Eating Grief at 3 AM by Doug Holder

Eating Grief at 3 A.M.
By Doug Holder
Muddy River Books
Brookline, MA
27 Pages

To order online: http://www.lulu.com/shop/search.ep?contributorId=1225982  

Review by Dennis Daly

What can you say about a poet who hates tulips, morning birdsong, and the seasonal promise of spring? Yeah, that’s what I thought too. But we would be wrong. Doug Holder, the author of this amazing little chapbook, Eating Grief at 3 A.M., lives his poetry. On the one hand he exudes the feverous, edgy images of an insomniac; on the other hand he channels Henny Youngman in a manic comedy- by- the- numbers shtick. The combination saddens, disturbs, and ultimately enlightens with its unflinching insights into the forgotten and discarded denizens populating Holder’s eclectic landscapes.

The title poem, Eating Grief at Bickford’s, opens this collection. It is a paean to night people, to men and women who wander into Bickford’s seeking warmth, food, comfort, or company. Everything appears flawed here. The table cloths are threadbare. The plates cradle only crumbs. The porcelain cups reveal cracks. And, of course, the unwashed night walkers who stroll in, seeking what is missing from their broken lives.  This piece oozes nostalgia for the mildly repulsive details of this haven, which are virtually inseparable from the arms-length companionship offered there. The poet describes the scene this way,

The boiling water
Ketchup soup
The mustard sandwich
They used to relish
All that so lean
Cuisine.

Oh, Hunchback
In the corner
Your lonely reflection
In the glass of water—

And Tennessee Williams’ Blanche
Eyes me through her grilled cheese
“Pass the sugar, sugar”
She teases.

My favorite poem in the book, Abandoned Warehouses, says little but suggests a lot. Empty spaces promote excitement and sometimes danger. Trysts happen there. So do meetings between enemy sides. Holder’s gone-to-seed warehouses provide sanctuaries for the poet/artist. Even as they surrender to nature’s encroachments, the warehouses still dispense something unique to the truth seekers among us. They seem to shut out the world. It is in places such as these that Holder finds his voice. He concludes,

Sometimes you must follow
The rat’s path
The vagrant,
The scrawled invective of the graffiti
The flow of some muddy, godforsaken creek
Before you can truly
Speak.

In the poem Father Knows Best—Mother Does the Rest Holder unveils his tongue-in-cheek (or maybe not) homicidal side.  The poem is based on long running TV show starring Robert Young and Jane Wyatt. The show purports to show the typical American family with all its well-mannered accoutrements. Holder will have none of it. Strangely, his poetic technique is not sarcasm. The poet confronts his subjects with a humor infused with savagery. The father’s sweater emits “tyranny,” while his smile, according to Holder, seems “brutal.” Consider how the poem ends,

“Princess!”
and she arrives
dancing with the dog
with an anxious, scripted
girlish giggle.
And don’t
you think
they would like to
kill him
just a little?

Holder remembers his elementary school art teacher in the poem entitled Mrs. Plant. The particular piece of art that he recalls from that teacher’s class is her own face. Like many people Mrs. Plant’s face was sculpted by her life’s experiences. Here’s how the poet puts it,

Her face,
A painting
That she worked on
For a long time.
An angry mask
Of red lips—
And rouge.
Disappointment
Sinking her cheeks…

But Mrs. Plant, like all of us, has a history, some sort of life that could have been. Holder ends the poem alluding to that life,

Walking back to
Her cold water flat
Sketches,
A love note
Stuffed in a pocket
Of her winter coat…?

Sometimes poetic lines do strange things. They weigh down what seems obvious—the literal-- with additional meanings and emotions. Holder’s poem You Know It Is Tough Being a Writer does this. The poet takes Henny Youngman type comedy one-liners and breaks them up into shorter lines comprising mostly of one, two, or three words. The effect is eerie and the words that make up these little self-deprecating jokes seem to acquire surprisingly sharp edges. Here’s one of those slowed down one-liners,

The run-down flats
The impoverished street
No one asked you the time
Just stole
Your fake
Rolex

Pathos intermixed with what was stock comedy. Weird! Even during the poem’s denouement this effect takes place. The sharp elbows are still up targeting academia with a sneer (or, perhaps, wink) back at himself. Listen,

The dead silence
Of the mandarins
After translating
The works of Eliot
Into English.

And take my creative partner…
Please.

Holder-the-contrarian rants his irritable feelings out in a poem entitled Spring, This Ain’t a Love Poem. By the tenor of his words he seems to yearn for a madman’s weather, the kind that assaulted Gloucester in King Lear. Remember Gloucester, recalling the previous night’s storm and his toxic relationship with his son, remarks: “As flies to wanton boys are we to th’ gods. They kill us for their sport.” Certainly Holder seeks, at the very least, “the cold insular comforts.” The poem begins with a huff of frustration,

Oh for crying out loud
It is here again.
The tulips sprout
 Like maddening clichés…
Those
Blooming idiots!
And the chirp
Of those morning birds,
What are we left with?
Their pellets, their
Turds.

The final poem in the collection, Disappearing From the Block, deals with human disintegration and tumultuous change. Whatever one’s moments in the sun may have been, no one gets out alive. We’ve come full circle: these are the frequenters of Bickford’s at 3 in the morning. The poet describes one such catastrophic change,

That couple
joined at the hip
the smiles always in unison.
Just yesterday
I saw him
in a distant
part of town
a vacant stare
with the early
morning addicts
his wife clipping weeds
and the bare and brittle
branches
in their garden.

As each poem exceeded another foolish expectation I found myself exulting in the grandeur of down-and-out human experiences and the curious memories of humble moments. Holder’s pieces delivered and gilded that grandeur and those moments. Together these poems are a wonder of offbeat artistry.

Wicked Hard David R. Surette

 
Wicked Hard
David R. Surette
Koenisha Publications
ISBN: 987-0-9800098-8-0
2013


“armed with the light
fixture suspended from its wire,
I tried to burn my brother with the bulb
as he swung by standing on the doorknobs
it burst into blue flame, a pop,..”

Surette's poetry is crisp, terse and humorous, with great respect, the poet uses experience to inform the poems. His childhood and growing years explain our own roots within that same self absorbed world. “She walked out of the bathhouse, we turned to see.”  As the reader turns the pages, each poem finely crafted, sparks our imagination and curiosity:

“...first gig drive from Malden to Boston seems endless.
I hit the curb turning West to Medford Street,
change the tire in pit stop time.
No Exit, boys Life, Unnatural Axe & Lapeste,
The bass player's mother said he couldn't go.
He snuck out.
It would be his only show.
The set's over in a blink.
The ride home takes seconds...”

His poems are just like that, the unspeakable, last chance to play, song. We encounter all the emotions of maturing; lust, greed, recognition and death. And more than that all the poems are about love:

“...Except those who stayed
behind, gravely wounded by
failure and doubt,
the curse of being
different and not
different enough,
having no meds
or not the right dose,
or dosing themselves,
broken-hearted and
sadder than they should be,
hair's horn or a
curtain across the eyes,
their deaths called sudden,
their wakes swollen
as only a teenager's can be.”

Wicked Hard blankets our age and our cool realities. The poems do not resist reality, instead, they encounter situations that maybe familiar and veiled with unfamiliar. The reader is warmed by their directness. Each word contains its own full meaning and manages to reach us. We realize we are privy to the poets' experiences but also we realize it is the humanness of the poems that help us relate:

“...I knew I'd never see him again.
I should have asked
why we never were friends.”


Irene Koronas
Poetry Editor:
Wilderness House Literary Review
Reviewer:
Boston small Press & Poetry Scene

Nothing by Design By Mary Jo Salter

Nothing by Design
By Mary Jo Salter
Alfred A. Knopf
Borzoi Books
New York
www.aaknopf.com
108 Pages (Hardcover)
$26.95

Review by Dennis Daly

Our universe provides little architecture for the internal paths of our lives. We routinely sculpt old expectations, and make things new by redesigning our days with charged up meaning and personal significance. Poets also follow this pattern, but even more so. They struggle to string together a mode of existence, often doling out praise and blame as they go. Most become demi-gods in their own minds—but not all.

In her new collection of poems, Nothing by Design, Mary Jo Salter creates her singular poetic world with a rare combination of vintage forms, wondrous music, and a very contemporary sensitivity. By her metrically adept pieces she belies her book’s title (at least as it relates to artistic creation) and she plumbs the layered, ironic depths of her subjects. Salter’s poems are wide ranging covering the lives of fellow poets who touched her, a section with some pretty funny light verse, warfare’s logical absurdity, adulterous behavior of a spouse, divorce, and a contextually astounding version of an Anglo-Saxon poem.

The introductory poem entitled Morning Mirror sets the philosophical stage. At an academic retreat of some sort, having her six o’clock morning coffee, the poet espies a bow tied man, a likely lecturer at the same conference, out for a walk by the lake’s edge. As she watches him she notices that at the same time she is being watched by a deer, which gazes at her in an unsettling but neutral manner. The poet describes her reaction to the experience this way,

I’m trying to unthink the expectations
of my given kind, to adopt another mode, a
curious but disinterested sense
of otherness. (Why is it for a week
all the deer have been either does or fawns?
Somebody knows the answer.) She wants more
from me, or maybe nothing; sniffs the grass,
nibbles a bit, then twitches: her profile high,
she bounds to the shore with leisurely, sure leaps

Salter’s irony conveys us through society’s expectations for humanity in a poem called The Gods. The poet often sits in an upper balcony of the concert hall she frequents. The patrons who sit in these seats are referred to as “the Gods” because they peer down on everyone else. But the truth is that these seats are the worst in the house. Railings impede vision. The performers devolve into ants. Even more unfortunately, the ceiling above these seats is decorated with eminent names of philosophers and artists, as well as the virtues they promoted. The poet comments,

It’s more the well-fed gods
of philanthropy who seem
enshrined in all their funny,
decent, noble, wrong

postulates, and who haunt
these pillared concert halls,
the tinkling foyers strung
with chandeliered ideals,
having selected which
dated virtues—COURAGE
HONOR BROTHERHOOD—rated

Chiseling into stone;
having been quite sure
that virtue was a thing
all men sought…

Our Friends the Enemy, a poem set in No Man’s Land between the trenches during World War I on Christmas Day 1914, tells the story of an unofficial truce and a football game between the British and the German soldiers. The story is true and, of course, completely absurd: it changed nothing. But that’s not the point. The game like an artwork or a poem became a miniature universe for a time and mere mortals created the values (read BROTHERHOOD and GLORY) in that universe. Salter refers to the madness of Ajax during the Greek/Trojan war in a pretty cool opening section. Here are a few of the lines,

Were they mad?
They kicked the severed head
of the football across the frozen mud
like Ajax running wild in the field:
it was the sheep he killed
when he’d thought he’d been slaughtering
Odysseus and Agamemnon…

Reading Salter’s poem Drinking Song will drive you to drink both metaphorically and literally. It is the poet’s master work in this book. Not only does its music work as a joyous drinking song, but it also compels as a dirge of profound sadness and solemnity. Its purpose is to tell a story. The tight meter and rhyme scheme control the lines and help the poet inject her cathartic irony and outright sarcasm. Even the syntactical aberrations are wonderful and detract nothing from the literal meaning. Consider these well-wrought stanzas,

Coffee tea and morning toast,
none loved more and love was most.
Up we dressed for dinner out,
Prozac and Prosecco, doubt.

Peace in time and time to seethe,
Open wine and let it breathe.
Mix up our imperfect match:
dry martini, olive branch.

Jesus, who agreed the whore
he shall have with him always more?
Econo lodge and Scottish Inn,
vodka, orange, scotch, and gin…  

Another marriage-gone-wrong poem entitled Complaint for Absolute Divorce drips its sarcastic acid onto the page, diluted only with the author’s affecting and heart-rending big-picture irony. This well done villanelle also gives the book its spot-on title. Salter seems to have chosen her form, the villanelle, for absolute control of her deep and volatile emotions. It works! She cuts her real betrayer, the as-is universe, and at the same time conveys a deep, almost inconsolable, sadness. Salter ends her poem,

…who could feel remorse?
That “Absolute” was rather fine.
A little something to endorse

the universe as is: for worse,
for better. Nothing by design.
Complaint for Absolute Divorce,

let me salute you, sole recourse!
I put my birth name on the line—
a little something—and endorse
the final word, then, in “Divorce.”

Notice also that the poem’s title in the penultimate stanza is fittingly self-referential.

Salter’s eloquent version of the Anglo-Saxon Seafarer strangely complements her contemporary poems. Or perhaps not so strangely. Faced with an uncaring, neutral world the poet makes sense of her life through art. She creates the molds and the metrics of her life: the tighter and more formal the poetry, the more control she has over her emotional material. Now she has a choice. Either she becomes the God of her own creations or she looks elsewhere for the origin of the order and understanding she brings to life. Remember the deer in her first poem, which leaps away with Kierkegaard-like surety. I’m betting the Seafarer tips us off to her decision. Listen to these lines,

The joys of the Lord can kindle
more in me than dead
and fleeting life on land.
I do not believe the riches
of this world will last forever.
Always, without fail,
of three things one will turn
uncertain for a man
before his fatal hour:
sickness, age, or the sword
will rip the life right out
of the doomed and done for.
The best praise will come after

From people who outlive him…

Salter’s artistry and technical beauty amaze each time you reread her poems. They will endure beyond this generation. This book belongs among her best. The word timeless comes to mind.

God’s Naked Will & other sacrilege

 


God’s Naked Will & other sacrilege

By C.D. Mitchell

BurntBridge Press

159 pages
 


Review by Thomas Gagnon 

            First-time author C. D. Mitchell excels at making scenes.  He often opens with sensational information, which evolves into a drama both compelling and realistic—no contrived plot twists here.  But also often, something is missing.  Most of these stories are all about their scenes, while the characters—if not missing in action—stay two-dimensional.

            First, the positive, and there is plenty of positive to accentuate.  Mitchell does create utterly memorable scenes.  Near the end of the first story, “Clovis Clementine,” the already horrible life of Clovis takes an especially ghoulish and ghastly turn.  During a flood, he imagines that dead bodies rise up and talk to him—at first, a high school classmate that he had attacked and killed, and later, at three-pages’ length, “the Colonel” who urges him to join the devil’s ranks.  A scene like that has lasting impact, and there are many such scenes throughout this short story collection.

            One other scene—a favorite of mine—occurs in the title story, “God’s Naked Will.”  It is a dialogue over the phone between a Pentecostal preacher, Mooney, and a receptionist at an escort service, absurdly named God’s Own Escort Service: A Touch From Above With Every Date.  The absurdity continues with the line “God’s Own Escort Service.  How can we touch you today?,” but the ensuing conversation takes unexpectedly dark turns:

            “I want someone who knows how to keep her mouth shut.  But I also want someone

            who knows what she’s doing.  And she must be white.”

            “What are you, a bigot?”

            “No.  But my faith prohibits inter-racial marriages.”

            “Your faith probably prohibits premarital sex, too.”   (55)

Such unexpected darkness—or, at best, murkiness—is a strength in all Mitchell’s stories.

            Also positive, Mitchell boldly presents distasteful issues and situations.  The mere concept of the Lord’s army (introduced almost right away in “Clovis Clementine”) induces shivers.  And it gets more distasteful than that, in story after story: schizophrenia, suicide, adultery, horrific hypocrisy, capital punishment, voyeurism, verbal abuse, and sexual perversions.  Nor are these evils hurriedly set aside.  Rather, they stay front and center, throughout.  For instance, the sexual perversions in the story “Original Sin”—especially, lust masquerading as nudism—never quite disappear.  Although the bride, Lesley, knows ahead of time that she will be getting married nude in front of strangers (on p. 124), she cannot reconcile herself to the thought (on p. 139).  On the contrary, she suggests to the groom, Zach, that they leave as soon as possible.  They don’t.  Lesley cannot escape from human sin.  Consequently, neither can the reader.

            This is impressive.  What is not impressive is the lack of characterization in most of these stories.  Clovis is not so much a person as he is a misfortune incarnate; the same is true of another character with severe mental illness, Sally in “Job’s Comforter.”  Although Lani in “Stud Fee” has interesting moments, Mike, the stud, does not.  Elias in “Healing Waters” achieves an anti-climax rather than a climax.  And so on, with one exception: Reverend Mooney.  Mooney takes on dimension because he is both astoundingly hypocritical and apparently unaware of his hypocrisy.  He contains a world of contradictions, which are not amusing and yet are not wholly disgusting, either.  It is clear that the unrealistic tenets of Mooney’s own faith are partly to blame for his faults.

            Each story is a mix of the well-done and the problematic.  Since schizophrenic Clovis believes in the Fundamentalist Christian concept of the Rapture, it is apt that he fears the flood is a particularly ominous sign.  But, the many similes describing Clovis’ schizophrenia merely strain the brain.  The can of mace in “Job’s Comforter” is a Chekhov’s gun that never goes off—an excellent aspect of the story.  But, the metaphor of Job’s comforter is utterly perplexing.  Whereas Darleen does aim to comfort her schizophrenic daughter, Sally, Job’s comforters do not comfort Job.  Other stories are more (or less) out-of-balance than these two.

            For all its imperfections, however, some stories in the collection do linger in the mind.  Important questions about faith are framed by intensely dramatic (but plausible) situations.  Yes, it is a bumpy ride, but it is an enjoyably bumpy ride with resonance. 

Brightness Fall Poems by Ellen Steinbaum

Brightness Fall

Poems

by Ellen Steinbaum

CW Books

Cincinnati OH

Copyright © 2013 by Ellen Steinbaum

83 pages, softbound, no price listed

Review by Zvi A. Sesling

To the long line of women who have written books of “confessional” poetry, we can add Ellen Steinbaum, whose most recent book is Brightness Falls. Steinbaum’s poetry is  gentle and sympathetic to our senses, certainly as revealing as her predecessors who write about their lives and loves.      

There are four sections to this book, the first, “Begin Again”  starts with untethered and is followed by begin again, two fifteen line poems in which we learn she is alone with, in the first a “solace/of pillows” and in the second “with beach grass blade/for compass.”

In the first scenario we can see her alone in her bed, the empty pillow next to her where he late husband would have been,  something everyone experiences with the loss of a partner.  In the second poem there is another recollection with which we can associate, our confusion at suddenly being alone and like wind blowing through grass and the grass perhaps bending in so many directions, we find ourselves directionless, unsure of where we want to  go or should, not metaphorically, but actually.

In one of her longer poems Steinbaum reveals what life was like for her before she met her new husband, though we do not learn how much time has passed after the death of her first husband before the new relationship.

Before I Met Him

I was fine

gave dinner parties

grew a garden

read the papers

paid my bills

repainted rooms and

bought new dishes

went to ballets

wrote my will

had a new book out

visited family  

tried new recipes

tried new wines

made new friends and

wrote new poems

had (small) adventures

I was fine

I was fine

had (small) adventures

wrote new poems

made new friends and

tried new wines

tried new recipes

visited family

had a new book out

wrote my will

went to ballets

bought new dishes

repainted rooms and

paid my bills

grew a garden

gave dinner parties

I was fine

I was fine

Males and females can associate with the emotions of having a departed spouse and the need to move on in life. Perhaps everyone’s method is different, but the underlying attempts to restart and reshape are all there.

Unlike some who might search for romance and a new beginning, there are those who do not consciously make the effort.

widow’s walk

she didn’t want to

want again

yearn for arms

around her

arms holding her

new kisses

skin warmed

by new hands

she didn’t want to dance

drop dizzily

from brightness

to deep shadow

want to go instead

on her even way

stay small and

folded from the light

never venture

into crowded streets

she never wanted

she never

dreamed

This poem reflects both the prelude to hope and the movement to the next phase of a life, from to companionship to love confirmed by the first stanza of:

there will be worse (I)

after the argument

he says there will

be worse and I

think those

are words of love

There are times when readers wonder if Steinbaum is writing about her deceased husband or her new mate. There are times when readers are left with no doubt it is about the present and the future, and while brightness may fall, a new sun rises for her.

This book is a “must read” for everyone who has survived and recovered from loss.  It is for everyone else as well.

__________________________________________

Zvi A. Sesling

Reviewer for Boston Small Press and Poetry Scene

Author, King of the Jungle (Ibbetson Press)

Author,  Across Stones of Bad Dreams (Cervena Barva Press)

Publisher, Muddy River Books

Editor, Muddy River Poetry Review

Editor, Bagel Bards Anthologies 7& 8

LET THE BUCKET DOWN: A Magazine of Boston Area Writing

LET THE BUCKET DOWN: A Magazine of Boston Area Writing

ISSUE 1

2013

Editor: Joseph Torra

Managing Editor: Molly Torra

$15

Review by Doug Holder

Somerville poet and writer Joe Torra has a long history on the literary scene as a novelist, poet, publisher, and teacher. I was glad when he told me he started a new literary magazine: Let the Bucket Down: A Magazine of Boston Area Writing.

There is much to recommend in this new venture by Torra. There is an essay by Robert Dewhurst about the birth of Measure magazine, the brainchild of the late Boston, Black Mountain School, poet John Wieners. I met Wieners late in his life through his late friend Jack Powers (The founder of Stone Soup Poetry) and I knew of his magazine. But this essay filled in the blanks about the Boston literary scene in the 50s and 60s, and how one went about putting together a little magazine in days before the Mimeograph Revolution. 

Joe Dunn, has a brilliant poem about Boston’s infamous Molasses Flood, with images of Bowler hats floating on a sweet, lethal sea. Bubbles of death percolate from the depths, topped by these drifting, Bowler tombstones.

Roland Pease, founder of Zoland Books has a nice piece about his seminal years as a writer and publisher. He has been part of the Cambridge, Mass. scene since 1963, and is a rich trove of local literary history. Also included is poetry by well-known faces such as Carol Weston, an essay by Daniel Bouchard, poetry by Joel Sloman, photos from the Word of Mouth Poetry Series of the 80’s and 90’s, and fiction and non-fiction by many other folks.

Poet Ruth Lepson, who I had the pleasure to interview years ago, has a fine piece about Robert Creeley and the jazz musician Steve Lacy. When Lacy was at the New England Conservatory (where Lepson teaches), both he and Creeley collaborated with their music and poetry. Lacey and Creeley both loved improvisation and the energy of irresolution in their art.

This new magazine is a very welcomed addition to the literary scene…highly recommended.

The Hotel Oneira by August Kleinzahler

 

The Hotel Oneira
August Kleinzahler

Farrar Strauss Giroux

New York, NY

© Copyright 2013 by August Kleinzahler

Hardbound, $24, 89 pages

Review by Zvi A. Sesling

What makes a poet memorable to me is the ability to make me sit up and feel a wow moment, an idea, a poetic line or a usage of words that says to me this poet is unique.

August Kleinzahler is that kind of poet.  In three previous poetry volumes of his that I have read I have had those moments when I get excited about what I am reading.

In his latest book Kleinzahler produces many wow moments for me.  Take for example

A History of Western Music: Chapter 63:

They follow you around the store, these power ballads,

you and the women with their shopping carts filled with eggs,

cookies, 90 fl. oz. containers of anti-bacterial dishwashing liquid,

buffeting you sideways like a punishing wind.

You stand, almost hypnotized, as the rosticceria counter

staring at the braised lamb shanks, the patterns

those tiny, coagulated rivulets of fat make,

both knees about to go out from under you.

So many images in the supermarket.  We have all experienced these moments, though I must admit I have never spent much time looking at coagulated rivulets of fat, though I have been buffeted sideways like a punishing wind.   This has been particularly true in a Whole Foods where they seem to push the carts the way they drive their cars—blindly and with abandon.  

                                                               .

Then there is this scene from Hollyhocks In The Fog in which a reader who has spent time at a seaside shore might relate:

Every evening smoke blows in from the sea, sea smoke, ghost vapor

of lost frigates, sunken destroyers

It hangs over the eucalyptus grove,

cancels the hills,

curls around garbage outside the lesbian bar.

Kleinzahler is a favorite because not only do the images come with super glue so they stick in your mind and warp your senses, but because the poems themselves are written to make you reread and thoroughly enjoy them.

And there are the memorable lines like: my name is on everyone’s lips:/-August, they say,/with resignation and dismay, pulling up their collars against the wind. 

Or:  Two turkey vultures, wings unfurled like spinnakers,/dry and groom themselves,

Hotel Oneira is out this week by the author of nine books of poetry, winner of the  2004 Griffin International Poetry Prize for The Strange Hours Travelers Keep and the 2008 National Book Critics Circle Award for Sleeping It Off In Rapid City.

There is much to discover in Kleinzahler’s poetry: individual lines, couplets and whole poems.   It is highly recommended.

_________________________________________

Zvi A. Sesling

Reviewer for Boston Small Press and Poetry Scene

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

Publisher, Muddy River Books

Editor, Muddy River Poetry Review

Editor, Bagel Bards Anthologies 7& 8

Female Adventurers: The women who helped colonize Massachusetts and Connecticut by Alice Plouchard Stelzer

Title:                     Female Adventurers: The women who helped colonize Massachusetts and Connecticut

Author:                                Alice Plouchard Stelzer

Publisher:           Merrimack Media

ISBN:                     978-1-939166-21-0

Cover:                   Paperback

Pages:                   161

Price:                    $14.95

Reviewer:           Pam Rosenblatt

While some people may disagree, people’s lives make good readings – no matter how mundane a person’s life may seem. Take the pauper “Oliver” in Charles Dickens’ Oliver Twist or the rambunctious “Huckleberry Finn” in Mark Twain’s The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, or the unstable “Willy Loman” in Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman.  Each of these characters led rather insignificant lives, but the authors make remarkable, memorable stories from them. These writers seem to suggest that everyone has a story, no matter how insignificant that person’s life may appear to a lot of people.

                Alice Plouchard Stelzer seems to agree! In Female Adventurers: The women who helped colonize Massachusetts and Connecticut, a 161 page non-fiction paperback published by Merrimack Media, 2013, Stelzer shows how important people are not just to themselves, not just to their families, not just to their friends, but to history as well.

Stelzer has written about a subject little researched and written about before: the women behind the men who emigrated from England to New England, mainly Massachusetts and Connecticut.

Often essential facts about colonizing women are not available or only minutely available. But Stelzer has gathered enough information about the lives of twelve women who assisted in colonizing New England to make an interesting, amazing read. 

Stelzer mentions how the colonizing woman had to do to with establishing New England’s towns. These resilient women tended to chores like cooking, gardening, sewing and mending clothes, and “have had a large part in the struggle with the wolves, bears, Indians, hardships and disappointments of New England,” as noted in Rev. George L. Clark’s 1906 address, Unremembered.[1]

 “Discussing men’s departures for war, Clark asks: …who were more dauntless than the mothers, wives and sisters, who with sad hearts, yet brave faces, spun the yarn, wove the cloth and made their butternut coat; filled the knapsack and with a kiss and a trembling, a thrilling word sent those men of nerve on their way of duty and death.”

In the past, women were only slightly recognized as vital figures in the history of the United States. But their husbands, boyfriends, fathers, brothers, or sons have been acknowledged in the history logs much more regularly. But they all made a durable mark in colonial society, according to Stelzer.

Woman who were once alive and have impacted early American history are documented in a clever, readable way throughout the book. Their families are written about, too. Stelzer has made an attempt not to acknowledge all of the people who have touched these women’s lives significantly; she even includes genealogical data.

Three women are discussed below. Each woman shows how Stelzer makes even the most unassuming woman adventurer important:

Margaret Barret Huntington (Her husband died at sea from England to New England):

“As the ship Elizabeth Bonaventure approached the Boston harbor, what must Margaret Huntington have been feeling? It was the end of a terrible ocean journey for her. The ocean passage created an unbelievable challenge for the emigrants. Margaret and her family would have been on the ship for probably six weeks with poor sanitation, the smell of seasickness everywhere, and no water for washing herself or clothes. But the end of the journey, there would have been no firewood for cooking and most of the food would have spoiled. Then there were the storms that tossed the ships around, wave to wave. Disease preyed on the weak travelers. Serious illness spread fast in the cramped quarters and smallpox stalked this voyage.

                In fact, Margaret’s husband, Simon Huntington succumbed to smallpox before the ship arrived in Boston. It is likely, from what we know about Puritan beliefs, that Margaret spent the time during Simon’s illness and death praying fervently to God for Simon’s soul and for the salvation of her children and the other passengers. All would have been in prayer as they committed Simon’s body to the ocean.”

How difficult the move to Windsor, also known as Roxbury, Massachusetts, must have been for Huntington, as Stelzer writes:

“Many questions remain unanswered because almost none of these women could write. What would Margaret’s life have been like in Roxbury? She was stranded there with four little children. It is plausible that Simon had a sizeable investment into the Massachusetts Bay Colony before coming. Since no researchers have been able to find a will, Simon probably died intestate, which would guarantee Margaret her one-third dower of Simon’s estate, but what exactly was the estate? Later the children were given land grants, but was there cash available for her to live? Margaret’s rather wealthy family may have brought servants with t hem, but none show up on the Bonaventure passenger list—like many of the passenger lists, this remains incomplete.”

Like Hester Sherman Ward, (an informant on a witchcraft controversy):

Here is some background to Ward:

“Hester married Andrew Ward in 1627 in England. Some sources say she was married in February 1619 but that would have meant she married at the age of thirteen, which would not have been a common practice in the wealthy Puritan family from which she came. The 1627 date is more likely correct. According to Roger Thompson’s Mobility & Migration, the emigrants leaving England for Massachusetts traveled in companies. All the citizens of one area would plan to leave at the same time. This was when an extended family would gather and make plans to migrate. Hester and Andrew, her father, Edmund Sherman and Stepmother Judith Angier Sherman, along with many of Hester and Andrew’s siblings, came to New England in 1632 on the ship James. Having so much family traveling with her would have been comforting to Hester, as some migrating women left their extended family behind. Hester was married for four years when it came time to emigrate to Watertown in the Massachusetts Bay Colony. Hester and Andrew had two children, the youngest only a year old, and possibly a stepson, Edmund.”

A few witchcraft controversies arise in the book. The below incident shows how important the opinions of women, especially Ward, were in colonial New England:

“Goodwife Knapp was not the usual suspect of the superstitious search for witches. She had a good reputation and did not get involved in arguments with her neighbors. On the other hand, Mary Staples, according to Taylor was a

               

Shrewd and shrewish woman, impatient of some of the

Puritan social standards and of the laws of everyday life.

She openly condemned certain common moralities, was

reckless in criticism of her neighbors, and quarreled with

Ludlow about some church matters.

During Knapp’s trial, Roger Ludlow, who was a very influential man throughout New England, tried to get Goodwife Knapp to name Mary Staples as a witch but she refused. Before then, Ludlow had had several arguments with Goodwife Staples because he thought she was a liar….”

And here is what Ward accused Mary Staples of:

Hester Ward, wife of Andrew Ward, being sworne

deposeth, that aboute a day after that goodwife Knapp

was condemned for a witch, she goeing to ye prison house

where the said Knapp was kept, she said Knapp, voluntarily,

without any occasion giuen her, said that goodwife Staples

told her, the said Knapp, that an Indian brought vnto her,

the said Staplyes, two little things brighter then the light

of the day, and told the said goodwife Staplyes they were

Indian gods, as the Indian called ym; and the Indian told

her, the said Staplyes, if she would keepe them, she would

be so big rich, all one god, and that the said Staplyes told

the said Knapp, she gaue them again to the said Indian,

but she could not tell whether she did so.

And Mary Blott Woodford, (a possible “maide servant” who had left England for New England), can be read about in well-written, clear sentences.

Here is the chapter’s opening paragraph:

“Researching seventeenth century women is difficult in all cases, but servant women are especially challenging because they leave no footprint behind. By following the men to whom the women had connections, I develop suppositions on the movements of the women. Mary Blott Woodford is such a case.

                Both Mary and her future husband, Thomas Woodford, migrated to the Massachusetts Bay Colony on the ship Francis and Mary as servants. It is probable that they met on the ship because it was the rule and norm that servants would only socialize with other servants. It is not likely they knew each other before their voyage because Mary lived Bedfordshire, England and Thomas from Lincolnshire. These towns are one hundred miles apart.”

                Woodford lead a simple but hectic home life, as Stelzer writes, “While in Hartford, Mary was busy with her family, gardens, and the myriad duties of a seventeenth-century wife and mother. She also had two more daughters.”

                And there were additional hardships for Mary, too, including several moves to different places in New England:

                “Just think about how many times Mary had to pack up her life belongings and move into another wilderness. She went from Bedfordshire, England to Roxbury, Massachusetts, to Springfield, Massachusetts, to Harford, Connect. She would need to create new gardens and set up a new home,  which was a challenge in these wilderness towns. At Roxbury, Agawam and Northampton. It would have meant loving in some crude shelter until the lots had been assigned and their house built.”

Female Adventurers: The women who helped colonize Massachusetts and Connecticut has much intrigue, even though it is a scholarly book. The excitement of colonization, genealogy, love, marriage, death, witchcraft controversies, crime and punishment, the supernatural , etc. in well-researched, not- too-long chapters are all topics discussed in this book. Notes and Endnotes about individual women adventurers, their families and friends are even included after each section.                               

Alice Plouchard Stelzer’s Female Adventurers: The women who helped colonize Massachusetts and Connecticut is a fine book about New England in the 1600s. It will hopefully leave the reader wanting more concrete examples of female adventurers in colonial America, something which may not be so plausible as the historic records are so far and few.

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[1] Stelzer, Alice Plouchard. Female Adventurers: The women who helped colonize Massachusetts and Connecticut, Merrimack Media, 2013.   All quotes and information supporting this article was found in the book reviewed –

Female Adventurers: The women who helped colonize Massachusetts and Connecticut, by Stelzer.