Review of CRACK WILLOW, POEMS OF TRANSFORMATION, by Shelby Allen

Review of CRACK WILLOW, POEMS OF TRANSFORMATION, by Shelby Allen, Cherry Grove Collections, PO Box 541106, Cincinnati, Ohio 45254, cover art also by Shelby Allen, www.cherry-grove.com, 82 pages, 2011

Review by Barbara Bialick

The poets who wrote back cover lines for this book, speak of nature, survival, metamorphosis…that’s all there, but the poem I want to zoom in on is one about her father in a photograph.—“In an Old Newspaper Photo”. Like this photo, this is a book full of secrets, family secrets, that she tells but doesn’t tell, knows, but doesn’t know:

“…my father stands straight/at the center of men and smiles/…he’s completed a deal/…But I know my father had another smile,/thin as string, bent/like the curve of his hat,…/a smile below sad eyes/the same look his father had/in the photo on my parents’ bureau/My father used to say his father/always wanted to…I don’t remember what…He never did it,/My mother said my father/always wanted to do something too…/I recognize/the little tell-yourself-it-doesn’t-matter smile,/our family caption…”

Allen probably has this smile, too, one of the Radcliff girls overshadowed by the Harvard boys, in the 1966 Yearbook, or the smile of the FAO Schwartz “three-ton teddy bear” in Boston. “Am I still (my mother’s)toy?/Do Not Climb, the sign says,/but children are climbing,/right up to the steel scarf and its fetching bow/…giant F, giant A, my mother’s silenced initials./an O on the third block as wide/as my buried scream.”
I would call this book “a good read,” but I am also waiting for its sequel when she tells me what is going on here and that she has even more fully transformed the past.

Like the skater paper doll, in “A Closed Shop”, captured “in your groove, the slot cut for you/in the lid of the box/Stop, little skater/You don’t even have ice./How will you learn to fall?”

But the poet does tell us what to do in “Any Tree Will Listen”: “If you can’t speak of it,/stand in the embrace of a Norway spruce:/all of Norway will shelter you/in a cloak of boughs filled with fjords of light./,,,If you can’t find a tree/when you need one, all you need/is a crack in the concrete: one green shoot.”

Somerville Poets Patrick Sylvain and Kim Triedman: Words as a balm for disaster.

Somerville Poets Patrick Sylvain and Kim Triedman: Words as a balm for disaster.
Interview with Doug Holder

Poets Kim Triedman and Patrick Sylvain joined me on my Somerville Community Access TV show “Poet to Poet: Writer to Writer,” to talk about the acclaimed poetry reading they were part of and the subsequent anthology “Poets for Haiti.” All this was in reaction to the tragic earthquake that brought Haiti to its knees. Triedman, managing editor for the Ibbetson Street Press in Somerville, Mass, edited the anthology and was instrumental in organizing the reading. Sylvain is originally from Haiti and now lives in Somerville. He is a well-regarded poet, educator and activist.


Doug Holder: How do you think poetry has helped people connect with Haitian culture? Did your readings and others like it help people realize what was lost during the earthquakes?

Kim Triedman: I think the enormity of the disaster was enough for people to stand up and take notice. Poetry, at least to my knowledge, had not been used in this way significantly before—in terms of the way the poetry community supported us. I think it was a very valuable model if nothing else. The fact that so many people came out and responded to the poetry, responded to the situation, responded with donations, made the reading a tremendous success. We had five Haitian American poets. I think the situation in Haiti demanded this attention.

Patrick Sylvain: I agree, I was thrilled with it, and when I saw the lineup of all the other poets, I knew it would be a success. But I did not think it would be as successful as it turned out. Even the reading we did at Porter Square Books in Cambridge was great—I think we sold 170 books.

KT: Yes. It really excited us. There was tremendous energy. The whole thing took over two hours. And no one got up to leave.

PS: What impressed me was all the generosity of the poets and Kim in putting it together.
The Arts have been central to Haitian culture. Whether its poetry, fiction, painting, etc… Haiti is known for its artistic expression. After the earthquake we sort of made a pact with the devil. It brought us attention, but also destruction. Haiti has been demonized in so many ways. So I think an event like this to counterbalance that image—is so good for an alternative way to look at things. It provides a way took beyond the fact that Haiti is the poorest country. The language of poetry is universal. And poets speak with one another. The readers at the event and the poetry lovers interacted in a very warm and heartfelt way.

DH: Kim-- there is always a litany of disasters-so why did this particular one—light a fire for you?

KT: I can’t say exactly. But I happened to be in my poetry workshop a couple of days after the incident and one of my colleagues said as we were leaving: “I wish there is more that we can do.” We had all written checks; we all watched the footage. For some reason I couldn’t keep my eyes off of it. And that night it occurred to me that I had a friend who was a poetry organizer. She made me realize I could put something together with poets and artists. I ended up working with Jim Henle of Harvard University who had the same idea. I think what prompted me was that line from my group: “I wish there is more that we can do.” Once we asked people to be part of our reading etc…we had a full roster of poet in two days, etc…

DH: The reading took place Feb. 23, 2010 at the Harvard Ed. School. It has been said that the “Poets owned the evening.” What does that mean?

PS: Our words and emotions took us someplace that was unexpected. It was not a catastrophe reading so to speak, nor was it overwhelmed with emotions. It was sort of a heartfelt literary event that took us to a spot where we understood human frailty, human resilience, but at the same time we talked to each other. Fred Marchant (Director of the Suffolk University Poetry Center) read a poem by a Haitian poet. The poem he read was connected to one of his own poems. There were many of these “interconnections.” Fred read the work of a poet he never met. We had 13 poets, and the audience wanted more!

KT: It almost had a spiritual aspect. People were elated. It was an incidental reading forum. There was no grandstanding. Robert Pinsky (Former U.S. Poet Laureate), as well as an award-winning Haitian High School poet read. Other poets like Rosanna Warren, Gail Mazur read—so we had an amazing group. It took its own shape.

DH: Patrick—in your poem “Boulevard Jean Jacques Dessalines” you write of this famed street in Port-au-Prince. Tell us a bit about the street in its salad days, and how it is now. Who was the man it was named after?

PS:When I grew up was you Port-au-Prince was very small. I left Haiti in 1981. The Boulevard was like Mass. Ave. in Cambridge, Mass. It was a central artery. It had a lot of business going on, and two hundred yards to its right you had the seaport—so literally you could see the sea. I remember when I started to go to school you could see the increase in merchants. And when I went back to Haiti in 1990, I wanted to see some of these places. I wanted to look at people. To me Haiti is theatre. The merchants pressing against each other, all the theatrical battles that took place between them…I wanted to witness this yet again. I had a very specific memory of a very chaotic place. So when I went back, I could see the street was overwhelmed by vendors, and the poverty and desperation was very evident.

Dessalines was one of the founders of Haiti. He became a liberator and later ironically a dictator. Later he was murdered, a little outside Port-au-Prince. So this same thoroughfare named after the great liberator is full of chaos and poverty.

DH: Kim—in your poem “Toil” you write “Spring will come.” Has spring sprung in the aftermath in Haiti?

KT: It’s going very slowly. I hope it will. There is just a relentless of catastrophes these days.

PS: I think we can only be hopeful. People in Haiti don’t believe in suicide—as long there is hope there is life.

Presa 14, spring 2011 Tributes to Hugh Fox

Presa 14, spring 2011
Tributes to Hugh Fox
Presa Press, PO Box 792
Rockford, MI 49341
presapress@aol.com, www.presapress.com
Copyright 2011 Presa Press and Authors
Editor – Roseanne Ritzema

for Ibbetson St. Press

Review by Lo Galluccio

Hugh Fox never stops writing. Right now he has four novels out: “Depths and Dragons” (Skylight Press in the U.K), “The Lord Said Unto Satan” (Post Mortem Press), (On Line) – 'In the Beginning” (Muse it Up Press in Canada) and “Reunion” by Luminous Press. In addition, he's released a Journal of Archeological musings called “Immortal Jaguar” (Skylight Press.)

As stated in the introduction to this tribute issue to Fox, Hugh has been the longtime editor of Ghost Dance and exerted his influence as a founder of COSMEP and The Pushcart Prize. He has written books about Charles Bukowski and Lyn Lifshin and his reviews in the Small Press Review outnumber those of any other reviewer.

For this issue of Presa, Hugh was asked to select favorite poems, including Fox's 180 line collaboration with Eric Greinke “Beyond Our Control.” It's currently under nomination for a Rhysling Award. The issue also includes poems and memoirs about and to Hugh from grateful friends and fellow writers: Kostelanetz, Greinke, Lifshin, Luschei, Lockie, Smith and O'Hearn. Also included in the issue are poems by 30 other poets various subjects.

Word play, striking juxtaposition, musings on the nature of the universe and consciousness, the emblematic presence of mysterious gods – all pervade Fox's verse. A time and space traveler, he leaps from situation to situation, from cultural purview to personal episode like an acrobat. In Section 11 of “Apotheosis of Olde Towne” he writes:

“playspace
eye to eye under glass grass,
wayspace,
chess,
chat
color upflung - - pipe in birds!” p. 5

Broken up into four jagged stanzas, Hugh begins and ends with Unity: “green, the curved eye and the curved mind.”

In a self portrait poem, “Who am I?” from Once, Fox asserts:

“Who am I?,
musico loco/crazy musician


vagabond wind,
fuchsia feathers,
…
Buddha snapping up
from dreams...
the snake twisting of
dragon king Melech-Moloch
God.” p 6


Having been raised staunchly Irish Catholic and then realizing his Jewish lineage, Hugh uncovers and seemingly vaunts many spiritual icons in his poems to form a rich cosmos in which many spirits are at play.

He is equally comfortable in the urbane setting of the Allerton Hotel in Chicago where he would encounter “Le petitie Gourmet where there was this blonde piano player who'd always play “Clair de Lune” when I'd come in after the Chicago Symphony Orchestra on Saturday nights....” This was years before and now Fox, rummaging around for old ghosts, finds at the Drake “a beautiful naked-armed harpist (statistically impossible!) playing “Clair de Lune” in the lounge.” Such snapshot moments of coincidence or synchronicity also activate Fox's poetry.

He pays tributes to relics collected on journeys in his Amsterdam ranch house in “Flea Markets.”

“I buy a bunch of Mochica masks
of Hercules, me the only one in the world who
knows that's what they are, my whole house a
flea market museum...” p 8

Comparing it to the garage sale flea markets inhabited by “Koreans and Japanese, Indonesians, Hindus from India” where one finds “a wood carved statue of dancing Siva, a marble carving of Ganesha, the elephant God, my whole sanity/identity revolving around the walls of my rooms that are more me than me these days.”

In a whoosh of hedonistic pleasure, Fox, in “Everything” from Approaching/Acercando, runs down the everything of that moment.

“....NOW, NOW, NOW, slender reed legs
that arrive at almost full-time
rapturous friction, take Crack, dance
in the street, the voices in the internal Caverns
always whispering higher heels, shorter skirts....”

All, it seems the enigmatic feminine presence in humanity “without thinking about death or its equivalents or alternatives.” p. 10



In the brilliant collaboration with Greinke, Fox ebbs and flows in each stanza with a longing for “now defunct deities” and “greasy abandoned keyboards and feeble mountain peaks.” p 11. He writes:

“Trying to slide back into pre-everything
but slipping instead into black holes of
memory, Polish sausaging and
potato-pancaking through memorial
masquerades that mimic lost moments...” p 12

And in the final stanza:

“The spirits of our ancestors waft around us
haunt our whys and why-nots, wherefores and where-nexts,
remind us that soul music is in us all.” p. 15

There is an interlude of poems by Ellaraine Locke, John Mervin, Guy R. Beining and one I'm particularly fond of by Mike Spikes which ends:

“when you are away from me
I am
too.” p. 24

Juxtaposed nicely are two by David Bloomberg and Dean Phelps: “My Dream of Being Pregnant Was” and “The Child Inside,” respectively.

Then the small press luminaries weigh in on the unique and magnetic character of Hugh Fox, part mystical unicorn, part work horse.

“No one else reviewed as much small-press produce as Benny. If only because he acknowledged books and writers ignored everywhere else. Some small press should produce a CD-RROM reprinting those reviews not only to respect him but our movement.”
Richard Kostelanetz

Eric Greinke pens one for Hugh:

“With blue eyes
Why extinguish
Your distinguished self
In the muddy mire?
I turned my back
On poetry, but
Poetry wouldn't tun
Its back on me,
Nor on you, Hugh.” p. 37





The notoriously prolific Lyn Lifshin, in a tribute titled “Amazing” gives gracious thanks to Fox for years of friendship and support as a poet:

“It is hard to believe that the book he wrote about me, “Lyn Lifshin, A Critical Study” was published in 1985. I've always been amazed at the imaginative, perceptive plunges he keeps taking into my work. If I ever feel down about my writing or discouraged, his words always make me feel better. He is one of the sweetest, warmest people I know.” p. 38

Ellaraine Lockie pens a five page travelogue about a week with Hugh, who she dubs Foxy, well worth reading and Jared smith puts one in called, “Do We Not” with the refrain “We get older, do we not?” in three stanzas replete with many beautiful nature images – a serenade to vintage aging and the eyes' inscrutable ability to see on through it all.”

Viva Hugh Fox!

Lo Galluccio, author of “Hot Rain,” “Sarasota VII,” and “Terrible Baubles.”

Mid Drift by Kate Hanson Foster

Mid Drift
by Kate Hanson Foster
Loom Press
Lowell, MA
Copyright © 2011 by Kate Hanson Foster
ISBN: 978-0-931507-27-4
Softbound, 62 pages, $15

Review by Zvi A. Sesling

So let me start by saying I truly enjoyed Kate Hanson Foster’s Mid Drift for its simple complexity – or is it complex simplicity. This book breathes language, image and sun breaking through an overcast sky. It is about Lowell, MA, love, failed love, about prayer for what was, is or will be, it is a memoir of failure and of hope. It is very accessible and a joy to read.

In the opening poem, “Prayer” Ms. Hanson Foster tells us what her life is about:

Dear God:
what should we make
of what has gone wrong with my life?
All day I could watch
dead water. I’m in love
with a lunatic, I drink too much,
and I no longer believe in recovery.
I want back what disappears
into the crook of the canal.

But unhappiness can be combined with a touch of humor that masks a depressed state as in “Riverwalk”

He tells me about his drinking
problem, the prostitute,

his unhappy marriage.
A stickler for facts, he informs me

this is the longest lenticular
truss bridge remaining in the United States

I tell him I can sometimes still see Tom
hanging from the cast iron.

This book reveals people as they are, gloss removed, myth burned off, the fake outside the stadium. It shows urban depression as it really is, not the gleaming glass and steel, but the “deserted floor of that mill building”, the “whorey smell of big cities/a strange flower in some moth/eaten cow town” or she can relate personal sorry when she wants to “...tell you how it feels to be forgotten.”

Hanson Foster gives us images clear, stark, indelible. People are alcoholics, depressed, driven to compulsive or inevitable ends. Yet this is a poetry book that leaves a discarded past and a half acre of hope. Well worth reading.

Almond Town: Poems by Margaret Young.

Almond Town: Poems by Margaret Young. ( Bright Hills Press 94 Church Street POBOX 193 Treadwell, NY.) http://www.brighthillpress.org $16.


Review by Doug Holder



Margaret Young, a fellow faculty member at Endicott College in Beverly, Mass. can define with a skillful selection of words the worlds of sadness and gladness. She can marvel at her youth, but at the same time see the blush turn to a bloom, and foresee its preordained wilt.



I am most struck by her poems about her days in a theatrical troupe she formed decades ago. Here she captures the visceral feel of being young, creative, and supremely alive—but still with a gimlet eye toward the future. Case in point: her poem “Theatrical Residency, Pennsylvania Mining Town,” concerns her life as an actor in a down-at-the heels burg:



“Knelling in the bingo hall

smudges tights with cigarette ash:

this is a church but I’m down

here to rehearse the Wacko Song

as Prince the Wonderdog or plead

that Capulet not marry me to Paris

and its old nunnery next door

is where I knelt once just

inside the entrance to my small

pink room to suck my lover

off: when you’re twenty-five

you think your knees and love

will last forever so you run

up and down slag heaps

in ten dollar sneakers, each tree

younger than you, and back

through street of this slow-

dying town where recorded

Bells wake us every blessed day.”

I loved the image of a young woman running, and running by even younger trees. Fleeting youth framed by a strip of seminal trees-- now why couldn't I think of that!



And in her poem “Movie Set, Pittsburgh” she show us the high holy in the lowly pedestrian:



“Waiting for fake rain

again

we pull blossoms off

the parking lot’s



one

skinny tree.”



Highly Recommended.

Brook Batteau and the New Cosmology: A review (and preview) of a unique “rock/soul/tribal dance” band.

Brook Batteau and the New Cosmology:
A review (and preview) of a unique “rock/soul/tribal dance” band.

(Last seen in April at the Precinct Bar in Union Square; next to be seen on Friday, May 27th, at “the Loft” at Tommy Doyles, 96 Winthrop Street, Harvard Square. FREE admission before 9:30 pm., when Brook’s band is scheduled to hit the stage.)

In the spirit of full disclosure, the three people in this band are friends of mine. The fuller disclosure: they became friends only after I went to a bunch of their shows, hanging around afterwards to ask questions like, “how the heck do you guys do that?”

For me, the most important “that” that they do, is unleash—in every audience I’ve seen—an uncontrollable urge to dance in an energetic state of bliss.

First, some quick history. Brook Batteau was raised in Cambridge, one of four musically gifted siblings. (That’s a whole other story.) Brook developed a utterly unique, compelling lead vocal style while fronting bands in Boston, L.A., and New Orleans. Some compare his singing to a cross between David Byrne and Roy Orbison. There is some truth to this, but it’s more accurate to say that he sounds like someone from another planet. (I mean this as a real compliment to the other planet.)

Brook is also a very fine, original songwriter and guitarist. His wife Kate Hennessey, with whom he’s performed for years, is the “drum goddess” of the group. Rounding out the trio is veteran bassist Frank Rozelle. Frank reminds me of Keith Moon—the legendary drummer for the Who—who had an uncanny ability to anchor the beat of any song, while simultaneously incorporating constant, brilliant embellishments.

I asked Frank how he manages this. “I used to play with a group that had a wild, wild lead guitarist,” he explained. “It took a lot of work and practice, but I figured out how to hold my own on the bass. It was a matter of pride.”

Fortunately, people with credentials (I’m a musician, but usually write reviews of poetry books) also offer glowing comments about this group. “I felt all my cares floating away,” writes Josh Glenn of the Boston Globe. Lucy Holstedt, prof. at Berklee College of Music, exclaims, “I immediately started dancing and didn’t stop. This is GREAT band.”

I moved to Boston in the 1980’s. There have been a handful of bands that I’d always go to see. First, it was “O Positive.” Later, it was “Morphine,” led by the late, great Mark Sandman. For a few years, no one in particular, Now, thankfully, there’s another group that literally makes me jump and gyrate with joy. After each show, I feel I may have added years to my life.

Brook Batteau and the New Cosmology is based in Western MA, so they’re not in the area as often as I’d like. Whenever I hear they’re coming to town, I cancel any previous plans. I explain “something critical” has come up, and it’s “essential” I be there.

And in all honesty, I’m telling the truth.

Kirk Etherton, Union Square, Somerville, May 23, 2011

Deep Landscape Turning Poems by Ann Hutt Browning

Deep Landscape Turning

Poems by Ann Hutt Browning

Ibbetson Street Press

TO ORDER GO TO: http://tinyurl.com/yfwxkrp




Review by Fred Marchant
Oct. 23, 2009




It is a haunting title, this Deep Landscape Turning, and as we read this book of poems, it is a title that encourages us to meditate on each of those three words.

Let us begin then with the middle term. There are many literal landscapes in this book. There are poems set in the Dordogne and Macedonia, in Prague, London, and Chicago, and one 67 Knollwood Avenue, an address that sounds so quintessentially American, one can easily imagine it as the poet’s home. And as these poems ground themselves in place, there is also a wonderful sense of the peripatetic poet. Many of these poems present us with speakers walking across and sometimes deep into these landscapes. “A Day in the Dordogne, France”—the opening poem in the collection—sets the tone overall:


Dodging the shade we stay in the light air;
Then we plunge into the cavernous cave.
Damp with living walls, exuding mysteries
Of a people gone, but our brothers still,
Who breathed startling beast detail with sure strokes,
Startling sufficiency, quiet observers.
In a way, the aesthetic principle Browning ascribes to the ancient cave-painters also applies to her own work. She too writes with quick sure strokes, breathing startling life in each detail that she observes as she walks, strolls, plunges, slips, gets up again.

But this cave passage from the Dordogne also brings me to another word from the title of the book, deep. There are of course some literal caves in these poems, but the deep landscape is also the landscape of memory, and of our earlier selves, our souls in their idiosyncratic evolution. Browning’s poems invariably head toward that inner life, sometimes wryly, sometimes sadly, but always with a sure-footed sense that what resides there holds the key or keys as to what makes us human. Here is “My Younger Brother,” one of these memory poems, short enough to be quoted in full:
He held our mother’s hand,
His thumb rubbing back and forth
Across her knuckles.
He and our mother strolled in the garden,
Small chatter about food to eat growing well.
He filled her skirt with ripe tomatoes,
Laughing as he dropped each one
Into the billowing cloth,
His opened fist a fat starfish.
My mother walked, her loaded skirt swaying,
Back to the house, my brother following.
Her skirt was stained with red juice,
Her eyes like stars.


The precision of image in that child’s thumb moving across the adult’s knuckles, and in that skirt stained and swaying, these are typical of Browning’s art, but also typical is the cumulative effect of such images. One feels in this memory a joy and sense of abundance, so much so that we believe fully that the mother’s eyes were like stars in the sky to these children.

But of the three words in the title of this book, none is more important than “turning.” In one sense it points to the turning of seasons, perhaps especially to autumn and leaves turning colors and then falling. But it is the deep landscape within us that is turning also. It is our mortal participation in that larger turning of the seasons that is at the center of this book, grounding it, and at the same time inspiring language and imagination to intense feeling. There are arrivals and departures scattered throughout, and each time they remind us of the “turning,” the way nothing stands still, not the self, not memory, not others, not the world around us. In these poems, there are, for example, several hints of mortal threat posed by illness. One poem has a speaker who has says that death “has walked through our bedroom/ Touching his ashes to the lips of my wife.” There are also separations and yearnings and the rueful recognition that our ways of bridging the distances between us—even between loving partners—are in the long run as fragile as can be. The poem that gives the book its title is “Macedonian Autumn: Deep Landscape Turning,” the final poem in the book. It seems to be about a time of physical separation between the poet and her beloved. She has withdrawn from talk and “lived close to my secret-turned space.” She has written a letter, one t hat has been unanswered for a month. Then when the reply comes she is “split in two by joy.” But all this falling and rising emotion seems to suggest other and more permanent separations, where all that can remain between the most profound of lovers is but the “paper self” of words, poems, books, the signals we make to one another over great chasms.

In sum, Deep Landscape Turning has the feeling of elegy, but not despair. It has the feel of someone turning to face difficult, unyielding truths, and even if they are painful, there is the satisfaction of finding the words that will say those truths, and let us hold them, maybe even share them, as long as we can. In these poems, therefore, there is a great and lasting affirmation of our capacity to know and love. Such is the beautiful signal that emanates from this book in the end.


----Fred Marchant is the director of the Poetry Center at Suffolk University in Boston.

The Endicott Review Volume 28, Issue Spring 2011

(The Undergraduate Literary Review of Endicott College in Beverly, Mass. http://endicott.edu)


The Endicott Review
Volume 28, Issue 1
Spring 2011
Copyright © 201 by The Endicott Review
80 pages


Review by Zvi A. Sesling



The great thing about The Endicott Review (Endicott College in Beverly, MA.) is that there is always something for someone. Pardon the cliché, but it is true. The magazine has several sections entitled College, Nature, Childhood and Family, Love, Self, Death, Artwork, Dream, Miscellaneous. Each section provides writing by, in some cases, young, enthusiastic writers with promising futures and lots of talent. If the magazine has any weakness it is that there are no biographies of the authors and artists, which, of course would probably add another 20 or so pages. I would also like see a larger type, but with limited budgets. But that is all incidental to the terrific poetry, short stories, photographs and artwork contained in the Review’s 80 pages.

Richard W. Moyer is back with more nostalgia about Youngstown OH in 1940 and what intrigues me this time is that he went to Youngstown Rayen High School, where I attended the ninth and tenth grades. Sadly, his poems will have to serve as nostalgia because that venerable high school was torn down a year or two ago, an odd parallel to the demise of a once proud city. Personally, I hope he puts out a poetry book on the city.

So let’s look at the poetry where Emily Braile’s First Apartment takes us all back to those first days on our own, with or without roommates.

First Apartment: the opening lines of which remind me of the day I opened the refrigerator door and found a cold hamburger and beer, nothing else. Ah, what a breakfast, and I still can’t stand beer.

Cold beer and a
chicken nugget salad
eaten with chopsticks
by allies.

Or you can laugh with Tim Gager’s reminiscence When I’m Drunk I think About Phoenix which starts:

The time I just drove there
with an American Express
in my pocket but no coin
for a pay phone I found

by accident, a sunny bar
with green velour drapes frosted
with dust, must be dumb luck
Ma Bell’s out of order




Among the better poems in the journal is Endicott College Professor Doug Holder’s Portrait of My Mother At 85; Mark Pawlak’s short reminder of our high school or college courses, Teen Transit Talk; Johnny Clarke’s Angry Poetry For Self Loathing Lovers; Larissa Burgess’s Shoes; and Abigail Bottome’s Observing Couples. Before any other contributors think that not being mention mean their poems are not held in the same esteem, fear not, the all the poems are quality, it’s just that these poems were among my favorites.

The short stories are all worth a read as well, though Luke Salisbury’s Tell It Not, Paul Stephen Stone’s How To Train A Rock (as well as Parts 2 and 3), The Woman In Boston With Pamphlets by Lauren Peterson and Love On A Cold Sunday by Sara Peterson [any relations to Lauren??] were personal favorites, though readers may find others to their preference.

The magazine also contains excellent artwork and photography, the favorites (again, those not mentioned should have no thoughts of being less talented), being Avery Hopkins photo of a tree like a donut (or other thoughts), Melissa Paiva’s playing cards (a straight in poker) and Caitlin Cawley’s leaf with water drops. Doug Rosenberg had a number of interesting photos of which the black and white of a dog was my personal choice. Finally, Ruth Henderson’s photo montage was another favorite.

All that said, The Endicott Review presents a wide array of talent and I highly recommend to readers seeking new and established writers, as well as talented photographers. Take the time to get a copy to read it and enjoy it.






******** Zvi A. Sesling has published poetry in numerous magazines both in print and online in the United States, Great Britain, New Zealand, Canada and Israel. Among the publications are: Ibbetson St., Midstream, Poetica,The Deronda Review, Voices Israel, Saranac Review, New Delta Review, Plainsong, Asphodel, Haz Mat Review, Istanbul Literary Review, The Chaffin Journal, Ship of Fools, Chiron Review, Poetry Monthly Interational, Matrix, The Tower and Main Street Rag. He was awarded Third Place (2004) and First Prize (2007) in the Reuben Rose International Poetry Competition and was a finalist in the 2009 Cervena Barva Press Chapbook Contest. In 2008 he was selected to read his poetry at New England/Pen “Discovery” by Boston Poet Laureate Sam Cornish. He was a featured reader in the 2010 Jewish Poetry Festival in Brookline, MA. His poems have been published in the U.S., Canada, England, Israel and New Zealand. He is a regular reviewer for the Boston Small Press and Poetry Scene and he edits the Muddy River Poetry Review. He is author of King of the Jungle, (Ibbetson St., 2010) and a chapbook Across Stones of Bad Dream (Cervena Barva, 2011) and a second full length poetry book, Fire Tongue (Cervena Barva) is scheduled for 2011.

Poets Kim Triedman and Lawrence Kessenich Take The Helm at " Ibbetson Street "

(Kim Triedman)





















(Lawrence Kessenich)









Poets Kim Triedman and Lawrence Kessenich Take The Helm at the Ibbetson Street Press.

( Somerville, Mass.)

Ibbetson Street, a well-respected literary journal , founded in Somerville, Mass. in 1998, announced a change in the editing staff. The magazine, affiliated with Endicott College in Beverly, Mass., released this statement from publisher Doug Holder:


Dorian Brooks our longtime Managing Editor at “Ibbetson Street” is retiring. She did a wonderful job for us, and brought Ibbetson Street to a new level. Dorian will be very hard to replace but I asked two excellent poets and writers to grab the helm that Dorian so adeptly occupied. Kim Triedman will be the Managing Editor for the November issue (2011) and Lawrence Kessenich for June (2012). Each editor will be bringing a small number of poets on board for each issue, as well as editing the magazine. Harris Gardner and Mary Rice will continue to be our Poetry Editors. The new Issue of Ibbetson Street that is to be released this June will be the last one edited by Dorian. Mary Rice is the Poetry Editor for our upcoming issue ( #29) and she did a great job, including securing a number of poems from poet Celia Gilbert.


Below are the bios of the two new managing editors.








Kim Triedman began writing poetry after working in fiction for several years. In the past two years, she's been named winner of both the 2008 Main Street Rag Chapbook Competition and the 2010 Ibbetson Street Poetry Award; finalist for the 2007 Philbrick Poetry Award and the 2008 James Jones First Novel Fellowship; and semi-finalist for the 2008 Black River Chapbook Competition and the 2008 Parthenon Prize for Fiction. Her poems have been published widely in literary journals and anthologies here and abroad, including Main Street Rag, Poetry International, Appalachia, The Aurorean, Avocet, The New Writer, Byline Magazine, Poet's Ink, Poetry Salzburg Review, The Journal (U.K.), Asinine Poetry, Poetry Monthly, Current Accounts, Ghoti Magazine, IF Poetry Journal, Great Kills Review, Trespass Magazine, Mature Years, ART TIMES, Literary Bird Journal, and FRiGG Magazine. Additionally, one of her recent poems was selected by John Ashbery to be included in the Ashbery Resource Center’s online catalogue, which serves as a comprehensive bibliography of both Ashbery's work and work by artists directly influenced by Ashbery. This poem has also been included in the John Cage Trust archives at Bard College. Ms. Triedman has been nominated for the anthologies Best New Poets 2009 and Best of the Web 2010. She is a graduate of Brown University and lives in the Boston area with her husband and three daughters. Her first poetry collection -- "bathe in it or sleep" -- was published by Main Street Rag Publishing Company in October of 2008





Lawrence Kessenich won the 4,000-euro first prize at the 2010 Strokestown International Poetry Festival. He has published poetry in Cream City Review, Atlanta Review, Chronogram, Conclave, Ibbetson Street and Wilderness House. His chapbook Strange News was published by Pudding House Publications in 2008. Mr. Kessenich was an editor at Houghton Mifflin Company in Boston for ten years, where he read for the publisher's annual poetry series and worked on Selected Poems: Anne Sexton and Anne Sexton: A Biography. He also worked with two Houghton Mifflin Literary Fellowship Award-winning novelists and many other fiction and nonfiction writers. He lives in Watertown, a suburb of Boston.

Dr. Steven Luria Ablon: A Poet Who Yearns to Break Your Heart.

Dr. Steven Luria Ablon: A Poet Who Yearns to Break Your Heart.


Interview with Doug Holder

Steven Ablon is a psychiatrist whose main purpose as a poet is( in his words) “to break your heart.” Ablon, a Harvard Medical School faculty member who is well-seasoned in the practice of psychoanalysis, is acquainted with heart break. In his poetry he wants his words to be strongly evocative. He wants to reach the reader on a visceral level.

And indeed Ablon achieves this with his new book of poetry “Night Call.” Neeta Jain, Poetry Editor of The Journal of General Internal Medicine writes:

“In Night Call, Ablon slows us down so we can examine moments in medicine with him. He balances harsh, clinical reality of human frailty with the sweetness of compassion. A master poet, Albon uses poems to expose this tension as he masters medicine from student to physician.”

I talked with Dr. Ablon on my Somerville Community Access TV show “Poet to Poet: Writer to Writer.”

Doug Holder: You practice psychoanalysis. Sigmund Freud of course is the father of psychoanalysis. Does this come into play in your poetry?

Steve Albon: I love poetry. Freud’s interest in the subconscious, the dissociative method—I think these are basic parts of poetry and analysis. Like free association—you work with whatever comes to your mind, and go from there. When you begin writing—writing a poem—you sometimes end up in a surprising place you didn’t expect to. I’m in a workshop where we use phrases as prompts and then just write for five minutes —whatever comes to mind. We see where it leads us. Sometimes you can get material that builds into a poem.

DH: I have run poetry groups at McLean Hospital for years. I find poetry can be very therapeutic. Your take?

SL: I don’t use poetry myself. I think it is tremendously therapeutic though. It is for me my writing source of comfort and awareness.

DH: Well life is essentially chaotic. Doesn’t writing bring some coherence—provides a narrative to it all-so to speak?

SL: It gets you in touch with things, and brings coherence to things you weren’t fully aware of. Like in my poetry collection “Night Call.” I went to medical school and went through all kinds of painful and difficult things as a young man. At the time I didn’t have time to think about it. Now many years later all of this comes up. Probably because I have enough distance to deal with them.

DH: You quote Goethe in your introduction. “We are, ourselves, at last, dependent.” Doesn’t this fly in the face of the American Western mythos of the stranger coming into town—the lone gunslinger—taking matters in his own hands?

SL: (Laugh) I think we would agree that there are some situations that you have to be strong and independent. But underneath it all we long for relationships, support, love, and connection. Connection is what sustains us. People try to push this aside and minimize it. If you do this you miss out on a lot of important things.

DH: In your poem Café de Paris, in your new collection, you are in a café with an attractive woman. A nefarious mole on her leg spoils the idyllic moment. As a doctor are you more on the lookout for pathology than the average Joe?

SL: Well as doctors we know more than the average person about pathology. We know a mole can become a melanoma. We know the consequences. We have seen patients struggle with things like these.

DH: William Carlos Williams, a doctor and poet, and author the groundbreaking book of poetry “Patterson” wrote about of all places a very pedestrian Patterson, N.J. He thought that poetry should reflect the “local,” “real life.” Your poetry is accessible, and certainly deals with life the way it is, without grand theatrical flourishes.

SL: I don’t think poetry should require looking up references. It should have an immediate impact in its own right. Much like Robert Frost. You read it, and it seems to be on the page very powerful. There is meaning behind it but it is not obscure. In that way it is poetry of everyday life.

DH: You deal with death in your poetry. Death is a fact of life. Do you think we try to push it aside—or don’t deal with it in Western society?

SL: So much of poetry deals with death. It is part of life—not just medicine. I think Asian cultures are more accepting of it. It is a hard fact of life. As P.T. Barnum said “I’m not going to get out of this life, alive.’

DH: You studied with Barbara Helfgott Hyett. What constitutes a good teacher of poetry?

SL; Barbara is very good teacher. She can work with each person’s style. You are not expected to fit in her way of writing. You find your own voice. She is incredibly generous and loves to see the people she works with succeed. She always tells us to write a poem that will “break her heart.”


Cadaver

The lesson for today is life
inscribed in bones we dig among,
muscled, tendoned, the ruined veins,
heart as frozen as gray snow.

The face is the burnt white moon
raveled, the seas scalpelled for us
a thousand times without reproach.
I turn the grooved brain in my hand.

Which lobe for laughter, which regret
stinking of formaldehyde.
Who kissed the crater cheek, this chin,
the death we call Penelope.


* from "Night Call"

And the Birds Still Fly by Pam Rosenblatt

And the Birds Still Fly
Pam Rosenblatt
Eden Waters Press
$12.95


REVIEW BY Renee Schwiesow

“And the Birds Still Fly” is Pam Rosenblatt’s second book of poetry. Her first book, “On How to Read The Manual,” was published by Ibbetson Press. I heard Pam Rosenblatt read from “On How to Read The Manual” several years ago in Plymouth, Massachusetts. The soft-spoken photographer/poet brings her words lightly to our ears, where they linger in a whisper that remains with us.

Rosenblatt, a member of the legendary Somerville Bagel Bards, will no doubt be offering us more in the way of spoken word as she continues to promote “And the Birds Still Fly.” Kathleen Spivack has called these poems “original an innovative.” Indeed, Rosenblatt’s layout is original and innovative leading the eye along a path as if each word were a lyrical morsel for us to follow until we’ve reached the ending notes of the poems.

sun yellow bird
with rapid, stirring wings
hovers, drinks
lilac’s nectar.

The work sings us a score filled with nature. Rosenblatt pays tribute not only to the birds, but also to the squirrels, raccoons, even the insects get a poetic nod:

A six-legged insect constructs
a translucent home –

Then she juxtaposes nature against the manmade in the work “In Her Dining Room,”

Varnished green purple red grapes
push against each other falling over
the chubby chipped red-hued apple and
two portly peeling lime-colored pears all tucked
inside the dark wood bowl. . .

the difference between all that lives and grows and the inanimate palpable through the end two lines

. . .fruit too hard to consume.
Scene easy to photograph.

Rosenblatt’s photographer’s eye is evident in the observations she makes throughout “And the Birds Still Fly.” It is an eye that offers us a picture of each object she has chosen to witness and bring to life before the reader’s eyes.

She gazes out the window again,
the cumulus have somehow connected,
turned gray. Thunder rolls with
a sharp strike of white-yellow across
the smoke-hued sky.

Yes, we have that picture and a bonus in sound.

IBBETSON STREET 29 to be out next month!

The New Ibbetson Street (29) with poetry from: Celia Gilbert, Richard Hoffman, Jennifer Barber, and Barbara Helfgott Hyett will be out in June--stay tuned!




(Click on picture to Enlarge)


Front Cover Photo: Dianne Robitaille.

The Write Stuff: English Students Contributing to Local Small Press and Poetry Blog

***** This appeared in the Endicott College Blog






The Write Stuff: English Students Contributing to Local Small Press and Poetry Blog




The EC blog recently sat down with Doug Holder, an adjunct writing professor at Endicott and founder of the local Boston literary blog Boston Area Small Press and Poetry Scene. Doug helps us introduce his first student contributor to the blog, Jason Roberts:

I have taught ENG 101 and Creative Writing 108 for a couple of years now at Endicott College. I also have set up an office for the Ibbetson Street Press, a literary journal, and small publishing house at the college. In that capacity I am always looking to involve Creative Writing students and others in the larger literary community. The literary blog Boston Area Small Press and Poetry Scene, which I founded 7 years ago, is widely read by the Boston area literary community and beyond. It consists of interviews with writers, book reviews, and more. Our first reviewer in a new student series is Creative Writing major Jason Roberts, who was in my Eng 101 class this semester (Spring 2011). Jason told me he never has written a book review. I showed him sample book reviews on the site, and when he was ready we gave him a poetry journal to read. We worked on several drafts before it was posted; Jason now knows the basics of writing reviews and probably has his first publishing credit. I plan to work with students next semester and enlist them in the role of book reviewers, which will help make writing vital and exciting. I hope when people search online they will come across a collegiate cadre of Endicott writers.


We’d like to congratulate Jason on being the first student in this series! Click here for Jason’s full review of “Popt Art Portraits. Popt Art Vol 1 Spring 2011,” on the Boston Area Small Press and Poetry Scene.




Jason Roberts, Creative Writing major


In similar news, we would also like to congratulate Creative Writing student Katie Clarke, who interviewed Pulitzer Prize winning Poet Maxine Kumin and whose essay will be featured in the next issue of the literary journal Ibbetson Street.

Tags: creative writing, poetry, review, student work

Jennifer Jean: A Poet with ‘Oceanic’ tastes

Poet Jennifer Jean: A Poet with ‘Oceanic’ tastes

Interview by Doug Holder



Poet Jennifer Jean was born near the water in Venice Beach, California. Her mother often took her out on the water, and the water has been a player on her life stage. She now lives in Salem, Mass., a historic seaport with her husband and kids. So I guess you could say she has never been a fish out of water.



Jean who teaches writing at Salem State College, is an accomplished poet with work in Caketrain, California Review, North Dakota Quarterly and others. She is the author of two collections of poetry “In the War,” and “Fishwife Tales.” This enterprising bard is an instrumental player behind the Mass. Poetry Festival to be held May 13th and 14th in Salem, Mass. I spoke to her on my Somerville Community Access TV show “Poet to Poet: Writer to Writer”



Doug Holder: Your new collection “Fishwife Tales” uses marine creatures as a focal point. What was behind your choice to use these denizens of the deep?



Jennifer Jean: When I began the project I was in graduate school and I just got married. I felt I was going from my female world to unknown seas. I had a group of friends who stayed together like a group of fish. When I separated from the school—and I became married—which I am very happy with—at first my husband felt like an alien creature. The women’s community that I was from had a history—so much of my life was a female only life. I had so many people who were closer to me than my husband. But of course now we have a wealth of experience. But before I was living in my own mythos. I wanted to make that something that I could write about.



I identify with the water. I was born in Venice, California. My mom would take us out on the ocean all the time. So I have an affinity for water. The Fishwife is sort of born out of water. So when the character of the Fishwife comes out of the water for the Fisherman (Her husband) they obviously have a commonality.



DH: You have founded something called the Fishwife Music Project. Can you tell us about this?



JJ: Somehow the Fishwife poems lend themselves to music. I collaborated with a student from the Berkeley College of Music in Boston. She was inspired by the poems and wanted to put them to music.



DH: In the poem “Fishwife Advent” the fish or fish/woman seems to be sympathetic to the boat in the midst of a storm?



JJ: The Fishwife is in a woman’s form. She knows her husband is out in the storm. She changes into a half marine creature and half woman—and guides his boat to safety. She allows herself to be both fish and woman.



DH: You are a columnist for an art magazine “Art Throb” on the North Shore. Does your role of a poet play a role in your journalism?



JJ: To some extent, like poetry, every word counts in journalism. I am spitting bullets when I have to write prose on a deadline—and I teach Comp! I love the end result, but it is hard. I love “Art Throb’-it’s run by two young ladies—they are very tolerant of me!



DH: You teach Creative Writing at Salem State in Salem, Mass. What does the new breed of students bring to the plate?



JJ: The kids are more into form or meter in poetry. Hip Hop may have been a big influence. They are into internal rhyme. However they sometimes cannot reach the same depth with rhyme.



DH: Tell me about your involvement with the Mass. Poetry Festival?



JJ: I originally got involved through Stone Soup Poets. We brought the Festival from Lowell to Salem. Well, I live in Salem and so I am involved. I work closely with founder Mike Ansara and his assistant January O’Neil.

Wrestling Angels: Poetic Monologues By Freddy Frankel.

*****A Review in by Hugh Fox. Fox is a founding editor of the Pushcart Prize.



Wrestling Angels: Poetic Monologues By Freddy Frankel. 2011. 57pp, Ibbetson Street Press 25 School St. Somerville, Ma. 02143 $14.00 http://lulu.com/ibbetsonpress

A fascinating series of poetic monologues here beginning with characters out of the Torah/Old Testament like Adam and Eve, Rebekkah, Jacob, Rachel, Moses, then moving on to Jesus, Paul, Constantine, Mohammed, Abu Bakr, Erasmus, Luther, Hitler, God. And a lot more. A kind of history of world theology from the beginnings to last week. And every monologue here really gets to the slashing heart-of-the-matter point. Take Luther, for example, a Luther you never heard of/heard from before, but still historically authentic: “ I’m the flash-point in the Catholic Church,/the edge wedged tight in wood, rotted by men/who gather gold dispensing pardons…//hate those stiff-necked Jews, they refuse/to back my faith in God. In my book/ “The Jews and Their Lies,” I put the world/on notice: burn their books, their synagogues; / fire and brimstone on their heads.” (Martin Luther, p.44) He really gets inside-inside the essences of biblical characters like Solomon, Elijah and in just one page captures what most of the rest of the world would take chapters to capture: “I am my mother’s metaphor for failure—not/ the icon of success I appear, She, /Bathsheba, fought to put me on the throne…//The more she carps the more I decorate my palace and the temple/ with royal wives who bring more gold.” B (“Solomon,” p 21.) As deep as you can get. Like five hundred pages of revelatory power in a mere 57 pages. No one has ever gotten more to the heart of the matter than super-perspective Frankel. But not to be read at bedtime.

You Are Not Alone Series June 25 Doug Holder, Douglas Bishop, Kate Chadburne, Rene Schwiesow,

( Click on pic to enlarge)




Presents
You Are Not Alone
Poetry & The Arts
Saturday June 25th 2011

Brockton Public Library, 304 Main St, Brockton, MA
Free Admission - HC Accessible


12:00-12:30 Open Mic Sign Up - Share your poetry be the inspiration
12:30-12:45 Opening Remarks - Joyce Irene Benoit, Med., C.C.A.
12:45-1:45 Features and Open Mic
1:45-2:00 Intermission
2:00-4:00 Features and Open Mic
Closing Remarks - Philip Hasouris, Founder

POETRY FEATURES:

Doug Holder: Founder of Ibbetson St. Press, Arts/editor Somerville News. His poetry has appeared in Anthologies, Magazines and Newspapers.

Douglas Bishop: International Performer and Boston area favorite. He is well known for working with musicians, singers and other poets. His poetry has been published in journals, anthologies and periodicals.

Rene Schwiesow: Author of 2 books of poetry:  She has been published in many small press publications, anthologies and literary reviews.

MUSIC FEATURE:

Kate Chadbourne: Singer, storyteller, and poet whose performances combine traditional tales with music for voice, harp, flute, and piano. She was recently featured on NPR.

"The Glorious Ones" The Arsenal Center for the Arts

The Glorious Ones”
Reviewed by James Foritano

“The Glorious Ones” at The Arsenal Center for the Arts until May 7th is a scintillating revival of a a Broadway musical celebrating the Commedia dell’ Arte, a 16th century Italian theater based loosely on plot, but sustained mainly by improvisation and acrobatics.


Our modern slapstick - think The Marx Brothers, Charlie Chaplin or Lucille Ball, is inspired by the rowdy antics of these wandering players. Not only slapstick, but any theater in which quicksilver turns of incident and emotion seem to interrupt predictability – think Shakespeare – is indebted to the nimble minds and bodies of this tradition.


Such a weight of history could easily overbalance a night of fun, but F.U.D.G.E. theater company manages handily to tell this weighty history through the singing, grimacing, capering bodies of its dedicated actors.


Curt Fennell embodies Flaminio Scala, the driving force of this madcap band of thespians. He takes his fun, erotic and theatrical, where he can get it, but when the “Glorious Ones” are invited to perform for the court of the king of France, Flaminio is all business. Alternately baggage master and martinet, Flaminio carries his “glorious” troupe to new heights, but also to attendant slippery slopes.


“The Glorious Ones” focuses on that point in history when written theater is taking precedence and prestige over improvisation. Written scripts give nuance to stock characters and more detailed plotting gives marching orders to actors attuned to scanning restive audiences, ready colleagues, for just that right moment to insert a pertinent, and often impertinent, diversion.


The comedy and tragedy of progress is illustrated brilliantly, pognantly by actors who take their rollicking roles so seriously that, over a lifetime of rehearsals and applause, they’ve become Pantalone, Arlecchino, Columbina, Armanda. Take off that mask and you’ve taken off the face behind it. Ouch!


Flaminio as the impresario/lead actor of this doughty, star-crossed troupe performs their “swam song” to a plaintive, bitter end. But the audience senses portents of demise, and also of rebirth in the bouncing action, haunting songs which the F.U.D.G.E. ensemble sprinkles throughout this rare, polished tribute to actors past and to come of Commedia dell’ Arte.

Review of “what looks like an elephant” by Edward Nudelman

Review of “what looks like an elephant” by Edward Nudelman, Lummox Press, PO Box 5301, San Pedro, CA 90733, www.lummoxpress.com, 113 pages, $15

Review by Barbara Bialick

A good poet tends to have a keen eye for observation, irony and detail, metaphysics and philosophy, so it should be no surprise when a scientist poet arrives on the small press scene with his first “full-length” book, “what looks like an elephant”. While the first thing I think of when a writer uses the symbol of an elephant, is the republican party, the book doesn’t go too heavily into politics. Rather, one gets intrigued by the lingo he uses for some of his images, that of a noted and scientifically published biologist living in the Boston area, a published poet, too.

For example, in “Linear Equations” he writes, “The volume of air in a cave is greater than all its parts,/Ask a spelunker to differentiate light’s vector./Follow that course. Graph the activity of a winter bird/as a function of ambient temperature/…You should be dead, but you aren’t. Graph that.”

Or examine a less dense, poem, “Arrival”: “Who can tell a gnat from a mosquito, unless/blood is spilled? Outside, a dog wants in./Inside, a soul wears slippers and sips iced tea./…Nobody here remembers the Vietnam war/but they will not easily forget this one.” But what war is that?

A poet is a poet, I believe, but how often do poets start out, “I was splicing a gene/when Thayer walked in…” He has all sorts of tools and numbers and colleagues ready to mine for poetry, yet he is not bound by them. “If the fear of God/is the beginning of wisdom,/ why am I so ignorant?” (“Notes from an Ill-kept Journal”)

Edward Nudelman’s first book of poetry, “Night Fires” was published in 2009 by OSU Press. Some of the journals he has published in include “The Atlanta Review”, “Chiron Review” the “Orange Room Review” and many others. He is a noted cancer research biologist with “over 60 published papers in top-tier journals.” He has also published two books on Jessie Willcox Smith, an American illustrator (Pelican Publishing, 1989, 1990). He is a native of Seattle who lives “just north of Boston with his wife, Susan, and their Golden Retriever, Sofie.”

Bagel Bard Anthology 6--To be released this month!

To order Bagel Bard Anthology 6 and others go to: http://www.wildernesshousepress.com/p/bagels-with-bards.html




*****From the Introduction – Kathleen Spivack


The Bagel Bards are a loose group of local writers, many of them
poets, who meet once a week at the welcoming coffee shop Au Bon Pain in Davis Square, Somerville, Massachusetts to share coffee and bagels.But most importantly, they share information about the writing trade. They are a networking group for writers in the area.

The brain child of at least four superb and conscientious writers,
oug Holder, Harris Gardner, Steve Glines and Irene Koronos, the
Bagel Bards have been meeting weekly for years, providing a haven
for local writers and publishers engaged in the solitary practice of the
wordsmith profession. Writing and reading are the shared passions.
Bagel Bards range in age from 19 to 94-plus...



************ Kathleen Spivack has been a visiting professor of American Literature/Creative Writing (one semester annually) in France since 1990. She has held posts at the University of Paris VII-VIII, the University of Francoise Rabelais, Tours, the University of Versailles, and at the Ecole Superieure (Polytechnique). She was a Fulbright Senior Artist/Professor in Creative Writing in France (1993-95). Her poetry has been featured at festivals in France and in the U.S. She reads and performs in theatres, and she also works with composers. Her song cycles and longer pieces have been performed worldwide.

Yolandi Elvira Cruz: A talk with a young poet who thrives in Somerville's " Books of Hope

(Books of Hope authors)







Yolandi Elvira Cruz: A talk with a young poet who thrives in Somerville's " Books of Hope" Project.

Interview with Doug Holder

"Books of Hope" is a project located in the Mystic River Housing Project in Somerville that introduces young people to the world of publishing, marketing, poetry and creative writing. I interviewed one of the young poets who particpates in the project: Yolandi Elvira Cruz. I asked her to send her bio. She wrote the News:

"Yolandi Elvira Cruz Guerrero was born and raised in the Dominican Republic and wrote her first book when she was in third grade. It was made up of only eight pages and filled with illustrations she created herself with color pencils and water paint. Yolandi is now a seventeen-year-old High School Junior trying to pass her classes and working with kids at the local library. She has been writing since she came out her mother’s womb and has had the luck of encounteringamazing teachers and friends who have encouraged her to share her stories bothin Spanish and English. She met her first love, Spoken Word, as a freshman and has been working to make her marriage stronger and have a couple kids ever since. Right now she participates in Books of Hope in the community of Somerville.

She writes for peace and refuses to create art that doesn’t work towards positively changing the world."




What has poetry given you that other forms of expression have not?


Poetry has given me confidence and it has empowered me by reassuring me that words do have a strong impact on the entire world.


We live in Somerville, certainly not known for its "natural beauty" It is a city. What for you is beautiful about Somerville--where do you find beauty?


Although, I am not from Somerville I am actually from Boston I would say that I find the beauty of Somerville in its youth because they are very artistic and have important messages to deliver.


I know there are a lot of poets in our area. It is very competitive. Even more so if you are a teenager , and not connected in the "adult" poetry world. Has Books of Hope helped you to connect?


Books of Hope has helped me more so to become a stronger writer, we haven't necessarily had strong connections into the "adult" poetry world yet. However, we did have Lauren Whitehead give us a writing workshop which was amazing. Soon we will be doing a Mystic Ink Tour where we will most likely be exposed to this world "adult" poetry world you speak of.


Has writing poetry been helpful to you in any other aspect of your life?


Yes, writing has helped me release and understand many things I couldn't comprehend on my own. It has also helped me with my ability to speak in public and own my work as an artist.




Any teachers who have inspired you?


All of my teachers have inspired me. All of them, starting from my mother and ending with my 8-year old sister.



What for you makes a great poem?


A great poem to me is a poem that sounds like a melody even if it doesn't make any sense. Poetry is Music. Music is Poetry. And a great poem is simply based on how our hearts not our "intellectual egos" perceives it.