Three Poems By Ross Runfola

Three Poems

By Ross Runfola

University of Buffalo

The State University of New York

The Poetry Collection

Of the University Libraries

Buffalo, NY

Library.buffalo.edu/pl

300 copies printed

Review by Dennis Daly

Like a solitary glass of draft beer, poetry needs attention. In this elegant looking but gritty chapbook of three relatively short poems by Ross Runfola, each piece gets the attention it deserves. Herein the poet speaks to games and the violence they induce, flat beer, and crotch-sniffing dogs. Let us deal with flat beer first.

Some of you may indeed marvel at how, in a twenty-two ounce glass of blueberry beer, the blueberries seem motivated to rise and fall of their own accord, their propulsion systems and their quantum methodologies among life’s greater mysteries. Others, including myself, are purists and eschew blueberry beer. We prefer our beer without fruit or other zesty ingredients cruelly added during spring’s onset or in the midst of a heartless summer. An appropriate and expected one inch (read two fingers) head in either a zany lager or stern ale usually enhances the inspiration value so coolly and happily delivered. But even a flat beer, that is, one criminally under carbonated, can for our purposes lead to a prayerful and profound meditational experience.

Runfola in his poem, Magic Glass, understands these principals. He describes a working class type of guy, an understated average fellow, and gent whose body has turned the final corner and now revolts against years of youthful, unthinking pleasures and indiscretions. He describes him this way,

A work shirt with mud on the left sleeve

Glasses with huge frames that were never fashionable

Yellow fingers from smoking too many cigarettes

A pair of well worn black Harley Davidson boots

A raspy smoker’s cough…

Yes, this man hacking away, sitting next to the poet’s persona at the bar, seeks metaphysical meaning. The poet explains,

Staring in his beer glass for almost an hour

As if it is a crystal ball

Is he pondering the existence of God

Bemoaning the end of a relationship

Being laid off from a job

Thinking about his son in Iraq

                       Or

Is he pissed off because his beer is flat.

Of course the beer glass can function as a crystal ball. Every serious drinker knows this and on occasion has received hints of future calamities or unexpected successes. 

Next, let us consider the function of games as suggested by Runfola in his poem, Bored Games. The poet watches gamers closely with an eye on filling the vacuum of his life. This is a problem because to many people the game is not just a game, it is life. The old have time on their hands and so do those who want to be seen and, of course, the young. The poem begins this way,

I watch old men playing chess in the park

carefully measuring every move

The blonde in the tight fitting sweater

struggling with the New York Times crossword puzzle

Little children crying out in frustration

trying to put together a jigsaw puzzle…

The poet’s persona learns a valuable lesson when, all in good fun, he mixes with the serious gamers,

When I won at chess for the first time

The guy in the park who talked to himself

Knocked the chess pieces down and broke my jaw

When I played pool at Flynn’s Golden Dollar Café

The pimp with the red felt hat pulled a gun on me.

Broken people or people outside the law are playing for different stakes than their bored counterparts and not understanding this can lead all to disaster.

Finally, in Runfola’s poem entitled The Dog Walkers Club a crotch sniffing canine named Zelig changes the poet’s world forever.  This poetry revolts against the humdrum and the routine and those who reinforce that false existence on us. The poet describes the dog walkers thusly,

When I walk Zelig every morning

Men with bedroom slippers

And football sweatshirts

All give me the same secret greeting

In the winter—“Cold enough for you.”

In the summer—“Hot enough for you.”

When it rains—“Looks like it’s going to be a wet one.”

Life’s triteness is surely painful and something that most of us find inescapable. We are slowly drawn into the dog walkers club losing spontaneity and creativity along the way.  But then poet’s dog noses into instinctual, precipitant action,

…Zelig sniffs a dog walker’s crotch

Then another

Then sniff and a hump combination to the bearded one

“Don’t be afraid, you remind Zelig of his father,” I shout

As he makes a hasty retreat…

In the end both poet and dog are masters of their own destinies.  I like happy endings.

Somerville’s Jennifer Swanson Downes: A Low Brow/Pop Surrealist Artist

                          (Downes struts her stuff in front of her art at Somerville Open Studio)







Somerville’s Jennifer Swanson Downes: A Low Brow/Pop Surrealist Artist

By Doug Holder

 When I met Magoun Square resident Jennifer Swanson Downes at the Sherman Café in Union Square one morning recently, she described herself as a Low Brow/ Pop Surrealist artist. She told me that in her mind this genre examines the grimier and seedier side of life. Her work seems to subvert banal realistic images and infuses them with her own unique sensibility. Her art is colorful, well, like Downes’ background is. She has a Black Belt in Karate, plays the harmonica, flute and mandolin.  Jenn-O-Matic (Her moniker), also has a cat and dog grooming service and has worked as a kindergarten school teacher.

 I was interested in her use of bright color in her works as evidenced in her Tiki series—a Polynesian flourish of artwork she has created. As I picked at the crumbled remains of my luscious Sherman Café oatmeal scone she told me:

  “I really learned about color by drawing in black and white. I mean there are a million shades in between. So it was a natural progression to experiment with different vivid colors.”

Swanson, like many an artist, uses her travels as an inspiration for her work. She has visited Belize, the Mayan Pyramids, and has a particular fascination with ancient civilizations—all reflected in her art.

Swanson loves living in Somerville. She finds the close proximity to other artists, culture, music festivals, etc… very inspiring. Like many creative people she has found a home in the Paris of New England, Somerville, Mass.

*** For more information about Swanson go to:  http://jennomatic.weebly.com

The FSG Book of Twentieth-Century Latin American Poetry An Anthology Edited by Ilan Stavans Introduction and Selection Copyright 2011 by Ilan Stavans

The FSG Book of Twentieth-Century Latin American Poetry

An Anthology Edited by Ilan Stavans

Introduction and Selection Copyright 2011 by Ilan Stavans

Farrar Strauss Giroux

New York, NY

Softbound, 728 pages, $25.00

ISBN 978-0-374-53318-2

Review by Zvi A. Sesling

Poets you know, poets you don’t know. Male and female. Spanning the late 19^th century through most of the 20^th century, Latin American poetry has much to attract both readers and writers of poetry and The FSG Book of Twentieth-Century Latin American Poetry fills that bill to perfection.

First there are the eighty-four authors from sixteen countries who write in Spanish, Portuguese and seven other languages, including indigenous Central and South American ones. Another plus for this volume are the translators who include:  Samuel Beckett, Ursula K. Le Guin, Martin Espada, Willis Barnstone, James Merrill, Mark Strand, Elizabeth Bishop, W.S. Merwin, Richard Wilbur and others.

Aptly edited and selected – and occasionally translated – by Ilan Stavans, Lewis-Sebring Professor in Latin American and Latino Culture at Amherst College, one can thoroughly enjoys the selections of Pablo Neruda, Gabriela Mistral (Neruda’s teacher), Jose Marti, Julia De Burgos, Cesar Vallejo, Juan Gelman, Jorge Luis Borges, Octavio Paz and Carlos Drummond De Andrade, to name a few. There are also many other poets and Prof. Stavans delivers delicious selections, many of which are worth reading several times as they inspire and motivate poets to write and readers to admire the talent in this book.

Stavans’s Introduction: Translation and Power provides, for those who have not had the opportunity to hear his class lectures, the opportunity to read a semester or two of informative poetic history in the context of sociology and politics.  Stavans who grew up in Mexico states that he became familiar with those speaking indigenous languages and this too shows in his selection of poets writing in their native languages rather than Spanish or Portuguese. Of interest to readers too is the inclusion of Ladino poetry, the equivalent of Eastern European Yiddish, but used mostly by Spanish and Portuguese speakers and writers. 

Reading these poems you can taste the flavors of Latin America and savor the richness of the poetry presented by Stavans. Whether or not you are familiar with Latin American poetry, this is a must have book for your shelf, and take the time to read it all thoroughly.

_______________________________________

Zvi A. Sesling is author of King of the Jungle (Ibbetson Street, 2010), Across Stones of Bad Dreams (Cervena Barva, 2011) and the soon to be published Fire Tongue (Cervena Barva). He is Editor of Muddy River Poetry Review and Bagel Bards Anthology #7.

Somerville’s Gil Barbosa: From Towing Cars to Towing Books.

Somerville’s Gil Barbosa: From Towing Cars to Towing Books.

By Doug Holder

  Gil Barbosa doesn’t look like a stereotypical bookseller. He is a burly man, with a plethora of tattoos on both of his muscled arms. His hands look like they have clashed with metal rather than a rarefied page in a brittle tome. Yet this former head of a towing business handles his new charges with great delicacy. Since June, 2011 he has been the proprietor of the Book Shop at Ball Square. And although he is not getting rich, he is getting by, not a small accomplishment in the indie book biz.

  Barbosa told me:

  “I have lived in Somerville all my life. Currently I live in the Spring Hill section of the city. The residents and the shop owners of Ball Square have been very supportive of the store. Somerville is a great place to do business.”

   For 25 years Barbosa was in the towing business, and decided not to bring his enterprise to the next level. It required a huge investment of time and money and Barbosa was tiring of doing this for over two decades. After being laid off from a state job at the Charles River Dam, he helped his aunt out at her bookstore: Annie’s Book Stop in Belmont, Mass. When his aunt gave her store up he inherited her inventory. He snagged a great deal on a lease in Ball Square, and the rest, as they say, is history. Barbosa reflected:

  “The people in the neighborhood are very appreciative that we are here. One person was surprised that places like my store even exist anymore. He thought they were extinct...”

  Barbosa feels stores like his creates nostalgia for a past when people had more time to browse much less read. Barbosa is a reader as well as confirmed bibliophile.  Currently he is reading “Ten Hills Farm” by C.S. Manegold. The book deals with Ten Hills Farm (which in the 1600’s occupied land that is now Somerville) that once held a large population of slaves. Who would of thought of it? The slaves of Somerville. Barbosa is also a big fan of the True Crime genre, and reads about everything from gangs, thugs, to serial killers.

 Although in his aunt’s shop in Belmont Romance novels were big selling items, here in the highbrow ‘hood of Somerville, the big ticket items tend to be Science Fiction, Classics, Fantasy, Novels, etc… This is not to say Barbosa does not have Romance on hand—you always have to something about lust and love—right? Barbosa also has a poetry section, and sells used CDs and posters.

Barbosa is a champion of local authors. Writers like Peter David Shapiro “Ghosts on the Red Line,” and Bobby Martini “Citizen Somerville” have read at the store. And Barbosa has even ushered in local poets at a recent reading. Barbosa told me that he encourages Somerville’s active small press community to bring in their books, etc… to sell. And publishers—they have a very generous consignment policy!

 Barbosa feels there is a future for the “book” and the “bookstore.” He feels independents have created their own niche market and provide personal services that big chains don’t. Barbosa is optimistic about his prospects and hopes to be on the scene for years to come.

A Few Forms of Love Richard Brostoff

 A Few Forms of Love

Richard Brostoff

Finishing Line Press

$14.00

Review by Rene Schwiesow

Richard Brostoff is a psychiatrist who finds that writing poetry in the morning enables him to return to his office in the afternoon with his mind “more fluent and at ease with trope.”  He feels that his writing helps him to better address another’s wilderness.

What better way to address his readers’ wilderness than through forms of love?  Erich Fromm, the German psychologist and philosopher stated:  “Love is the only sane and satisfactory answer to the problem of human existence.”  Brostoff’s poems on love speak to the love of nature and to the love and loss of an other.

In “Green Song” Brostoff combines nature and human love as he often does throughout the book:

I miss the swampland of our wanting

where a low lit creature crawls

by stealth

reptilian in my veins.

“Beneath a Storm” takes a look at Valentine’s Day, showing us that romance can be found even in the ordinary moments coveted during a winter snowfall.

It’s Valentine’s Day, and in the early light

at six a.m. I am dozing by your side.

Other men will rush to buy their wives

red hearts of cinnamon, carnations bunched

with baby’s breath, red lacey cards.

I buy you white pajamas

of fine Egyptian cloth,

not certain what the color means.

When Brostoff talks of loss and grief he is fluid and we can see the beauty even in the melancholy.  In “Canyon”

Grief finds, like water, slow erosions,

cascading

drifts and stammerings

and wears things down

in geological time, transforming

what it touches

making us what we are,

layered as the canyons forms,

both beautiful and sad.

The work entitled “Grief” ends with a blockbuster three lines:

You hold an absence

at your center,

as if it were a life.

If the question is what is love?  Then Brostoff has, indeed, given us a satisfactory answer.

***Rene Schwiesow is co-host of the popular South Shore venue The Art of Words in Plymouth, MA.  She writes a monthly column for the arts in Plymouth’s Old Colony Memorial.

Trojan Women By Euripides Translated by Francis Blessington: Whistler in the Dark Theater Company

The Factory Theater, 791 Tremont St. Boston

May 18^th to June 2^nd, 2012

Director Ben Evett

Light Design PJ Strachman

Set Design Natalie Laney

Sound Design Chris Larson

Contact Jen O’Connor:  508-944-2939

Admission $20.00  Students  $10.00

Review by Dennis Daly

Scurrying along the base of the looming, chemically-stained building, through the parking lot, under the steam pipe, down the twisted steps and into a forbidding white-washed brick, claustrophobia-inducing passageway, the door wedged open with a boulder, I arrived at the Factory Theater.  And then it got better, much better.

On opening night the Trojan Women played to a packed theater. The experience was unforgettable. The light, set, sound, and costume designers worked magic. You could hear the creaking of Greek ships and almost smell the tide as it rolled in. Audience members sat among the cast on the gritty stage as the play began and crazed, damaged women in torn dresses roamed among them, obviously in shock. 

The intimate seating arrangement I liked very much; it produces an edgy magic. One moment Helen of Troy seduces you with her eye contact, the next moment a Greek chorus addresses you with a heart-rending dirge. We were all amazed when, in the distance, Troy burned, and we all watched that awful spectacle together in the same confined camp-space.

The acting ensemble consists of eight players and two of them have multiple roles. The three women that make up the chorus mingle silently with the audience when they are not reciting a choral piece. Their facial expressions and their graceful movements would put many professional mimes to shame. They are that good.

Nathaniel Grundy storms onto the stage as an angry but resigned Poseidon. He wants revenge for the destruction of his especial city and will eventually get it, albeit, after the action of the play. As Menelaus he convinces both with his gratuitous cruelty and with his weak-kneed surrender to Helen’s charms.  But it is in the role of Talthybius, the herald, which he really shines. His occasional humanity as he delivers his messages in the midst of horror surprises and reassures us that some vestige of goodness still survives this scenario of total devastation.

Aimee Rose Ranger rules the stage in all four of her roles. She is clearly doing what she is meant to do. As Athena she is spiteful and conniving. As Cassandra knowledge leads her to insanity. As Andromache she brings us to tears with a mother’s pathos. And, as Helen, Ranger truly soars, exuding sex and guile throughout her amazing performance. 

Rosalind Thomas Clark convinces as Hecuba, the fallen queen of Troy. Her strength in facing the apocalyptic terrors is moving and understandable to modern sensibilities. The dark stories of Cormac McCarthy comes to mind.

But the glue that keeps this all together and makes it work is the writing of the translator Francis Blessington. His lyrical tone builds an airy and transparent  atmosphere about the action that seems to keep everything in motion, even when the subject is havoc and slaughter.  Listen,

What’s not for me to cry about?

My country, children, husband all have perished.

The grandness of my ancestors

Cut short: how are you nothing now.

Why be silent? Why not?

Why lament?

Miserable I am, under a heavy fate

That lies upon my limbs—what torture!

My back stretched on a hard bed.

My head! My temples!

My ribs! I wish to pitch

And roll my back and spine

On both sides, always

Weeping elegies in song.

And even this is music to the wretched:

To sing their ruin without a dance.

I notice that on occasion a contemporary phrase sneaks into the poetic speeches and this technique works quite well. When Helen is defending herself before her Greek husband, Menalaus, she recounts her side of the story and argues that she was a pawn in a game played by the gods and was in fact abandoned before she was abducted from her home in Greece.  She seems to take a momentary break and then says,

Now

Not you, but I, shall question myself:

What was I thinking…

That’s pretty funny considering the awful context of this defensive speech.

Euripides’ Hecuba, as portrayed in Blessington’s often riveting poetry, is an existential character. She believes life is preferable to the alternative—even in a concentration camp. She prays to the gods but she is not too sure that they are there. At one point she prays,

O support of earth, having your seat on earth—

Air or Zeus—whoever you are, difficult to know,

Either necessity of nature or mind of man..

See this extraordinary play. You’ll not regret it.

The Chameleon Couch Yusef Komunyakaa

 

The Chameleon Couch

Yusef Komunyakaa

Farrar, Straus &Giroux Books

ISBN: 978-0-374-53314-4

2011 $14.00

"a trembling runs through what pulls us

to the blood knot."

Some of the poems, in this collection, have a deep throaty

longing. In Komunyakaa's poems the longing roots us to what

each verse reveals "the cold stings." The poet waters

each word in which to feed the reader, his contemplations

concerning the birth of each word is there. He writes like

his life depends on setting the words on the page and I envision

each poem spread before me:

"...My name grew into a sonata he learned

to put back into his mouth, an echo

of his voice in the wind. My blood seethed

into his words, an immaculate conception

in reverse, & no one could keep God's worms

out of the tomb after I died in childbirth."

This is my first time reading Komunyakaa and I read his poems

with trepidation, because he is an accomplished writer, well

known to so many and I want to read the poems as poems.

I realize the poems want more than a sentence or form, they

want to sustain the line, line by line. For me the poet uses every-

thing to find the poem, to have the poem converse, take root:

"...Brushstrokes formed a blade to cut

the hues. A slipped disk

grew into a counterweight,

& the muse kept saying,

Learn to be kind to yourself.

A twisted globe of flesh

is held together by what

it pushes against."

This is a book to be kept, read, and then read again and again:

"My muse is holding me prisoner.

She refuses to give back my shadow,

anything that clings to a stone or tree

to keep me here. I recite dead poets

to her, & their words heal the cold air.

I feed her fat, sweet, juicy grapes,

& melons holding a tropical sun

inside them. From here, I see only

the river. The blue heron dives,

& always rises with a fright fish

in its beak, dangling a grace note..."

Couched in tomorrow, the morning each day brings, the poems

receive comfort and then change and return to their own

presence. They ask to be read and that is all we can do when

we enter any holy place. Read the signs, the omens, the ritual

and then leave with a sense of renewal:

"...I know what it took to master the serpent

& wheel, the crossbow & spinal tap.

Once I was a leopard beside a stone gate.

I am a riddle to be unraveled. I am not

and I am. When their eyes are on me

I become whatever is judged badly.

I circle the park. Hunger shapes

my keen sense of smell, a lifetime ahead..."

The strophes, "echo us back as the years uncount," and there again,

is the sadness, longing for, again. The poems live in our veins, sustain

our present tense. "Perhaps omens speak more clearly across a

desert or the seas."

irene koronas
poetry editor: wilderness house literary review
reviewer: ibbetson street press
artamust.blogspot.com
girdlegirls.wordpress.com

Interview with Debra Spark Author of The Pretty Girl: Novella and Stories.

Interview with Debra Spark Author of The Pretty Girl: Novella and Stories.

By Doug Holder

 Debra Spark is author of the novels Coconuts for the Saint, The Ghost of Bridgetown and Good for the Jews. She edited the best-selling anthology Twenty Under Thirty: Best Stories by America's New Young Writers. Her popular lectures on writing are collected in Curious Attractions: Essays on Fiction.

Spark's recent release is a fiction collection titled The Pretty Girl: Novella and Stories. I had the pleasure to speak to her on my Somerville Community Access TV show Poet to Poet: Writer to Writer. Spark currently teaches at Colby College in Maine.

 Doug Holder: In your new collection The Pretty Girl: Novella and Stories you have many references to Jewish culture, literature, etc…. Can you tell us a bit about your background?

Debra Spark: I grew up in the suburbs of Boston, but much of my family is originally from the New York City area. I had a secular Jewish background. As a friend told me once about himself:  “ I am so secular I am Baptist.”(Laugh) But we were very culturally Jewish—we celebrated the holidays, etc…

DH:  Your protagonist Andrea, in your title novella in the collection The Pretty Girl, has made a study of her elderly aunt Rose. Rose is a resident of the Chelsea section of Manhattan, and as we learn had a tumultuous as well as colorful past. I found that through my interviews of people I learn about myself. Do you think Andrea was trying to learn about herself?

DS: I wasn’t thinking that. She is really interested in her aunt, and this aunt is someone she loves. She is curious about what her young life had been like. She is passionate about her inquiry because she loves her, and perhaps she sees things in her aunt that she perhaps doesn't have in her own life. I mean Andrea is not a pretty woman. She was concerned with her weight and her sense of her physical self. When her aunt was young she was pretty. Andrea wanted to know what it was to live a life as an attractive woman.

DH:  In Rose’s NYC apartment there is a painting titled “The Pretty Girl” We later learn that it is Rose herself as a young girl. And the painting was by a man who she had an affair with, and shared a traumatic event. It must be a constant reminder to Rose of this trauma, but to the outside world this painting of a young woman with an enigmatic smile must have been a mystery. Why would Rose want to be constantly reminded of this tragic part of her life by the painting? And is a painting a good literary device?

DS: It reminds her of the early part of her life. When she was being painted she was the object of great devotion and love; even though that became perverted because of things that happened afterwards. A painting is a good literary device. A self-portrait always has a story behind it.

DH:  So often young people never think of the elderly as once having vibrant, creative, and sexual lives. Andrea seems more aware than most.

DS: Yes I agree. Rose is a fictional version of my aunt Ethel. I always thought that she was much more interesting—much more vibrant—much more fun that the average person her age.

DH: Do you go by the old adage: write what you know?

DS: Lorri Moore told me that the relationship between the autobiography and the actual work is a little like the relationship with the ingredients in the kitchen cupboard and the cake. So although everything I write about is made from aspects of my life, I don’t think it is recognizable. I mean when you eat a cake, you don’t say “Ah, I got some baking soda here." So that is how it is with my books. It is all of me. It is all parts of me. None of it is directly me. I don’t like that an old adage you mentioned. I think if you don’t know something before you sit down to write; then make an effort to learn about it.

DH: You teach writing at Colby College in Maine and elsewhere. How do you introduce seminal writing students to creative writing?

DS: I always start off the semester by telling the students within every writer there are two writers. The writer who wants to write and the writer who wants to prevent the writer from writing. So there is the person who has good ideas and wants to get them down, and then there is the censor—the person who wants to edit. I learned this from one of my teachers the writer John Hershey. As a teacher I can’t teach you to have imagination, but I can teach character, plot, grammar, that type of thing. If I am a good teacher I can get students to access their imagination. I try to get these two writers in balance.

DH: What was it like for you starting out as a writer?

DS: I went to college and graduate school. I had a lot of early luck. When I came back to Cambridge, Mass. in my early 20’s, I was adjuncting and doing freelance editing. I had a lot of writer friends and there was always something to go to: readings, etc… It was quite a lot of fun. My life now is different. I am middle-aged and I have a child. I have a hard time getting my own writing done. Even back then I did  have a hard time finding time, come to think of it. It is hard for me to balance work, motherhood and art. I do things when I can.

 I did a lot of book reviewing early on. I tell my students to do this although the world is different now. But it is good to have your name out there. There are now a lot of online opportunities.

DH: If your child said he wanted to be a writer what would you say?

DS: I would be worried. It is hard to make a life as a writer. Obviously I would support him if he really wanted it. It seems like a bigger challenge than it was 20 years ago. The true answer is that I would want him to do what he really wants to.

The Poetry of Elizabeth Hansen Elizabeth Hanson 2011

The Poetry of Elizabeth Hansen

Elizabeth Hanson 2011

“long spears of ice

like bats unfurl themselves

in rows under the overhang

and sharply they sing and fall

into the embankment of snow

as a single wind calls to them...”

Hanson's poems in this self published chapbook will surprise

and embrace the reader. The core of what the poet is writing

is not as simple as it sounds. Her poetry reflects her relationships

and her surroundings. She places the words with careful touch.

Their core is a place like plums, pomegranates, and familiar flavors.

Similar to the differences in verse, the fruit remains itself. The

placed words the reader tastes and identifies. Hanson writes

about the core, the juice, the renewal relationships bring,

not too sweet or tart. We come to identify each poem as our own.

She is not to be missed or set aside:

“each morning

they gather, at the same coffeeshop

they discuss

world events the economy;

I'm always

getting my latte

my muffin,

there is a lot to say

about routine

about life

being predictable.

And if occasionally

your husband slaps you,

not because there is another woman

not because he wants to leave

(though these could always be

considered side issues)

nor because of what

you have done

but what life has

made him

and because deep down its

easier to blame

someone else-

than shouldering the blame

and maybe 'playing by the book'

'being a man' – is a killer

is life

is death

and respect

the lack of it

kills love

better than

a beating”

The poems collect our everyday routines and presents the ways only

a poet like Hanson can portray:

“...the woman

one day

simply

piled

her collection

in front

of the wall

and was never

seen again...”

Readers will be sustained by these poems, they will become the morning

fruits we eat.

Irene Koronas

Reviewer: Ibbetson Street Press

Poetry Editor: Wilderness House Literary Review

THIS BEAUTIFUL PLACE By Tankred Dorst and Ursula Ehler

THIS BEAUTIFUL PLACE

By Tankred Dorst and Ursula Ehler

Hanging Loose Press

Prose, 91 pages

ISBN: 978-1-934909-29-4 (pbk.)

$18.00

     Tankred Dorst  is a German playwright who has also worked in film, radio, and as a stage director.  THIS BEAUTIFUL PLACE, written with his partner, Ursula Ehler, is his only novella.  Translator Anna Posten, in her illuminating afterward, notes that the book was first conceived as a screenplay and, indeed, it has a cinematic quality.  Posten mentions the parallels between this novella and the work of American filmmaker Robert Altman.  She says that “Altman’s style, with its emphasis on luck and fate, coupled with dark undercurrents of tragedy and dissatisfaction, had a strong effect, not only on Dorst, but on German culture and writing from the last quarter of the twentieth century through to the present day.”  

     THIS BEAUTIFUL PLACE is comic in an even darker way and more indebted to Theater of the Absurd than Altman’s work but the fragmented, episodic unfolding of the narrative(s) works the same kind of magic as that of an Altman film.  The reader gradually learns more about the characters and their motives, their dreams, desires and delusions as their stories weave together.  

      One of the most interesting characters is Lilly, child of an absent father and a drunken and feckless mother.  Lilly believes her father, who deserted the family and who is no doubt an alcoholic too, is living in Spain and is, in fact, the King of Spain.  As the story progresses, she steals money from her mother and takes off with her little brother, Maxi, who is still young enough to be in diapers, an heads off to hitchhike to Spain to find her father the King.  She imagines a wonderful life filled with love if only she can find him.  

     Another presence dominating the story is not a character per se but a historical personage (though there is some debate about what is true and what is myth regarding him) called Aleijadinho (real name: Antonio Francisco Lisboa).  He was a Brazilian architect and sculptor who lived from 1738—1814.  He is said to have contracted leprosy but continued to design churches and carve religious statuary.  When he lost his hands he had his tools strapped to the stumps of his arms and continued to work.  When his feet rotted away he bought a slave to carry him on his shoulders.  

     Another character is Adam Bonsack, a womanizer who has written an essay on Aleijadinho, and his devoted wife, Anna, whom he neglects and humiliates.   A comic character who turns up for brief interludes is Fritz, who is Maxi’s actual father though he in no way carries out that role.  Fritz is a lewd, disheveled geezer who wears an aviator’s cap and rides around on a moped and who is generally unwelcome wherever he shows up.

     Dorst’s novella explores how our lives are bounded by our dreams and delusions, and by the luck of the draw. Within that context there is still room for hope, however, because there’s still room for the persistence, the courage of an Aleijadinho.

                                                                                    --Richard Wilhelm

Jessica Treadway: A writer of everyday people and everything human: Interview with Doug Holder

Jessica Treadway:  A writer of everyday people and everything human

Interview with Doug Holder

  Jessica Treadway is not a writer whose main concern is the mere trappings of everyday life. She goes to the marrow of what makes us human. And that means the flaws, the pockmarks, how we delude ourselves and how we love in spite of it all. Treadway, is an unpretentious woman, with an open face and an engaging smile.  But don't be fooled; this is an accomplished writer with an impressive resume. She currently is a Professor at Emerson College in Boston, and has recently released a collection of short stories  Please Come Back To Me.Treadway has a number of books to her credit and her work has appeared in top shelf publications like: Plougshares, AGNI, Best American Short Stories, etc... She has received awards from the National Endowment for the Arts, and was on the Board of Directors of PEN-New England. I had the good fortune to talk with her on my Somerville Community Access TV show  " Poet to Poet: writer to Writer."

Doug Holder: You grew up in Albany, New York, the home of the famed novelist William Kennedy. Do you use the less than cosmopolitan burg of Albany, N.Y. as a focal point for your work like Kennedy does?

Jessica Treadway: I really  don't use the city itself, but upstate New York in general. My sensibilities are probably that of an upstate N.Y. girl. I have quite a few stories in fictional towns around Buffalo, N.Y.  Joyce Carol Oates as well as Richard Russo have also been influenced by and have written about upstate New York-like settings.

DH: What is the upstate New York frame of mind?

JT: Winter comes to mind. (laugh) You don't realize until your work is collected and even after that you have a certain focus in the body of your work.. It usually takes a reader to point out the similarities in some of your stories. A lot of my stories are set in the winter, but there are some beautiful summers in my work. The landscape is bleak in the winter but a stunning backdrop in the summer.

DH: In the title novella in your new collection  Please Come Back to Me a vision of a deceased woman's husband appears in front of her and prevents her from having a tragic accident. Are ghosts a good literary device. Have you ever seen one?

JT: I don't think I have ever experienced a ghost. I believe I wrote that in a certain way so that the person who saw the apparition believed it was the deceased man. I hope I left it open to the fact that this was just what she saw and not an actual presence. The story tries to deal with living people's  experience of seeking communication after death. A ghost or anything used as a literary device can be used if it is employed well. I would say a writer should try everything.

DH: In your short story "The Nurse and the Black Lagoon" a woman tries to understand why her teenage son has been accused of a disturbing crime. She creates this whole story to convince herself that her son is normal. We all create myths of sort to get by in life, to bring order to the chaotic nature of existence. Do you think the mother was heroic in her efforts to keep herself together?

JT: I think one of the main  themes in my work is willful blindness, and what the repercussions and ramification will be. The woman in the story you referenced knows the truth and ignores it--or goes to a layer close to the surface and tries to arrange things the way she likes it. It's not particularly admirable. I think the character is weak but not evil.

DH: You are not a mother yourself, but you write about mothers often enough.

JT: Some of my greatest gratification comes from mothers who ask me:" How do you know what this mother character would say or do.?" To be a good writer you have to have empathy and imagination. Just because you are a good mother--doesn't mean you can write well about it.


DH: You teach writing at Emerson College in Boston. What is the best way to teach writing?

JT: Instead of offering opinions, ( although I do of course)  I try to ask questions. I find this more effective than harsh criticism, etc...

DH You started out as a journalist. how important was this for your maturation as a writer?

JT: I only did it for a few years. It makes you learn that how to select the details that are relevant. I wrote for a wire service. They kept to a strict word limit. I learned to write concisely and fast

DH: I have always believed in the importance of community in the writer's life. You have belonged to writer's groups in the past. What role did they play?

JT: I was in a group of four women writers including Debra Spark who got together to discuss our work. That played an important role. The group that played the most important role was a group I was in for 10 years with Andre Dubus. It met in his house in Haverhill, Mass. I joined because I loved his work. My first book that came out was partly written in that group. And having the support of fellow writers like Elizabeth Searle, Debra Spark and others over the years was a great help.

The Endicott Review Spring 2012

This is an edict from our Puritan reviewer Dennis Daley regarding The Endicott Review Spring 2012 edition :)

The Endicott Review

Spring 2012

Volume 29, Issue 1

Beverly, MA

Review by Dennis Daly

What is this you’ve put in my hands, Palfrey?  Have you no sense. My name, Endicott, defiled in this abomination of a magazine. Let our Puritan band discover the followers of these mountebanks and mirth counterfeiters.  Every copy of this Endicott Review must burn. See to it.

But hold, let us determine punishment now. I want the editor to swing for this veritable maypole of perfidiousness. Just paging through it now I read of mirth and alcohol and dancing and masques and bright colors and whispers of heathen sex: all this from an undergraduate journal that has been loosed upon our world by its faculty advisors.

What say you? There is no editor, only an editorial board. Then let us pick four of the most deserving as our scape goats. The one called the Wolf King must die tonight. His very alias denotes him as the Lord of Misrule. In his poem, Who Am I/Enigma, he says,

For who am I?

Am I a great and noble leader

Am I a wise and intelligent scholar

Am I a strong and strapping Adonis

Am I a kind soul

Or a despicable villain…

Clearly we have a ringleader here. There are others.

Hadley St. Clair consorts with evil doers and satanic manifestations.  Consider these lines written by her,

The man who taught me

how to write poetry

talks to wolves and cats,

wears tuxedo jackets and speaks

fluent jazz.

Jess Richard anthropomorphizes crows and is delusional. She’s lost to sin and Beelzebub. She writes,

Crows

he told us

they recognize faces.

In a prose poem entitled Drunk Poet Society, Larissa Burgess contemplates a dissolute life. She says,

…I’m thinking about becoming a drunk. Maybe I cant be a

great alcoholic like Bukowski or Fitzgerald or Plath. But I’ll write short, sad poems about

the things I’ve tried and failed..

Good ancient Palfrey, set up the gallows for all of the aforementioned editors. Henceforth editors at The Endicott Review will think twice about their chosen subjects and the awful responsibility they bear creating out of nothing a true literary magazine with expectant and zealous votaries.

Who else dawdles their precious time with demons and beasts giving scandal and ruining souls? Ronnie Tuscano admits that there is

… a war that rages in my soul

fought between two great creatures

The wolf and the tiger

a creature of the night against one of the day…

He cleverly creates ambivalence here and thus deserves three days in the stocks. Arrest him.

Tyler Golec in his affecting poem entitled A Silent Song mourns loneliness and need and praises youth and music and drunken rapture as a sanctuary. More pagan delusions! He says,

Girls sway drunkenly as they enjoy youth

Long youthful legs shown off, breasts left partially bare

The night whispers sex from full young lips

And you listen to the whispers as you get stoned…

Twenty lashes and perhaps Tyler will appreciate our solemn quietude.

Luke Salisbury’s piece, Fragmentation, 1960 portrays the depth and sensitivity of his thirteen year old persona, listening to the drunken words of hardened adults, and there lies the problem. His prose is too pensive, too deft for our new world of stark sainthood. He describes the breakup of the parents’ marriage as a force of nature, cruel and unstoppable. This prompter of internal life and an apparent friend of the magazine must be stopped. His unacceptable artistry demands forty lashes.  

In the deep dusk of the forest Jason L. Roberts obviously cavorts with practitioners of the black arts. In his poem, Prehistoric Love, he confesses,

Velociraptor of mine

Claw me to shreds

Pick out my fantasies and dreams and stomp on them

I am yours to command for you are my lord

My savior…

Not less than twenty-five lashes.

Zvi A. Sesling, a friend of the magazine, commits the unforgivable crime of minimizing death and the evil ones. He speaks of the “broken frame of life” with authority as if he knows something in poetry too profound to tell in plain language.  He says,

Death does not steal them

From us

They hide waiting for us to

Join them

The eternal smile permanent…

This poet worries me: forty lashes. And lay them on heavily!

In her poem, Anywhere But Here, Meghan Perkins admits devil worship. She says,

I want to take a running leap off a cliff

and dissipate into smoke,

drifting into the stratosphere,

returning to dance on the face of the moon,

Arrest the woman and jail her. We will provide a fair trial before we hang her.

We have a true outrage by poet and friend of the magazine, Doug Holder. The table of contents places his poem, It’s Like Putting Lipstick On A Pig, on page 32. But it is not there. They smeared it instead on page 26. Concealment will not work, however. Righteousness uncovers licentiousness wherever it hides. This poem is a mockery of all that we hold dear. Holder spews,    

When she pouts

put the red on her

porcine lips

A Red Flag around her mouth

because no make-up

will disguise the genuine

whine and plea of

her insistent oink…

Holder makes us, a congregation of saints, wallow in the human condition. He deserves both thirty lashes and the stocks and then you will secure a signed confession of his wizardry. Pile rocks on his naked chest if necessary.  When you are finished with him, good Palfrey, bring him to Salem before the Great and General Court in shackles and we will think more on this. The man is another Thomas Morton and not fit to be in our colony.

The art work throughout this magazine reeks of deviltry: from the expressive paintings of Arielle Matthews to the magnetic photograph of mother and child by Brittany Mellon. The artist responsible for the idolatrous cover must be pulled from his or her anonymity and justice will again be meted out, fairly, of course.

Prepare the fire, Palfrey, the Spring 2012 issue must not survive this night.

The FSG Book of Twentieth-Century Italian Poetry: An Anthology Edited by Geoffrey Brock

The FSG Book of Twentieth-Century Italian Poetry

An Anthology Edited by Geoffrey Brock

Introduction and Selection Copyright 2012 by Geoffrey Brock

Farrar Strauss Giroux

New York, NY

Hardbound,  672 pages,  $50.00

ISBN 978-0-374-10538-9

Review by Zvi A. Sesling

Editing an anthology of poetry is a daunting task, particularly if you have decided on a single subject, say twentieth century Italian poets. Having selected the theme or subject matter you next need to choose which poets to use. Finally, there is the question of which poems. When it comes to Italian poetry there are centuries to pick from. Or, if you are Geoffrey Brock you limit yourself to the twentieth century when some of the most exciting and poignant poetry was written.

Brock’s “Introduction”  is like a course in the history of Italian poetry, citing St. Francis’s Canticle of the Sun as the beginning of Italian poetry. He then notes other early Italian poets and discusses many of the poets in this volume.  In his “A Note on Translation” Brock explains his selection process which included poets who are Swiss, not Italian, but write in Italian. He also admits, “I have had to omit important and marvelous poets and poems, either because I lacked space or because I was unable to find or make sufficiently marvelous translations…”  This explanation is refreshingly honest and does not diminish what Brock accomplished, a selection of marvelous translations of seventy-three poets, some represented by one poem, others by multiple selections.

Among the poets are a number of familiar names such as Giovanni Pascoli, F.T. Marinetti, Giuseppe Ungaretti, Eugenio Montale, Salvatore Quasimodo, Cesare Pavese, Giorgio Bassani (perhaps better known for his novel The Garden of the Finzi-Contini), Holocaust survivor Primo Levi and Pier Paolo Pasolini, also a movie director who was murdered.

Brock, who did a number of the translations, also selected translations by a veritable who’s who of poets, including: AllenGinsberg, Seamus Heaney, James Merrill, Robert Lowell, Geoffrey Hill, Thomas Lux, Charles Wright, J.D. McClatchy, Samuel Beckett, W.D. Snodgrass, Ezra Pound, A.E. Stalllings, Kevin Prufer, Jonathan Galassi, W.S. Di Piero, Cid Corman, Dana Gioia, Kenneth Koch, Marianne Moore, Charles Tomlinson, Cyrus Cassels, John Frederick Nims, Peter Covino, Lawrence Ferlinghetti and many other poets, each of them bringing their own brilliance to the book.

The Anthology has many long poems, but here are examples of three translations that are shorter. First is Cid Corman’s reading of Giuseppe Ungaretti’s  Joy Of Shipwreck followed by Jonathan Galassi’s translation of Eugenio Montale’s 10 and finally Brock’s rendering of Mario Luzi’s Night Cleanses The Mind.

JOY OF SHIPWRECK

Versa, February 14, 1917

And suddenly the voyage

resumes

as

after being shipwrecked

a surviving

old sea dog will

10

Why wait? The squirrel beats his torch-tail

on the pine tree’s bark

The half-moon with its peak sinks down

into the sun that snuffs it out. It’s day.

The sluggish mist is startled by a breeze,

but hold firm at the point it covers you.

Nothing ends, or everything,

if, thunderbolt, you leave your cloud.

NIGHT CLEANSES THE MIND

Night cleanses the mind.

A little later, as you well know,

we’re here, a line of souls along the ledge,

some ready for the leap, others

as if in chains. On the sea’s page,

someone traces a a sign of life, fixes a point:

Seldom do any gulls appear.

These are just three short examples. The FSG Book of Twentieth-Century Italian Poetry is filled with wonderful poems. It is a book of poetry that should be in everyone’s collection. Very highly recommended.

_______________________________________

Zvi A. Sesling is author of King of the Jungle (Ibbetson Street, 2010), Across Stones of Bad Dreams (Cervena Barva, 2011) and the soon to be published Fire Tongue (Cervena Barva). He is Editor of Muddy River Poetry Review and Bagel Bards Anthology #7.