Interview with Meikle Paschal: The Black Buddhist and his spiritual journey

Left  Doug Holder   Right  Meikle Paschal   at the Somerville Community Access TV studios.

Interview with Meikle Paschal: The Black Buddhist and his spiritual journey

With Doug Holder

  When Meikle Paschal arrived at his first meeting of the Bagel Bards at the Au Bon Pain in Davis Square, Somerville, he was the only black man in a sea of white, pasty faces. But he did not seem fazed--he weaved through the crowd like he was at home at the joint—striking up conversations, and cracking the dry air with his wit.  30 or 40 years ago this may have not been the case.   Paschal , a native of the mean streets of Roxbury, was a self-described Angry Black Man.  He was uncomfortable in his own skin, fighting the pressure of a racist society that he felt kept the cards stacked against him. Now, in his 60’s, he is a very different character.  He found his way through the practice of Buddhism, and is transformed into a rather contented  man in the  autumn of his years, as  Frank Sinatra once sang.   Today he is a  respected educator with the pedigree of a PhD, and a home in the tony suburb of Lexington, Mass.  I interviewed Paschal about his new memoir The Black Buddhist: A Spiritual Journey (Ibbetson Street Press) on my Somerville Community Access TV show  Poet to Poet: Writer to Writer.

Doug Holder: Meikle you were in the tradition of the Angry Young Man some decades ago. This literary tradition , and this dynamic in society, goes way back and of course it involves the working class railing against the system. And you added another factor on the plate—you are a black man. What specifically were you angry about?

Meikle Paschal:  Actually I don’t know what I was angry about. It was sort of a persona you kept so no one would bother you. If I looked like a pushover—even girls would come up to me and challenge me to a fight. So I had to have this edgy, urban demeanor so that people would  leave me alone. When you are a young person and in that domain it’s ok—it serves a purpose. But when you finish school and go out to the workplace, and still have that angry edge, it limits you. If you are looking for a job people label you as an angry black man. From that image all kinds of generalizations get passed on. People don’t get to know you. They just tread lightly around you.

DH: You embraced Nicene Buddhism.  Why did you go there –did western religion fail you?

MP: I had an experience when I was quite young. Probably around 14. I had my first sexual encounter in a hallway. My family members were practicing Catholics. So I started feeling guilty and went to Confession. I made the mistake of saying I committed adultery.  And this priest almost started to come through the screen to get at me. He told me never to see the girl again. But she lived upstairs so I wondered how that was going to be possible. I started thinking something was wrong about this. I was on may way out. It was a long trail. For a long while I went to Atheism—you know when you are dead you are dead. After I grew up and grew more accepting of the ways of the world, I realized that I didn’t quite know what was going on. Then I had this experience. It was with my mother-in-law. I  had stayed with her awhile to calm down after completing my dissertation. One day she fell down  in the front yard and never recovered. It turns out that she was riddled with cancer. She died shortly after. One night after this I went to sleep, not thinking about here or anything. In the middle of the night she came to me  just as clearly as you sitting here. She sat at the edge of my bed and told me that everything was going to be all right.  It was such a beautiful experience. I cried; I called my mother and tried to get some understanding. And I began to realize there is more going on in this world that I can understand.  And this lead me to the path of reading. And in my reading I feel into what the Buddha actually said. It lead me to some thoughts I had during my own life. I saw them clearly articulated now. I read even more and I sought out some people who were practicing Buddhists in my family. I became ready to embrace it. It has become a way of life. And this way of life has diminished the Angry Black Man persona. The meditation, etc.. has made me feel more at home in the universe.

DH: Does the angry side ever rear its ugly head?

MP: Every so often I can slide. It is under control. It is relegated to the lower domains. When you become harmonious with the world this stuff doesn't come up so often.

DH: But sometimes isn't it a good thing to get good and pissed off?

MP: It doesn't work for me. Being a black man in this society, if I get angry, it would be a negative thing. Besides it makes me feel sick. I try to let things stay quiet.

DH: You talked about these incidences of foreshadowing in your life--in which someone would say something in passing for instance and it would be of great imporance. Do we often miss these signs?

MP: Well, I do feel we all follow a path. I have had occasions where I could of gone one way instead of the other. When I went down to the Induction Center during the Vietnam War I was very despondent because I thought I was going to be sent to the jungles to die. As I was coming home from the Center I just happened I looked up and I saw a sign for the U Mass Boston. And for some unknown reason I went in. I found the recruiters; they took me in; and I was accepted into college. And being accepted into college-- I am sure-- saved my life. I have had experiences like this in my life and I was able to embrace them. Your path unfolds before you. You have a few choices. You can stay stuck or you can evolve. The universe gives you information to hear; it is up to you to embrace it or not. That is the message I am trying to display in the book.

DH: Does your Buddhist practice manifests itself in your college teaching?

MP: My teaching is all about my Buddhist practice.  I teach Philosophy, English and Composition. I do tell my students that if they do have self-confidence, start a  regime, that the energy will flow. I don't get angry with them. I am accessible. It makes for a more harmonious classroom. We both learn and benefit.

DH: You use quotes throughout the book by Buddha. One is " What we think, we become."

MP: I truly believe this. It took a long time to believe in myself--to not be afraid that all these things were going to be taken from me. I have relinquished fear. I think of myself as a worthy person. I love being a calmer state of being.


To order The Black Buddhist... go to:      http://lulu.com/ibbetsonpress 

Writers and New England a Many-Sided Mad Affair

                   Porter Square Books, Tuesday, April 23rd, 7 p.m.

 

 

 

 

"Writers and New England: a Many-Sided Mad Affair"

 

A presentation from With Robert Lowell and His Circle: Sylvia Plath, Anne Sexton, Elizabeth Bishop, Stanley Kunitz and Others

by Kathleen Spivack

 

This presentation is going to be fun--and relevant. I’m going to focus on New England (a major character in the book) and of course on Lowell, Bishop, Plath, Sexton, Rich, as well as some of the other poets around the time and place. What is it about our wonderful--and maddening--region that has had such an influence on writers? There'll be time for questions and comments.

 

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



 

 

PS: My two forthcoming workshops are already filling up, "Excellence" and "Publish (Before) You Perish." All genres and levels welcome; just bring whatever project you're working on, and writing materials. For more information, visit the Massachusetts Poetry Festival or the Cambridge Center for Adult Education.

 

Review of THE PHILOSOPHER’S DAUGHTER by Lori Desrosiers

Review of THE PHILOSOPHER’S DAUGHTER by Lori Desrosiers, salmonpoetry, Cliffs of Moher, County Clare, Ireland, www.salmonpoetry.com, 79 pages, 2013

Review by Barbara Bialick

In The Philosopher’s Daughter, Lori Desrosiers writes that the mystery of her life, indeed her own creation, starts in “Paris 1950” with the subtlety of ideas exchanged between her parents: “Blanch eats crepes on the Ile de la Café/…Leonard studies philosophy/…I am only a thought.”

Thoughts versus action is a theme as she paints her parents’ conflicting personalities with memories, until finally she herself is in her 60s, around the age her father died, and now she is the teacher, the poet, pulling images from her life story. In “That Pomegranate Shine” she writes “I was the wrong kind of bride/more sweat than glisten,/more peach than pomegranate/…Ten years later, I emerged shivering/…standing with my children…”

She eventually becomes a type of philosopher herself, like her father was in “Big Words”: “The cancer took his language first/those beautiful big words used every day/In fact, when I was little he taught me words/like ‘symbolic’ and ‘essential’…I would learn a thousand big words/if they could bring him back.”

In contrast to her father, an author of books on metaphysics, “The city understood my mother/It was large and gritty, like her imagination/Escape to theater or opera always/just a cab-ride away…” Her father died of what she calls “star cancer”, a brain cancer, not long after they divorced.

She fears her mother’s death in “If, Mother…”: “When your tongue is quiet,/there will be no more stories/no more trips to 1930s Chicago,/no languid afternoons/on Margate beach/no Cape Cod Bay…” Also, no more Paris trip together, like “how we turned the wrong way/veered off the boulevard/how close that day/we came to death…”

Nowadays she claims “The World is Flat”—as when “a boy I know/drove off a cliff/following the GPS in his car./GPS systems think/the world is flat/no mountains, valleys or/boulders, no cliffs…”

Lori Desrosiers also published a chapbook, “Three Vanities”, Pudding House Press, 2009. Publisher of the “Naugatuck River Review” (narrative poetry), she has an MFA

From New England College in New Hampshire” and has been published in many literary journals. In 2010, she won the Greater Brockton Society for Poetry Award for “That Pomegranate Shine

New Ibbetson Street Press Poetry Release: Flying Cats (actually swooping) by Dan Sklar

  Dan Sklar Professor of Creative Writing at Endicott College has a new collection of poetry forthcoming:

                                                 Flying Cats  ( actually swooping)

                                                     ADVANCED PRAISE!

The refreshing thing about Sklar’s poetry is that it’s not that  carefully worked-over, avant-garde, conundrum, riddle-twisted work that is less interested in getting across ideas and emotions than puzzling and impressing the reader. Sklar is Mr. Tell-It-As-It-Is. Which he himself is very aware of: My poems/do not win/poetry awards/because/they re/not poems/at all.

Which is not to say that they don’t move, touch you, and communicate. By getting rid of all the technique games and getting to the human heart of things, Sklar is one of the most successful communicators around. His topics include the inner Thoreau, horses, funerals, war, bicycles, rain, aging, sex, opera, canoes (and the Iroquois), truck accidents....and there’s not a poem, story, or play in this book that you can stop reading once you’ve read the first line. Unreadable poets should take a course in Sklar, get readable, read this book.

—Hugh Fox, Founding editor of the Pushcart Prize



Fans of European 19th century verse, thick with symbolism and multi-syllabic, will find little to love in Dan Sklar’s work. Sklar’s poetry could be characterized as American Primitive, clean and bracing as creek water. Like Whitman, Sklar celebrates the mystery and profundity of the everyday. This is “guy” poetry, muscularly chronicling the days and to-do list of the contemporary American male, helplessly and joyfully committed to the challenges of raising a houseful of boys, teaching sleepy-eyed college students, and handling the ignominies of manuscript rejection letters. Sklar’s poems tumble and sing with enormously universal appeal.



—Lisa Beatman, Author of Manufacturing America



I say to the woman tonight out of the blue: “You know what I liked about that guy yesterday? He didn’t appear at all jealous or even slightly worried I might be better than him (whatever that means)… and in front of his students.” Dan, you’re a person who is self-assured and in a very good, rare and unpretentious way.



-- G. Todd Slone—The American Dissident



Ibbetson St. Press

25 School St.

Somerville, Mass.

02143

http://ibbetsonpress.com

Salem in Séance Poems by Susana H. Case

Salem in Séance

Poems by Susana H. Case

WordTech Editions

www.wordtechweb.com


ISBN: 9781625490025

93 Pages

Review by Dennis Daly

Witches (i.e. those who have signed the devil’s book) cannot get through the Lord’s Prayer without stumbling, or recite the Ten Commandments in order and intact. So, for a stutterer like me, saying "h-h-h-hallowed be thy name" in the greater Salem of 1692 could be the onset of some serious judicial trouble. And, indeed, all sorts of spasmodic tics, flaws and quirks convinced that pent up joyless citizenry that Satan’s diabolical plan to destroy the Puritan Church had neared its triumphal conclusion.

Susana H. Case uses her poetic rendition of these happenings to give voice to some of the twenty executed women and men of those times and also to describe the complicated motivations of the accusers and political backdrop involved in the progression of this hysteria. She also engages her subjects with direct comments creating snippets of dialog in many of her poems. This unusual convention is not always successful but when it is it adds mightily to the poem’s power.

In her poem Sarah Good Case summons the voice of one poor soul going through one hell of a midlife crises. Here is part of Sarah’s story,

…I know

the villagers cannot abide me: my poverty,

begging,

the turbulence,

curses I admit

I have made upon their livestock.

[You make excuses for them!]

But I must, I am wrecked

since the loss of inheritance

rights, my downhill slide,

know the ruin upon me

makes my eyes look hollowed out,

more like seventy than thirty-eight.

Even my four-year-old

gives evidence against me. And my husband,

William, affirms if I am not already a witch,

I soon will be one…

Yes, her husband William must have been one understanding son-of –a bitch.

Another one of the accused does better in the husband department. Elizabeth Cary, the title character of a more uplifting poem in Case’s collection, puts it this way,

though he has never broken the law

before, Nathaniel is influential

enough—mariner and merchant—to arrange

my escape from the eight pounds

of weight, from what would otherwise

be my fate. New York, bless

Governor Fletcher, no friend

of Massachusetts (the two governors

almost slug it out on Martha’s vineyard),

provides asylum. My husband

loves me. The others conspire to get what

we have, divide it among themselves.

For prison keepers who live in penury, and

for those like my Nathaniel

rich enough to assure salvation, praise

the Lord for the glory of bribery.

The poet gets a number of things right. The victims of the Salem Witch Trials are not model human beings. They are earthy country folk with their own fears and shortcomings. Case’s portrayal of four year old Dorcas Good, in the poem of that same name, by her mother, Sarah Good, is riveting. Sarah explains,

…My Dorcas,

four years old, a fluttering

little bird whom I suckled

not so long ago, I admit

is a disordered child. They searched

her too, found a nipple on her finger

which could nourish a snake. If my salvation

after death depends

upon her goodness, I am ruined.

This child, her ways wicked and strange;

All is fury, all is pain.

Case in her poem Without Powerful friends portrays the case of Bridget Bishop, who, among other things, was accused of killing her husband with the use of a voodoo doll. After the first stanza Case interjects an account of Samuel Shattuck’s testimony against Bishop. Shattuck complains that in 1680 Bishop had bewitched his eldest child. This section works quite well. Later on in the same poem Case’s updated language and comments work less well. Bishop speaks,

…If I zoomed three hundred

years into the future, those about me

would still wish me hanged.

[It’s true, it happens every summer

now in front of tourists]

So there it is. I adore my big hats,

taverns, my old house—unlicensed

place of amber-colored cider and play—

my play at shuffleboard,

have no reason for shame

from that forbidden game.

[I’d bet you’d like a cigarette.]

The section of the book called Accusations includes the poem Cursed Children. Case gives voice to Betty Parris, the nine year old daughter of Reverend Samuel Parris. Here the poet’s interjected comments are biting and effective. The poem begins,

…Household chores are difficult

for me. [You’re only nine, Betty Parris!]

I am sickly, do not know

why I should be sickly. Unexplained

sickness sticks to mother.

[Take a closer look at your father.]

I do not know what you mean.

In the poem Master Witch Case recounts the execution of George Burroughs. Burroughs, a former minister himself, does the unthinkable. At the hanging he recites the Lord’s Prayer without a hitch. What to do? Enter the helpful Cotton Mather. The poet concluding the piece explains,

The crowd grows apprehensive.

Everyone knows what a witch must do

is make a mistake.

Then for those unsettled

in the crowd, Cotton Mather reminds them

the hanging must proceed;

George Burroughs has been convicted

by a skillful and temperate jury

(and perhaps he is a Baptist).

Sad, corroded village.

Such was the darkness of the day—

These perceptive and passionate poems by Susana Case are not only well worth the read but a good way to give sentient voice to historical injustice. And poets certainly have a plethora of that raw material.

Plum(b) poems by Kim Triedman

 

Plum(b)

poems

by Kim Triedman

Main Street Rag

Charlotte NC

Copyright © 2013 by Kim Triedman

ISBN: 978-1-59948-408-2

Softbound, 78 pages, $14

Review by Zvi A. Sesling

Kim Triedman lives with open windows and with her newest volume of poetry we stand outside her room and hear her thoughts. Reading her reveals even more and we

discover that open windows can tell us something about hearts, open and closed.

The first part of the book, “Plumb” plumbs the history of her house in ways one would not expect. It is the history of two lives, doors, basements, porches, windows, flowers, vegetables and more, all of it riveting reading because Triedman brings you into her world, her garden, her house, herself.

Terra Firma

Forgive me, but I don’t know where

to place my foot.

See how the landscape changes, just like that?

the peas, climbing; the corn?

Nothing is where one might expect anymore, reasonably

expect, given all that time and time

before. There are things I know –

eyes, of course, wet well; the smell of rain

on the tomatoes. Moons

in all their shiny outfits.

But seasons slide beneath our feet

and high above

a hard-bill flicker taps away

at punky time.

I would go there if I could –

the next place. I would find

a way to breathe.

In the “Signs” you see the relationship between Triedman being unsure where to place a foot, perhaps a metaphor for a relationship, and the geese that don’t seem to know where to go. Is there a relationship between fear and ambiguity? Does direction necessarily have meaning?

Signs

The hostas, for instance,

how leggy they grow

and those rickety ladders

of lusterless blooms. Look, I know

what it is –

an ending again, a sorting out

of times. I can lift my head and see

the contrails

parsing up a church-blue sky

and the old dog readies herself

for a winter

she may

or may not see.

Beneath the nasturtiums:

dried leaves hang

like crumpled paper hats.

We have been here before, you and I –

a north wind whispers yellow

to the trees, and the old wicker chair sits

waiting, putting on her poker face.

It’s only that wayward flock of geese –

recklessly ignoring all the signs –

only they don’t seem to know

which way to go.

In the second section, “Plum,” the next layer of Triedman’s personal thoughts are peeled to reveal more of her relationships: In Lost In Translation, for example we see loss in a different way:

I thought you said yes

or something like it, something

juiced, a plum, and time out there

calling and calling, moons swaddling us

like silvered gauze. I thought there were

eyes talking, mouths hearing

every single word, not to mention

the pulse.

But enough about you.

Perhaps you didn’t know

that when I tip my head the clouds

no longer matter, nor the light;

that the red fruits on the dogwood

fall without a sound. Even that

thing we made—glitter and fire

and silk—that thing we never really knew

how to hold,

I have lost that too.

The final section is “Laden” and continues her book-long theme of things as metaphors for life, relationship and self.

Pink Lady

Fitting, perhaps—these fruits

just beginning to turn.

I am laden.

Looking down I see

the childhoods—

dappled; apple

cheek’d.

I am the bearer, the witness

tree—

sheltering,

rooted,

unable to leave

 

The way athletes have career years, Triedman has produced a career volume of poetry, which is not to say past and future books have not or will not surpass this one. However, Plum(b) follows in the footsteps of those poets whose revelations about themselves and their relationships have propelled them to legendary status. 

Ms. Triedman has written much about a house, plants, trees and herself. Yet ultimately

this fascinating volume of sixty-two poems is about her – good love and bad, some happy moments and sad ones. You will see her from the outside in – and the inside out. She has left her windows open for you to discover her. This is a highly recommended book by an accomplished poet.

_________________________________________________

Zvi A. Sesling

Reviewer, Boston Area Small Press and Poetry Scene

Author, King of the Jungle and Across Stones of Bad Dreams

Editor, Muddy River Poetry Review

Editor, Bagel Bards Anthology 7

Editor, Bagel Bards Anthology 8

 

 

 

 

 

 

Girl Friend and other Mysteries of Love by Charles P. Ries

Girl Friend

& other

Mysteries of Love

New and Selected Poems

Charles P. Ries

Propaganda Press

ISBN 9780615764344

2013 $11.99

“It's broken now. Fallen to a floor

that does not care about possibilities.

Placed in a closet of lost things,

it's a testimony that our passion

had no privilege...”

The poems touch everyday; relationships made easy, on paper, in a poem. Ries is a magician, he pulls love from each word juxtaposition, “filled with sweet flames,” the poems wear old shoes and worn shirts. We relax into the book, like a glass of wine or a beer warms us:

“...Life dealt us its cruel card. We won't be jumping into

flaming beds with the passion of young bodies. Rather,

I will roll her wheelchair or lift her off the ground when

she topples over. I will be happy to hold her in my heart

as a perfect moment when love blew through the right

window at the wrong time.”

We are not lulled into a lullaby, or tricked by sweet talk and blowing on our ear. We wake up startled by dreams and, “pretending the zit on my nose wasn't as big as a condo,” Ries mixes humor and the mean places we may end up when we fall; all his encounters, from the mundane, to the spiritual, “the constant erection, forgetfulness, and tears. Everywhere was a bed.” Girlfriend & Other Mysteries of Love, fill our glass. Love becomes every emotion, love flies and love returns us to ourselves and love makes mistakes and forgives and eats pizza alone:

“...Years later, after she dried out, moved

away, began to live in real time and

remember her days, she made friends

with life and walked the middle road

between drunks and born-again Christians.

She discovered she could zap pain

away with a flick of her forefinger.

She liked doing this better than

drinking and began to live dangerously...”

There are many girl friends. Ries writes with eyes wide open. The reader participates in all the poems:

“...When I saw her, she wept in sorrow.

Her tongue was heavy with anti-anxiety,

anti-depressant, anti-psychotic drugs she

calls her Vitamin Z. She sounded like I do

on too many beers, but without my

cheery, drunken disposition. “I want to

kill myself. I am sick of being a weirdo-

cripple-psycho-handicapper,” she moaned...” 

This is a wonderful book. Love and those that find love and love coming and going, yet stays on the page in this book-- not to be missed.

Irene Koronas

Reviewer: Ibbetson Street Press

Somerville Writer Ilan Mochari Pens a Debut Novel Zinsky the Obscure

Somerville Writer Ilan Mochari Pens a Debut Novel  Zinsky the Obscure

 By Doug Holder


Although we were well into March, the winds of winter gave a cold bitch slap to the windows at the Sherman Cafe in Union Square, Somerville. It was here, over one of Sherman's famed oatmeal scones that I met Somerville novelist Ilan Mochari. We sat down to talk about his writing life and his new novel:  Zinsky the Obscure (Fomite Press).

 Mochari is originally from Long Island, NY--the town of Great Neck to be exact. He is a big man, in his late 30's, and an engaging conversationalist.

  Mochari moved to Somerville in 2004, and lives on the Somerville side of Cambridge City Hospital. I asked him if he liked living in the Paris of New England.    He reflected: " It's fantastic. There are so many writers in the community. I am sure sure when I walk down the street after our interview I will run into an artist or writer I know." He lists poet Tanya Larkin, and writer Ralph Pennell, as a couple of his favorite Somerville scribes.

  Mochari also confided that he is a denizen of many of the coffee shops our burg has to offer including: Sherman, the Diesel in Davis Square, True Grounds in Ball Square, and Bloc 11 in Union Square.

  This Somerville writer worked as the first managing editor of the Somerville Scout a monthly magazine that focuses on the 'Ville. He worked at this gig from 2009 to 2011. Mochari said of his experience: " It was a wonderful excuse to call people up--to get to the heart of the matter. It was also a great way for me to learn about the city and its residents, not to mention having my work out there, even though I was writing in a different genre." Mochari now has a full time gig with Build- a business media outlet based in New York City.

  Not surprisingly, like many writers I interviewed, he worked as a waiter for many years. It paid the bills, and it gave him the flexibility to write in his off hours. He also met many fellow artists, and made connections, through his job. And in spite of making a living as a writer now, he is glad that he has a job that he can fallback on.

  Mochari's novel Zinsky the Obscure concerns a 30 yer old man, Ariel Zinsky who is recovering from an abusive childhood, and has set out to write an autobiography as a form of therapy or healing. He recasts himself into a Holden Caulfield-like character in this coming of age story.

  I asked the author how his story differs from so many stories of this genre. He replied: " I tried to write a story that tells how this character moves forward after the trauma in his life. The novel is essentially about Zinsky overcoming the world's indifference to his trauma."

  Of course much of fiction is loosely based on the author's real life experience. I wondered how Mocahri's family took to this novel that might have touched on some painful familial history.  Mochari smiled thoughtfully: " I have been writing for a long time now. My family understand the dynamics. My dad has long been out of the picture and is basically illiterate--so there is no issue there. My mom was a high school English teacher--she understands the art of fiction."


  According to Mochari he grew up on the wrong side of the tracks in the tony suburban town of Great Neck, N.Y. His family rented and did not own, and the budding writer didn't have the name brand clothes, etc.. that the other kids had. Mochari doesn't think he could live the suburban life again. He feels he is a creature of the asphalt--he is a walker in the city, so to speak.

  At Yale University where he got his degree in English; he studied with noted critic and scholar Harold Bloom. He loved studying with Bloom. Bloom, according to Mochari taught Shakespeare using contemporary language, not the rarefied academic-speak he was afraid he would be subject to. To this day Bloom plays an influence in his writing.

 After our talk Mochari gravitated to the next table. It seemed another  writer friend of his just sat down, and he decided to chat. Form my perch he seemed to be off at the races again, with both writers speaking in a rapid fire cadence about their work. And that's the way it is in our artistic mecca in Union Square, in Somerville, on any given day...  Mochari will be reading from his work in the near future; a listing is below...

May 5: Muse & The Marketplace Conference, Boston

May 30: Porter Square Books, Cambridge

June 5: Harvard Book Store, Cambridge

June 13: The Book Shop, Somerville

Snakebit Kudzu by Murray Shugars

Snakebit Kudzu

by Murray Shugars

Copyright 2013 by Dos Madres Press inc.

Dos Madres Press

Loveland OH 45140

Softbound, 57 pages, no price

ISBN 978-1-933675-90-9

Review by Zvi A. Sesling

Murray Shugars presents us with his songs of the south – dogwood, Mississippi heat, mockingbirds. But we also get a bit of Michigan and “Big Lake,” Ravenna and a taste of New Orleans jazz. We also learn Shugars’ version of history: Christopher Marlow shot by a jealous husband in an SUV, some bossa nova poetry that leaves a smile and on and on. There are poems utilizing various devices such as with humor or seriousness or both make his point.

Take for example How To Kill A Tree:

When you decide to fell

the dogwood behind the house,

do it quickly. Saw it at the roots

and watch it fall

Don’t limb the tree—dropping

first the dead branches, then

the dying—and let it stand

alone on that hill, a brare trunk

with two raised arms

cut off at the elbows.

Don’t leave it there

naked in the Mississippi heat,

saying one cool morning

you’ll finish the job.

Or try the poem The Eccentric Motions Of The Bossa Nova

I found the five

unanswered equations of Apollonius of Perga

scrawled on a blank page in the dictionary of God

I found a formula

for the eccentric motions of celestial lovers

and the unrequited desire of planets.

I found the names of conic sections,

the date of each birth and death.

I found the tangents and harmonic

divisions of the bossa nova.

I think Tom Jobim wrote those notes.

In another poem, How To Judge A Poet we learn different views of what it takes to write verse:

When you meet a poet

outside G&L’s in Muskegon, Michigan,

where all the poets eat

the best goddamn chilidogs

anyone has ever had,

Now, if you want to find out how to judge a poet, better grab copy of this book and read the rest of the poem.

Shugars has a way of making his point. He is a different kind of poet, telling Federico Garcia Lorca to come to Vicksburg and walk the National Military Park together, or lump Plato and Ronald Reagan into one poem and in another presents you his bucket list.

Murray Shugars is a poet to savor, read slowly, more than once, sit back in that comfy stuffed chair, then crack a thin smile.

_________________________________________________

Zvi A. Sesling

Reviewer, Boston Area Small Press and Poetry Scene

Author, King of the Jungle and Across Stones of Bad Dreams

Editor, Muddy River Poetry Review

Editor, Bagel Bards Anthology 7

Editor, Bagel Bards Anthology 8

Dream Catcher by Jessica Harman

Poet Jessica Harman

Dream Catcher

Jessica Harman

Aldrich Press 2013

ISBN: 978-0615753577

　

"...As if you walked on my soul, a bed of coals-

And the fight and the raw light-..."

Dream Catcher is a song about grief and remembrance. Love lilts across each page, each poem searches for how love left, how the imprint, the foot prints, become an eagle and verbs to wear during winter:

"...Walk through me on fire. You did.

I can't believe you did and cried

When I left. Eagle feathers, I left you

With your Buddha and prayers

To Saint Martha who was supposed

To cure our poverty, an old woman

In St. Patrick's Cathedral told you.

We never got rich. Never had anything

But our mangled love, which was ugly,

When you looked at who had to do

The dishes, but which was Beautiful,

Because like asparagus and pebbles

and circles, somewhere there is our love

In its pure God form,..."

Harmon is the dream catcher. She writes poems that sift through the relationship and exposes the human aspects of love, while letting the reader experience the ethereal, the catch all. "We wept out of selfishness, because we didn't have what we wanted, and the only brief way beauty can be real." The reader gets to witness the language, the shadow on poems meant to love what was and continues to affect:

"...Saved, me like water on a forest fire-

And now the cool and hot of letting go

Begins. After your death, the prayer that let you know

That finally I had let you go your own way

Was a whisper of something ether-like

Running like a vein

Through a rock, turning, turning, turning

Into blood. The universe, the way a swatch of dark marble

Will swirl with white quartz

Remains a fragment of some special pure way..."

Love poems usually try to persuade, the reader, into a dream, as if all was perfect – plain – and in these poems we get to bite into the food offered and it is not always sweet. Often the taste reminds us there are more flavors, more than one way to love. The poems echo real:

"...Things combine, as they do, as they will,

To make something that is,

And is beautiful, just because.

It's like that now, with us.

There is nothing else."

This book must not slip through our hands without being read completely. The poems dance beyond the music, like morning sun after cloudy days.

"...It's there, though, connected in a deep web,

A fine grain, a super-subtle incantation,

A place where dream blurs and reality begins."





Irene Koronas

Poetry Editor: Wilderness House Literary Review

Reviewer: Ibbetson Street Press

Reviewer: Cervena Barva Press