Poesy, Issue #36

Poesy, Issue #36
A quarterly literary journal
ISSN 1541-8162
Subscriptions $12 per year
Attn: Editor, Brian Morrissey
P.O. Box 7823
Santa Cruz CA 95061

It’s been awhile since I’ve reviewed a journal, so Poesy and I returned from hiatus together. After 18 years and 35 issues, Publisher / Editor Brian Morrissey took a year off to explore China. For this latest issue, Morrissey engaged a guest editor, Erika King, a student of literature and art history at Bennington College in Vermont. Her internship is the latest in many transitions for Poesy.

Morrissey began Poesy’s journey when he was fourteen and living on the east coast. Since that first edition, Morrissey’s vision has never flagged. He wanted his literary journal to be the best on the market, one that provides photographic and poetic adventures into the unknown for readers in every issue. After his move to the west coast, Morrissey was concerned that Poesy might become regional in flavor and interest instead of reflecting the work of poets across America. He contacted poet and journalist, Doug Holder, who became the east coast editor. Their editorial collaboration produced the results Morrissey wanted.

This latest issue features breathtaking photographs in black and white that effectively capture the spirit of the poetry. In Poesy, the poetry, photographs, interviews, and commentaries become the stars through simple-yet-striking presentation. Work by 16 poets and 5 photographers blend beautifully to reflect the harsh truths, stark sorrows, fragmented souls, and joy hungry spirits that comprise our chaotic world. Also memorable is an article by Doug Holder about Harris Gardner, the real estate broker and substitute teacher who single handedly founded the Boston Poetry Festival. Erika King’s interview with the Guerilla Poets Project so intrigued me that I checked their website. The GPP is a consortium of small presses, poets, and writers who want poetry to matter again, with or without sales. To that end they disperse broadsides throughout the world for readers to discover as a surprise when they purchase books or check them out from libraries.

Taken as a whole, Poesy is an exceptional journal created by visionaries. Its very simplicity inspired excitement in this old poet-writer-reviewer-photographer on many levels. From the editors to the poets and photographers to the layout, this journal is unique and highly recommended.

Laurel Johnson for Midwest Book Review

POETS AGAINST THE KILLING FIELDS

POETS AGAINST THE KILLING FIELDS
(Anthology); Trilingual Press; Cambridge, MA; $12.95


If you can turn off “American Idol,” forget for a moment the Red Sox and the Patriots, and take a hard look at the phase of late capitalism in which we find ourselves here in America, in 2007, you might just want to vomit. More likely you would have tuned back into “American Idol” long before you got to that point. The various poets of this anthology are not going to let you do that. They have your head in a vice and toothpicks propping your eyes open. And you are going to look. And you WILL see.
They shouldn’t have to do that to you. You could have seen for yourself. It’s a matter of record that Al Gore won the 2000 election. It’s a matter of record that the United States invaded Iraq for reasons having nothing to do with America’s security. It’s laughable that Saddam Hussein would have anything to do with Islamic jihadists like al-Queada. Contrary to the blatant lies of George W. Bush, the US has introduced torture as a standard operating procedure in interrogating detainees regardless of how much evidence there may or may not be that they are involved with terrorists. Waterboarding is a method of torture used as far back as the Inquisition. How interesting that torture is instituted by a President that used to enjoy blowing up frogs as a kid. But I digress.
The US turned Iraq, which had a large middle class and was a developed nation, albeit under dictatorial rule, into a nightmarish hell-hole. And the US will not leave even when Iraq’s oil is in the hands of American oil companies. Iraqi families have seen their loved ones gunned down or imprisoned almost at random by either rival militias, gangs of thugs or US troops.
My point here is that all too many Americans are oblivious to the suffering of others around the world even when that suffering is directly caused by the US or its client, Israel. All too many Americans are oblivious that our country is moving closer to authoritarianism every day. And this anthology may make you uncomfortable if you are one of the oblivious. And if you are, read deeply then throw your TV remote in the trash; become a citizen of the world. Let yourself address the “small girl playing with bullets found on war ground” as Aldo Tambellini does in “March 14, 2005.”

has the killing bullet
replaced your toy doll innocence
after your baptism by fire
did your parents survive

“In A Shout for Yusuf Hawkins,” Jill Netchinsky writes:

Bensonhurst
cardboard theater figures
drunk Italian inlaws
a gun on New Year’s Eve
Veterans reminisce
“Let’s go beat up some nigguhs”

The Poets Against the Killing Fields are here to tell you that the world is experienced very differently by third-world people under the thumb of US imperialism, and by working people and people of color here in America, than the unfair and unbalanced networks like Faux News would have you believe. Perhaps as you peruse these pages the scales will fall off your eyes as well and you too will find your clenched fist beginning to rise. Now say it with me: Fuck “American Idol!”

Richard Wilhelm
Ibbetson Update

Watermark by Jacquelyn Pope Review by Doug Holder

September 14, 2005


Watermark by Jacquelyn Pope (Marsh Hawk Press PO BOX 206 East Rockaway, NY 11518 2005) http://web.archive.org/web/20060506015704/http://marshhawkpress.com/ $13.


Jacquelyn Pope's new collection of poetry "Watermark" ( Marsh Hawk Press) is an undeniably melancholy, haunting, and accomplished collection of poetry. Pope's use of language is fine-tuned, clear, clipped, concise and most of all evocative. I was most impressed with the poems that dealt with human relationships. Her imagery beautifully defines estrangement, and the ultimately unknowable entity the "other." In "Mrs. Robinson," ( I'm assuming modeled after that disaffected, booze-swilling cipher of "The Graduate" fame), Pope paints a portrait of an empty woman with chilling precision: " He's fixed her off the page, where she'sabandoned: mid-century,semi-continential. Cold sunlightstabs the medicated air.Too bored to sitand suck the mentholated tipof her malaise, she wondersat the nerve that led him on" (41) In " By Light," Pope skillfully traces a woman's realization that even in what we feel are the most intimate relationships; we are ultimately strangers to one another. It is impressive how Pope uses the most banal of things such as: lamplight, and shadows on a wall to bring the poem home: " ...I sat/ in my own pool of light,/ still wholly/ untranslated into rooms that had/ learned you long ago. Our shadows/ hovered on their walls, dark forms/ drawn across the future./ Time flickered,/ fading from the room the night/ I saw our boundaries were drawn..." (39) When I read the work of some contemporary poets, often I find that the poems are obscure, inaccessible, and I simply can't relate to them. And just as often when I read small press poets whose work is accessible, I found that the poems are too facile and lack the heightened language a poem requires. Pope has written a collection that most of us non-academic poets can understand, relate to, and go back to in years to come.

Doug Holder/ Ibbetson Update/ Somerville, Mass. 2004/ Sept. 2005

Rafts by Simon Perchik

Rafts
simon Perchik
Parsifal press 2007
13.95 U.S.
16.00 Can
ISBN 978-0-9739960-3-6

Review by Irene Koronas


RAFTS

This book of poetry shifts back and forth, time tides, small ocean pools we can gaze into for small bits, living matters. “you can hear the dirt, the shallow foothold, the hand to hand.” The poem’s relationships have a natural commitment with family - lovers as close as trees. “and nothing underneath but this orange this half brother, half sister, head down-there’s still room, the healing bigger than ever, returning from a pasture and covered with wet grass.”

The intimacy of Simon Perchik’s poetry astounds, the reader immediately recognizes and identifies with the persistent struggle to identify with all around oneself. “it’s a scary scratching, squeaks right through the heart as when falling stars cry out the light that is not morning and leaf by leaf, surrounded by a fence.”

Mostly, this collection of poems, melds into an epic like Homer, but not Homer, like sublime, but not sublime; these poems are narrative sublimity in that they also capture, take us on the journey. and what is the journey? is it simply in narrative in nature, the going forth, coming back? perhaps. “anything is possible-they hatch til the stones whose common ancestor in the moon…they keep the dead company.” we carry his words up the hill. pile them in neat piles, then the phrases tumble down and find another configuration. Rafts is a poetry book which dares to be its own. “once you reach the emptiness it will still answer…”

Irene Koronas is the poetry editor of the Wilderness House Literary Review, and a member of the "Bagel Bards," a writers' group in the Boston area.

Lois Ames: Confidante to Sylvia Plath and Anne Sexton.”

“Lois Ames: Confidante to Sylvia Plath and Anne Sexton.”

Recently I was privileged to hear Lois Ames speak at the “Wilderness House
Literary Retreat,” in Littleton, Mass. Lois Ames is a poet, biographer and
psychotherapist. She was a confidante of the poet Anne Sexton, and has
published many essays on both Sexton and Sylvia Plath including: “A
Biographical Note,” in Plath’s “Bell Jar,” She also was the editor of “Anne
Sexton: A Self-Portrait in Letters.’ I talked with her on my Somerville
Community Access TV show “Poet to Poet: Writer to Writer.”

Doug Holder: Is it a natural fit for “confessional” poets like Sexton and
Plath to have a trained social worker , and a literary historian, as a
confidante?

Lois Ames: I don’t think it is usual. I don’t think that’s why I was their
friend or confidante. I knew Sylvia from high school and Smith College. Anne
I once met in high school, but I didn’t know her till much later. I was then
a trained social worker, but I don’t think that’s why we became friends.
Anne certainly asked me to go to McLean Hospital when she first started
teaching poetry there. She wanted someone trained to help her when she
reviewed the patient poems. She didn’t want to hurt these fragile patients’
feelings. She wanted me to monitor what she said. She turned out to be
superb.

Doug Holder: You wrote the biographical note for the “Bell Jar.” Did you
ever want to do a complete biography of Plath and Sexton?

Lois Ames: I did. The book “Anne Sexton: Self-Portrait in Letters.” was my
idea. It was done partly to get an understanding about what material was
there. She had appointed me her official biographer. But it was also to help
her children to understand aspects of their mother’s life they weren’t aware
of. I thought if I was there for them we could go through the letters, and
this would be very helpful.

I was the first one to be asked to do the biography of Sylvia Plath. I had
a contract with the family. Harper and Row was my publisher. It became
increasingly difficult for me to do this, as other biographers have found
out. And I finally decided for the sake of my own sanity and my family; that
it was better to pay back the advance to Harper’s. I always felt it was a
wise decision.

Doug Holder: Did Plath have any interest in teaching poetry at McLean
Hospital, like Sexton?

Lois Ames: Oh, no, I don’t think so. Sylvia was a junior in college when she
was at McLean. In those days she wasn’t trained to do anything like that.
She went to England after she graduated Smith. There was no reason for her
to even think of doing that. That was not Sylvia’s interest. Anne loved
teaching. Sylvia found teaching very difficult. She taught one year at Smith
College and felt that it drained her. I assume going to England with Ted
Hughes and leaving Smith, was a wonderful opportunity for her.
Doug Holder: Anne was not formally educated beyond high school. If say, she
was educated in the Liberal Arts at Harvard, would she be a different poet?
Lois Ames: She was very interested in form when she first started and she
studied it very diligently. When she was in Robert Lowell’s workshop she
studied it as well. She read a great deal. She tried to make up for the
great gaps in her education. Her teachers in public school gave up on her
very early. They told her parents that she was hopeless. She was sent to the
“Garland School,” a finishing school for girls at the time. She said she
learned to make perfect white sauce there, but that was it. But she was
writing poetry when she was there and it was published in a magazine the
school put out.

Doug Holder: Have you had any clients since Sexton and Plath who have
reached literary heights?

Lois Ames: I knew a lot of the people in the workshop Anne ran. I am sworn
to confidentiality however. But a lot of people, who came out of the
workshop, have been or are published poets. They do very well in the poetry
world.

Doug Holder: Is your own poetry influence by either poet?

Lois Ames: Anne certainly taught me a lot about reading. She taught me to
get as many critiques as possible. Have I ever tried to follow the style of
either of them? No. And no one has ever accused me of that.

Doug Holder: Do you think if Plath didn’t have this dramatic background of
suicide, Smith, and marriage toTed Hughes, etc...and was a working-stiff
from Waltham, would she be as celebrated as she is today?

Lois Ames: I am wondering where Plath will stand in a hundred years. Ted
Hughes was very good at marketing Plath. He kept her reputation growing by
the astute publication of her work. I think the fact that she and Ted Hughes
had a passionate romance, were from a tumultuous family, and the fact that
Sylvia killed herself, all lead to the mystique. It contributes to her
present fame. Some of Plath’s poems were superb and she knew a lot about
poetic form.

Doug Holder: Where will Sexton’s work stand in a hundred years?

Lois Ames: I think it will fare well. I think Sexton was more daring than
Plath. The problem is that people don’t read Sexton today. I don’t think she
is promoted. She hasn’t been marketed the way Plath is today.

Doug Holder: The poet Ted Hughes, Plath’s husband, has been much maligned.
Both Plath and his other wife committed suicide. It has been said he drove
Plath to suicide through his infidelity, etc... What’s your take?

Lois Ames: Ted had a lover during their marriage that he later had a child
with. This was the source of Sylvia’s rage. Later she killed herself the
same way Sylvia did. I felt extreme sympathy for Ted. There is nothing more
rage full to do to other people than to kill yourself. I don’t think other
people are responsible for other people’s suicides. With the medications we
have now maybe Sylvia and Ann could have been saved.

Doug Holder: Did the limitations on women coming of age in the 50’s play a
role in these untimely deaths?

Lois Ames: Each of us was a warrior trying to find herself. Every
achievement was huge. To get out from under the dishwashing, the daycare,
and to create anything took enormous courage, and strength. I am sure it
took its toll.

Doug Holder: Did Sexton and Plath’s mental illness contribute positively to
their poetry?

Lois Ames: Each wrote in spite of their illness. It took enormous courage to
do this.

Close those goddamn doors: An Afternoon With Louisa Solano

" Close those goddamn doors!: An Afternoon with Louisa Solano: Memories of the Grolier Poetry Book Shop"At the Wilderness House Literary Retreat http://www.wildernesshouse.org

By Doug Holder

On Aug 6 2006 at the Wilderness House Literary Retreat Louisa Solano, former owner of the Grolier Poetry Book Shop held court for a few hours of casual conversation concerning her experiences running the famed Harvard Square bookshop for over 30 years. It seems that almost every major contemporary poet passed through these doors at one time. Here is a sampler of what Solano had to say about the times and poets she knew:

Gordon Cairnie: (the founder of the store)

“These goddamn browsers, close those goddamn, doors!” This was a declaration often heard by Solano. Cairnie was “quirky,” and did have a temper according to Solano. Solano said, “After I bought the store I had a whole line of people who told me that Gordon ruined them emotionally. It was the way he talked to them.” Cairnie in part was reacting to the browsers who never bought a book, and the ones who shoplifted. Obviously keeping people out of the store was not good business sense. But Solano felt there was a prevailing attitude at the time that poets were abused by society, so poetry and commerce were viewed as totally separate entities. After he died Solano recalled that many folks thought it was a “sin” that she took over the store.

Solano on shoplifting:

“According to a study 98% of people steal. People steal because it is an adventure, a high. It’s like shooting up; you have to do more and more. You become an expert on justification.” Solano said that studies indicate that shoplifting is highest among people in religious orders. She recalled that a monk with a flowing robe ripped her off. She said, “His robe was a little less flowing when he went out."

Solano on Harvard Square:

"Whatever part of the country people come from, the suburbs or little working communities, they come to the square and reality diminishes. She continued:"People are walking in a state of grandeur. I remember being accompanied down the street by someone who said he was going to kill me because I was a Harvard capitalist!”

Solano on Robert Lowell:

“I met him twice. I thought he was homeless. He was carrying two bags full of newspapers, and he was disheveled. The first time he said to me: “Young lady. I want you to know that Gordon talked too much, and you should never do that.” He walked out of the store. A week later he came and said, “Young lady. You are not following Gordon. You don’t talk to customers.” I found out later that this was Robert Lowell.”

Solano’s favorite poet:

“Philip Levine. He has always been my favorite. I think his approach to poetry is wide open. He loved an audience. He was a great standup comic. I loved the love he had for the Jewish community. I really love him.”

Solano on the small press:

“I always thought the small press was the most interesting part of poetry. When I took over the store there was a big small press movement going on. This was the 70’s. Some magazines were printed on colored tissue papers, different sizes, etc… Most of the bigger presses were publishing Lowell, Sexton and Plath. They were not particularly democratic. Diana Di Prima was first published by a small press and then started her own, and it is still going strong. She has done translations, and poetry publishing.The University of Texas/Austin was wild about the small press. They probably now (besides the University of Buffalo) have the best small press collection.’“Black Sparrow Press’ started out selling books with three or four poems for a dollar. Most of the bookstores today would not accept these.”Even if you were published just in the small press; the fact was you were in a book on a public shelf. Then if things went well you would do another small press book. If things continued to go well, you would get known.

Solano on Charles Bukowski:

"He sent his poems out virtually everyday to every small press magazine out there. This totally demolished the myth of him as a disorganized drunk. He wouldn’t be able to do this if he was."

Solano on Ed Hogan founder of “Aspect” magazine and “Zephyr Press”:

“Ed was brilliant. He had a lot of energy. He talked endlessly and rapidly. He got a great group of local poets together, and got the magazine out.”

Solano on Allen Ginsberg.

“I loved Allen. When he died I thought the world would cave in. He visited the store when he was quite ill. He looked yellowish and diminished. I was shocked. I thought of him as immortal. He brought poetry in the open from a very closed 1950’s America."

On Jack Kerouac:

“When I first met him he was sitting down at Lowell House. (Harvard University.) He was wearing a checkered shirt, and sloppy chinos, partly because he was so fat. The audience loved him because he was what they expected. He was the crazy writer. At the end of the reading, Desmond O’Grady, a wild Irish poet (I was madly in love with him), and I escorted him to a bar in Cambridge. There was a young woman who announced to Kerouac and all the guys around him that she wanted a “multiple lay.” Kerouac didn’t do anything and just waddled off to the bar. We got him back to where he was staying and he passed out. The next day we met him at the Oxford Grill on Church St. in Harvard Square. The news came out that Plath committed suicide. Desmond threw his arms around Jack and very dramatically said “We are the only ones left.” Jack said,” Stay away from me.” He was homophobic. The last we saw of him he was walking down Church St. with two Harvard undergraduates looking for the perfect “Gold,” --
marijuana. "

*The Ibbetson Street Press has released the book "Louisa Solano: The Grolier Poetry Book Shop"by Doug Holder and Steve Glines which can be purchased from Ibbetson Street Press 25 School St. Somerville, Mass. 02143 $10 or through http://lulu.com

Jim Kates and the Zephyr Press

Jim Kates and the Zephyr Press


Probably the most significant of small presses birthed in Somerville, Mass. is the “Zephyr Press,” (now based in Brookline, Mass.) that was founded by the late Somerville publisher Ed Hogan. Hogan, started the much-heralded “Aspect,” magazine in the 1970’s. In 1980 he and a group of his editors formed “Zephyr,” and for seven years the press published a small but significant list of poetry, fiction and non-fiction. In 1990, Zephyr published its hallmark collection of Russian poetry: “The Complete Poems of Anna Akhmatova” translated by Judith Hemschemeyer. After this collection of work by this groundbreaking early 20th Century maverick female writer, other titles from Russia followed, as well as the first anthology of Ukrainian writing in English, “From Three Worlds.” With the untimely death of Hogan, Kates, an old friend of Hogan’s, assumed responsibility for the press and relaunched it in 2000. Since then Zephyr has published numerous books of translations, including the work of Nobel-nominated Chinese poet Bei Dao. Zephyr also has an imprint, “Adventures in Poetry,” that publishes fiction and poetry, and they cooperatively publish a British-based journal “Modern Poetry in Translation.

To interview publisher Jim Kates is no problem because he is an affable man, who seems to have an endless supply of information about the “Zephyr Press,” and the literary world at-large. Kates describes “Zephyr,” as an “alternative” press, an alternative to the commercial presses, who Kates feels has all but abandoned serious literature. Kates realizes that running a “small” independent press is usually a money-losing and often all consuming undertaking. He doesn’t make a living running Zephyr, and the press lives “hand to mouth,” from grants, be it state, federal or private. Zephyr only has one paid employee on staff, and now its office is based in Brookline, Mass.; although it makes no secret of its Somerville roots. The late Ed Hogan, the Somerville publisher was according to Kates “...a child of Somerville, and Somerville was an essential part of his vision.” Unfortunately when Hogan died in a freak canoe accident Zephyr was forced to move to Brookline.

Asked to remember what the Somerville literary scene in the 1970’s was like, Kates’ memory was somewhat cloudy. However he did mention his memory of the “100 Flower Bookstore,” and Hogan’s wife June Gross’ lit mag. “Dark Horse.” Somerville in the 70’s and 80’s was not like the gentrified city it is today, Kates said. He remembers one poet who got a Cambridge PO BOX, so it wouldn’t be known that she lived in Somerville. “It just looked better to be in Cambridge,” Kates said.

Since Zephyr published the Akhmatova anthology many subsequent books on the great poet have hit the market. This anthology according to Kates, “opened up the gates,” for the others. Later, June Gross, inspired Kates to publish an anthology of contemporary Russian poets, and more recently Zephyr published the acclaimed Chinese poet Bei Dao. Dao, was a member of the dissident “Misty” poets group in China and has been a champion of Chinese writers. Dao often sends promising Chinese writers ‘Zephyr’s” way. Zephyr published a collection of Dao’s essays concerning his dislocation from his motherland: “Blue House.”

Surprisingly, American readers are buying Chinese poetry. Another popular title of the press is: “Iraqi Poetry Today,” that gives Americans a much needed window into Iraqi culture.

Kates and I could have talked much longer. He had a plethora stories about the fiction titles the press has released, and the translation group he is part of. Kates’ enthusiasm is contagious, and after speaking with him I found myself brainstorming for my own small press. Kates brings me back to my belief that a man or a woman who has a true passion for something, is a very lucky person indeed.