ANNE ELIZABETH TOM TOUTS THE WRITER FRIENDLY CAPE COD WRITERS CENTER CONFERENCE

ANNE ELIZABETH TOM TOUTS THE WRITER FRIENDLY CAPE COD WRITERS CENTER CONFERENCE

BY DOUG HOLDER

I have known Anne Elizabeth Tom, the director of the Cape Cod Writers Center for a number of years now, and find her an untiring advocate of writers, a whirlwind of creative energy, not to mention a warm and generous person. Tom is now putting on the finishing touches for the 47th Cape Cod Writers Center Conference starting Aug 15. There will be two separate conferences: one section Aug 16-18, the other Aug19 –21. The Craigville Conference Center is located on a bluff overlooking Nantucket Sound and Craigville Beach on Cape Cod. I talked with Tom about the Cape Cod Writers Center and Conference on my Somerville Community Access TV show “ Poet to Poet: Writer to Writer.”


Doug Holder: Can you tell us about the history of the Cape Cod Writers Center and Conference?

Anne Elizabeth Tom: It was established by Marion R. Vuilleumier in 1962. She was definitely a woman ahead of her time. She was a writer, and she wanted to get a writing group together. She did form one and eventually they decided to have a couple of creative writing teachers come down to the Cape for a week in the summer. This grew with more and more teachers. So now we have fiction writers, nonfiction writers, creative nonfiction writers, etc. This summer we have folks teaching like poet Richard Wollman, who runs the Zora Neale Hurston Center at Simmons College with the founder Afaa Michael Weaver. We also have screenwriting and poetry courses. All of this has evolved over the years, and the annual Conference is the Center’s major program. But we support writers all year long. We have an author interview TV show and recently we have had poets CD Collins, Lisa Beatman, and Tracey Fern, (a children’s book author) on the show.

DH: I recently read an article in the New Yorker that discussed the question: “Can writing be taught?” Well, can it?

AT: I think like anything there needs to be a certain amount of native ability there. But most definitely people can be guided to write well. Just being exposed to other writers at conferences and workshops as well as reading a lot helps. I think the momentum of getting together with other writers makes a difference. A lot of it has to do with the fact that you become exposed. It supports you. It’s lonely being a writer. And there is a lot of networking at our Conference for instance.

DH: I know you are going to have some literary agents this year.

AT: Yes-we have. Jason Ashlock, an Agent and Contracts Manager at Moveable Type Literary Group, and Molly Lyons of Joelle Delbourgo Associates.

DH: Do you have any anecdotes about writers making connections at the Conference?

AT: We actually do. Last year we had a mock editorial panel with the publisher David Godine and some other publishers and agents. It really was a lot of fun. We had asked faculty to pick some manuscripts they thought might be worth running past the editorial panel. There was someone who had a really interesting book on gardening. His book considered the impact of English gardening on American gardening. Another book that was considered was a romance. Both were reviewed by the panel.

DH: Can you name some of the teachers this year?

AT: Well, Richard Hoffman the author of the memoir “Half the House: a Memoir” will be teaching a memoir and an advanced memoir course. Suzette Standring, a syndicated columnist, will be teaching a column writing course, Tom Daley will be hosting our Box Lunch briefings (These are 45 minute discussions on writing and publishing.) There is just a small part of our offerings.

I would advise people to sign up for classes as soon as possible. We are already 30% full, and our catalogue has only been out for a few weeks. Registration closes July 15. Go to our website for a registration form and other information. http://capecodwriterscenter.org

DH: Can you talk about your background and how you became involved with the center?

AT: We used to spend summers on the Cape when I was a kid. There are so many people I know who have experienced the haunting beauty of the Cape like I did. I had wanted to return here to do some writing. I had been a museum director, and I did a lot of corporate writing to earn a living, but I hadn’t done enough creative writing. When I came back I enrolled at the Cape Cod Writers Center. Afaa Michael Weaver was a poet teaching there that summer, as well as Fred Marchant, Wes McNair and others. The experience jumpstarted my own poetry. Later, it turned out the Director of the Center was leaving after eight years. I applied for the job and got it.

DH: Can you talk about the accommodations during the workshop?

AT: It is possible to stay at the Craigsville Center where the conference takes place. It is rustic. The rooms are $122/ a night but that includes all meals. The meals are family style. You don’t have to stay for the full week. You can just stay as few as a couple of nights. And there are hotels on the beach that you can stay at as well that are not expensive. There are all varieties of options.

You can also come down for the short courses like “Books & Blogs.” This course concerns the use of the Blog to publicize your work. This course is taught by Lisa Warren of Da Capo Press. There is also a course concerning publishing your first book.

DH: Many people fear poetry workshops because they hear stories that members, teachers, etc…literally tear their work apart. Is this true at the Conference?

AT: We have a very friendly Conference. It’s folksy with sophisticated people. This is the culture of the Conference. People have told me the environment is conducive to a positive experience.

DH: What else goes on at the Conference?

AT: Every night we have speakers. Our first night Aug 15 we will have an open mic where people can read from their work. Our keynote speakers are Roger Sutton, Editor-In-Chief of “The Horn Book,” and Martin Sandler who wrote: “The Story of American Photography.” He is well known for his young adult history books.

DH: Why do you think folks should attend the Conference?

AT: It is really about the contacts you make and the friendships you develop.

http://capecodwriterscenter.org

Omni Parker House Series to Relocate to Boston City Hall

Omni Parker House Poetry Series to Relocate to Boston City Hall July 9, 2009



(Somerville, Mass.) Harris Gardner announced at the Saturday meeting of the Bagel Bards that his Tapestry of Voices poetry series housed at the Gardner Room at the Omni Parker House Hotel in Boston is relocating to the Piemonte Room at Boston City Hall in Government Center, Boston. After a ten month stint at the Parker House ended, Gardner, ever the hustler, secured a new venue at an equally prestigious site. The Boston Poet Laureate Sam Cornish will open each reading with a few poems, and Gardner will continue to be the host. The first reading is July 9, at 6:30 PM.

Tom Daley, Ryk McIntyre, will open the series July 9, others to be announced...

contact Harris Gardner at tapestryofvoices@yahoo.com for more information

Escaping Islam by Mano Bakh, Kelli McIntyre, and Jacqueline Le Beau

A BagelBards Book Review

“Escaping Islam”
The Evil Might Not Be Realized Until It Is Too Late By Mano Bakh, Kelli McIntyre and Jacqueline Le Beau
AuthorHouse, Bloomington, IN price $17.95

Reviewed 6/12/09 by Paul Steven Stone

An unknown sage once declared, “You never know what you have until it’s gone”, a truism clearly illustrated in the life experience of Mano Bahk, and graphically depicted in his memoir, “Escaping Islam”. Through Bakh’s eyes and photographic memory we see the idyllic Iran of Bakh’s youth and early maturity, ripe with the riches of an emerging modern nation, yet steeped in traditions tied to extended families, a rich historical culture and an ancient humanistic religion. That religion, of course, is Islam.
But the Islam of Mano Bakh’s earliest years is not the Islam he later escaped from, in a harrowing ordeal vividly depicted, as a high ranking officer in Iran’s Imperial Navy.
In order to share the sense of loss and dislocation brought on by the Islamic Revolution of 1979, Bakh paints a rich portrait of life as he knew it, growing up and maturing in the Iran of the Shah with its many freedoms, cross currents of thought and manifold opportunities. All of which was shut down for good (or evil, really!) in the Iran that surfaced under the influence and tight control of the country’s Muslim Revolution.
Written as a warning to those both inside and outside his native land, “Escaping Islam” is a searing condemnation of those who would, in service to a harsh and unforgiving religion, restrict and constrain the lives and well-being of their fellow citizens. If I have a criticism of Bakh’s narrative it concerns his exhausting detailing of the twists and turns of his life story, offering more information than at times seems necessary or desirable. Still, in painting his portrait with so many strokes, he has offered the reader a glimpse of his life’s trajectory that stands up to even the closest scrutiny.


* Paul Steven Stone is the author of " How to Train a Rock"

At the Threshold of ALCHEMY by John Amen

At the Threshold of ALCHEMY

by John Amen

Presa Press

Rockford, Michigan

Softbound, 83 pages

ISBN: 978-0-9800081-5-9



Review by Zvi A. Sesling





Raw. That’s the word that comes to mind when I read many of the poems in John Amen’s At the Threshold of ALCHEMY. The other thought I have is that when he writes about subjects such as death, divorce, masturbation (during a wake) there is a sense of the merciless, unending sledgehammers pounding you as in After the Funeral:



The floorboards exhaled,

walls slept for the first time in years.



Grandma slouched in the foyer,

her belly mounding in her lap, makeup streaked.

I distracted myself in the basement, thinking

of Ms. Gilham, my face in her cleavage.



Upstairs, aunts and neighbors – the mercenaries

of resilience –cooked, cleaned, scrubbed

until the house could have passed for a delivery room



I reemerged,

and his brother gnawing the gristly silence.

No one noticed the stain on my corduroys

or saw me put a silver spoon in my pocket.





Amen’s visuals are explicit, his meanings an opposite of what a good wake or shiva is all about. The mystery is his age at the event. The final result can be fascination or revulsion.



In the poem Martin Amen writes directly to a friend:



You were seriously fried, Martin, when you got back from Ecuador,

demanding steak fajitas at the Dairy Queen, asking stranger if they

planned to vote for the messiah in the next election.





There is much more to this poem, more of muscle and gristle Amen is best at portraying.

His poetry is a mirror of the underside of life, poems that reflect visions of the sex, drugs and rock ‘n’ roll, bad dreams that crawl into the brain and come out the eyes. A pen – or computer – that tries to record it all while it’s fresh as a dandelion still yellow. His surrealism is Dali in words, Picasso in thoughts wrought in short, raw poems.

Wendy Mnookin: A poet who writes from ‘the dailiness of life.’

Wendy Mnookin: A poet who writes from ‘the dailiness of life.’

David Wojhan writes of local poet Wendy Mnookin’s new collection of poetry “The Moon Makes It’s Own Plea,” “Wendy Mnookin’s poems arise both from the small joys and the larger reckonings of domestic existence—from what Jarrell called ‘the dailiness of life.’ ” From learning a new language, to the wisdom of a domestic cat, Mnookin brings the reader closer to larger ontological truths.

Mnookin is the author of three previous collections. She is a graduate of Radcliffe College and has an MFA from Vermont College. She has won a book award from the New England Poetry Club and a poetry fellowship from the National Endowment of the Arts. I spoke with her on my Somerville Community Access TV show “Poet to Poet: Writer to Writer.”


Doug Holder: Seth Mnookin, your son, a well-known writer, wrote in an article for Salon.Com, that he bonded with you through writing and reading. This is a story I hear quite often. Why is this a good way to bond?

Wendy Mnookin: Well, certainly with us it was really good way because he was a reader like me. We were the two readers in the family. He was the kind of person who on any given day would pile up some books and read. For us it was a way to share an interest we both had. In terms of a way of bonding, reading is what I love to do. So if someone else likes to do that then there is an immediate bond. So there you are…sharing a bond. But is amazing the amount of people that don’t read. What’s really fun for me is to talk to people who are reading, reading and reading.

DH: Your son was a Harvard graduate and also a heroin addict. Drug abuse, mental illness is all too common a story among writers. Your take?

WM: He thought he was becoming part of a “creative community” when he first started taking drugs. And now that he is not using, sober and writing, I think he is aghast at the idea he had that the use of drugs would make him into a writer. He bought into the Hunter Thompson thing. He was a journalist like Thompson. But Seth is the first to say he got his best writing done clean and sober.

DH: “The Moon Makes its Plea” is a new direction for you. How does it differ from your other collections?

WM: The challenge of the previous books was to take a single experience that transformed my perception of the world, like my father’s early death, or my son’s drug addiction. These books cohered around some kind of story. Both my method of writing and my method of putting together the book were different. In my new book I wasn’t trying to tell some story. I was trying to see where the poems would lead. So it developed differently.

DH: In your title poem you write: " Nothing gets done except existence.” This sounds very Beckett-like. His two tramps in perpetual stasis. Yet later in the poem you write" Let me stay!" So you don't feel the futility?

MW: So far I feel it would be hard to get to the point where I would let go of things. "Nothing gets done except existence", to me is not a statement of futility. It is a good thing. The dailiness of things. That is what gets done. But I guess it could have two meanings with one tone of voice or another.

DH: Many poets I know obsess about what is factually accurate in a poem. Do you feel getting the facts straight is important in a poem?

WM: I really thought about this a lot because I was writing that book about my son's drug abuse. I was struggling with if it was ok to be factual, or not to be strictly factual. Where I come out on this is I don't have a lot of loyalty to facts. I don't want to make things up for no reason. What you are after is the truth of experience and the facts don't always convey the truth of the experience.

DH: I've been told to be a writer you must be able to insult your mother if your work requires it.

WM: When I wrote the book about my father's early death, I tried not to be hurtful. My mother read the entire book and said, " I knew you were angry at me." I had tried so hard not to hurt her. Family members read things the way they already see them. I did not feel that the book was angry towards my mother, but if she is looking for it she will find it.

DH: In your poem: " And So I decide to Study Hebrew After All" you use the conceit of Hebrew words as kibitzing Jewish uncles. Does language bring out strong familial feelings?

WM: I was learning Hebrew at the time. And one of the ways I could learn letters was assigning them personalities. I don't know if I feel that way about English because it is so much more routine for me. But I do feel certain tugs to certain expressions and ways of speaking. But in learning Hebrew I had to give personalities to the letters or risking losing them.

DH: In the poem: " The River Scrapes Against Night" you write:" I'm not fooled/ by steady breathing. / We are this small/This brief." Could you have written this in your 20's?

WM: Sometimes I think how I came to writing so late. Everyone got this stuff done in their 20's. I think, yeah, but who knows what I might have written? You might want to have taken it all back! In your 20's you don't feel small and brief. I certainly didn't. I felt the center of the universe. I had my life ahead, even though intellectually I knew I was going to die eventually. It is different now when you have most of your life behind you.




MAYBE I MADE THIS UP

My mother said, Yes, you can
wheel your baby sister

that far, and back.
The baby blew fish kisses

with her small round mouth
while I pumped high on the swings,

and higher. Hello! I waved
when I hung by my knees

on the jungle gym.
Yippee-yeah! I called

when I herded the cattle
downstream,

over the seesaw, around the sandbox,
past the distant fountain.

At home my mother asked
Where’s your sister?

and the world shifted
slightly. If

there were clouds,
they fled. If birds,

they silenced.
I can only tell you

the truth as I know it.
Last week an ice cream store

opened in my town,
and I wrote to my kids

about another opening,
years ago, when they were allowed

to walk four blocks
for free ice cream,

and each of them wrote back,
one at a time,

no, I was twelve,
I was seven,

it was summer, or vanilla,
or strawberry.

I raced with my mother
to the park and found

my sister, batting
her toys in the carriage.

Just before my mother
grabbed her, my sister

looked at me, she
saw who I was, she

didn’t look away.

--- Wendy Mnookin

-----Doug Holder/Ibbetson Update

For more information about Wendy Mnookin go to: http://wendymnookin.com

THE ENDICOTT REVIEW

The Endicott Review
Vol. 26, Issue 1
Spring 2009


Review by Lo Galluccio

The Endiccott Review combines the work of student writers and those who are outside working professionally or who are widely published. This creates an intriguing and wide-ranging collection of over 100 poems, plus several insert pages of photographs that are, colorful, imaginative and conceptually inspired. Some highlights are the war memorial pics by Johnny Bonacci and David Inestroza’s corporate-sponsored hockey rink shots.

Ted Reicher’s poem, “At the Astapovo Station” is a stunning and spacious call and response which seems to circle back to Tolstoys’s struggle with God – a God of waiting.

“No God.”

“No God sees.”

“No God sees the truth.”

“No God sees the truth, but waits.”

Lauren Peterson writes a prosaic but nice narrative called, “Driving to get Lost” about the value of ignoring a GPS and finding oneself in new surroundings, as if time pressures didn’t matter in the modern world:

“when I’m lost
when I’m found
when I’m lost again.”

In a sultry portrait of a man’s adoration for the charms of the young Lauren Bacall, Richard Mayer concludes:

“How sad for a man if he couldn’t whistle!.”

referring, or course to her most famous star-turn with Bogart.

In the Introduction to this edition by many of the editors – all interesting, philosophical statements about poetry-- Ripley Bottom writes:

“Poetry is angel’s wings on a mouse”
“Poetry is failure”
“Poetry is connection”
“Poetry is skin against skin”
“Poetry is the thinnest strand of string between the piano and the street.”

What I like about this collection, is the variety of voices and the subtleties of the writing, from historical pieces, to modern portraits, to almost “flash fiction” poems to philosophical testimonials. And there is humor:

Doug Holder’s funny and sardonic anti-ode to spring: “Spring: This Ain’t No Love Poem” starts by castigating the tulips:

“Oh for Christ’s sake
here it is again.
Tulips sprout
like maddening colorful clichés.”

Chris Tipler turns in a gorgeous portrait of an ordinary woman living in the lush extraordinary landscape of Seville, Spain….a poem called, Dulcinea, where “sea anemones scattered in brilliant reds among the sage,” and “trellises of grape drop.”

“Rome is Burning” – one of my favorite poems in the issue – uses a jagged rhyme scheme and compelling juxtapositions of life images that history is about to turn -- “The asphalt angel’s crying….” And ships sailing and “prayers for concrete cowboys” – a picture of reverence and irreverence swallowed up by fire that leaves the men dead and “the women and children sold as slaves.” As in all wars, this poem extends beyond the actual realities of Rome burning, which it did three times. Sawiski’s poem resonates with a strange abstraction and a concrete augury.

Another treat is Stone Soup’s MC and fine writer, Chad Parenteaus’ “Found Poem” from the pages of a Wayfarer’s letter giving tidbits of what weighs on a post-WWII maritime man.

“I got a mitt here –
it’s pretty nice and
about time I got one.
Nothing new on Pre-flight
or baseball.”

Lisa Beatman, author of “Manufacturing America” also contributes a handful of interesting works, among them the pithy “Glass” and the more narrative poem about buying lamb in Roslindale for grilling. In “Halal” she contrasts the reality of a freshly slaughtered, “long bone with muscles intact, red.”with a daydream about free lambs gamboling on a hillside.

Against the experimental dream-like and signature Hugh Fox lovc-obsessions in an assemblage of poems across two middle pages:

FUN

“Fun to see my Amazonasmaniac wild-piranha river you-say-it-
I’ll play it wife dyeing her wild jazz-hair black and
stringing it into tame post-menopausal saintliness”

is an elegant villanelle, “Letter” by Valerie Wohlfeld, a fresh breath of formalism
in a collection of mostly modern free verse.

Bagel Bard and poet organizer Harris Gardiner contributes a witty poem about a frog gaining leverage on a beautiful Princess in “Froggy Goes Courting:”

“Beauty won’t outscore common sense.
Well, maybe in your youth. Face it.
You will grow old; then we’ll start
To mirror each other’s looks.”

Finally, Sergio Inestrosa’s poems to Li Po and the Moon in Spanish and in translation are jewels of imagery and refraction:

“He wanted to attain
the moon’s peaceful mood”

“he died, drowned in
its pearly reflection.”

And in “Lunario” or “Concerning the Moon,” he writes in five sections about different auras of the moon:

II.

The moon’s pallor
Turns its back on the sun
while it sleeps

IV.

The honey-colored moon
growing tender
in the womb of night


This is only a smattering of the many poems worth reading, including the ubiquitous and prolific Lyn Lifshin’s work. I urge you to pick up this Spring’s issue with an auburn cover close-up of a bewitching girl laughing.

John Buffalo Mailer to be a featured reader at the Somerville News Writers Frestival Nov. 2009

Somerville, Mass.

(Somerville, Mass.)

Timothy Gager co-founder of the Somerville News Writers Festival announced that John Buffalo Mailer, son of the late Norman Mailer, will be a reader at the Somerville News Writers Festival this November. Earlier this month Gager announced that Rick Moody will be the featured reader. Doug Holder, co-founder, has selected Frank Bidart, Sam Cornish, Tino Villanueva, Richard Hoffman and Tam Lin Neville as the featured poets. Bidart will be the recipient of the Ibbetson Street Press Lifetime Achievement award.

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

John Buffalo Mailer (born April 16, 1978) is an author, playwright and journalist. He is the youngest child of American novelist Norman Mailer. Mailer is a graduate of Wesleyan University. He has written several screenplays and is a freelance journalist. In 2005 he co-wrote The Big Empty with his father.

Mailer was a founding member of Back House Productions, a theater production company in New York. He was also previously the editor of High Times, a magazine which advocates the legalization of cannabis.

Before graduating from Wesleyan University with a BA in Theater, John Buffalo Mailer published his first novella, Hello Herman, in The Reading Room, vol. 1, Great Marsh Press. The story centered around a sixteen year old mass murderer from a small suburban town in Iowa, and the cocky young journalist, trying to run from his own dark past, who is hired to interview him.

After graduating, John founded Back House Productions in New York City with three other Wesleyan grads. Within one year Back House became the resident theater company of The Drama Bookshop's Arthur Seelan Theater. In 2001, John's first play, an adaptation of Hello Herman, had its New York Premiere at the Grove Street Playhouse.

2003, he took a hiatus from Back House and theater in general to accept the position of Executive Editor for the infamous High Times magazine. Hired by Richard Stratton to help re-launch the magazine as an independent, outlaw version of Vanity Faire, Stratton, Mailer, and Annie Nocenti, the Editor, made national headlines with the stories they published. While there, John became active in the protest movement centering around the Republican National Convention. In addition to the "High Times Activist's Guide to the RNC", he also interviewed his father for New York Magazine, on the possible dangers and benefits of the protest.

His second play, Crazy Eyes, recently had its World Premiere in Athens, Greece, in March 2005. Crazy Eyes, which takes place in October 2001, in Park Slope, Brooklyn, centers on an actor, a day trader, an AIDS researcher, a bag of white powder,and a Palestinian American who owns the 99 cent store.

John is a member of The Dramatists' Guild Actor's Equity Association, and The Playwright/Director's Group of The Actors Studio. He has lectured at the University of Notre Dame, Wesleyan, and the University of Athens. He is also the American Cultural Dramaturge for Israeli actress Meital Dohan's one woman show, Bath Party. In addition to HeIlo Herman and Crazy Eyes, he has written several screenplays, one short play, and freelanced for Playboy, New York, Stop Smiling, and Lid Magazines.

John is the youngest child of Norman Mailer, with wife Norris Church Mailer, and was selected as one of People Magazine's sexiest men alive in 2002.

"The Paris of New England: Interviews with Poets and Writers" Reviewed in New Pages

I am glad to see my book of interviews " From the Paris of New England: Interviews with Poets and Writers" got a pretty decent review on New Pages, a well-respected literary site for the independent press. Also glad that my fellow Bagel Bard and co-founder of The Somerville News Writers Festival Timothy Gager is listed as a literary luminary, as well as Bagel Bards: Miriam Levine, Afaa Michael Weaver, and Ibbetson poet Marc Widershien "The Life of All Worlds" ( Ibbetson Street Press 2001) I want to thanks Steve Glines for his excellent design work and for putting this book together. I included some excerpts:



From the Paris of New England
Interviews with Poets and Writers
Nonfiction by Doug Holder

Ibbetson Street Press, January 2009

Paperback: 133pp; $18.50

Review by Jeanne Lesinski

At a time when many newspapers – if not going out of business altogether – have cut arts coverage, it’s reassuring to see that poet Douglas Holder works as the arts editor for The Somerville News, in Somerville, Massachusetts, a city on the outskirts of Boston and Cambridge. From the Paris of New England is a collection of Holder’s “Off the Shelf” column interviews and Somerville Community Access television show “Poet to Poet: Writer to Writer” interviews with literary figures, many of whom live in this city. The literary luminaries in this volume include Martha Collins, Mark Doty, Timothy Gager, Miriam Levine, Dick Lourie, Afaa Michael Weaver, Marc Widershien, and twenty-two others.

Readers will likely find something of interest among the varied genres and experiences represented here, especially because Holder knows how to ask the important questions. He often inquires about inspiration, pivotal life experiences, themes, accessibility, talent, and craft. For example, when plied about his writing habits, Marc Widershien answered, “I wrote between the lines of my existence,” and about advice to novice poets, “Think of everything you do as grist. Talent is vital, but study, experiment, self-discovery through art are indispensable.” Other writers were equally forthcoming on subjects important to them...


To order this and other Ibbetson titles go to http://lulu.com/ibbetsonpress

Literature and the Arts in the Transitional Living Center at McLean Hospital

Literature and the Arts in the Transitional Living Center at McLean Hospital

By Doug Holder


Some years ago Alex Beam, The Boston Globe columnist came to my then home on Ibbetson Street in Somerville, Mass., to interview me about the role of poets and poetry at McLean Hospital. Beam was doing research on his book about the history of McLean: Gracefully Insane: Life and Death Inside America's Premier Mental Hospital.
McLean Hospital has a rich literary past and has been declared a national literary landmark. Poets Sylvia Plath, Anne Sexton, Robert Lowell, John Berryman, and others had “residencies” at the hospital. Anne Sexton ran her famed poetry groups here and was briefly hospitalized at McLean shortly before her death by suicide. I had the privilege to interview Lois Ames, the social worker for Sylvia Plath and Sexton, and the author of the introduction to Plath’s novel “The Bell Jar” that was set on these grounds.

For 20 years I worked on the inpatient units of McLean Hospital as a mental health worker. And since I am a poet, I made of point of running poetry groups for patients who resided on the units. I worked with an eclectic group of clients on several units. I helped them with their poems, conducted informal readings and even publishing some of their work in the now defunct literary journal “The Boston Poet.”

When I took a new position at the Transitional Living Center at Waverly House at McLean I hoped to continue the literary tradition that I established, and that was inherent at the hospital. The Transitional Living Care Center at McLean, according to its website, is a “… private pay program designed for men and women, age 18, and older, who are involved in psychiatric treatment and require a staff supported setting. For many persons with psychiatric illness, brief hospital stays alone are not sufficient to full recovery and return to normal living. The Transitional Living Center provides a setting for comprehensive treatment, and support of family members by providing the intensive assistance that recovering patients require.”

Shortly after I was hired by Robin Weiss, the program director, Richard Wilhelm, a friend of mine and the arts editor for my small literary press “Ibbetson Street” came aboard. Richard is an artist and a poet, and another staff member at that time Jennifer Matthews was a vocalist and a poet, so it was like a writer’s retreat on the campus of the hospital.


On the inpatient unit you more or less had a captive audience. The patients had to have privileges to leave the unit, so a poetry group in the evening could be a welcomed change from the usual didactic groups in the day. At Waverly House it is vastly different. The house is loosely structured, and the clients for the most part can come and go as they please. I focused my efforts on clients who expressed strong interests in the arts and literature. Some clients who studied writing in college brought whole collections of their poetry to the house. Often Richard and I would sit down with folks and workshop their poems and some even saw their work appear in my literary column in The Somerville News.

Other clients expressed interest in literary journalism, and in this regard I was able to help as well. For many years I have been the arts/editor for The Somerville News, and I have frequently gotten internships for students, friends, etc… I can remember one client, a law school dropout, who seemed to have lost direction. He got an internship at the paper, secured a paid editorship, and then went on to the Boston Herald organization. Another client got her first clippings at the paper, which made her professional journalist father beam with pride.

I have also hooked up clients with literary internships, with magazines like “the new renaissance,” as well as other publications. One client was studying for his PhD in Psychology but also had a strong interest in mystery and science fiction writing. I introduced him to the world of little magazines and online publishing and he racked up an impressive number of publication credits in a short time. We even appeared in the same online journal: his story, my poem.

I also have an affiliation with a local art gallery in Cambridge, “The Out of the Blue Art Gallery.” A number of clients have held volunteer jobs there, helping with publicity, with sales, and other duties .One recent client volunteered at the gallery and made a connection with an organizer at a local film festival. She wound up getting valuable experience writing press releases for the festival.

I find that patients that are involved in the arts have a greater sense of self-esteem, and it helps them get involved with the community, the larger world, hopefully realizing the mission statement of our program, namely transitioning clients back into the community for a fruitful and productive life.

Where the Mountain Meets the Moon by Grace Lin

Where The Mountain Meets The Moon
By Grace Lin





The book "Where The Mountain Meets The Moon," by Grace Lin is a timeless story of a young girl (Minli) who leaves home in hopes of improving her family’s fortune. The reader joins Minli on this quest for future happiness, and is taken on an adventure that interweaves Chinese folklore and mythical creatures, while teaching lessons on tolerance, compassion, and patience.

Although the story focuses on the Chinese culture, it is easily for people of all cultures to relate to. The author’s beautiful illustrations combined with her wonderful story telling style make this a “page turner” for young and old alike.


------Robin Weiss.

*Robin Weiss is a photographer and program director at McLean Hospital. Her photographic work graced Ibbetson 23. This is her first review on the Boston Area Small Press and Poetry Scene.

"Anthem" by C.L. Bledsoe

“Anthem”
C. L. Bledsoe
Cervena Barva Press
www.cervenabarvaress.com
$15.00

Review by Renee Schwiesow

Beneath the madcap stitch Bledsoe takes us on from hopeful to sardonic there is a thread that unravels to offer us more as each month poem within “Anthem” reveals its season. I was drawn into his unique observations with “Awakening,” an appropriately titled opening work that leads us toward “January.”

This is the month of lying
to ourselves
on couches
Life is waiting
for the bone toes to clip-clip through the door
find us sprawled about the business
of next

Just before “February” he pulls me into the life of a school janitor who makes me ask myself if Schneider could, just possibly, have had an internal depth that we were unaware of during our viewings of One Day at a Time.

And as March, “the Wednesday of months” rolls by, television makes its appearance on the page in the work, “Growing Pains in Syndication.” I was grinning by the time I read “Dr. Seaver, you never came for me,” and tearing up with laughter when reading the line, “Mike, you bastard, I trusted you,” which led to

Sat through Left Behind, for your
special message at the end, and it was all about the marketing.

I have to admit that by the time I reached,

And Maggie, what is there to say
between the two of us? Is your hair even blond?

I was still rollicking, holding onto “Mike, you bastard, I trusted you,” when I was slammed with, “Your eyes, empty and waiting.” And I recollected myself to absorb the impact of the entirety of the work.

While Bledsoe has been published in over 200 journals and anthologies, “Anthem,” published by Cervena Barva Press, is his first full-length collection. He is a three-time Pushcart nominee and his poetic resume is well expanded upon with works such as the title work

slough it off like skin. . .

find a place or make it in yourself
they’ll never touch
wrap it in lead fire make it hot
to touch hate can motivate
but it burns out like a bad light bulb
and must be replaced. . .

Behind the frogs and death and absinthe squirrels, beneath a how-to on what to do with locked doors, Bledsoe’s words jar us from January’s couch, beg us to read between his lines before we become the aging starlet of December’s grey light. They beg us to sing from his Anthem

. . .if it helps
hot showers loosen muscles
cold showers loosen hate

C. L. Bledsoe
Cervena Barva Press
www.cervenabarvaress.com
$15.00

Beneath the madcap stitch Bledsoe takes us on from hopeful to sardonic there is a thread that unravels to offer us more as each month poem within “Anthem” reveals its season. I was drawn into his unique observations with “Awakening,” an appropriately titled opening work that leads us toward “January.”

This is the month of lying
to ourselves
on couches
Life is waiting
for the bone toes to clip-clip through the door
find us sprawled about the business
of next

Just before “February” he pulls me into the life of a school janitor who makes me ask myself if Schneider could, just possibly, have had an internal depth that we were unaware of during our viewings of One Day at a Time.

And as March, “the Wednesday of months” rolls by, television makes its appearance on the page in the work, “Growing Pains in Syndication.” I was grinning by the time I read “Dr. Seaver, you never came for me,” and tearing up with laughter when reading the line, “Mike, you bastard, I trusted you,” which led to

Sat through Left Behind, for your
special message at the end, and it was all about the marketing.

I have to admit that by the time I reached,

And Maggie, what is there to say
between the two of us? Is your hair even blond?

I was still rollicking, holding onto “Mike, you bastard, I trusted you,” when I was slammed with, “Your eyes, empty and waiting.” And I recollected myself to absorb the impact of the entirety of the work.

While Bledsoe has been published in over 200 journals and anthologies, “Anthem,” published by Cervena Barva Press, is his first full-length collection. He is a three-time Pushcart nominee and his poetic resume is well expanded upon with works such as the title work

slough it off like skin. . .

find a place or make it in yourself
they’ll never touch
wrap it in lead fire make it hot
to touch hate can motivate
but it burns out like a bad light bulb
and must be replaced. . .

Behind the frogs and death and absinthe squirrels, beneath a how-to on what to do with locked doors, Bledsoe’s words jar us from January’s couch, beg us to read between his lines before we become the aging starlet of December’s grey light. They beg us to sing from his Anthem

. . .if it helps
hot showers loosen muscles
cold showers loosen hate

These Poems are not Pink Clouds by Timothy Gager

These Poems Are Not Pink Clouds
by Timothy Gager
http://timothygager.com
Propaganda Press, $7.00
alt-current.com
alt.current@gmail.com





A review by Mignon Ariel King





It's finally truly Spring. The biting Atlantic breeze has subsided, and buds pop open while birds sing. But don't get too depressed if you're both a curmudgeon and a secret romantic who longs to crack open a satisfying poetry collection. "These Poems Are Not Pink Clouds" by Timothy Gager is the cure for Spring fever. In "Harvard Square":


boys sit high on the wall
laughing, to girls
below speaking up
in some open aired
mating ritual


The narrator remembers another time, when he was 16, watching his girl try on clothes "and a beaded dress/made you more/beautiful than/a haunted gypsy/made me kiss you...." The book is an interesting mix of music, wistful lust, and a philosophy that casually mentions how it all might float away even if we try not to blink, for "...no one/really sees the sun/by staring... (from "bull"). The narrator never quite stares at anything; he remembers, reflects on recent choices and interactions as well as those of the past.


Bordering on a mid-life complaint that the good ol' days of youth will never come again, the narrator swerves at the last minute to admit: "There were no cheerleaders/to kiss at Mooney's house/only bad habits..." (from "out with the cool kids"). There are a lot of surprise endings here, but nothing too crafty. The revelations seem natural, shaped by a voice that refuses to kid itself or the reader. The expert writing style is not bogged down by the poet being overly pleased with his own clever devices. There is plenty of humor, but nothing is cute about the collection other than its pocket size.


In "Howdy from Ohio" a "man breaks into a smile/which is fighting a duel with my wince...." The poem analyzes regional cultural differences, the Boston-dwelling narrator trying to stay in his emotional cocoon when feeling virtually assaulted by the Ohio man's habit of greeting total strangers with a smile and hand pump. Yet the crabby narrator has a soft spot for women. "The Things I'd Say" is a love poem so completely lovely that it's impossible to pick out a few memorable passages to quote. Then, a slight mood shift reveals "How Runs Are Scored" in a sorta love poem that manages to compare sex to baseball in a giggle-producing manner that does not offend the female reader. No small feat.


"$149.99 Per Week" is a dismal reference to a dismal hotel room from the narrator's childhood. It's important to the collection as a whole in that suddenly the reader notices the abundance of travel references here, and rarely are they positive. The totally unsentimental "I Heart NY" describes one rather unpleasant stay in New York in which "a man sneezes into a rack of clothes/on the sidewalk...." The literary-history-minded reader might get excited at the title "Summer Job, Concord Ma.," but don't. Is the Narrator shelving books? No. Working the bait shop near Walden Pond? No such luck. The hapless college kid is peeling onions and dumping trash at a fast fish shack in the middle of nowhere! Don't worry, though, things get worse in this narrator's journeys.


In my personal favorite of the collection, "Sweet, cold Chicago" is dirty, drizzly, lonely, hostile. The fantasy of going wherever one pleases, being left entirely alone, and sleeping in a car is shattered by this miserable narration. It's not the most cynical poem in the bunch, however. That honor goes to the title poem, which sums up the mood of much of the collection: disgruntled yet curiously hopeful. "My Poems are Not Like the Pink Clouds of Cardiff" also notes, "Water is not really blue." If you like your poetry both sweet and sour, this one's for you.

Dreaming in Black and White: Wisconsin Noir and the Justified Poem

Wisconsin’s First Form

Dreaming in Black and White:
Wisconsin Noir and the Justified Poem


By Michael Kriesel

Crossover poems are increasingly popular in Wisconsin’s thriving poetry community: a member of my online writing group is churning out a series of great science fiction poems, pithy vehicles for social comment; my own manuscript of occult-themed verse is making the rounds of the book contests; and at a recent writing conference a Milwaukee poet handed me his latest chapbook, Misadventures of the Paisley Cowboy.
Then there’s the hard-boiled crime genre being worked by Madison area poet John Lehman, who recently published a book of verse noir—Acting Lessons, Parallel Press, 2008. Filled with murky mazes and existential ambushes, the work is in a short form devised by Lehman a few years ago, called the Wisconsin justified poem.
Looking like cubes of newspaper column, the poems are defined not just by their form, but also by a noir-ish feel and tone. They usually explore Wisconsin topics, are often rural, and at heart “inspired” by Wisconsin winters.
Here’s a taste, from Closed Until Spring:

This is the season of Ed Gein
and Jeffrey Dahmer. Sleep days,
fish through ice, pry firewood
from frozen mounds of snow.
Buy wine at the gas station. Court
darkness. Speak to no one. This
is winter in Wisconsin. Write
horror stories. Embrace the cold.

John Lehman, Acting Lessons

“They give the impression of a rigid form,” Lehman explains, “so that the language within the poem can be casual and conversational…more Midwest, and yes, more Wisconsin. They resemble their larger cousin, the prose poem.”


Magic Lunch Box

If you’re unfamiliar with prose poems, here’s a quote by Louis Jenkins, an acknowledged master of the form:
“Think of the prose poem as a box, perhaps the lunch box dad brought home from work at night. What’s inside? Some waxed paper, a banana peel, and half a peanut butter-jelly sandwich. Not so much, a hint of how the day has gone perhaps, but magic for having made a mysterious journey and returned…the prose poem is a formal poem because of its limits. The box is made for travel, quick and light. Think of the prose rectangle as a small suitcase. One must pack carefully, only the essentials, too much and the reader won’t get off the ground. Too much and the poem becomes a story, a novel, an essay or worse…the trick in writing a prose poem is discovering how much is enough and how much is too much.” (Nice Fish: New & Selected Prose Poems, Holy Cow! Press 1995.)
The prose poem has a dual nature, as its name implies. “On the one hand, there’s the lyric’s wish to make the time stop around an image, and on the other hand, one wants to tell a little story,” comments Charles Simic, a former U.S. Poet Laureate. “It must dazzle, and it must also have a lightness of touch. I regard the comic spirit as its true Muse.” (The Poetry of Village Idiots, Verse 13, no. 1, 1996)


The God Of Flow

All of the above holds true for the Wisconsin justified poem. But John Lehman cites an additional element—flow. It’s what gives poetry its real dynamic, claimed Robert Frost.
“Most poets break lines by phrases or concepts,” says Lehman, “but Frost carries us with his flow from one line to the next, then stops us in our tracks. ‘His head carved out of granite O, / His hair a wayward drift of snow, / He worshipped the great God of Flow / By holding on and letting go.’ (These are lines about Frost by Robert Francis.)
“Frost believed we further enhance the dynamics of the poem’s flow by stretching the spoken sentence over the line of poetry,” Lehman explains. “Frost’s famous narrative poem The Death Of The Hired Man is a classic example.”


Pulled Around The Corner

The Wisconsin justified poem, unlike the standard prose poem, pays attention to line breaks and their relationship to sentences. It pulls the reader around the corner and only stops movement when the end of a line corresponds with the end of a sentence. In addition, the lines seldom end with prepositions or articles, but with nouns, adverbs and verbs.
As forms go, it’s a soft one. The rules are few and fluid: conversational style, noir tone and Wisconsin topic. Keep it short and justify the text.
“I think its informality seems particularly suited to the voice of a Wisconsin narrator who might romanticize a little more if the winters weren’t so long and so dark,” muses Lehman. “The mutterings of someone in a farmhouse kitchen alone, late at night listening to the wind.”


Film Noir’s Influence

Film noir’s a big influence on the poems. “In a way the noir films were not realistic,” observes Lehman, “but a kind of theatrical romanticizing of the forties. People enjoyed them partially because they were escapist.”
That escapism sometimes bleeds into a comic surrealism, as in The Nut Bread Murders:

A friend sends a loaf of nut bread that’s dense
as a kiln-dried brick. I tell my wife it reminds me
of something my first wife would bake. Is this
a mistake? No, because upon hearing it she
makes me a fluffy coffee cake with a brown-sugar
and chocolate-chip topping, and I deduce there
may be a lesson about women here (how one
can be played against another). So I call my
first wife who asks what the hell I want. Hmmm.
Later, I decide to put her in a novel I’m plotting
as a character out to poison everyone with her
goddamn nut bread while I, the hero, am saved by
a stripper named Brown Sugah. Writing comes fast.
It’s February in Wisconsin and I am going nuts.

John Lehman, Acting Lessons


Giving It A Try

As a poet who’s muttered his way through his share of Wisconsin winters, the first time I saw the form it intrigued me enough to try it. Eventually I had a short manuscript that won a nationwide book contest, demonstrating the form’s appeal even to non-cheese heads (though the judges were fellow Midwesterners, over in Indiana).
Here’s the title poem from that collection:

Soul Noir
I just walk out of the Neon Toad
when this big guy grabs my shirt,
spins me around like a carnival
ride and slams me up against the
bricks. All I see is cartoon stars
but his voice cuts right through.
“Lie to yourself on your own time,
punk.” Then I’m on the sidewalk
sitting up and no one’s there. It
was my conscience. Bastard finds
me anywhere.

Michael Kriesel, Soul Noir

Soon after I started writing in this form / genre, I came to understand that noir’s romanticism also can be viewed as starkly stripped-down realism. Its flavor is similar to the oddball existentialism running through Wisconsin’s landscape like a vein of smoky quartz. Maybe that’s why the two combine so well. I offer another of my own examples:



Wisconsin Noir
Waiting for the sheriff, Ed Gein forks
apple pie in Plainfield’s only diner.
Barns slump like slaughterhouse cows.
At the crystalline heart of the state, Rib
Mountain oscillates: quartz monadnock
tinting our dreams through winter nights.
In the end, spring arrives, green and gold.
The Packers win the Super Bowl.

Michael Kriesel, Soul Noir


Transcending Landscape

The Wisconsin justified poem transcends regionalism by combining a specific form with a specific tone. The form’s uniquely suited to the tone of the material expressed. But it’s the tone most of all that gives the poems their distinct character—not unlike the dialogue in noir films.
These poems work the way haiku and watercolor do to capture the mood of a place, expressing the way our lives resonate with our state and sometimes finding In the Middle of Nothing, Greatness:

I pass a sign on Highway 26 that states
Juneau is 5 miles away, Oshkosh 53.
I saw the same sign just ten minutes ago,
but listen, when I check my gas gauge
(then, it had been a little below a quarter)
now, I swear, it shows half full. And there,
around a curve, against the steel November
sky, in a field of cornstalks far as a crow can
see—are you ready—rises an assemblage
of grain elevators more magnificent than
the Cathedral at Reims.

John Lehman, Acting Lessons

In Sprecher’s Tavern Lehman observes: “Living in Wisconsin is a lot like the tavern that sells rifles and beer. It doesn’t make much sense but it feels right when you’re there.”
That’s how these poems work. But how well do they work? Does it feel right? That’s the final test…and something only poets and readers and time can decide. The best test of any form is whether the force it contains could manifest as well in any other shape.
Here’s hoping more Wisconsin poets add to this new genre—a form and tone unique to where we live.



Acting Lessons
By John Lehman
2008; 38pp; chapbook;
Parallel Press, University of Wisconsin-Madison
728 State St., Madison, WI 53706. $10.
ISBN 978-1-934795-04-0

Shorts: 101 Brief Poems of Wonder and Surprise
By John Lehman
2005; 96pp, paper;
Zelda Wilde Publishing
315 Water Street, Cambridge, WI 53523. $11.95
ISBN 978-0-9741728-2-8

Soul Noir
By Michael Kriesel
2008; 24pp; chapbook;
Platonic 3Way Press
POB 844, Warsaw, IN 46581. $5.

I’d like to thank Carroll University Poetry Professor B.J. Best
for his help in preparing this article.

JULIA CARLSON’S "DRIFT": BOOK REVIEW

JULIA CARLSON’S DRIFT: BOOK REVIEW
by Linda M. Fischer


Julia Carlson has few illusions about the “drifting slumbering lives” we lead—at best
a tenuous existence. Her thematic concerns are mortality and consequent loss, and the concomitant search for meaning or redemption. In her chapbook Drift she explores lives that have touched hers—a widower whose anguish over the loss of his wife is compounded by guilt, the spectacle of a neighbor’s house being burned to the ground upon his death, an aged Comanche in South Dakota reflecting on the tribal life obliterated within his living memory, her boyfriend’s grandfather leaving a lifetime of memories behind in Oklahoma and moving east to live out his twilight years, the passage of what we know of life in “Places to Go” (dedicated to Mike Amato), concluding with its redemptive final lines:

Life depends on forward movement
And walking upright towards the end

To the final demise where things no longer matter
Cannot matter and no further explanation counts

But most of all the great wall where standing
We breathe leap easily and fall laughing at last.

Attuned to the brevity of life, she chides the lovelorn in her opening poem: “Have you made up your mind about life (and/or) death…hurry up and decide…The sun is red-hot; it’s sinking fast and setting soon.” She affirms this urgency in “Kingdom,” enjoining a young girl to stop by a meadow of an afternoon and drink in its loveliness—“This moment belongs only to you/ You never know if you will see it again/ And some will never see it at all,” a carpe diem theme that reappears in “Stabbed to the Heart” where she is being driven by “relentless demons/ Hoping to beat them to the finish/ Before they finish me off/ Once and for all.” In taking stock of her own life (“Sixty”), her birth coinciding with the extinction of the Caspian tiger, Carlson would hold her inevitable demise at bay, praying fervently “that somehow somewhere/ A piece of his wildness lives in one still.” I can relate to that!

------Linda Fischer is a regular contributor to "Ibbetson Street" Her poetry has appeared in the Atlanta Review, Mobius, Byline, and others...

PROS and CONS by Paul De Fazio, Michael DeFazio.

PROS and CONS by Paul De Fazio, Michael DeFazio. (High-Pitched Hum Publishing 321 15th St. North Jacksonville Beach, Florida 32250)

* trade or soft cover book is available at www.faze2publishing.com or ordered through local book store for $17.95 (hard cover is sold out).





The suspense novel Pros and Cons by Paul DeFazio and Michael DeFazio has all the earmarks of an action/thriller movie. There is ample sex, and violence, enough to keep a rating board fully occupied and preoccupied. It concerns a Boston police detective Joe Milano and his cousin Frank, a Boston corrections officer, and their lethal clash with Dominican drug dealers. Paul DeFazio has extensive backgrounds in law enforcement, and this evidenced in the use all the criminal justice jargon, and the very off-the-cuff, and tough dialogue. In this novel you get in a lot of places you have no business being in: in the nefarious head of a drug dealer and enforcer, a Dominican brothel, the dank despair of a Boston prison. Don’t look for profound insights into the human condition, literary allusions, and language flush with metaphor.

This novel makes no pretense towards being a high literary work. This is a straight-no-chaser example of genre writing. It is formulaic, cinematic, and in your face. In this book you might find out more than you want to know about sex hobbyists, but then again …you seem to linger on that page, now don’t you, pal? And Boston-area residents will like all the local references: Roxbury, Mass. General Hospital, the dirty water of the Charles River, and other settings in the land of the Bean and the Cod, the Cabot, and the Lodge. This book is a quick summer read, and it goes down as smoothly as that umbrella drink you will be sipping on, on some sun-drenched beach.

Doug Holder/ Ibbetson Update

Five Time Tony Award Nominated Playwright Elizabeth Swados to be on Poet to Poet/Writer to Writer July 21, 2009

Celebrated Playwright and Composer Elizabeth Swados will travel from New York City to talk about her new book of poetry on Poet to Poet/Writer to Writer hosted by Doug Holder on Somerville Community Access TV Channel 3 5PM.






Liz Swados newest ( and first) book of poetry, "The One and Only Human Galaxy," has been released by the Hanging Loose Press http://hangingloosepress.com



Elizabeth Swados is the author of three novels, two non-fiction books, a book of poetry, and nine children's books. A renowned musician, director, and composer, she has received five Tony-award nominations and three Obie awards for her theatrical productions both on and off Broadway. She lives in New York City. Welcome to Liz's official web site!




Biography:


Perhaps best known for her Broadway and international smash hit Runaways, Elizabeth Swados has composed, written, and directed for over 30 years. Some of her works include the Obie Award winning Trilogy at La Mama, Alice at the Palace with Meryl Streep at the New York Shakespeare Theater Festival, Groundhog, which was optioned by Milos Forman for a film, and a wide variety of Biblical musical adaptations. Her work has been performed on Broadway, off-Broadway, at La Mama, Brooklyn Academy of Music, Carnegie Hall, and locations all over the world. She has also composed highly acclaimed dance scores for well-known choreographers in the US, Europe and South America.

Ms. Swados has been creating issue-oriented theater with young people for her entire career. This work has culminated in a theatrical extravaganza for New York University, The Reality Show, about the trials and tribulations of college in New York City. The piece uses rock and roll, dance and edgy humor and was performed last summer by NYU students at Madison Square Garden.

Recent productions include Atonement, a theatrical oratorio presented by the Cathedral of St. John the Divine, an adaptation of S. Ansky’s The Dybbuk at NYU/Tisch, Spider Operas at PS122 (with Mabou Mines), Political Subversities, a political revue that has been presented in two Culture Project festivals as well as at Joe's Pub, and a workshop of Dance of Desire, a translation of Lorca’s Yerma by Caridad Svich. Her opera KASPAR HAUSER: a foundling’s opera enjoyed a seven week run at The Flea theater in TriBeCa. She recently wrapped a new children's CD, Everyone is Different, in conjunction with Forward Face. The CD is circulating in schools around the country.

Ms. Swados has published novels, non-fiction books, children's books and poetry to great acclaim, and received the Ken Award for her book My Depression. Her theater textbook, At Play: Teaching Teenagers Theater, was published by Faber & Faber in June 2006. A new book of poetry, The One and Only Human Galaxy, will be published by Hanging Loose Press in Spring 2009. Awards: Five Tony nominations, three Obie Awards, Guggenheim Fellowship, Ford Grant, Helen Hayes Award, Lila Acheson Wallace Grant, PEN Citation, and others. Most recently Ms. Swados received a special grant to record musical selections from her years of work.

AN INVENTORY OF LOST THINGS BY KARLA HUSTON

AN INVENTORY OF LOST THINGS

By: Karla Huston

32 Pages / 23 Poems

Price: $8



Centennial Press

P.O. Box 170322

Milwaukee, WI 53217

www.centennialpress.com



ISBN: 0-9797994-1-4



Review/Interview By: Charles P. Ries





Women have a distinct view of the erotic and love’s secrets. In reading Karla Huston’s new book of poetry, An Inventory of Lost Things, I enter into the ebb and flow of feminine romantic imagination. While not all of twenty-three poems of this collection focus on the heart’s yearning, a good number do and comprise the central theme of this eloquently written book of poetry.



Huston approaches her topic from a number of angles. In final stanza of her poem “The One on The Left” she says, “But you can’t take your mind off the boy, / barely twenty, going on the rest of his life – / going off for an afternoon at the shore. God knows / what they’ll do on the blanket / when it’s floated behind the vine-covered fence.” And again these lines taken from the closing of her poem, “Your Marie”: “You should know her hair was chestnut, / a flag of copper stars glittering / against the curve of her neck / and the strand that kissed her cheek / I knew you’d kissed when she left you / for the last time while her hips rolled / when she walked away / and her breast swayed in dreams / even now the ones you prayed into.”



Her book of poetry would easily fall into the category of great chic lit. Huston poems are thoughtfully narrative and carefully designed. There is no spare air in these poems. Each is complete from beginning to end.



I am reminded, as I read this collection, of the seminal book on women’s sexual fantasies, My Secret Garden by Nancy Friday. Our two genders reflect so differently on the erotic and on romance. Huston is masterful at understanding the sensual wonder world of the woman. As in this section from her poem “Rewind” demonstrates, “If she could, she’d take the first / bus out of happyland, find her own / little place and read sweaty novels / for the rest of her life. He’s weary / of the honey-I’m-homes / and the honey-dos and the honeyed / hams.” And again from this section of her poem, “The Plastic Surgeon’s Wife”: “When they make love, she fears / how he’d like to improve her – / a little lift there, a little tighter there, / fill her breasts with vanilla, / admire the suction in her soul -- / his reservoir, never full.”



This is a wonderful exploration of the feminine mind, by a writer uniquely suited to explore this undulating landscape of passion, yearning, and lost things.



__________________________________________________________



Charles P. Ries lives in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. His narrative poems, short stories, interviews and poetry reviews have appeared in over two hundred print and electronic publications. He has received four Pushcart Prize nominations for his writing. He is the author of THE FATHERS WE FIND, a novel based on memory and five books of poetry. He is the poetry editor for Word Riot (www.wordriot.org), Pass Port Journal (www.passportjournal.org) and ESC! (www.escmagazine.com). He is on the board of the Woodland Pattern Bookstore (www.woodlandpattern.org). He is a founding member of the Lake Shore Surf Club, the oldest fresh water surfing club on the Great Lakes (http://www.visitsheboygan.com/dairyland/). You may find additional samples of his work by going to: http://www.literati.net/Ries/

Poet Jeffrey Thomson: Birdwatching in Wartime

Poet Jeffrey Thomson: Multi-Layered Poems from the Multi-Layered Rainforest



Jeffrey Thomson lives and works in Maine, but he has a great interest in the very Southern climes of the tropical rainforest. His latest collection of poetry is “Birdwatching in Wartime,” that deals with his trips to the tropics.


Jeffrey Thomson’s third book of poems, Renovation, was part of the Carnegie Mellon University Press (CMU) poetry series in 2005. His second collection of poems, The Country of Lost Sons, inaugurated a new poetry series from Parlor Press at Purdue University in February 2004, and his first book, The Halo Brace, was brought out in a limited edition letterpress version from Birch Brook Press in 1998. Winner of recent fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts, he is an Assistant Professor of Creative Writing at the University of Maine, Farmington. He was an editor for From the Fishouse: An Anthology of Poems that Sing, Rhyme, Resound, Syncopate, Alliterate, and Just Plain Sound Great 2009 from Persea Books, 2009), along with Camille T. Dungy and Matt O'Donnell. I spoke with him on my TV show “Poet to Poet Writer to Writer” on Somerville Community Access TV.



Doug Holder: First off you quote the poet Elizabeth Bishop more than once. Is she a major influence?

Jeffrey Thomson: Absolutely. I was writing this book about the tropics, South America, and Central America. You can’t skip Elizabeth Bishop if you are doing that. But she has always been a focus of mine. I love her poems, the textural detail in her work, the way she builds the poem slowly with the accumulation of detail; the precision of language. There are two poems in here that have epigraphs from Bishop. One concerns her time in Brazil, in a sort of exile with her lover.


DH: Obviously your travels to the rainforest have informed many of the poems in your collection. Tell us about your experience there.

JT: In 2001 I took students down on a trip to Costa Rica. I was teaching at a private women’s college in Pennsylvania at that point. I took the students on a January trip when I didn’t know much about the country. I had been there only once. So when I took them there I hooked up with this guide, and I was just blown away. It is an amazing country in terms of what you can see. It is a country the size of West Virginia, and 25% of its land is in private reserve. This experience gave me the incentive to write these poems. One of the things about going into the rainforest is the multi- layered quality—it is so rich, there are so many plants, there are so many species, that there is always something behind what you are seeing. I have gone back six or seven times and continue to learn things.

DH: In the poem “Underwhelmed” you write of a presence, perhaps divine: “ under the splay- handed palms, under drinks glowering dark in/globes of glass, under the tender/humidity, the phosphorescent surf…” You seem to imply that the presence of God is under the trappings of the material world. If you closely observe nature, if you live close to it, is it not impossible to feel his or her presence?

Are you a religious person?

JT: I was raised in a very religious household, but I am not a believer anymore. I am an atheist. No, I don’t go out in the world and feel God’s presence. I feel the presence of the natural world. The natural world is so complex it is not understandable. There is always another layer…there is always something behind it.


DH: There are a lot of birds in this book. Do they give to, pardon the pun, “the flight of the imagination?”

JT: Birds are really interesting. I am a bird watcher. I especially like to watch them in the tropics.

DH: Woody Allen said that nature to him was “ birds eating worms, worms eating worms, it’s like a big restaurant. Do you feel that nature is a battlefield, like it is implied in the title poem: “Birdwatching in Wartime?"

JT: There is a level where nature is a battlefield. I didn’t want these poems to be the standard: I’m out in the world; I’m out in the wilderness, and then the epiphany. I’m not interested in that soft and cuddly type of nature. I don’t think nature is that way, particularly in the tropics. Everything seems poisonous, the trees have thorns, the insects have poison so the birds can’t eat them. There is this level where everything is at war with everything else. There is another level of war in “Birdwatching…” I was in Costa Rica in 2003, right before we were going to go to war in Iraq. I played up this tension of being out in the woods with birds, while very serious matters of life and death were going to happen out in the greater world. There is a level where the language of nature becomes corrupted by the language of war.

DH: Can you talk about the anthology “From the Fishouse: An Anthology of Poems that Sing, Rhyme, Resound, Syncopate, Alliterate, and Just Plain Sound Great” that you co-edited?

JT: There is this website http://fishousepoems.org that was started by my friend Matt O’Donnell. He wanted to feature emerging poets, and poets whose work sounded good when read out loud. There are a lot of young poets working in this genre. Since O’Donnell started this website there are almost 2,000 poems up. We define emerging poets as having a 2nd book or less before submission. Some of our poets have moved on and have made names for themselves like Tracy Smith and Major Jackson. For the print anthology we took the best from the website. The poems are not organized by poets, but by their sonic qualities.


Underwhelmed

Under the catastrophic dark,
the comet splintering the sky
with its ancient grief,
under the splay-handed palms,
under drinks glowering dark in
globes of glass, under the tender
humidity, the phosphorescent surf,
under the calls of night jars
chuckling up from the ground,
under the ticking aloe under the moon’s
absence, under, under, under.
Under the blinking stripes jets
write across the sky, under
stillness, the cabin pressure holding
steady, under the coned light
blanking out pages of gloss, under
the plunge of my love’s hair, under
her sadness and her eyes
startling as stars, under our lives,
the miscarried child left in the bowl,
underground, underwater, understory,
under the bougainvillea’s whorish musk,
under the coral’s forest of horn, under
God, undertow, underdog, under
everything there is a season,
under the absence of twilight,
under the beach’s grittle and bone,
under the words, startle, startle,
under the luxury of the table
so whitely laid, under
the candle’s light shaped
like a hanging blade, we tear
apart the body of the fish and leave
glistening ladders of bone.
---Jeffrey Thomson

Review, Finding Beauty, Selected Poems by Marine Robert Warden

Review, Finding Beauty, Selected Poems by Marine Robert Warden (Bellowing Ark Press, Seattle, Washington, 2009)

Review by Barbara Bialick


In Finding Beauty, you win the benefits of a life-experienced retired doctor in Riverside, California, who was born in 1927 and is a multi-published poet. His imagery is deep and mystical, and its lack of punctuation reflects his voice, which speaks with a certainty and also an irony. What he conveys is that we really can’t figure out the meaning of the present without a simultaneous awe of events from the movement of history. But nature’s beauty remains omnipresent.

The beginning of the book highlights close relatives. In “Mother”, he says,

“there was music inside you/that wanted to come out/so your hands played/with needles and leaves/substitute for black and white keys/…”

Unfortunately, back then, when he was six, he

“didn’t stop/to wonder what dreams you had”.

Then in “So”, he speaks about age:

“you are at the age now/where long-time friends disappear/and a big, black crow struts/on the back yard grass/arrogantly unaware…”

At all the various ages he covers in this collection, nature is noticeably on its own time and path. But nature is also a herald. In “For the Dead in Iraq” he needs look no farther than his back yard:

“there was a hoarse cry above our backyard/a hawk perhaps and all the gold finches/…sensed a dark shadow overhead/and fled leaving behind no songs/a single white feather fluttered to the grass”.

In one rare “doctor poem”, Warden thinks back to Chicago in 1954 where in the Black ghetto,

“I couldn’t forget the children/we delivered them by flashlights/in cold little basement flats/deep in the slums at Christmas time/…shivering ourselves/in our thin white student coats…”

Later in the book, the poetry is in tribute to his wife Lois. In “The Great Ground Swell”, “even this vast land…the ground swell rises higher and then/in all its magnificence the land/will genesis from the biblical void/the sea our Great Mother/gives birth to the land for us…/all part of a great ground swell/out of which you appeared”.

The last poems in the 71-page book, reach to comprehend

“the search for unobtainable beauty…”. “just as we grow older and change, the cord that holds us remains…”. And to this he concludes,

“from the unexpected/beautiful art is found…”.

--Barbara Bialick

Rick Moody to be a featured reader at the Somerville News Writers Festival Nov. 2009

Somerville, Mass.

Tim Gager, the cofounder of the Somerville News Writers Festival announced today that Rick Moody will be the featured fiction writer at the 7 year old festival. Several months ago Doug Holder, cofounder of the festival, said that poet Frank Bidart, Sam Cornish, Richard Hoffman, Tino Villanueva, and Tam Lin Neville will be the featured poets. Bidart will be awarded the Ibbetson Street Lifetime achievement award at the festival. Other fiction readers to be announced.



Life and work of Rick Moody:

Moody was born in New York City and grew up in several of the Connecticut suburbs, including Darien and New Canaan, where he later set stories and novels. He graduated from St. Paul's School in New Hampshire and Brown University.

He received a Master of Fine Arts degree from Columbia University in 1986; nearly two decades later he would criticize the program in an essay in The Atlantic Monthly.[1] Soon after finishing his thesis, he checked himself into a mental hospital for alcoholism.[2] Once sober and while working for Farrar, Straus and Giroux, he wrote his first novel, Garden State, about young people growing up in the industrial wasteland of northern New Jersey, where he was living at the time. In his introduction to a reprint of the novel, he called it the most "naked" thing he has written.[citation needed] Garden State won the Pushcart Editor's Choice Award.

In 2006, Arizona State Senator Thayer Verschoor cited complaints he had received about The Ice Storm as part of the reason he supported a measure allowing students to refuse assignments they find "personally offensive." Verschoor said that "There’s no defense of this book. I can’t believe that anyone would come up here and try to defend that kind of material," although eventually numerous professors did just that.[3]

His memoir The Black Veil (2002) won the PEN/Martha Albrand Award for the Art of the Memoir. He has also received the Addison Metcalf Award, the Paris Review Aga Khan Prize, and a Guggenheim Fellowship. His work has appeared in The New Yorker, Esquire, Conjunctions, Harper's, Details, The New York Times, and Grand Street.

Moody's most recent novel is The Diviners, released in 2005. Little, Brown and Company, the publisher of The Diviners, changed the cover after the galleys came out because women reacted negatively to it. The original cover showed a Conan the Barbarian-type image in technicolor orange; the new cover uses that same image, but frames it as a scene on a movie screen.[4] The Diviners was followed in 2007 by Right Livelihoods, a collection of three novellas published in Britain and Ireland as The Omega Force.

In addition to his fiction, Moody is a musician and composer. He belongs to a group called the Wingdale Community Singers, which he describes as performing "woebegone and slightly modernist folk music, of the very antique variety."[5] Moody composed the song "Free What's-his-name", performed by Fly Ashtray on their 1997 EP Flummoxed,[6] collaborated with One Ring Zero on the EP Rick Moody and One Ring Zero in 2004, and also contributed lyrics to One Ring Zero's albums As Smart As We Are and Memorandum.[7] In 2006, an essay by Moody was included in Sufjan Stevens's box-set Songs for Christmas.

When asked by the New York Times Book Review what he thought was the best book of American fiction from 1975 to 2000, Moody chose Grace Paley's The Collected Stories.[8]

Moody has taught at the State University of New York at Purchase and Bennington College. He lives in Brooklyn and Fishers Island.