BOSTON NATIONAL POETRY MONTH FESTIVAL April 5th to 9, 2017

Mr. Hip

BOSTON NATIONAL POETRY MONTH FESTIVAL

                     Boston National Poetry Month Festival, 2017

                          ~Boston Public Library, Central Library in Copley Square,

                          ~Community Church of Boston, 565 Boylston Street,

                          ~Fisher College, 116 Beacon Street, Boston

          April 5th-9th; FREE ADMISSION to all events.

             High School Poetry Slam Competition. Dozens of Established Poets. Publishing Panel.

             An Evening of Poetry, Music & Dance.  Emerging Poets and two Open Mic's.

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        Many thanks to our official broadcast media sponsor, WBUR

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                                    We are pleased to present our 3rd Annual High School Poetry Slam Competition.

        From 7:00-9:30pm, teams from local high schools will compete at Alumni Hall on the

        Fisher College campus, 116 Beacon Street. With MC "Mr. Hip."

                               The Festival continues at Boston Public Library with 13 Keynote Poets.  They include 

        winners of the Massachusetts Book Award, the National Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize.

        The Commonwealth Salon, 700 Boylston Street, 1st floor.

                              7:30-9:15 pm at The Community Church of Boston, 565 Boylston Street, 2nd Floor,                 Presenting  our 4th annual evening of Poetry Music & Dance. Produced by Lucy Holstedt,                             professor at Berklee College of Music, this concert features writers and performers in an eclectic

        mix of genres, with artisits from Berklee and the greater Boston area. With financial support of the                 Middle East & ZuZu Restaurants and Music clubs, and in partnership with the Community Church.

        

                    &                At Boston Public Library, you can enjoy over 50 established and emerging poets,             including Boston's Poet Laureate, Danielle Legros Georges, other former and current poets                           laureate, and professors at area colleges. Open Mic both days (see schedule for sign-up).

        Saturday also features a panel on Craft and Publishing. 

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                               Related poetry month events, April 5th-12th, at Berklee and Boston conservatory:

        the 3rd Annual Words and Music [and Movement] Festival, include BNPMF poets and musicians,                 faculty and students from Berklee/BOCO, and other hightly-acclaimed artists.

Boston National Poetry Month Festival is co-sponsored by Tapestry of Voices & Kaji Aso Studio

 in collaboration with Boston Public Library.      

FOR INFORMATION: Tapestry of Voices: 617-306-9484. Library: 617-536-5400.

The Sunday Poet: Kristie Connolly

Kristie Connolly

Kristie Connolly lives in Shirley, Massachusetts. She is a 2002 graduate of the North Bennet Street Preservation Carpentry Program School and is self employed as a preservation carpenter. She enjoys writing poetry as a creative outlet.

 PTSD 

We all have our wounds

Things that have ripped us apart

Scars that at first scream, I am hurt!

Then silently become just part of us. 

We know what they are from

Every day we know

If the wound would just stop there

If it would just let our minds rest

But it doesn't

It burrows painful passageways into our brain

Changing us

Demanding we must visit it

Because it is our thoughts now

There is always a new experience

But now it is an experience and the wound pouring over everything

Never just the experience anymore

And so now we are this and also that. 

We are divided and weighted down

Every decision, every joy tempered and every sorrow magnified, it lives with us as us. 

The only way out is to look for the love, feed the love and learn from it.

It is a long spiraled and layered journey but

If we leave it to fester we will surely die. 

Immigrants as heroes by Sergio Inestrosa

Immigrants as heroes

Sergio Inestrosa

Endicott College

The immigrants that I have in mind are the majority of Latinos that came to this country “undocumented”, but this ideas also can apply to immigrants from Africa, Syria, or the Middle East trying to find a place in Europe, or the US.

The reasons to immigrate can be very different: economical needs, political reasons, the search for freedom in its multiple forms, the pursuit of happiness, and the desire for adventure. The truth is that immigration is a big component of the global perspective that we are facing now.

I will use the three moments of a hero’s journey by Joseph Campbell to build the reflection.

1. Stages of separation

a) Departure or the call to adventure.

The immigrants as the “mythological” heroes are also exposed to an atmosphere of irresistible fascination, “el otro lado”, meaning US, is a “magical” place, the land of the opportunities, the place where the dreams comes true, “gringolandia, a special place, a call for success, but not without a price. This is a call to adventure where the destiny has summoned the hero and transformed his spiritual center of gravity from within the pole of his society to an unknown place, almost a mythical place where both success and danger may be encounter.

The hero can go in his/her own will, or can be sent by another force: a great economical need, the lack of opportunities in his/her own land, running away from a father that wants to impose his will, escaping from political persecution or fear, running away from military service or as a simple desire for adventure. 

b) Refusal of the call

In many cases, an immigrant can be defeated by circumstances: homesickness, lack of a sponsor to get some money to start the trip, lack of energy to carry on the challenge, fear of failure or death, a specific relative situation, a girl friend or boyfriend, the work of immigration officers, even bad luck can lead a person to refuse the call, etc.

c) Supernatural aide

For those who have accepted the challenge to start the trip, one of the first encounters is with a protective figure that provides them with amulets for good luck, and success. Many Mexicans have gone to the basilica of Guadalupe in Mexico city to visit the Virgin and ask for help and protection, people from Guatemala may go to Esquipulas for the same purpose; also in Tijuana there is a very famous “goddess” La Santa Muerte, and many immigrants pay tribute to her before crossing the border; some adopted her as a protective divine when they established in the US. Most of the time it is a feminine divinity but it also can be a masculine figure like Saint Jude, or Jesus himself.

d) The crossing of the first threshold

This is the moment of thrust; reaching the shore of Italy, Spain, Greece or Turkey or crossing of the border in US, facing La Migra, this is a dangerous time, and territory; it is the entrance to a magnified power, and territory.

But for the immigrants, crossing the border is not the end of the problems; the immigrants have to face new challenges, and difficulties: violence, hunger, discrimination, nostalgia, a bitter reality, (US is no longer what use to be), unfamiliarity with the language, and culture, new rules, new set of values, even the weather can be a factor; and let’s not forget those personal needs and desires, a companion, a lover, a family member, a friend.

e) The belly of the whale

Once the immigrant crosses the border, reaches the shore, he or she will be swallowed into the unknown. For the Latino immigrants, “el otro lado” is the unknown, the new territory, if the immigrant survives, and the majority does, he or she will be born to a new life, new opportunities may be presented. Here starts for the immigrants, our heroes yet a new stage.

2. Initiation

a) The road of trials

Most of immigrants start from the bottom, they use the social connections, a safety net to get shelter and food, to get a job or two, to buy false documents. At that time they are trying to survive, they are learning how to move in this new environment, suddenly they are able to move into a new place, get into a school for night classes, learn the basics f the new language, get a GED, use the social network in the community to succeed, get into a church and express their faith.

If everything goes well, soon the immigrant would be able to sent money home to repay the debts, to help a relative to start the journey or simply to help the family to improve their conditions.

For male immigrants (and probably for female too) companion, alcohol, gambling may be distractions, temptations; the new culture and language, new set of rules, very low education background, social and racial discrimination may be obstacles to succeed. Defeat of those obstacles can be the real measurement of the achievement.

b) Apotheosis

If the immigrant find a job or two and starts sending money to his/her family this should be seeing as an apotheosis, meaning that the journey had paid off, all the effort, and suffering have been rewarded. The immigrant can be seen as a hero, even for the cynical politicians. He or she is now a good son, daughter, husband, father, mother, a brave person that made a sacrifice, and finally is collecting the fruits of that effort. Everybody would exalt the kindness, the great heart, the courage ofthis ordinary hero and this “fervor” will be contagious, others will try to imitate him/her, and will start their journey. Success is contagious.

3. The return

If by any chance that immigrant returns having been deported, he/she will seen as a victim, a person that have suffered the injustice of the system; but if that person returns as a legal immigrants people will recognize his/her achievements; if returning by air people will receive him/her at the airport, how sweeter return, so different from that day when the hero departed.

From the first moment we will see a change in his/her clothing, or maybe a testimony to their success will be the purchased of a house, or improvements to his/her property or the increase in his/her positions; if a car is purchase or driven around people will notice the good luck working in favor of the immigrant. In any case of those cases, the immigrant would be seeing as a victorious person; everybody will recognize and even celebrate his/her success.

So many times that immigrant will compare his/her current situation with his/her home land, and people will notice that the new land has taken hold of him/her. The hero, the immigrant, looks like a Master of the two worlds. The hero has gained the freedom to live, to pass from one side to the other without risking his/her life.

Finally the immigrant stands victorious as true hero.

Sergio Inestrosa is a full professor of Spanish at Endicott College in Beverly, Ma.

Luck. Stories. By Ed Meek

Luck: Stories. By Ed Meek ( Tailwinds Press-2017)

Alfred Hitchcock said and I paraphrase, “ Fiction is real life with the boring parts cut out.” And very few words are wasted in Somerville writer Ed Meek's new collection of short fiction “Luck.” Meek, (Maybe a little like Raymond Carver), is not a fancy writer. There are no flourishes of magic realism, no David Foster Wallace-like endless stream of consciousness, no complex dialogue—but man does it pack a punch. And not just a punch, but a sucker punch, because the beauty of these stories sneak up on you, and bitch slap you out of your complacency.

Consider his story “ Kickboxing with Ingrid.” Here a hapless adjunct professor ( And God knows I know that territory) has a midlife crisis, and gets involved with a requisite blonde undergrad—to rekindle his dying flames. But often in life and in many cases this book—fantasy fails to meet up to expectations. As this academic consummates his relationship with the girl—some surprising changes occur,

“ I felt myself falling into her and I closed my eyes. I should have kept them closed I guess, but I worried I'd come too soon, so I opened them and looked down at her face and the oddest thing happened. It was if I was looking at an entirely different person. Her head seemed suddenly too big, her face square and distorted, misshapen like a warped melon. She was grimacing a bit and there was a look of fear and submission in her eyes...Where was the beautiful girl I had been obsessed with?”

Later after the affair led to his dismissal from his job, and an unexpected illness, he arrives to lick his wounds at the “Sevens” bar on Beacon Hill in Boston ( I have hoisted more than a few there) and has a moment of painful self-recognition while waiting for a pint of bourbon from the barkeep,

“I got to the Sevens early. I ordered a pint of bourbon while I waited. In the mirror I saw a wiry old guy with grayish brown hair. When he raised his hands to drink, his hands trembled.

Jack came up behind me. He gave me a double-take. “ What the hell happened to you”, he said.

I cackled and wiped the beer off my mouth with my sleeve.

Another great story is “The Fall of Iran.” Meek places a young teacher ( Meek told me he taught in Iran for a stint) and his girlfriend around the time of the fall of the Shah. The demise of the couples' relationship in some ways follows the demise of the regime. The story also gives us a fascinating insight into Persian culture. Suffice to say, that you should never say you love an expensive, cherished rug in a host's abode—because you will cause him or her a great deal of pain.

In another standout “Out West” the author has a character face the myth of the old west and himself—when he moves to Montana.

Meek know how to tell a story. He has his own understated voice—as true as when you chew the fat with him and in his writing. I can imagine having a beer with him at the Sevens as he orders a drink. “Make it straight. No chaser.”

From the Bloc 11 Cafe: Neuroscientist/Poet Robert Rice

Poet Robert Rice  ( text on wall Julie Ann Otis)

Doug Holder interviews Somerville neuroscientist/poet Robert Rice in the bustling Bloc 11 Cafe in Somerville, Mass. Robert works at the Broad Institute at MIT, and is a practicing poet.

To Listen:   
 https://ia801503.us.archive.org/1/items/Z0000095/Z0000095.MP3

   To sample his work:

SPRING  ( Click on)


                                               

The Sunday Poet: Kate Hanson Foster

Kate Hanson Foster

 Kate Hanson Foster's first book of poems, Mid Drift, was published by Loom Press and was selected by Massachusetts Center for the Book as a "Must Read" in 2011. She gained her MFA from Bennington College, and her poetry has appeared in Comstock Review, Harpur Palate, Poet Lore and elsewhere. She lives and writes in Groton, Massachusetts.




The First Gunshot

The first gunshot is not a gun—

It is a child playing with bubble wrap,

and small innocuous feet need the weight

of a whole body for a single, satisfying pop.

The first gunshot is a smile. A laugh. A fool

lit a firecracker in the hallway and someone

is going to ring their neck. There is no puzzle

in the echo—it is the muffled bone-snap

of a branch outside. The backfire of an old truck

turning the corner. The first gunshot is one

last pure breath, and the peace in the peak

of it. An unexpected flower in full vivacious

bloom. Not the start of something. A finger.

A trigger. A round. Not the first cave hollowing

within a body. Not a body hitting the floor

thinking how can I look dead enough—eyes

open or shut. Not run like a deer to the nearest

exit. Not resolving one’s body as a shield to cover

a lover, a friend, a child. The first gunshot

is a cloister of joy. A sweet stillness, so alive,

so subsistent after a burst of a big bright balloon.

No fear. No fight. No flight into action because

it’s not going to happen. Not to you. Not today.

From the Other Room by Anna M. Warrock (Slate Roof 2017)

 


From the Other Room by Anna M. Warrock (Slate Roof 2017)

Review by Doug Holder

'

The first thing I noticed about Somerville, Mass. Poet Anna. M. Warrock's new collection of poetry “From the Other Room,” was the physical book itself. Usually I merely glance at a book cover, but this was like love at first sight; I stopped to admire its simple beauty, The craftsmanship was at such a level, that it reminded of the many finely crafted books put out by Gary Metras' Adastra Press that-- like Slate Roof-- is located in Western, Massachusetts. Slate Roof is a small, collaborative press that published art-quality poetry books—the poetry that is between the covers in this case is more than worthy of its design.

I am in my early sixties so I can easily identify with what Warrock writes about. As the acclaimed poet Martin Espada opined, “Warrock speaks the the language of grief with eloquence and courage. She understands that experience of death changes the experience of life.” It usually takes someone with a little mileage to crack this nut open to the readers.

In her poem “Spring's Lament” the poet looks at a greening April tree, and sees the dark shadows below the nascent leaves. She understand how life and death are close dance partners, and indeed there may be a welcoming balm, and some forgiveness under Spring's incessant bloom,

So a tree turns green and green and green.

Then there's the shade.

I will not let go of that, the shadow under the tree,

dark, deep and forgiving.

Forgiven. That's what I mean, forgiven. (2)

Warrock captures a strikingly beautiful moment in the poem “Looking into her Death.” This is when a young girl ( Warrock—I assume) looks into her mother's hidden cupboard, and sees the luminous glasses on the shelf in a lineup of sorrow, waiting to be poured, to forestall their own demise—a perfect metaphor of absence-- for loss—for death...

… The glasses, stacked neatly,

become luminous on the shelves.

By opening the door, I shed light

on their curves, their brittleness.

They are so clear I can see the dust

caught on their transparent sides. Standing there, I realize they are waiting.

The glasses do not know my mother

is dead, so they wait for hands

to take them down, fill them with

beer or juice or milk. Then

her hands will wash them,

her hands will put them away.

“ She is dead,” I say softly, “she is dead.”

Warrock has long been on the Boston are poetry scene. Her poems have appeared in the Harvard Review, The Madison Review and elsewhere. Her poems have been  performed at the Boston Hayden Planetarium, and permanently installed in a Boston area subway station. The reader gets the whole package here, the beautiful physical book and the poems(to use a cliché)...at times left me breathless.

INTERVIEW WITH CLARE L. MARTIN with Susan Tepper

INTERVIEW WITH CLARE L. MARTIN

 with Susan Tepper

Clare L. Martin’s second collection of poetry, Seek the Holy Dark, is the 2017 selection of the Louisiana Cajun and Creole Series by Yellow Flag Press. Her acclaimed debut collection of poetry, Eating the Heart First, was published by Press 53. Martin’s poetry has appeared in Thrush Poetry Journal, Melusine, Poets and Artists, and Louisiana Literature, among others. She founded and edits MockingHeart Review.

SUSAN TEPPER: ‘Seek the Holy Dark’ is an enticing title for a book of poems. What do these words mean to you?

CLARE L. MARTIN: The title of the book comes from the poem of the same title. I must go to it to explain what it means to me. In the poem, “Seek the Holy Dark,” there are supernatural beings—whether they are angels or demons, or something entirely different, I do not know. These beings exist alongside humans. The beings speak in the poem. Their speech in the poem is prophetic. The title “Seek the Holy Dark” is an imperative plea to acknowledge the darker aspects of existence in the spiritual journey. We uncover and discover through darkness to light. I suppose I am urging the reader to go with me into these dark places to find illumination and enlightenment for themselves. I also have tried to tap into that prophetic voice for many of the poems. Sometimes prophecy can be very mundane. My hope is that the language that I use rises to a level so that what is ineffable can be intimated. This ties into the declaration to “seek the holy dark” that enfolds the entirety of the poems.

ST: Though this is not a typical collection of love poems, your poems are inclusively about love in all its myriad forms.

CLM: In my belief system, God is love. So, spiritually, I want to aspire to my “godself” and be love. I believe Love energy permeates the universe, and is both the Infinite and the infinitesimal. Many of these poems are in pursuit of godliness and/ or are love poems to humanity. Even though I write about God, this book is not religious in any way. I think this will be obvious to any reader. Some might call these poems heretical or sacrilegious but I would protest those characterizations. I take readers to the very edge with me, and we come back from the poetic experiences wiser and stronger. I hope that doesn’t sound boastful. I mean it sincerely.

In the poems that are more typical “love poems,” I express with abandon myriad passions. The erotic or love poems are dangerous for me. They may not seem as daring as some poets have been able to express, but for me they are risking a great deal. If I cannot risk it in life, I will risk it on the page.

I also feel that the poems that are the most sensual express a womanliness that I have grown into. It has something to do with my mother’s death. Many of these poems were written after her death. I was both in mourning for her and in a sense freed as well when writing these poems. She was proud of me and loved me and I loved her, but I do not believe she would have approved of this book. I wrote it anyway. I had to. I do not mean that in a callous way. The unwritten words would have consumed me. This book is an exclamation of my personal womanhood and adulthood.

ST: Your poems deal with the displaced and disenfranchised people of the world and how they are inter-connected to the luckier people. Yet I would not categorize you as a protest poet. At least not in the traditional sense. In your poem BODY you write:

“I am a million bodies / laid upon each other / a million bodies in a mass grave / …”

CLM: This poem came to me through viewing the shore at Dingle, Ireland as photographed by Myriam Jégat. I saw the stones as bodies and the imagery came from there. There is a fury in this poem that outpaces the language. I hope the reader senses this. My protest is against hatred, egoism, injustice, and malignancies of human character. I put my life on the line in each poem. I hope that comes through for the reader.

SFT: One of my many favorites in this collection you have titled “Woman in Prayer.” It seems to be a poem of repentance, though I’m not quite certain of that. What can you tell us about this poem that begins:

“I am penitent; / poured on rail of the pew / somber Mary alit, / red-glassed candles / no smoke, but a hint / of myrrh…/”

CLM: This poem is a personal excoriation because of my own (at-the-time) perceived spiritual failings. I was raised Roman Catholic and left the Church at thirteen, before my Confirmation. I am a believer in God, but all my life I have been told I am doing it wrong because I don’t attend Mass and follow the Catholic Church’s teachings. I do, however, enter Catholic church buildings often for prayer and mystical solitude.

This poem is nearly the exact truth of an event. It occurred at St Anne’s Catholic Church in the city I live in. The poem was written shortly after I left St. Anne’s building. I suppose the overwrought contrition I felt expanded to many things in my life that I perceived as wrongdoings. I will likely never be free of “feeling guilty,” because of my upbringing. But, I am on a path of reclamation of my own sense of wholeness and inner peace. The book itself is a declaration of that purpose.

Thank you, Susan, for your thoughtful and thought-provoking questions and for caring enough about Seek the Holy Dark to ask them.

 Susan Tepper, an award-winning writer, has been at it for twenty years. Six books of her fiction and poetry have been published, with a seventh book, a novella, forthcoming in the fall of 2017. FIZZ her reading series at KGB Bar, NYC, is sporadically ongoing these past nine years. www.susantepper.com

Inward Accompaniment in ‘hundred and eight prayer flags’, a book of poems by Simrin Tamhane

Simrin Tamhane

Inward Accompaniment in ‘hundred and eight prayer flags’,

a book of poems by Simrin Tamhane

article by Michael Todd Steffen

In the February 13 & 20, 2017 issue of The New Yorker (pp 93-5), Joyce Carol Oates comments on refugee and fiction writer Viet Thanh Nguyen. “It is hardly surprising,” Oates writes, that the displaced person “is obsessed with identity, both personal and ethnic…likely to be highly sensitive to others’ interpretations of him and his ‘minority’ culture. And so his peripheral status confers certain advantages, for he is in a position to see what others do not.”

The insight applies to Simrin Tamhane and her expressive debut book of poems, hundred and eight prayer flags, issued this year as part of the Endicott College Young Poets Series by Ibbetson Street Press (series director Emily Pineau,  Founders Dan Sklar, Doug Holder).

Tamhane sees from her experience and memory, in the title poem, the embodiment of her natural and homeland energies, in

thousands of faded mantras printed on

rows of endless white

prayer flags that cling

onto tall bamboo poles while

dancing with the swirling Himalayan wind… [page 3]

The poet poignantly documents the significant coincidence of her young displacement from India to America with the loss of a cherished grandfather:

When I was flying

to the United States, leaving

behind everything,

the time zone didn’t let me

know that you died

until 2 days later…

And so I lit candles for you,

In this foreign land,

And prayed for your soul…

Hidden in the dorm bathroom,

Silencing my pain with

Cheap toilet paper [“my father’s father,” page 9]

The physical sense of isolation, however, is sustained inwardly with accompaniment in images of multiplicity like the “hundred and eight prayer flags” of the poem, or even more subtly in Tamhane’s choice word for a particular red denoting plenitude:

i am vermillion

power clouds [“who am i” p. 6]

The genius of the poetry, however, while allowing the consolation and inspiration of memory, faces its counterweight in what has happened with a striking concluding image:

Goodbye was 3 pistachios placed

On your hand while you

Struggled to have them touch your lips [page 9]

Whether she is conjuring from her past in India a poor maid that looked after her, forays with other children stealing passion fruit from her grandfather’s bamboo trellis, or witnessing the contradictions in the lives of her young American encounters (a would-be animal-rights activist who wears a vintage leather jacket, a medical student who works as a nightclub stripper) Tamhane’s vision is pristine and her language vivid and to the heart.

Charlotte Gordon has called this book “luminous and clear-sighted.” Mark Herlihy has noted the range of Tamhane’s powers of empathy which convey “loss, longing and heartache on personal and universal levels.” It is a promising first collection, accented with talent, imagination and consideration.

Michael Todd Steffen curates the Hastings Room Reading Series in Cambridge. His poetry and articles have appeared in The Boston Globe, Connecticut Review, Poem (HLA), ACM (Another Chicago Magazine), Ibbetson Street, Taos Journal and in the window of the Grolier Poetry Bookshop. His first book Partner, Orchard, Day Moon was published in April of 2014 by Cervena Barva Press edited by Gloria Mindock. 

“La La Land” – a movie review by William Falcetano (written before the Oscars)

“La La Land” – a movie review by William Falcetano (written before the Oscars)

I went to this movie on Valentine’s Day; it was one of those things guys do, along with buying flowers and boxes of chocolates and dinner. Guys do this sort of thing not because we are hopeless romantics – we’re not – but because the women in our lives are romantics and we must go along. So I went to see the musical “La La Land” a skeptic determined to put on a happy face, grin and bear it (if it proved to be a really painful experience I could always get my comeuppance in a movie review); but I left the theater a convinced believer – and you will too.

The first scene – on a jammed highway overpass – was amazing, but almost backfired for an excess of energy, too much kinetic, balletic movement. Our leading lady Mia Dolan, played by the beautiful and talented Emma Stone, is busy texting (what else is there to do when stopped in traffic?) while our leading man Sebastian Wilder, played by the handsome and gifted Ryan Gosling, is stuck behind her, fuming with road rage (more than once a woman in the audience was heard to say to her boyfriend or husband – “that’s just like you!”). When the chance comes to move ahead a few feet she is busy texting and he, full of umbrage, leans on his horn while passing her. She responds by flipping him the bird – not an auspicious start to a love story! The couple meet again when Mia finds her car has been towed (cars again!); she wanders into a piano bar where this same fella is acting out a little rebellion by improvising complicated jazz numbers when the owner (J.K. Simmons) just wants traditional Christmas melodies. He’s fired on the spot and she falls in love; but when she approaches him he turns out to be the same jerk again. Strike two. But winged Cupid has brought these two love birds together and will not quit until they meet a third time – this time three’s the charm. Now he’s reduced to a shoulder slung keyboard in a cheesy band playing 80s pop tunes at pool parties for the pretty and the vacuous – a painful fate for a jazz purist. They manage to save each other from their mutual entanglements and begin their dance around and with each other.

Music is an integral part of this film: it stands alone in jazz scenes and is interwoven with dance numbers. Song and dance are what make musicals a distinctive art form – and the musical film is one of America’s great art forms, along with Jazz. Yet Jazz is dying and the musical – well it’s all but dead. In Sebastian’s lamentation over the death of jazz we are invited to think also about this other art form which is so characteristically American, and so much a part of our American story. There are plenty of allusions to the history of musicals – this is after all a film about film making just as “Singing in the Rain” – perhaps the most well-known and celebrated movie musical. Mia is a barista on the Warner Brother’s lot and she is gobsmacked by the movie stars who dash in for a take-out cappuccino. We see scenes being shot as they meander around the back lots with the Hollywood Hills in the background. Mia wants to make a drama, a film, something; Sebastian wants to restart an old jazz club. They are millennials so full of ambition, so short of success, so hungry for auditions and gigs; this is as much “La Boheme” as La La Land. They pursue their dreams with the ardor and purity of youth – you can’t help but root for them. Besides they are so good looking you can’t take your eyes of their faces – Emma Stone works small miracles in lots of close up shots.

This is a very knowing work of art, it alludes to and incorporates the Griffith Observatory from “Rebel without a Cause” – an LA landmark; dance scenes take place in Paris against cartoon backdrops that recall that other musical – “An American in Paris”. The staging, lighting, costumes all work their magic and mix together almost seamlessly with the realism of the Los Angeles sun and the California nights as street scenes jammed with parked cars under romantic street lights somehow come to life to evoke a strong sense of place.

But LA exists in a larger world and Paris beckons to Mia – how can she resist? In the end they both find success; but love...ah love…such a tricky, slippery thing...let’s just say they find love but not in the way we might have imagined or hoped for – and it is this which saves this movie from the worst faults of the movie musical – the predictably happy ending. The dollop of realism with which this film ends blends reality with fantasy in a way that works; at least it worked for me: a determined skeptic and an old codger familiar with love and loss.

During the Great Depression, in the 1930s, musicals rendered a real service for a country that needed an escape, even if only for an hour or two, from a national reality that was less than savory; and this musical can do that for you too just as it did for me and my gal on Valentine’s Day.

 

 

Endicott College/Ibbetson Street Press/Visiting Author Series

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The Sunday Poet: Heather Nelson

Heather Nelson

Heather Nelson is a poet, teacher, mother and recovering attorney based in Cambridge, Massachusetts. She studied writing under the poet C.D. Wright as an undergraduate at Brown University. Most recently she has studied poetry with Tom Daley and Barbara Helfgott Hyett. Heather's work has appeared in Constellations, The Somerville Times, The Sunday Poet, he Compassion Anthology and Ekphrastic Review.

The Leaning Tower                          

is climbed by appointment-

timed clusters of travelers wound into queues,

shuffling along the edge

of 4:30’s scorching shadow.

I am searching for Sophia

when a dark-garbed guard turns my head

with a sharp bark: Watch your son!

My blond boy as always is climbing the rails.

I spot her at last-far off

on the grass, behind the Pomodoro,

where at 4 she practiced her shaky

walk-over, dark hair sweeping the ground.

Like an umber fan, hair hid

her burning face, her trembling legs,

the trace of amused scorn at the corner

of her older brother’s mouth.

Still waiting, I’m wishing for morning

a return to the wall where they all

walked abreast, two boys and a girl,

tramping together along Lucca’s rim.

Truthfully there was morning

fighting too, over three bottles of

water, bought just for the bathroom,

spilled struggling over who gets whose first.

Lunch served us a respite under the cover

of a wide canopy, we all had room

for seven wines poured by the owner’s daughter

whose red hair wound across the label of the Rosato.

Our family runs toward noir,

thick brow and olive skin,

sister and big brother twine, arms wrestling,

each boasting a greater darkness.

The last wine served is darkest

and sweetest lingering in the late afternoon light,

blurring Sophia’s lithe and livid frame, her simmering shame,

all she is hiding in her halter of yellow flowers, daring me to find her.

--Heather Nelson