The Man In The Booth In The Midtown Tunnel by Doug Holder
(Somerville, Mass.)
Ibbetson Street Press founder Doug Holder will be releasing a new collection of his poetry this summer (2008) through the Cervena Barva Press (http://cervenabarvapress.com ) "The Man In The Booth In The Midtown Tunnel"
Here is a review from Luke Salisbury author of the award winning novel "Hollywood and Sunset," and a Professor of English at Bunker Hill Community College ( Boston):
The Man In The Booth in The Midtown Tunnel
Doug Holder is a very funny man and a very funny poet, but his new collection is much more than funny. There's a profound seriousness in this book. Holder deals with his past and sometimes sour present. He doesn't spare us the intensity and craziness he sees and feels around him. The title poem, a very fine poem, catches the fears and wonders of a New York childhood. I also felt loneliness, fear and a tantalizing feeling of being trapped in a grown-up world riding through the Midtown Tunnel.
Another poem speaks of "A bus full of exiles." We're all on that bus and Holder doesn't let us off until we have shared his feelings of desolation and even madness everywhere from "effete ivied walls" to the wards of McLean Hospital, stopping off for some of "The Love Life Of J. Edgar Hoover (The poem is everything you hope and expect it will be -"Mother downstairs/Off her rocker"), to "Killing Time at The 99" which has the fine lines "And drink/To all/This/Loneliness/Made visible" (Great lines I think), to "hoping/there/is/still/someone/out there" when using the "Pay Phones On The Boston Common" to final observations of a "Rat's Carcass."
The collection isn't depressing. It's alive. Alive with vitality, ugliness, sadness, sex, even love. It's all here. This is Holder's best to date.
I found myself on a cool evening in April walking to Dunkin Donuts in Harvard Square with Aeronwy Thomas, daughter of the late great Welsh poet Dylan Thomas. Aeronwy Thomas, a well-regarded educator and poet in her own right, is on a national tour talking about her father Dylan, who wrote some of the most revered verse in the 20th Century, as well as a critically acclaimed play "Under Milk Wood."
Somerville resident, Wellesley College professor, and owner of the famed Grolier Poetry Book Shop, Ifeanyi Menkiti hosted a reading with Aeronwy Thomas, her husband Trevor Ellis, and Peter Thabit Jones, a respected Welsh poet and editor of the Swansea Poet Magazine. I asked Menkiti why he decided to host this event organized by publisher Stanley Barkan of Cross Cultural Communications. Menkiti said:" I Love Dylan Thomas' sense of community. His work releases a poeticimpulse across the world. It travels across borders. In the publication "Wellesley Week" Menkiti adds: " Whether one reads his poems alone, by oneself, or hears them read aloud by him or others, or perhaps hears read aloud the captivating words of " A Child's Christmas in Wales," one always comes away with a sense of ineffable magic in the air-a sense that words are potent things."
Dylan Thomas (who died at 39 in 1953) first gained significant praise for his poetry collection: " 18 Poems" He is also well-known for his poem to his dying father "Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night," as well as many other works. He died in New York City at St. Vincent's Hospital in Greenwich Village from suspected chronic alcohol poisoning.
Thomas' Daughter Aeronwy first read the poems of her famous father 20 years after his death in 1973. She was sheltered from his "wild public" lifestyle. Now she is the midst of a whirlwind national tour: "Dylan Thomas Tribute," where she and Jones read from Thomas' poetry, their own poetry, and discuss Thomas' body of work and his life.
The evening started out on Plympton Street in Harvard Square at the Grolier, but the actual reading took place at Harvard's Adams House several doors down the block. In addition to the reading by Jones and Thomas, Tino Villanueva, Aldo Tambellini, Kristine Doll, Pavel Grushko, and Aled Llion Jones read translations of Dylan Thomas' work.
One of Thomas' poems that Jones read concerned of all things: a rat:
"Rats swam the canal of my childhood fears.../ a rat's meal is my thought/ it eats in my sleep."
Aeronwy Thomas read her own poem that harked back to her childhood memories of the great poet titled: "Later Than Laugharne:"
"...The memories race back- ... And the thrill of peeping through the keyhole (I was always the most naughty) to see my father writing his poems about gulls, hills, cormorants on estuaries which he saw through his wide-vista window, as he sat, bent, writing in crabbed letters, pressing against the hard surface of the kitchen table that was his desk..."
Aeronwy's husband Trevor sang traditional Welsh folksongs that were a welcomed addition to the reading.
After the event I managed to interview Thomas about her late father. As for Dylan Thomas' ill-fated love affair with alcohol, Aeronwy said his trips to the United States did him no good. When he was in his native Wales he was surrounded by family and friends and drank the weak beer of the local pubs. He wrote in his "shed" every day. In the United States he was offered hard liquor like whiskey and Martinis, etc... He was unmoored, away from home and structure, and this lead to his downfall.
As far as Bob Dylan, who lifted Dylan Thomas' first name for his last, Aeronwy Thomas admires his song lyrics. But she did say that Bob Dylan did admit to lifting Thomas' name, but now he states that he has done more for Thomas than Thomas did for him.
I asked Thomas about the movie adaptation of "Under Milk Wood" that starred Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor. She said that she was grateful someone made a movie of her father's play. She feels Burton was a classic narrator. She did have some reservations about what she characterized as "additions" to the work, but overall she was happy with the movie.
The evening ended with a small wine and cheese buffet. Thomas signed books and was surrounded by admirers and well wishers. After this long evening no one would blame Aeronwy Thomas if she did "go gently into that good night" to get a well-earned sleep.
DO NOT GO GENTLE INTO THAT GOOD NIGHT
Do not go gentle into that good night, Old age should burn and rave at close of day; Rage, rage against the dying of the light. Though wise men at their end know dark is right, Because their words had forked no lightning they Do not go gentle into that good night. Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay, Rage, rage against the dying of the light. Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight, And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way, Do not go gentle into that good night. Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay, Rage, rage against the dying of the light. And you, my father, there on the sad height, Curse, bless me now with your fierce tears, I pray. Do not go gentle into that good night. Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Assignment #1: Write a poem about Baseball and God
And on the ninth day, God In His infinite playfulness Grass green grass, sky blue sky, Separated the infield from the outfield, Formed a skin of clay, Assigned bases of safety On cardinal points of the compass Circling the mountain of deliverance, Fashioned a wandering moon From a horse, a string and a gum tree, Tempered weapons of ash, Made gloves from the golden skin of sacrificial bulls, Set stars alight in the Milky Way, Divided the descendants of Cain and Abel into contenders, Declared time out, time in, stepped back, And thundered over all of creation: "Play ball
An article from The Somerville News Somerville, Mass.
( pic--Doug Holder/ Somerville poet.)
Wanted: A poet for Somerville
By George P. Hassett
Their numbers are rivaled only by Manhattan. They have been coming here for decades, "not by design but naturally." Looking onto a Union Square street from a coffee shop window, walking on a Davis Square sidewalk, or riding on the 89 bus - they try to capture the city's sights and energy with the written word. (
They are the poets. And soon one could be selected from the ranks to be the city's first poet laureate.
The idea of an official city poet appointed by the local government was proposed last week by Ward 7 Alderman Robert C. Trane. The initial spark came from Somerville News Arts Editor Doug Holder. He said he was recently attending a party for Boston's first laureate Sam Cornish and thought to himself, "Damn! Why doesn't Somerville have something like this?"
Boston has Cornish, Cambridge has a poet populist and Holder wanted Somerville to get its literary due. He raised the issue with Trane at a Somerville News Contributor's meeting, wrote a column stating his case and an official city poet is now a possibility in this city of 80,000 people and four square miles.
"I didn't start this so I would become the poet laureate," he said. "Honestly."
Boston's laureate has a budget of $3,000. In Cambridge it is $1,500. Trane said he has asked a local business to contribute to a budget for a Somerville laureate.
"These are tight fiscal times but I think this is worthy," he said.
Holder said a good poet laureate would "know how to press the flesh."
"We don't need someone who sits in an ivory tower. They need to be able to go into the schools, the nursing homes, the streets and bring poetry to the people," he said.
Among city poets there is excitement about the idea and a feeling that a laureate should have deep roots in the city.
"It would be awful to have someone who's only lived here two months [be poet laureate]," said Gloria Mindock a poet and publisher of Cervena Barva Press who draws inspiration for her work from bus rides through the city.
They say instituting a city poet is long overdue and point to a Granta Magazine survey that said Somerville trails only Manhattan for writers per capita.
"Somerville has a writing scene as active as Cambridge or Boston. They used to look down on Somerville from the other side of Mass Ave. but literary resources have been coming here one by one for years now, not by design but naturally," said Ifeanyi Menkiti owner of the Grolier Poetry Bookshop.
He said walking through Davis Square and witnessing the city's diverse population take on everyday tasks inspires his verses.
Union Square writer Lee Kidd said "poetry is an outlaw thing" and an official city writer should be an "instigator." Kidd said his literary center is Union Square and the poetry written in the neighborhood's coffee shops help shape his city. "Poets are very important to a society. A city without poets has nothing to say."
Trane said Mayor Joseph A. Curtatone has expressed support for the idea. The specific selection process has not yet been decided but he said he wants to organize a committee of local writers to begin nominating candidates soon.
In an interview, Trane was not quick to rattle off names of illustrious poets but said he still had an appreciation for the craft.
"Am I a poetry guy? Not really. But we all understand the written word is a powerful thing."
A new book of poetry released by the Ibbetson Street Press of Somerville "Manufacturing America." Lisa Beatman, a well-known Boston area poet writes of her experience teaching immigrant workers at the Ames Paper Factory in Somerville, Mass.
Press Release: "Manufacturing America" Punches the Time Clock
What will happen when nothing is "Made in America" anymore? What will happen to all that machinery: the machines themselves, the operators that drove them, and the old walls and roofs that housed manufacturing villages churning out blue jeans and paychecks to a vanishing middleclass?
Award-winning author Lisa Beatman answers these questions and more in Manufacturing America (ISBN 978-0-6151-8124-0, Ibbetson Street Press, $14.95), a collection of poetry and prose. Beatman won first prize at the 2000 Lucidity poetry conference, and Honorable Mention for the 2004 Miriam Lindberg International Poetry Peace Prize. She was also awarded a Fellowship to Sacatar Foundation in Brazil, and a Massachusetts Cultural Council Grant.
Norm Davis, editor of the HazMat Review, says, " Beatman's poetry is very alive and full of feeling and pictures. The working people she writes about are not simply "victims" at the hands of exploiters. They are fighters, too. Her poem, Good Bones, portrays the magnitude and the utter tragedy of what has happened to the working class."
In Manufacturing America, Beatman conducts a chorus of immigrant factory workers. The collection moves through the ‘life cycle' of manufacturing - from its roots in the Lowell, MA textile mills, through downsizing, to the ‘artist lofts' mined from the old buildings as manufacturing moves overseas. It documents the swan song of a formerly vital sector that historically provided a leg up to many American workers. The book is true-to-life, based on her job at a manufacturing plant near Boston, MA.
Susan Eisenberg, author of Blind Spot, says, "Manufacturing America bears witness to the lyrical life of a factory and the individuals who inhabit it at the start-up of the 21st-century. Lisa Beatman adds the stories of immigrant workers, heard through the ear of a poet on site to teach literacy skills, to the growing literature of work poetry."
Lisa Beatman currently manages adult education programs at the Harriet Tubman House in Boston, MA. She studied international public administration at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard. Her poems and stories have appeared in Lonely Planet, Lilith Magazine, Hawaii Pacific Review, Powhatan Review, Rhino, Manzanita, and Pemmican. Her first book, "Ladies' Night at the Blue Hill Spa", was published by Bear House Publishing.
Doug Holder, Editor of Ibbetson Street Press, says, "Lisa Beatman's poetry reminds me of another Mass. Cultural Council Award winner, Charles Coe. Both Cole and Beatman's work is accessible but layered with meaning. Their poetry has an ample dose of levity, and at the same time, it is wise and knowing. Beatman has a gimlet reporter's eye and a poet's heart."
For information, and to place book orders, contact:
Doug Holder Ibbetson Street Press
21 School Street
Somerville, MA 02143
Phone: 617-628-2313 Click here.
ibbetsonpress@msn.com
(Somerville, Mass.) Somerville's Ibbetson Street Press will be awarding former U.S. poet/laureate Robert Pinsky the Ibbetson Street Press Lifetime Achievement Award at the Somerville News Writers Festival, Nov. 11, 2007 7PM at the Dilboy VFW Hall ( 371 Summer St.) Davis Square, Somerville. The award, like the festival, is in its fifth year. It is awarded to individuals who have made substantial contributions to the poetry and or the small or alternative press world. Former recipients of the award have been Robert K. Johnson (poet and retired Suffolk University professor), Louisa Solano (former owner of the Grolier Poetry Book Shop), Jack Powers (founder of Stone Soup Poets), and David Godine (founder of Davide Godine publishing). Tickets are $15 and will be available at the door or by calling 617-666-4010.
Somerville, Mass. Robert Pinsky will be awarded the fifth annual Ibbetson Street Press Lifetime Achievement Award at the Somerville News Writers Festival Nov. 11, 2007 at 7PM. ( Dilboy VFW Hall 371 Summer St. Davis Sq. Somerville) http://somervillenewswritersfestival.com/ Pinsky is the former Poet/Laureate of the United States.
Former recipients have been Robert K. Johnson ( retired Suffolk University Professor), Louisa Solano ( former owner of the Grolier Poetry Book Shop), Jack Powers ( founder of Stone Soup Poets), and David Godine ( founder of David Godine Publishing, Inc.) The Ibbetson Street Press is a small press located in Somerville, Mass. http://ibbetsonpress.com/ To get tickets to the Festival call 617-666-4010 or purchase at the door.
Robert Pinsky
Robert Pinsky was born on October 20, 1940 in Long Branch, New Jersey. He received a B.A. from Rutgers University in New Brunswick, New Jersey, and earned both an M.A. and Ph.D. in Philosophy from Stanford University, where he was a Stegner Fellow in creative writing, and studied under the poet and critic Yvor Winters.
He is the author of several collections of poetry, most recently Gulf Music: Poems (Farrar, Straus & Giroux: 2007); Jersey Rain (2000); The Figured Wheel: New and Collected Poems 1966-1996 (1996), which received the 1997 Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize and was a Pulitzer Prize nominee; The Want Bone (1990); History of My Heart (1984); An Explanation of America (1980); and Sadness and Happiness (1975).
He is also the author of several prose titles, including The Life of David (Schocken, 2006); Democracy, Culture, and the Voice of Poetry (2002); The Sounds of Poetry (1998), which was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award; Poetry and the World (1988); and The Situation of Poetry(1977). In 1985 he also released a computerized novel, Mindwheel.
Pinsky has published two acclaimed works of traslation: The Inferno of Dante (1994), which was a Book-of-the-Month-Club Editor's Choice, and received both the Los Angeles Times Book Prize and the Harold Morton Landon Translation Award; and The Separate Notebooks by Czeslaw Milosz (with Renata Gorczynski and Robert Hass).
About his work, the poet Louise Glück has said, "Robert Pinsky has what I think Shakespeare must have had: dexterity combined with worldliness, the magician's dazzling quickness fused with subtle intelligence, a taste for tasks and assignments to which he devises ingenious solutions."
From 1997 to 2000, he served as the United States Poet Laureate and Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress. During that time, he founded the Favorite Poem Project, a program dedicated to celebrating, documenting and encouraging poetry's role in Americans' lives.
In 1999, he co-edited Americans' Favorite Poems: The Favorite Poem Project Anthology with Maggie Dietz. Other anthologies he has edited include An Invitation to Poetry (W. W. Norton & Company, 2004); Poems to Read (2002); and Handbook of Heartbreak (1998).
His honors include an American Academy of Arts and Letters award, Poetry Magazine's Oscar Blumenthal prize, the Poetry Society of America's William Carlos Williams Award, and a Guggenheim Foundation fellowship. He is currently poetry editor of the weekly Internet magazine Slate.
This poetry book is about the atrocities committed in El Salvador during the civil war from 1980-1992. It is based on my talks with El Salvadoran refugees in the 1980's and years of research.
In San Miguel, many people are being exterminated and the atrocities continue to this day.
I hope you will order this book. The people of El Salvador should not be forgotten. I hope to carry this message on behalf of Rufina Amaya, the only survivor of the massacre at El Mozote, who died of a stroke in March of this year.
In her fascinating poem cycle, Gloria Mindock jolts back into memory the roots of El Salvador's present day violence. Mindock coaxes to the page the voices of the dead who lie, less in peace, than in restless obsession with the atrocities they suffered. She brings forth as well the voices of the living who seem startled to find that they died somewhere between the horrors they witnessed and the grave they have yet to lie down in. Blood Soaked Dresses is a beautiful, harrowing first book. --Catherine Sasanov
We are reminded of Cezar Vallejo's witnesses: bones, solitude, rain, and the roads -- that we are tied to each other in beauty and suffering, life and death. Gloria Mindock's poems grant us the voice of a soul caught on a limb between the promise of peace everlasting and impossible resurrections. Poem after poem we are asked to uncover those whose bitter ash weeps over the world, and no other country/wants to see it. This book is written from a compassionate heart that whispers and grieves, one that isn't afraid to hold its gaze. --Dzvinia Orlowsky
A poet must never shy from the necessary, no matter how hard it is. In poetry that is both elegant and brutal, Gloria Mindock exposes the horror of the Salvadorian conflict especially on women. Though Salvador has faded from the front pages, the war has reincarnated in other countries on other continents making "Blood Soaked Dresses" completely contemporaneous. This poetry possesses, as Yeats said, "a terrible beauty." And we need it now more than ever. --John Minczeski
The reader of Blood Soaked Dresses is enriched by Mindock's power and commitment. She has earned a place among our great protest poets, reminding us, with lyric tension, that social justice is our constant and necessary concern. --Simon Perchik
IBBETSON STREET PRESENTS From Mist To Shadow: Poems by Robert K. Johnson
Fred Marchant (Director of the Poetry Center at Suffolk University) writes of Johnson's work: "His is an art of transparency, an art in which language through its own devices becomes nearly invisible and what is seen through the scrim is usually an epiphany... The ordinary life is under the poet's gaze transformed into something approaching the sacred..."
"From Mist To Shadow" is an apt title for Robert K. Johnson's newest collection of poetry. The poems offer a wide range of subject matters and styles. The book's first pages concern the poet's early years, and the final pages his later years. In between we have meditation on family, literature, career, movies and a host of characters who have weaved in and out of the poet's life.
Robert K. Johnson was a Professor of English at Suffolk University (Boston, Mass) for many years and is the author of six collections of poetry. His work has appeared in a wide variety of magazines, journals and newspapers. He is currently the submission editor for the Ibbetson Street Press of Somerville, Mass.Robert K. Johnson was a Professor of English at Suffolk University (Boston, Mass) for many years and is the author of six collections of poetry. His work has appeared in a wide variety of magazines, journals and newspapers. He is currently the submission editor for the Ibbetson Street Press of Somerville, Mass.
The Ibbotson Street Press Poetry Award is presented at the annual Somerville News Writers Festival held every year at the Jimmy Tingle Off-Broadway Theatre in Davis Square. The festival will be held November 11th this year. In past years poets and writers such as Pulitzer Prize winner Franz Wright, Robert Olen Butler, Oscar-nominated novelist Tom Perotta, Iowa Writer's Workshop head Lan Samantha Chang, Sue Miller ( author of "The Good Mother") , Steve Almond, Boston Globe Columnist Alex Beam, poet Nick Flynn, and many others have read in this
event. This year former poet/laureate Robert Pinsky will be receiving the Lifetime Achievement award.
The winner of the award (must be a Massachusetts resident) will receive a $100 cash award, a framed certificate, publication in the literary journal "Ibbetson Street" and a poetry feature in the "Lyrical Somerville," in The Somerville News.
To enter send 3 to 5 poems, any genre, length, to Doug Holder 25 School St. Somerville, Mass. 02143. Entry fee is $10. Cash or check only. Make payable to "Ibbetson Street Press" or "Doug Holder.
The contest will be judged by Richard Wilhelm poet and arts/editor of the Ibbetson Street Press.
The winner will be announced at the festival, and will receive his award. A runner up will be announced as well.
Already a member? Click here to compose a blog post. Not a member? Click here to join the Small Press Exchange.
Small Press Exchange Blogs are among the most intuitive blogging tools available today. Everything you need to quickly and easily create your blog is included—whether it is pictures, documents, etc. Small Press Exchange Blogs are for everyone—from first time bloggers to experts. Want to learn more about blogging on the Small Press Exchange? Click here.
User Blogs 
Robert Pinsky was born on October 20, 1940 in Long Branch, New Jersey. He received a B.A. from Rutgers University in New Brunswick, New Jersey, and earned both an M.A. and Ph.D. in Philosophy from Stanford University, where he was a Stegner Fellow in creative writing, and studied under the poet and critic 
This poetry book is about the atrocities committed in El Salvador during the civil war from 1980-1992. It is based on my talks with El Salvadoran refugees in the 1980's and years of research.
