To the Dark Angels by Jared Smith

To the Dark Angels by Jared Smith (NYQ Books)

Jared Smith

Review by Doug Holder

Jared Smith is a poet who has an intimate knowledge of the failure of language; yet he still writes, and writes powerfully. In his lead poem, “Shivering Between Beings,”   in his accomplished new collection: To the Dark Angels, he acknowledges this with poetic resignation and appreciation:  “What we build endures/from the fleet-footed animals/grained grasses/spaces between stars/endures beyond understanding/white within darkness/in the primeval without words.” This is a theme that reappears throughout the book. Smith, who has a great affinity for the working stiff, the “Hey, Joe what do you know?” everyday guy trying to make the daily nut, performs his work with words despite all its limitations. He punches in for the countless eight hour shifts, and puts in the hard work needed to convey beauty and truth.

Although many of the poems here are focused on nature (Smith now lives in the hills outside Denver), Smith was a resident of New York City when he first really cut his teeth in the literary world, and knows how to capture the ethereal beauty of the cityscape. In his poem “Back Briefly to the City” he conveys the allure, the endless possibility platter, and the dream New York offers.  Here you have a picture of the poet pining for a drink, and meditating on a vision of a cab as it disappears into the mystery of the night:That’s why I've come here now, it seems, but I’d like a drink first/ and to choose among the many sleek women in their furs with/all the secrets of taxi cabs run out into the city night on sequined feet.”        

   

Smith rails against the buzz, the byte, the incessant demands of the cell phone, the quick fix, and the fragments of conversation that transpire over a wireless world. To this poet, to create art is a slow and contemplative process:

       “... It takes raw youth

       and time to work the patterns, shape clay

       with colors carrying the patina of meaning

       a time that lingers between the workings

       of grandfather clocks and cell phones,

       accumulating in the dust of empty rooms.

       No instant messages, no quick network

       comes from this where time stands, still,

       just a slow communication that enfolds.”

Smith wants to impart a message to the reader, and he wants he or she to take notice—before  they send his or her next  text, or email, before they don their headphones-- before they shut themselves off to the world.

Highly Recommended.

Review Of Transoceanic Lights by Sui Li

Review Of Transoceanic Lights by Sui Li, Harvard Square Editions, New York, 2015

By Luke Salisbury 

                                    Transoceanic Lights is a first novel about a Chinese immigrant family's first four years in America, but labels do not adequately describe the high quality of writing, subtlety of construction, or fresh look at the subject.  The story is largely told by the oldest son, who was five at the time of arrival, and sometimes in his mother's voice.  The child is enormously intelligent, and his narration is seasoned by comments from years after the action, but these, rather than intruding, or lessening the story, broaden and deepen it. 

                                    The novel opens: "The clouds below drifted in the wind and swelled into rain-laden anvils the size of mountains before dispersing into wisps of cobweb."

                                    Much of the tale is contained and foreshadowed in that opening sentence.  This is late twentieth century immigration.  The family is on a jetliner.  One world can be left for another in a matter of hours, and the transoceanic lights—the dreams, hopes, illusions that pull and uproot the family (The word will only be used once in the text and beautifully: in the last line)—are literally and figuratively, in the clouds.  The reality awaiting them will indeed be "rain-laden" and the crushing reality of immigrant labor will be an "anvil."  

                                    A sense of "dispersing" pervades the novel.  The essence of this story is change.  The first day of school will become third grade and fifth grade.  The difficult marriage between the narrator's parents will get worse.  Work will not get easier.  Work will always be work.  The horrid relatives—and there is doozy of an aunt and a hilarious awful cut-up cousin—remain horrid, but time is moving.  America does not stand still, no matter how difficult life is.  Everyone is in transition—on the move—toward the transoceanic lights.  This seamless novel beautifully shows the passage of time, mixing familiar worlds of childhood and the very trying world of immigrant adults.

                                    The author, like his main character, was born in China and came to America at an early age.  He himself is "transoceanic."  Chinese?  American?  Chinese-American?  His child narrator is a fascinating mixture of all three—as newcomers to America have always been, as we amalgamate, cling, and change, into that shape-shifting phenomenon we happily call an American.  "Cobweb" strikes me as especially, Asian.  Think of the Cobweb Forest in Kurosawa's great Macbeth adaptation, Throne of Blood, where Washizu and Miki are lost in the violent, stormy Cobweb Forest, inhabited by demons and the Witch who makes the fatal prophecy.  One feels another sensibility in this novel.  It's exact and appropriate. 

                                    The word is used again: "The clarity of those days is long gone.  All the memories have vanished, replaced by figments, cobwebs, and ghosts."  This is more than a story of immigrant hardship; it is a story of and about memory.  Ma, the mother, remembers China and her loving father, who can not help her now, not with work, or mean treatment by her husband's family.  Ma remembers China but "all the strands that wove the fabric of those memories together belonged to a time never again to become present."

                                    The writing is remarkable for its lack of self-pity.  Coming to America means work in an older brother's fast-food Chinese-American restaurant for Ba, the father; in restaurants for Ma, where she labors equally hard, but doesn't have the security of family.  Ba returns at night "to collapse from merciless exhaustion and wake up the next morning to resume the perpetual cycle."  That cycle includes nightly arguments over money, which he hides from Ma.  Ma says of working in America: "...it's all backwards, if I work hard someone thinks I'm a threat and tries to get me fired, if I slack off, out the door I go, and if I work just right, then it all depends on the whim of the boss."

                                    It's not that the characters don't complain.  They do nothing but complain, and have reason to, but the novel doesn't complain.  The novel moves from one grade to the next for the narrator (A terrific evocation of childhood with its fears, bullies, accidents, friendships and lost friendships), the years of hard work for the parents, the birth of another child (A powerful scene.  The author is a doctor and the reader is the beneficiary), and finally Ma's return to China to visit her dying father, which is terrific.  The depiction of the Chinese hospital is amazing.  The reader may recall the phrase 'don’t get sick in another country.'  Transoceanic Lights does not ask for pity or resort to nostalgia.  This is life where no one has the option of quitting.  It's not the America I know.

                                    The heart of the book is the ferocious love Ma has for her children.  She will work any job, call home any number of times a day when the narrator takes care of his sister, put up with a man she can not stand, not move back to China—for the sake of her children.  Education is everything.  The narrator can no more not be the best in school than Ba or Ma can quit their jobs.  Ma is literally sacrificing her life and happiness for her children.  Her son is her ticket to a better life and he's known that since he was five years old.

                                    Transoceanic Lights is very well written.  The style is fluent.  It surprises, in the way a reader likes to be surprised, takes chances, and fits the story the way a seasoned novelist suits the word to the action.  Ma's angry phone calls to China become repetitive, but they are, of course, conversation, and conversation can be repetitive, especially if you hate someone, as Ma comes to hate Ba.  The shifting points of view move the story effectively.  Several times I was confused, but rereading solved the problem.  The use of detail wonderful.  Whether it be the nuanced smells of Asian food, a new city, the family's American apartment which has "an odor... occupying the corridor like a poltergeist," the filthy city streets of an American Chinatown (The city is never named), or massive litter by the Pearl River, the sense of place is marvelous.  This is a fine novel.

                                    I doubt there will be many better published this year.  Let me be the first to welcome a serious new talent to the room.


**** Luke Salisbury is a professor of English at Bunker Hill Community College

Interview with January O'Neil: Executive Director of the Mass. Poetry Festival

Interview with January O'Neil: Executive Director of the Mass. Poetry Festival

January O'Neil

 Interview with Doug Holder

I remember years ago meeting with January O'Neil, and the founder of the Mass. Poetry Festival, Mike Ansara, at the home of my friend Paul Stone in Cambridge. Paul Stone was the Creative Director of W.B. Mason, and I thought bringing someone experienced in advertising would be a good idea. I don't know how much (or if anything) was taken from that seminal meeting, but there is no doubt that the Mass. Poetry Festival is on the tip of everyone's tongue. Over the years many Somerville poets have been presenters at the festival, and this year is no exception. Offhand I can think of Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Lloyd Schwartz and Somerville Poet Laureate Nicole Terez Dutton. I caught up with O'Neil, who is a professor of English at Salem State University--one of the many hats that she wears, and wears well. The festival will take place in Salem, Mass. from April 30 to May 2.  For further details go to:  http://masspoetry.org


Can you give me a brief history of the Festival?

Co-founded by Michael Ansara, the first Massachusetts Poetry Festival ran in 2008 and took place again in 2009. Both were overwhelming successes and put Mass Poetry, the organization behind the festival, on the literary map.

How has it evolved from its start in Lowell?

In 2010, the festival took a year off and moved to Salem with Salem State University as a major sponsor. The Peabody Essex Museum and City of Salem have been valued supporters of the festival as well. In 2011, I came on board as a volunteer and eventually became its executive director in 2013. Laurin Macios came on board as program director, which gave Mass Poetry the next level of structure. Laurin has been the driving force behind some of our most recognizable programs: Student Day of Poetry, Poetry on the T, and the U35 Poetry Series—to name a few.

Tell me about some of the headliners this year.

Our exciting lineup of headliners includes: Rita Dove, Richard Blanco, Stephen Burt, Denise Duhamel, Nick Flynn, Regie Gibson, Jorie Graham, Edward Hirsch, Richard Hoffman, Adrian Matejka, Marge Piercy, and Rachel Wiley.  In addition, we have nearly 100 poetry reading, workshops, panel discussions, group readings and visual arts sessions happening during the three-day event.

Do you feel the festival is inclusive of the many different voices, camps, schools of poetry that we have out there?

That is our goal. We have made a conscious effort to reach out to all parts of the state and into New England to bring new voices. Our programming committee received more than 170 proposals, so it was a difficult task narrowing the selection down to about 60. But I’m quite happy with the diversity and range of poets and poetic voices.

Of all the memorable moments you must of had working for the festival--which stands out?

There are too many to name. Working with the festival volunteers and seeing so many familiar faces year after year makes it all worthwhile.

How can one get involved?

Visit masspoetry.org and find out more about the festival, volunteering, and other ways to get involved.


***** For information about the Mass. Poetry Festival go to http://www.masspoetry.org

Comedian, Playwright, George MacDonald takes a ride with Whitey Bulger

George MacDonald

 **** Well, when you work three jobs like I do, you meet a lot of interesting people. And because I am a local journalist, I get to interview a fair number of interesting people. Have if you will... one Mr. George MacDonald, a comedian, playwright, and for now--a night counselor at McLean Hospital, where I work. George and I were like two ships passing in the night. I was leaving the 3 to 11 shift and George was starting his usual graveyard. George looked like an interesting dude, and so we eventually got talking. George is originally from Southie, and was part of the comedy explosion here in Boston in the 80s and 90s. Since we are both a year or so on either side of 60-- we knew a lot of the people, places, and folks on the scene for the past decades. George is good friends with the comedian Jimmy Tingle, who I worked with when I ran The Somerville News Writers Festival. He had great anecdotes about many of the other great comedians, poseurs, players, what have you... in Boston and L.A.--his stomping grounds during his career.   Here is a brief bio for George:

Actor, comedian and writer, George J. MacDonald is pleased to be artistically involved with Somerville once again. Stage plays that Mr. MacDonald has written include, Waiting For Whitey,  At The Funny Factory,  In A Better Place and Whistling Past The Graveyard.  Screenplays include, Both Guns Blazing,  Still In The Picture and The Spider Sequence. Some of Mr. MacDonald’s film credits are,  Monument Ave. , Celtic Pride, Bluff and When Stand-up Stood Out.  His television credits include,  MAD-TV, The Michael Richards Show and A&E’s Comedy On The Road.  In 2005, George made his directorial debut with Why Work? , a sketch comedy show that appeared in The Edinburgh Fringe Festival.  Mr. MacDonald is a member of SAF-AFTRA, Actors Equity Association and The Dramatists Guild of America. 

George, a former Somerville resident, was kind enough to share an essay about his experience with the notorious Whitey Bulger. George wrote a play Waiting for Whitey that was staged in Boston, and got a great review in The Boston Herald and elsewhere.

Hitching a Ride with the FBI’s Most Wanted 


by George J. MacDonald



As soon as I got in the car, I knew I’d made a mistake. From the curb and through the windshield, the driver resembled a guy who attended U. Mass Boston’s Harbor Campus, same as I did. But now, sitting next to him in the front seat, looking into those laser beams he had for eyes, I knew exactly who this individual was. James ‘Whitey’ Bulger. The Irish mob boss of my South Boston neighborhood, a man reputed to be a ruthless killer.

It was early March, 1977. Sunny. About three o’clock. The air was crisp. I had cut my last class of the day and felt very tired as I thumbed a ride along the boulevard on Carson Beach. My fatigue, combined with the joint I had just smoked, severely impaired my powers of observation. When the car pulled over to the curb, I was filled with a surge of gratitude. I jumped inside, delighted to have escaped the late winter chill. I was lit up like a Christmas tree and feeling more friendly than a golden retriever.

“Hey, big guy! How ya doing?”

Not a word. Just his icy stare boring holes into me.

“Sorry. Didn’t mean to be rude. You looked familiar. Thought you were a friend from school.”

His eyes softened a bit at the apology. Thank God my parents had raised me right.

“You probably do recognize me. But not from school.”

As the reefer haze in my brain cleared, the situation began to come into focus. Sitting beside a sociopathic murderer tends to have a sobering effect on most people. I finally recognized him and knew that this was not good.

“My name is Jimmy. Jimmy Bulger.”

“Oh yes, of course. I’ve seen you around the neighborhood.”

I introduced myself and we shook hands. He asked me where I was going so I told him. He pulled away from the curb and an awful lot of questions raced through my mind. Why does this hardcore gangster want me to know who he is? Is he looking for an alibi? Where’d he hide his gun? Is there a body in the trunk? This is a wiseguy of the heaviest caliber. Why is he picking up a hitchhiker, even if it is another person from Southie?

He talked a lot and I listened. Whenever you find yourself in the company of a stone cold killer, it’s always a good idea to yield the floor. He wagged on and drove the most circuitous route imaginable to my destination. He dropped me off exactly where I was going and I thanked him for the ride. He told me he’d see me around. I said sounds good to me, all the while hoping that such would not be the case. Only ten minutes had passed. I’ve never been so happy to get out of a car in my life.

Things have changed a lot for me since 1977. I haven’t smoked marijuana or hitchhiked for almost thirty years. I’m much too long in the tooth and those are a young man’s games. Things have changed a lot for Whitey, too. He‘s gone from being a local crime boss, to an FBI informer turned fugitive, to a lifetime guest of the federal government inside The Crowbar Motel.

I’ve often wondered about my ride with the FBI’s Most Wanted. What compelled him to pick me up? What motive could he have had for doing this? A notorious desperado and shooter like him, going out of his way to give a free ride to a total stranger and civilian like me? He had nothing to gain by giving me a lift. So then why did he do it? What was that all about? Guess I’ll never know.

I’m glad they did finally bring him to justice. He caused too much pain and suffering for a clean getaway. Whitey Bulger is now behind bars and in his eighties. He’s another old killer in an orange jumpsuit who must answer for his sins. Had he died while a fugitive, living under an alias, he might never have been found. His tainted legend could have drifted into the realm of the unexplained, right beside D.B. Cooper and Jimmy Hoffa, Area 51 and the Roswell crash. That place beyond the pale where things go bump in the night. Then my tale of the road might become merely one more ghost story ‘round the campfire, like an Elvis sighting, a Bigfoot encounter or a boat ride through the Bermuda Triangle.

Some people may find my story hard to believe. But it is true. And after sitting in his car and looking into those maniacal eyes, I can honestly tell you that Whitey Bulger was no Flying Dutchman.




*****George J. MacDonald is an actor, playwright and former resident of both South Boston and Somerville. He has also lived in New York and Los Angeles, but will always be a Bostonian at heart. He plans on maintaining his East Coast sensibility by never developing a taste for sushi or ‘taking’ meetings.

Asking My Liver For Forgiveness By Rob Cook

 

Asking My Liver For Forgiveness

By Rob Cook

Rain Mountain Press

New York City

www.rainmountainpress.com

ISBN: 978-0-9897051-7-2

70 Pages

$10.00

Review by Dennis Daly

One part obsession, one part surreal, one part experimental, Rob Cook’s new collection of poems, Asking My Liver For Forgiveness, delivers a consummate parable of medical terror. According to the book’s Afterword Cook contracted an obscure liver disease back in 2010 which in turn triggered the ravages of cirrhosis. Until an official diagnosis surfaced in early 2014 the poet and his world spiraled into a maelstrom of unpredictable physical pain, emotional ennui, and psychological denial. Through it all he kept writing.

Cook’s poems themselves leak pus, blood, and sweat off the page and into a syringe-fired dreamscape of alternating hopelessness and healing. At the same time the patient’s offending liver becomes independent, animal-like, and even sentient. Poetic order imposes itself on the havoc and illogic in a calming, almost climatic, way.

Early in the collection the poet objectifies his body parts in an effort to understand the disease darkening his consciousness. In the poem entitled Your Body That Led This Far Cook asks some pertinent questions,

Is your sugar flu at least one moment’s

true loneliness? Is your liver a frightened

animal huddled near your tummy

that reads the notes inside the harsh breads

and chilis you send it? Does your heart

already know the direction of your grave?

How do you know which kidney

Can be trusted? Which arm?

Which leg? Which eye?

Courting sleep at the Marion Hotel in his poem entitled Blackness Over Motel Country, the poet concocts a nightmare conversation with the dreamed up visage of a hospital nurse who once tended him. The coordinates of terror reduce “the best possible sleep” to a blend of anxious confession and jaundiced lunacy. Cook explains,

“I got sick without once leaving my childhood,” I tell her.

“The pine needles will not hurt you from there,”

the woman says through her conduit of ash tray static.

It is not my own voice, the despair of the television

that doesn’t end. “I am always watching from

the livers that came before you,” she says

when the sleep creatures pass like a blur of doctors

and their searchlights of mist. Maybe she discusses

my elevated comet count with the man selling

the letters left in the vacancy sign …

War metaphors monopolize commiserations on diseases. Cook’s immune system turned on its own vital organ, the liver, considering it an alien force bent on mischief. Brigades of soldiers were sent to destroy the offending party. The poet employs this battlefield metaphor in order to comprehend his internal chaos. He uses his title poem, Asking My Liver For Forgiveness, to reconcile with his former ally. Cook explains,

… it’s taken

how many years  to remember you

slogging without faces

through my liver’s venereal swamps?

To walk with precision

through my liver that cannot be

comforted from the snake-hard cold,

its dark churches where monsters pray,

the ones I let in who will never stop

stalking us, my friend, my liver,

my friend.

I will always be sorry—for both of us—

The poem Cryptogenic Cirrhosis chronicles a very bad diagnosis. Cook’s persona spelunks his way through gothic caves of anxiety and medical unease. Facing the unknown of one’s mortality forces the artistic mind to focus and refocus its imaginative powers on the minutia of whatever is at hand, presumable scientific certitude (or not). The wording evokes a strange and soaring elegance. Cook opens his poem with dissolution,

not one doctor could diagnose

each day i wanted  

a different angel to die,

so they pillaged

all the terrors in my body,

which was a virus now,

though not yet pain.

“you have cryptogenic cirrhosis” –

meaning the hypothetical afterlife

will become, in the days of

the impending panic transplant,

more than just a child who nourishes a distant cancer.

Still, one can feel dollars

Of damnation denominations

Pasted to the kidneys’ Egyptian ceilings

End of days bring panic, religious fervor, and great expectations. Cook’s poem entitled 11:59 chronicles all three using a mixed combination of Christian and medical imagery. The result both impresses and scares the hell out of you. Here’s the heart of the piece,

It is time to track god, digging

with his enormous cross in the wrong

direction, toward the thousand basements

of the last crucifix company between

jerusalem and the day after.

It is time for everyone to stay silent.

It is time to hear where the trees and the water

have stopped praying for us.

It is time for a hospital

without the cruel voices that arrive

from the center of the evening pills.

It is time for a breakfast without scalpels,

a nurse without tourniquets that monitor the liver’s fear,

a doctor without the elimination of names.

Notice the repetition of the phrase “It is time.” Cook seems to work himself up to a crescendo of control and hope that greatly tones down the panic and pessimism created by earlier pieces.

Exceptional artistry originates from diverse experiences, many of them disconcerting and even degrading. One’s flesh follows its own genetic and environmental script in spite of our better, often antiseptic, angels. Wherever Cook may be on mortality’s time span, his poetic work inexorably advances before him with its surgical candor and its strange, unblinking imagery. If you harbor even a modicum of belief in the curative power of words, read this marvelous poet.