeweled with ruby
and sapphire glass, mane dusted
with gold. His eyes are
the wildest of all.

Children stand in his stirrups flailing
the air, shouting to a crown struck
by Faro’s glitter, as this magic carpet
whirls to the tune of the Wurlitzer.

Faro travels at great speed going
nowhere. Perhaps the wildness
in his eyes is really terror, having
learned that no rider can pull him out
from the centripetal rut he is in, as
he is rushed toward
an open distance he’ll never reach.

To immortalize someone gives them life beyond the grave. Plato gave immortal life to an otherwise miscreant character named Socrates. So to Tricaro gives life to an otherwise unnamed Irish cleaning lady:

The Irish Cleaning lady

Eyes gray as industry.
She’d boarded a ship in Cork
a city on her beloved isle,

but where living was hard,
to seek a better life.
Now she wears the starched

pink uniform that her school
kitchen job requires, which
passes for maid’s garb

when she cleans houses
late into the night. This lady
who speaks the brogue

of broad a’s
has work to do,
and a clean house it will be.

Poor in the sense that cars, rings
and fashions are of no
interest to her. Rich

in that cards, rings and fashons
are of no interest to her.
Resourceful in that she can

sew a silk purse from a sow’s ear,
but there’s be nothing in it
a friend, beggar, or thief could want.

Weak tea with a half slice
of marmalade toast for breakfast, thin
Mulligan stew with soda bread

for supper, perhaps
a pear, suit her well.
Her husband has but a small pension,

so she cleans houses.
With no child
of her own, she nevertheless

puts her deceased sister’s children
into their callings – white
turned-around collar for the boy,

nurse’s pin for the girl.
For decades, crouched
under the lash of moral obligation,

could her life have been more
spare, less giving had she

not left her emerald star
in its sky of sea?

We have all known them the little old ladies with a sad story to tell but a story largely kept to themselves so as not to trouble the grandchildren. We secretly wish for divine intervention, a lightning bolt of luck that transforms that losing lottery scratch ticket we all know to be in her purse into a winner capable of transforming her life into “Queen for a day,” a week, a month, just long enough to make her forget her past and smile the broad grin of someone inhaling life for the first time with the appetite of a hungry child. Alas life rarely works out that way and the poet is left with immortalizing a life that would otherwise be forgotten, a life that, without the poet, would cease with its passing.

Mrs. Dory’s Teacups

When her husband was alive a porch was called veranda, Later,
the New York Times became her seat on the stoop
of a four-story, run down walk-up.

Lines in her heavily rouged face, if placed end to end
could mark distance greater then the dimensions of her world –
the stoop and one room just inside the building’s front door.
The closest thing she came to activity was watching
UPS deliveries and girls playing hopscotch near the curb.

Her neighbor Todd ran errands for her. She’s offer him
coca in one of twelve teacups she and Mr. Dory brought
from their native England. Matching plates were sold
to pay for her husband’s cremation,
so she used saucers to serve her home-made scones.
Todd would run his fingers along the cup’s
fourteen-carat rose petals and smile.

She’s sip tea, her little finger extended, speak with clipped
eloquence about children she couldn’t have, her favorite nephew,
slightly older than Todd, who roomed in Greenwich Village
with a friend. She’d ask Todd why he blinked his eyes
so often.
Why at almost eighteen, he’d never dated.

When Mrs. Dory died some months later, her building super
gave Todd a box and a note. Ten teacups were exchanged for
scattering her ashes over Sleepy Hollow.

Two cups were for Todd. The note
included her nephew’s number.

And so it goes. This is a beautiful book of poetry. I recommend it to all.

Bagels with the Bards 2- an anthology of poetry by Boston-area breakfast poets

Introduction by Afaa Michael Weaver
Edited by Molly Lynn Watt
Designed by Steve Glines

"Bagel Bards" founded by Doug Holder and Harris Gardner

"An anthology of poetry by a diverse, and iconoclastic group of poets who have met for breakfast at Au Bon Pains in the Boston area for the past two years..."

To order: http://www.lulu.com/content/729666

From the introduction...


It all came to fruition the day we made our first bagel, after a few energetic drafts of the thing. It got up from the table, shook its rolling shoulders, yawned from the hollow core mouth of itself, and began to dance. At that precise moment, the miracle came as sure as the Matrix Oracle would have predicted from over her pan of cookies. Sunlight hit the bagel, and it became lines on the floor, long lines that would have been perfect for any chorus line, but instead filled themselveswith words, words that made promises to all of us. These words spoke the premise. The poet is a baker although he may never have the dough. We looked at each other and knew this was our creation myth, this dance of language on some piece of paper, or in our hearts, or in the burrowed brow of the manager trying to wrap his head around the idea that poets gather in the corner of his place on Saturdays and spend a few hours living, living, living. O bard, a bagel has become a poem.

-- Affa Michael Weaver

Poets included:

Lo Galluccio
Regie Gibson
Gary Hicks
Ian Thal
Barbara Thomas
Mike Amado
Tom Daley
Gloria Mindock
Matt Rosenthal
J.C. Foritano
Ellen Steinbaum
Irene Koronas
Ricardo Fitter
Doug Holder
Steve Glines
Harris Gardner
Tino Villanueva
Beatriz Alba Del-Rio
Mia Champion
Henry Braun
Pam Rosenblatt
Ann Brudevold
Ann Cahart
Elizabeth Leonard
Marc Goldfinger
Patricia Brodie
Martha Boss
Barbara Bialick
Varsha Kufaka
Barbara Thomas
Deborah M. Priestly
Julia Carlson
Nataniel Mayes
Mignon Ariel King
John Hildebidle
Walter Howard
Elizabeth Doran
Tim Gager
Lainie Senechal
Martha Boss
Robert K. Johnson
Eytan Fichman
Abbot Ikeler
Afaa Michael Weaver
Tomas O'Leary
Molly Lynn Watt
Chad Parenteau
Mary Buchinger
Richard Wilhelm
Henry Braun
Llyn Clague
Mike Amado
Elizabeth Tom
Harris Gardner
Doug Holder

Opening the Door to French Film by Hugh Fox

OPENING THE DOOR TO FRENCH FILM
by Hugh Fox
2007, World Audience, Inc. (no price listed)
review by Richard Wilhelm http://richardwilhelm.blogspot.com


I was looking forward to digging into Hugh Fox’s "Opening the Door to French Film." As the introduction by Eric Greinke says, the book is designed to be an informal commentary on the work of various French directors from the 1930’s to the present. The writing is certainly free of academic jargon. The tone is conversational, sometimes to a fault. Street corner vernacular is frequently less precise than standard English. Fox is so informal that his language on occasion confuses rather than clarifies. The informal, conversational approach seems welcoming in the first pages as Fox describes the plots of the various films of each director. Forty or fifty pages into the book however this approach grows tedious. Imagine sitting down with a friend who starts telling you, one-by-one, the plots of a hundred and twenty-some films. Interesting at first, but it quickly gets tiresome.


It seems there could have been a better way to organize this book but Fox had a vision of the book he wanted to write, so it is only fair to judge the book as it is written. And his vision was to write a chapter on each director, describing the plots of various films with commentary. Fox has some worthwhile insights on each director’s themes and methods and this makes the book worth owning. But since the approach makes the book tedious to read cover-to-cover, the reader is better served by just diving in at any point of interest, i.e., pick a director one likes or is curious about and jump in. To this end, it would have been helpful to have an index, though the spacing of the typeface makes skimming the chapters relatively easy.


One must take Fox to task for the many errors, typos, misspellings, and stylistic inconsistencies in this book. In his chapter on Luis Bunuel, he launches into a description of the 1977 film "The Obscure Object of Desire" which he correctly calls "Bunel’s (sic) last film. Two pages before, he discusses "The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie" which he tells us was released in 1991. It was released in 1972. In a discussion of Bertrand Tavernier’s 1986 film, "Round Midnight," Fox speaks of "the friendship between the Frenchman and the gringo saxophonist." Why would he use "gringo" to describe an African-American musician in a context devoid of any Mexicans? The saxophonist is not a "gringo" to the Frenchman. It is depressing to encounter a book published by a writer who shows so little regard for his craft. It makes the reader not trust the material.


I was surprised Fox did not mention the 1945 film "Children of Paradise," written by Jacques Prevert and directed by Marcel Carne, regarded by some as the greatest French film ever produced. (Not to quibble, but neither was there mention of the 1986 film by Jacques Beineix, "Betty Blue," a personal favorite of this reviewer. But, in fairness, Fox can’t possibly be expected to mention every film produced in France. The book is a personal, rather than an encyclopedic, survey of French film.)


Fox’s knowledge and insight—and his reputation—would have been better served
had he taken the time to give his book a serious, professional editing. Nonetheless it’s a fun book for film buffs.


--Richard Wilhelm
Ibbetson Update

* Richard Wilhelm is the arts/editor for the Ibbetson Street Press.

Cervena Barva Press Celebrates Two Year Anniv. April 26 McIntyre and Moore Books--Somerville

CERVENA BARVA PRESS CELEBRATES TWO YEAR ANNIVERSARY
McIntyre & Moore Booksellers
255 Elm St. (Davis Square)
Somerville, MA 02144-3222
April 26th, 7:30 PM, Free, Handicap Accessible

Readers: Andrey Gritsman, Doug Holder, and Don Share
Andrey Gritsman is a native of Moscow, Russia, lives in the NYC area, and works as a Physician. Mr. Gritsman is the author of poetry in Russian: No Man’s Land (Petropol, S. Petersburg), Double (Hermitage, New York), Transfer (Arion, Moscow), and Island in the Woods (Pushkin Foundation Publishing House, S. Petersburg), and View From the Bridge (poems & essays in Russian and English) published by WORD in NY. Other books include Long Fall: Poems, Texts, and Essays in English (Spuyten Duyvil Press, 2005), and In Transit (English with Romanian translations, Bucharest, Romania, 2005). He has been published in numerous literary magazines including Richmond Review, Ars Interpres, Poetry International, Confrontation and others. His work appears in numerous anthologies including Modern Poetry in Translation (UK) and Crossing Centuries (New Generation in Russian Poetry), and in The Breath of Parted Lips: Voices From The Robert Frost Place (CavanKerry Press). Twice nominated for The Pushcart Prize and was shortlisted for the PEN/American Center Joyce Osterweil Poetry Award in 2005. He runs the Intercultural Poetry Series at Cornelia St. Café in NYC and is editor of Interpoezia, an online journal of international poetry.
(Andrey has a poetry postcard forthcoming by Cervena Barva Press and was interviewed in the February, 2007 Newsletter).

Doug Holder founded the Ibbetson Street Press in 1998. He has published over 30 books of poetry by local and national poets and 20 issues of the literary journal Ibbetson Street. Doug is co-founder of The Somerville News Writer’s Festival and curates the Newton Free Library Poetry Series. Doug interviews contemporary writers and has a show on Somerville Access Community TV called "Poet to Poet." His work has been in numerous literary journals including Rattle, Doubletake, The Boston Globe Magazine, Poesy, Small Press Review, Artword Quarterly, Manifold, the new renaissance, and The Café Review. Work in anthologies include Inside the Outside: An Anthology of Avant-Garde American Poets (Presa Press), Greatest Hits: Twelve Years of Compost Magazine (Zephyr Press), and America’s Favorite Poems (edited by Robert Pinsky)
(Doug’s chapbook, Of All The Meals I Had Before: Poems About Food and Eating, will be released at this reading from Cervena Barva Press and he will be reading work from his chapbook. Doug was interviewed by Cervena Barva Press in the May, 2006 Newsletter).


Don Share is Curator of the Woodberry Poetry Room atHarvard University, Editor Literary Imagination, andPoetry Editor of Harvard Review. He teaches atHarvard and in the Lesley University MFA program. Hisbooks include Squandermania, new from Salt Publishing;Union, (a finalist for the Boston Globe/ PEN NewEngland Winship Award for outstanding book), Seneca inEnglish, and I Have Lots of Heart, translations ofMiguel Hernåndez (which received the Times Literary Supplement Translation Prize). His critical edition of the poems of Basil Bunting is forthcoming from Faberand Faber.
(Don was interviewed by Cervena Barva Press in the February, 2007 Newsletter).
Gloria Mindock founded Cervena Barva Press in April, 2005.
The Press publishes poetry and fiction chapbooks and full-length plays, fiction, poetry, memoirs, and poetry postcards by writers from all over the world. The press has published many writers with prestigious awards between them such as Gary Fincke, Eric Pankey. Michael Burkard, David Ray, John Minczeski, Dzvinia Orlowsky, Catherine Sasanov, Simon Perchik, Rane Arroyo, and others. Many international writers will be published this year including Flavia Cosma, Martin Burke, Susanne Morning, Ioan Tepelea, David Hill, Michael Nash, Denis Emorine, to name a few.
Local writers published this year are Doug Holder, Mary Bonina, Harris Gardner, Philip Burnham, Leela Arnet, and poetry postcards by Irene Koronos, Debra Priestly, Matt Rosenthal, and others.
On the Cervena Barva Press Website, readers can find out what’s new with the press, read the monthly newsletter online where writers are interviewed, look for readings and events in the local area as well as from all over the world, and check out the chapbook poetry and fiction contests that are held each year by the press.
Cervena Barva Press runs an online bookstore called, The Lost Bookshelf, where the press sells their publications as well as books by writers/publishers on consignment.

Contact Information: Mary Curtin, Events Coordinator, 617-241-9664, 617-470-5867 (cell), marycurtin@comcast.net
Gloria Mindock, Cervena Barva Press, Editor: editor@cervenabarvapress.com
http://www.cervenabarvapress.com
http://www.thelostbookshelf.com

Fairy Tales For Writers by Lawrence Schimel

Fairy Tales for Writers. Lawrence Schimel (A Midsummer Night’s Press. 16 W. 36th St. 2nd Floor. NY, NY 10018 http://www.amidsummernightspress.com) $6.50

“Fairy Tales for Writers” by Lawrence Schimel is a new release by the small press “A Midsummer Night’s Press” of New York City. I love Schimel’s conceit of using fairy tales as templates for his poems of the writing life. In this little book you have all the players and places you most likely encountered in your travels in the literary milieu. In “Little Mermaid” a young, idealistic woman falls under the spell of a charismatic but Janus-faced MFA professor:

“She slaved to scrape together on
enough money to join the MFA
where he taught working double shifts
as a waitress that sent sharp pains
shooting up her legs from being on her feet
all day and night. She had no time to write
But she bore it all silently, buoyed by the memory
of their time together at the conference,
and the promise the future held.

At the cocktail party, the night before
the first day of classes, where the students were
to meet and mingle with the faculty and each other,
he introduced her to his wife,
who had also once aspired to write, but now
was content to remain in his shadow,
to be seen on his arm when he won awards and
to look the other way when he followed
his wandering eye.”

And in the poem “Sleeping Beauty” the poet examines the damage unconstructive and mean-spirited criticism can do to a writer in the formative stages; literally freezing him or her in their track, like, well, “Sleeping Beauty”:

“Be it from parent or teacher, sibling or spouse,
just one tiny prick of criticism is all it takes sometimes
to put a burgeoning writer to sleep
for a hundred years,
for a lifetime
for so long that no princes are left
to hack through the brambles,
or if one is, he can’t imagine that he should bother.”

This is a charming mini-chap from “A Mid Summer Night’s Press.”

Doug Holder/Ibbetson Update/ March 2007/ Somerville, Mass.

Shay Duffin as Brendan Behan

THE BREW OF THE NIGHT MEETS THE DAWN OF THE DAY: SHAY DUFFIN’S PORTRAYAL OF IRISH REBEL BRENDAN BEHAN



One of the more impressive things about Shay Duffin’s portrayal of Irish rebel, playwright, poet and novelist Brendan Behan (Besides his impressive acting) is the amount of glasses of Guinness he downs in the course of the play. Behan was an alcoholic and so Duffin portrays this bard with a bad elbow as a prolific downer of libations. But Duffin can obviously hold a drink and he pulls off his one man show “Shay Duffin as Brendan Behan: Confessions of an Irish Rebel” (At Jimmy Tingle’s Off Broadway Theater), with accomplished showmanship and humor.

Behan was born in Dublin in 1923 and died in 1964. In both his plays and his writings he took shots at the Church, the State, England, authority: anything that smacked of sham or hypocrisy.
His signature play was “ The Borstal Boy” which he wrote when he was in prison.

Duffin had a casual acquaintance with Behan in Dublin, when Duffin was a boy. Duffin captures this expansive, brilliant, witty and tragic man, with the expert skills of a well-oiled mimic, as well as a scholar of the nuances of speech and tics of personality.

Duffin had this reviewer on his toes from the start, quoting Behan on his views of theatre critics:

“Theatre critics are like eunuchs in a harem; they watch performers, but they are unable to do it themselves.” I could have sworn he was looking at me… no matter… well noted.

Behan, as portrayed by Duffin, proceeded to regale the audience with his tales of prison, his time as an Irish Republican Army operative, his writing and drinking life, and his too early, tragic demise. Duffin has mined a great treasure chest of great lines from Behan like:

“They say I drink like a fish. Well, we don’t drink the same f...g thing.”

Here is Behan’s account of his father berating his long-suffering mother:

“Kathleen if Jesus was married to you, he would climb back on the cross!”

And this succulent droplet of Behanian philosophy about the lean times in Dublin:

“To eat was an achievement, to get drunk a victory.”

The play follows the decline of Behan, and at the end the spotlight narrows on Behan’s wizened face, to show the sorrows behind the drunken bombast of the man. Behan died in a hospital in Dublin in March of 1964. His words were heard clearly on a cold Somerville night in March 2007.

Doug Holder

To order tickets call 1-866-811- 4111

Interview with poet Michael Graves with Charles Ries

ADAM AND CAIN
By: Michael Graves
Black Buzzard Press
Price: $15.95
80 Pages/ 9 Poems

ISBN: 0-938872-29-X

Order from:
Michael Graves
The Phoenix Reading Series
P. O. Box 84
Dyker Heights Station
8320 13th Avenue
Brooklyn, NY 11228

Review/Interview By: Charles P. Ries


Adam and Cain is Michael Graves first full length collection of poetry. He work has been widely published, and well received within academic journal. In 2004 he was the recipient of a grant of $4,500 from the Ludwig Vogelstein Foundation. He has taught full-time for The Pennsylvania State University and been an adjunct for various branches of The City University of New York for fifteen years. Currently, he is an adjunct at New York City Technical College of The City University of New York

When Carol Novack, Editor of the edgy on line literary magazine, Mad Hatters Review (http://madhattersreview.com/) asked if I would review a new book of poetry by a writer named Michael Graves I was expecting free verse, something crazy and narrative like much of the work I read on her site. I was surprised when the book I got in the mail was (what I have come to consider), academic in style – a style that often leaves me lost, losing interest, and running for my dictionary. In Adam and Cain, Graves uses the original story of sibling rivalry, and turns it into a morality tale that transcends its biblical origins. Using a series of nine long poems Graves tells his version of this story. Here are part #1 and #2 from the forth poem in this collection titled, “Cain to Adam”: “#1 / At first, / There was one, / Adam, the Master, / Unrivalled. / Now, / There are brothers / Who envy their father, / But tremble to show it, / It is not so, / Abel, my brother, / You, whose face I see / When I look for my own / in the still waters of dream? // #2 / I would do anything / To quiet the voice / That argues within. / The unceasing voice / That drives me to fight / With arrogant Adam - / That tyrant! / And rages and quails / At the peacekeeping gestures and words / Of smooth, solicitous Eve! // O, brother, blest is your peace!”

While I have written over one hundred poetry book reviews, I don’t have an MFA. I wondered if I was qualified to review a collection of poems as erudite as this one. Everything I know about poetry has been through my own reading, living in the small press, and talking with (mostly) non-academically trained poets. Maybe I not a fan of formal poetry out ignorance, but I just don’t find it accessible. I think this issue of accessibility is at the core of the debate I often see in the small press between academically trained poets and non-academically trained poets. Some, in the non-academic small press would say poets like Graves have lost contact with the people and common expression; and some in the academic press would say the work of non-academic small press poets is not informed through study, and has not progressed.

So what was I supposed to do? Toss this book or deal with it? I knew certain poetry circles find Michael Graves work to be exceptional, and this made me curious enough to ask Graves if he would help me understand why I should care about his work. He graciously agreed to do so.

CPR: You are an academically trained writer; how does this training color or influence your writing?

MG: I am an academically trained writer, but one of the academics who trained me, James Wright, was a translator of and deeply influenced by twentieth century Spanish language poets such as Pablo Neruda and Cesar Vallejo, to mention only two. He also translated Georg Trakl, an important early twentieth century Vienese poet, among other German writers. Wright’s association with Robert Bly is well-known so I think I don’t need to go into it here. The brilliant Joycean Leonard Albert who arranged my introduction to Wright frequently encouraged me to be sure to read “juicy” work not included in the canon.

I think academic should be divided into at least two categories--the academic which honors and celebrates the archetypal, the universal, that approaches its subject rigorously, but humbly, say Socratically, with a genuine sense that basic assumptions and truths might be true but must be tested, explored, presented, etc., over and over and second the dead arrogant, prescriptive only academic. The letter killeth but the spirit giveth life. The arrogant academic would be that which honored only the canon of DWEMs –Dead White European Males, with only token exceptions, and it would assume it always had the final say as to what was worth reading and why. Dictionaries and those who work on them recognize the reality that language is a living thing and that words and meanings and usages phrases enter languages and become accepted, so why shouldn’t academics recognize that poems come into being and gain and deserve recognition, even if they compete with canonical works for attention.

CPR: Adam and Cain is your first full collection of poems; have you done chaps? How come so few books of poetry?

MG: I have a chapbook Outside St. Jude’s (REM Press, 1990) from an extremely small press that a friend, Remington Murphy published for awhile. It’s been reissued as an e-book by Ram Devineni who publishes Rattapallax. It’s available by going to the Rattapallax site and as a pdf. I also have a chapbook Illegal Border Crosser forthcoming from Gloria Mindock’s Cervena Barva Press

I have about another five to six hundred good or better than good poems on a wide range of subjects. I have one manuscript ready to mail out and the rest are waiting for me to find the time and energy to finish organizing into mss. That work was interrupted by my mother’s death in March, 2006. Gloria Mindock is interested in publishing a full-length collection. Last but not least, this is an opportunity for a good publisher to get some of my work while it’s still available!

CPR: Do you rewrite your poems extensively?

MG: Though I rewrite some poems extensively, in general, the answer is no, but they have long gestation periods. Some are looked at over many years, five, ten, fifteen until I know what to do. They are often not finished when they come, but they are often close. I jot notes for poems all the time. And I have long stretches when I’m thinking about writing on and off all day long. I suppose I’m obsessive and don’t mind thinking about trying to transform my life, especially my inner life, into poetry. However, I know that writers can be extremely unreliable commentators on their own creative processes, like a narrator in a novel.

CPR: In your Cervena Barva Press interview you say, “The book [Adam and Cain] was written slowly over many years. The initial impulse came to be during Leonard Albert’s course Religious Ideas in Modern Fiction, and I think the style of the poems might be indebted to Auerbach’s discussion of Biblical style in Minesis.” You also say, it was written in a ‘non-discursive in a high modernist manner.’ What is Minesis? What is a non-discursive in a high modernist manner?

MG: I started the book with the short story Cain in Exile, originally titled Cain and written for Leonard Albert’s course in the short story, probably sometime in 1976-77. I finished the book in 2005. So, the book took about thirty years to complete. Mimesis is the transliteration of Aristotle’s word for imitation. He writes that art imitates life; mimesis is the representation of life. After that, it gets complicated: we could probably say that any poem or work of fiction imitates life. I think it becomes a question of by what means, in what style, what degree of success, what truth?

By non-discursive high modernist manner I mean that the transitions are left out between the poems and that the reader must think about the relationship of the parts without help from the writer. Also, the reader is not told how to interpret the work. For example, he is not told Adam inflicts a psychic wound on Cain. The rationale is the writer need not tell the obvious to the reader and that the reader gets more pleasure out of participating in the creation of the text, and that the impact of what he gets is more powerful and profound, and that it is modern in a deep sense to give the reader the freedom to determine for himself.

CPR: What audience did you have in mind when you wrote Adam and Cain? Will my neighbors who shop at the Pic’n Save down the street enjoy this book?

MG: Everybody who’s interested in poetry. Everybody who doesn’t say I hate Biblical themes on principle. Everybody who doesn’t say there must be no difficulty in poetry. Everybody who doesn’t say the Bible is the final word and no one can add to or subtract from it. Anybody who hears the music in the poems and imagines the human situation will feel their power. I have already had a wide range of readers buy or praise this book, readers without college degrees, from various ethnic groups, people from various walks of life.

CPR: A few of your metaphors in Adam and Cain were meaningless to me because I am not a biblical scholar; so in a sense these metaphors have not deepened my appreciation of your work, but obscured it. Maybe as we read widely, travel, think, experience life with growing awareness and evolve, our art reflects this insight and complexity of thought that come with our personal and creative growth. For example, we may use metaphors that are common to us, but uncommon to most people. I recently read a New York Times Book Review interview with a noted poetry critic who said she didn’t review poetry collections from writers born after 1950 because she felt so out of touch with some of the cultural images they were using (cartoons characters, TV. shows, cultural events, movies etc) images that were very clear to them, but not clear to her.

MG: Absolutely, there are books I could not do justice to. For one example, I find Allen Mandelbaum's, The Maxioms of Chelm beyond me, I have not found the time and energy to look up the terms I don't know, though I have spent some time looking for critical articles on it, but I love its music. Though I like to think one could sense/perceive that something is interesting, worthwhile, etc., even if one's grasp of it were limited.

CPR: Do you feel elevated or formal language, such as you use in Adam and Cain, looses its audience because it is difficult to grasp?

MG: No. My most important audience is composed of people who can enter and/or accept the book. In one sense, the audience by definition is the people who read the book. I’m not writing for people who won’t look a word up when necessary. I suppose it’s fair to call the language elevated, but I think the better term, which you mention, is formal. It carries no negative or satiric connotations. And there are plenty of poems in the collection that are made of easily understood mono or disyllabic words only.

CPR: You wanted Adam and Cain to be read; yet your writing style will not be accessible to most people. Why publish it?

MG: I’m not worried about being a best seller and I’m not sure my work won’t reach a wide audience. Nonetheless, I am aware that it is quite possible that it won’t. Perhaps this comparison would be helpful: getting to really know someone takes time and effort. Even though there is a place for connections that are immediate and wonderful, all too often, when we connect immediately and “completely” we are sorry later. Most of us would agree that long term relationships need investments of time, energy, willingness, open mindedness, dialogue, etc and we are very used to saying reading a book is a conversation… In addition, I think that Adam and Cain has qualities that a reader could connect with immediately. Sir Philip Sidney settled for, “Fit audience though few.” I want as many fit audience members as possible, and I think a lot of them are out there. Whether or not I’ll reach them…

CPR: What attracted you to this morality tale?

MG: I think the key moment came in Leonard Albert’s class Religious Ideas in Fiction or The Bible as Literature, when he pointed out that God gave no reason for His rejection of Cain’s gift in the King James Bible. To paraphrase, I thought something like “What an amazing thing.” I didn’t have these words but it pointed to God’s nature as Manichean and suggested Gnostic perspectives on Biblical texts were possible. I think there was also something deeply rebellious in me. I had already shown some of my writing to Professor Albert and he had voiced the opinion that I had an argument with God, very unMiltonic I suppose! And I had already discovered my conflicted anger, which might be too mild an expression, at my parents.

CPR: In the same Cervena Barva Press interview you say Jame Joyce is a big influence of yours. The American writer, Max Eastman once asked Joyce why Finnegan’s Wake was written in a very difficult style and Joyce replied, “To keep critic busy for three hundred yeas.” Some critics considered this book a masterpiece, though many readers found it incomprehensible. I guess you don’t find Joyce incomprehensible? How come I do?

MG: I’m willing to read a lot of Joyce criticism and join Joyce reading groups.

CPR: Fair enough, but tell me why you love James Joyce and how has he influenced your writing?

MG: Joyce was one of the very first writers I was exposed to after I returned to school and he represented the triumph of the artist over repression. The first of his works that made a major impact on me was Dubliners. Central to Joyce’s purpose in that collection of stories was the revelation to both the reader and the characters that the characters were trapped and paralyzed in a living death, although the naturalistic surface of stories remained undisturbed. I encountered those stories at a messianic phase in my life and they filled me with enthusiasm.

I have spent many years misreading Joyce in important ways and unable to penetrate much of his work, especially Finnegans Wake, but what was accessible to me was so immediately rewarding, so full of beauty, human importance, respect for art, intellectual interest and excellence, I have been willing to persist in my attempt to read him. It is said of Joyce that one only rereads him. His work has inspired me to explore the sexual content of religious symbols and images, to strive to make theme/form and content inseparable, to explore indeterminacy in narrative sequences, to charge writing with as much meaning as possible.

CPR: Let’s talk about whether or not poetry can not be formal. I believe this term (form) is most often used when referring to academics that choose to write within various forms (sonatas etc). Yes, narrative poetry is a form; but for the most part narrative poetry, of the sort I find throughout the small press and enjoy, does not obscure.

MG: There is no necessary opposition between form and clarity. It could be argued that form is a clarity that emerges from the flux or obscurity of experience or that form is the underlying structure or can be. The sonnet, for example, is based on the statement of a situation or problem in the first eight lines, which reaches its fullest tension about the eighth line and the comment or resolution in the last six. It is a form that is true to the mind’s perception of experience: problem and solution. It is true that some forms, such as the sestina, if followed rigorously, are complicated and difficult. But even so, the content in a form need not be obscure; need not be filled with arcane or specialized facts or allusions. Narratives have formal elements, as I assume you agree—plot, protagonists, narrators, conflicts, symbols, irony, setting, situation, rising action, climax, resolution, images. I think the question is always whether or not they are well used.

CPR: It feels like our poetry worlds are, indeed, worlds apart. Do your students at NY City Technical College relate to your poetry?

MG: Surprisingly, yes, some of the students do relate to my poems. I read them a selection from Adam and Cain and my other work. Of course, some of them have little interest in English and little if any of the course content seems to reach them. It’s not appropriate to read them many of my poems or spend a lot of time on them. I teach remedial writing and freshman composition. And City Tech students are not succeeding at passing the CPE, the Competency Proficiency Exam, so there is great concern to get them ready for the Final exam. I think that teaching poetry could be one way to try to get them enthusiastic about language, but our curriculum doesn’t really include that as much of an option. Our freshman composition course has a required text and there is only one poem in it, but I take a little time near the end of semester to give the students a sense of who I am as a writer, and some of them feel the emotion the poems generate and give –I can’t find the words,--grunts, wows, gasps. Not a whole lot of them, but some. This semester I had a student ask to purchase the book. I asked him to contact me after the semester ended, that is, after final grades went in. Though he asked twice, I haven’t heard from him, so he might have been hoping to influence his grade.

CPR: How old are you? What do you do for a living? Are you married? Do you have children?

MG: I’m 55. I work as an adjunct instructor; technically I believe the term is lecturer for the City University of New York and a reader for a faculty member at New Jersey City University with weak eyes. I’m single and don’t have any children. I still have fantasies, but I’m getting old….

CPR: We are both getting old; but (I pray) immeasurably wiser. Thank you for widening both my vocabulary and my mind with regard formal poetry and narrowing the great divide between academic and non-academic poets.

Graves earlier comment that, “long term relationships need investments of time, energy, willingness, open mindedness and dialogue” has timeless truth to it. How many times have I been surprised to become close with someone who after a first and second meeting I feel no connection with? Yet over time something begins to happen; we begin to be aware of something deeper. Through process of preparing this review I have had to look deeper, think deeper, and read again. Adam and Cain was no fast dance, but I got through it. It was hard work, and I will read it again. After all, we’ve become friends.

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If you would like to hear Michael Graves read his “Blatnoy Series go to: http://www.madhattersreview.com/issue3/poetry_graves.shtml

To find Michael Graves interview in Cervena Brava Press go to: (http://www.cervenabarvapress.com/gravesinterview.htm)

______________________________________________

Charles P. Ries lives in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. His narrative poems, short stories, interviews and poetry reviews have appeared in over one hundred and sixty print and electronic publications. He has received four Pushcart Prize nominations for his writing, and most recently read his poetry on National Public Radio’s Theme and Variations, a program that is broadcast over seventy NPR affiliates. He is the author of THE FATHERS WE FIND, a novel based on memory. Ries is also the author of five books of poetry — the most recent entitled, The Last Time which was released by The Moon Press in Tucson, Arizona. He is the poetry editor for Word Riot (http://www.wordriot.org/) and Pass Port Journal (http://www.passportjournal.org/). He is on the board of the Woodland Pattern Bookstore (http://www.woodlandpattern.org/) in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Most recently he has been appointed to the Wisconsin Poet Laureate Commission. You may find additional samples of his work by going to: http://www.literarti.net/Ries/ .

Review of "The Gardner and the Bees " Helena Minton

Review of The Gardener and the Bees by Helena Minton

$9 plus $2 S&H to March Street Press, 3414 Wilshire, Greensboro, NC27408.> web site address: marchstreetpress.com email address:> _rbixby@earthlink.net_ (mailto:rbixby@earthlink.net)

Helen Minton has a new poetry book out called The Gardener and the Bees. Like Emily Dickinson1 and Marianne Moore2, Minton is a modern poet who pays intricate attention to word usage and concrete imagery. In her poems, Minton takes ordinary observations, adds some unusual twists and turns and makes her poetry something special to read. She writes about nature and its influences on human experiences, especially focusing on gardening, flowers, animals, and nature’s relationships with man/woman. She paints with words. Sometimes the tone of a poem is happy; sometimes it’s sad; sometimes it changes from happy to sad; or sometimes it’s simply angry.

And she writes about personal experiences, too, as seen in “The Birch” (p. 26), when the speaker recalled planting a birch with her father and says, “The week before my wedding/how did we find a moment, my father and I, who rarely/worked together with our hands?/During the tissue-paper preparations/it felt urgent that we dig,/heft the compact root ball. Lowered it. Pack in the dirt./Less urgent as we stood back and admired what we’d planted,”(Stanza 1) How more personal can an experience between father and daughter (or son) get?


Or, as read in “Building the Compost” (pp. 16-17), how more personal can a moment be as when the speaker describes a scene where a woman creates a frame for compost upon the request of her husband and Minton writes “Now, he thinks, she will be happy.” and has the woman “…herself moving/toward the thrift/of a woman in wartime,/saving scraps, starting seeds/for a victory garden.” (Stanzas 11-12) Though written in the third person, Minton has the reader appreciate the personal achievement of the woman.


In “The Birch” and “Building the Compost”, Minton has illustrated how the speaker deals with the main masculine figures in her life.


Minton writes with wit and imagination, as viewed in “Wedding Day” (p. 27). She has taken an ordinary, though special, event and changed it into a potentially disastrous one which, through a twist of fate and imagination, everything turns out okay. The speaker says, “Out of the branches, inch-long bodies fell/all afternoon, softly, on the patio,/on the chairs and the tablecloths/as the brown creatures stripped trees of green./My father paid the grandchildren/a penny a bug to collect them.” How unfortunate for the bride and groom and everyone present to experience this act of nature. But, Minton wittingly writes that “The caterpillars don’t appear in any pictures./They never dropped in my hair/or landed on the neck of a guest,/or were caught in David’s Mexican wedding shirt.” So things didn’t turn out as badly as the reader first thought they would. Though Minton’s use of imagery and description and wit, she has captured the reader’s attention and left him/her feeling like the children at the wedding – “…not frightened/as they filled their buckets/strung between the maples limbs,/close to lovely from this distance.” (Stanza 1)


Often she writes with vivid detail and description, as seen in her opening poem “Perennial Bed” (p. 3). The reader can visualize Minton’s bees who “spend hours/on the saucers of rose sedum, their curled legs moving over petals/fleshy as rubber brushes” (Stanza 1) or the lone bee who “lands on a filament/ of coreopsis moonbeam,/floating down, down to the dirt,/then flung back/through the undulating architecture.” (Stanza 2)


Her poetry is often sensual, appealing to the mind and the body, and allows the reader’s mind to look for pleasure3, as read in her poem “The Marie Selby Botanical Gardens”(p. 31), where the speaker “stroll(s) past hibiscus/jacaranda and frangipani,/ through the black shadows of the banyan,/crushed oyster shells underfoot,/in the early morning Florida cold/sharp as a comb across the scalp.” (Stanza 1) The speaker is enjoying herself as she is “trying, as I tried last year,/to learn the difference/between palmate and pinnate, royal and sabal,/and the lower fanned shrubs/which look like palms but are not.” (Stanza 2) The reader is having a pleasant time reading the poem that Minton ends happily questioning, “Who said we should suffer/to study flowers?” (Stanza 4) Minton’s style is sincere, sometimes feminine, sometimes heartwarming and sometimes heartbreaking. She doesn’t use traditional stanzas and doesn’t rhyme words, though her sentences flow smoothly, as if the speaker is having a conversation with the reader.

It may take a couple of reads to understand Minton’s inner meanings in her poetry, The Gardener and the Bees is just like the title suggests – a productive, happy yet possibly confrontational experience. As the speaker concludes in “Perennial Bed”,
“Let them sting me,/brash as I am.” (Stanza 3) Minton has written a book of poetry that should be read and enjoyed and discussed by both men and women.
###
1 enotes.com. “Dickinson, Emily │Introduction: Feminism in Literature”, 2007.
2 enotes.com. “Moore, Marianne │ Introduction: Feminism in Literature”, 2007.
3 John Timpane, Ph.D. with Maureen Watts, Poetry FOR DUMMIES, New York: Wiley Publishing, Inc., 2001, p. 31

Pam Rosenblatt/ Ibbetson Update

Alfred Nicol: From Printer to Award-Winning Poet

Alfred Nicol: From Printer to Award-Winning Poet.

By Doug Holder

Alfred Nicol, a graduate of Dartmouth College, worked as a printer for twenty years. During this time he continued to write poetry and honed his craft. Nicole left his printing business and now concentrates on his writing full time. He is a member of the Powow River Poets of Newburyport, Mass, and edited the critically acclaimed anthology “Powow River Anthology.” He is the recipient of the 2004 Richard Wilbur Award for his first book of poetry “Winter Light.” (University of Evansville Press). His poems have appeared in “Poetry,” “The New England Review,” and many others. I talked with Nicol on my Somerville Community Access TV Show “”Poet to Poet: Writer to Writer”

Doug Holder: You worked as a printer for many years after graduating Dartmouth. Can you talk about this, and why you gave it up to write fulltime?

Alfred Nicol: I began as a pressman. My father had worked in a factory. We take this model of what a man should do. I had the idea if I took this artisan position, then I would have my mind to myself in the evening. But I wound up exhausted at the end of the day. So I tried to get up earlier and earlier before the kids got up so I could write. It didn’t work out that well. Eventually I got the opportunity to give it up.

Doug Holder: What do you do for a living now?

Alfred Nicol: I live the life of Riley. I punch in to my studio and write my poems.

Doug Holder: You are part of the Powow River Poets, and edited their anthology. Can you talk about the group and your involvement?

Alfred Nicol: The Powwow River Poets don’t have a head. Rhina Espalliat brought the group together. There are so many personalities in the group. She is someone who can smooth over the rough edges. She is a great encourager. The Powow River is an absolutely democratic group. There is no one in charge. What I did with this anthology was to honor this diverse group. It has sold well for a poetry book. There are 24 poets represented. Bill Coyle, a distinguished poet from Somerville is included, as well as Len Krisak, Deborah Warren, Richard Wollman and others. There are more formalist poets in this group than there would be in a slice of any other group of poets.

Doug Holder: I am told that you started out as a Free Verse poet but switched to Formalist. What happened?

Alfred Nicol: This is true. I had been writing Beat-influenced verse for over 20 years. The first poem I brought to a workshop, the poet Len Krisak commented “Not bad for Free Verse.” I took offense. I thought: “I’ll show this guy.” So I did. I thought my experience with Formalism would be a hit and run affair, but having done it just once I was so taken with working with meter that I didn’t stop. I couldn’t stop playing with it. I haven’t stopped playing with it.

Doug Holder: Rhina Espaillat wrote of your work “Nicol is much more than a poet’s poet, he is also a reader’s poet, and his work, though dazzling, is not intended to simply dazzle but to convey, with charm and profundity, the experience of our common life.” Do you think poetry is “common?”

Alfred Nicol: Well, poetry has to be uncommon no matter where it gets it start. I suppose what Rhina is saying is that if you are writing about your neighbors then you are writing about the common life. But you still better make it poetry if you are going to call it poetry.

Doug Holder: What makes it poetry?

Alfred Nicol: I’m not going to take the easy route; saying you put into verse and make it rhyme. You have to lift away from common speech. It has to urge the reader toward song. As you read it or write it, somehow the work has to be a magnet and take you away from common speech towards song.

Doug Holder; You won the prestigious Richard Wilbur Award for your book “Winter Light.” How would you have handled this when you were younger as opposed to now at 51?

Alfred Nicol: The way it affected me now is it allowed me to publish a book. I waited a long time. I started writing as a high school student. I never thought I was anything but a poet. You don’t need to have the world applaud you to keep on writing, but it sure does help. It helps for someone to acknowledge that it has been worthwhile. It tells you that you haven’t wasted your life.

Doug Holder: Would you have said you wasted your life if you didn’t win the award?

Alfred Nicol: I don’t think I would have. (Laughs.)

Doug Holder: Are you the product of an MFA program, or do you consider yourself part of any school?

Alfred Nicol: No, but I had a lot of good teachers at Dartmouth like Sydney Lea.

Church

In what sense am I nearer to my God
For being here? This priest's a kindly dullard:
His sermon's borrowed, stumbled through slipshod.
These windows are not art, though brightly colored.
The choirmaster's voice is grandiose.
My neighbor in the pew would have me gone.
(Such spinsters clutch the third commandment close.)
The muscles of the neck suppress a yawn.
How many of the men believe as I do,
Who come to waste part of this least of days
Waiting in hope to kindle faith, or try to
Affect the candle's flicker with my gaze,
Or watch, as the communicants parade
Back to their seats, to see the glimmer fade?

Alfred Nicol

Doug Holder/Ibbetson Update

Shay Duffin and His Portrait of an Irish Rebel

Shay Duffin and His Portrait of an Irish Rebel

By Doug Holder

If you want the full Shay Duffin experience then listen and keep your mouth shut. Duffin a master storyteller, is an accomplished Ireland-born actor and writer, who is in town performing his acclaimed one man show “Shay Duffin As Brendan Behan: Confessions of An Irish Rebel,” playing through March 31 at Jimmy Tingle’s Off Broadway Theatre smack dab in the heart of Davis Square, Somerville. This work pays homage to the iconoclast, novelist, playwright, Irish Republican Army operative and poet Brendan Behan (1923-64) Duffin, like the late Behan, is a man who has the gift of gab (or “crack” as they say in Ireland”) and has a reputation of regaling folks with his ribald anecdotes about the actors, writers, ner-do-wells, holier than thou hordes, drunks, stumblebums, and pikers he has encountered in his eclectic life. I talked with Duffin at The Somerville News offices on a bitterly cold March morning.

When I asked Duffin why he chose Behan as a subject for his play, and indeed for a fair amount of his creative work, the usually loquacious actor simply said “I admired his honesty.” Behan was not only honest according to Duffin, but he was sick, a dyed-in-the-wool drunk from a long line of people with “bad elbows.” Duffin said that he is totally different from Behan. For starters he rarely drinks. Behan’s extended family was very political, stolid Republicans; while Duffin’s was decidedly apolitical. Duffin who overcame the challenge of clubfeet as a boy, turned out to be a fine athlete, while Behan was chubby, slovenly, and after awhile toothless. Both men were residents of Dublin, but Duffin went out of his way to avoid the drunk and boisterous Behan when he would see him stagger down the street. In spite of this Behan was quite an influence on the budding actor. Duffin said: “I like what he had to say.” Behan according to Duffin did not tolerate any hypocrisy or sham.

Duffin said that the playwright wrote one great play “Borstal Boy” that was set at the Borstal School; a reform school Behan was a resident of. Duffin feels that Behan had other great plays in him, but he died at the tender age of 41, so they never saw the light of day… much less Broadway. He recounts that Behan wrote “Borstal Boy” when he was poor. Duffin opined: “Success is the worst thing that can happen to a writer. When he was rich he stopped writing. He became more popular for the character he was than the writer he was.” Duffin recalled that when Behan wasn’t drinking he was quite a charming and funny man, but when he downed more than a few it affected his “chemistry.” Behan was a Diabetic, and alcohol consumption had severe repercussions for him mentally and physically. Duffin remembered: “He had a long-suffering wife Beatrice who loved and stood by him. She literally wiped his “arse” for the 7 or 8 years that they lived together.”

Behan was involved with the Irish Republican Army. Duffin said that the IRA that Behan was involved in was a lot different from the very violent one that took over in the 70’s. Behan’s IRA did not indiscriminately kill. Although they could be vicious, Duffin feels:” It was more romantic—more patriotic. After 1969 or so the IRA turned to indiscriminate violence, and my sentiments turned against them.” Duffin describes himself as a pacifist, more of a lover—although he has had his share of fights.

Many writers like Dylan Thomas, Eugene O’Neil F, Scott Fitzgerald have turned to alcohol for comfort and maybe to open the floodgates of creativity. I asked Duffin about this. He said: “The writing life is a lonely life. When the writer picks up a bottle it is a lot easier. Maybe it does release some creativity. But in Behan’s case it probably was heredity.”

Duffin has a long resume as an actor with appearances in such classics as “Raging Bull,” and “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.” Recently he was in the movie “ The Departed” with Jack Nicholson that was set in Boston. He played “Jimmy” the barman to Nicholson’s gangster character. Of his experience with “Jack” he said: “Jack was very much to himself. Very quiet, just being ‘Jack.’”

When we moved our conversation to the Diesel Café right next to the theatre, Duffin shared anecdotes about Cardinal Law who he said berated him severely about bringing his Behan play to the Cardinal’s hometown some years ago. It seems, according to Duffin, that the Cardinal took objection to the hard drinking and talking Behan and was worried about the negative influence the play would exude. Duffin reportedly said in reply: “I don’t think he was a pedophile though.” Duffin recalled Law turned white as a ghost and left. This was in 1988 or 1989 before the scandals became public. There were also stories about former Boston Mayor Ray Flynn, and Whitey Bulger, who saw his play more than a few times.

Duffin, like Behan, calls a spade a spade, and doesn’t pull his punches, which is a refreshing quality in these oh-so-politically correct academic environs we live in. If Duffin’s performance for me is any indication of the play he stars in, get your hands on tickets now!

Doug Holder/ Ibbetson Update *The play runs through March 31st at Jimmy Tingle’s Off Broadway Theatre. Davis Square Somerville.

Doug Holder, Harris Gardner and Jennifer Matthews At Squawk March 15 9 PM

Featured Poets













Doug Holder http://authorsden.com/douglasholder

Harris Gardner http://www.tapestryofvoices.com

Jennifer Matthews http://www.jennifermatthews.com


A Talk with Squawk
February 18, 2005 by Doug Holder
Somerville News

On any given day, at the Sherman Cafe, in Union Square, you are bound to run into any number of poets, writers, and artists nursing their respective cups of java.

On this particular Saturday I ran into the former owner of House of Sarah Books in Inman Sq. and June Gross who co-wrote the play “The Dangers of Empathy.” But, who I was really waiting for was Lee Kidd and Jessa Lynne, of the “Squawk Coffeehouse,” a long-time venue of music, poetry and performance housed at the Harvard Epworth Methodist Church just outside Harvard Square.

Since 1988, the coffeehouse has presented such folks as the poet/writer Ed Sanders, the singer and 60’s activist John Sinclair, the jazz musician and Kerouac confidant David Amram, and a host of local poets and musicians. Their other brainchild is “Squawk Magazine” an art and poetry journal that they have put out with artist/poet Mick Cusimano and others. There are 57 issues of the print magazine, and now “Squawk” is solely online, but a new print run may be in the works.

Lee Kidd, one of the founders of the “Squawk” enterprise, is decidedly a Renaissance man. Since 1976, he has owned and operated a language school in Harvard Square that specializes in foreign language immersion. Kidd is not just a self-educated bohemian. He attended Harvard Divinity School; he is a Fulbright scholar, and has been published in “The New Yorker.”

Jessa Lynne has an equally fascinating background. Originally from the Milwaukee area; she moved here looking for a counterculture venue when she heard of the “Naked City,” an earlier incarnation of “Squawk,” which was located at the “Allston Mall” in Allston. “I was impressed with the warm and open environment,” she said. Since then, she has graced the stage at “Squawk.” She has performed skits, political satire, dance and other modes of expression.
Lynne works at Harvard, and also has a gig where she portrays historical figures like Susan B. Anthony, Emilia Earhart, and other notable women, at libraries and schools in the area. Kidd said that “Squawk” has changed a lot from 1988 to 2005. Before it was basically music and poetry, now there is anything from jugglers to book signings, he said. “We are more eclectic now. We have a coffeehouse consciousness, a mix of people from the homeless to Harvard professors,” he said.

Kidd and Lynne are optimistic for the future of “Squawk.” Kidd said, “There will a great golden age of music and poetry in the third millennium, and we'll be part of it.” “Squawk” meets every Thursday night at 9 p.m. at the Harvard Epworth Methodist Church, 1555 Mass. Ave., Harvard Square, Cambridge. More information is available at www.angelfire.com/music/squawk.








SQUAWK Coffeehouse, an open-mike venue for musicians, poets, & other performing artists.





Every Thursday night, from 9:00 pm to 12 midnight,
located in the Harvard Epworth Methodist Church, 1555 Mass. Ave., Harvard Square, Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA (between Harvard & Porter Squares, right next to Harvard Law School's Pound Hall), or call (617) 776-3625.