Jan 8, 2018 5PM Steven Ostrowski and Benjamin Ostrowski: Father and Son Write to Each Other

Ben  and  Steve Ostrowski 

Penultimate Human Constellation by Steven Ostrowski and Benjamin Ostrowski


 
“You will never encounter another volume of poetry like this. Father and son, Steven and Benjamin Ostrowski give the reader the most intimate and engaging look into a closeness between two family members I’ve yet encountered; a dialogue couched in experimental form and imagery that is always fresh and inventive. A book of correspondences that often spans oceans and continents as the two are separated. Not a single lazy line and nothing telegraphed. Surprises abound around every corner, hallmarked by wit, love and a genuine, deep affection for one another. Each poem is masterfully sectioned by the authors, a joy to read. Would that all fathers and sons could share such a genuine interest in each other’s lives. Imaginative writing at its very finest, employing free-association writing techniques that keep the reader transfixed and entertained page after page. Unique is a term often overused. Penultimate Human Constellation is inarguably unique, and lives up to the volume’s title in the most unanticipated and delightful ways.” -Robert Nazarene, founding editor & publisher,
The American Journal of Poetry

David P. Miller: Actor, Poet, Librarian

David P. Miller’s chapbook, The Afterimages, was published in 2014. His poems have recently appeared in Meat for Tea, Ibbetson Street, Constellations, riverbabble, What Rough Beast, Foliate Oak Literary Magazine, and Autumn Sky Poetry Daily. A Boston resident, he was a member of the multidisciplinary Mobius Artists Group for 25 years.  He has a new book forthcoming from Nixes Mate Press.

Boston Area Small Press and Poetry Scene: Doug Holder Interviews poet George Ellenbogen

Boston Area Small Press and Poetry Scene: Doug Holder Interviews poet George Ellenbogen

Poet George Ellenbogen Nov. 6, 2018, 5PM

George Ellenbogen

See it live at 5PM  http://scatvsomerville.org

George Ellenbogen, a native of Montreal, Canada, studied literature at McGill University and Tufts University in Massachusetts. Between degrees, he worked in the Arctic and lived for extended periods in Mexico and in England. Until his retirement in 2004, he taught poetry at Bentley College in Massachusetts. His poems have appeared in several anthologies and in magazines such as The Literary Review, Partisan Review, Boulevard, Revue Europe and Queen’s Quarterly as well as in the following collections of his work:

• Winds of Unreason (1957)
• The Night Unstones (1971)
• Along the Road from Eden (1989)
• The Rhino Gate Poems (1995)
• Portes aux rhinos et autres poemes (1997)
• Winterfischer (2002)
• Morning Gothic (2007)
• Matin d’horreur (2008)

Most recently he has published a memoir of his childhood and adolescence in Montreal’s Jewish district, A Stone in My Shoe: In Search of Neighborhood (Vehicule, 2013).
Ellenbogen’s work has been supported by the Whiting Foundation, the Montalvo Foundation, the Karolyi Foundation, the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, the Canadian Department of External Affairs, Gesellschaft fur Kanada Studien, the Canada Council, United States Information Service, and Canadian International Cultural Relations. He has read his poems on both sides of the Atlantic, was featured in a 1990 documentary, “George Ellenbogen: Canadian Poet in America,” and in a graduate dissertation,“Postmodernism and the Travel Motif in the Poetry of Adrienne Rich and George Ellenbogen” (Brigitta Wallenberg, University of Salzburg). He is also one of several poets featured in Jean Tobin’s Creativity and the Poetic Mind (New York: Peter Lang Publishing, 2004).

Oct. 2, 2018. Poet, Cook, Entrepreneur -- Joshua Lewin

Josh Lewin

Joshua Lewin is a cook, entrepreneur, and storyteller, who mixes technique and mediums into a unique and immersive experience, whether at the table, on the page, or beyond. 

Exploring new styles of narrative through poetry, prose, and mixed media applications, Lewin also owns and operates Juliet, with Katrina Jazayeri. Juliet is home to Somerville’s most unique dining experience, open morning through night, showcasing a combination of culinary and service excellence alongside bold storytelling, and trailblazing a new paradigm of supportive and professional restaurant careers. 

In addition to Doug Holder's locally focussed poetry columns for The Somerville Times and online, Lewin’s writing has appeared in EATER Boston, Chefs Feed, The Huffington Post, WBUR’s Cognoscenti, Food Arts, and more, as well as in the print publication, a combination of literary journal and food interest magazine, Of Juliet, produced by the team of the restaurant since January 2018. 


see the show live at 5PM on http://scatvsomerville.org

Sept 25, 2018 5PM Michael C. Keith author of " Let Us Now Speak of Extinction"

( Left/Michael C. Keith/Right Walter Cronkite)

 See it live at 5PM  at  http://scatvsomerville.org

Michael C. Keith is the author or coauthor of more than two dozen groundbreaking books on electronic media, among them Talking Radio, Voices in the Purple Haze, Sounds of Change, The Broadcast Century, Radio Cultures, Signals in the Air, the classic textbook The Radio Station (later Keith’s Radio Station), and Waves of Rancor––a book cited by President Clinton for its study of the radical right’s use of audio media. The recipient of numerous awards in the academic field, including the Broadcast Education Association’s Lifetime Achievement Award, the International Radio Television Society’s Stanton Fellow Award, and the University of Rhode Island’s Achievement Award in the Humanities, he is also the author of dozens of articles and short stories and has served in a variety of editorial positions. Prior to joining Boston College (where he was named Emeritus upon retiring), Michael served as Chair of Education at the Museum of Broadcast Communications and on the faculties of The George Washington University, Marquette University, and Dean College. He is co-founder of the Broadcast Education Association’s Radio Division and its first chair. Beyond that, he is the author of an acclaimed memoir––The Next Better Place (Algonquin Books)––a young adult novel––Life is Falling Sideways––and 14 story collections––Of Night and Light, Everything is Epic, Sad Boy, And Through the Trembling Air, Hoag’s Object, The Collector of Tears, If Things Were Made To Last Forever, Caricatures, The Near Enough, Bits, Specks, Crumbs, Flecks, Slow Transit, Perspective Drifts Like a Log on a River, Let Us Now Speak of Extinction, and Stories in the Key of Me. He has been nominated a half dozen times for a Pushcart Prize and was a finalist for the National Indie Excellence Award for short fiction anthology and a finalist for the 2013 International Book Award in the “Fiction Visionary” category. www.michaelckeith.com

 Let Us Now Speak of Extinction, a collection by Michael Keith, is now available from MadHat Press.

Sept 11, 2018 Poet to Poet Rodger LeGrand

Rodger LeGrand

Rodger LeGrand has published six collections of poetry, including Two Thirds Water (2018), Seeds (2017), andMillions of Ravenous Creatures (2016). His work has been described by the poet Thomas Lux as being “lighted by an almost excruciating tenderness towards the world and its inhabitants.” The editor of The Cortland Review, Ginger Murchison, has described his work as “poems of crisp intelligence sparked by imagination with an eye and an ear to both the street and the heart.” Darrell Laurant, editor of Snowflakes in a Blizzard, describes LeGrand’s poetry as “sweet liquid disguising bitter medicine—until the aftertaste kicks in.” The poet Stephen Dobyns has written that, “always there is a shuffling between clarity and mystery [in LeGrand’s poetry], precision and ambiguity, humor and darkness as he works through the conundrums of how we live and how we might live better—not in terms of money, though that would be nice, but metaphysically, or, more simply, basic kindness in a world where kindness is too often a rarity.” 

LeGrand grew up in Upstate New York, was educated at the State University of New York at Oswego, and received an MFA from Sarah Lawrence College. He has taught at the University of Pennsylvania, Temple University, North Carolina State University, and currently teaches at MIT.

LeGrand’s collection, Seeds, was included as part of Books on the T. In a recent interview he had said “I love the idea of sharing poetry with people who might not ordinarily read poems. My poems are written to be read and understood by any interested reader. I don’t write for an academic audience, so knowing that my work has been traveling around through the Boston transit system has been really exciting. The Books on the T program places poems in front of commuters—maybe nurses or cooks or whoever. That just feels right to me.”

Poets Lee Varon and Marc Goldfinger--Aug 7-- Discuss Spare Change News Poems: An Anthology by Homeless People and Those Touched by Homelessness

Lee Varon

MARK Goldinger and LEE Varon-- editors of this new anthology from the Ibbetson Street Press.  See the interview live at 5PM at  http://scatvsomerville.org   Aug 7th from the Somerville Media Studios!  Poet to Poet/Writer to Writer

Marc Goldinger 

July 17, 2018. Brandeis Women's Center Resident Scholar Rosie Rosenzweig

Rosie Rosenzweig

Rosenzweig’s early poetry was anthologized in the first gender-friendly American Hebrew prayer book as well as in various feminist anthologies. As the founder of the Jewish Poetry Festival in Sudbury Massachusetts, she hosted outstanding luminaries like the former the poet laureate Robert Pinsky.  Her more current poetry is being collected in a work-in-progress.

Rosenzweig’s interpretations of Biblical women appear in Reading Between the Lines, All the Women Followed Her, and Praise Her Works: Conversations with Biblical Women. Her essays have appeared in Ethical Wills, Making the Jewish Journey from Mid-life through the Elder Years, and the Foreword. Her travel memoir, A Jewish Mother in Shangri-la describes the Jewish Buddhist World of meditation.

Women’s Intergenerational issues have been a focus of her work and a recently completed a play, “Myths and Ms.” At Brandeis for almost a decade, she has been interviewing artists in various media and hosting a yearly panel at the Brandeis Rose Art Museum on the creative process in an effort to understand the psychological and spiritual state of consciousness present at the moment of creation. Defining how creativity can transform the artist, she has currently coined  a term called MotherArtTM.

Current Projects

My book-in-progress will newly define the process of creativity based on ten years of interviews with women artists and will re-define Mindfulness Meditation. The book’s thesis uses Buddhist Psychology to analyze the theory of Flow. My published article demonstratives the transformative effects of the creative process. The current book proposal will be finished this year. 

Representative Publications

Rosenzweig, Rosie. “MotherArtTM and Maternal Health: Transformation from Grief To Compassion.” Journal of the Association for Research in Mothering. York University, Toronto, Canada. Volume 11. Number 1. (2009): 224–238.

Rosenzweig, Rosie. “Post-triumphalism and the New Haskalah.” in New Jewish Feminism: Probing the Past, Forging the Future edited by Rabbi Elyse Goldstein, 397–403. Woodstock Vermont: Jewish Lights Publications, 2009.

I Wish Francisco Franco Would Love Me by Gloria Mindock

I Wish Francisco Franco Would Love Me

by Gloria Mindock

Copyright © 2018 Gloria Mindock

Nixes Mate Books

Allston, MA

ISBN 978-0-9993971-9-0

Softbound, 48 pages, $9.95

Review by Zvi A. Sesling

In her latest book of poetry Gloria Mindock resurrects Francisco Franco, the one-time brutal dictator of Spain. In previous works Mindock has provided descriptions of how dictatorships swim in the blood of victims. In I Wish Francisco Franco Would Love Me, Mindock uses Franco’s obsessiveness with a voice that shouts for an end to the cruelty of dictatorships everywhere.

Here is “Dictator” in which she tells readers about Franco and his ongoing need to destroy people:

A dictator is not a spectator.

A spectator is not a dictator.

Why do you make everyone in Spain listen?

Some will betray you, rise-up.

You do not love!

You do not love!

Brutal Franco!

Brutal Franco!

You slob!

Messy in the heart. Kicking it out of your chest.

Even your heart knows you have secrets

cascading down into your pants.

Throats are slit today, bullets are fired, bombs dropped.

Plaza’s preserved as killing fields.

Big man Franco leaves terror.

Too many Fathers are dead.

Never to hold their children again.

Killing in Bejar today …

Fascist!

Randomly killing what suits you.

Mindock is a particularly fine poet whose many dark works awaken people to the evil conduct of dictators-- which is often minimized in history and in the media, until the brave come forth to reveal the excesses of violence:

*In Les Milles a young girl raped at the age of ten somehow survives and is rescued so

“One less surrounded by dark colored roses,/a chill in the air and scars left on the face”

*”Big Killer Franco – Men want to shoot you in the back.? Turn your head towards them Franco./ Look them in the eye as they fire./But they don’t fire./You say, execute them and walk away./A grin on your face…/Customary.”

*”Franco murdered memories./The dead converse with their screams”

*”A hat falls on the ground boldly/hugging the blood”

And in the poem Orbit Mindock describes the aftermath of a bomb perfectly placed:

One bomb lunges

Chars the sunrise

Whispering graves now a museum

Scars left

Bones face the other planets

A planet showing what exile is

Mindock’s poetry is never to be taken lightly. It thrives on blood, torture and evil individuals while always letting the reader know that she is on the side of the oppressed wherever they live. In Blood Soaked Dresses and The Whiteness Of Bone she addressed the horrors of Central American dictatorships. And in this latest endeavor she reminds anyone who may want to remember Gen. Francisco Franco in some positive manner that he was nothing but another vicious despot.

July 10, 2018 Alan Bingham author of Dying Well Prepared-- 5PM

Alan Bingham

  See it live at 5PM   http://scatvsomerville.org



Alan Bingham is the author of  Dying Well Prepared  Conversations and Choices for Terminal Patients. He is a retired hospice and palliative care executive who has spent many hours with terminal patients and their families. A management graduate with a liberal arts background in philosophy he spent most of his career in healthcare informatics, working on HIPAA (starting with its genesis in the Kennedy Kassebaum Bill), developing medical records systems, becoming a HIPAA compliance officer and an Ombudsman working in nursing homes. An Australian who now lives in Somerville, Massachusetts he is active in his community.

Poet Susan Eisenberg--July 26, 2019

Susan Eisenberg--author of the new poetry collection Stanley's Girl

 
See the show live at 5PM  July 26 http:///scatvsomerville.org  

A multidisciplinary artist and educator, Susan Eisenberg re-imagines the everyday, playing with scale and juxtaposition to investigate issues of power and social policy. She is a Resident Artist/Scholar at the Women’s Studies Research Center at Brandeis University, where she focuses on projects that address patient-centered medical care and employment equity. She has developed two touring exhibits: the photographs and poems of Perpetual Care, and the mixed media installation, On Equal Terms.

First introduced to the craft of poetry by Denise Levertov, Eisenberg holds a BA in Women’s Studies from the University of Michigan and an MFA in Creative Writing from the Program for Writers at Warren Wilson College. The author of the poetry collections Blind Spot (2006), Pioneering (1998), and It’s a Good Thing I’m Not Macho (1984), her poetry appears in numerous anthologies, including American Working-Class Literature (Oxford). She taught for more than a decade at the University of Massachusetts Boston, and has worked with students of all ages to develop tools for self-expression..

Eisenberg entered the construction industry in 1978, graduating four years later, as one of the first women in the country to achieve journey-level status in the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers (IBEW). She earned her master electrician’s license in 1983, and worked on Boston-area construction sites for fifteen years, including during pregnancies with her daughter and son. In 1991, she began to interview other tradeswomen pioneers from across the United States. These oral histories became the basis for her nonfiction book, We’ll Call You If We Need You: Experiences of Women Working Construction (1998), selected as a New York Times Notable Book and developed into a not-yet-produced feature film screenplay by MGM.

As a poet, artist, activist, author and lecturer, Eisenberg helped shape the cultural expression and analytical thinking of the tradeswomen’s movement nationally and internationally, speaking at the U.S. Department of Labor in Washington D.C. and the International Labour Organization in Geneva, Switzerland. A recipient of the Samuel Gompers Union Leadership Award, she served on the Planning Committee of the First National IBEW Women’s Conference, and consulted with the AFL-CIO’s Center to Protect Workers’ Rights on equity policies.

In the 1970s and ‘80s, Eisenberg was Artistic Director of Word of Mouth Productions, a touring women’s theater company, and then, for ten years, directed Women in History, a performance workshop combining theater and oral history at the Boston Public Library. Her recent work has been awarded grants from Mass Humanities, Berger-Marks, Tavris, Tyre and Puffin Foundations, as well as writing residencies at Hedgebrook and Martha's Vineyard.

June 5th Poet, Actor DAVID GULLETTE

 

see it live at  5PM  http://www.scatvsomerville.org  

DAVID GULLETTE was one of the first editors of Ploughshares and is Literary Director of The Poets’ Theatre, which presented his adaptation of Seamus Heaney’s translation of Beowulf in December 2015 and his BOSTON ABOLITIONISTS in March 2017 at the Boston Athenaeum. He has also acted with the ART, Christmas Revels, Actors Shakespeare Project, and NPR’s The Spider’s Web. His book of poems, QUESTIONABLE SHAPES, was published by Cervena Barva Press in 2017

May 1, 5PM Tim Devin Curator of the New Small Press Collection at the Somerville Public Library

Tim Devin: Curator of the New Small Press Collection at the Somerville Public Library

Tim Devin: Curator of the New Small Press Collection at the Somerville Public Library

By Doug Holder

I met Tim Devin at my usual corner of the Bloc 11 Cafe in Union Square. We were there to talk about his new project, namely a small press collection at the main branch of the Somerville Library—where Devin also works. Since I have been involved in small press publishing for decades, and a proud member of this group of ink-stained wretches, Devin's project was of utmost interest.

Devin is a man somewhere in middle age, of average height and build, who speaks in a calm and collected professional manner, but occasionally this composure cracks with a small press geek's enthusiasm—especially when he talks about a new find for the collection.

Devin has lived in Somerville since the 90s. He has been involved with a number of literary/art projects, and was on the board for the Somerville Arts Council. Devin told me, “ I love the sense of community in Somerville. It seems that people care about each other in this city.”

The definition of “small press" varies. Devin defines it as booklets, zines, magazines, that have a small press run, and are local in nature. The scope of the collection will include Somerville, Boston, Cambridge and other places in the immediate vicinity.

Devin told me that the small press collection idea was jump-started by New York Times columnist and noted writer Pagan Kennedy. Kennedy, a longtime Somerville resident, was a key figure in the zine scene in Allston and Somerville in the 80s and 90s. She has a collection of zines that has been collecting dust in her home, and she wanted to donate it to the Somerville Libray, rather than some academic library.

I asked Devin why the library would promote such an arcane collection of little magazines, etc... He reflected, “ I think the library's mission is to provide information. Here they provide an archive of local talent. They provide a sense of literary history in the city.”

Devin gingerly handled a bunch of his treasures in plastic sleeves. He talked enthusiastically about a zine named “Zunti”--a wildly colorful production that illustrates an author's florid dream. He showed me a comic book by the Somerville Media Center's Programming Director , Dave Ortega titled “Abuela.” This little book deals with Ortega's Mexican background, as well as Mexico's political and cultural landscape. There is also work by Somerville's Gilmore Tamny who has been producing artful poetry chapbooks for over twenty years.  The collection includes many other booklets, etc...that deal with pop culture, music, a plethora of genres.

The collection is just getting started, and for now it is not collecting standard perfect-bound books from the small press. Devin said he loves donations and now is a bit short on poetry. So if you have

a trove of small press publications, think about contacting Tim Devin at the library, and find a home for your favorite zines.

 Statement from the Library:

Patrons are free to check out items out of the library (although the older items in the collection are reserved for in-library use only). This collection is located near the graphic novels on the second floor of the Main Library at 79 Highland Ave.

We’re also actively building this collection! Are you a zinemaker? Did you recently come out with a booklet or small magazine or small art book? If so, get in touch with Tim at tdevin@minlib.net or 617-623-5000 x2963.

SEE IT LIVE AT 5PM  at http://scatvsomerville.org  

Poet Susan Richmond author of "Before We Were Birds" April 17 5PM

Poet Susan Richmond

 See it live at 5PM at  http://www.scatvsomerville.org

Susan Edwards Richmond is the author of five poetry collections: Before We Were Birds, Purgatory Chasm, and Boto (all by Adastra Press); Increase (FootHills Publishing); and Birding in Winter (Finishing Line Press). Fred Marchant writes of Before We Were Birds (2017), “With stunning imagery and gentle, meditative music, Richmond conjures a sense of sacred wildness in all things.” Her poems have appeared in numerous anthologies and journals, including Appalachia, Blueline, The Iowa Review, Poetry East, Runes, and Sanctuary: the Journal of the Massachusetts Audubon Society. She earned an M.A. in Creative Writing from the University of California, Davis, and a B.A. with Honors in English from Williams College, and won Academy of American Poets Prizes at both institutions. She has taught at U.C. Davis, Clark University, Boston University, Emerson College, and the Shirley Medium Correctional Facility. Susan is poet-in-residence at Old Frog Pond Farm & Studio in Harvard, MA, where she curates a Poem of the Month and organizes an annual plein air poetry walk and chapbook, which is supported by grants from local cultural councils. She is past president of the Robert Creeley Foundation, and teaches in Mass Audubon’s Drumlin Farm Community Preschool. A member of the Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators, Susan’s first picture book is forthcoming from Peachtree Publishers. Her website iswww.susanedwardsrichmond.com.

April 10 5PM Vietnam Vet Writer Marc Levy discusses his new book " How Stevie Nearly Lost the War and Other Postwar Stories"

How Stevie Nearly Lost the War and Other Postwar Stories

“Rhythmic, visceral, laconic, powerful, Levy’s stories will haunt the reader long after reading them.” Nguyen Ba Chung, William Joiner Center

“… Any family member, any therapist, who wants to know something of the pain that vets carry in their heads and hearts…should read this book.”
Hamilton Gregory, author of MacNamara’s Folly

“His quiet voice details a variety of experience hard to come by. The stories click with a kind of muted rage, a majestic astonishment, the fine appreciation of deep irony, and unmistakable authority. Buy this book, and learn a thing or two about the war that defined and baffled and energized a generation.”
Larry Heinemann, author of Paco’s Story, recipient of the National Book Award

“Some of the most eloquent voices in the history of American war literature have come out of the tragedy of the American War in Vietnam. Enter Marc Levy, a dazzling stylist, who takes readers on a wild ride in this perfectly paced collection of stories. Funny and furious, his characters, with all their injuries, love and live to the hilt. How Stevie Nearly Lost The War is hard to put down. Levy is a master storyteller. This book will last.”Demetria Martinez, Mother Tongue

“His writing is about the aftermath that follows you home. His words flow like poetry, exposing the carnage and madness of war.”
Frank Serpico

“Touring around Khe Sanh in the gloomy fog, I was reminded of a passage in veteran Marc Levy’s excellent collection of Vietnam war stories, How Stevie Nearly Lost the War and Other Postwar Stories. ‘VA Shrink: Were you in Vietnam? Vietnam Vet: Yes. VA Shrink: When were you there? Vietnam Vet: Last night.’ ”
Matthew Stevenson, contributing editor, Harper’s Magazine, author of Reading the Rails

“Levy got me with his first sentence – ‘Anyone can say they were in Vietnam.’ I pay his work the ultimate compliment that I pay Tim O’Brien’s The Things They Carried– the lines between fact and fiction are blurred, and that, my friends, is exactly what Vietnam was like. Read this collection.”
Doug Rawlings, co-founder, Veterans for Peace

“In these days when those with power over our fate are working overtime to obliterate truth and memory, Marc Levy’s brutal honesty and authenticity are just what we need. His new volume of stories will not let you forget the reality of Vietnam and of war.”
H. Bruce Franklin, author of Vietnam and Other American Fantasies

Levy has collected some of his best short stories in a small but powerful book about life and death with the 1st Air Cavalry Division in Vietnam and his endless attempts since to describe, remember and deal with the memories and pain he still packs with him. “Wherever you were, whatever you did in war will always be with you,” he tells younger vets. “Always.”
Michael Putzel, The Price They Paid: Enduring Wounds of War

“In the words of his alter-ego in How Stevie Nearly Lost The War, Marc Levy writes with “the unerring chaos, the unpredictable beat, the cyclic consequences, the sorrow of war.” His prose breaks all bounds of fiction and non-fiction with exhilarating zeal. Get ready for a wild ride.”
Dave Zieger, director of Sir, No Sir!

These stories pull no punches. Something good or strange is always just around the corner. The best of them bring the war home — its casualties are tragic and frightening, yet almost hopeful in all their sorrow.
Paul Krassner, author of Confessions of a Raving, Unconfined Nut

A bold and troubling, surreal, rambling account of a Vietnam veteran’s struggles with PTSD and memories. A former combat medic, Levy’s travels and traumas in search of human kindness and understanding offer grim testimony to the aftereffects of war.
John Ketwig, author of …and a hard rain fell: A G.I.’s True Story of the War in Vietnam.

Poems of the Manhattan Project: Poet John Canaday to be interviewed by Doug Holder on Poet to Poet/ March 27/5PM

    SEE IT LIVE AT 5PM  at http://scatvsomerville.org 

Poems of the Manhattan Project

John Canaday is a Massachusetts-based poet whose work has been published in The New Republic, Slate,The Southern Review, Raritan, The Hudson Review, Poetry Daily, The Virginia Quarterly Review, and many other journals and anthologies (including a volume sponsored by the Hiroshima Peace Institute). His volume of poetry set in the country of Jordan, The Invisible World, won the Academy of American Poets Walt Whitman Award in 2001. He has researched nuclear issues for many years; his study of the relationship between physics and literature in the context of the Manhattan Project,The Nuclear Muse: Literature, Physics, and the First Atomic Bombs, was published by the University of Wisconsin Press in 2000.

 Canaday's latest collection is Critical Assembly, which looks at nuclear weapons, in the poet's own words, "from the perspectives of the men and women who occupied positions of privileged intimacy with respect to their development: the scientists, spouses, laborers, locals, and military personnel involved in the Manhattan Project. The efforts of these individuals to 'make sense' of their experiences shaped the ways in which nuclear weapons have been inscribed into our culture and our psyches, a process that is surely among the most crucial transformations in human history."

March 20, 2018 Harris Gardner and Kirk Etherton Talk about the Boston National Poetry Festival April 5 to 8

Harris Gardner Co-founder of the Boston National Poetry Festival

Kirk Etherton--Board Member of the Boston National Poetry Festival

See the show live at 5PM at http://scatvsomerville.org

   For info about the festival...  https://www.bostonnationalpoetry.org/

Novelist Beth Castrodale Feb 27 5PM

Novelist Beth Castrodale

Beth Castrodale’s début novel, Marion Hatley, was a finalist for a Nilsen Prize for a First Novel from Southeast Missouri State University Press, and it was published by Garland Press in 2017. Garland will also be publishing Beth’s latest novel, In This Ground, in 2018. Beth recommends literary fiction on her website SmallPressPicks.com, and she has published stories in such journals as Printer’s Devil Review, The Writing Disorder, and Mulberry Fork Review. She lives in Jamaica Plain, Massachusetts.

see it live at  5PM:  http://scatvsomerville.org

Pantoums by Dennis Daly

Pantoums

by Dennis Daly

2018 Dennis Daly

Dos Madres Press

Somerville MA

ISBN  978-1-030029-85-3

Softbound, 67 pages (including notes)

No price given

Review by Zvi A. Sesling

One Poet whose work I always enjoy is Dennis Daly.  Whether he’s writing about experiences in Afghanistan, or in his habitat of Salem or translating Ajax from the Greek,

it is always interesting and most certainly educational.

In his latest book he turns his focus to pantoums, not my favorite form of poetry, but under his skillful writing they become both fascinating and enjoyable.

As he notes in his introduction, “Originating in Malay, prior to the fifteenth century, the pantoum probably developed from an oral tradition of rhythmic and repetitive rowing songs.”

Daly, in educating the uninitiated to this form of poetry goes on to say, “Pantoum are made up of quatrains. The modern form requires no set number of stanzas. The second and fourth line of each quatrain repeats as the first and third line of the next quatrain.” Of course there’s more to his explanation.

Finally Daly states, “American practitioners of this form have included John Ashbery, Donald Justice, and Marilyn Hacker.  In his book Pantoums Daly is very much a match for any of those written by those celebrated poets.

In his first pantoum Daly lays out the form’s history:

HARMONIES

For all men do there is an end,

They row and row to make pantoums.

Muscles ache, minds transcend

In happy moments one presumes.

They row and row to make pantoums,

Harmonies keep on coming,

In happy moments one presumes

All’s right that coaxes humming.

Harmonies keep on coming,

Insects skim the river.

All’s right that coaxes humming

Through mortality’s quaint shiver

Insects skim the river.

Muscles ache, minds transcend

Through mortality’s quaint shiver.

For all men do there is an end.

Now let’s look at his last pantoum in this most interesting volume. It is rooted in his many travels and reveals life in a different civilization:

TRUST

One trusts most those things unseen,

Unconquered battlement just out of reach,

Solidity projects a smokescreen,

A figure of fundamental speech.

Unconquered battlement just out of reach,

Where traitors conspire their plots,

A figure of fundamental speech,

Impaled by the writer-robots.

Where traitors conspire their plots,

Solidity projects a smokescreen.

Impaled by the writer-robots,

One trusts most those things unseen.

So these are the first and last poems in Daly’s book, and there are so many more good ones in between. Footnotes answer questions about some of the words, locations and historical context in the book.

Overall this is scintillating poetry by a fascinating poet who has seen and experienced much more than the average person.  The many poetic forms he uses in different collections he published conveys his breadth of knowledge.   This is a book well worth owning and reading

Author, The Lynching of Leo Frank, Editor, Muddy River Poetry Review

Feb 6, 2017 5PM Poet Gary Rainford

Poet Gary Rainford

 see the show live at 5PM  http://scatvsomerville.org


Gary Rainford is the author of two poetry collections, Salty Liquor and Liner Notes.  Gary’s suite of poems, We Are Here, was an honorable mention selected by Betsy Sholl for The Gabriel Zimpritch Memorial Poetry Prize.  His work is collected in the anthology, Take Heart, edited by Wesley McNair.  Down East magazine calls Gary a Maine poet at the top of his game.  Maine Today Magazine calls his latest book, Liner Notes, a tribute to music.  Gary teaches online for a college in New York, runs Island Verse, a creative writing literacy incubator, and serves as code enforcement officer and plumbing inspector for Swan’s Island where he lives year-round with his wife and daughter. 

Jan 23, 2018 5PM Poet John Cuetara

Poet to Poet: Writer, Electronic Media Scholar, Michael C. Keith Jan 16, 2018 5PM

Writer, Media Scholar, Michael C.Keith

see it live at 5PM  http://scatvsomerville.org

About the Author

Michael C. Keith is the author/coauthor of 30 book volumes and dozens of articles on the subject of radio and broadcast studies. In addition to his non-fiction titles, Keith has published over a dozen creative works, including an acclaimed memoir: The Next Better Place––a young adult novel: Life is Falling Sideways––and several short story collections: most recently Slow Train and Perspective Drifts Like a Log on a River. Mad Hat Press will publish his next story collection, Let Us Now Speak of Extinction. His fiction has been nominated for several awards, among them the Pen/O.Henry Award, the Pushcart Prize, the National Indie Excellence Award, and the International Book Award. He is professor emeritus at Boston College.