Endicott College/Ibbetson Street Press Visiting Author Series-- Spring 2011

Endicott College of Beverly, Mass. and the Ibbetson Street Press of Somerville, Mass. launched a Visiting Author Series in Oct. 2010. The series premiered with Boston Poet Laureate Sam Cornish, and followed with award-winning poets Bert Stern and Miriam Levine. The Spring 2011 featured writers for the Series have been announced by Doug Holder, founder of the Ibbetson Street Press and Dr. Mark Herlhy, the Chairman of Humanities at Endicott College.

**For more information contact Doug Holder dholder@endicott.edu



On Feb 24, 2011 at 4PM at the Halle Library on the Endicott Campus noted Poets/Publishers Gary Metras (Adastra Press) and Mark Pawlak (Hanging Loose Press) will read from their poetry and discuss their work as editors and publishers.




On April 14, 20ll at 4PM at the Halle Library noted fiction writer and baseball afficando Luke Salisbury will read from his work and chat about America's favorite pastime.














Gary Metras is the editor, publisher, and printer of the Adastra Press which specializes in handcrafted chapbooks of poetry. The American Book Review said of Adastra: “As long as fine literary presses continue to handcraft handsome books like these from Adastra, serious readers can rest assured that the book is alive and well.” Metras has worked with such renowned poets as: Thomas Lux and Ed Ochester, but has published many debut collections as well.



Metras is a well-regarded poet in his own right. Recently the Pudding House Press released his collection “Greatest Hits: 1980-2006.” He has been the subject of a feature story in "Poets and Writers" magazine; he has been widely published in the small press, and has been a featured poet in a recent issue of the literary magazine: “Ibbetson Street.” Metras has read at the Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts, and he teaches writing at Springfield College in Springfield, Mass.









Mark Pawlak is a longtime editor of the respected small press Hanging Loose, http://www.hangingloosepress.com , and the author of the poetry collection “Official Versions."


His poetry and prose have appeared in “The Best American Poetry 2006,” “New American Writing,” “Off the Coast,” “Pemmican,” and “The Saint Ann’s Review,” among other places. In addition, he is editor of four anthologies, most recently, “Present/Tense: Poets in the World,” a collection of contemporary American political poetry, featuring work from some of the country’s best-known writers. Pawlak is Director of Academic Support Programs at the University of Massachusetts Boston, where he also teaches mathematics. He has been the recipient of two Massachusetts Artist Fellowship awards. He lives in Cambridge with his wife and his teenage son.








Luke Salisbury is a professor of English at Bunker Hill Community College in Boston. Salisbury, 64, is a man with a gift for gab, and the well-turned phrase. Eclectic in his tastes, Salisbury, with his signature rapid - fire cadence and disarming laugh, regales you with his anecdotes, his impressive knowledge of baseball, and his “alternative” universe of film, books and political intrigue he has spent many years pondering and writing about. He is the author of a number of fiction titles including: “The Answer is Baseball.” (Time Books, 1989), “The Cleveland Indian” (Smith, 1992), and his novel about the great filmmaker D.W. Griffith “Hollywood and Sunset” (2007). His writing has appeared in such publications as “The Boston Globe,” “Ploughshares,” “Cooperstown Review,” "Pulp- smith,” and others. Salisbury received his M.A. in Creative Writing from Boston University and lives in Chelsea, Mass. with his wife Barbara.

SARX, Poetry by Nancy A. Henry

Review of SARX, Poetry by Nancy A. Henry, Moon Pie Press, Westbrook, Maine, 2010, 127 pages, www.moonpiepress.com, $11.

Review by Barbara Bialick

To begin with I want to apologize to the author, in that I did not read SARX cover to cover as I ordinarily would. She is a sensual, lightly erotic poet who can turn good phrases, but there’s simply too much of this collection to go around. Sarx, which apparently means “flesh” in Greek, means not only lovers loving, but nature naturing. Here are some examples that I enjoyed:

“Husband came spinning and sparkling/out of the brilliant powder of the earth,/his magnificent reason full of glory.” (“A Genesis”)

“These brainy types,/listen to them dissect our souls/they don’t need God/they need more pricey booze” (“Undergrad Waitress Serves Faculty Cocktails”)

“In midsummer, the turtles would stage/their silent siege, heads like dried prunes/just beyond the razor weed…” (“In Midsummer”)

“I am waiting/for you to seep into me/the liquefied silver permeating/all these fractures/in the hard brittle glass of myself/till your shining grace spiders/through every vein,/rings every cell./…I am waiting Lord/step here/into this gray dusty room/make every dust mote sing/and bloom.” (“Noon Prayer”)

According to George Wallace on the back of the book, “Sarx is a book of poems that is, at its core, reverential of its subjects, whether they are sensuous, funny or sacred or mundane; a praise poem to that which is flawless, but also to ‘the erotic power of flaws.’ Once again Nancy Henry gives voice to a heart that swallows things whole. These are poems to cherish, as one might an ‘Ironic secret…this tenderness nearly unbearable.’”

To her credit, Henry lists around 50 known and little known journals these poems were previously published in. She teaches English and humanities courses at Central Maine Community College, Thomas College and University of Southern Maine. She’s published two previous full-length collections of poetry and several chapbooks.

Somerville’s Jane Sherrill: An artist who likes to tear paper….

( Seascape by--Jane Sherill)


Somerville’s Jane Sherrill: An artist who likes to tear paper….

By Doug Holder

Artist Jane Sherrill is on a big tear these days…literally. On her website she writes: “I tear paper. That is what I do. It frees me and opens up possibilities. I’m interested in breaking out of habitual ways of thinking …”

Sherrill tears old drawing and paintings into strips. She then weaves them together to form new collages. She then applies her colored pencils to her creations making for an evocative affect.

Sherrill is an accomplished artist who has lived in Somerville for the past 20 years. Originally from New Jersey, she started out as a poet in New York City publishing her work in a variety of small press magazines and journals. As a resident artist in the Vernon Street Studios in Somerville, she juggles teaching jobs with her artistic work to pay the bills. Sherrill who has worked as a psychotherapist, special education teacher, and a social worker, decided to give up the steady income that came with her profession to pursue her passion—her art.

Sherrill told the News that she regularly participates at the Open Studios at Vernon St. Each November she opens her studio to the public. The Vernon St. Studios is housed in a historic 19th century industrial building (“Rogers Foam Facility’), and is comprised of two buildings. Somerville artists such as Gary Duehr, Emily Hiestand, and Tova Specter have studios on the premises.

Sherrill's paintings, etc… have been exhibited in many Somerville locales, such as: Somerville City Hospital, Willoughby Baltic Gallery, Tufts University Art Gallery, and Baltic Fine Arts to name a few venues.

Besides the collages Sherrill has painted a collection of beautifully rendered seascapes inspired by a week in Truro on Cape Cod, as well as many other works-in-progress. Sherill said: “I love the sea; its constant movement, its colors changing all the time, the transformation of its surface by nature—in short it has the energy of life.”

Jane Sherrill has worn many hats in her long career. She has developed her own monologues for the stage, and has been involved with graphic design. She is like many of the eclectic and talented artists who ply their trade in the “Paris of New England.”


For more information go to http://www.janesherrill.com

Leo Racicot recalls Ted Kennedy/Katherine Hepburn

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"Meeting Katharine Hepburn" by Leo Racicot




The legendary Katharine Hepburn was indeed, notorious for refusing to sign autographs but must not have considered correspondence as "autograph" because I have many letters and notes from her (signed) as well as one cherished autographed photo.


She was interested in doing a screenplay of mine back in theearly 80s, "Walking Song". She liked it but kept demanding I "cut it down "because it was "too long". I cut it and sent it back to her. "Too long",came back the reply. "Cut more!"So I cut and cut and cut.


This went on awhile until the happy day when I was summoned to 244East 49th St. in tony Turtle Bay to meet her. She was much shorter than I pictured, maybe 5' 7", stunning face, very self-centered. It seemed, for the longest time, to be about homemade brownies and tea with Hepburn doing little calesthetics in between ("Opens the pores"). When I finally worked up the courage to ask about the play, Her Majesty waved a dismissive hand, said, "Oh,that play's too short", gave her housekeeper a look that said, "Get him out of here" and ascended into the nether sphere.


HAHAHAHA!!!!! I was crushed. About a month or so later, I received a photo of Hepburn in the mail. On it she wrote, "Sorry.You whittled that thing down to a nub."






"Meeting Ted Kennedy"

by Leo Racicot

Back in the 1980s, I was working
for UMass Lowell Libraries (then
called ULowell) when the Senator
came into O'Leary and headed up
the stairs with his entourage to
the director's office. My colleague,
Marge Ryder, said, "Darn! Now we
won't get to meet him!" A little
while later, Marge nudged me; the
Senator was coming down the stairs
by himself and went into our faculty
lounge. Marge grabbed my arm
and said, "Here's our chance!!"

But once inside the lounge,
we found hide nor hair of Kennedy
and Marge yelled out, "Where the
HELL is he??? He was just in here!!"
No sooner had she said this than
the toilet in the Men's Room flushed
and the Senator emerged. He barely
had time to zipper up when Marge
torpedoed herself at him and introduced
the both of us. In spite of the embarrassing
moment, Ted was more than gracious
and kind. Soon, we were joined in the
lounge by other staffers and the Senator
regaled us with his instant wit and charm.

In all the excitement, I lost track
of the conversation and did not realize
it had turned to talk of the conflict
in Northern Ireland. Innocently, I
piped in, "Did something bad
happen in Northern Ireland?",
thinking some new development
had occurred. Ted's face took on
an air of disbelief and in his full-on
Kennedy accent he said, "YOU
don't KNOW about the TROUBLES
In NORTHERN IRELAND???
dad silence fell on the faculty room.
Then he pointed at me and
ordered, "String this man up
BY THE BALLS!!!"



******Leo Racicot's work has appeared in CO-EVOLUTION QUARTERLY, UTNE READER, MOTHER JONES, SPIRITUAL LIFE, FAITH AND INSPIRATION, GAY SUNSHINE JOURNAL, TOBIAS, THE POET, POETRY MAGAZINE, YANKEE MAGAZINE. Two of my essays were included in BEST OF....anthologies, and I is the recipient (1988, 1992) of the SYLVIA PLATH POETRY FORUM AWARD.

Author Joan Leegant: Novelist of the wandering Jew in search of connection...

Author Joan Leegant: A novelist of the wandering Jew in search of connection...




With Doug Holder



Joan Leegant is the author of WHEREVER YOU GO, published July 2010, and AN HOUR IN PARADISE, for which she won the PEN/New England Book Award, the Wallant Award for Jewish Fiction, and was a Finalist for the National Jewish Book Award. Formerly an attorney, she taught at Harvard University for eight years. Since 2007, she has lived half the year in Tel Aviv, where she is the visiting writer at Bar-Ilan University and lectures for the U.S. State Department. When not in Israel she lives in Newton, Massachusetts. Her latest book WHEREVER YOU GO portrays three lost souls in the Israel--each in their own way trying to find themselves. I interviewed Leegant on my Somerville Community Access TV Show “Poet to Poet: Writer to Writer.”





Doug Holder : I heard you once shared a pastrami sandwich with Allen Ginsberg, the iconic Beat Generation poet?



Joan Leegant: What I recollect of it—I was a teenager, but I was in awe. This was in the mid 60’s. And he had just completed a performance—he was sort of in his guru stage. He was chanting, etc... So I was sort of surprised when he asked my father Bernie, who was a cousin of his, to get him a pastrami sandwich. This was a serious disconnect for me. I didn’t expect him to be so down-to-earth. He was a very regular guy. He asked how the family was, etc... He was an object of curiosity of course for the family. He hadn’t the huge reputation he would make later on. By-the-way the pastrami was excellent--it was N.Y. pastrami of course!



DH: When did you first go to Israel?



JL: My first trip to Israel was in the 1970’s. I was 27. I stayed for a few years and I was enamored with the country. I really admired its spunk and its community at the time. In the late 70’s I had come out of an anti-war period. Israel had just been involved in two wars in 1967 and 1973, and I was used to the sight of soldiers. I speak the language and have Israeli friends—so I am quite comfortable there.





DH: The three young protagonists in "Wherever You Go" seem like lost souls--they are looking to define themselves. They come to Israel. Is Israel a good place for this?



JL: That basically is the theme of the work. People are seeking to connect to the divine or something larger than themselves. They want to find one little corner of happiness. So people do come to Israel seeking something...and sometimes they find it is available--whether it is religious, political activity, or a sense of belonging.





DH: There are two sisters in the novel Dena and Yona. Dena is a staunch ideologue living in a settlement in the desert. Yona lives in New York (and travels to Israel), is an adulteress, and is trying to reconcile with her estranged sister. Who are you more sympathetic to?





JL: Yona is the character who has a lot more compassion, and she is far more vulnerable. I have more compassion for her.



I do admire but I don't agree with the politics at all of the sister Dena. She is a very principled person. There is a part of me that really admires people who want to live by their principles, and are passionate about that. But this can turn into fundamentalism. And that is the point of the book.





DH: There is a lot of hostility in the book towards American Jews. Do you feel that when you are in Israel?







JL: I don't feel it. But I have observed it. I think there is a level in which they are more cynical. The people portrayed in the book are fundraisers for the right wing settlements. And they are aware that the American Jews who financially support the settlements are not going to live there or send their children there. They are not prepared to make the sacrifice to live there. But they will offer their financial support. The people who are willing to accept the money are cynical and that's who I am portraying. One of them says that the Americans come here and help them out but go back to live in their affluent communities and big houses. I guess some Israelis feel that Jews in the diaspora are not living their destiny in Israel.





DH: You teach writing in Israel at Bar-Ilan University in Tel Aviv. You have also taught writing at Harvard University Extension. How do the students differ--what are the writing about? How do your courses unfold?




JL: I do two things. We do alot of reading and discuss other authors work. Then we have workshops. Students work is discussed.


Like the Extension School my students in Israel are of an older population. I teach in an Master's program in Israel--most of the students are native English speakers who are either in the country for the program or live there. This is a program in the English Department of an Israeli University. They are often from South Africa, the United States, Great Britian, etc... Like Harvard Extension they come from diverse backgrounds.



The subject matter they write about is different. Some of my Israeli students come from the army and write about their army experience. Some people have lived in the country for twenty-five years or more and write about their immigration experience. There is a Jewish women in my class from India, and she writes evocatively about the Jewish community in her native country. So often people write about immigration--the tapestry of the immigrant experience, the Jewish experience, Jewish identity, etc...






For more information about MS. LEEGANT go to http://www.joanleegant.com

Dosha, Flight of the Russian Gypsies by Sonia Meyer

Dosha, Flight of the Russian Gypsies
Sonia Meyer
Wilderness House Press
www.wildernesshousepress.com
$24.95

The atrocities inflicted upon cultural groups have existed for centuries. Roma have been hard hit by the full impact of prejudice and persecution. From pre-Third-Reich Germany to Stalin’s reign of terror, to the illusion of Kruschev’s thaw, Rom and Romni have been captured, tortured, left for dead or murdered. Still today, Roma are faced with torment. Sonia Meyer, author of “Dosha: Flight of the Russian Gyspies,” knows the threat of persecution first-hand. At the young age of two, Sonia fled with her parents from the Nazi regime, taking refuge with partisans and Gypsies. By the age of 7 she knew no other life beyond that of war and death. Sonia grew up reassured by the howl of the wolf, for at that moment she knew that she was safe, that the forest could, once again, awaken to its own sounds, following the cacophony of bomb droppings and the crack of gunfire.

From the memories of the nomadic life Meyer was forced to live hiding out in forests, abandoned houses, inns and barns during and post World War II, the story of Dosha, Russian Gypsy, has been given Roma wings to fly. And “Dosha: Flight of the Russian Gypsies,” does soar from its pages, each of its three parts a mixture of action, intrigue, and romance blended seamlessly into harmonious balance.

While the story of Dosha as a Lovari woman is fictional, the historical perspective of Russian Gypsies on the run from the Nazis, from Stalin, and from Kruschev’s Roma round-ups has been successfully and accurately woven through the book with a deftness that slips around factual ennui as silently and mysteriously as the Roma navigate their beloved woods. This is the beauty of Meyer’s ability to bring to life the way of the Roma amidst war and post-war oppression.

In 1941 Dosha is a small child facing life in a war-ravaged country. Days, months, years lived on the move, sharing family around campfires, sleeping soundly in caravans, and becoming one with her horse courses through her veins. It is a life that captivity can never truly separate her from. Later, drafted by the Soviet government as a horsewoman, she and her stallion are trained in Russian dressage. Employed by the State behind the Iron Curtain, Dosha knows the constant pull of longing to be free again, the ever-present threat of death, the inevitable entanglement of lives ordered into service, frightened into silence.

Meyer has put pen to the page in a lyrical movement of literature with a European flair. Her personal knowledge of gypsy life and the time spent in historical research have served this story well. There is richness to her images, depth in her characters, and fluidity in her narration. The swish of a Gypsy skirt, the camaraderie of the Gypsy men, the laughter of their children, and the Roma’s ability to understand and intuit the hidden forces of this world will stay with you long after the last word of this story offers its hush to your soul.
Rene Schwiesow is a Massachusetts poet and writer, co-host of Plymouth’s Art of Words, she thrives on bringing words to life behind an open mic.

Endicott Students at the Somerville News Writers Festival, Nov. 13, 2010

Endicott Students at the Somerville News Writers Festival Nov. 13, 2010

As you know Endicott College ( Beverly, Mass.) is now affiliated with the Ibbetson Street Press. So a bunch of creative writing students lead by professor Dan Sklar attended the festival.


Below the students are with Boston Poet Laureate Sam Cornish, and poet Ifeanyi Menkiti( Wellesley Professor of Philosophy, poet, and owner of the Grolier Poetry Bookshop).





(click on pic to enlarge)


(Sam Cornish center/ Ifeanyi Menkiti far right)





(click on pic to enlarge)

Review of BEYOND THE STRAITS by Marine Robert Warden

(PRESA PRESS)





Review of BEYOND THE STRAITS by Marine Robert Warden, Presa :S: Press, PO Box 792. Rockford, MI 49341, www.presapress.com, $13.95, November 2010 (reprinted from 1980, Momentum Press)

By Barbara Bialick

Last year I had the good fortune to review Dr. Warden’s previous of ten books, FINDING BEAUTY (Bellowing Ark Press, 2009). He must have agreed, for I found my own review quoted on the back of this current, worthwhile reprint from 1980, BEYOND THE STRAITS. This book takes us from the straits of Seattle to the open seas to Asia, and back to the U.S. with wide lyrical lines in lower case, no punctuation, with subtle hints of Whitman but visiting many more places than did the bard of New York.

As Eric Greinke remarks in the introduction, “The search for (Warden’s) voice was something like ten days.” Certainly this book is just as broadly painted, and experienced in viewpoint as the previous one, possibly because he didn’t become a poet until he was 48 years old, and had already experienced the military, marriage, and the practice of medicine, but with a poet’s vision.

In Kansas, he declared, he sensed how out of a “great ground swell off the coast of Asia” our country could emerge, as his wife emerged to him. In the poem “The Great Ground Swell”, he wanted America to experience “what the land could mean for us…a healing process, a rebirth out of rocks with the blades of grass that bend their endless moan across the prairies…” At the same, this sea man looks beyond that which we daily experience: “the continents are merely rock extrusions of the sea’s bed.”

In “Thanksgiving Day 1946”, he writes “today the rain falls over all our land/it falls on the ships in “Frisco Bay…/it rains into the eyes of our dead at sea…” But the men marching by “still don’t realize/there’s a generation waiting for birth/that expects them to make a new land/out of dreams they hatched across the ocean…”

I’d say Dr. Warden deserves to be noticed along with the more widely known poets of the modern and contemporary periods. I will end by quoting the last poem, “Taking Leave”, which speaks for itself: “animals know nothing of this/the real meaning of flowers or love/beyond the crushed petals that excite their senses/…how the industrial city that was destroyed/became a garden of flowers/how my ship pulled away from that harbor/with its cargo of haunted faces/how we floated outward like slow glass/over a sea of fire”. This book deserves its reprint status, and should be read by people today who are watching our country in distress and need a historical context for hope and action, which seems so hard to come by.

Review of A NORTH ATLANTIC WALL BY Donald Wellman

Review of A NORTH ATLANTIC WALL BY Donald Wellman, Dos Madres Press, Inc., PO Box 294, Loveland, Ohio 45140, 95 pages, 2010

By Barbara Bialick

This book-length literary journey would appeal to those who like medieval travel mixed with travel in the present, but largely through intellectual allusions, history, and what the author called “transhistory.” I didn’t notice any particular poems that would stand out distinctly without their book, yet it is interesting reading and written smoothly. As literary analyst Don Byrd notes on the back cover, “Don Wellman maps a remarkable geography. The deeper interest of this poetry, however, belongs to places that are not on the map.”

There is a literal map at the beginning of the journey.—the Spanish Kingdoms, 1210.
There are also some notes in the back, should you want to study more closely all the allusions and opinions. But the author observes on page 39, “The canon urged the poet to wed fabulous lies with the understanding of the readers so as to facilitate impossibilities and join admiration with delight. Does this justify Quixote or make transparent an underlying purpose?”

An example of the metaphorical travelogue reads, p.46, “From the stone bed of San Guillarmo, draw an east west line/the sacred stones lead to the summit on a north south axis/and all of this at the time when a pagan queen ruled the/headlands and the Milky Way was thought to be the celestial colure…”

But the present intrudes into the intellectual fantasy, on p. 47: “Later the poets discussed roof construction after/the Arabic fashion…Families arrived in black Mercedes to visit the spa…”

The quote that most interested me was his philosophical idea about God, page 74:
“So I say, as it is impossible that what has happened has never happened, and so it is impossible too that what will happen shall not happen. And above all, in God, who understands and knows from the beginning what has to happen, even before it comes to be, so it was and is then without a doubt necessary that the future has been completely determined in his thought already, given that he knew and understood always, what causes are necessary for the consummation of what has to happen.”

Donald Wellman lives in Weare, New Hampshire and has written two other books of poetry. For many years, he edited O.ARS, a series of anthologies about post-modern poetics. He has been a translator in several languages.

“Tales Of The Troupe” by Robert Dinsmoor

A BagelBards Book Review

“Tales Of The Troupe”
By Rob Dinsmoor
Zingology Press, No price listed

Reviewed by Paul Steven Stone

“Tales of the Troupe” is just what its title suggests, a series of stories about a comedy troupe named Chucklehead that performed blackout skits and guerilla theater in New York City towards the end of the 80’s. The author, Rob Dinsmoor, who makes his living these days as a science and medical writer, focused more acutely on the funny bone back then as one of the troupe’s onboard skit writers.

“Tales of the Troupe” offers a wry often bemused look at the struggles (many) and triumphs (few and short lived) that await any group of dedicated performance artists who are long on enthusiasm and short on visible means of support. The stories are connected by theme, time and characters but, alas, not by any sense of a building or compelling narrative. They are often humorous, always well written, but too reflective of life itself, which never fails to end its subplots with a dull thud rather then a resounding chord.

“Tales” has much to offer the self-motivated reader who might be interested in off-broadway theater, or Greenwich Village lifestyles, or the perils and pitfalls of the quest for fame and popular success, or who just might enjoy spending a few hours with an enjoyable group of comics and their cohorts. But fiction readers hungering for more story in their short stories, will find themselves wishing the author had allowed himself a little more literary license in conveying the times and adventures of Chucklehead.


**** Paul Steven Stone is the Creative Director of W.B. Mason and the author of "Or So It Seems."

“Midsummer Night’s Dream” presented by F.U.D.G.E Theatre Company –

“Midsummer Night’s Dream” presented by F.U.D.G.E Theatre Company –
Arsenal Center for the Arts, Watertown – November 5th -13th


Review by Adrienne Drobnies



As we slip closer to the winter solstice, F.U.D.G.E Theatre Company brings to the stage Shakespeare’s play of magical realism, “Midsummer’s Night’s Dream.” Joe DeMita’s innovative direction is the greatest strength of this production. The stage is set up with long monochrome strips of hanging fabric, a mirror to one side, and two rotating platforms on the floor, all of which are used effectively. The draped fabric evokes variously trees in the forest, bed covers for the lovers, and the tug-of-war between characters. The music (Debussy, Saariaho) fits well with the minimal and contemporary feel of this staging. The most interesting directorial choice was to divide the part of Puck into two, where the actors echo and mirror each other. And in the dreamscape of the forest scenes, the characters of Lysander, Hermia, Demetrius, and Helena have “shadows,” whose silent choreographed movements seem to represent the pure emotion of the young lovers. The depth and seriousness of those emotions balance the comedy of the characters’ immature actions. The effect of the extra players, enhanced by the stage mirror, is to create a kaleidoscope of altered and divided consciousness. The two Pucks, played by Anne Olmsted and K. Bevin Ayers, worked exceptionally well together. The actors were energetic and professional, with Richie DeJesus outstanding as “Bottom.” The cuts made to the script maintained the beauty of the language, humor, and fantasy in this enjoyable production. At a time of year when some fantasy and laughter is welcome, it’s worth the trip to the Arsenal Center to see this entertaining “Midsummer Night’s Dream.”

Elegiac: Footnotes to Rilke's Duino Elegies by Elaine Terranova

Elegiac: Footnotes to Rilke's Duino Elegies

Elaine Terranova

Cervena Barva Press

2010 $7.00

　

Within this chapbook of longing, grief finds release, "It's true,

life reminds us of death and time, isn't that how life comes

to you…" The poems take flight, yet, grounded in history,
Elaine Terranova

they swim on the surface of the wide blue ocean, yet, the poems

sink into our psyche:



"…I was cold

I was in the iceberg of myself.

wringing my hands,

washing my face without water.

Having forgotten each rhyming wish.

Every word is a word of praise,

even a curse, a word of praise.

Utter it, and you are a beggar…"

　

By the end of the reading the reader realizes it is a journey influenced

by Rilke and completely the poets own experiences and her references

become personal tributes, the mythology of carnival, angels,

female deities:

　

…"The soft contours of an old photo.

Fine lines etched into a hill.

Motion stops. Smile locked

before it is imagined. A trip you didn't take,

bags you let go by without claiming.

There was the window, the line of light

that came between so we were separate.

What dawn pulled away, leaving us

to the normal operations of the world…"



Clearly this is the writing of an accomplished poets, with much to impart.

Cervena Barva Press gives us the most current writers, internationally as

well as our local voices. This is one of the chapbooks that implores us

to invest in our small presses.

　

Irene Koronas

Poetry Editor:

Wilderness House Literary Review

Reviewer:

Ibbetson Street Press

Inventing God by Robert Pringle

Inventing God

Robert Pringle

Pudding House Chapbook Series

ISBN 1-58998-657-1

$10.00

　

"A school of Protestant fish

boats down the Ulanga

aboard Tuesday evening Bible study

pouring gillfuls of Gordon's gin

on the rocks of free will…"



'Inventing God' poses "on a console TV, stares at the finishing touch."

Robert Pringle deconstructs his relationship with established religion;

looking for his own god, "God should have stayed, adjective and phrase."

The poems present all the 'things' god is not. I think the poems are protesting

but I'm not entirely convinced of what is being presented as protest, except the

poems do protest very well:



"A man and a woman

have knocked on the door.

Ten a.m., near freezing,

I hear the shifting

of leaflets and feet.

They knock again,

brood in close voices.

Wonder what they think

of my custom Harley

parked in the driveway.

I knock in return -

a chatter of teeth

and cross-purposes,

unwilling, it seems,

to trust their senses.

"We can lead the way

to His Heavenly Kingdom,"

quiet, a jangling of keys.

"I'm here to enjoy

His earthly Paradise,"

quiet, imagining that hot=

throated roar. "Are you

on the road to Armageddon?"

They could be easing

down the steps. "We know

the prophecy of Route 666!"

"I offer the joy of His

open road - hope the fuel,

charity a fair weather,

faith leaning into every turn."



Some of the poems read like a christian person on LSD



"Eagling from slits in spires, then race round

desks to shake His maiden-splitting penis,

flutter next the cloakroom coats as if

skirts in the face of Mrs. Spence

for all her harangues, hyperbole, finger-pointing…"



or:



"She LISTENS

to the test pattern

on a console TV, STARES

at the finishing touch to a delicate hand

of The Galapagos Madonna,

clay homologue

to Darwin-in-Drag effigy

hanging from a Dollar Mark Cross."



Pringle experiments with word play, uses language poetry and sometimes

the poems are metaphysical in their meaning, in presenting the truth as

omnipresent; the poet references ubiquitous themes, trying to corral

individual thought, reflections on society; (Donne?) or the modern poet lament

(Ferlinghetti?) All this is written with religion and social issues as subject matter

(mostly).



"…Late in the game…"

"We could be sucking in sulphur fumes

right now, straight from Satan's inflamed

nostrils…But, Revelations in extensor

" 'To him who conquers, I will grant…life

in paradise'." "We conquered! and every

particle of 'them' is now our cannibal bodies;…"



Where the poetry fails is in the conjunctions. There is a disconnect that

might leave the reader wondering what one phrase or line or verse has

to do with the other. Forget what I just wrote: I can't find a good

enough example from the poems to substantiate or to make a clear

connection:



"…Molten curse of earth

perpetual, black land sinking, senseless

with good and evil,…

Kind of the boatman guide,

nodding in place of my name."

The writing is powerful and I recommend supporting this fine small press,

'Pudding House,' by investing in this chapbook or any of their books.

'Inventing God' is a book that will call you back to read again and again.

　

Irene Koronas

Review:

Ibbetson Street Press

Poetry Editor:

Wilderness House Literary Review

Review of POETS FOR HAITI, An Anthology of Poetry and Art, Edited by Kim Triedman

Review of POETS FOR HAITI, An Anthology of Poetry and Art, Edited by Kim Triedman, Preface by Paul Farmer and Ophelia Dahl, Yileen Press, PO Box 2828,
Vineland, NJ 08362, www.yileenpress.com, $20 donation benefits people of Haiti, ravaged by the earthquake in Port-au-Prince, of January 12, 2010, through Partners in Health (pih.org)

By Barbara Bialick

With its striking red cover on which a mysterious and mystical blue man made of geodes and straw, strides proudly, this exquisitely illustrated and classy collection of poetry, grew out of a benefit of poetry readings by 18 Boston-area poets held on the Harvard University campus last February, 2010.

This book is a testimony to the power of art and poetry to respond wherever the need is great and emotional. All the colorful, symbolic prints in the book are by prominent Haitian artists. The poems are written by American and Haitian poets, some about the horrors of the earthquake itself, others chosen for the way they speak to God, life and death, history, and the will to survive.

Some of the 30 poets included in the book are former poet laureate Robert Pinsky, Rosanna Warren, Gail Mazur, Afaa Michael Weaver, Daniel Tobin, Danielle Legros Georges, all from the U.S. as well as Haitian poet Marilene Phipps-Kettlewell, Patrick Sylvain and Haitian-American poet populist of Cambridge, Massachusetts, Jean-Dany Joachim, to name a few. There are 18 gorgeous, full-color glossy art prints, including the cover. Here’s an enticing sampling of poetry:

A compelling poem, called “Ports of Sorrow” by Patrick Sylvain, brings you right in:
“Early Afternoon, I stand in my own port of pain…/Port-au-Prince has become an archipelago of open tombs,/Consumed slowly by the sun and forming an everlasting covenant./…Port-au-Prince has neither port nor prince…”

In “Earthquake” by Marilene Phipps Kettlewell, a long, powerful poem, she writes about how the Church of the Sacred Heart of Jesus had an “immense Christ/who stood on top of the steeple, weightless,/…God’s son now lies/face down, open arms embracing dirt./…All hearts bleed as one heart.”

Robert Pinsky contributed his poem “Ginza Samba” from The Figured Wheel: New and Collected Poems 1966-1996 where he writes about “the trading of brasses,/pearls and ivory,/calicos and slaves,/ Laborers and girls….”. that he himself becomes historically connected to through an old saxophone.

But as Jean-Dany Joachim wrote in the last poem of the collection, “This evening I will not cry for my Dead/…I give my tears in exchange for LIFE…”.

On that note I urge you to get this wonderful, sad, yet hopeful collection of art and poetry.

A Tribute to Jack from his friend Sidewalk Sam

At the memorial service for Jack Powers, the founder of Stone Soup Poetry of Boston, Mass., the famed street artist and Power's close friend Sidewalk Sam, made an eloquent tribute speech about Jack. A few years back I worked with Sam to organize Jack's 70th birthday, along with Margaret Narin and the the Rev. Louise Anderson. Sam graciously sent me the text of the speech.




A Tribute to Jack from his friend Sidewalk Sam 10/24/2010


Jack Powers spent every waking moment of his existence devoted to noble intentions and noble pursuits. He lived a noble life by practicing hundreds of little acts of nobility on a daily basis. He was a humanist. He was concerned with the condition of human-kind.

I was in awe of him for his devotion to the noble idea of poetry and for his absolute belief in the noble idea of Mankind. I worked with Jack constantly over the years on poetry and other artistic projects.

Let me tell you a story … Jack was the main person I relied upon when my wife, Tina, and I undertook a vast project to ennoble a loathsome passageway from Haymarket into the North End. Remember it? It was the Freedom Trail, a pedestrian footpath that meandered under the elevated expressway and was the principle entrance into the North End from Boston, before the Rose Kennedy Greenway was built. Rusty, decayed, filthy and forlorn, it became a dungeon-like flophouse for homeless people who panhandled tourists passing through.

Jack, Tina and I decided to turn the block long space from a dungeon into a noble medieval Italian cathedral that would provide an appropriate welcome to tourists into the North End. Jack helped us clean up three dump truck loads of trash that we containerized for the City to haul away. We installed trash barrels and Jack swept the block and cleaned up the area many times a day. Nancy Jameson built seven flower boxes, which Tina and Jack painted with Tuscan motifs and planted with flowers and then maintained daily. We got a lift from Modern Continental Construction Company for the entire summer. Jack donned breathing gear every day, raised himself up to the underside of the overhead highway two stories above us and cleaned and scraped away decades of filth, rust and debris.

Hardly any metal held that highway up when Jack finished. He removed tons of rust! Once cleaned, we painted the beams and supports that held up the highway to resemble ornate marble church pillars. The entire block long underside of the highway was painted like a royal-blue cathedral ceiling - a painted "heaven." Jack placed hundreds of gold stars in it. We painted dozens of cherubs flying among gold laced clouds in the blue, star-studded sky. We read poetry daily. We had violinists perform and singers sang arias along the walkway.

Jack thrilled to the whole enterprise and devoted himself entirely to it. It consumed five years of our lives. It was a celebration of the streets! It took one of the worst examples of public spiritless-ness and turned it into an exalted expression of high art.

It was what Jack was about. He was a poet … but he was so much more. He believed in people. He acted like a high priest of people in daily life. He believed in Boston. To him Boston was his temple. He tried to make daily life in Boston a holy experience. He was high-minded. He believed in the power of the little guy, you and me, to exalt ourselves and make of daily life a paradise.

Jack thought immense thoughts and lived an immense life and was completely undaunted by poverty and class disadvantages. He went about the City as a humble street servant, doing common day labor – like a serf, like a peasant, like a ditch digger, like a grape picker. He was proud to be identified with them. And as he grew more and more into that role, I thought more and more that he was like St Francis of Assisi and I was in awe of the hundreds of tiny corporal act of mercy that he would bestow on Boston streets daily. As he went about his appointed rounds, Jack was a holy man. He lived his last years a misunderstood saint, a downtrodden seer; sweeping our streets. His broom was like Demosthenese 's lantern – instead of looking for an honest man, Jack cleaned the pathways of Boston for us, because we were all honest men.

He saw our beauty and our worth. He saw beauty in the mundane. He was a Johnny Appleseed of the streets. In his character as Jacques DeBris, he collected trash trophies and set them on little stages like sculptures. They were beautiful! They were wiser and kinder than anything Marcel Duchamp ever did.

Wisdom, vision, insight, hard work, deep down goodness, great humor, unending love… Jack was so beautiful.

Jack had no faults, or none worth mentioning. Certainly none to be mentioned on the glorious level on which he lived. His spirit… ah, that is his story! And we all have a story about Jack ...

The Great American Poetry Show edited by Larry Ziman, Madeline Sharples, Nicky Selditz

The Great American Poetry Show
Volume 2
Poems by
Edited by Larry Ziman, Madeline Sharples, Nicky Selditz
The Muse Media
West Hollywood, CA
Volume 2 Copyright © 2010 by Larry Ziman
Hardcover, 157 pages, $35

Review by Zvi A. Sesling

This book of poetry really is a “show.” It is 8x10, hardcover
and provides 157 of poetry, followed by a bio of every
author. Moreover the authors are presented in alphabetical order
which is especially useful if you want to find the poem or author
again.

As for the poetry, it has some old poetic friends like A.D. Winans,
Lyn Lifshin, Alan Catlin, but for the most part I am not familiar with
the poets, though their poems are of high quality and belong in “the show”
which is baseball talk for the major leagues.

Of the many poems a number caught my eye let me name just three: To My Daughter on a Fine Fall Day, by Carol Carpenter, Big Daddy by Carrie Jerrell, Remembrance by David Parke about a lost love which closes: At night when I stand in the chilled desert breeze/ and feel it lightly kiss my face,/I close my eyes and feel the phantom of your lips against mine.

The magazine has a penchant for personal poems as a good many of them are first person, though Lois Swann’s short poem (8 lines) is quite enticing:

Thanksgiving

The frost has left a simple beautiful pattern
on the black car roof
Like stars clustered or marcasite
threaded with silver.

Shivering, undressed, I find such marks sparkling
on the skin of my inner thigh,
The sign of you I am loathe to bathe away,
fearing to squander diamonds

To be sure there will be poems you do not like, but in 157 pages can you really expect
every poem to grab you? No, but in The Great American Poetry Show my guess the
majority (probably more than a simple majority) will be enjoyable, and since every reader is different, many readers will connect with a number of the poems and poets.

Interview with " Night Train" Co-founder Rusty Barnes

Questions for Rusty Barnes


***Interviewed by Sue Miller

Rusty Barnes grew up in Appalachia and made his home in the Boston area. He's the author of Breaking It Down, a book of flash fiction (Sunnyoutside Press), and Redneck Poems, a chapbook (MiPOesias). Published widely in both print and oon the web, Rusty's shopping his first novel. He is perhaps best known as the co-founder of Night Train, but he is taking a bigger slice of literary pie these days, with both Fried Chicken and Coffee, a blog focusing on the voices of rural America and the issues that threaten it, and Live Nude Poems, which presents—with commentary--the work of poets that must be read. We had a few questions for Rusty, in advance of his appearance at the upcoming Somerville Writer's Festival on November 13.

What did you want to be when you grew up?
At various points, a preacher, an FBI agent, pro baseball player.

What was the first thing you remember writing?
Other than school assignments and a couple of 'poems,' I don't really recall. It's come to me so easily I felt (and sometimes still feel) as if I was born doing it. I listened a lot as a child, mostly to my family's stories. My extended family used to get together at someone's house, usually my grandmother's trailer on Sundays, brew some coffee, then sit and talk for six or seven hours. No joke. This happened throughout my childhood and up until my grandmother died in 1981. Then it more or less stopped, though on a good day you can still get them (my dad's family) going. This is where I learned to listen for the stories. Writing them down came later.

Who told you were good, and when?
I was encouraged all along by my parents. Our landlord, Edmund Tuton, this mysterious and wonderful man who came from exotic Long Island, often gave me money and books for getting good grades. He told me I was good. I found out how dumb I was in grad school—very—yet I got key encouragement from my teachers Christopher Tilghman and DeWitt Henry when I was ready to quit and go home.

How much time do you spend writing, in a week?
I actually think it's more important to read. My reading time counts 4 or 5 to 1 against writing. I read from midnight to 3 am nearly every day, usually a book of fiction, one of poetry, and one non-fic/memoir/biography at the same time. We have a two-year-old who has had sleeping issues, too, so that time is often spent singing silly songs very quietly or telling stories or walking around with her on my shoulder.

What is most satisfying to you as your fingers hit the keys?
I love building characters and putting them through hell in fiction. I love getting an image or feeling or seeing something strange, and nursing it into a poem. I enjoy the workmanlike feeling I get from non-fiction, of making myself clear when my nature is to speak quickly and get as much out as possible before something shuts my mouth.

I think I'm a poet first, even though my first three published books are (or will be) fiction.

What would you be doing if you weren't a writer?
There are many things I'm competent or even semi-good at, but none of them ever really appealed as a career. Once I made the decision to be a writer, that's what I was, though I worked as a house cleaner, janitor, teacher, editor, tutor in the many interims. I write because I'm not really good enough at anything else.

Which is stronger: the urge to create or the need to destroy?
I constantly struggle against my better self. I am so good at destroying and otherwise fouling up my emotional and inner life, turning it all haywire, so good, but I have to feel like a creator to feel right operating in the world.

Rusty Barnes will be reading November 13, 2010 at the Somerville Writer's Festival VIII, hosted by Timothy Gager at the Center for Arts at the Armory. Advance tickets are available through Brown Paper Tickets (617-718-2191). There will be a daytime book fair with readings beginning at 7 p.m. Features: Malachy McCourt, Sam Cornish. Writers and Poets: Jennifer Haigh , Steve Almond, Michelle Hoover, Ethan Gilsdorf,Rusty Barnes, Fred Marchant, Diana Der-Hovanessian, David Ferry, Martha Collins, and Douglas Holder. Sponsored by Porter Square Books and Grub Street

Endicott College/Ibbetson Street Press Visiting Author Series Nov. 18, 2010

(Beverly, Mass.)



The Endicott College/Ibbetson Street Visiting Author series will continue Nov. 18, 2010 with poets Miriam Levine and Bert Stern. The series directed by Ibbetson Street Press founder Doug Holder, will be held at Endicott's Halle Library at 4P.M. The series is open to the public, and will include an open mike after the features. Free admission. Check http://endicott.edu for directions to the college.








"I'm interested in people and their stories,"
says Miriam Levine. Her most recent book is The Dark Opens, winner of the 2007 Autumn House Poetry Prize. She is the author of In Paterson, a novel, Devotion: A Memoir, three poetry collections, and A Guide to Writers' Homes in New England. Her work has appeared in Harvard Review, The Kenyon Review, The Paris Review, and Ploughshares, among many other places.


A recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts writing fellowship and grants from the Massachusetts Artists Foundation, she was a fellow at Yaddo, Hawthornden Castle, Le Château de Lavigny, Villa Montalvo, Fundación Valparaíso, and the Millay Colony for the Arts.

She is Professor Emerita at Framingham State College, where she chaired the English Department and was Coordinator of the Arts and Humanities Program.
Born in Paterson, New Jersey, Miriam Levine now divides her time between Florida and Massachusetts. Currently she is at work on a new novel and a poetry collection.









Bert Stern is Milligan Professor Emeritus at Wabash College, and has also taught at the University of Thessaloniki and at Peking University. At present, with his wife, Tamlin Neville, he edits Off the Grid Press. Bert also teaches in an alternative sentencing program called Changing Lives through Literature.

Bert’s poems have appeared in Poetry, Hunger Mountain, The American Poetry Review, Beloit Poetry Review, Ibbetson Street, and in many other journals and anthologies. Steerage, his recent poetry collection, is on the “Must Read” list selected by the Massachusetts Book Award. He has been nominated tfour times for a Pushcart Prize, and is the recipient of an Artist’s Grant from the Somerville Arts Council.


Interview with Miriam Levine by Doug Holder


http://dougholder.blogspot.com/2008/04/poet-miriam-levine-makes-dark-open.html


Bert Stern's Blog

http://bertstern.blogspot.com




Interview with Miriam Levine by Doug Holder

Profane Uncertainties by Luis Raul Calvo, translated by Flavia Cosma

Profane Uncertainties
by Luis Raul Calvo, translated by Flavia Cosma
Cervena Barva Press
Somerville MA
Copyright © 2010 by Luis Raul Calvo
Softcover, $15, 45 pages

Review by Zvi A. Sesling

Argentina was the home of some great poets: Borges, Barbarito and Benitez. Now, thanks to Gloria Mindock and Cervena Barva Press and translator Flavia Cosma, we have a chance to read a poet every bit as good as any Argentine poet, Luis Raul Calvo, who sees the world not as utopian, not as hellish, but for what it is. His is a reality show of its own.

For example in the section entitled Lowest Depth of the Soul, poem XII tells us:

The man who sleeps today
In the middle of the road,
Once knew how to indulge
In the earthly pleasures

Once he loved submissive women,
Bought himself the finest liquors,
And squandered left and right
What belonged to him,
And what didn’t.
He lived as if wishing to negate the saying
That affirmed That nothing is eternal
In this life,

In times past,
Watching others sleeping on the pavement,
He would have said, loudly and firmly,
“They must have done something
to deserve their fate.”

These are words of the keen, observant eye, the writer who records what he sees and with
pen tells us bares the truth of the scene.

Then there were the days people used to say if you go far enough on the right, you are on the left and vice versa. Calvo’s take of this is:

Diffuse Limits

There is a plateau that separates
Words form gestures,
Hearts from pinciples,
Holiness from sins.

The diffused limits of love
Work out the differences

Calvo’s profoundness lies in his ability to take the complicated and make it simple; to take life and make it accessible. He is one of the poets who create their own language to explain life, who (to steal the concept of left and right in a circle) are so deep they are simple; so simple they are deep. I am left only with the impression that nothing of Calvo’s poetry is either profane or uncertain. Which leaves a bottom line: Calvo’s poetry is that the reader is left satisfied; the reader-poet inspired to write. Who needs more?

Clear-Eye Tea by Mary Bonina

Clear-Eye Tea
Mary Bonina
Cervena Barva Press
http://www.cervenabarvapress.com
$15.00

The wonderful thing about poetry is that it so often speaks to you through the reading. And Mary Bonina’s book Clear-Eye Tea did, indeed, speak to me. In particular her poem, “Small Town: A Death,” rang its bell loud and clear, triggering memories of a friend lost to a train, the same way the small girl Bonina writes about was lost.

The commuter train this morning
on the tracks that run behind the school
blows its whistle as it passes by, for the girl
who was killed the afternoon before,
crossing over, taking a short cut home,
a hole in the fence patched up from time to time.

I didn’t say that what you heard would always be happy. But, when you hear it in the reading, it’s a soft affirmation, a hug that can comfort in the empathy that you, as a reader, receive or give. In “Small Town: A Death,” Bonina takes a look at how the tragic loss of a life in such a public manner changes the landscape of grieving,

But at the girl’s house, a police car was posted,
out front the vans and wired poles and lights. . .
while others searching
for a story gathered around the corner.

then Bonina ends with a sucker-punch to our already sore gut

How cruel the piled up fallen leaves
coloring the driveway, blanketing the front lawn.

But death and grieving are not Bonina’s only subjects in this work that gives honor to the everyday experiences of life, to the ordinary moments that raise their poetic wings in flight. In “The Reindeer of Green Hill,” Bonina celebrates visiting a father at a factory. Her words the echo of four small children poignant in their love

The whistle blew and my father
appeared with the herd of men
outside the loading dock.

We brought him sweets:
a cookie or a plum
pushed through the fence.

We collected his kisses.
Mary Bonina shows us vivid images. She confronts us with what is real and asks us not to avert our eyes from the weeping or the laughter. The words ask us to meditate on the images, on the tactile emotions that pour themselves through the strophes, and the words ask us to find the gap that leads us to the clear eye tea of her title. A tea that will take us to a place of Zen, if we allow the paradoxes to steep within us, just as the tea ceremonies of Japan are meant to do.

There is water and there is fire within this book. Sound the gong when you pick it up and allow yourself to experience the mantra of the words. You will not want to sound the gong again until you have read cover-to-cover. Then you will have come to know the inspiration of the joy, the sadness, the emptiness and fullness of life as Mary Bonina has described it for us.

***Rene Schwiesow is a writer and poet. She is the co-host of The Art of Words poetry venue in Plymouth, MA