Steve Almond: MY LIFE IN HEAVY METAL
By Doug Holder
This is an interview with Somerville writer, Steve Almond. * published in the Somerville News.
There is a saying from an old television show, to the tune of, " There are a million stories in the Naked City, this has been one of them." This statement referred to New York, but this could apply to Somerville, Mass. as well. And not only are there a million stories, but there is an ample supply of writers in our locale to pen many a compelling tale.One new kid on the block is Steve Almond, who has written a critically acclaimed collection of short stories, MY LIFE IN HEAVY METAL. Almond, who teaches at Boston and Emerson colleges and has been published in any number of prestigious literary journals, has completed a work that explores the capricious nature of that thing that bewitches, bemuses, and bother us, namely, LOVE. I talked with Mr. Almond at Starbuck's in the heart of Davis Square, Somerville.
DH: Many writers get their start as journalists. Off hand I can think of Ernest Hemingway and Stephen Crane. You worked as a journalist for awhile. Did this spur you on to write fiction?
SA: Yeah. I didn't have the courage to write fiction just out of school. I was too beat up by my family, lack of self-esteem,etc..I did want to work with language. I needed to be pushed into the world a little bit. I was a reporter and it was the best thing I ever did. It forced me to shut up and listen to people. It gave me an ear for dialogue. I learned to write every day. I was slowly getting enough recognition and I was able to develop confidence.I was in my late 20's; and I thought" You know, I got to break away from the corporate setting. I have to try fiction, or I will hate myself if I don't."
"My Life In Heavy Metal" was my first book, so it was a big break for me. It is so hard to get stories published, and so hard to sell them. You have to sell books. I love readings, but the hard part is how many you sold, the numbers.
DH:You live in Somerville, the Winter Hill section. Is Somerville a good place to be?
SA: I have lived in Somerville for four and a half years now. I moved straight from North Carolina where I was in graduate school. I got an MFA in Creative Writing at the Univ.of North Carolina. I didn't want to stay in the South.In New York I felt I would be too distracted. I came up to visit in Boston and found an apartment in Somerville, one of those big, old houses-I loved it. I also knew I wanted to teach, and I knew I could teach here. I love the Portugese Bakery around the corner from my house( Winter Hill Bakery). I like a place where I can hear both Portugese and Italian being spoken. I like being close to Boston,but not being right in it. I like not living in Cambridge; it's too expensive.
Somerville is working class; there are some artists;there are university kids who bring energy, not a lot of corporate types. I am happy to have a quiet niche.
DH:Have you written any Somerville based stories?
SA: None of the ones in this book. The one story in the collection that is informed by Somerville, is: " The Last Single Days of Don Viktor Potapenko." It is about a pickpocket,and a lothario. There is a poetic squalor to the scene. It has the idea of gangsters...you can't live on Winter Hill without hearing about about the Winter Hill Gang and Whitey Bulger. There is some romantic danger just down the street. It takes me a few years to soak up a place that I live in, in order to write about it.
DH:In MY LIFE IN HEAVY METAL,you write about love, lust and relationships. In spite of all the ironic and glib barbs thrown in this book, there is still a sense of romanticism. Do you agree?
SA: Oh yeah. I am glad to hear you say that. In its worst moments it's glib. What I wanted to write about is the heartbreak and the suffering of desire. That's what everyone goes through. If they don't I pity them. The stories are about how we throw our bodies before our hearts.We pay a price...always. There is a larger endorsement of the effort for love in this book. I hope people who read these stories feel less alone with their dangerous desires...mistakes.
DH: Critics say that you write beautifully about sex. Can you comment?
SA: I have no interest in exploiting sexuality. I think sex is one of the deepest emotional, intellectual and spiritual experiences. There is no such things as "casual sex." There is a lot more going on.
DH:You teach at a couple area colleges and schools. How does this help or hinder your craft?
SA: I teach at Boston College and Grub St. I love it. I am energized by it because I get a chance to talk about what I love, and get paid for it.
DH: Are you in touch with other Somerville writers?
SA: I knoew (poet) Joe Torra. Josh Barkin is a friend of mine. I try to find other young writers to hook up with.
DH: As the song goes" It's still the same old story"; but is it? Is the search for love the same as 40 or 50 years ago?
SA: It is very different. The force of society to get married is gone. Men and women suffer for it. The larger message of the book is if you don't know yourself, you are sunk. Previously you banged things out in a marriage, now there is an extended adolescence.There are real prices to be paid.
DH: Any new projects?
SA: I am working on a novel. I am slugging it out. I hope to be done with a draft at the end of the year.
Monday, July 21, 2008
Deborah M. Priestly, is much more than just a poet...
Deborah M. Priestly, is much more than just a poet...
Poet Deborah M. Priestly is many things. She is the manager of the hub of Cambridge’s art scene, the "Out of the Blue Art Gallery," http://www.outoftheblueartgallery.com that she runs with her partner Tom Tipton. She is a gay rights activist, a survivor of sexual abuse, a mother of two daughters, a painter and an accomplished poet. Priestly has a number of publication credits and is the author of several chapbooks of poetry. Her latest two projects that she completed were the editing, along with Timothy Gager and Maria McCarthy, of the "Out of the Blue Writers Unite" poetry and prose anthology, and work on her own collection of poetry "The Woman Has A Voice." This collection deals with the sexuality and spirituality of women amidst their turbulent lives. Priestly who has read and hosted at the "Toast" poetry series, was a guest on my Somerville Community Access TV show: "Poet to Poet: Writer to Writer."
Doug Holder: Can you give us a little history of the "Out of the Blue Gallery" in Cambridge that you run with your partner Tom Tipton?
Deborah Priestly: I am not a founder of the "Out of the Blue Art Gallery." It was originally at 168 Brookline St. in Cambridge, down the block from the "Middle East." Tom Tipton and Sue Carlin founded it about seven years ago. Tom and Sue had the idea to have a really cool space that would give artists a chance to show their work. They wanted to have art and music, etc... One afternoon Tom was sitting at the "Brookline Lunch" in Cambridge with Sue. The owners overheard them discussing this idea, and told them they could hang art at his shop. So they hung art in this luncheon spot. Later they hung art in a loft in Chinatown. One day they were having lunch at the same place, and the owner said: "I have a property available." The rest is history. So--that’s how it happened. Later we moved to 106 Prospect Street. Just like any great idea it started with a conversation and ended up a reality.
The first time I discovered the gallery I was jogging, and I landed out front of the " Out of the Blue Art Gallery." I thought: "What the heck is this place?" I told Tom and Sue that I thought this was a great space. I told them it would be great if they had a poetry reading. Then I basically walked out. At the time I was working at Boston University. Later, I walked in again, and said the same thing. Tom said: " I remember you. You are Debbie. If you think we should have a poetry reading, then you should do it." The rest is history. Now I am proud to say that I am part of this really cool idea.
DH: How do you define yourself as an artist?
DP: I guess as an inventor on-the-fly. I used to say I am a poet. Now I paint as well, but down deep I have to say I am a poet because of the way I think. People have told me that when I drink, and I am a little tipsy, I speak in verse. So down deep I am a poet.
DH: Do you think the troubles you experienced, sexual abuse, epilepsy, depression, etc... spurred you on to write?
DP: In a weird way yes because it gave me an outlet. For the times I felt alone, the writing was really like a friend. When I can’t write now I paint. I always tell younger people it’s really important to get what you are feeling out. If I didn’t have this outlet I probably would be using drugs, and drinking. The book "The Woman Has A Voice" isn’t about feeling sorry for myself. In the collection I try to show people there is a way out of the darkness. There is resolution and hope.
DH: Why do you feel so many poets, and artists have been effected by mental illness?
DP: I think a lot of the times artists are more aware and sensitive to their environment. I don’t want to use the word "mental illness.’ I just want to say they may be over sensitive to the stimulus around them. I react strongly to a siren for instance, while a friend may find it a mere annoyance. I’m just more sensitive to the stimuli.
Poet Deborah M. Priestly is many things. She is the manager of the hub of Cambridge’s art scene, the "Out of the Blue Art Gallery," http://www.outoftheblueartgallery.com that she runs with her partner Tom Tipton. She is a gay rights activist, a survivor of sexual abuse, a mother of two daughters, a painter and an accomplished poet. Priestly has a number of publication credits and is the author of several chapbooks of poetry. Her latest two projects that she completed were the editing, along with Timothy Gager and Maria McCarthy, of the "Out of the Blue Writers Unite" poetry and prose anthology, and work on her own collection of poetry "The Woman Has A Voice." This collection deals with the sexuality and spirituality of women amidst their turbulent lives. Priestly who has read and hosted at the "Toast" poetry series, was a guest on my Somerville Community Access TV show: "Poet to Poet: Writer to Writer."
Doug Holder: Can you give us a little history of the "Out of the Blue Gallery" in Cambridge that you run with your partner Tom Tipton?
Deborah Priestly: I am not a founder of the "Out of the Blue Art Gallery." It was originally at 168 Brookline St. in Cambridge, down the block from the "Middle East." Tom Tipton and Sue Carlin founded it about seven years ago. Tom and Sue had the idea to have a really cool space that would give artists a chance to show their work. They wanted to have art and music, etc... One afternoon Tom was sitting at the "Brookline Lunch" in Cambridge with Sue. The owners overheard them discussing this idea, and told them they could hang art at his shop. So they hung art in this luncheon spot. Later they hung art in a loft in Chinatown. One day they were having lunch at the same place, and the owner said: "I have a property available." The rest is history. So--that’s how it happened. Later we moved to 106 Prospect Street. Just like any great idea it started with a conversation and ended up a reality.
The first time I discovered the gallery I was jogging, and I landed out front of the " Out of the Blue Art Gallery." I thought: "What the heck is this place?" I told Tom and Sue that I thought this was a great space. I told them it would be great if they had a poetry reading. Then I basically walked out. At the time I was working at Boston University. Later, I walked in again, and said the same thing. Tom said: " I remember you. You are Debbie. If you think we should have a poetry reading, then you should do it." The rest is history. Now I am proud to say that I am part of this really cool idea.
DH: How do you define yourself as an artist?
DP: I guess as an inventor on-the-fly. I used to say I am a poet. Now I paint as well, but down deep I have to say I am a poet because of the way I think. People have told me that when I drink, and I am a little tipsy, I speak in verse. So down deep I am a poet.
DH: Do you think the troubles you experienced, sexual abuse, epilepsy, depression, etc... spurred you on to write?
DP: In a weird way yes because it gave me an outlet. For the times I felt alone, the writing was really like a friend. When I can’t write now I paint. I always tell younger people it’s really important to get what you are feeling out. If I didn’t have this outlet I probably would be using drugs, and drinking. The book "The Woman Has A Voice" isn’t about feeling sorry for myself. In the collection I try to show people there is a way out of the darkness. There is resolution and hope.
DH: Why do you feel so many poets, and artists have been effected by mental illness?
DP: I think a lot of the times artists are more aware and sensitive to their environment. I don’t want to use the word "mental illness.’ I just want to say they may be over sensitive to the stimulus around them. I react strongly to a siren for instance, while a friend may find it a mere annoyance. I’m just more sensitive to the stimuli.
Marc Widershien interviewed by Doug Holder
Marc Widershien interviewed by Doug Holder
April, 2001, Boston, Massachusetts
A Lucid Moon Interview no. 11
Marc Widershien has completed a memoir, The Life of All Worlds, due to be released before the end of the year by the Ibbetson Street Press/Stone Soup Poets. This book will deal with Widershien's boyhood in Boston during the 1940s, 1950s, and 1960s. Widershien, 57, is currently teaching at Springfield College of Human Services, and Massachusetts Communications College in Brookline, Massachusetts. Marc is also an accomplished poet, artist and musician. He has worked as a Ph.D cab driver, bookkeeper, bookstore owner, and librarian. I have known Marc for a short while, but I quickly realized that there was a lot to learn from him, especially about the life of the creative person in America. In spite of personal and professional setbacks, he kept his eye on his seminal vision. Now as a mature artist he describes himself as a student of the word, and retains an aura of energy of a much younger man.
DH: I always ask this question of poets I interview. How did you become one? Was it something that started very early, or did you gradually grow into it? Was there a dramatic defining moment?
MW: I am still not sure. My mother and aunt edited a tabloid called Chai Odom Bulletin (I mentioned this in The Life of All Worlds). I remember the deadlines, the excitement. It reminded me of one those fast talking films you would see in the 1930s where reporters are screaming into telephones. Everyone is running around in circles. These were called "screwball comedies." Sirens blare, a cub reporter rushes in to say there's an elephant loose in Central Park that kind of thing. I felt ignored, but at the same time, drank in that energy. I can still hear those old Royals clicking away like butterflies. That was one incident. In 1961, I was at the Eastman School of Music, studying the violin. I was in low spirits by the middle of December. Mr. Cooper, our English teacher, would play these strange poems on records: "Let us go there you and I..." "The Sea of Faith Too" They helped me define my anguish. It was a catalytic moment. Months later, in a pouring rain, I sat at a table next to the window, felt peaceful, and started to write complete drivel. It was then I started to really read poetry with intensity: anthologies with poems by Keats, Arnold, Auden, Spender. Then I discovered Eliot, then Pound, Stevens, Baudelaire, and so forth.
DH: Explain the germ of the idea of The Life of All Worlds. How did all of this start?
MW: First of all, the book is subtitled, Fragments from an Autobiographical Journey. My father died in 1970, at the age of 64. I was 26, living in San Francisco, and attending San Francisco State. I knew that my father had been ill, but I didn't know how ill. I came home from work one day, and there on my outside steps was a telegram wedged under the door. It was from my mother, informing me of my father's death. I flew back to Boston in the middle of the night. I attended the funeral, and had to be back on the Coast the next day. Back in San Francisco, I mourned my father, but I felt inexplicably angry, as if we had unfinished business. One day, I was in Berkeley, and came across this book by Bishop James Pike, The Other Side. In the book, Pike was talking to his dead son (who had killed himself). I took temporary solace in the fact that there was an "other world." But not long after, I had some kind of a breakdown. There had been an incubation of about three months, and then the universe fell on me. I was out there, and psychically raw. I had to confront my grief and the deeper issues in life. In 1972, I left San Francisco, and finally ended up in New York. I think the book records the inspiration of a young man who in some ways is a very old man. The writing went on for several years.
DH: You told me that in San Francisco, you viewed a most beautiful sunset, and you had what you described as a "vision." Was this sort of a defining moment for yourself as a man and an artist?
MW: The sunset was in my head. You might call it an out-of-body experience. In fact, I remember few sunrises and sunsets in that fog-driven town. As I said, I think my father's death and my grief opened up a level of consciousness that I had never completely experienced. This-mind you-without certain "inducements." The only similar epiphanic moment that was so intense was when I was a four year old boy walking Revere Beach, Massachusetts, just after dawn. That was a sunrise!
DH: How did your background as a working class Jewish kid from Boston shape your artistic sensibility?
MW: Let me say that my experience was common to people of numerous ethnic groups. In certain kinds of literature, one writes about what one knows best. It was as Irving Halperin of San Francisco State once said: "Home sweet home." Dorchester gave me some sense of community, but it was a mixed bag. You had to fight, and I did. My feeling for the arts began, maybe, with my cousin Myron Press who was a fine pianist and an inspiration to us-because he was the oldest. Myron, without knowing it, gave us a great legacy. He died young, of childhood diabetes. From Dorchester, it was on to the Boston Music School where I eventually studied art and music. I also loved to paint, and my mother gave me a steady supply of oils and watercolors. She sacrificed for me in that way. I somehow bridged the gap between blue collar Dorchester, and the Brahmin Back Bay. I also had mentors and role models whom I dearly loved. It was a childhood of great ironies, both joyful and depressing. But I say this: If the past makes you cry, it was worth living-- because it shows reverence. In fact, time itself, is a mental construct. This is not to say we should wallow in that demon nostalgia. The past was not better than the present, just different. Poets are distillers, but they also get drunk on what they distill. At the same time, a person without a past has not lived "authentically." And part of the equation is that artists don't perceive the past as "the past."
DH: You have had a wide variety of jobs and careers. What have these experience brought to your work?
MW: I'm not sure how to answer that question. Work may have instilled in me the habit of writing, whenever, wherever I could sneak it in. You see, these piddle jobs had nothing to do with anything but making a buck. I'd rather make a poem. I've never been to a retreat, yet have always made time for writing. I wrote between the lines of my existence. Poetry is a sneaky business to begin with. Everyday we try to steal fire. Yet poems, for me, are no ordinary occurrences. First you play with the language, then try to make poems out of it all.
DH: Is the struggling artist experience a valuable one? Is suffering necessary, or is this just a cliche?
MW: Poetry is and will forever be a craft. I like to think of myself as a composer rather than a poet, because you need a certain amount of training just to get anything down on paper. Poets hang out their shingles all the time, before they are ready, often concerned more with self than with art. I'm against that. In some ways, poets can be very selfish and insensitive. All people suffer; they are like orange skins. And I've met a lot of thick-skinned writers too. I've seen suffering. You don't have to be an artist to suffer. What you do need to be is a constant observer of life's minutia. You may not see heaven in a grain of sand, but you will see the sand a helluva lot better. That kind of suffering is redemptive. "The wise man learns to enjoy his suffering," a sage once said.
DH: What themes do your poems most often deal with? From my reading of your work, there seems to be a strong spiritual sensibility to them.
MW: Mallarme wrote that all reality is spiritual. He spoke of the willed disappearance of the poet, of le neant. That man understood the creative process. That's my focus, but one must be very careful to make certain that art is more experiential than didactic. I love music and art and poetry. I love dance. Poets need to be aware of man's highest flights of the imagination. It is a process-always. I believe as the Paul Klee wrote: "Be arrows of fulfillment even though you will tire before having reached the goal." I also think that art is embodied in something else he said: "Man's metaphysical freedom contrasted by his physical limitations is the root of all tragedy." What else could a mere mortal like myself add?
DH: Finally, what advice do you have for the novice poet?
MW: Think of everything you do as grist. Talent is vital, but study, experiment, self-discovery through art is indispensable. When a writer is ready, the mentors will come-and they must come if an artist is to grow. Don't worry about imitating other writers. Eventually you will develop a style because "the style is the man himself." (Remy de Gourmont). Do not rush into publishing. That is deadly. Sit on the poem until you get it right. You may have to sit on it for years. And be prepared for the hard knocks of other people not liking your work. I have always agreed with Pound in The ABC of Reading: "Technique is the test of sincerity." Finally, be a servant of the word; it takes a lot of humility to create durable art.
The Old Photograph
The smiling apparition seems never to have lived,
but owes its existence to our own nostalgia.
My father no more than fifteen
wears his drill uniform with pride.
(A Jew In Russia could not wear a uniform.)
It is the grin of a fresh cadet in the new world
of Boston's West End, with cobbles instead of wheel ruts.
I write my epilogue in the sad dust of those generations.
Man on the Earth
L'Homme en terre place a l'homme sur la terre
--Paul Eluard
In the spirits of rain
in the heart's cry
the word is only a provocation.
It is man, wholly man
walking on earth
affirming his dignity,
feeding on a heritage sustained
by and sustaining the dad.
Man in the earth gives way to man
on the earth.
April, 2001, Boston, Massachusetts
A Lucid Moon Interview no. 11
Marc Widershien has completed a memoir, The Life of All Worlds, due to be released before the end of the year by the Ibbetson Street Press/Stone Soup Poets. This book will deal with Widershien's boyhood in Boston during the 1940s, 1950s, and 1960s. Widershien, 57, is currently teaching at Springfield College of Human Services, and Massachusetts Communications College in Brookline, Massachusetts. Marc is also an accomplished poet, artist and musician. He has worked as a Ph.D cab driver, bookkeeper, bookstore owner, and librarian. I have known Marc for a short while, but I quickly realized that there was a lot to learn from him, especially about the life of the creative person in America. In spite of personal and professional setbacks, he kept his eye on his seminal vision. Now as a mature artist he describes himself as a student of the word, and retains an aura of energy of a much younger man.
DH: I always ask this question of poets I interview. How did you become one? Was it something that started very early, or did you gradually grow into it? Was there a dramatic defining moment?
MW: I am still not sure. My mother and aunt edited a tabloid called Chai Odom Bulletin (I mentioned this in The Life of All Worlds). I remember the deadlines, the excitement. It reminded me of one those fast talking films you would see in the 1930s where reporters are screaming into telephones. Everyone is running around in circles. These were called "screwball comedies." Sirens blare, a cub reporter rushes in to say there's an elephant loose in Central Park that kind of thing. I felt ignored, but at the same time, drank in that energy. I can still hear those old Royals clicking away like butterflies. That was one incident. In 1961, I was at the Eastman School of Music, studying the violin. I was in low spirits by the middle of December. Mr. Cooper, our English teacher, would play these strange poems on records: "Let us go there you and I..." "The Sea of Faith Too" They helped me define my anguish. It was a catalytic moment. Months later, in a pouring rain, I sat at a table next to the window, felt peaceful, and started to write complete drivel. It was then I started to really read poetry with intensity: anthologies with poems by Keats, Arnold, Auden, Spender. Then I discovered Eliot, then Pound, Stevens, Baudelaire, and so forth.
DH: Explain the germ of the idea of The Life of All Worlds. How did all of this start?
MW: First of all, the book is subtitled, Fragments from an Autobiographical Journey. My father died in 1970, at the age of 64. I was 26, living in San Francisco, and attending San Francisco State. I knew that my father had been ill, but I didn't know how ill. I came home from work one day, and there on my outside steps was a telegram wedged under the door. It was from my mother, informing me of my father's death. I flew back to Boston in the middle of the night. I attended the funeral, and had to be back on the Coast the next day. Back in San Francisco, I mourned my father, but I felt inexplicably angry, as if we had unfinished business. One day, I was in Berkeley, and came across this book by Bishop James Pike, The Other Side. In the book, Pike was talking to his dead son (who had killed himself). I took temporary solace in the fact that there was an "other world." But not long after, I had some kind of a breakdown. There had been an incubation of about three months, and then the universe fell on me. I was out there, and psychically raw. I had to confront my grief and the deeper issues in life. In 1972, I left San Francisco, and finally ended up in New York. I think the book records the inspiration of a young man who in some ways is a very old man. The writing went on for several years.
DH: You told me that in San Francisco, you viewed a most beautiful sunset, and you had what you described as a "vision." Was this sort of a defining moment for yourself as a man and an artist?
MW: The sunset was in my head. You might call it an out-of-body experience. In fact, I remember few sunrises and sunsets in that fog-driven town. As I said, I think my father's death and my grief opened up a level of consciousness that I had never completely experienced. This-mind you-without certain "inducements." The only similar epiphanic moment that was so intense was when I was a four year old boy walking Revere Beach, Massachusetts, just after dawn. That was a sunrise!
DH: How did your background as a working class Jewish kid from Boston shape your artistic sensibility?
MW: Let me say that my experience was common to people of numerous ethnic groups. In certain kinds of literature, one writes about what one knows best. It was as Irving Halperin of San Francisco State once said: "Home sweet home." Dorchester gave me some sense of community, but it was a mixed bag. You had to fight, and I did. My feeling for the arts began, maybe, with my cousin Myron Press who was a fine pianist and an inspiration to us-because he was the oldest. Myron, without knowing it, gave us a great legacy. He died young, of childhood diabetes. From Dorchester, it was on to the Boston Music School where I eventually studied art and music. I also loved to paint, and my mother gave me a steady supply of oils and watercolors. She sacrificed for me in that way. I somehow bridged the gap between blue collar Dorchester, and the Brahmin Back Bay. I also had mentors and role models whom I dearly loved. It was a childhood of great ironies, both joyful and depressing. But I say this: If the past makes you cry, it was worth living-- because it shows reverence. In fact, time itself, is a mental construct. This is not to say we should wallow in that demon nostalgia. The past was not better than the present, just different. Poets are distillers, but they also get drunk on what they distill. At the same time, a person without a past has not lived "authentically." And part of the equation is that artists don't perceive the past as "the past."
DH: You have had a wide variety of jobs and careers. What have these experience brought to your work?
MW: I'm not sure how to answer that question. Work may have instilled in me the habit of writing, whenever, wherever I could sneak it in. You see, these piddle jobs had nothing to do with anything but making a buck. I'd rather make a poem. I've never been to a retreat, yet have always made time for writing. I wrote between the lines of my existence. Poetry is a sneaky business to begin with. Everyday we try to steal fire. Yet poems, for me, are no ordinary occurrences. First you play with the language, then try to make poems out of it all.
DH: Is the struggling artist experience a valuable one? Is suffering necessary, or is this just a cliche?
MW: Poetry is and will forever be a craft. I like to think of myself as a composer rather than a poet, because you need a certain amount of training just to get anything down on paper. Poets hang out their shingles all the time, before they are ready, often concerned more with self than with art. I'm against that. In some ways, poets can be very selfish and insensitive. All people suffer; they are like orange skins. And I've met a lot of thick-skinned writers too. I've seen suffering. You don't have to be an artist to suffer. What you do need to be is a constant observer of life's minutia. You may not see heaven in a grain of sand, but you will see the sand a helluva lot better. That kind of suffering is redemptive. "The wise man learns to enjoy his suffering," a sage once said.
DH: What themes do your poems most often deal with? From my reading of your work, there seems to be a strong spiritual sensibility to them.
MW: Mallarme wrote that all reality is spiritual. He spoke of the willed disappearance of the poet, of le neant. That man understood the creative process. That's my focus, but one must be very careful to make certain that art is more experiential than didactic. I love music and art and poetry. I love dance. Poets need to be aware of man's highest flights of the imagination. It is a process-always. I believe as the Paul Klee wrote: "Be arrows of fulfillment even though you will tire before having reached the goal." I also think that art is embodied in something else he said: "Man's metaphysical freedom contrasted by his physical limitations is the root of all tragedy." What else could a mere mortal like myself add?
DH: Finally, what advice do you have for the novice poet?
MW: Think of everything you do as grist. Talent is vital, but study, experiment, self-discovery through art is indispensable. When a writer is ready, the mentors will come-and they must come if an artist is to grow. Don't worry about imitating other writers. Eventually you will develop a style because "the style is the man himself." (Remy de Gourmont). Do not rush into publishing. That is deadly. Sit on the poem until you get it right. You may have to sit on it for years. And be prepared for the hard knocks of other people not liking your work. I have always agreed with Pound in The ABC of Reading: "Technique is the test of sincerity." Finally, be a servant of the word; it takes a lot of humility to create durable art.
The Old Photograph
The smiling apparition seems never to have lived,
but owes its existence to our own nostalgia.
My father no more than fifteen
wears his drill uniform with pride.
(A Jew In Russia could not wear a uniform.)
It is the grin of a fresh cadet in the new world
of Boston's West End, with cobbles instead of wheel ruts.
I write my epilogue in the sad dust of those generations.
Man on the Earth
L'Homme en terre place a l'homme sur la terre
--Paul Eluard
In the spirits of rain
in the heart's cry
the word is only a provocation.
It is man, wholly man
walking on earth
affirming his dignity,
feeding on a heritage sustained
by and sustaining the dad.
Man in the earth gives way to man
on the earth.
Gloria Mindock: A Doyenne of the Somerville Arts Scene
Gloria Mindock: A Doyenne of the Somerville Arts Scene.
By Doug Holder
On an early Friday morning a slightly soggy Gloria Mindock came out of a torrential rain to talk to the staff of The Somerville News about her longtime involvement in the Somerville arts scene. Mindock has an impressive literary pedigree in our
artistically endowed city. She moved from a small town in Illinois to the “ville in 1984.
She told the News that it took her 3 years to get used to the relatively fast pace of her new hometown. But after her initial adjustment she was off to the races. She co-founded the Theatre S&S Press Inc., which published books and produced experimental plays. It received grants from such prestigious institutions as the Rockefeller Foundation. Later, after the theatre went “south”, she co founded the Boston Literary Review (BLUR), and was the editor from 1984 to 1994. After a decade of working as an editor of other people’s work she took a creative hiatus to concentrate on her own.
Mindock remerged after a long hibernation to find the Cervena Barva Press a couple of years ago. The press to date has published poetry postcards, chapbooks, and perfect bound editions of poetry by such poets as: Mary Bonina, Harris Gardner, Simon Perchik, George Held, and many others. Upcoming in her impressive lineup of talented bards are: Lo Galluccio, Tim Gager, Chad Parenteau and Steve Glines to name just a few.
But Mindock , who has been a drug counselor with the social service agency Caspar Inc. in Somerville for many years, had even greater ambitions. She recently took over the editorship of the online literary magazine Istanbul Literary Review, and along with her partner Bill Kelle, (who helps Mindock with all aspects of her many enterprises) publishes a newsletter that lists poetry readings around the country, includes interviews with poets and writers, as well as featuring breaking news from the world of the small press.
Mindock, along with her friend the poet Mary Bonina, has also launched a poetry reading series at the upscale Pierre Menard Gallery on Arrow Street in Harvard Square in the Republic of Cambridge. It has become the talk of the town, and “the” place to read along with the “Grolier Poetry Series” at Harvard and the venerable “Blacksmith” poetry series down the block.
Recently Mindock has published a collection of her own poetry through Somerville’s Ibbetson Street Press “ Blood Soaked Dresses.” This book of poetry pays tribute to the El Salvadoran people who suffered greatly during their Civil War in the 1980’s.
Of the Somerville arts scene Mindock said:
“The arts scene here is wonderful. Just look at the great events the Somerville Arts Council organizes each year. Somerville is booming with writers, painters, and actors. “
But she warns:
“If rents continue to rise in the area Somerville will see a mass exodus of artists. Most artists are not rich and struggle to survive. The city should do more for its artists, in terms of affordable housing.”
In spite of these worries Mindock feels lucky to live in this vibrant hub of the arts. She attends Saturday morning meeting of the Bagel Bards, a writers group that meets at the Au Bon Pain Café in Davis Square, and like a energized and colorful butterfly she flits from reading to art opening, supporting her many friends in the community. Somerville has been called the “Paris of New England” and one of its solid citizens is a woman who wears many hats, or as the case may be berets, Gloria Mindock.
To find out more about Gloria Mindock go to http://www.cervenabarvapress.com
By Doug Holder
On an early Friday morning a slightly soggy Gloria Mindock came out of a torrential rain to talk to the staff of The Somerville News about her longtime involvement in the Somerville arts scene. Mindock has an impressive literary pedigree in our
artistically endowed city. She moved from a small town in Illinois to the “ville in 1984.
She told the News that it took her 3 years to get used to the relatively fast pace of her new hometown. But after her initial adjustment she was off to the races. She co-founded the Theatre S&S Press Inc., which published books and produced experimental plays. It received grants from such prestigious institutions as the Rockefeller Foundation. Later, after the theatre went “south”, she co founded the Boston Literary Review (BLUR), and was the editor from 1984 to 1994. After a decade of working as an editor of other people’s work she took a creative hiatus to concentrate on her own.
Mindock remerged after a long hibernation to find the Cervena Barva Press a couple of years ago. The press to date has published poetry postcards, chapbooks, and perfect bound editions of poetry by such poets as: Mary Bonina, Harris Gardner, Simon Perchik, George Held, and many others. Upcoming in her impressive lineup of talented bards are: Lo Galluccio, Tim Gager, Chad Parenteau and Steve Glines to name just a few.
But Mindock , who has been a drug counselor with the social service agency Caspar Inc. in Somerville for many years, had even greater ambitions. She recently took over the editorship of the online literary magazine Istanbul Literary Review, and along with her partner Bill Kelle, (who helps Mindock with all aspects of her many enterprises) publishes a newsletter that lists poetry readings around the country, includes interviews with poets and writers, as well as featuring breaking news from the world of the small press.
Mindock, along with her friend the poet Mary Bonina, has also launched a poetry reading series at the upscale Pierre Menard Gallery on Arrow Street in Harvard Square in the Republic of Cambridge. It has become the talk of the town, and “the” place to read along with the “Grolier Poetry Series” at Harvard and the venerable “Blacksmith” poetry series down the block.
Recently Mindock has published a collection of her own poetry through Somerville’s Ibbetson Street Press “ Blood Soaked Dresses.” This book of poetry pays tribute to the El Salvadoran people who suffered greatly during their Civil War in the 1980’s.
Of the Somerville arts scene Mindock said:
“The arts scene here is wonderful. Just look at the great events the Somerville Arts Council organizes each year. Somerville is booming with writers, painters, and actors. “
But she warns:
“If rents continue to rise in the area Somerville will see a mass exodus of artists. Most artists are not rich and struggle to survive. The city should do more for its artists, in terms of affordable housing.”
In spite of these worries Mindock feels lucky to live in this vibrant hub of the arts. She attends Saturday morning meeting of the Bagel Bards, a writers group that meets at the Au Bon Pain Café in Davis Square, and like a energized and colorful butterfly she flits from reading to art opening, supporting her many friends in the community. Somerville has been called the “Paris of New England” and one of its solid citizens is a woman who wears many hats, or as the case may be berets, Gloria Mindock.
To find out more about Gloria Mindock go to http://www.cervenabarvapress.com
TIM GAGER: An Interview with a Dire Reader
An interview with Timothy Gager: A “Dire” Reader in Somerville, Mass.
Writer Timothy Gager is a man who crosses many literary genres. He has a new poetry collection out from Somerville’s Cervena Barva Press: “ this is where you go when you are gone.” In 2007 alone Gager had 32 works of fiction, as well as poetry published in online and print journals. Gager is the current fiction editor of the “Wilderness House Literary Review,” the coeditor of the “Heat City Literary Review,” and the editor of the fiction and prose anthology “Out of the Blue Writers Unite.” He is the cofounder of the Somerville News Writers Festival, as well as the Dire Literary Series in Cambridge, Mass. The series was voted “Best Of” in the Boston Phoenix 2008. I spoke with him on my Somerville Cable Access TV show “Poet to Poet: Writer to Writer.”
Doug Holder: Tim you write both poetry and fiction but until recently you were primarily known as a fiction writer. Which do you identify with more strongly: poetry or fiction?
Tim Gager: I don’t define myself as exclusively either of them. I don’t wake up in the morning and say: “ I am a poet, I am going to write a poem.” Or “ Gee, I haven’t written a story for awhile, I’m going to write a story.” If something strikes me at a certain depth or certain level, that is when it is going to become a poem or a story.
DH: Charles Bukowski wrote that wine, classical music, jazz, the horses, and women were essential to his writing life. What’s on your list?
TG: Reading. Food. Love. Disappointment. Achievement.
DH: Any music?
TG: I like calming music. I like folk music. I also like to have baseball on in the background. I’m not really watching it on the TV. I’m not listening to it, but I like it on.
DH: Some writers claim that writing is like an addiction. Your take?
TG: Addiction is sort of a strong word. It can be viewed negatively. I think “passionate” is a better word. With passion-you always want to be in possession of it. If you have a passion for writing you want to spend as much time with your love as you possibly can.
If I wasn’t writing I would miss it. It would be like my best friend went across the country. But I would survive. But I can’t see myself giving it up. If I didn’t write there would be definitely a void.
DH: Baseball comes up in a lot of your writing, as well as other writers we know. What is it about the game that holds such allure?
TG: Baseball is the first reality television show. The drama is each individual’s numbers going up and down: it’s who is hitting better, who’s in first place. It’s a lot like life. Life has a lot of drama. There is also love in the game. When Manny Ramirez makes that great catch you love it.
DH: You co-founded The Somerville News Writers Festival. With the support of the folks at The Somerville News, you managed to book top name talent like Junot Diaz, Tom Perrotta, etc… You spend a lot of time on this. You are in essence making a showcase for other folks, and you are not getting rich. What makes Tim Gager, run?
TG: I promote other people, but, if I didn’t have the Dire Reader Series, The Somerville News Writers Festival, I would be missing out. The fact that I have these venues provokes people to check out my stuff. A lot of excellent writers’ work may never see the light of day. The fact that I founded these series is a big payoff for me personally. When in doubt (because it is subjective to a great degree of what good writing is), editors, etc… when they see that I have read with the likes of Franz Wright, may have second thoughts about my work. It has given me a lot of respect. I even getter better rejection slips…almost apologetic ones.
DH: But of course there is an altruistic reason, right?
TG: I believe writers should be treated like rock stars. It makes me happy to have an event where writers can be seen.
DH: The Norton and Tauro families, the owners of The Somerville News have been very supportive ,right?
TG: It has never been, “Hey, get 250 or 300 people or the festival is over…” I have that internal pressure on myself.
DH: In the poem “2A.M.” from your collection “ this is where you go when you are gone” you write provocatively about sex:
“On me
you push down
the weight on each bent leg,
cures my evils…”
Often you explore the ying and yang of your relationships with women. Is there more ying than yang or vice-a-versa?
TG: That’s a personal question. I use intentional double meanings. People may not get the poems—but it adds an extra layer. For instance: “ Pushing down on someone”—you might think that refers only to the physical aspect of sex. But it also means you are leaning on someone.
DH: You have run the Dire Literary Series for many years now. Recently it was voted of “Best Of…” in the Boston Phoenix. What’s your secret?
TG: It is funny how Dire evolved. I had thought it would be a variety show, like David Letterman, with all the guests as readers. It evolved into a house party, and everybody is involved.
You have to make your series fun—it has to move quickly—you have to be able to relate to people. You have to have “events” not just another reading. The audience should have a chance to schmooze with the writers for instance. Oh yeah, publicize…I am afraid not to.
Writer Timothy Gager is a man who crosses many literary genres. He has a new poetry collection out from Somerville’s Cervena Barva Press: “ this is where you go when you are gone.” In 2007 alone Gager had 32 works of fiction, as well as poetry published in online and print journals. Gager is the current fiction editor of the “Wilderness House Literary Review,” the coeditor of the “Heat City Literary Review,” and the editor of the fiction and prose anthology “Out of the Blue Writers Unite.” He is the cofounder of the Somerville News Writers Festival, as well as the Dire Literary Series in Cambridge, Mass. The series was voted “Best Of” in the Boston Phoenix 2008. I spoke with him on my Somerville Cable Access TV show “Poet to Poet: Writer to Writer.”
Doug Holder: Tim you write both poetry and fiction but until recently you were primarily known as a fiction writer. Which do you identify with more strongly: poetry or fiction?
Tim Gager: I don’t define myself as exclusively either of them. I don’t wake up in the morning and say: “ I am a poet, I am going to write a poem.” Or “ Gee, I haven’t written a story for awhile, I’m going to write a story.” If something strikes me at a certain depth or certain level, that is when it is going to become a poem or a story.
DH: Charles Bukowski wrote that wine, classical music, jazz, the horses, and women were essential to his writing life. What’s on your list?
TG: Reading. Food. Love. Disappointment. Achievement.
DH: Any music?
TG: I like calming music. I like folk music. I also like to have baseball on in the background. I’m not really watching it on the TV. I’m not listening to it, but I like it on.
DH: Some writers claim that writing is like an addiction. Your take?
TG: Addiction is sort of a strong word. It can be viewed negatively. I think “passionate” is a better word. With passion-you always want to be in possession of it. If you have a passion for writing you want to spend as much time with your love as you possibly can.
If I wasn’t writing I would miss it. It would be like my best friend went across the country. But I would survive. But I can’t see myself giving it up. If I didn’t write there would be definitely a void.
DH: Baseball comes up in a lot of your writing, as well as other writers we know. What is it about the game that holds such allure?
TG: Baseball is the first reality television show. The drama is each individual’s numbers going up and down: it’s who is hitting better, who’s in first place. It’s a lot like life. Life has a lot of drama. There is also love in the game. When Manny Ramirez makes that great catch you love it.
DH: You co-founded The Somerville News Writers Festival. With the support of the folks at The Somerville News, you managed to book top name talent like Junot Diaz, Tom Perrotta, etc… You spend a lot of time on this. You are in essence making a showcase for other folks, and you are not getting rich. What makes Tim Gager, run?
TG: I promote other people, but, if I didn’t have the Dire Reader Series, The Somerville News Writers Festival, I would be missing out. The fact that I have these venues provokes people to check out my stuff. A lot of excellent writers’ work may never see the light of day. The fact that I founded these series is a big payoff for me personally. When in doubt (because it is subjective to a great degree of what good writing is), editors, etc… when they see that I have read with the likes of Franz Wright, may have second thoughts about my work. It has given me a lot of respect. I even getter better rejection slips…almost apologetic ones.
DH: But of course there is an altruistic reason, right?
TG: I believe writers should be treated like rock stars. It makes me happy to have an event where writers can be seen.
DH: The Norton and Tauro families, the owners of The Somerville News have been very supportive ,right?
TG: It has never been, “Hey, get 250 or 300 people or the festival is over…” I have that internal pressure on myself.
DH: In the poem “2A.M.” from your collection “ this is where you go when you are gone” you write provocatively about sex:
“On me
you push down
the weight on each bent leg,
cures my evils…”
Often you explore the ying and yang of your relationships with women. Is there more ying than yang or vice-a-versa?
TG: That’s a personal question. I use intentional double meanings. People may not get the poems—but it adds an extra layer. For instance: “ Pushing down on someone”—you might think that refers only to the physical aspect of sex. But it also means you are leaning on someone.
DH: You have run the Dire Literary Series for many years now. Recently it was voted of “Best Of…” in the Boston Phoenix. What’s your secret?
TG: It is funny how Dire evolved. I had thought it would be a variety show, like David Letterman, with all the guests as readers. It evolved into a house party, and everybody is involved.
You have to make your series fun—it has to move quickly—you have to be able to relate to people. You have to have “events” not just another reading. The audience should have a chance to schmooze with the writers for instance. Oh yeah, publicize…I am afraid not to.
An interview with Lo Galluccio: "Hot Rain"
An Interview With Lo Galluccio
Lo Galluccio is a multi-talented artist. Her career includes time in the theatre, as a songwriter and vocalist with Roy Nathanson and The Jazz Passengers, and as a vocal artist who released CDs with the Knitting Factory label in NYC. She also worked with John Zorn, the renowned avant- garde Jazz saxophonist, and had a track on one of his compilations. Most recently Lo has released a collection of poetry with the Ibbetson Street Press (Somerville, MA), titled Hot Rain.
Lo recently recited her poetry at the Toast Lounge in Somerville as part of The Somerville News at Toast series. She has also read at the Warwick Art Museum, Boston University Barnes and Noble, The Out of the Blue Art Gallery, and other venues around the Boston area. I talked with her recently on my show, “Poet To Poet/Writer To Writer.”
Some Other Magazine: Lo, you told me that two major influences on you are the rocker/poet Patti Smith and performance artist Laurie Anderson. In fact, Smith approached you once and told you that you have a beautiful voice. Do you take anything from Smith’s and Anderson’s work, and incorporate and use it in your own alchemy?
Lo Galluccio: Laurie Anderson was someone who influenced me to stop being an actress, and start wanting to have an original voice and speak my own words in a certain way. I studied at the Goodman Theatre in Chicago. My acting teacher talked about the performance artist Laurie Anderson, and how she had such a weird, and “right” perspective on things. I became interested in her pieces “Big Science” and “Strange Angels,” and eventually I just fell in love with her. She took the spoken word and made it into music. She is an architect of music and sound. She is also a conceptualist person.
Patti Smith is a totally different animal. To me, she is the saint of rock ‘n’ roll. She is a brilliant lyricist. When I encountered her, I was surprised to see that she was at my show at St. Mark’s church in NYC. But there she was, wearing a ski cap, and she had these blazing black eyes. She looked like a little crazy crow. She came up to me and said, “You have a beautiful voice.” I was just speechless, because she meant that much to me. That record Horses really inspired me, because she does a stream of consciousness that’s mixed in with rock ‘n’ roll riffs. There are expansive piano chords as well. My first record has been compared to hers a bit.
SOM: You have a beautiful, fey voice. I noted that in some ways your singing reminds me of the brilliant but doomed horn player Chet Baker. Is he an influence?
Lo: I was turned on to a Chet Baker documentary Let’s Get Lost. I got into how beautiful Baker was as a young man. Roy Nathanson use to call me the “ethereal girl” in the East Village. Roy is the lead saxophonist and band leader of the Jazz Passengers, and he is tremendous. His voice is so quirky, and his phrasing is so original. I was lucky to have him play on a demo for me. I was stunned by his voice. He said to me, “When you start singing in your own words, you are not going to want it the other way again.”
SOM: You told me you were discovered by Roy when you were watching your underwear revolve in a washing machine at a laundromat.
Lo: I moved to the East Village because someone said that is where the “weed” trees grow. In other words, where the outsiders, where the wild things are. I was in a laundromat on Second Ave. and Roy lived in a dumpy place around the corner. He saw me staring at my laundry and said, “You’ve got to be an artist because no one stares at their underwear as long as you have. Do you have anything to show me?” I said, “Yeah, I do, I have this collection of poems, Hot Rain.” I gave it to him, and he said “Wow...this stuff is really incredible. I want you to write a song with me for the In Love record that the Jazz Passengers are making for Windham Hill. That was my first professional gig as a lyricist. It was a thrill. Roy was old school...that way. If he saw you and read you, he would take a chance on you.
SOM: So many artists live hardscrabble lives. It is rare that I meet one who hasn’t suffered the black dogs of depression, drug addiction, or some bout of mental illness. Can you talk about this?
Lo: A friend of mine, a soul singer named Kore, said, “Everyone goes crazy at least once in their life.” Maybe “other” people are afraid to enter the sanctuary that madness provides for some artists. For me, I probably made it tougher on myself than I needed in some ways. I took one hit in New York that was really rough. I broke up with someone who mentored me. He was a partner and a lover, and we had a band together, “Fish Pistol.” We had an alchemy. And when that fell apart, I was devastated. It was tragic because we really loved each other, and we were really good together artistically. I made a mild suicide attempt. I was put in St. Vincent's Hospital psychiatric unit. At the time I fought like hell not to go in there. I really spent three hours in the ER, saying “you cannot put me in the locked ward!” They said, “Yes we can.”
SOM: Do you think meds and hospitalization compromise the creative process?
Lo: Not completely. I think it is good for some people to spend time away from the pressures of the world, whatever is hurting them. Being around other people and being supported by people, when that happens, and medication, when it works, is a good thing. At the time I was a raging bull about it.
SOM: How much of Hot Rain is fictional, and how much is autobiographical?
Lo: It is not fictional. I am a highly subjective person, and I like a high degree of subjectivity in poetry. I like Sexton, Lowell—the “Confessional” poets. Some of my poems play with identity and wild imagery. In those cases, the images take over the place of a rational narrative.
SOM: You told me that you were inspired by a voice you heard while taking a bath?
Lo: After I broke up with my boyfriend, I was in a lot of grief. So I went to a yoga center in New York. I went religiously, because I didn’t know how to heal myself. When I started to do yoga, I heard about the elephant-headed god Ganesha. I really worshipped his shrine. So I think that’s where the voice came from. It was like an echo of my own subconscious. It said, “Pale blue eyes.” “Wow,” I thought, “what is this...is this voice coming from outside of me?” I was enamored with Ganesha. He is a dreamer’s God. I still have this voice with me. When I got to NYC, it is more pronounced because of the energy of the city. I think Gods are protecting all of us, somewhere and somehow, in different cultures and traditions.
For more info about Lo, go to www.logalluccio
Lo Galluccio is a multi-talented artist. Her career includes time in the theatre, as a songwriter and vocalist with Roy Nathanson and The Jazz Passengers, and as a vocal artist who released CDs with the Knitting Factory label in NYC. She also worked with John Zorn, the renowned avant- garde Jazz saxophonist, and had a track on one of his compilations. Most recently Lo has released a collection of poetry with the Ibbetson Street Press (Somerville, MA), titled Hot Rain.
Lo recently recited her poetry at the Toast Lounge in Somerville as part of The Somerville News at Toast series. She has also read at the Warwick Art Museum, Boston University Barnes and Noble, The Out of the Blue Art Gallery, and other venues around the Boston area. I talked with her recently on my show, “Poet To Poet/Writer To Writer.”
Some Other Magazine: Lo, you told me that two major influences on you are the rocker/poet Patti Smith and performance artist Laurie Anderson. In fact, Smith approached you once and told you that you have a beautiful voice. Do you take anything from Smith’s and Anderson’s work, and incorporate and use it in your own alchemy?
Lo Galluccio: Laurie Anderson was someone who influenced me to stop being an actress, and start wanting to have an original voice and speak my own words in a certain way. I studied at the Goodman Theatre in Chicago. My acting teacher talked about the performance artist Laurie Anderson, and how she had such a weird, and “right” perspective on things. I became interested in her pieces “Big Science” and “Strange Angels,” and eventually I just fell in love with her. She took the spoken word and made it into music. She is an architect of music and sound. She is also a conceptualist person.
Patti Smith is a totally different animal. To me, she is the saint of rock ‘n’ roll. She is a brilliant lyricist. When I encountered her, I was surprised to see that she was at my show at St. Mark’s church in NYC. But there she was, wearing a ski cap, and she had these blazing black eyes. She looked like a little crazy crow. She came up to me and said, “You have a beautiful voice.” I was just speechless, because she meant that much to me. That record Horses really inspired me, because she does a stream of consciousness that’s mixed in with rock ‘n’ roll riffs. There are expansive piano chords as well. My first record has been compared to hers a bit.
SOM: You have a beautiful, fey voice. I noted that in some ways your singing reminds me of the brilliant but doomed horn player Chet Baker. Is he an influence?
Lo: I was turned on to a Chet Baker documentary Let’s Get Lost. I got into how beautiful Baker was as a young man. Roy Nathanson use to call me the “ethereal girl” in the East Village. Roy is the lead saxophonist and band leader of the Jazz Passengers, and he is tremendous. His voice is so quirky, and his phrasing is so original. I was lucky to have him play on a demo for me. I was stunned by his voice. He said to me, “When you start singing in your own words, you are not going to want it the other way again.”
SOM: You told me you were discovered by Roy when you were watching your underwear revolve in a washing machine at a laundromat.
Lo: I moved to the East Village because someone said that is where the “weed” trees grow. In other words, where the outsiders, where the wild things are. I was in a laundromat on Second Ave. and Roy lived in a dumpy place around the corner. He saw me staring at my laundry and said, “You’ve got to be an artist because no one stares at their underwear as long as you have. Do you have anything to show me?” I said, “Yeah, I do, I have this collection of poems, Hot Rain.” I gave it to him, and he said “Wow...this stuff is really incredible. I want you to write a song with me for the In Love record that the Jazz Passengers are making for Windham Hill. That was my first professional gig as a lyricist. It was a thrill. Roy was old school...that way. If he saw you and read you, he would take a chance on you.
SOM: So many artists live hardscrabble lives. It is rare that I meet one who hasn’t suffered the black dogs of depression, drug addiction, or some bout of mental illness. Can you talk about this?
Lo: A friend of mine, a soul singer named Kore, said, “Everyone goes crazy at least once in their life.” Maybe “other” people are afraid to enter the sanctuary that madness provides for some artists. For me, I probably made it tougher on myself than I needed in some ways. I took one hit in New York that was really rough. I broke up with someone who mentored me. He was a partner and a lover, and we had a band together, “Fish Pistol.” We had an alchemy. And when that fell apart, I was devastated. It was tragic because we really loved each other, and we were really good together artistically. I made a mild suicide attempt. I was put in St. Vincent's Hospital psychiatric unit. At the time I fought like hell not to go in there. I really spent three hours in the ER, saying “you cannot put me in the locked ward!” They said, “Yes we can.”
SOM: Do you think meds and hospitalization compromise the creative process?
Lo: Not completely. I think it is good for some people to spend time away from the pressures of the world, whatever is hurting them. Being around other people and being supported by people, when that happens, and medication, when it works, is a good thing. At the time I was a raging bull about it.
SOM: How much of Hot Rain is fictional, and how much is autobiographical?
Lo: It is not fictional. I am a highly subjective person, and I like a high degree of subjectivity in poetry. I like Sexton, Lowell—the “Confessional” poets. Some of my poems play with identity and wild imagery. In those cases, the images take over the place of a rational narrative.
SOM: You told me that you were inspired by a voice you heard while taking a bath?
Lo: After I broke up with my boyfriend, I was in a lot of grief. So I went to a yoga center in New York. I went religiously, because I didn’t know how to heal myself. When I started to do yoga, I heard about the elephant-headed god Ganesha. I really worshipped his shrine. So I think that’s where the voice came from. It was like an echo of my own subconscious. It said, “Pale blue eyes.” “Wow,” I thought, “what is this...is this voice coming from outside of me?” I was enamored with Ganesha. He is a dreamer’s God. I still have this voice with me. When I got to NYC, it is more pronounced because of the energy of the city. I think Gods are protecting all of us, somewhere and somehow, in different cultures and traditions.
For more info about Lo, go to www.logalluccio
Sunday, July 20, 2008
HARRIS GARDNER: A Bard who brings the Boston Area A Plethora of Poetry and Poets
HARRIS GARDNER
A BARD WHO BRINGS THE BOSTON AREA
A PLETHORA OF POETRY AND POETS.
an article by dougholder
Eight years ago, a fairly obscure Boston poet, by the name of Harris Gardner, looked in a current issue of Poets and Writers magazine and noticed that a number of cities were advertising wonderful-sounding poetry festivals during April, National Poetry Month. Gardner, a real estate broker on Beacon Hill, Boston, and a substitute schoolteacher in the area, did his research and found that the city didn’t have a regular annual event of their scope and size. Gardner, 61, a man with an Einstein shock of frizzy hair and a frenetic manner was like a dog on a meat-truck with his brainchild for a Boston festival. He tells me, “My vision for a Boston national poetry event for National Poetry Month has always been to bring together performance poets,
student poets, academic and non-academic poets, as well as emerging poets. For the past seven years, I tried to bring together the brightest and the best talent in Massachusetts.”
Gardner is an admirer of the “spoken word” or poetry recital venues, and believes poetry should be a vehicle for social change and vision. He says that he raises the $10,000 to $ 11,000 dollars he needs to fund the festival by himself. He makes a point of paying each of the 50 plus writers a fee for reading their work at the
Boston Public Library-Copley Square Branch each April. The festival is over a full weekend, and requires a herculean effort to organize. In each festival besides the standard bards, he includes the participation of local schools, involving poets from the Boston Latin as well as choice elementary schools. Poets who have appeared in the festival include: Don Share (editor at Poetry Magazine), Steve Cramer (Lesley University), Afaa Michael Weaver (author of Plum Flower Dance), Sarah Hannah (author of Longing Distance), and many more.
The Boston National Poetry Festival, although a major component under Gardner’s “Tapestry of Voices” organizational umbrella, is far from the only thing this impresario has on his plate. He has two very successful series in the Boston area. One is the “Poetry in the Chapel Series,” at the Forsyth Chapel at the historic Forest Hills Cemetery in Jamaica Plain. Once a month Gardner has four major regional poets, and sometimes poets of national reputation like: Thomas Lux. The chapel is usually packed, and “The Boston Globe” has lauded it as: “The coolest place to hear poetry.” In the downtown crossing section of Beantown, amidst the buzz of commerce and traffic; Gardner has also made poetic inroads. He hosts a monthly reading (The second Thursday of each month 6:30PM) at Borders Books. The reading includes four featured poets, and an open mike that serves as a sort of talent pool for Gardner to pick future feature readers. Gardner has also hosted venues at the Warwick Art Museum in Warwick Rhode Island, a reading in the wake of 9/11 at the Cathedral of St. Paul in Boston, and he collaborates on an annual reading with the Whittier Association in the northern suburbs.
Gardner, although well-known as an organizer, is a well-published poet with two poetry collections under his belt, including credits in such literary magazines as: Harvard Review, The New Renaissance, Pemican, The Aurorean, Poesy, Midstream, Fulcrum, and Ibbetson Street. Gardner finds it frustrating that his poetry doesn’t get more attention like his other work does. The poet reflects about this paradox: “Being known as an organizer even more than a poet is indeed frustrating. I have to take some responsibility for that. I do not have time to submit poetry to as many journals that I would like to. Partly because of my organizational activities. I am most happy when I am writing a new poem that works, or being involved in a reading of my own or with others. I do get a rush of satisfaction if I get a poem published.”
Gardner first became interested in poetry at the tender age of fifteen. He grew up in the “City of Sin” as it is affectionately called: Lynn, Mass., a coastal city not far from Boston. His first published poem came during his fifteenth year and saw the light of day in a syndicated young folks’ page out of Cleveland Ohio. The poem surfaced in several newspapers shortly after. The budding bard regularly contributed poems to the “Lynn Daily Item” and the editor referred to the young Gardner as the “poet laureate.” His solo book of poetry, “Lest They Become” was published by the Ibbetson Street Press in 2003. A new book is slated to come out with the Cervena Barva Press of Somerville titled: “Among Us,” the theme being, of all things, angels.
Gardner is a dyed-in-the-wool Bostonian, and feels he lives in fertile poetic ground. Gardner opines that, “Boston has been known as the ‘Athens of America’ for all its fine and literary arts. There is a thriving poetic energy throughout the Boston-area that involves ‘town and gown,’ not ‘town versus gown’ I find there is considerable interaction between these two communities. We are in a golden age of poetry and the greater Boston area is abuzz and prolific with the output.”
Gardner was instrumental in the selection of the Boston Poet Laureate, Sam Cornish, and the new Cambridge Poet Laureate, Peter Payack. He feels that these poets will work well with students, have an accessible personality and will be willing take on a legacy project, such as a favorite poem project with submissions from the community-at-large. Gardner says, “They should also be willing to write commerative poems for inaugurations or visiting dignitaries, etc... and they should take the honor as it is intended.”
email harris at: tapestryofvoices@yahoo.com
A BARD WHO BRINGS THE BOSTON AREA
A PLETHORA OF POETRY AND POETS.
an article by dougholder
Eight years ago, a fairly obscure Boston poet, by the name of Harris Gardner, looked in a current issue of Poets and Writers magazine and noticed that a number of cities were advertising wonderful-sounding poetry festivals during April, National Poetry Month. Gardner, a real estate broker on Beacon Hill, Boston, and a substitute schoolteacher in the area, did his research and found that the city didn’t have a regular annual event of their scope and size. Gardner, 61, a man with an Einstein shock of frizzy hair and a frenetic manner was like a dog on a meat-truck with his brainchild for a Boston festival. He tells me, “My vision for a Boston national poetry event for National Poetry Month has always been to bring together performance poets,
student poets, academic and non-academic poets, as well as emerging poets. For the past seven years, I tried to bring together the brightest and the best talent in Massachusetts.”
Gardner is an admirer of the “spoken word” or poetry recital venues, and believes poetry should be a vehicle for social change and vision. He says that he raises the $10,000 to $ 11,000 dollars he needs to fund the festival by himself. He makes a point of paying each of the 50 plus writers a fee for reading their work at the
Boston Public Library-Copley Square Branch each April. The festival is over a full weekend, and requires a herculean effort to organize. In each festival besides the standard bards, he includes the participation of local schools, involving poets from the Boston Latin as well as choice elementary schools. Poets who have appeared in the festival include: Don Share (editor at Poetry Magazine), Steve Cramer (Lesley University), Afaa Michael Weaver (author of Plum Flower Dance), Sarah Hannah (author of Longing Distance), and many more.
The Boston National Poetry Festival, although a major component under Gardner’s “Tapestry of Voices” organizational umbrella, is far from the only thing this impresario has on his plate. He has two very successful series in the Boston area. One is the “Poetry in the Chapel Series,” at the Forsyth Chapel at the historic Forest Hills Cemetery in Jamaica Plain. Once a month Gardner has four major regional poets, and sometimes poets of national reputation like: Thomas Lux. The chapel is usually packed, and “The Boston Globe” has lauded it as: “The coolest place to hear poetry.” In the downtown crossing section of Beantown, amidst the buzz of commerce and traffic; Gardner has also made poetic inroads. He hosts a monthly reading (The second Thursday of each month 6:30PM) at Borders Books. The reading includes four featured poets, and an open mike that serves as a sort of talent pool for Gardner to pick future feature readers. Gardner has also hosted venues at the Warwick Art Museum in Warwick Rhode Island, a reading in the wake of 9/11 at the Cathedral of St. Paul in Boston, and he collaborates on an annual reading with the Whittier Association in the northern suburbs.
Gardner, although well-known as an organizer, is a well-published poet with two poetry collections under his belt, including credits in such literary magazines as: Harvard Review, The New Renaissance, Pemican, The Aurorean, Poesy, Midstream, Fulcrum, and Ibbetson Street. Gardner finds it frustrating that his poetry doesn’t get more attention like his other work does. The poet reflects about this paradox: “Being known as an organizer even more than a poet is indeed frustrating. I have to take some responsibility for that. I do not have time to submit poetry to as many journals that I would like to. Partly because of my organizational activities. I am most happy when I am writing a new poem that works, or being involved in a reading of my own or with others. I do get a rush of satisfaction if I get a poem published.”
Gardner first became interested in poetry at the tender age of fifteen. He grew up in the “City of Sin” as it is affectionately called: Lynn, Mass., a coastal city not far from Boston. His first published poem came during his fifteenth year and saw the light of day in a syndicated young folks’ page out of Cleveland Ohio. The poem surfaced in several newspapers shortly after. The budding bard regularly contributed poems to the “Lynn Daily Item” and the editor referred to the young Gardner as the “poet laureate.” His solo book of poetry, “Lest They Become” was published by the Ibbetson Street Press in 2003. A new book is slated to come out with the Cervena Barva Press of Somerville titled: “Among Us,” the theme being, of all things, angels.
Gardner is a dyed-in-the-wool Bostonian, and feels he lives in fertile poetic ground. Gardner opines that, “Boston has been known as the ‘Athens of America’ for all its fine and literary arts. There is a thriving poetic energy throughout the Boston-area that involves ‘town and gown,’ not ‘town versus gown’ I find there is considerable interaction between these two communities. We are in a golden age of poetry and the greater Boston area is abuzz and prolific with the output.”
Gardner was instrumental in the selection of the Boston Poet Laureate, Sam Cornish, and the new Cambridge Poet Laureate, Peter Payack. He feels that these poets will work well with students, have an accessible personality and will be willing take on a legacy project, such as a favorite poem project with submissions from the community-at-large. Gardner says, “They should also be willing to write commerative poems for inaugurations or visiting dignitaries, etc... and they should take the honor as it is intended.”
email harris at: tapestryofvoices@yahoo.com
Interview With Writer Luke Salisbury: An author who explores alternative universes of baseball, literartue, and political intrigue
Interview With Writer Luke Salisbury: An author who explores alternative universes of baseball, literartue, and political intrigue.
By Doug Holder
Luke Salisbury is a professor of English at Bunker Hill Community College in Boston. Salisbury, 60, is a man with a gift for gab, and the well-turned phrase. Eclectic in his tastes, Salisbury, with his signature rapid - fire cadence and disarming laugh, regales you with his anecdotes, his impressive knowledge of baseball, and his “alternative” universe of film, books and political intrigue he has spent many years pondering and writing about. He is the author of a number of fiction titles including: “The Answer is Baseball.” (Time Books, 1989), “The Cleveland Indian” (Smith, 1992), and his novel about the great filmmaker D.W. Griffith “Hollywood and Sunset” (2007). His writing has appeared in such publications as “The Boston Globe,” “Ploughshares,” “Cooperstown Review,” "Pulp- smith,” and others. Salisbury received his M.A. in Creative Writing from Boston University and lives in Chelsea, Mass. with his wife Barbara. I interviewed Salisbury on my Somerville Community Access TV show ‘Poet to Poet/ Writer to Writer.”
Doug Holder: You said the dawn of Elvis, the Beatles, liberated you from the buttoned-down, all boys purgatory, prep school world you grew up in. Who were the writers that liberated you when you were coming of age?
Luke Salisbury: I went away to an all boy’s school when I was fourteen. I hadn’t been a big star with girls in the 7th and 8th grade. I felt I was isolated. I felt that I was never going to get off. There were things that kept my soul together: rock ‘n roll, literature, and baseball. My life was changed—saved or ruined—when I read the “ The Great Gatsby” when I was seventeen. I never wanted to do anything but write a book that good. I never will; maybe no one else will. The book explains even in the first page the whole world. Its pressures, its nuances, its mystery. Faulkner would be another influence. Why? Because there is something about being a teenager reading something you can barely understand, and you know it is over your head—but by God—you know it is worthwhile.
DH: Did you feel liberated by any 60’s era writers?
LS: I got that from rock ‘n roll, not from 60’s literature. I was not a Jack Kerouac person. I was not reading that stuff as it was being done. Later in the 60’s when I really needed to be on an island protected from my own demons and the demons around me, Nabokov became my obsession. I was traveling around Europe in the summer of 1968 buying his paperbacks at kiosks in railroad stations .I was always in an alternative world of baseball, literature and rock ’n roll. I’d love to name some 60’s poets but none of them were important as the “Rolling Stones.” And also what I considered classic literature. In the 60’s I spent a long time reading “Tristan Shandy” and “Tom Jones.”
DH: Did you engage in any of the “excesses” of the era?
LS: As many as I could. But there were three things going on. Political revolution which I thought was bullshit because I didn’t actually see anyone go out and fighting. Then there was the drug revolution. I always thought I was wrapped a little too tight to do the heavy duty stuff. Then there was the sexual revolution. It was a wonderful time to be a young man. I mean the middle and late 60’s, not the stuff that comes to us post “Easy Rider.” Love and peace that stuff was bullshit. It was about resistance. It was about resisting the draft and authority.
DH: You wrote two assasination novels. One was “Blue Eden.” Did you find the elitist intrigue, the possibilities of nefarious cabals behind the Kennedy assassination a source of fascination?
LS: It was. Because in the late 60’s I’d sit around and think about the novels I would like to write. I became obsessed with the Kennedy assassination. This stuff happens in front of your face, you don’t know what it is. There is subtext, there are stories… this is raw material. Everybody was taking a crack at it—the big time writers like like Mailer and DeLillo. But once you get into it you can’t get out.
DH: So who really killed Kennedy?
LS: I have no idea. Maybe Oswald, but he certainly wasn’t alone. It’s fascinating but it is like drugs and then you go home to detox and get out.
DH: In a recent book you penned “Hollywood and Sunset” you write of D.W. Griffith, the famed filmmaker, whose signature work was “The Birth of a Nation.” You refer to Griffith and others of his ilk as “sellers of light.” What are novelist’s sellers of?
LS: Ah… Inner light. All sorts of light. I got interested in Hollywood because it is really the center of power.
Basically D.W. Griffith invented Hollywood. He did everything with the two dimensional movie that could be done. He made the most racist movie ever produced: “The Birth of a Nation.” It made a huge amount of money and it took advantage of a racist sensibility of the time- what could be more American?
You had a frontier of the movies in his time. What happens when America hits the Pacific? We invent a dream-factory Hollywood. So I became very interested.
DH: How does this American sensibility differ from the European?
LS: “We” have to keep moving. We never stop. The past is used up.
DH: Does obsession help a writer?
LS: Yes. Who the hell is willing to sit and write a novel and then another novel, without it getting published? If they finally do get published the only people who read them is an obscure reviewer somewhere. But you keep doing it. It is madness. Poets can write a poem in five minutes or five years. There is no way to do this as a novelist.
Someone has to support you; or you have to support yourself. Many of us teach. So yes obsession helps. But just having obsession doesn’t mean that God will give you success, or that you have much talent. But it makes life worth living.
DH: Many writers work a variety of odd jobs to support themselves. You worked as a security guard for a number of years. How did that help or hinder your writing life?
LS: While I was a security guard I read “Gravity’s Rainbow,” and “Remembrances of Things Past.” I worked at Polaroid during the night shift. You have to survive if you are a writer. Especially if you are not in the generous bosom of a university. Faulkner said the best job for a writer is a piano player at a bordello. The hours are good and there is a lot of interesting company around.
I had many jobs in the 70’s. I worked in the Welfare Dept.. I worked for a school board in the Bronx, etc…
DH: You have taught at Bunker Hill Community College for over twenty years. How has this been?
LS: I have taught for 22 years. And it’s a great job. The average of the students is 30 years old. People come from everywhere, and there are no Yuppies. This isn’t Boston University. The kids and older people don’t think I am an idiot because I don’t make much money. Most of the students at Bunker Hill are there to learn skills, learn English, etc… I don’t think you can do better teaching adults in a public school, in a big city. It’s not the hell-hole that “Goodwill Hunting” characterized it as.
DH: You have been published by Harry Smith the legendary small press figure.
LS: Yes. Harry was basically a poet and published poets. He had a magazine from 1964 to 1998 “The Smith.” He had a policy of publishing unpublished writers. Half the magazine was devoted to their work. I had sent him something in 1970 and he turned it down. Five years later I sent him something and he sent me back an envelope with a “Yes” written across the front. He discovered me, and my friend the poet Jared Smith. He help start COSMEP—the seminal small press organization.
DH: So you have an affinity for the small press?
LS: Oh yes. There would be a lot less literature if it wasn’t for the small press. Where do we go if we are not one of the twenty people writing novels? I thank God for the small press and the internet—we can find each other here.
DH: You have written extensively about baseball. Why?
LS: You get a tremendous amount of respect knowing about sports. Baseball was that ‘alternative” world for me—it saved me.
Doug Holder
By Doug Holder
Luke Salisbury is a professor of English at Bunker Hill Community College in Boston. Salisbury, 60, is a man with a gift for gab, and the well-turned phrase. Eclectic in his tastes, Salisbury, with his signature rapid - fire cadence and disarming laugh, regales you with his anecdotes, his impressive knowledge of baseball, and his “alternative” universe of film, books and political intrigue he has spent many years pondering and writing about. He is the author of a number of fiction titles including: “The Answer is Baseball.” (Time Books, 1989), “The Cleveland Indian” (Smith, 1992), and his novel about the great filmmaker D.W. Griffith “Hollywood and Sunset” (2007). His writing has appeared in such publications as “The Boston Globe,” “Ploughshares,” “Cooperstown Review,” "Pulp- smith,” and others. Salisbury received his M.A. in Creative Writing from Boston University and lives in Chelsea, Mass. with his wife Barbara. I interviewed Salisbury on my Somerville Community Access TV show ‘Poet to Poet/ Writer to Writer.”
Doug Holder: You said the dawn of Elvis, the Beatles, liberated you from the buttoned-down, all boys purgatory, prep school world you grew up in. Who were the writers that liberated you when you were coming of age?
Luke Salisbury: I went away to an all boy’s school when I was fourteen. I hadn’t been a big star with girls in the 7th and 8th grade. I felt I was isolated. I felt that I was never going to get off. There were things that kept my soul together: rock ‘n roll, literature, and baseball. My life was changed—saved or ruined—when I read the “ The Great Gatsby” when I was seventeen. I never wanted to do anything but write a book that good. I never will; maybe no one else will. The book explains even in the first page the whole world. Its pressures, its nuances, its mystery. Faulkner would be another influence. Why? Because there is something about being a teenager reading something you can barely understand, and you know it is over your head—but by God—you know it is worthwhile.
DH: Did you feel liberated by any 60’s era writers?
LS: I got that from rock ‘n roll, not from 60’s literature. I was not a Jack Kerouac person. I was not reading that stuff as it was being done. Later in the 60’s when I really needed to be on an island protected from my own demons and the demons around me, Nabokov became my obsession. I was traveling around Europe in the summer of 1968 buying his paperbacks at kiosks in railroad stations .I was always in an alternative world of baseball, literature and rock ’n roll. I’d love to name some 60’s poets but none of them were important as the “Rolling Stones.” And also what I considered classic literature. In the 60’s I spent a long time reading “Tristan Shandy” and “Tom Jones.”
DH: Did you engage in any of the “excesses” of the era?
LS: As many as I could. But there were three things going on. Political revolution which I thought was bullshit because I didn’t actually see anyone go out and fighting. Then there was the drug revolution. I always thought I was wrapped a little too tight to do the heavy duty stuff. Then there was the sexual revolution. It was a wonderful time to be a young man. I mean the middle and late 60’s, not the stuff that comes to us post “Easy Rider.” Love and peace that stuff was bullshit. It was about resistance. It was about resisting the draft and authority.
DH: You wrote two assasination novels. One was “Blue Eden.” Did you find the elitist intrigue, the possibilities of nefarious cabals behind the Kennedy assassination a source of fascination?
LS: It was. Because in the late 60’s I’d sit around and think about the novels I would like to write. I became obsessed with the Kennedy assassination. This stuff happens in front of your face, you don’t know what it is. There is subtext, there are stories… this is raw material. Everybody was taking a crack at it—the big time writers like like Mailer and DeLillo. But once you get into it you can’t get out.
DH: So who really killed Kennedy?
LS: I have no idea. Maybe Oswald, but he certainly wasn’t alone. It’s fascinating but it is like drugs and then you go home to detox and get out.
DH: In a recent book you penned “Hollywood and Sunset” you write of D.W. Griffith, the famed filmmaker, whose signature work was “The Birth of a Nation.” You refer to Griffith and others of his ilk as “sellers of light.” What are novelist’s sellers of?
LS: Ah… Inner light. All sorts of light. I got interested in Hollywood because it is really the center of power.
Basically D.W. Griffith invented Hollywood. He did everything with the two dimensional movie that could be done. He made the most racist movie ever produced: “The Birth of a Nation.” It made a huge amount of money and it took advantage of a racist sensibility of the time- what could be more American?
You had a frontier of the movies in his time. What happens when America hits the Pacific? We invent a dream-factory Hollywood. So I became very interested.
DH: How does this American sensibility differ from the European?
LS: “We” have to keep moving. We never stop. The past is used up.
DH: Does obsession help a writer?
LS: Yes. Who the hell is willing to sit and write a novel and then another novel, without it getting published? If they finally do get published the only people who read them is an obscure reviewer somewhere. But you keep doing it. It is madness. Poets can write a poem in five minutes or five years. There is no way to do this as a novelist.
Someone has to support you; or you have to support yourself. Many of us teach. So yes obsession helps. But just having obsession doesn’t mean that God will give you success, or that you have much talent. But it makes life worth living.
DH: Many writers work a variety of odd jobs to support themselves. You worked as a security guard for a number of years. How did that help or hinder your writing life?
LS: While I was a security guard I read “Gravity’s Rainbow,” and “Remembrances of Things Past.” I worked at Polaroid during the night shift. You have to survive if you are a writer. Especially if you are not in the generous bosom of a university. Faulkner said the best job for a writer is a piano player at a bordello. The hours are good and there is a lot of interesting company around.
I had many jobs in the 70’s. I worked in the Welfare Dept.. I worked for a school board in the Bronx, etc…
DH: You have taught at Bunker Hill Community College for over twenty years. How has this been?
LS: I have taught for 22 years. And it’s a great job. The average of the students is 30 years old. People come from everywhere, and there are no Yuppies. This isn’t Boston University. The kids and older people don’t think I am an idiot because I don’t make much money. Most of the students at Bunker Hill are there to learn skills, learn English, etc… I don’t think you can do better teaching adults in a public school, in a big city. It’s not the hell-hole that “Goodwill Hunting” characterized it as.
DH: You have been published by Harry Smith the legendary small press figure.
LS: Yes. Harry was basically a poet and published poets. He had a magazine from 1964 to 1998 “The Smith.” He had a policy of publishing unpublished writers. Half the magazine was devoted to their work. I had sent him something in 1970 and he turned it down. Five years later I sent him something and he sent me back an envelope with a “Yes” written across the front. He discovered me, and my friend the poet Jared Smith. He help start COSMEP—the seminal small press organization.
DH: So you have an affinity for the small press?
LS: Oh yes. There would be a lot less literature if it wasn’t for the small press. Where do we go if we are not one of the twenty people writing novels? I thank God for the small press and the internet—we can find each other here.
DH: You have written extensively about baseball. Why?
LS: You get a tremendous amount of respect knowing about sports. Baseball was that ‘alternative” world for me—it saved me.
Doug Holder
Thursday, July 17, 2008
Interview with Poet Sarah Hannah: A Poet With Longing Distance.
Interview with poet Sarah Hannah: A Poet within “Longing Distance”
Sarah Hannah is an educator, a poet with a PhD from Columbia University, and a sometimes rock musician. Her poems have appeared in “Barrow Street,” “Parnassus,” “Gulf Coast,” “Crab Orchard Review,” and others. Her original manuscript which became her first poetry collection “Longing Distance,” was a semi-finalist for the “Yale Younger Poets Prize,” in 2002. Anne Dillard describes her collection as: “…an extremely moving work. I’m struck by her intelligence of emotion and her unmistakable voice…Sarah Hannah is a true original.” She currently resides with her husband in Cambridge and teaches at Emerson College in Boston. She was a guest on my Somerville Community Access TV show “Poet to Poet/Writer to Writer.”
Doug Holder: Can you tell us about the “Yale Younger Poets Prize” which “Longing Distance,” was a semi-finalist for?
Sarah Hannah: That was a sort of near miss. That was in 2002. That was the year Tupelo Press accepted my book. I found out I was a runner up by phoning the editor, (not the judge) who was W.S. Merwin. The editor told me he remembered the book, and it was a semi-finalist, and it was a strong book.
Doug Holder: A lot of folks claim a PhD can ruin a poet. You learn how to write academic papers, but you forget how to write poetry. This does not seem to be the case with you.
Sarah Hannah: It ruined me in the sense that while I was writing my dissertation, I felt that I didn’t have time to write poetry. But I think the PhD made me a better poet. It forced me to really study poetry deeply. You have to grapple with ideas that are foreign to you. You read more than just contemporary poets. You learn to become a better writer.
Some people become sidetracked. They go into a PhD program and they emerge as critics not poets. There are more people around than you think that are poets and scholars.
Doug Holder: How did you come up with the title for your collection “Longing Distance?”
Sarah Hannah: I was writing a series of sonnets about a messed up love affair. You know “absence makes the heart grow fonder,” an all those clichés. So I came up with a line while I was in the country watching my husband scale a rock. I thought of the line: “I keep you at longing distance.” I thought it was just going to be another sonnet in the sequence. I wrote the sonnet, but then wound up expunging it from the book. I kept “Longing Distance,’ as the title.
Doug Holder: From our email exchanges I get the impression you haven’t had an easy life.
Sarah Hannah: I lived a hardscrabble life. I’ve seen life disintegrate . I wanted to put back my experiences in more metaphysical or formal terms.
I grew up in Newton, Mass., in the Waban section. A lot of neurosis going on there. I would say seven out of my eight high school friends were bulimic. I was not. My mother was hospitalized at the same “summer hotel” Anne Sexton visited.
Doug Holder: How does your teaching at Emerson College fit with your poetry?
Sarah Hannah: It’s fitting beautifully because I am teaching poetry, as opposed to composition. I am teaching traditional form to graduate and undergraduate students. I teach a hybrid literature and writing course.
Doug Holder: Why did you move from the bright lights and big city of New York to the more provincial environs of Boston?
Sarah Hannah: I am a lover of the underdog. Boston is the underdog to New York. I felt I had to come back. You know: “My end is my beginning, my beginning my end.” I have always missed Boston. I am a loyal person that way. My husband and I purchased a house in Cambridge. It’s right in the Central Square area. It’s a very diverse city. I often write at the ‘1369” Coffee Shop or ‘Grendel’s Den,” in Harvard Square. I feel rooted here.
Doug Holder: How does the lit scene here compare to the “Big Apple?”
Sarah Hannah: There are a lot of readings here like N.Y. I lived in N.Y. for 17 years. It took me 8 years to get “out” there. It seems much faster out here. I have a book though, that makes a difference. I was worried. It took a long time for me to establish myself in New York City. But I didn’t loose my contacts because I maintained my connection to the journal “Barrow Street,” and now I am an editor there.”
Eclipse
Every so often I am dilated; the pupilsSwallow everything—a catchall soup,Two cauldrons, stubborn in the bald glare
Of bathroom light. They are hunting sleep—The sea grass, the blue cot rocking;In sleep I am a Spanish dancer,
Awaiting my cue at the velvet curtain,Now and then groping for the sash,Or on horseback, abducted, thumping
Through pampas. I sleep too much;I curl in at midday, sheepish,In strange rooms. Clouds are hurrying by—
The walls, a wash of white; still my eyesAre mazing through their dark gardens,The great lamp shut, the crescents duplicating.
It is only a temporary state of affairs.The sun boils behind the moon
Sarah Hannah is an educator, a poet with a PhD from Columbia University, and a sometimes rock musician. Her poems have appeared in “Barrow Street,” “Parnassus,” “Gulf Coast,” “Crab Orchard Review,” and others. Her original manuscript which became her first poetry collection “Longing Distance,” was a semi-finalist for the “Yale Younger Poets Prize,” in 2002. Anne Dillard describes her collection as: “…an extremely moving work. I’m struck by her intelligence of emotion and her unmistakable voice…Sarah Hannah is a true original.” She currently resides with her husband in Cambridge and teaches at Emerson College in Boston. She was a guest on my Somerville Community Access TV show “Poet to Poet/Writer to Writer.”
Doug Holder: Can you tell us about the “Yale Younger Poets Prize” which “Longing Distance,” was a semi-finalist for?
Sarah Hannah: That was a sort of near miss. That was in 2002. That was the year Tupelo Press accepted my book. I found out I was a runner up by phoning the editor, (not the judge) who was W.S. Merwin. The editor told me he remembered the book, and it was a semi-finalist, and it was a strong book.
Doug Holder: A lot of folks claim a PhD can ruin a poet. You learn how to write academic papers, but you forget how to write poetry. This does not seem to be the case with you.
Sarah Hannah: It ruined me in the sense that while I was writing my dissertation, I felt that I didn’t have time to write poetry. But I think the PhD made me a better poet. It forced me to really study poetry deeply. You have to grapple with ideas that are foreign to you. You read more than just contemporary poets. You learn to become a better writer.
Some people become sidetracked. They go into a PhD program and they emerge as critics not poets. There are more people around than you think that are poets and scholars.
Doug Holder: How did you come up with the title for your collection “Longing Distance?”
Sarah Hannah: I was writing a series of sonnets about a messed up love affair. You know “absence makes the heart grow fonder,” an all those clichés. So I came up with a line while I was in the country watching my husband scale a rock. I thought of the line: “I keep you at longing distance.” I thought it was just going to be another sonnet in the sequence. I wrote the sonnet, but then wound up expunging it from the book. I kept “Longing Distance,’ as the title.
Doug Holder: From our email exchanges I get the impression you haven’t had an easy life.
Sarah Hannah: I lived a hardscrabble life. I’ve seen life disintegrate . I wanted to put back my experiences in more metaphysical or formal terms.
I grew up in Newton, Mass., in the Waban section. A lot of neurosis going on there. I would say seven out of my eight high school friends were bulimic. I was not. My mother was hospitalized at the same “summer hotel” Anne Sexton visited.
Doug Holder: How does your teaching at Emerson College fit with your poetry?
Sarah Hannah: It’s fitting beautifully because I am teaching poetry, as opposed to composition. I am teaching traditional form to graduate and undergraduate students. I teach a hybrid literature and writing course.
Doug Holder: Why did you move from the bright lights and big city of New York to the more provincial environs of Boston?
Sarah Hannah: I am a lover of the underdog. Boston is the underdog to New York. I felt I had to come back. You know: “My end is my beginning, my beginning my end.” I have always missed Boston. I am a loyal person that way. My husband and I purchased a house in Cambridge. It’s right in the Central Square area. It’s a very diverse city. I often write at the ‘1369” Coffee Shop or ‘Grendel’s Den,” in Harvard Square. I feel rooted here.
Doug Holder: How does the lit scene here compare to the “Big Apple?”
Sarah Hannah: There are a lot of readings here like N.Y. I lived in N.Y. for 17 years. It took me 8 years to get “out” there. It seems much faster out here. I have a book though, that makes a difference. I was worried. It took a long time for me to establish myself in New York City. But I didn’t loose my contacts because I maintained my connection to the journal “Barrow Street,” and now I am an editor there.”
Eclipse
Every so often I am dilated; the pupilsSwallow everything—a catchall soup,Two cauldrons, stubborn in the bald glare
Of bathroom light. They are hunting sleep—The sea grass, the blue cot rocking;In sleep I am a Spanish dancer,
Awaiting my cue at the velvet curtain,Now and then groping for the sash,Or on horseback, abducted, thumping
Through pampas. I sleep too much;I curl in at midday, sheepish,In strange rooms. Clouds are hurrying by—
The walls, a wash of white; still my eyesAre mazing through their dark gardens,The great lamp shut, the crescents duplicating.
It is only a temporary state of affairs.The sun boils behind the moon
Interview with Poet, and Polymath Hugh Fox: Still a Wunderkind at 76
Interview with Poet, and Polymath Hugh Fox: Still a Wunderkind at 76
With Doug Holder
At the Sherman Café in Union Square, I met poet, translator, critic, playwright, Hugh Fox and his wife before a taping we were to do at Somerville Community Access TV of my show “ Poet to Poet: Writer to Writer.” Fox was visiting his daughter who lives in Somerville and teaches at area universities. Two of my next-door neighbors Kirk and Lucy joined us as Fox held court. At age 76 Fox no signs of slowing down. He regaled us with stories of his extensive travels, all peppered with his vast wealth of knowledge of ancient Aztec culture, mythology, literature, and publishing. Fox talks like a Bronx cabdriver, (decidedly from the side-of-his mouth,) and he is not afraid to use, to put it mildly, unsavory language. My friend described him as “Larger than life.” And so he is.
Fox, who was a tenured professor at the Michigan State for well over 30 years, recently completed a controversial memoir “Way, Way Off the Road” (Ibbetson Street) that dealt with many of the figures from the small press movement, a movement that has produced thousands of small literary magazines and books, and is the lifeblood of poets and writers of all stripes. Fox was a founding member of COSMEP, (a seminal small press organization), he published the well regarded literary magazine “Ghost Dance,”and penned the first critical study of the dirty old man of literature himself, Charles Bukowski. Fox has written and published many books and chapbooks of poetry, and has reviewed countless small press books for Len Fulton’s “Small Press Review.”
Doug Holder: Hugh you wrote critical studies of Henry James and Charles Bukowski, two vastly different writers. Whom did you have the greater affinity for?
.
Hugh Fox: I got my PhD from the University of Illinois and my dissertation was on Edgar Allen Poe. I was raised as an Irish Catholic, and all I read was Irish Catholic literature. I had no idea what was in the outside world. I decided to take on Henry James because it would be an Americanization process and I thought I would learn to write novels. I did like James’ work a lot.
I never intended to get involved with Bukowski. I was totally academic. And then one day I was in this bookstore in Hollywood, the “Pickwick,” (I saw Aldous Huxley at the store that day as well. I was reading him for years. There was this old woman standing next to me, and I said to her: “Look there’s Aldous Huxley!” She said: “ Don’t know what you are saying!” He heard us and then vanished!) So I bought Bukowski’s book: “Crucifix and the Death Hand.” I got a hold of his press LouJon in New Orleans, and they told me to look him up in the phonebook. So I called him up and said: “This is Hugh Fox. I love your work. I want to meet you.” He said OK come over tomorrow. He was living in a motel in Hollywood. I talked with him awhile. He took out these suitcases. There were all his books and magazines in them. He gave me five full suitcases. He told me if I saw doubles to keep them. My entire way of seeing the world changed after this. Bukowski and Henry Miller were big influences of change for me.
DH: You were friends with Harry Smith, the book publisher, and founder of “The Smith” magazine. Smith published such writers as: Duane Locke, Ruth Moon Kempher, John Bennett, Lloyd Van Brunt, Jeff Sorensen, Alan Britt, and Tristram Smith as well as my friends Luke Salisbury and Jared Smith. Can you talk about your relationship with Smith?
Hugh Fox: I’ll tell you what happened. Smith had no money at all. He meets Marian Pechak up in Rhode Island at Brown. So he marries her. Her parents die and she gets millions. So they move to Brooklyn Heights. They had a big Brownstone mansion. So Smith tells her he wants to be a publisher. His wife said:” Hey, we have the money do what you want to do”. So he started to publish. He had an office right by City Hall in New York City. I met Smith through COSMEP. I used to go to Smith’s all the time. I go between semesters, the summer; I’d go for a month a year for twenty years. Smith published everyone who was anyone. I did a lot of reviews for him. He paid me—I stayed at his house—he set up the basement for me. We used to go out for lunch and dinner. His wife told the kids to call me: “Uncle Hugh.” I was closer to Smith than anyone else. Through him I met Menke Katz who was a Yiddish writer.
DH: You edited the groundbreaking anthology “The Living Underground,” that our Boston Poet Laureate Sam Cornish was in. How did you get this collection together?
HF: It was formed due to my connection with COSMEP. This was the “Committee of Small Press Editors and Publishers.” Len Fulton and others formed it in the early 70’s. Len Fulton still runs the magazine “The Small Press Review and “Dustbooks Publishing” in Paradise, California. COSMEP used to have annual conventions around the country: St. Paul, New York, and New Orleans. Every convention had a huge reading. Almost every small press editor in the country was there. I got to meet all the writers and all the publishers. I got to know people in Boston, and of course Sam Cornish was in Boston, and as it happened he was included in “The Living Underground…” He was at the convention in Boston.
DH: What is an “underground poet?”
HF: Someone who is not published by the big New York publishers.
DH: What was “groundbreaking” about the anthology?
HF: We had living, contemporary small press poets. We had folks like Charles Potts, Richard Krech, and many others. We had a reunion almost forty years later in Berkley, Ca.
DH: How did you get involved with the small press literary award the “Pushcart Prize?”
HF: I got involved through a COSMEP conference in New Orleans. The Prize doesn’t have as much impact as it did in the day. I go to a Barnes and Noble today and nobody is
buying anything, everyone is there with his or her computer. Everyone is having coffee with their computers.
DH: Hugh you are the most prolific reviewer I know. How did you get involved with reviewing books, and why do you spend so much time on an activity that doesn’t provide you with monetary compensation?
HF: I became good friends with Len Fulton of the Small Press Review. Now, every four months or so I get a package of books to read. It’s good for me because I get to find out what’s going on with the poets. It influences my style—all these poets I read. It helps me get my name in the Small Press Review all the time. I want to be involved.
DH: Your are the doyen of the short review. How are you able to get to the essence of a book with such few words?
HF: Before I go to bed I always read a few things. Then I just react to it. It’s funny it is like I listen to an inner voice. The inner voice tells me what to write. The reason I got a degree in American Literature was really to learn how to write reviews of books. To react to books. My first draft of my Poe dissertation was horrible. My advisor said as much. He told me that I was going to write his way. He said: “ You are going to react, feel, and so forth. I learned to react. I learned this from academic teaching.
DH: You said you always considered yourself a wunderkind, a boy genius. How about now at 76?
HF: The same at 76. I haven’t aged mentally or psychologically. I’m still 26. I may have cancer of the prostate, arthritis, but my mind is the same. When I was in California recently I wrote 100 poems in two weeks.
DH: What do you want your legacy to be?
HF: I haven’t thought about it. I would like to see other people do the same thing. I want them to react to the world around them.
With Doug Holder
At the Sherman Café in Union Square, I met poet, translator, critic, playwright, Hugh Fox and his wife before a taping we were to do at Somerville Community Access TV of my show “ Poet to Poet: Writer to Writer.” Fox was visiting his daughter who lives in Somerville and teaches at area universities. Two of my next-door neighbors Kirk and Lucy joined us as Fox held court. At age 76 Fox no signs of slowing down. He regaled us with stories of his extensive travels, all peppered with his vast wealth of knowledge of ancient Aztec culture, mythology, literature, and publishing. Fox talks like a Bronx cabdriver, (decidedly from the side-of-his mouth,) and he is not afraid to use, to put it mildly, unsavory language. My friend described him as “Larger than life.” And so he is.
Fox, who was a tenured professor at the Michigan State for well over 30 years, recently completed a controversial memoir “Way, Way Off the Road” (Ibbetson Street) that dealt with many of the figures from the small press movement, a movement that has produced thousands of small literary magazines and books, and is the lifeblood of poets and writers of all stripes. Fox was a founding member of COSMEP, (a seminal small press organization), he published the well regarded literary magazine “Ghost Dance,”and penned the first critical study of the dirty old man of literature himself, Charles Bukowski. Fox has written and published many books and chapbooks of poetry, and has reviewed countless small press books for Len Fulton’s “Small Press Review.”
Doug Holder: Hugh you wrote critical studies of Henry James and Charles Bukowski, two vastly different writers. Whom did you have the greater affinity for?
.
Hugh Fox: I got my PhD from the University of Illinois and my dissertation was on Edgar Allen Poe. I was raised as an Irish Catholic, and all I read was Irish Catholic literature. I had no idea what was in the outside world. I decided to take on Henry James because it would be an Americanization process and I thought I would learn to write novels. I did like James’ work a lot.
I never intended to get involved with Bukowski. I was totally academic. And then one day I was in this bookstore in Hollywood, the “Pickwick,” (I saw Aldous Huxley at the store that day as well. I was reading him for years. There was this old woman standing next to me, and I said to her: “Look there’s Aldous Huxley!” She said: “ Don’t know what you are saying!” He heard us and then vanished!) So I bought Bukowski’s book: “Crucifix and the Death Hand.” I got a hold of his press LouJon in New Orleans, and they told me to look him up in the phonebook. So I called him up and said: “This is Hugh Fox. I love your work. I want to meet you.” He said OK come over tomorrow. He was living in a motel in Hollywood. I talked with him awhile. He took out these suitcases. There were all his books and magazines in them. He gave me five full suitcases. He told me if I saw doubles to keep them. My entire way of seeing the world changed after this. Bukowski and Henry Miller were big influences of change for me.
DH: You were friends with Harry Smith, the book publisher, and founder of “The Smith” magazine. Smith published such writers as: Duane Locke, Ruth Moon Kempher, John Bennett, Lloyd Van Brunt, Jeff Sorensen, Alan Britt, and Tristram Smith as well as my friends Luke Salisbury and Jared Smith. Can you talk about your relationship with Smith?
Hugh Fox: I’ll tell you what happened. Smith had no money at all. He meets Marian Pechak up in Rhode Island at Brown. So he marries her. Her parents die and she gets millions. So they move to Brooklyn Heights. They had a big Brownstone mansion. So Smith tells her he wants to be a publisher. His wife said:” Hey, we have the money do what you want to do”. So he started to publish. He had an office right by City Hall in New York City. I met Smith through COSMEP. I used to go to Smith’s all the time. I go between semesters, the summer; I’d go for a month a year for twenty years. Smith published everyone who was anyone. I did a lot of reviews for him. He paid me—I stayed at his house—he set up the basement for me. We used to go out for lunch and dinner. His wife told the kids to call me: “Uncle Hugh.” I was closer to Smith than anyone else. Through him I met Menke Katz who was a Yiddish writer.
DH: You edited the groundbreaking anthology “The Living Underground,” that our Boston Poet Laureate Sam Cornish was in. How did you get this collection together?
HF: It was formed due to my connection with COSMEP. This was the “Committee of Small Press Editors and Publishers.” Len Fulton and others formed it in the early 70’s. Len Fulton still runs the magazine “The Small Press Review and “Dustbooks Publishing” in Paradise, California. COSMEP used to have annual conventions around the country: St. Paul, New York, and New Orleans. Every convention had a huge reading. Almost every small press editor in the country was there. I got to meet all the writers and all the publishers. I got to know people in Boston, and of course Sam Cornish was in Boston, and as it happened he was included in “The Living Underground…” He was at the convention in Boston.
DH: What is an “underground poet?”
HF: Someone who is not published by the big New York publishers.
DH: What was “groundbreaking” about the anthology?
HF: We had living, contemporary small press poets. We had folks like Charles Potts, Richard Krech, and many others. We had a reunion almost forty years later in Berkley, Ca.
DH: How did you get involved with the small press literary award the “Pushcart Prize?”
HF: I got involved through a COSMEP conference in New Orleans. The Prize doesn’t have as much impact as it did in the day. I go to a Barnes and Noble today and nobody is
buying anything, everyone is there with his or her computer. Everyone is having coffee with their computers.
DH: Hugh you are the most prolific reviewer I know. How did you get involved with reviewing books, and why do you spend so much time on an activity that doesn’t provide you with monetary compensation?
HF: I became good friends with Len Fulton of the Small Press Review. Now, every four months or so I get a package of books to read. It’s good for me because I get to find out what’s going on with the poets. It influences my style—all these poets I read. It helps me get my name in the Small Press Review all the time. I want to be involved.
DH: Your are the doyen of the short review. How are you able to get to the essence of a book with such few words?
HF: Before I go to bed I always read a few things. Then I just react to it. It’s funny it is like I listen to an inner voice. The inner voice tells me what to write. The reason I got a degree in American Literature was really to learn how to write reviews of books. To react to books. My first draft of my Poe dissertation was horrible. My advisor said as much. He told me that I was going to write his way. He said: “ You are going to react, feel, and so forth. I learned to react. I learned this from academic teaching.
DH: You said you always considered yourself a wunderkind, a boy genius. How about now at 76?
HF: The same at 76. I haven’t aged mentally or psychologically. I’m still 26. I may have cancer of the prostate, arthritis, but my mind is the same. When I was in California recently I wrote 100 poems in two weeks.
DH: What do you want your legacy to be?
HF: I haven’t thought about it. I would like to see other people do the same thing. I want them to react to the world around them.
Wednesday, July 16, 2008
Interview with New England Poetry Club President: Diana Der-Hovanessian with Doug Holder, July 27, 2004, on Poet To Poet/Writer To Writer, Somerville
Interview with New England Poetry Club President: Diana Der-Hovanessian with Doug Holder, July 27, 2004, on Poet To Poet/Writer To Writer, Somerville Community Access TV.
Diana Der-Hovanessian is the president of the venerable literary organization: The New England Poetry Club. Based in Cambridge, Mass., it was founded by Amy Lowell, Robert Frost and Conrad Aiken almost ninety years ago. Lowell's vision was to bring well-known poets to large audiences. In the 1960's through the 1980's the club became insular and provincial, with meetings held at the Brahmin enclaves of Beacon Hill and the Harvard Faculty Club. Der-Hovanessian changed this by inviting Russian poets such as: Andrei Voznesenky and Yevtushenko to read at the club. And since then scores of South American and Latin American Poets have visited and read there, as well as prominent American poets such as: Robert Creeley, X.J. Kennedy, Robert Pinsky, and many others. I spoke to Diana Der-Hovanessian on my Somerville Community Access TV show: Poet To Poet/Writer To Writer.
Doug Holder: How did you become involved with the club?
Diana Der-Hovanessian: I joined it when Victor Howes was running things. He asked me to be secretary. I said "I don't do shorthand." (laughs) He said: "No...No. Not that kind of secretary." So for eight years he had me do programming. I became president in 1980. It's been a long time and we are due for another election!
DH: Amy Lowell started the club. She was quite an eccentric character, wasn't she?
DDH: When I first went into the club we had people who actually knew her. They had interesting stories about the early days. She started the club in 1915, when she came back from England. She was under the influence of Imagists, like Ezra Pound. But Robert Frost and a group of Formalist poets took it away from her. Frost, who was the second or third president, got into big fights with the Imagists, in those days.
DH: Lowell's goal was to reach a large audience through poetry and poetry readings. Has this been your goal?
DDH: This vision of expansion had stopped for awhile when I came around. I felt like we should expand. Now we bring in name poets to make it more exciting. We also have our own members read. We also have free workshops for members.
DH: What is the mission of the Club?
DDH: To expand poetry. To bring people into the art. To show off the best. To be a forum for an exchange of ideas.
DH: Can you talk a bit about the poets who have read for you over the years?
DDH: We had an Irish festival some years ago with the help of Seamus Heaney, who is on our board. He brought a lot of poets from Ireland, like: Evan Boland. Some of the Club's other readers over the years have been: Robert Lowell, Robert Creeley Stanley Kunitz, James Merrill, to name just a few.
DH: Did you have a relationship with the Beat poets?
DDH: We did sponsor a reading by Allen Ginsberg. Once I went to the airport to meet a visiting poet, and Ginsberg was there with him. Ginsberg was wearing a tie. He told me that he was dressed up for the Club. I told him that he didn't have to do it. He turned his tie over and said, "Brooks Brothers. I got it at Good Will."
DH: What do you think of the Slam poets and the Hip-Hoppers?
DDH: We had a program for them at the Boston Globe Book Festival. There was someone on the Globe who wanted it: Patricia Smith. I thought it was fun. I love the fact that they memorize their poems. I envy them. I could do that when I was young.
DH: You are a respected poet in your own right. I believe you are a Fulbright Scholar, and have written extensively about the Armenian Holocaust. Can you talk about your education, and early influences?
DDH: I've been a Fulbright Scholar twice. I went to Boston University as an undergraduate. I studied with Robert Lowell at Harvard. I took his last workshop. It was really great. They said he wouldn't show up. But he did. He was there every single week. It was one hour of teaching poetry, and one hour of going over student poems.
I completed nine volumes of translations from the Armenian. I have always been interested in the Armenian Holocaust. When the Turks started the genocide against the Armenians in 1915, they started by murdering the leaders. You wouldn't think that poets were the leaders. But they started out by killing two hundred poets.
DH: How did you start the Longfellow House readings in Cambridge?
DDH: Erica Mumford was a board member. She and I were walking down Brattle St. We looked over at the Longfellow House and said, "Wouldn't this be a perfect place for a reading." We walked in and said, "Don't you want poetry too?" (They had concerts.) And they replied, “Sure, if you want to do it." And that's how it started. It's been going on for almost twenty five years now.
DH: Any plans for the 90th anniversary?
DDH: Depends on the funding. We want to bring our Golden Rose prize winners together for a big celebration. We are the oldest reading series in the country.
Diana Der-Hovanessian is the president of the venerable literary organization: The New England Poetry Club. Based in Cambridge, Mass., it was founded by Amy Lowell, Robert Frost and Conrad Aiken almost ninety years ago. Lowell's vision was to bring well-known poets to large audiences. In the 1960's through the 1980's the club became insular and provincial, with meetings held at the Brahmin enclaves of Beacon Hill and the Harvard Faculty Club. Der-Hovanessian changed this by inviting Russian poets such as: Andrei Voznesenky and Yevtushenko to read at the club. And since then scores of South American and Latin American Poets have visited and read there, as well as prominent American poets such as: Robert Creeley, X.J. Kennedy, Robert Pinsky, and many others. I spoke to Diana Der-Hovanessian on my Somerville Community Access TV show: Poet To Poet/Writer To Writer.
Doug Holder: How did you become involved with the club?
Diana Der-Hovanessian: I joined it when Victor Howes was running things. He asked me to be secretary. I said "I don't do shorthand." (laughs) He said: "No...No. Not that kind of secretary." So for eight years he had me do programming. I became president in 1980. It's been a long time and we are due for another election!
DH: Amy Lowell started the club. She was quite an eccentric character, wasn't she?
DDH: When I first went into the club we had people who actually knew her. They had interesting stories about the early days. She started the club in 1915, when she came back from England. She was under the influence of Imagists, like Ezra Pound. But Robert Frost and a group of Formalist poets took it away from her. Frost, who was the second or third president, got into big fights with the Imagists, in those days.
DH: Lowell's goal was to reach a large audience through poetry and poetry readings. Has this been your goal?
DDH: This vision of expansion had stopped for awhile when I came around. I felt like we should expand. Now we bring in name poets to make it more exciting. We also have our own members read. We also have free workshops for members.
DH: What is the mission of the Club?
DDH: To expand poetry. To bring people into the art. To show off the best. To be a forum for an exchange of ideas.
DH: Can you talk a bit about the poets who have read for you over the years?
DDH: We had an Irish festival some years ago with the help of Seamus Heaney, who is on our board. He brought a lot of poets from Ireland, like: Evan Boland. Some of the Club's other readers over the years have been: Robert Lowell, Robert Creeley Stanley Kunitz, James Merrill, to name just a few.
DH: Did you have a relationship with the Beat poets?
DDH: We did sponsor a reading by Allen Ginsberg. Once I went to the airport to meet a visiting poet, and Ginsberg was there with him. Ginsberg was wearing a tie. He told me that he was dressed up for the Club. I told him that he didn't have to do it. He turned his tie over and said, "Brooks Brothers. I got it at Good Will."
DH: What do you think of the Slam poets and the Hip-Hoppers?
DDH: We had a program for them at the Boston Globe Book Festival. There was someone on the Globe who wanted it: Patricia Smith. I thought it was fun. I love the fact that they memorize their poems. I envy them. I could do that when I was young.
DH: You are a respected poet in your own right. I believe you are a Fulbright Scholar, and have written extensively about the Armenian Holocaust. Can you talk about your education, and early influences?
DDH: I've been a Fulbright Scholar twice. I went to Boston University as an undergraduate. I studied with Robert Lowell at Harvard. I took his last workshop. It was really great. They said he wouldn't show up. But he did. He was there every single week. It was one hour of teaching poetry, and one hour of going over student poems.
I completed nine volumes of translations from the Armenian. I have always been interested in the Armenian Holocaust. When the Turks started the genocide against the Armenians in 1915, they started by murdering the leaders. You wouldn't think that poets were the leaders. But they started out by killing two hundred poets.
DH: How did you start the Longfellow House readings in Cambridge?
DDH: Erica Mumford was a board member. She and I were walking down Brattle St. We looked over at the Longfellow House and said, "Wouldn't this be a perfect place for a reading." We walked in and said, "Don't you want poetry too?" (They had concerts.) And they replied, “Sure, if you want to do it." And that's how it started. It's been going on for almost twenty five years now.
DH: Any plans for the 90th anniversary?
DDH: Depends on the funding. We want to bring our Golden Rose prize winners together for a big celebration. We are the oldest reading series in the country.
Interview with Tom Perrotta
Interview with Tom Perrotta
Tom Perrotta is an American novelist and screenwriter best known for his novels “Election” and “Little Children” both of which were made into critically acclaimed, Golden Globe-nominated films. Perrotta co-wrote the 2006 film adaptation of his book “Little Children” for which he received an Academy Award nomination for Best Adapted Screenplay. Perrotta will be the headline featured reader at the Somerville News Writers Festival on Nov. 11. I interviewed Perrotta recently for “The Somerville News.” For information about the festival go to www.somervillenewswritersfestival.com.
Doug Holder: Tom for the last twenty-five years I have worked at the psychiatric hospital McLean Hospital in your hometown of Belmont so I am aware of what the town is like. In your book “Little Children” you seem to fashion the setting after a town much like Belmont. The Boston Globe once opined that Belmont was the most “boring” town in the state. How is it for a writer?
Tom Perrotta: I live about ten minutes from Harvard Square, so my cultural life isn’t limited to Belmont.
DH: From some of your novels that I read I get a sense of contempt for the ‘burbs. Are you of the mindset that the suburbs are the home of “broad lawns and narrow minds” as Hemingway once wrote?
TP: I have no contempt for the suburbs whatsoever, and am puzzled when people observe that about the books. I grew up in the suburbs and live there now. “Little Children” isn’t so much about a place as it is about a time of life — the period around age 30 when adulthood sets in for good — and about the ambivalence a lot of people of my generation feel about parenthood. Any of the dysfunction found in the suburbs can be found in the city and in the country, too.
DH: Were you influenced by any of the “chroniclers” of the suburbs such as: Cheever, Richard Yates, or Updike?
TP: Updike’s Rabbit books are a huge influence. I particularly love “Rabbit Redux,” the novel in which Updike creates a microcosm of the 60s in one house. I tried, in my own modest way, to achieve something similar in “The Abstinence Teacher.”
DH: Any favorite Somerville-based writers?
TP: Steve Almond, Pagan Kennedy.
DH: Did you ever dabble in poetry?
TP: Nope.
DH:This will be your second appearance in the Somerville News Writers’ Festival. We are quite grateful. I am aware that you will be on tour and will be reading at larger venues across the country. Do you have a commitment to the local literary community?
TP: I love the local writing community—I think it rivals any in the country—and I enjoy my hometown events way more than I enjoy being on the road.
DH: Are you a frequent visitor to Porter Square Books and McIntyre and Moore?
TP: They’re both excellent stores, though for some reason I don’t get to them as often as I’d like. I end up doing a lot of my book shopping in Harvard Square.
DH: Can you tell us briefly about your new book: “Abstinence Teacher?”
TP: “The Abstinence Teacher” is a novel inspired by the culture war that’s been going on for the past twenty years or so. It has two main characters, one a liberal sex education teacher, the other a born-again Christian, who live in the same community, and whose daughters play on the same youth soccer team. The novel explores the separate worlds that they live in, and also tries to shed some light on the things they have in common as well as on the things that divide them.
DH: It is a popular notion in literary circles that Hollywood can ruin a writer. William Faulkner said that if you are going to be ruined, you can be ruined anywhere—or words to that affect. What’s your take?
TP: Faulkner spent some time in Hollywood, and it didn’t seem to ruin him. I like movies, and I like writing for them. I just don’t see any downside to it, as long as I can set aside the time to keep writing fiction.
Tom Perrotta is an American novelist and screenwriter best known for his novels “Election” and “Little Children” both of which were made into critically acclaimed, Golden Globe-nominated films. Perrotta co-wrote the 2006 film adaptation of his book “Little Children” for which he received an Academy Award nomination for Best Adapted Screenplay. Perrotta will be the headline featured reader at the Somerville News Writers Festival on Nov. 11. I interviewed Perrotta recently for “The Somerville News.” For information about the festival go to www.somervillenewswritersfestival.com.
Doug Holder: Tom for the last twenty-five years I have worked at the psychiatric hospital McLean Hospital in your hometown of Belmont so I am aware of what the town is like. In your book “Little Children” you seem to fashion the setting after a town much like Belmont. The Boston Globe once opined that Belmont was the most “boring” town in the state. How is it for a writer?
Tom Perrotta: I live about ten minutes from Harvard Square, so my cultural life isn’t limited to Belmont.
DH: From some of your novels that I read I get a sense of contempt for the ‘burbs. Are you of the mindset that the suburbs are the home of “broad lawns and narrow minds” as Hemingway once wrote?
TP: I have no contempt for the suburbs whatsoever, and am puzzled when people observe that about the books. I grew up in the suburbs and live there now. “Little Children” isn’t so much about a place as it is about a time of life — the period around age 30 when adulthood sets in for good — and about the ambivalence a lot of people of my generation feel about parenthood. Any of the dysfunction found in the suburbs can be found in the city and in the country, too.
DH: Were you influenced by any of the “chroniclers” of the suburbs such as: Cheever, Richard Yates, or Updike?
TP: Updike’s Rabbit books are a huge influence. I particularly love “Rabbit Redux,” the novel in which Updike creates a microcosm of the 60s in one house. I tried, in my own modest way, to achieve something similar in “The Abstinence Teacher.”
DH: Any favorite Somerville-based writers?
TP: Steve Almond, Pagan Kennedy.
DH: Did you ever dabble in poetry?
TP: Nope.
DH:This will be your second appearance in the Somerville News Writers’ Festival. We are quite grateful. I am aware that you will be on tour and will be reading at larger venues across the country. Do you have a commitment to the local literary community?
TP: I love the local writing community—I think it rivals any in the country—and I enjoy my hometown events way more than I enjoy being on the road.
DH: Are you a frequent visitor to Porter Square Books and McIntyre and Moore?
TP: They’re both excellent stores, though for some reason I don’t get to them as often as I’d like. I end up doing a lot of my book shopping in Harvard Square.
DH: Can you tell us briefly about your new book: “Abstinence Teacher?”
TP: “The Abstinence Teacher” is a novel inspired by the culture war that’s been going on for the past twenty years or so. It has two main characters, one a liberal sex education teacher, the other a born-again Christian, who live in the same community, and whose daughters play on the same youth soccer team. The novel explores the separate worlds that they live in, and also tries to shed some light on the things they have in common as well as on the things that divide them.
DH: It is a popular notion in literary circles that Hollywood can ruin a writer. William Faulkner said that if you are going to be ruined, you can be ruined anywhere—or words to that affect. What’s your take?
TP: Faulkner spent some time in Hollywood, and it didn’t seem to ruin him. I like movies, and I like writing for them. I just don’t see any downside to it, as long as I can set aside the time to keep writing fiction.
Somerville poets host Ed Sanders and his “Tales of Beatnik Glory”
Somerville poets host Ed Sanders and his “Tales of Beatnik Glory”
Off The Shelf by Doug Holder
The Squawk Coffeehouse is a throwback to the bohemian coffeehouses of yore, with ample doses of off-key, off-the-wall, outside-of-the box poetry and song. Presided over by resident Somerville bohemes Lee Kidd and Jessa Piaia, Squawk located at the Harvard Epworth Church, 1555 Mass Ave., Cambridge (just outside Harvard Square), is a refuge for those of us who are still beatniks and hippies at heart. The doors for the readings open at 9 p.m. on Thursdays, and the readings usually last till 12 a.m. or so.
On Thursday, March 27, “Squawk” is going to host the poet, historian, and musician Ed Sanders, (opening for Sanders will be the musical group Dagmar2). Sanders is the doyen of the sensibility that “Squawk” embodies. Sanders is the founder of the FUGS ( a variation on a popular four letter word coined by Norman Mailer in his groundbreaking novel “The Naked and the Dead”) an influential 60's avant-garde folk/rock band, as well as the publisher of the much sought after “F--k You: A Magazine of the Arts.” He cut his teeth in the Lower East Side of NYC from around 1960 to 1970 and in his introduction to his autobiographical novel “Tales of Beatnik Glory” he writes of this once in a lifetime milieu:
“Many of the stories are set in the Lower East Side of New York City, where I lived from 1960 to 1970. The 60's were particularly intense in the Lower East Side, and I was in the middle of it as a publisher of numberless mimeographed tracts and literary magazines, and as the operator of the Peace Eye Bookstore, a cultural center and the location for some of the stories… It was at the Peace Eye Bookstore in late 1964 that Tuli Kupferberg and I founded the satiric anarcho-poetic folk ensemble known as the Fugs.”
Besides “Tales of Beatnik Glory,” Sanders is the author of “America, A History in Verse,” “1968, A History in Verse,” “The Poetry and Life of Allen Ginsberg,” and others. He currently lives in Woodstock, NY where he publishes “The Woodstock Journal.” I conducted an interview with Sanders recently:
Doug Holder: What made you drop out of the University of Missouri and head to Greenwich Village?
Ed Sanders: I headed for New York University, at first to study math and rocket science; but switched to classics after a few semesters of the glory of Greek. I had many good times at the University of Missouri, but, since I was already steeped in current poetry movements, I wanted to be close to where I perceived the glowing nexus resided, and that was New York City.
DH: You wrote your first poem (a long one) on toilet paper. You sent it to Lawrence Ferlinghetti, the founder of City Lights, and he published your first book. Can you tell me about the poem-- and what brand of toilet paper?
ES: Jail paper. I wrote Poem from Jail in two formats: on the backs of the insides of cigarette packs, and on toilet paper, which I kept hidden in my cell, since writing was forbidden. The poem is a long meditation on the Demeter-Persephone myth, plus material on Herman Kahn's Doomsday Machine, and from I.F. Stone's "Hidden History of the Korean War."
When I was released, I managed to smuggle out one copy of the Poem from Jail in my tennis shoe, all wadded up under my foot; then typed it, and mailed it to Lawrence Ferlinghetti who, to my everlasting gratitude, published it in 1963.
DH: Your book "Tales of Beatnik Glory" deals with your times in the Lower East Side of NYC in the late 50s and 60s. It seemed possible then to live the "Bohemian" life on the cheap. Can kids "afford" to live that way in today's climate?
ES: No rent control now. A person of youth needs three jobs: one for the rent, one for the art, and one for the fun.
DH: Ginsberg's " Howl" was a great liberating influence on you when you were a kid. Did it break you out of the corseted 1950's Midwestern sensibility?
ES: It seemed to liberate my consciousness in a way that many of the strictures of my upbringing had prevented, although I was raised by literature-encouraging, liberal parents. It helped me became an "American Bard," that is, a poet who takes public stances.
DH: Everything is high tech these days. You were part of the "Mimeograph Revolution" You put out a magazine "F--k You: A Magazine of the Arts." Can you tell me about the nuts and bolts of putting out a small press magazine back then. What did “F--k You” offer its readers?
ES: We were on the cutting edge, as they say, of the then-current poetry scene: published Ginsberg, DiPrima, Robert Duncan, Creeley, Olson's 'Maximus,' William Burroughs, Auden, Snyder, Dorn, and many, many others. It was given away free, and was much sought out during its three year run.
The actual mechanics of typing stencils and operating a small hand-cranked mimeo machine can be found, say, in my story, in “Tales of Beatnik Glory, Volume 1, "An Editorial Conference."
DH: You wrote a book "1968: A History in Verse." Is '68 the most pivotal year in that decade?
ES: 1968 showed the best and worst of a great nation. With its assassinations and broken dreams, riots and rebellion; but also its music and poetry, it's awful war that went on for another 7 years; but also the Prague Spring, Columbia, Paris, the riots of Chicago and the rise of Nixon, the break-down of the Democratic Party just three years after Johnson's Great Society.
DH: You were influenced by the Beats. Do you pick up "On the Road" with the same enthusiasm now as you did when you were a young writer?
ES: "On the Road" is not quite as good as many other novels of the century. I was more of a "Howl" fan than a Kerouacian.
DH: Can you describe how you became associated with SQUAWK, and what keeps you coming back?
ES: Well, I love that beautiful church. Its vibes are so powerful and historic. And Lee and Jessa have been friends since the time of the 1995 Beat Conference at New York University. They embody the best of the Community Spirit-helping all enjoy the fruits of poesy and center-left political power: the joy of freedom, and the strength of community action.
Off The Shelf by Doug Holder
The Squawk Coffeehouse is a throwback to the bohemian coffeehouses of yore, with ample doses of off-key, off-the-wall, outside-of-the box poetry and song. Presided over by resident Somerville bohemes Lee Kidd and Jessa Piaia, Squawk located at the Harvard Epworth Church, 1555 Mass Ave., Cambridge (just outside Harvard Square), is a refuge for those of us who are still beatniks and hippies at heart. The doors for the readings open at 9 p.m. on Thursdays, and the readings usually last till 12 a.m. or so.
On Thursday, March 27, “Squawk” is going to host the poet, historian, and musician Ed Sanders, (opening for Sanders will be the musical group Dagmar2). Sanders is the doyen of the sensibility that “Squawk” embodies. Sanders is the founder of the FUGS ( a variation on a popular four letter word coined by Norman Mailer in his groundbreaking novel “The Naked and the Dead”) an influential 60's avant-garde folk/rock band, as well as the publisher of the much sought after “F--k You: A Magazine of the Arts.” He cut his teeth in the Lower East Side of NYC from around 1960 to 1970 and in his introduction to his autobiographical novel “Tales of Beatnik Glory” he writes of this once in a lifetime milieu:
“Many of the stories are set in the Lower East Side of New York City, where I lived from 1960 to 1970. The 60's were particularly intense in the Lower East Side, and I was in the middle of it as a publisher of numberless mimeographed tracts and literary magazines, and as the operator of the Peace Eye Bookstore, a cultural center and the location for some of the stories… It was at the Peace Eye Bookstore in late 1964 that Tuli Kupferberg and I founded the satiric anarcho-poetic folk ensemble known as the Fugs.”
Besides “Tales of Beatnik Glory,” Sanders is the author of “America, A History in Verse,” “1968, A History in Verse,” “The Poetry and Life of Allen Ginsberg,” and others. He currently lives in Woodstock, NY where he publishes “The Woodstock Journal.” I conducted an interview with Sanders recently:
Doug Holder: What made you drop out of the University of Missouri and head to Greenwich Village?
Ed Sanders: I headed for New York University, at first to study math and rocket science; but switched to classics after a few semesters of the glory of Greek. I had many good times at the University of Missouri, but, since I was already steeped in current poetry movements, I wanted to be close to where I perceived the glowing nexus resided, and that was New York City.
DH: You wrote your first poem (a long one) on toilet paper. You sent it to Lawrence Ferlinghetti, the founder of City Lights, and he published your first book. Can you tell me about the poem-- and what brand of toilet paper?
ES: Jail paper. I wrote Poem from Jail in two formats: on the backs of the insides of cigarette packs, and on toilet paper, which I kept hidden in my cell, since writing was forbidden. The poem is a long meditation on the Demeter-Persephone myth, plus material on Herman Kahn's Doomsday Machine, and from I.F. Stone's "Hidden History of the Korean War."
When I was released, I managed to smuggle out one copy of the Poem from Jail in my tennis shoe, all wadded up under my foot; then typed it, and mailed it to Lawrence Ferlinghetti who, to my everlasting gratitude, published it in 1963.
DH: Your book "Tales of Beatnik Glory" deals with your times in the Lower East Side of NYC in the late 50s and 60s. It seemed possible then to live the "Bohemian" life on the cheap. Can kids "afford" to live that way in today's climate?
ES: No rent control now. A person of youth needs three jobs: one for the rent, one for the art, and one for the fun.
DH: Ginsberg's " Howl" was a great liberating influence on you when you were a kid. Did it break you out of the corseted 1950's Midwestern sensibility?
ES: It seemed to liberate my consciousness in a way that many of the strictures of my upbringing had prevented, although I was raised by literature-encouraging, liberal parents. It helped me became an "American Bard," that is, a poet who takes public stances.
DH: Everything is high tech these days. You were part of the "Mimeograph Revolution" You put out a magazine "F--k You: A Magazine of the Arts." Can you tell me about the nuts and bolts of putting out a small press magazine back then. What did “F--k You” offer its readers?
ES: We were on the cutting edge, as they say, of the then-current poetry scene: published Ginsberg, DiPrima, Robert Duncan, Creeley, Olson's 'Maximus,' William Burroughs, Auden, Snyder, Dorn, and many, many others. It was given away free, and was much sought out during its three year run.
The actual mechanics of typing stencils and operating a small hand-cranked mimeo machine can be found, say, in my story, in “Tales of Beatnik Glory, Volume 1, "An Editorial Conference."
DH: You wrote a book "1968: A History in Verse." Is '68 the most pivotal year in that decade?
ES: 1968 showed the best and worst of a great nation. With its assassinations and broken dreams, riots and rebellion; but also its music and poetry, it's awful war that went on for another 7 years; but also the Prague Spring, Columbia, Paris, the riots of Chicago and the rise of Nixon, the break-down of the Democratic Party just three years after Johnson's Great Society.
DH: You were influenced by the Beats. Do you pick up "On the Road" with the same enthusiasm now as you did when you were a young writer?
ES: "On the Road" is not quite as good as many other novels of the century. I was more of a "Howl" fan than a Kerouacian.
DH: Can you describe how you became associated with SQUAWK, and what keeps you coming back?
ES: Well, I love that beautiful church. Its vibes are so powerful and historic. And Lee and Jessa have been friends since the time of the 1995 Beat Conference at New York University. They embody the best of the Community Spirit-helping all enjoy the fruits of poesy and center-left political power: the joy of freedom, and the strength of community action.
Off The Shelf by Doug Holder
The Squawk Coffeehouse is a throwback to the bohemian coffeehouses of yore, with ample doses of off-key, off-the-wall, outside-of-the box poetry and song. Presided over by resident Somerville bohemes Lee Kidd and Jessa Piaia, Squawk located at the Harvard Epworth Church, 1555 Mass Ave., Cambridge (just outside Harvard Square), is a refuge for those of us who are still beatniks and hippies at heart. The doors for the readings open at 9 p.m. on Thursdays, and the readings usually last till 12 a.m. or so.
On Thursday, March 27, “Squawk” is going to host the poet, historian, and musician Ed Sanders, (opening for Sanders will be the musical group Dagmar2). Sanders is the doyen of the sensibility that “Squawk” embodies. Sanders is the founder of the FUGS ( a variation on a popular four letter word coined by Norman Mailer in his groundbreaking novel “The Naked and the Dead”) an influential 60's avant-garde folk/rock band, as well as the publisher of the much sought after “F--k You: A Magazine of the Arts.” He cut his teeth in the Lower East Side of NYC from around 1960 to 1970 and in his introduction to his autobiographical novel “Tales of Beatnik Glory” he writes of this once in a lifetime milieu:
“Many of the stories are set in the Lower East Side of New York City, where I lived from 1960 to 1970. The 60's were particularly intense in the Lower East Side, and I was in the middle of it as a publisher of numberless mimeographed tracts and literary magazines, and as the operator of the Peace Eye Bookstore, a cultural center and the location for some of the stories… It was at the Peace Eye Bookstore in late 1964 that Tuli Kupferberg and I founded the satiric anarcho-poetic folk ensemble known as the Fugs.”
Besides “Tales of Beatnik Glory,” Sanders is the author of “America, A History in Verse,” “1968, A History in Verse,” “The Poetry and Life of Allen Ginsberg,” and others. He currently lives in Woodstock, NY where he publishes “The Woodstock Journal.” I conducted an interview with Sanders recently:
Doug Holder: What made you drop out of the University of Missouri and head to Greenwich Village?
Ed Sanders: I headed for New York University, at first to study math and rocket science; but switched to classics after a few semesters of the glory of Greek. I had many good times at the University of Missouri, but, since I was already steeped in current poetry movements, I wanted to be close to where I perceived the glowing nexus resided, and that was New York City.
DH: You wrote your first poem (a long one) on toilet paper. You sent it to Lawrence Ferlinghetti, the founder of City Lights, and he published your first book. Can you tell me about the poem-- and what brand of toilet paper?
ES: Jail paper. I wrote Poem from Jail in two formats: on the backs of the insides of cigarette packs, and on toilet paper, which I kept hidden in my cell, since writing was forbidden. The poem is a long meditation on the Demeter-Persephone myth, plus material on Herman Kahn's Doomsday Machine, and from I.F. Stone's "Hidden History of the Korean War."
When I was released, I managed to smuggle out one copy of the Poem from Jail in my tennis shoe, all wadded up under my foot; then typed it, and mailed it to Lawrence Ferlinghetti who, to my everlasting gratitude, published it in 1963.
DH: Your book "Tales of Beatnik Glory" deals with your times in the Lower East Side of NYC in the late 50s and 60s. It seemed possible then to live the "Bohemian" life on the cheap. Can kids "afford" to live that way in today's climate?
ES: No rent control now. A person of youth needs three jobs: one for the rent, one for the art, and one for the fun.
DH: Ginsberg's " Howl" was a great liberating influence on you when you were a kid. Did it break you out of the corseted 1950's Midwestern sensibility?
ES: It seemed to liberate my consciousness in a way that many of the strictures of my upbringing had prevented, although I was raised by literature-encouraging, liberal parents. It helped me became an "American Bard," that is, a poet who takes public stances.
DH: Everything is high tech these days. You were part of the "Mimeograph Revolution" You put out a magazine "F--k You: A Magazine of the Arts." Can you tell me about the nuts and bolts of putting out a small press magazine back then. What did “F--k You” offer its readers?
ES: We were on the cutting edge, as they say, of the then-current poetry scene: published Ginsberg, DiPrima, Robert Duncan, Creeley, Olson's 'Maximus,' William Burroughs, Auden, Snyder, Dorn, and many, many others. It was given away free, and was much sought out during its three year run.
The actual mechanics of typing stencils and operating a small hand-cranked mimeo machine can be found, say, in my story, in “Tales of Beatnik Glory, Volume 1, "An Editorial Conference."
DH: You wrote a book "1968: A History in Verse." Is '68 the most pivotal year in that decade?
ES: 1968 showed the best and worst of a great nation. With its assassinations and broken dreams, riots and rebellion; but also its music and poetry, it's awful war that went on for another 7 years; but also the Prague Spring, Columbia, Paris, the riots of Chicago and the rise of Nixon, the break-down of the Democratic Party just three years after Johnson's Great Society.
DH: You were influenced by the Beats. Do you pick up "On the Road" with the same enthusiasm now as you did when you were a young writer?
ES: "On the Road" is not quite as good as many other novels of the century. I was more of a "Howl" fan than a Kerouacian.
DH: Can you describe how you became associated with SQUAWK, and what keeps you coming back?
ES: Well, I love that beautiful church. Its vibes are so powerful and historic. And Lee and Jessa have been friends since the time of the 1995 Beat Conference at New York University. They embody the best of the Community Spirit-helping all enjoy the fruits of poesy and center-left political power: the joy of freedom, and the strength of community action.
Off The Shelf by Doug Holder
The Squawk Coffeehouse is a throwback to the bohemian coffeehouses of yore, with ample doses of off-key, off-the-wall, outside-of-the box poetry and song. Presided over by resident Somerville bohemes Lee Kidd and Jessa Piaia, Squawk located at the Harvard Epworth Church, 1555 Mass Ave., Cambridge (just outside Harvard Square), is a refuge for those of us who are still beatniks and hippies at heart. The doors for the readings open at 9 p.m. on Thursdays, and the readings usually last till 12 a.m. or so.
On Thursday, March 27, “Squawk” is going to host the poet, historian, and musician Ed Sanders, (opening for Sanders will be the musical group Dagmar2). Sanders is the doyen of the sensibility that “Squawk” embodies. Sanders is the founder of the FUGS ( a variation on a popular four letter word coined by Norman Mailer in his groundbreaking novel “The Naked and the Dead”) an influential 60's avant-garde folk/rock band, as well as the publisher of the much sought after “F--k You: A Magazine of the Arts.” He cut his teeth in the Lower East Side of NYC from around 1960 to 1970 and in his introduction to his autobiographical novel “Tales of Beatnik Glory” he writes of this once in a lifetime milieu:
“Many of the stories are set in the Lower East Side of New York City, where I lived from 1960 to 1970. The 60's were particularly intense in the Lower East Side, and I was in the middle of it as a publisher of numberless mimeographed tracts and literary magazines, and as the operator of the Peace Eye Bookstore, a cultural center and the location for some of the stories… It was at the Peace Eye Bookstore in late 1964 that Tuli Kupferberg and I founded the satiric anarcho-poetic folk ensemble known as the Fugs.”
Besides “Tales of Beatnik Glory,” Sanders is the author of “America, A History in Verse,” “1968, A History in Verse,” “The Poetry and Life of Allen Ginsberg,” and others. He currently lives in Woodstock, NY where he publishes “The Woodstock Journal.” I conducted an interview with Sanders recently:
Doug Holder: What made you drop out of the University of Missouri and head to Greenwich Village?
Ed Sanders: I headed for New York University, at first to study math and rocket science; but switched to classics after a few semesters of the glory of Greek. I had many good times at the University of Missouri, but, since I was already steeped in current poetry movements, I wanted to be close to where I perceived the glowing nexus resided, and that was New York City.
DH: You wrote your first poem (a long one) on toilet paper. You sent it to Lawrence Ferlinghetti, the founder of City Lights, and he published your first book. Can you tell me about the poem-- and what brand of toilet paper?
ES: Jail paper. I wrote Poem from Jail in two formats: on the backs of the insides of cigarette packs, and on toilet paper, which I kept hidden in my cell, since writing was forbidden. The poem is a long meditation on the Demeter-Persephone myth, plus material on Herman Kahn's Doomsday Machine, and from I.F. Stone's "Hidden History of the Korean War."
When I was released, I managed to smuggle out one copy of the Poem from Jail in my tennis shoe, all wadded up under my foot; then typed it, and mailed it to Lawrence Ferlinghetti who, to my everlasting gratitude, published it in 1963.
DH: Your book "Tales of Beatnik Glory" deals with your times in the Lower East Side of NYC in the late 50s and 60s. It seemed possible then to live the "Bohemian" life on the cheap. Can kids "afford" to live that way in today's climate?
ES: No rent control now. A person of youth needs three jobs: one for the rent, one for the art, and one for the fun.
DH: Ginsberg's " Howl" was a great liberating influence on you when you were a kid. Did it break you out of the corseted 1950's Midwestern sensibility?
ES: It seemed to liberate my consciousness in a way that many of the strictures of my upbringing had prevented, although I was raised by literature-encouraging, liberal parents. It helped me became an "American Bard," that is, a poet who takes public stances.
DH: Everything is high tech these days. You were part of the "Mimeograph Revolution" You put out a magazine "F--k You: A Magazine of the Arts." Can you tell me about the nuts and bolts of putting out a small press magazine back then. What did “F--k You” offer its readers?
ES: We were on the cutting edge, as they say, of the then-current poetry scene: published Ginsberg, DiPrima, Robert Duncan, Creeley, Olson's 'Maximus,' William Burroughs, Auden, Snyder, Dorn, and many, many others. It was given away free, and was much sought out during its three year run.
The actual mechanics of typing stencils and operating a small hand-cranked mimeo machine can be found, say, in my story, in “Tales of Beatnik Glory, Volume 1, "An Editorial Conference."
DH: You wrote a book "1968: A History in Verse." Is '68 the most pivotal year in that decade?
ES: 1968 showed the best and worst of a great nation. With its assassinations and broken dreams, riots and rebellion; but also its music and poetry, it's awful war that went on for another 7 years; but also the Prague Spring, Columbia, Paris, the riots of Chicago and the rise of Nixon, the break-down of the Democratic Party just three years after Johnson's Great Society.
DH: You were influenced by the Beats. Do you pick up "On the Road" with the same enthusiasm now as you did when you were a young writer?
ES: "On the Road" is not quite as good as many other novels of the century. I was more of a "Howl" fan than a Kerouacian.
DH: Can you describe how you became associated with SQUAWK, and what keeps you coming back?
ES: Well, I love that beautiful church. Its vibes are so powerful and historic. And Lee and Jessa have been friends since the time of the 1995 Beat Conference at New York University. They embody the best of the Community Spirit-helping all enjoy the fruits of poesy and center-left political power: the joy of freedom, and the strength of community action.
Jack Powers Interviewed By Doug Holder: A Conversation On the late Gregory Corso
Jack Powers Interviewed By Doug Holder:
A Conversation On the Late Gregory Corso
Lucid Moon Interview #9:
Gregory Corso, was a poet and a central figure in the BEAT poetry movement. He was considered the most "shocking' of the Beat poets. Corso, expertly played the role of the wise guy hipster, thumbing his nose at the powers that be,and " busting the chops" of the self- proclaimed mandarins of the literary world.
Corso was born March 26, 1930 in New York. His early history was marked by a litany of bad luck, orphanages and prison. While in prison he immersed himself in the classics, devouring the works of Dostoevsky, Stendhal and Shelly, to name a few. His education was furthered when he met Allen Ginsberg in a Greenwich Village bar in 1950. Ginsberg, later to be doyen of the Beat movement, broadened the scope of Corso's writing. Until this time Corso wrote in a very conventional style. Ginsberg expanded his horizons, introducing him to eccentric word play and Surrealism. In 1956, Corso moved to San Francisco, and eventually became part of this legendary literary movement. With Ginsberg, he wrote the seminal Beat manifesto, THE LITERARY REVOLUTION IN AMERICA. Over the years, Corso has written or contributed to more than 20 books of poetry, including : GASOLINE, BOMB and other works.
On January 19, 20001, Corso died in the town of Robbinsdale, Minnesota. He lived there with his daughter. I talked with Boston Beat poet Jack Powers, ( founder of the Stone Soup Poets ), about his recollections and perceptions of the man and his passing.
DH: How did you first come into contact with Corso? What were your impressions?
JP: I had Corso read for Stone Soup Poetry in the mid-70's in Boston. There was a great deal of interest in the BEATS then, and the audience was packed. It was two decades since the "pot started to boil," and some of the hip people were anxious to see him as well as the older poets from that era. I loved the natural music he had when reading his poetry, as well as his irreverence, which he expressed liberally on the page and in person. There is an old story of a reading Ginsberg gave with Robert Lowell. Corso was in the audience, and he interrupted the poets in midstream, yelling to the tune of, " What are you doing Allen!...Lowell is a murderer of Poetry!" He was to say the least, prone to public outbursts. Corso stayed at my home on a couple of occasions. The first time he stayed, he shared a room and a bed with his girlfriend. My partner at the time was sleeping in the adjoining room. After I left for work, he lifted up the sheet where he and this woman lay nude and beckoned her...the guy was always on! I remember once before a reading Corso wanted his money up front. I never had much money. I used a credit card to send him a 100 bucks as a retainer. He wanted 400 when he got in Boston. When he arrived in Boston, he told me he wanted the 400 before the reading. I was counting on using the proceeds from the gate, but I managed to come up with it. My bell rings, there is Corso. I hand him the 4 spot.He hands the money to a guy behind him. The guy gives him a package. Corso then asked, " Where is the bathroom?" He was wearing black pants, and low black shoes.When he came out there was a dime sized blood stain on his white socks...need I say more? He went on to do the reading that night. He pretended to be Corso. What I mean is, in spite of being wasted, high, he was able to go through the motions and put it over. He had an edge to his voice that was arresting. Of course I was from the projects like Corso, so I found it appealing. He was authentic. I saw his "authentic madness."
DH: In Corso's poem, ELEGIAC FEELINGS AMERICA, he writes of his deceased friend Jack Kerouac,...O and when it's asked of you,/ What happened to America/has happened to him/ the two were inseparable/like the wind to the sky/is the voice to the word./ How do you think Corso linked Kerouac's fate with America, and the notions connected with it?
JP: Corso was writing that Kerouac was coming from the working class, with a "Joe six-pack mentality." Like many Blue Collars, he was essentially patriotic. He was buying into the life that America offered. The American dream of reinvention, limitless possibilities, hitting the road and starting all over again, died along with Kerouac. Kerouac died in his mother's house, a broken man. You can't marry your mother. What he believed America was, proved to be an illusion. Kerouac sought the geographical cure instead of the vertical one. Ginsberg told me if Kerouac learned to sit and meditate he would of still been alive. Kerouac bought into the material culture. He wore the badge of Eastern religion, but it didn't mean anything. In this poem Corso saw Kerouac tragically barking up the wrong tree.
DH: In 1954 , Corso lived in Cambridge,Ma. At the Harvard Library he poured over all the great works of poetry. In fact, his first published poems appeared in the Harvard Advocate. He even wrote a play that was produced by Harvard students, " In This Hung Up Age" Did your paths cross at this time? Was Cambridge and Boston a nurturing place for the struggling artist, in the 50's?
JP: It was not. That's why I started STONE SOUP, in reaction to this reality. I remember going into the Grolier Bookstore in Cambridge, and being treated like I literally stunk. The 50's were nuturing to the Yale Younger Poets, the academics, certainly not the struggling artist. I did not know that Corso was living in Cambridge at the time. This was a pre-HOWL, and not many folks heard of him and the others.
DH: Can you tell me about the Beat Manifesto Corso and Ginsberg wrote, THE LITERARY REVOLUTION IN AMERICA?
JP: Its purpose was to shake the cage. America needed a blaze of raw energy . We were getting too complacent, fat and comfortable. When Eisenhower became president, we were saying, "this can't be our future." We were called around the camp fire, outside the castle, the government, and the academy. Eventually, one by one people joined us and that's how the 50's lead to the 60's. The manifesto's purpose was to drive a spike through complacency. Personally, as a project rat it effected me. I quit my job and I jumped a bus to San Francisco. It was a great experience. It was liberating. I didn't care where the parachute let me down. It was the key to unlock my own cage.
DH: You told me the other day, that CORSO outlived his expectations, and became a caricature. Can you explain this?
JP: I really meant the whole BEAT movement. The BEAT movement has become ritualized, rather than spontaneous. Nothing remains original.
DH: What was Corso's most notable contribution to the BEAT movement?
JP: He brought us honesty, irony and satire. He was a great clown. The poet, Leo Connellan, called him the best of the bunch. I don't agree, but Corso was far less inhibited with a sense of form...you didn't know where he was coming from, or going to go. What he was saying was there is no rules with poetry. Just as long as you are using as much of your total self as possibe.
Doug Holder, copyright: 2001, all rights reserved.
A Conversation On the Late Gregory Corso
Lucid Moon Interview #9:
Gregory Corso, was a poet and a central figure in the BEAT poetry movement. He was considered the most "shocking' of the Beat poets. Corso, expertly played the role of the wise guy hipster, thumbing his nose at the powers that be,and " busting the chops" of the self- proclaimed mandarins of the literary world.
Corso was born March 26, 1930 in New York. His early history was marked by a litany of bad luck, orphanages and prison. While in prison he immersed himself in the classics, devouring the works of Dostoevsky, Stendhal and Shelly, to name a few. His education was furthered when he met Allen Ginsberg in a Greenwich Village bar in 1950. Ginsberg, later to be doyen of the Beat movement, broadened the scope of Corso's writing. Until this time Corso wrote in a very conventional style. Ginsberg expanded his horizons, introducing him to eccentric word play and Surrealism. In 1956, Corso moved to San Francisco, and eventually became part of this legendary literary movement. With Ginsberg, he wrote the seminal Beat manifesto, THE LITERARY REVOLUTION IN AMERICA. Over the years, Corso has written or contributed to more than 20 books of poetry, including : GASOLINE, BOMB and other works.
On January 19, 20001, Corso died in the town of Robbinsdale, Minnesota. He lived there with his daughter. I talked with Boston Beat poet Jack Powers, ( founder of the Stone Soup Poets ), about his recollections and perceptions of the man and his passing.
DH: How did you first come into contact with Corso? What were your impressions?
JP: I had Corso read for Stone Soup Poetry in the mid-70's in Boston. There was a great deal of interest in the BEATS then, and the audience was packed. It was two decades since the "pot started to boil," and some of the hip people were anxious to see him as well as the older poets from that era. I loved the natural music he had when reading his poetry, as well as his irreverence, which he expressed liberally on the page and in person. There is an old story of a reading Ginsberg gave with Robert Lowell. Corso was in the audience, and he interrupted the poets in midstream, yelling to the tune of, " What are you doing Allen!...Lowell is a murderer of Poetry!" He was to say the least, prone to public outbursts. Corso stayed at my home on a couple of occasions. The first time he stayed, he shared a room and a bed with his girlfriend. My partner at the time was sleeping in the adjoining room. After I left for work, he lifted up the sheet where he and this woman lay nude and beckoned her...the guy was always on! I remember once before a reading Corso wanted his money up front. I never had much money. I used a credit card to send him a 100 bucks as a retainer. He wanted 400 when he got in Boston. When he arrived in Boston, he told me he wanted the 400 before the reading. I was counting on using the proceeds from the gate, but I managed to come up with it. My bell rings, there is Corso. I hand him the 4 spot.He hands the money to a guy behind him. The guy gives him a package. Corso then asked, " Where is the bathroom?" He was wearing black pants, and low black shoes.When he came out there was a dime sized blood stain on his white socks...need I say more? He went on to do the reading that night. He pretended to be Corso. What I mean is, in spite of being wasted, high, he was able to go through the motions and put it over. He had an edge to his voice that was arresting. Of course I was from the projects like Corso, so I found it appealing. He was authentic. I saw his "authentic madness."
DH: In Corso's poem, ELEGIAC FEELINGS AMERICA, he writes of his deceased friend Jack Kerouac,...O and when it's asked of you,/ What happened to America/has happened to him/ the two were inseparable/like the wind to the sky/is the voice to the word./ How do you think Corso linked Kerouac's fate with America, and the notions connected with it?
JP: Corso was writing that Kerouac was coming from the working class, with a "Joe six-pack mentality." Like many Blue Collars, he was essentially patriotic. He was buying into the life that America offered. The American dream of reinvention, limitless possibilities, hitting the road and starting all over again, died along with Kerouac. Kerouac died in his mother's house, a broken man. You can't marry your mother. What he believed America was, proved to be an illusion. Kerouac sought the geographical cure instead of the vertical one. Ginsberg told me if Kerouac learned to sit and meditate he would of still been alive. Kerouac bought into the material culture. He wore the badge of Eastern religion, but it didn't mean anything. In this poem Corso saw Kerouac tragically barking up the wrong tree.
DH: In 1954 , Corso lived in Cambridge,Ma. At the Harvard Library he poured over all the great works of poetry. In fact, his first published poems appeared in the Harvard Advocate. He even wrote a play that was produced by Harvard students, " In This Hung Up Age" Did your paths cross at this time? Was Cambridge and Boston a nurturing place for the struggling artist, in the 50's?
JP: It was not. That's why I started STONE SOUP, in reaction to this reality. I remember going into the Grolier Bookstore in Cambridge, and being treated like I literally stunk. The 50's were nuturing to the Yale Younger Poets, the academics, certainly not the struggling artist. I did not know that Corso was living in Cambridge at the time. This was a pre-HOWL, and not many folks heard of him and the others.
DH: Can you tell me about the Beat Manifesto Corso and Ginsberg wrote, THE LITERARY REVOLUTION IN AMERICA?
JP: Its purpose was to shake the cage. America needed a blaze of raw energy . We were getting too complacent, fat and comfortable. When Eisenhower became president, we were saying, "this can't be our future." We were called around the camp fire, outside the castle, the government, and the academy. Eventually, one by one people joined us and that's how the 50's lead to the 60's. The manifesto's purpose was to drive a spike through complacency. Personally, as a project rat it effected me. I quit my job and I jumped a bus to San Francisco. It was a great experience. It was liberating. I didn't care where the parachute let me down. It was the key to unlock my own cage.
DH: You told me the other day, that CORSO outlived his expectations, and became a caricature. Can you explain this?
JP: I really meant the whole BEAT movement. The BEAT movement has become ritualized, rather than spontaneous. Nothing remains original.
DH: What was Corso's most notable contribution to the BEAT movement?
JP: He brought us honesty, irony and satire. He was a great clown. The poet, Leo Connellan, called him the best of the bunch. I don't agree, but Corso was far less inhibited with a sense of form...you didn't know where he was coming from, or going to go. What he was saying was there is no rules with poetry. Just as long as you are using as much of your total self as possibe.
Doug Holder, copyright: 2001, all rights reserved.
INterview with Somerville Poet Afaa Michael Weaver
Interview with Somerville Poet Afaa Michael Weaver
Afaa M. Weaver is a Somerville poet, playwright and educator. He is a veteran of 15 years as a blue collar worker in the city of his birth Baltimore, Maryland. He received a National Endowment for the Arts fellowship for poetry while working in factories. He eventually got his MFA degree from Brown University. He is a member of the inaugural faculty of the first workshop retreat for African American poets, and is currently a professor of Literature at Simmons College in Boston. He recently edited These Hands I Know: African-American Writers on Family, finished the poetry collection Multitudes, Plum Flower Dance, as well as writing plays and journalistic pieces. Weaver won the 2008 Pushcart Prize for poetry. I talked with Afaa on my show Poet To Poet: Writer To Writer on Somerville’s Cable Access TV.
Doug Holder: Who influenced you, and what spurred you on to write poetry?
Afaa M. Weaver: Oh, the usual adolescent turbulence I suppose. In 1974 I met Lucille Clifton. She lived in Baltimore. She and Dr. Valerie Sedlack from Morgan University were my mentors. Our relationship continues today.
My influences were Langston Hughes, Conrad Aiken, who edited "Poetry of the Negro"
for the Library of American Poetry series.
DH: Do you label yourself as an African-American writer?
AMW: I do consider myself an African-American writer. My particular take on that is if I embrace that, I also embrace my chances of freedom. If I spend time dancing around it, in a very ironic way, it will capture me.
DH: You edited an anthology These Hands I Know… How does this differ from other anthologies of this type?
AMW: It is the first anthology of its kind. The first anthology of poetry and prose writers, primarily fiction writers, to deal with the subject of the Black family. African-American culture is very insular and closed because of the history of racism and slavery. We could not afford to reveal our private self to the world due to physical danger…even to this day. We’ve had to hold back because of the precarious position that we are now in as a culture. Some of us are not doing well. We can affirm our own humanity for ourselves and the rest of the world by letting some of our self loose on the rest of the world. We can let them know we do see ourselves as human beings contrary to opinion of other people. We do have a very human life.
The media for a very long time would not take stories of romance involving black people because of the misconception they didn’t have a romantic life. It was viewed as purely carnal. I am looking at the early development of musicals in this country. Today,
choices are still made along color lines. I am addressing a unbalanced system.
DH: Personally, do you experience racism in this so-called "Athens of America"
AMW: Yes. When I go to Harvard Square I just sense the way people respond to me.
Some times it is too much, and I don’t even go there. I don’t like walking into stores and see people respond in thinly veiled dread and panic when I walk through the door. This happens in HARVARD SQUARE, the center of liberalism and privilege.
I enjoy Somerville. It has the eclectic and diverse nature that makes it for me. I like have a Peruvian cafe down the block, or a Asian grocery store around the corner.
DH: In your poetry collection Multitudes your poetry deals with the ying and yang of your relationship with your father. Can you talk about this?
AMW: My father passed away this Spring. The poems I have written about him, gave me a way to talk with him. My father and I had the same challenges in our relationship as any father and son have when they deal with the old world of doing things and the new world of doings. It made it difficult to talk with my father.
It was a loving relationship. My father was not a communicator of feelings. I couldn’t say: " You know pop, let’s sit down and process this."
DH: Can you trace your development as a writer?
AMW: I say poet. I was a freelance journalist while I worked in factories. I wrote for the Baltimore Sun. I started a small press magazine called " Blind Alleys" with Melvin Brown, a Baltimore poet. It was eight and a half by eleven--fold over with staples. We were pretty productive. We had book reviews of our work, etc… But by 1985 I couldn’t sustain it, while making the transition from the factory to academia. I signed a contract for my first book while I was in the factory, and I applied to brown University. I was working in the factory for ten years, and I told my fellow workers: " you know I am getting out of here." They said: "No, you are going to die here with the rest of us." I said: No, I am not." When I got my NEA Grant--I left the factory for good. So I guess poetry is what did it for me.
DH: Do you think teaching is a hindrance e to your work?
AMW: I think it helps. There is nothing like the exchange that goes on in the classroom. I really enjoy helping someone find their voice, or appreciate poetry. Committee meetings and academic stuff doesn’t help me. Hey, it still beats the factory!
DH: What is it about Somerville that attracts so many writers?
AMW: You have the space to be eccentric.
Afaa M. Weaver is a Somerville poet, playwright and educator. He is a veteran of 15 years as a blue collar worker in the city of his birth Baltimore, Maryland. He received a National Endowment for the Arts fellowship for poetry while working in factories. He eventually got his MFA degree from Brown University. He is a member of the inaugural faculty of the first workshop retreat for African American poets, and is currently a professor of Literature at Simmons College in Boston. He recently edited These Hands I Know: African-American Writers on Family, finished the poetry collection Multitudes, Plum Flower Dance, as well as writing plays and journalistic pieces. Weaver won the 2008 Pushcart Prize for poetry. I talked with Afaa on my show Poet To Poet: Writer To Writer on Somerville’s Cable Access TV.
Doug Holder: Who influenced you, and what spurred you on to write poetry?
Afaa M. Weaver: Oh, the usual adolescent turbulence I suppose. In 1974 I met Lucille Clifton. She lived in Baltimore. She and Dr. Valerie Sedlack from Morgan University were my mentors. Our relationship continues today.
My influences were Langston Hughes, Conrad Aiken, who edited "Poetry of the Negro"
for the Library of American Poetry series.
DH: Do you label yourself as an African-American writer?
AMW: I do consider myself an African-American writer. My particular take on that is if I embrace that, I also embrace my chances of freedom. If I spend time dancing around it, in a very ironic way, it will capture me.
DH: You edited an anthology These Hands I Know… How does this differ from other anthologies of this type?
AMW: It is the first anthology of its kind. The first anthology of poetry and prose writers, primarily fiction writers, to deal with the subject of the Black family. African-American culture is very insular and closed because of the history of racism and slavery. We could not afford to reveal our private self to the world due to physical danger…even to this day. We’ve had to hold back because of the precarious position that we are now in as a culture. Some of us are not doing well. We can affirm our own humanity for ourselves and the rest of the world by letting some of our self loose on the rest of the world. We can let them know we do see ourselves as human beings contrary to opinion of other people. We do have a very human life.
The media for a very long time would not take stories of romance involving black people because of the misconception they didn’t have a romantic life. It was viewed as purely carnal. I am looking at the early development of musicals in this country. Today,
choices are still made along color lines. I am addressing a unbalanced system.
DH: Personally, do you experience racism in this so-called "Athens of America"
AMW: Yes. When I go to Harvard Square I just sense the way people respond to me.
Some times it is too much, and I don’t even go there. I don’t like walking into stores and see people respond in thinly veiled dread and panic when I walk through the door. This happens in HARVARD SQUARE, the center of liberalism and privilege.
I enjoy Somerville. It has the eclectic and diverse nature that makes it for me. I like have a Peruvian cafe down the block, or a Asian grocery store around the corner.
DH: In your poetry collection Multitudes your poetry deals with the ying and yang of your relationship with your father. Can you talk about this?
AMW: My father passed away this Spring. The poems I have written about him, gave me a way to talk with him. My father and I had the same challenges in our relationship as any father and son have when they deal with the old world of doing things and the new world of doings. It made it difficult to talk with my father.
It was a loving relationship. My father was not a communicator of feelings. I couldn’t say: " You know pop, let’s sit down and process this."
DH: Can you trace your development as a writer?
AMW: I say poet. I was a freelance journalist while I worked in factories. I wrote for the Baltimore Sun. I started a small press magazine called " Blind Alleys" with Melvin Brown, a Baltimore poet. It was eight and a half by eleven--fold over with staples. We were pretty productive. We had book reviews of our work, etc… But by 1985 I couldn’t sustain it, while making the transition from the factory to academia. I signed a contract for my first book while I was in the factory, and I applied to brown University. I was working in the factory for ten years, and I told my fellow workers: " you know I am getting out of here." They said: "No, you are going to die here with the rest of us." I said: No, I am not." When I got my NEA Grant--I left the factory for good. So I guess poetry is what did it for me.
DH: Do you think teaching is a hindrance e to your work?
AMW: I think it helps. There is nothing like the exchange that goes on in the classroom. I really enjoy helping someone find their voice, or appreciate poetry. Committee meetings and academic stuff doesn’t help me. Hey, it still beats the factory!
DH: What is it about Somerville that attracts so many writers?
AMW: You have the space to be eccentric.
Interview with Somerville Poet Afaa Michael Weaver
Afaa M. Weaver is a Somerville poet, playwright and educator. He is a veteran of 15 years as a blue collar worker in the city of his birth Baltimore, Maryland. He received a National Endowment for the Arts fellowship for poetry while working in factories. He eventually got his MFA degree from Brown University. He is a member of the inaugural faculty of the first workshop retreat for African American poets, and is currently a professor of Literature at Simmons College in Boston. He recently edited These Hands I Know: African-American Writers on Family, finished the poetry collection Multitudes, Plum Flower Dance, as well as writing plays and journalistic pieces. Weaver won the 2008 Pushcart Prize for poetry. I talked with Afaa on my show Poet To Poet: Writer To Writer on Somerville’s Cable Access TV.
Doug Holder: Who influenced you, and what spurred you on to write poetry?
Afaa M. Weaver: Oh, the usual adolescent turbulence I suppose. In 1974 I met Lucille Clifton. She lived in Baltimore. She and Dr. Valerie Sedlack from Morgan University were my mentors. Our relationship continues today.
My influences were Langston Hughes, Conrad Aiken, who edited "Poetry of the Negro"
for the Library of American Poetry series.
DH: Do you label yourself as an African-American writer?
AMW: I do consider myself an African-American writer. My particular take on that is if I embrace that, I also embrace my chances of freedom. If I spend time dancing around it, in a very ironic way, it will capture me.
DH: You edited an anthology These Hands I Know… How does this differ from other anthologies of this type?
AMW: It is the first anthology of its kind. The first anthology of poetry and prose writers, primarily fiction writers, to deal with the subject of the Black family. African-American culture is very insular and closed because of the history of racism and slavery. We could not afford to reveal our private self to the world due to physical danger…even to this day. We’ve had to hold back because of the precarious position that we are now in as a culture. Some of us are not doing well. We can affirm our own humanity for ourselves and the rest of the world by letting some of our self loose on the rest of the world. We can let them know we do see ourselves as human beings contrary to opinion of other people. We do have a very human life.
The media for a very long time would not take stories of romance involving black people because of the misconception they didn’t have a romantic life. It was viewed as purely carnal. I am looking at the early development of musicals in this country. Today,
choices are still made along color lines. I am addressing a unbalanced system.
DH: Personally, do you experience racism in this so-called "Athens of America"
AMW: Yes. When I go to Harvard Square I just sense the way people respond to me.
Some times it is too much, and I don’t even go there. I don’t like walking into stores and see people respond in thinly veiled dread and panic when I walk through the door. This happens in HARVARD SQUARE, the center of liberalism and privilege.
I enjoy Somerville. It has the eclectic and diverse nature that makes it for me. I like have a Peruvian cafe down the block, or a Asian grocery store around the corner.
DH: In your poetry collection Multitudes your poetry deals with the ying and yang of your relationship with your father. Can you talk about this?
AMW: My father passed away this Spring. The poems I have written about him, gave me a way to talk with him. My father and I had the same challenges in our relationship as any father and son have when they deal with the old world of doing things and the new world of doings. It made it difficult to talk with my father.
It was a loving relationship. My father was not a communicator of feelings. I couldn’t say: " You know pop, let’s sit down and process this."
DH: Can you trace your development as a writer?
AMW: I say poet. I was a freelance journalist while I worked in factories. I wrote for the Baltimore Sun. I started a small press magazine called " Blind Alleys" with Melvin Brown, a Baltimore poet. It was eight and a half by eleven--fold over with staples. We were pretty productive. We had book reviews of our work, etc… But by 1985 I couldn’t sustain it, while making the transition from the factory to academia. I signed a contract for my first book while I was in the factory, and I applied to brown University. I was working in the factory for ten years, and I told my fellow workers: " you know I am getting out of here." They said: "No, you are going to die here with the rest of us." I said: No, I am not." When I got my NEA Grant--I left the factory for good. So I guess poetry is what did it for me.
DH: Do you think teaching is a hindrance e to your work?
AMW: I think it helps. There is nothing like the exchange that goes on in the classroom. I really enjoy helping someone find their voice, or appreciate poetry. Committee meetings and academic stuff doesn’t help me. Hey, it still beats the factory!
DH: What is it about Somerville that attracts so many writers?
AMW: You have the space to be eccentric.
Afaa M. Weaver is a Somerville poet, playwright and educator. He is a veteran of 15 years as a blue collar worker in the city of his birth Baltimore, Maryland. He received a National Endowment for the Arts fellowship for poetry while working in factories. He eventually got his MFA degree from Brown University. He is a member of the inaugural faculty of the first workshop retreat for African American poets, and is currently a professor of Literature at Simmons College in Boston. He recently edited These Hands I Know: African-American Writers on Family, finished the poetry collection Multitudes, Plum Flower Dance, as well as writing plays and journalistic pieces. Weaver won the 2008 Pushcart Prize for poetry. I talked with Afaa on my show Poet To Poet: Writer To Writer on Somerville’s Cable Access TV.
Doug Holder: Who influenced you, and what spurred you on to write poetry?
Afaa M. Weaver: Oh, the usual adolescent turbulence I suppose. In 1974 I met Lucille Clifton. She lived in Baltimore. She and Dr. Valerie Sedlack from Morgan University were my mentors. Our relationship continues today.
My influences were Langston Hughes, Conrad Aiken, who edited "Poetry of the Negro"
for the Library of American Poetry series.
DH: Do you label yourself as an African-American writer?
AMW: I do consider myself an African-American writer. My particular take on that is if I embrace that, I also embrace my chances of freedom. If I spend time dancing around it, in a very ironic way, it will capture me.
DH: You edited an anthology These Hands I Know… How does this differ from other anthologies of this type?
AMW: It is the first anthology of its kind. The first anthology of poetry and prose writers, primarily fiction writers, to deal with the subject of the Black family. African-American culture is very insular and closed because of the history of racism and slavery. We could not afford to reveal our private self to the world due to physical danger…even to this day. We’ve had to hold back because of the precarious position that we are now in as a culture. Some of us are not doing well. We can affirm our own humanity for ourselves and the rest of the world by letting some of our self loose on the rest of the world. We can let them know we do see ourselves as human beings contrary to opinion of other people. We do have a very human life.
The media for a very long time would not take stories of romance involving black people because of the misconception they didn’t have a romantic life. It was viewed as purely carnal. I am looking at the early development of musicals in this country. Today,
choices are still made along color lines. I am addressing a unbalanced system.
DH: Personally, do you experience racism in this so-called "Athens of America"
AMW: Yes. When I go to Harvard Square I just sense the way people respond to me.
Some times it is too much, and I don’t even go there. I don’t like walking into stores and see people respond in thinly veiled dread and panic when I walk through the door. This happens in HARVARD SQUARE, the center of liberalism and privilege.
I enjoy Somerville. It has the eclectic and diverse nature that makes it for me. I like have a Peruvian cafe down the block, or a Asian grocery store around the corner.
DH: In your poetry collection Multitudes your poetry deals with the ying and yang of your relationship with your father. Can you talk about this?
AMW: My father passed away this Spring. The poems I have written about him, gave me a way to talk with him. My father and I had the same challenges in our relationship as any father and son have when they deal with the old world of doing things and the new world of doings. It made it difficult to talk with my father.
It was a loving relationship. My father was not a communicator of feelings. I couldn’t say: " You know pop, let’s sit down and process this."
DH: Can you trace your development as a writer?
AMW: I say poet. I was a freelance journalist while I worked in factories. I wrote for the Baltimore Sun. I started a small press magazine called " Blind Alleys" with Melvin Brown, a Baltimore poet. It was eight and a half by eleven--fold over with staples. We were pretty productive. We had book reviews of our work, etc… But by 1985 I couldn’t sustain it, while making the transition from the factory to academia. I signed a contract for my first book while I was in the factory, and I applied to brown University. I was working in the factory for ten years, and I told my fellow workers: " you know I am getting out of here." They said: "No, you are going to die here with the rest of us." I said: No, I am not." When I got my NEA Grant--I left the factory for good. So I guess poetry is what did it for me.
DH: Do you think teaching is a hindrance e to your work?
AMW: I think it helps. There is nothing like the exchange that goes on in the classroom. I really enjoy helping someone find their voice, or appreciate poetry. Committee meetings and academic stuff doesn’t help me. Hey, it still beats the factory!
DH: What is it about Somerville that attracts so many writers?
AMW: You have the space to be eccentric.
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