Feb 5 5PM Poet Richard Wilhelm

My guest Feb 5 at 5PM is poet Richard Wilhelm, the author of the poetry collection;"Awakenings"



Intimations of Survival in the poems of Richard Wilhelm

Review by Michael Todd Steffen




A thread of tradition in the cycle of the calendar year weaves the sequence of Richard Wilhelm’s book of poems, Awakenings (October 2007, Ibbetson Street Press), beginning with death in dull winter, proceeding to rebirth and awakening in spring, maturity and confidence in summer, ripening to harvest in autumn with premonitions of death again, still with the poet’s affirmation in the final line of the final poem,
A PASSENGER, “seeking yet another rebirth.”
Yet Wilhelm’s year is incomplete, denoting a sense of loss that resonates throughout the book. If William Carlos Williams tells us to invent “not in ideas but in things,” Wilhelm’s opening poems argue persuasively that intuitive invention is not so much in things, but in the resonance of things after their moment,

tree after Christmas tree,
put out with the trash,
some still decked in tinsel,
still fragrant with all that is over. (WHEN TOMORROW’S TRUCKS COME)

Perusing the first five poems the reader of the mainstream American poetic confidence has to ask: Where is the song of himself? By WINTER (p. 4) it is Wilhelm’s absence that has become most present. It is the world around him, the poems softly protest, in this early 21st century of aerodynamics subtly suggested in the book of nature by the creatures of the air:

An array of starlings
settles down on the Norway
maple’s snow-dusted branches.
Several birds,
as if by script,
change positions.
Stillness—
then a few more birds
flit to other branches.

Down from the same atmosphere of maneuvered flight, snowflakes are described as “sputtering,” as though from a mechanical sky, a sky that has overextended its patrol and interest:

copper leaves
cling on well
past death.

This intense awareness of things present in their denotation of “all that is over” (over, also “above”) conveys a sense of oppression, typified and announced in CRUMBLED BRICKS AND BROKEN GLASS, where Wilhelm feels “bored to a muted nausea,” more or less bound to follow his father around on a Saturday in an overheated Studebaker, fidgeting in a hardware store, riding along out past an abandoned railroad, places where his father’s memories are stirred, but the child’s are not. The visions are described point blank as seen, ominous in their state of dilapidation:

Rusted rails led past stands of sumac,
a chain link fence devoured by vines,
to an empty factory, its painted logos all but faded
from brick walls.

As if we lived in a super-constructed world already, the poet’s great fear is that demolition and deterioration are all that remain for the future, a ghetto-ization of housing and industrial parks that were erected and used up too fast:

this is all there is, this is all
there will ever be. Crumbled bricks
and broken glass…


The poet is unique in his subtlety of communicating things present, yet liberation of consciousness from the determined Now begins in the imagination, finding its first avenue to something possibly different, some change, in memory, the source of the shift in voice in AWAKENINGS where,

My senses soon whisk me
to my rural boyhood—

and in the rejuvenation of his mind, Wilhelm plays again:

We were soldiers or
Indians or desert island-
survivors. We’d crouch
in bushes, sneak up a hill
then hurl our spears into
a gully of soft wet earth…

The spears the boys hurl into the wet earth, the poet’s primary sense of manhood, only in the prior poem, NONES OF FEBRUARY, Wilhelm had discovered, “a fallen branch, dead but strong,” from which with his penknife he begins to carve out his poems, “smaller branches and knots” and a staff to sustain him walking “like a wandering monk.”
In the space allowed in this article I have touched on only a few poems, to make a point about Wilhelm’s sensibility: it is subtle, careful in the placement of word and line for connotation, and powerful when given a patient appreciation. The death of Christmas and rebirth and awakening to spring is so critical and vital to human survival, and Wilhelm has not failed to acknowledge this wondrous operation, however great the struggle against these birth pangs, however great the obstacle posed by civilization in our day which demonstrates its reliance on aggressive technology rather than on our curious communion with the earth and its plants and creatures, the suggestion of its cycles, so carefully heeded and portrayed in these poems.

We are given Wilhelm’s wide range of acceptance, from the beautiful and hopeful WE’LL GROW NEW FACES, where

If the dream comes again—
Sweet May will scent the air,

to the foreboding visions, in NIGHT OF THE BLOOD RED MOON, of an equilateral moon rising through sunset red, with the poet’s senses overcome by an equally unusual

urgency
from somewhere deep in the blood,
yearned for one I had not yet met.

Well worth reading and rereading, Richard Wilhelm’s Awakenings does the work of piercing through our superficial civilization, relating us to the cycle of our source and mother, the earth and her bearings, using familiar settings and images, set out in simple yet striking language.

Ibbetson Update/ Michael Todd Steffen/ Dec. 2007

Jan 29 2008 Errol Uys 5PM

Errol Lincoln Uys (pronounced ‘Ace’) is the author of the historical novel, Brazil (Simon and Schuster, 1986; New edition, Silver Spring, 2000).

Of this work, distinguished Brazilian critic Wilson Martins wrote: “Uys accomplished what no Brazilian author from José de Alencar to João Ubaldo Ribeiro and Jorge Amado was able to do. He is the first to write our national epic in its entirety. He is the first outsider to see us with total honesty and sympathy. Descriptions like those of the war with Paraguay are unsurpassed in our literature and evoke the great passages of War and Peace.”

Brazil won the highest critical acclaim in the United Kingdom, Germany and France, where it was a bestseller (La Forteresse Verte.) Said Le Figaro: “No one before Uys knew how to bring to life Brazil and her history. Uys’s characters are brilliant and colorful, combining elements of the best swashbuckler with those worthy of deepest reflection. Most stunning is that it took a South African now a naturalized American, to evoke so perfectly the grand but interrupted dream that is Brazil.” L’Express concurred: “A masterpiece! Brazil has the feel of an enchanted virgin forest, a totally new and original world for the reader-explorer to discover.”

Publisher’s Weekly described Brazil as “Pulsing with vigor, this is a vast novel to tell the story of a vast country. The principal characters, both real and imaginary, are hard to forget . . . Uys re-creates history almost entirely ‘at ground level,’ even more densely than Michener.”

Uys has also written the non-fiction book, Riding the Rails: Teenagers on the Move During the Great Depression (TV Books, 1999; Routledge, 2003.) The Boston Globe praised this work as “A riveting document of hope and hardship. The reader can all but hear the cadence of the trains on the tracks and the lonesome wail at every whistle-stop.” Riding the Rails was chosen as one of the “10 Best Books of 1999” by Amazon’s history editor.

Uys is a writer and editor with thirty years’ experience in the United States, England and Africa. He was editor-in-chief of Reader’s Digest in South Africa and senior international editor with the U.S. edition. In 1978, he began a two-year collaboration with James A. Michener that produced The Covenant. He has been a resident of Massachusetts since 1981 and currently lives in Dorchester, Boston.

Jan 8 2008: Poet David Surette

David Surette is a poet from Malden, Massachusetts. His poems reflect the undercurrents of contemporary American life.



David Surette was born July 14, 1957, at the Malden Hospital. He lived in Malden, Massachusetts for thirty-seven years. David attended the Immaculate Conception Grammar School for six years under the watchful eyes of the Sisters of Notre Dame. He finished his school days in the public schools, Beebe Junior High and Malden High, graduating in 1975.

David earned his B.A. in English from Colby College. He wrote and directed his original play Warm Angel senior year and earned the college's drama award.

After graduation, he managed the band Boys Life. He also was the band's chief lyricist, writing with his brother John, the band's singer and guitarist. David wrote the lyrics on the "A" side of their two singles and four of the six songs on their celebrated E.P.

When the band broke up in 1984, David went back to school to earn his teaching certificate and began a 15 year teaching tenure in the Waltham Public Schools.

He continued writing, not lyrics as his brother's own lyrics eclipsed his output, but fiction. He wrote short stories and completed two novels, Today's Special and Mud Season.

Malden is his first chapbook of poetry. He began the book in a summer session of the Boston Writing Project with the goal to finished it by his twenty- fifth high school reunion and the family gathering at Thanksgiving 2000, and then offered it on his website, www.davidsurette.com, in the spring of 2001. He released his second chapbook Muckers, Grinders, Shapers, Hangers, and Huns in 2002 and published over two dozen poems in various journals and magazines and became a regular reader and feature at poetry venues, libraries, schools in New England.

In 2003, he issued his third chapbook Good Shift which included "Forever and Ever" which was nominated for "Best Love Poem" at the Cambridge Poetry Awards.

David also released the single poem chapbook Acadie which was sold at Grande Pré, Nova Scotia to celebrate the 2004 Acadian Reunion.

Koenisha Publications of Michigan published Young Gentlemen's School in August, 2004. The book collects all the poems from David's three chapbooks plus ten new poems. It is available online at www.amazon.com, www.koenisha.com, and at your local bookstore.

Koenisha published David's second book of poetry Easy to Keep, Hard to Keep In in 2007. It is available online at www.amazon.com, www.koenisha.com, and at your local bookstore.

David is the co-host of Poetribe, a poetry group that offers poetry workshops, open mics, featured poets and the occasional poetry slam. They meet every other Saturday at the East Bridgewater Public Library in East Bridgewater, Massachusetts. He teaches English at East Bridgewater High School.

He currently lives in southeastern Massachusetts with his wife and three children. He and the family keep horses and sheep under the watchful eyes of thier border collie Rowdy and Martini, a very opinionated chihuahua.

Dec 4 5PM Poet Robert K. Johnson

My guest Dec 4 at 5PM will be poet Robert K. Johnson author of: From Mist to Shadow:Poems


Robert K. Johnson

From Mist to Shadow:
Poems by Robert K. Johnson

ISBN 978-0-9795313-0-9
80 pages at 12.00 paperback
Ibbetson Street Press http://www.ibbetsonpress.com
25 School Street
Somerville MA 02143

Review by Laurel Johnson

Robert K. Johnson is a poet, writer, retired English professor, and student of life. Between 1975 and 2007, he’s had six collections of poetry and two non-fiction books published, plus been featured in two poetry anthologies. In this latest book, Johnson tenderly transforms the small memories, wonders and sorrows of everyday life into moments brightened and sharpened through his words.

The commonplace turns quietly sinister as Johnson remembers the unexpected suicide of a friend. “Jimmy” recalls the class clown, the day he put his head in the oven after school, and the numbing effect on the poet:

And suddenly all the bushes, trees
and flowers I stared at in our yard
looked different, strange,
as if -- year after year --
they had been hiding something from me.

“Anguish” is a simply stunning poem about a mother lost to dementia, unable to separate reality from hallucination, and the son forced to witness her decline. I cannot do this fine poem justice with an excerpt; it must be read in its entirety.

“Brother of the Prodigal Son” is a long poem that remains true to the biblical version but extracts a bitter truth unspoken in the parable. This poem, also, cannot be adequately honored with an excerpt.

“The Truth About the Past” is another powerful recollection about the father who shared memories of his own revered father’s many talents. A long-lost great aunt shatters those memories with a harsh truth:

…she described my father’s childhood,
starting when he was two
-- the year his father abandoned
his wife and son.

Life is often unpredictable. This excerpt from “On F. Scott Fitzgerald’s ’Babylon Revisited’” shows how forgotten words and acts unexpectedly return to us like bad karma:

-- all can silently arc
over our heads for days,
for blithe or busy years
until the moment they curve
back into our lives as swiftly
as a hawk’s swooping claws
puncture a rabbit’s skin.

Regardless of age, a poet is always a poet. Age settles over us all, but Johnson still sees poetry in the world around him:

…subjects for poems,
like frightened children
seeking shelter,
tug at my mind…

One critic describes Robert K. Johnson as “the poet/laureate of the ordinary moment in time.” He is that and much more. His poetry is quietly powerful and poignant. This collection lives, breathes, and transforms the ordinary through the thoughts and memories of a skilled wordsmith. From Mist to Shadow is a book you’ll want to keep and reread.

-- Laurel Johnson is a reviewer for the Midwest Book Review and other magazines.

"Further Fenway Fiction" Adam Pachter guest Nov. 20 5PM

Adam Pachter is the author of the novel Ash (ISBN 0-89754-192-8) and numerous short stories. Pachter has edited both Fenway Fiction books, and he won the Improper Bostonian magazine's inaugural fiction contest for his story "Lotion." In addition, Pachter's work has appeared in Italy from a Backpack, Boston Metro, and the Word Riot Anthology. Pachter also writes for WGBH, Boston's public television station, and teaches classes on how to write a first novel. He lives in Arlington, MA, with his wife and young daughter, whom he has taught to say "Go Red Sox" and "Coco Crisp."

Tues Nov 6 2007 5PM Nick Mamatas

My Guest Nov. 6 at 5PM will be About the book:
Under My Roof, based on Archanians by Aristophanes, is the story of telepathic tween Herbert Weinberg, whose father Daniel decides to strike a blow for freedom by building a nuclear device, planting it in the lawn jockey in his front yard, and declaring independence from the United States.

The Long Island household is predictably turned upside down. Mother is out, a local weatherman is in, and he becomes both a hostage and Minister of Information. Though troops surround the belligerent ranch house-state, the appeal of independence becomes too much for many. A daring raid to kidnap Herb and bring him back to his mother snatches the boy prince from his ancestral home. Meanwhile, the house is filling up with former American refuseniks. Can the refrigerator hold out?

However, the seed has already been planted. All over America, people are declaring their independence, and simply by traveling from lawn to lawn across "the country", Herbert is able to reunite with his father and defeat American imperialism with a final burst of his telepathic powers.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

About the author:
Nick Mamatas is the author of the Civil War ghost story for Marxists, Northern Gothic, and the Lovecraftian Beat road novel for shut-ins, Move Under Ground, which was nominated for both the Bram Stoker and International Horror Guild awards for first novel. His short fiction has appeared in the Mississippi Review, Razor, the German music magazine Spex and a dozen other publications. His reportage and essays have appeared in the Village Voice, The Writer, In These Times and various Disinformation and BenBella Books anthologies. A native New Yorker, Nick now lives near, but not in, Boston.

Under My Roof, based on Archanians by Aristophanes, is the story of telepathic tween Herbert Weinberg, whose father Daniel decides to strike a blow for freedom by building a nuclear device, planting it in the lawn jockey in his front yard, and declaring independence from the United States.

The Long Island household is predictably turned upside down. Mother is out, a local weatherman is in, and he becomes both a hostage and Minister of Information. Though troops surround the belligerent ranch house-state, the appeal of independence becomes too much for many. A daring raid to kidnap Herb and bring him back to his mother snatches the boy prince from his ancestral home. Meanwhile, the house is filling up with former American refuseniks. Can the refrigerator hold out?

However, the seed has already been planted. All over America, people are declaring their independence, and simply by traveling from lawn to lawn across "the country", Herbert is able to reunite with his father and defeat American imperialism with a final burst of his telepathic powers.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

About the author:
Nick Mamatas is the author of the Civil War ghost story for Marxists, Northern Gothic, and the Lovecraftian Beat road novel for shut-ins, Move Under Ground, which was nominated for both the Bram Stoker and International Horror Guild awards for first novel. His short fiction has appeared in the Mississippi Review, Razor, the German music magazine Spex and a dozen other publications. His reportage and essays have appeared in the Village Voice, The Writer, In These Times and various Disinformation and BenBella Books anthologies. A native New Yorker, Nick now lives near, but not in, Boston.

Oct 23 Jane Katims 5PM

My guest on Oct 23 will be poet Jane Katims:

Jane Katims is the author and co-producer of six radio series for Wisconsin Public Radio, one earning her a George Foster Peabody Award in Broadcasting. Her series include: The Author is You, Book Trails, Worlds of Art, Wisconsin on the Move, Listening to My Feelings, and Through My Senses. She has written radio documentaries for WEN, WGBH, WBUR, and WCAS (Everybody Do What You're Doing, My Bike Got Swiped, Health Care -- Person to Person, Jack Tale Interview, The Toby Story, Birth Control -- What Choices? What to Do With My Life, Women and Music, and others).

In 2004, she was awarded a John Woods Scholarship in Fiction Writing (Western Michigan University) which entitled her to attend the Prague Summer Seminars. She is presently working on a collection of short stories, Getting the Gals Going, and a novel, Until Now and has completed a poetry collection, Dancing on a Slippery Floor..

Jane Katims earned her BA at the University of Wisconsin and her M.Ed at Lesley University. She presently teaches contemporary literature and creative writing at The Cambridge Center for Adult Education and at Tufts Institute for Lifelong Learning at Tufts University. In addition, she leads private writing workshops in poetry, memoir, and fiction writing. She has previously taught at Middlesex Community College; Buckingham, Browne and Nichols; and The Boston Graduate School of Psychoanalysis.

Jane Katims is a member the Board of Visitors of the English Department of the University of Wisconsin-Madison. She lives with her family near Boston, Massachusetts.

Oct 2 Abbott Ikeler author"Outposts"

Abbott Ikeler is the author of the poetry collection "Outposts" ( Ibbetson 2007)

B.A., Harvard University; M.A., University of Pittsburgh; Ph.D., University of London, Kings College

Abbott Ikeler taught literature and writing at Bowdoin College, the University of Muenster, and Rhode Island College before entering the corporate world. His academic achievements include a Senior Fulbright Fellowship, a book on nineteenth-century aesthetics, and numerous articles on Victorian fiction. From the mid-eighties to 2001, he held public relations and advertising positions with three multinationals and a full-service agency. Immediately before coming to Emerson College ( Boston), Dr. Ikeler was Director of Communications and Public affairs for the Internet and Networking Division of Motorola, a post he held for three years. The focus of his current research is global public relations, especially the impact of non-media influencers, such as industry and financial analysts.

He writes poetry, memoirs and literary criticism, including a book published by Ohio State University Press on Thomas Carlyle, Puritan Temper and Transcendental Faith, and numerous articles on Dickens and Trollope. His poems have been published in The Concrete Wolf, The Somerville News, Dream International Quarterly, and Bagelbards Anthology, No. 2. A sample poem follows below.






Epiphanies



They happen on a subway platform
in the midst of mild debate,
hardly heated, on the merits of a film.
Or between courses at a restaurant
unrated by Michelin
over the indiscretions of a distant friend.
An old incompatibility
of taste or moral vision gathers
in an unremarkable moment in a quite prosaic spot
to a settled recognition on one side or the other
of a wall that can’t be climbed.
The rest—days or decades—is merest epilogue.




--Abbott Ikeler

Sept 25 Rusty Barnes cofounder of "Night Train" magazine

Sept 18 5PM

Rusty Barnes grew up in rural northern Appalachia. He received his B.A. from Mansfield University of Pennsylvania and his M.F.A. from Emerson College. His fiction, poetry and non-fiction have appeared in many journals. After editing fiction for the Beacon Street Review (now Redivider) and Zoetrope All-Story Extra, he co-founded Night Train, a recently reinvented literary journal, which has been featured in the Boston Globe, The New York Times, and on National Public Radio. Sunnyoutside Press will be publishing a chapbook of his flash fiction sometime in 2007. If you want to know more, check these links to an interview conducted by Wayne Yang of Eight Diagrams: Part I, Part II, Part III. Or, friend him--I mean, uh, me--at MySpace.

Sept 4, 2007 5PM Sidewalk Sam

My guest will be noted street artist and arts activist Side Walk Sam. Sam will be talking about the Sept 15th celebration of Stone Soup Poets founder Jack Powers 70th birthday that he is helping to organize.


Robert Guillemin is "Sidewalk Sam," the popular artist dedicated to creating art at the feet of pedestrians to inspire, promote spirit, enrich daily life, and address social issues. Sidewalk Sam has been called the "Johnny Appleseed of Art" and a "Pavement Picasso". He has been featured on the "Today Show", "Good Morning America", "Evening Magazine" and "Real People" and in hundreds of newspaper articles from coast to coast. He takes arts to the streets with charm and expertise that has thrilled millions of people for nearly forty years.

Through a magical blend of community art initiatives, broad-based participatory events and an unfailing joyful spirit, he organizes citizens, government agencies, cultural organizations, schools and corporations to work together for a common cause.

After studying at Boston College and receiving a bachelor’s and master’s degree in painting from Boston University, Robert followed a traditional path to becoming a successful artist. He had many commissions and exhibits, including one-man shows at Boston’s Institute of Contemporary Art and the Rose Art Museum of Brandeis University, but the structure of the art scene was not a good fit for the artist he was becoming. He believed that art’s focus on a small, elite audience caused it to turn its back on society at large. He realized that "art for art’s sake" was not the same as "art for people’s sake."

Sidewalk Sam was born when Robert stepped outside of traditional art venues and took his talents and enthusiasm to the streets. Choosing "Sidewalk Sam" as a nickname and using skills he had sharpened while a copyist at the Louvre Museum in Paris, he began to reproduce beloved masterpiece paintings on the sidewalks of Boston. "By staying in museums, galleries and the halls of academe, I felt I was missing the human experience. So I chose to bring art to the street and into daily life. I love crouching on the sidewalk, kneeling at the feet of people and having art look up to us for a change. I want art to serve people as a natural part of everyday life. I think art should bring people closer to each other and inspire people to a better vision of society."

Sidewalk Sam makes a connection with the public. They gather on street corners to watch him chalk on the ground. His art is in perfect harmony with the pedestrian experience - a polite, social event in the streets of our cities where there is often a need for civility. Using the streets as a canvas, Sidewalk Sam has rallied people around solutions to social problems, addressing issues like poverty, diversity, children and family and the environment. Now in a wheelchair, Sidewalk Sam still thinks big. He organizes large events where lots of people come together and create big artworks to show their common spirit. “I love to get people involved with each other", he says. "Art can bring society together.” He adds, “Everything in modern life is so depersonalized - I’m just trying to personalize it a little.”

Aug 7: Jacques Fluery 5PM

Poetry Tyrant reviews The Haitian Firefly's collection
A review by Doug Holder, the founding publisher of The Ibettson Street Press

Sparks in the Dark: Lighter Shade Of Blue. A Poetic Memoir. Jacques Fleury. “The Haitian Firefly” $12. Contact: haitianfirefly@yahoo.com

Jacques Fleury writes that he was born with a humongous head. He reflects: “When my mom was birthing me, I was told that she ran out of the hospital just as I was coming out of the darkness of her womb, valiantly striving to reach the light. So just as I was coming out she made a giant leap for ‘pain kind’ out of bed and bolted out of the door and caught a cab home.”

Jacques Fleury

To this day Fleury has a dramatic head both physically and metaphorically. He often adorns it with large hats and outrageous sunglasses that he wears in the dead-of-night. He is an exotic even in Cambridge’s teeming and diverse Central Square. And so is his writing. His poetry is not sedate and understated, but much like a lush, colorful, exotic plume; at times gaudy and blinding, and for the most part joyful in spite of the pain he has suffered in his 30- something years.

Fleury was born in Haiti and is a working journalist, poet, columnist, and community TV host. His first full poetry collection: “Sparks in the Dark…” is large, ambitious, and covers a lot of ground.

It’s hard being a Blackman, much less a Haitian Blackman in a white society. Fleury rages against this inequity in his poem: “Unrequited Rage:”

“How dare you judge me/ my color does not define me/ you should be appalled for Dissing me! / unleash your dirty heart/ you will find me!... / I am only a mere man pregnant with error/ a walking Disaster!!!/ So use me like a mirror, / if you want to see the reflection of your Brother!!!/

And Fleury knows that the “womb makes the man,” and he urges mothers to treat their children well, or else it’s a short passage to a worldly hell, in his poem:

“Women! Women From Your Wombs!”

“Women! Women from your wombs/ you gonna yell to break the spell/ women! Women from your wombs/ you too one day/ face drooping dripping down in the dumps/ with creases like beaten down leather/ established breasts hardened, eager and perky/ like the buds of spring./ swollen like balloons since in your mouth men/ blow bubbles…/ since from your wombs babies are born/ bearing your sins/ and looked down as / fools for sucking in anger/and resentment seeping from/ your congested chests/ have come into this world/ entangled in your mess.”

Fleury’s work is provocative and evocative, but at times it needs pruning, because it grows like wild jungle vegetation. Of course that might be the point.

Doug Holder

"Hollywood and Sunset" author Luke Salisbury July 17

July 17 5PM Luke Salisbury:


Luke Salisbury is a Professor of English at Bunker Hill Community College in Boston and teaches English and Film. He is the author of The Answer Is Baseball (Times Books, 1989; Vintage, 1990) which The Chicago Tribune called the best baseball book of 1989, (A Common Reader said, “Salisbury reveals the heart of the sport better than writer I’ve read,” No. 47, April, 1991), and a novel, The Cleveland Indian (The Smith, 1992; paperback, 1996) which was nominated for the Casey Award in 1992 as best baseball book of the year, and was studied at Indiana State University in an American literature course. Blue Eden, a novel in three stories, (The Smith; hardback and paper, 1996). Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine said, “The middle tale, ‘The Number of the Beast,’ is a gem.” Hollywood and Sunset, a novel will be published by Shambling Gate Press, fall 2005. Mr. Salisbury contributed to Red Sox Century: One Hundred Years of Red Sox Baseball, Baseball & The Game of Life, Ted Williams: A Portrait in Words and Pictures, DiMaggio: An Illustrated Life, Jackie Robinson: Between the Baselines, Fall Classics: The Best Writing About The World Series’ First Hundred Years and wrote Chapter 9 of a Treasury of Baseball, published by Publications International Ltd. His work has appeared in the Boston Globe, Ploughshares, Stories Magazine, Pulpsmith, Fan, Elysian Fields, Spitball, Nine, SABR Review of Books, Cooperstown Review, and (in translation) AERA, the Japanese equivalent of Time. He is a past vice president and national secretary of the Society For American Baseball Research (SABR). Mr. Salisbury was the first keynote speaker at Nine Magazine’s Annual Spring Training Conference (1994), and was a frequent guest on Channel 2 Boston’s “Ten O’clock News,” “The Group,” and “Greater Boston,” New England Cable News Network, Comcast’s Sports Pulse, and WBUR’s “Connection.” He was featured in AMC’s “Diamonds On the Silver Screen,” HBO’s Curse of the Bambino and wrote the Krank column for Boston Baseball from 1996 to 1999. His latest book is "Hollywood and Sunset."

Mr. Salisbury attended The Hun School, New College, and received an MA in Creative Writing from Boston University. He once taught third grade in the Bronx, and now lives with his wife Barbara and son Ace in Chelsea, Massachusetts.

Poet Michael Mack July 10

http://www.michaelmacklive.com/


Michael Mack will be my guest on "Poet to Poet, Writer to Writer" July 10
5PM Somerville Community Access TV


Michael Mack is a poet and performer who uses his art to give form to his
feelings about having a mother with schizophrenia and in so doing educates
his audiences about the devastating illness. Courtesy of Michael Mack




The room darkens, and sad, frightening voices echo through the air. Mixing
light and shadow with the skills of an actor and the voice of a poet,
Michael Mack brings the sensations of schizophrenia to his listeners.

The experience is not his directly, but that of his mother, whose
schizophrenia was diagnosed when Michael was 5 years old. Yet the story is
his, too. What child wouldn't be affected by the inexplicable behavior of
his or her mother?

Luckily for him and his audiences, Mack was not shackled by his childhood.
As an adult, he transformed the central experience of that time into a
one-man performance that enlightens patients and clinicians, as well as
people who have never seen mental illness firsthand.

"This has been a tremendously cathartic experience," Mack, 49, told
Psychiatric News. "It keeps the memory of my mother alive, and it's a kind
of mission, opening people's minds."

Patients hear his work as their story. "It's an emotional event for them,"
he said. "It's a human story about a human tragedy that ends up with a
hopeful message."

Mack grew up in the Maryland suburbs of Washington, D.C., the oldest of four
children his parents had in the first five years of their marriage. Years
later, he listened to his father tell the story of how he came home to find
Michael's mother in tears and asking if she was the Blessed Virgin (see
box). She was diagnosed with schizophrenia. In periods of remission, she was
a kind and attentive mother, but when the illness returned, her behavior
could threaten and disturb her children.

Once, she gave a party for neighborhood children, handing out cigarettes and
giving away toys belonging to Michael and his siblings.

"I remember it being a real fun party, but at the same time having the
feeling that something was really wrong," he recalled.

The family exhausted its insurance benefits as Mack's mother moved through
hospitals and other facilities around Washington. Eventually, the parents
divorced, and Michael's mother spent the last years of her life in a group
home in Baltimore, where she died of cancer in 2002. She never saw his
performances but expressed surprise that anyone might be interested in her
experiences. His father has seen (and responded positively to) the piece
several times and has brought friends to see it.

"I think it has helped him to see how we saw the situation as children,"
said Mack.

After high school, Mack served in the Air Force, attended community college,
and then went to Sloan School of Business at the Massachusetts Institute of
Technology. His march toward a conventional career detoured into the arts
when he signed up for a course in poetry taught by Pulitzer Prize-winner
Maxine Kumin. For the first time in his life, Mack poured his memories and
feelings about growing up with his mother onto paper. He became Boston's
poetry slam champion. He switched his major to creative writing and
graduated in 1988. Since then, he has worked as a technical or freelance
writer, but his personal and professional focus has been "Hearing Voices
(Speaking in Tongues)," the one-man show that he presents around the
country. His big break came in 1997, when an advocate for people with mental
illness heard Mack recite his poetry and invited him to speak to the Boston
chapter of the National Alliance on Mental Illness.

As he began writing, Mack went back to the events of his childhood and began
to see them in a different way, experiencing them as an adult, not as a
child. He came to understand what his mother and father did and why they did
it. When he was young, he felt cheated out of his childhood and was angry at
his parents, he said. But in writing the poetry that became his program's
script, he came to understand how they had responded as best they could to
the circumstances of their lives.

Mack never gives the same presentation twice. Each little scene-poem is a
story in itself. He selects elements to construct an essential story that
varies with the place and the audience.

For a general audience, he might have a "doctor" character describe symptoms
of schizophrenia, but leave that out when performing for a more
knowledgeable professional audience. Even they glean value from his show,
however. After a performance at McLean Hospital near Boston, staff members
came up to him and told him that seeing the performance was a way for them
to reconnect with the fundamental reasons they went into the mental health
field, said Mack.

"The performance helped them see the human cost of mental illness and how
they can help," he said.

He recently gave two performances in Rochester, N.Y., the first in a large
auditorium for the general public and mental health care consumers. There,
he performed for an hour and a half, enhancing the show with all the
lighting and sound technology the theater had to offer. Later, before a
smaller group of patients at the Rochester Psychiatric Center, he pared the
performance down to 30 minutes of material that spoke directly to that
specialized audience.

For most audiences, he dramatizes auditory hallucinations by immersing the
stage in total darkness for more than two minutes while speaking in the
voices that reflect psychosis. However, for patients, he may ask for the
lights to be lowered rather than turned off and ask the patients to close
their eyes to lessen the chance of fearful reactions. In either case,
patients have told him how much they appreciated his giving voice to what
they have gone through.

Performing for audiences of patients, psychiatrists, and mental health
professionals has led to another kind of insight, said Mack. His recent
presentation at the rochester Psychiatric Center entailed his first visit to
a state psychiatric hospital since he visited his mother in an aging, dingy
facility 20 years before.

"What a change!" he said. "I was so impressed with the building and how
patients and staff interacted."

June 19 Poet Bob Clawson

My Guest June 19 at 5PM will be poet Bob Clawson.






Bob Clawson was Anne Sexton’s friend and associate for the last ten years of her life. He often helped her edit drafts of her work. He also directed the musical group, “Anne Sexton and Her Kind,” which toured the country for three years.



Bob Clawson is a writer, editor, teacher, fisherman, and cook. His formal education includes a rural two-room schoolhouse, Kenyon College, Harvard, and Yale. He has visited 32 of the United States, and has been to France, Italy, Canada, Mexico, Greece, and to several island nations such as Britain, Jamaica, Cuba, Ireland, and Nantucket.



Poetry captured Clawson at Kenyon College, where he studied with John Crowe Ransom and Irving Feldman. He spent a long career in advertising where he was a writer, editor, and creative director. His time for reading poetry dwindled, but, in his words, “...it followed like a brindled hound,/just ribs and tongue and tail.”



Fifteen years ago, he left business. For the next seven years, he wrote a self-syndicated golf column that eventually reached over 100 newspapers, but it became, “Too much like work: 56-hour weeks.” In the mid-nineties, a friend asked Clawson to teach poetry to 4th graders. This triggered a powerful urge to write poetry, not just occasional drafts, but serious work. He wrote from 1996 to 1998 and studied with Bruce Weigl, Fred Marchant, Gail Mazur, Stephen Dunn, Heather McHugh, and Thomas Lux, before sending work to poetry journals.



In 1997he published his first book, Nightbreak. It went through three printings. He has published in many fine journals including The Southern Review, Beloit Poetry Journal, Poet Lore, Yankee, The Christian Science Monitor, and The Lancet ( a weekly British medical journal), and the Shit Creek Review, among others.

Sept 11 2007 Carl Von Essen

June 12 2007 5PM My guest will be: Carl von Essen. Carl von Essen was born in 1926 and raised in Northern California. After medical studies in California and Sweden, he practiced and taught in the United States, India, and Switzerland and served the World Health Organization in Sri Lanka and Zimbabwe. Throughout a long professional career spanning the globe, he devoted available time to exploring the natural world and pursuing his passion for angling. He is also the author of The Revenge of the Fishgod: Angling Adventures around the World. Carl von Essen now lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts, with his wife, the Jungian psychoanalyst Manisha Roy.

His latest book is: ""The Hunter's Trance: Nature Spirit&Ecology."

Poet Dan Sklar May 29 5PM

June 29 5PM ---My guest will be poet and Creative Writing Director of Endicott College Dan Sklar. Dan has taught poetry, fiction, nature writing, Eastern Literature, Drama, Playwriting and Children’s Literature at Endicott College for twenty years. One of Dan’s plays was just published in “The Art of the One-Act” and his poems and stories have or will be published in the Harvard Review, Ibbetson Street, Fulcrum, and many others.

Dan is the author of the poetry collection “Hack Writer” He hold a PhD in Literature from Boston University.

Tino Viilanueva May 15 5PM

Tino Villanueva- From his humble beginnings in Texas as the son of migrant workers, "Tino Villanueva emerged as an important voice of Chicano expression in the early 1970s," wrote Dictionary of Literary Biography contributor Julian Olivares. "The poetic voice for him is an existential affirmation of being by which one achieves salvation from silence, chaos, and annihilation."
Growing up in an atmosphere of poverty and prejudice, Villanueva graduated from high school but failed his college entrance exam. Devoted to self-improvement, the young man took jobs and read extensively. Drafted into the U.S. Army in 1963, Villanueva spent two years in the Panama Canal Zone. This brought him a new understanding of his Hispanic heritage; he began reading the works of poets like Ruben Dario and José Martí.
Returning home, Villanueva enrolled at Southwest Texas University, where he produced his first poem--a sonnet--in a class for native Spanish-speakers. The poem, "Camino y Capricho eterno," was published in a local newspaper in 1968. Villanueva earned a bachelor of arts degree that same year, and moved his studies to Buffalo, New York. "Living away from the Southwest permitted him to take stock of himself and to take into account the injustices perpetrated upon him and his people," reported Olivares. Villanueva embraced the Chicano Movement, and produced the poetry collection Hay Otra Voz. "Appearing in 1972 when there were very few journals that gave space to U.S. Hispanic literary expression," Olivares continued, "Hay Otra Voz was received without any reviews." But with subsequent publications of Villanueva's poetry in journals in the U.S. and abroad, the poet began to gain more recognition.
In 1984 Villanueva began publishing Imagine: International Chicano Poetry Journal, dedicated to poetry of any language, accompanied by English translation. That same year he published Shaking off the Dark, a well-received collection that a World Literature Today critic called "a journey into the semiotic concept of biculturalism." Olivares pointed to one of the poems in the collection, "Now, Suns Later," a tribute to the poet's grandmother, as "[interweaving] light imagery emanating from two sources, the sun and the grandmother."
Villanueva's anthology, Crónica de mis años peores, acknowledges the continuing struggles faced by Hispanic Americans. But the book is "a work of triumph and of overcoming," declared reviewer Susan Smith Nash in World Literature Today. Nash concluded, "individuals are able, by sheer force of will, to overcome the effects of shaming and physical and emotional abuse is tantamount to miraculous." To a Publishers Weekly contributor, the poet's tone is "complex and hard to characterize, more on the order of wistful disappointment . . . than anything like self-pity."
In the movie Giant, a pivotal moment takes place in a Texas roadside diner, where an Anglo customer, trying to prevent the eviction of a Hispanic man by the owner, is himself severely beaten. The Anglo "to a certain extent represents the social conscience of America," remarked Tom Lewis in a World Literature Today review of the collection Scene from the Movie Giant. Villanueva turns the scene into a five-part poem, which begins with the poet at age fourteen seeing Giant for the first time. Whereas the diner scene carries much symbolic weight, Lewis added, "Villanueva's poem quietly and richly extends the movie by revealing how a lone member of its audience derived from the complex emotions it aroused in him a sense of selfhood and creativity."
PERSONAL INFORMATION
Family: Born December 11, 1941, in San Marcos, TX; son of Lino B. and Leonor (Rios) Villanueva. Education: Southwest Texas State University, B.A., 1969; State University of New York at Buffalo, M.A., 1971; Boston University, Ph.D., 1981. Memberships: American Association of Teachers of Spanish and Portuguese. Addresses: Office: Department of Spanish, Wellesley College, Wellesley, MA 02181. Agent: Odon Betanzos, 125 Queen St., Staten Island, NY 10314.
AWARDS
Ford Foundation fellowship, 1978-79; American Book Award, Before Columbus Foundation, 1994, for Scene from the Movie Giant.
CAREER
State University of New York at Buffalo, Buffalo, NY, instructor in Spanish, 1969-71; Boston University, Boston, MA, lecturer in Spanish, 1971-76; Wellesley College, Wellesley, MA, instructor in Spanish, 1974--. Locutor and program director for La hora Hispaña, broadcast for the Spanish-speaking community by Harvard University radio station WHRB. Military service: U.S. Army, 1964-66.
WRITINGS BY THE AUTHOR:
Hay Otra Voz: Poems (title means "There Is Another Voice: Poems"), Editorial Mensaje (New York, NY), 1972, 3rd edition, 1979.
(With others) Literatura Chicana: texto y contexto (title means "Chicano Literature: Text and Context"), Prentice-Hall (New York, NY), 1973.
Chicanos: Antologia de ensayos y literatura (title means "Chicanos: Anthology of Essays and Literature"), Fondo de Cultura Economica (Visión de Ningun Lugar, México), 1979.
Shaking off the Dark, Arté Publico Press (Houston, TX), 1984, revised edition, Bilingual Press (Tempe, AZ), 1998.
Crónica de mis años peores, Lalo (Los Angeles, CA), 1987, translation by James Hoggard published as Chronicle of My Worst Years, TriQuarterly Books (Evanston, IL), 1994.
Tres Poetas de Posguerra: Celaya, Gonzalez y Caballero Bonald: (Estudio y Entrevistas), Tamesis Books (London, England), 1988.
Scene from the Movie Giant, Curbstone Press (Willimantic, CT), 1993.
La llaman America, Curbstone Press (Willimantic, CT), 1996.
Contributor in El Espejo/The Mirror: Selected Chicano Literature, edited by O. Romano and H. Rios, Quinto Sol Publications, 1972; and We Are Chicanos: An Anthology of Mexican-American Literature, edited by Philip D. Ortego, Washington Square Press, 1974.
Contributor of poetry to San Antonio Express/News, Persona, El Grito, Entre Nosotros, Caribbean Review, Hispamerica: Revista de literatura, Revista Chicano-Riqueña, Poema Convidado, and Texas Quarterly; contributor of essays to Cuadernos Hispanoamericanos, Papeles de Son Armadans, and Journal of Spanish Studies: Twentieth Century

April 17 Poet Molly Lynn Watt

April 17 5PM My Guest will be Molly Lynn Watt:


Molly Lynn Watt carries a pen, a notebook and a journal as she travels, whether to Harvard Square, China, Ireland or Alaska to record her wonderings. She shapes adventures and questions into poems, essays and stories sometimes illustrated with photographs. She is an original member of Cambridge Cohousing community, a longtime progressive educator and a peace and justice activist. She facilitates the monthly Fireside Poetry Readings on the last Tuesday of each month (usually) with neighbors, Jenise Aminoff and John Hildebidle. Check out NoCa's events and www.cambridgecohousing.org/poetry/ for reading dates. Molly is the author of the poetry collection: "Shadow People." ( Ibbetson, 2007)

Harris Gardner-Founder of The Boston National Poetry Festival

March 27 2007: 5PM My guest will be poet/organizer/activist/ Harris Gardner http://tapestryofvoices.com founder of:




(Harris Gardner, and friends...)

THE BOSTON NATIONAL POETRY MONTH FESTIVAL Now in its SUCESSFUL Seventh !!! Year

CO-SPONSORS:Tapestry of Voices & Kaji Aso Studio in partnership with The Boston Public Library. Starts Saturday, April 14th, 2007 10:00 A.M. To 5:00 P.M. and Sunday, April 15th, 2007 from 1:00 P.M. to 4:45 P.M.. OPEN MIKE: Sunday, 2:00 to 3:30 P.M. The festival will be held both days at the library ’s main branch in Copley Square.56 Major and emerging poets will each do a twenty minute reading; also Featuring 15 elementary school students from the John Eliot Elementary School.These fifth and sixth graders will open the festival with poetry by Langston Hughes,Ogden Nash, Carl Sandburg, Shel Silverstein, Maya Angelou, other poets, and their own originalpoetry. They will be followed by prize winning poets Alden DiIanni-Morton and Shari Caplan, two seniors at Boston Latin High School. The 55 major and emerging poets will follow with a:

POETRY MARATHON. Some of the many luminaries include Diana DerHovanessian , Afaa M. Weaver, Rhina P. Espaillat, Richard Wollman, Lloyd Schwartz, Maxine Kumin, Fred Marchant, Barbara Helfgott-Hyett, DanTobin, Charles Coe, Steven Cramer, Danielle Legros-Georges, Regie Gibson, Marc Widershien, Tino Villanueva, and Doug Holder.
This festival has it all. A plethora of professional poets, celebrities, a Pulitzer Prize Winner and former National Poet Laureate, numerous award winners, student participation.Even more, it is about community, neighborhoods, diversity, BOSTON and MASSACHUSETTS. This fast growing tradition is one of the largest events in Boston’s Contribution to National Poetry Month. FREE ADMISSION !!
For information: Tapestry of Voices, (617-306-9484) or
617-723-3716 Library: (617)- 536-5400

Wheelchair accessible. Assistive listening devices available. To request a sign language interpreter or for other special needs, call (617) 536-7855 (TTY) at least two weeks before the program date.

Poet, Publisher, Playwright Diana Saenz March 6 2007

My Guest March 6 2007 5PM:

Diana Saenz was born in Los Angeles, California. She lived for a time with her grandparents in Fresno, California. She recounts her memories of Central California as among her most powerful memories, specifically recalling of the scent of Oleanders that proliferated in her grandparents' neighborhood, in Fresno.

Diana Saenz is a playwright and poet who has been writing for 35 years. Her fifteen plays have been produced in California, Massachusetts, Texas and Maine. She has written three books of poetry, and numerous articles and short stories. Saenz founded "The Boston Poet," an event calendar for poets.

Diana later founded the online journal http://www.bostonpoet.com and the Boston Poet Journal.

Feb 27 5 PM Poet Alfred Nicol author of "Winter Light"

Alfred Nicol worked in the printing industry for twenty years after graduating from Dartmouth College, where he received the Academy of American Poets Prize. He now lives in Amesbury, Massachusetts and is a member of the Powow River Poets. He edited the Powow River Anthology, published by Ocean Publishing in 2006, and was the recipient of the 2004 Richard Wilbur Award for his first book of poems, Winter Light, published by The University of Evansville Press. His poems have appeared in Poetry, The Formalist, Measure, Commonweal, Verse Daily, The New England Review, Atlanta Review, and other journals. Several of his poems have been anthologized in Contemporary Poetry of New England, Sonnets: 150 Contemporary Sonnets, and Kiss and Part. The last of nine installments of his long poem, “Persnickety Ichabod’s Rhyming Diary” will appear in Light Quarterly, Vol. 52.


"Nicol is much more than a poet's poet; he is also a reader's poet, and his work, though dazzling, is not intended to simply dazzle but to convey, with charm and profundity, the experiences of our common life." -- Rhina P. Espaillat

"How different an aesthetic Nicol shows in the splendid Winter Light, as canny and moving a formalist collection as I have seen in years." -- Sydney Lea

"On every page Nicol exhibits a genuine largeness of spirit and grace of mind. His techniques are well-honed. This is certainly among the finest new volumes of poetry I have read in years." -- Jay Parini

Feb 13 2007 My guest will be John Hodgen

My guest Feb. 13 5PM will be poet John Hodgen. Hodgen will be reading from his new book, Grace.Winner of the 2005 Donald Hall Prize in Poetry. Hodgen, who teaches writing at Assumption College in Worcester, has two other prize-winning books, and his poems, according to Ha Jin, National Book Award winner and professor at Boston University, contain "a voice that speaks directly from the heart."His publications include the anthologies Witness and Wait: Thirteen Poets From New England and Something and We Teach Them All: Teachers Writing About Diversity. His other honors include the Grolier Prize in Poetry in 1980 and an Arvon Foundation Award (Kensington, England) in 1981.

Feb 6 2007 5PM: My guest will be Manisha Roy. Roy was born in Northeast Assam, India, and educated in Calcutta. Once an anthropologist, she is now a writer and lecturer of Jungian psychotherapy. She has been a practicing psychotherapist since 1985 in Boston. She is the author of "Bengali Woman" and " Cast The First Stone: Ethics in Analytic Practice" among other works.

Jan 16 5PM My guest will be the poet Martha Collins.

Martha Collins is the author, most recently, of Blue Front, a book-length poem based on a lynching her father witnessed when he was five years old in Cairo, Illinois, published May 2006 by Graywolf Press. She has also published four collections of poems, two books of co-translations from the Vietnamese, and a recent chapbook of poems, and has edited a collection of essays on the poet Louise Bogan.

Collins' awards include fellowships from the NEA, the Bunting Institute, the Ingram Merrill Foundation, and the Witter Bynner Foundation, as well as three Pushcart Prizes, the Alice Fay Di Castagnola Award, and a Lannan residency grant.

A selection of poems from Blue Front won the Laurence Goldstein Poetry Prize in 2005; other selections from the book appeared in Kenyon Review and Ploughshares.
Collins founded the Creative Writing Program at UMass-Boston, and since 1997 has taught at Oberlin College, where she is Pauline Delaney Professor of Creative Writing and one of the editors of FIELD magazine and Oberlin College Press.

Jan 9 2007 5PM My guest will be Nate Graziano.

Biography
I currently live in Manchester, New Hampshire with my beautiful wife Liz and two beautiful children, Paige and Owen. I teach writing at Pembroke Academy in Pembroke, New Hampshire.
In 2002, my first hardcover collection of fiction Frostbite was published by Green Bean Press. In October of 2003, my first full-length collection of poetry Not So Profound was also published by Green Bean Press. I'm the author of a number chapbooks and broadsides of poetry and fiction. In July, sunnyoutside will be publishing a new volume of poetry titled Honey, I'm Home.
I was born in 1975 and grew up in West Warwick, Rhode Island. I attended college at Plymouth State in New Hampshire, lived a year in Las Vegas, and have since been freezing my ass off here. I'm currently a part-time graduate student in the fiction writing program at the University of New Hampshire. For more information, read my books. They reveal a lot.
My work has been published by some of the following print journals, zines and organizations: Nerve Cowboy, Staplegun, The Black Bear Review, Way Station Magazine, Heeltap, The Owen Wister Review, Angelflesh, The Chiron Review, Unwound, Iodine, Poesy, Art:Mag, Blind Man's Rainbow, The Silt Reader, Heeltap, Gros Textes(Belgium), The Brobdingnagian Times(Ireland), Main Street Rag, Controlled Burn, Anthills, The Dublin Quarterly (Ireland) and Bottle 3.
Places To find my work on-line:http://www.sniffylinings.com/
http://www.thundersandwich.com/
http://www.the-hold.com/
www.openwidemagazine.co.uk/
http://www.myfavoritebullet.com/
http://www.remarkpoetry.net/
http://www.dublinquartlerly.com/

Jan 2 2007: 5PM My guest will be Somerville Poet Bert Stern:


Bert Stern was born in Buffalo, New York in 1930. He was educated at the University of Buffalo, Columbia,and at Indiana University, where he earned his Ph.D. in English.
Stern taught for forty years at Wabash College, where he is now Milligan Professor of English, Emeritus. He also taught from 1965-67 at the University of Thessaloniki and from 1984-85 at Peking University. He presently teaches in "Changing Life Through Literature," a program for men and women on probation.

His poems have been published in New Letters, The American Poetry Review, Indiana Review, Poetry, Spoon River Poetry Review, among others, and in a number of anthologies. His chapbook, Silk/The Ragpicker's Grandson, was published by Red Dust in 1998. His essays and reviews have appeared in Sewanee Review, Southern Review, Modern Language Review, The New Republic, Southern Review, Columbia Teachers’ College Record, Adirondack Life, and in a number of anthologies. His critical study, Wallace Stevens: Art of Uncertainty, was published by the University of Michigan Press in 1965

My guest Dec. 5 5PM will be Richard Wollman:

Evidence of Things Seen. Richard Wollman. ( The Sheep Meadow Press POBOX 1345 Riverdale-on-Hudson NY 10471)

Simmons College literature professor Richard Wollman in his new poetry collection: “Evidence Of Things Seen” writes of shucking clams, of Lester Young in a ruminating Paris, of a church that reflects the images of subverted and converted Jews, and he does it with elegiac and evocative language. In his poem “Pressure” Wollman describes his inept attempts to shuck clams. Here is a portrait of a poet who is just as shucked as his crustacean charges:

“but there was no remedy for dull knife slips in the flesh of my hand beneath the thumb where I’d slice myself open like an unprotected clam.I t was ruining my hands.The boss knew I didn’t have to do this for my living and waited for me to quit, baited me, making me stand on the bar to clean the grease…No one ever poured a drink until I dragged myself back there, the only one who could no longer smell the liquor of the fish all over us.”

I have always been a fan of the “ Pres” and “Lady Day,”. In “Lester Young in Paris” we have a portrait of the “Pres” (Young), the famous jazz saxophonist, as deadens his pain, and his ghosts with booze and his art. In some respects the poem reads like a haunting, late night jazz composition:

“In the studio he wore felt slippers. It was a way to live,deaden the noise of fists,the reedy wheeze of his breath stolen one night in a white barracks. And the squawk of hospital doors up north. In curved brass, pain takes the shape of song, the sense variously drawn out. What can be made of the low sounds of men? He drank deep until he finally drowned them.”

Recommended.

My Guest Nov 14 at 5PM will be poet Richard Moore:


Of Richard Moore's ten published volumes of poetry, one was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize and another was a T. S. Eliot Prize finalist. He is also the author of a novel, The Investigator (Story Line Press, 1991), a collection of essays, The Rule That Liberates (University of South Dakota Press, 1994), and translations of Plautus' Captivi (in the Johns Hopkins University Complete Roman Drama in Translation series, 1995) and Euripedes' Hippolytus (in the Penn Greek Drama Series, U. of Pennsylvania, 1998). Moore's most recent poetry books include The Mouse Whole: An Epic (Negative Capability Press, 1996) and Pygmies and Pyramids (Orchises Press, 1998). His newest collection of poems, The Naked Scarecrow, was published by Truman State University Press, New Odyssey Editions, in the spring of 2000. He is listed in Who's Who In America, and articles on his work have appeared in The Dictionary Of Literary Biography and numerous newspapers and journals. His fiction, essays, and more than 500 of his poems, have been published in a great variety of magazines, including The New Yorker, Atlantic, Harper's, Poetry, The American Poetry Review, and The Nation. He has also published translations of poetry in German, French, and Italian. He gives frequent readings, lectures and dramatic performances in Boston, Washington, and other cities.

My Guest Oct 17 2006 5PM will be author and pilot Patrick Smith:


The 5X5 Interview: Patrick Smith, Ask The Pilot
Patrick Smith is sure one doggone aviator extraordinaire. In his "Ask the Pilot" column for Salon.com, he dispels common airline myths, explains the beauty of certain flight patterns, and tries to keep terrorist hysteria to a minimum. That's all well and good, but what about the mile-high club and how getting bumped to first-class simply ruins you for flying with the peons in steerage ever again? We asked the pilot these questions and more, and miraculously he answered without demanding security strip search us first.

Age: 38
Occupation: Patrick Smith is an erstwhile airline pilot and author of a popular weekly air travel column at Salon.com and a book author. Location: Somerville, Massachusetts, just outside Boston

1. The fan mail from your column: I bet you receive an inordinate amount from people wanting to discuss the "mile-high club." What would you like to say here to end this conversation once and for all (well, at least for me)?
That it's not worth the effort? Granted this is one of those for-the-sake-of-it thrills, but the novelty only goes so far. I mean, what could be a more erotic setting than the closet-sized lavatory of a jetliner, wedged between a chemical toilet and a filthy, napkin-clogged waste receptacle? But hey, knock yourself out.
That said, some airlines are installing lower-deck sleeping suites for premium class passengers. Those on Virgin Atlantic, I remember reading, will have full double beds and total privacy.
As for me I'll admit nothing, but, not for any reason, I'd like you to imagine three things: (1) A Swedish exchange student. (2) a four-seat Piper Cherokee (with no autopilot). (3) a lazy half-hour above the marshes and estuaries of Newburyport, Massachusetts.
2. Salon is rightfully proud of its independent-press status. Is it an ethical choice of yours to work for them or could you just as easily see yourself in an office in the towers of Conde Nast?
It's less a choice than an accidental fit. I'm a pretty liberal guy, politically, which lends itself nicely to Salon's leanings. Not sure how that happened; I grew up in a blue collar suburb and went to a Catholic high school. But during the mid-1980s, in my late teens, when most would-be pilots were enlisting for ROTC, I was hanging out in the hardcore punk rock scene, which, if you remember, was virulently leftist and anti-Reagan. Most of my ideological sensibilities probably owe to that period -- getting out of the suburbs and into the city.
But finding a home at Salon wasn't by design. I certainly don't *choose* to use credit cards to pay my rent, and a mainstream gig could make life a lot more comfortable.
I think (hope) Salon appreciates my ability to pull in readers from across the spectrum, at least when I stick to aviation's more nuts-and-bolts issues. You'd be surprised, though, how often ideology makes its way into a topic. As a general subject, air travel is seemingly apolitical -- at least the way others have covered it -- but there have been loads of partisan controversies: debates over security, racial profiling of passengers, cockpit guns and so forth. Some of my writing gets fairly provocative. Last winter, you might recall, a Christian pilot found himself in hot water after he evangelized to a planeload of people over the PA. So I went and looked at the way airlines around the world mix religion and flying. Those were two of my favorite columns.
3. I was once bumped up to first-class for a Virgin flight to the U.K. and I really don't know if I can fly in lesser accommodations again. The other half really does live quite a lot better. Can you dispel any of the wonderful feelings that remain from that flight, or is it really as good as it seemed for that one blissful trip?
You're screwed. There's no going back. It's funny though, your use of the phrase, "the other half." I used to have a girlfriend who was repulsed by the idea of separate classes on airplanes. Obviously she never had a sleeper seat on a 14-hour nonstop.
It's ironic, because while we whine about the worsening discomforts of economy class, things have never been more luxurious up front. (A sign of impending class warfare, my old friend would probably say.) Enclosed sleeper suites, 14-inch personal video screens, even a turndown service.
Now, don't confuse domestic first class with international. There's a world of difference, and carriers tailor their service to specific routes. Neither should you confuse most U.S. airlines with those overseas. The Asian and European carriers especially, have perfected the art of long-haul comfort. As I write in my book, the service levels aboard U.S. airlines aren't quite the laughing stock of the world, but it's something like that or well on its way. Singapore Airlines, perennial passenger service champ, hands out designer pajamas for each leg of your flight.
Even -- or especially -- in coach, the more prestigious foreign lines put U.S. standards to shame. I recently flew from Hong Kong to Bangkok aboard Emirates, the carrier of Dubai (United Arab Emirates), and it was fantastic. We had six-page menus, adjustable foot and head rests, personal videos, a crew that spoke 12 languages. In economy.
4. Columnists, whether they're sports or aviation columnists, usually have a much more well-rounded education/interest than just their column subject. How much of your other interests do you manage to slip into your column?
Whether I'm more cerebral or, as you say, "well-rounded" than other pilots is debatable, but it's always fun to venture off-topic, just to see who notices whatever reference you've chosen to slide in. Song lyrics, favorite authors or artists, and such. I love to travel, having been to fifty or so countries, and a few of my articles have veered almost into full-blown travelogues.
That's part of my schtick, though: I don't write about planes, I write about air travel. As a kid, it wasn't only flying, in and of itself, that infatuated me; rather the opportunities it presented. Aerobatics and fighter planes bored me, but I could spend hours studying the routes and timetables of the airlines. We've come to see flying as little more than an inconvenient means to an end, and I'm trying to reattach it to the greater realms of geography and culture -- not incidental to the journey, but part of it. In 2004 you can step aboard a plane in New York and fly nonstop to fucking Singapore! If that can't amaze and impress you, something's wrong.
5. How about word association? I say, "People who buy the dirty magazines at the airport newsstands are scary individuals." You say . . .
Only if they read them on board. Which brings up a possible and disturbing variation of the Mile High Club, above.

An adaptation of the columns, "Ask the Pilot," was recently published by Riverhead books. An index of Patrick's online articles can be viewed here. For more information on his book, check out Ask The Pilot.

My guest Oct 3 2006 5PM:
In Blind Spot, acclaimed local poet Eisenberg wrestles with the effort to break with the perceptions and behaviors dictated by one’s inherited place on the planet. The book includes a section of poems about the many hatreds of Eisenberg’s grandmother, poems which helped Susan to understand the impact of the truth her grandmother always hid about herself—that she was a refugee from the pogroms of Russia.

Co-sponsored by the Jewish Women’s Archive.

About Susan Eisenberg:Raised in a three-generation household in Cleveland, Susan Eisenberg lives in Boston. She is the author of the poetry book, Pioneering (1998), and the nonfiction book, We’ll Call You If We Need You: Experiences of Women Working Construction (1998), which was selected as a New York Times Book Review Notable Book and optioned by MGM for a feature film. Licensed as a master electrician, she helped shape the cultural expression and analytical thinking of the tradeswomen’s movement nationally and internationally. Currently she is developing Permanent Care, a photo-based exploration of the relationship of the chronically ill to medication. She travels widely as a poet and lecturer; and teaches at the University of Massachusetts Boston.

My guest Sept 12 at 5PM will be poet Cheryl Perreault

Hopkinton poet plays as ‘Artist for Alzheimer’s’

Hopkinton resident and poet Cheryl Perreault's recently performed for "Artists for Alzheimer’s," a non-profit organization that brings together volunteer artists and people with Alzheimer’s and related forms of dementia.

Perreault’s performance was at Hearthstone, an assisted living residence for people with Alzheimer’s disease, located at 50 West Main Street in Hopkinton.
Perreault read from many of her works, while accompanied on guitar by longtime collaborator Steve Rapson.

The spoken words of Perreault’s poetry, along with the melodies provided by Rapson, helped create a strong emotional connection with the audience. Perreault and Rapson introduced many works from their CD, entitled "On Ants, Sandwiches and The Meaning of It All." Carol Cahill of Hearthstone, who helped coordinate the event, had much praise for the performance. "This performance was a truly uplifting experience for everyone involved," said Cahill. "The responses and reactions by those in attendance was something to behold. Tears came to my eyes on more than one occasion."

Perreault and Rapson were presented with an award at the conclusion of their performance, which recognized their contribution to enhancing the cultural life of people living with Alzheimer’s disease. For more information on the artistry of Cheryl Perreault, and to learn about her CD, she has a website at http://www.CherylPerreault.com. For more information on "Artists for Alzheimer’s," visit their website at www.ArtistsForAlzheimers.org.

Sept 5. 5PM My guest will be Gloria Mindock, founder of the Cervena Barva Press in Somerville, Mass.

Gloria Mindock
Between 1984-1994, I was Editor of the BOSTON LITERARY REVIEW/BluR, Co-founder of THEATRE S. and S. PRESS INC., and ran a poetry reading series called, BluR Reads. S. PRESS published a chapbook of my poems called, DOPPELGANGER, in 1992. Its poems were a text of a theatre piece of the same name performed by THEATRE S. A review by STAGES stated I took great liberties with Poe and "captured the romantic desperation of "William Wilson," a tale of self-destructive double-identity."
I have been published in numerous journals including PHOEBE, RIVER STYX, POET LORE, FIRE, and BLACKBOX with poems forthcoming in BIG HAMMER, BOGG, and UNU Revista de Cultura in Romania with translations by Flavia Cosma. I have been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and was awarded a Massachusetts Council Poetry Fellowship distributed by The Somerville Arts Council.Oh Angel, a chapbook, was published in January, 2006 and Nothing Divine Here is forthcoming.Both published by U ŠOKU ŠTAMPA publications.
For over 34 years, I have been involved in all aspects of the theatre, acting in plays, operas and musicals, writing text for original plays as well as music compositions. My favorite was writing the music for an adaptation of GILGAMESH, in which I sang 72 sections a capella.
My solo multi-media performance art pieces include, "BIG BOMB BUICKS, WHERE DID ALL THOSE BIRDS AND DOGS COME FROM?, I WISH FRANCISCO FRANCO WOULD LOVE ME, and SKIN CELLS, MAGGOTS, AND OTHER POINTS OF INTEREST."
While THEATRE S. was in existence, many grants were awarded to the theatre from The Polaroid Foundation, The Rockefeller Foundation, The Globe Foundation, New England For the Arts, Massachusetts Cultural Council, and The Somerville Arts Council.
Support ?ervená Barva Press

Aug 15 5PM My guest will be Danielle Legros Georges.


Danielle Legros Georges was born in Haiti and raised in the U.S. Her poems have appeared in numerous magazines, including The American Poetry Review,and her work is widely anthologized. Her many awards for writing include a LEF Foundation Fellowship; and a MacDowell Fellowship. Maroon is her first book-length publication. She is on the faculty at Lesley University in Cambridge, Mass.

Aug 1 5PM My guest will be Bagel Bard Scribe, Wilderness House Literary Review Poetry editor, and artist: Irene Koronas.

Irene Koronas and the SPIRITUAL POWER OF ZERO
by Lo Galluccio
Experimental poet and painter Irene Koronas based in Cambridge began creating when she was 12-years-old.
She explored language by reading and writing poetry and eventually fell in love with Octavio Paz, Cavafy and Yannos Ritsos.
Her Orthodox Greek heritage led her to be inspired by these poets as opposed to many confessional American poets.
Her latest creative exploration Project Zero, has led her to contemplate the meaning, image and representation of zero in all its many forms.
You will find paper reinforcements in some of her artwork because they are, after all, little sticky zeros. The title painting of her exhibition up at the O’Neill branch of the public library this month is titled 1 with 0=10-0_1 full circle.
Looking for zero, word combinations (o)
Wording zero’s representation, round soundVoid of biology, creator of chaos. Who belongsOpen? O differentiation from others. O only aloneAllows alone. O look you fools collapse
So broken so whole so smooth, so longSo propitious to soothe to group to blockCombinations; odd one equation annoys power;Old power oppositions. Zero uncovers
Look how wantonly, look you opposites,come, come. One, one good to twoZero zero plus two, no additionOnly zero operates somehow out of thought,subtraction. Others also born from cosmos,from reason, from axiom of you.
And Project Zero is not the first time Koronas has looked at numbers for their spiritual and artistic value. Her father made lists of numbers –pages and pages- before going to the dogtracks to bet and her Aunt was a compulsive scratch ticket gambler.
For Irene the numbers have a mystical meaning, for instance 1+ 2 = 3, is like the trinity. Her cubist paintings could compare with Eucharistic bread, broken into pieces but always whole.
Indeed her paintings --which relate to her poems like abstract correspondences-- are usually made on a grid composed of squares, which like eyes have images (or pupils) at the center.
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In the poem 12 cubes, printed below, she said, “The idea for this poem came from a painting done in a 12 cube grid. The words are not confined within the cubes but the cubes allow the images to co-exist. Unlike formalist writings and the use of a single subject; theme; I imagine the many and the varied images from the many sources. So each image compliments the other in and only in the fact that it is an image. The words paint an image. The image holds the words.”
12 cubes
everything’s wild on the way, in theway it is explained, i discover eightcubes from the 12 cubes painted. Nakedas opposed to nude, i witness yourleaps off the page, fifteen months toolate. Setting shutter speed, flexible andgetting paid for the method lovers tonein early morning. please sit, gatherliquid appropriately then clap. all sky,all video stores so red, no concept iscomplimented, it is blurry around myneck. I understand your concise cheer,red lines. Both round houses aremetaphysical, probably just adjustingwith ease with passing through. whatwill you inherit? the holes wornbackwards? dark night or day, standingby fountains fulfilling wishes? i dreamhow to button-hole memory: run staplesuntil an ostrich with no arms, a doorthat opens on explanations as conceit listens, tacks their thumbs; that’s whathappens in triangles. my brother wasthere he was orange he put himself inboxes to preserve our mothers for wesoak them in rain, in the end there by arope called victor, for grass in august islovely, sometimes an embarassment.have you transcended, thrown nerve upfrom tooth, given a ram one morechance to decode the seven purpleswamps. please, mothers, propel usthrough clouds, understanding our needto break even; hawks folding space, long corners into square houses
That poem relates to a painting in her upcoming exhibit, and is taken from a handmade chapbook called, “species.”
It’s full title comes from a definition found in a 1947 dictionary that Irene likes to use in order to find archaic meanings.
7. obsolete: specie.
{latin species seeing,appearance, likeness, aparticular sort, kind,species, from specere,to look at}
She said, “Forming a grid becomes a spiritual exercise, a discipline, a daily stance of commitment to my own definitions of what it means to be part of a species; historically I bring myself to myself each and every day. The becoming is within each square and each square represents that becoming.”
The maker of many one-of-a-kind handmade books, Irene Koronas also suggests that the musicality of her poems comes from her Orthodox Christian heritage where almost all the liturgy is sung.
“This is my history. It is as important to hear the poem as to read it,” she said.
Her watercolor paintings exhibit will be on display at the O’Neill Branch of the Public Library in Cambridge, 70 Rindge Ave., for the rest of January.
She is an exciting, experimental artist who is still dedicated to evolving

July 25 5PM My Guest will be Jean Trounstine:


"I am a professor of humanities at Middlesex Community College in Lowell Massachusetts, and I specialize in writing, literature and theatre courses. I am never bored! I became a writer because of needing to write about working in prison. I needed to tell stories of the amazing women behind bars. At Framingham Women's Prison in Massachusetts, I directed eight productions, including THE MERCHANT OF VENICE. Drawing from music history, women's history, art, literature and drama, the program eventually earned college credit and was nominated for a prestigious Schwartz Award, considered by the Mass Foundation for Humanities as the most successful project funded in 1988. It is the basis of my first book SHAKESPEARE BEHIND BARS: THE POWER OF DRAMA IN A WOMEN'S PRISON, published by St. Martin's Press, 2001. Prison work changed me, and I've written many articles about teaching offenders and been featured on The Today Show, All Things Considered-NPR, and The Connection. I co-edited an anthology of writings used in the Changing Lives Through Literature Program, published by Notre Dame Press, a program I helped to establish for women in Massachusetts (see cltl.umassd.com), where criminals are sentenced to a literature seminar and probation instead of jail. Because of that work, I also coauthored FINDING A VOICE: THE PRACTICE OF CHANGING LIVES THROUGH LITERATURE, published by the University of Michigan Press (which also recently published the paperback of SBB). My first collection of poetry, ALMOST HOME FREE, a collection of poetry about the journey of cancer -- I'm a survivor -- was published by Pecan Grove Press in 2003 and received enthusiastically.Most recently I've co-edited a book with Karen Propp, WHY I'M STILL MARRIED, published by Hudson Street Press, an imprint of Penguin, 2006. Essayists include a slew of great writers! I live more happily than not with my husband in Massachusetts. "

July 18 5PM my guest will be Chiemi:

Chiemi is a singer, songwriter and performer in the Boston-area, and welcomes you to see her perform, download her music or buy her CDs, and enjoy her work.


Chiemi was born Ingrid Chiemi Schroffner on Halloween 1970 in Honolulu. Her Japanese middle name means blessed one. Chiemi was the reigning Miss Teen of Hawaii in 1987-88. As a 'teen queen', she performed, singing and dancing for and at many charitable functions and fundraisers. In 1988, Chiemi conducted her Punahou High School graduating class of over 400 to perform a rendition in four-part harmony of her first written piece, "Steps to Find." While a soloist and member of the 150 person Boston College Chorale under the direction of the late liturgical music composer Dr. C. Alexander Peloquin, Chiemi was graced with the part of the female angel in Haydn's "The Heavens Are Telling," which she performed with the Chorale in a special audience with Pope John Paul II at the Vatican in Rome. While in graduate school, Chiemi was a soloist and member of "The Wand'ring Mistrials," an acapella singing group covering various pop tunes for charitable and graduate student events. Chiemi's musical influences are Joan Baez, Suzanne Vega and Annie Lennox. She enjoys micing at The Burren for the experienced and interesting people she has met to learn from—so much friendly talent! She thanks God for giving her a voice and sends much Aloha to her family and friends for their love and support, especially to her husband, Josh...

View the new Chiemi Montage video here.

June 13 5PM My guest will be Patricia Brodie. Brodie is a poet with a new collection out: "The American Wives Club" ( Ibbetson, 2006) Here are some comments about her work:




Patricia Brodie's poetic knife is well honed as she pares down to theessence of what it means to be mother/wife/lover/friend/careerwoman/expatriate in today's world. She skillfully carves words intowell-crafted pieces to complete a work that both genders will want to viewagain and again. ‹Ellaraine Lockie, poet, nonfiction author, educator

Patricia Brodie's poems are warm and witty with wonderful surprises for theenchanted reader. Her poems reflect a life of love, friendship and travel,of eucalyptus trees, found treasures of the sea, and the bittersweetmemories of home and family. They sing.‹Victor Howes, past president, New England Poetry Club

Patricia Brodie's poems are sophisticated, warm, sardonic. Whether you are drawn to form or free, you will find much that will please in this variedand very readable collection. Her distinctive voice will linger afteryou've finished. ‹Dorothy Stone, poet