Thursday, June 04, 2009

John Buffalo Mailer to be a featured reader at the Somerville News Writers Frestival Nov. 2009




Somerville, Mass.

(Somerville, Mass.)

Timothy Gager co-founder of the Somerville News Writers Festival announced that John Buffalo Mailer, son of the late Norman Mailer, will be a reader at the Somerville News Writers Festival this November. Earlier this month Gager announced that Rick Moody will be the featured reader. Doug Holder, co-founder, has selected Frank Bidart, Sam Cornish, Tino Villanueva, Richard Hoffman and Tam Lin Neville as the featured poets. Bidart will be the recipient of the Ibbetson Street Press Lifetime Achievement award.

***********************************************************************************

John Buffalo Mailer (born April 16, 1978) is an author, playwright and journalist. He is the youngest child of American novelist Norman Mailer. Mailer is a graduate of Wesleyan University. He has written several screenplays and is a freelance journalist. In 2005 he co-wrote The Big Empty with his father.

Mailer was a founding member of Back House Productions, a theater production company in New York. He was also previously the editor of High Times, a magazine which advocates the legalization of cannabis.

Before graduating from Wesleyan University with a BA in Theater, John Buffalo Mailer published his first novella, Hello Herman, in The Reading Room, vol. 1, Great Marsh Press. The story centered around a sixteen year old mass murderer from a small suburban town in Iowa, and the cocky young journalist, trying to run from his own dark past, who is hired to interview him.

After graduating, John founded Back House Productions in New York City with three other Wesleyan grads. Within one year Back House became the resident theater company of The Drama Bookshop's Arthur Seelan Theater. In 2001, John's first play, an adaptation of Hello Herman, had its New York Premiere at the Grove Street Playhouse.

2003, he took a hiatus from Back House and theater in general to accept the position of Executive Editor for the infamous High Times magazine. Hired by Richard Stratton to help re-launch the magazine as an independent, outlaw version of Vanity Faire, Stratton, Mailer, and Annie Nocenti, the Editor, made national headlines with the stories they published. While there, John became active in the protest movement centering around the Republican National Convention. In addition to the "High Times Activist's Guide to the RNC", he also interviewed his father for New York Magazine, on the possible dangers and benefits of the protest.

His second play, Crazy Eyes, recently had its World Premiere in Athens, Greece, in March 2005. Crazy Eyes, which takes place in October 2001, in Park Slope, Brooklyn, centers on an actor, a day trader, an AIDS researcher, a bag of white powder,and a Palestinian American who owns the 99 cent store.

John is a member of The Dramatists' Guild Actor's Equity Association, and The Playwright/Director's Group of The Actors Studio. He has lectured at the University of Notre Dame, Wesleyan, and the University of Athens. He is also the American Cultural Dramaturge for Israeli actress Meital Dohan's one woman show, Bath Party. In addition to HeIlo Herman and Crazy Eyes, he has written several screenplays, one short play, and freelanced for Playboy, New York, Stop Smiling, and Lid Magazines.

John is the youngest child of Norman Mailer, with wife Norris Church Mailer, and was selected as one of People Magazine's sexiest men alive in 2002.

"The Paris of New England: Interviews with Poets and Writers" Reviewed in New Pages




I am glad to see my book of interviews " From the Paris of New England: Interviews with Poets and Writers" got a pretty decent review on New Pages, a well-respected literary site for the independent press. Also glad that my fellow Bagel Bard and co-founder of The Somerville News Writers Festival Timothy Gager is listed as a literary luminary, as well as Bagel Bards: Miriam Levine, Afaa Michael Weaver, and Ibbetson poet Marc Widershien "The Life of All Worlds" ( Ibbetson Street Press 2001) I want to thanks Steve Glines for his excellent design work and for putting this book together. I included some excerpts:



From the Paris of New England
Interviews with Poets and Writers
Nonfiction by Doug Holder

Ibbetson Street Press, January 2009

Paperback: 133pp; $18.50

Review by Jeanne Lesinski

At a time when many newspapers – if not going out of business altogether – have cut arts coverage, it’s reassuring to see that poet Douglas Holder works as the arts editor for The Somerville News, in Somerville, Massachusetts, a city on the outskirts of Boston and Cambridge. From the Paris of New England is a collection of Holder’s “Off the Shelf” column interviews and Somerville Community Access television show “Poet to Poet: Writer to Writer” interviews with literary figures, many of whom live in this city. The literary luminaries in this volume include Martha Collins, Mark Doty, Timothy Gager, Miriam Levine, Dick Lourie, Afaa Michael Weaver, Marc Widershien, and twenty-two others.

Readers will likely find something of interest among the varied genres and experiences represented here, especially because Holder knows how to ask the important questions. He often inquires about inspiration, pivotal life experiences, themes, accessibility, talent, and craft. For example, when plied about his writing habits, Marc Widershien answered, “I wrote between the lines of my existence,” and about advice to novice poets, “Think of everything you do as grist. Talent is vital, but study, experiment, self-discovery through art are indispensable.” Other writers were equally forthcoming on subjects important to them...


To order this and other Ibbetson titles go to http://lulu.com/ibbetsonpress

Wednesday, June 03, 2009

Literature and the Arts in the Transitional Living Center at McLean Hospital




Literature and the Arts in the Transitional Living Center at McLean Hospital

By Doug Holder


Some years ago Alex Beam, The Boston Globe columnist came to my then home on Ibbetson Street in Somerville, Mass., to interview me about the role of poets and poetry at McLean Hospital. Beam was doing research on his book about the history of McLean: Gracefully Insane: Life and Death Inside America's Premier Mental Hospital.
McLean Hospital has a rich literary past and has been declared a national literary landmark. Poets Sylvia Plath, Anne Sexton, Robert Lowell, John Berryman, and others had “residencies” at the hospital. Anne Sexton ran her famed poetry groups here and was briefly hospitalized at McLean shortly before her death by suicide. I had the privilege to interview Lois Ames, the social worker for Sylvia Plath and Sexton, and the author of the introduction to Plath’s novel “The Bell Jar” that was set on these grounds.

For 20 years I worked on the inpatient units of McLean Hospital as a mental health worker. And since I am a poet, I made of point of running poetry groups for patients who resided on the units. I worked with an eclectic group of clients on several units. I helped them with their poems, conducted informal readings and even publishing some of their work in the now defunct literary journal “The Boston Poet.”

When I took a new position at the Transitional Living Center at Waverly House at McLean I hoped to continue the literary tradition that I established, and that was inherent at the hospital. The Transitional Living Care Center at McLean, according to its website, is a “… private pay program designed for men and women, age 18, and older, who are involved in psychiatric treatment and require a staff supported setting. For many persons with psychiatric illness, brief hospital stays alone are not sufficient to full recovery and return to normal living. The Transitional Living Center provides a setting for comprehensive treatment, and support of family members by providing the intensive assistance that recovering patients require.”

Shortly after I was hired by Robin Weiss, the program director, Richard Wilhelm, a friend of mine and the arts editor for my small literary press “Ibbetson Street” came aboard. Richard is an artist and a poet, and another staff member at that time Jennifer Matthews was a vocalist and a poet, so it was like a writer’s retreat on the campus of the hospital.


On the inpatient unit you more or less had a captive audience. The patients had to have privileges to leave the unit, so a poetry group in the evening could be a welcomed change from the usual didactic groups in the day. At Waverly House it is vastly different. The house is loosely structured, and the clients for the most part can come and go as they please. I focused my efforts on clients who expressed strong interests in the arts and literature. Some clients who studied writing in college brought whole collections of their poetry to the house. Often Richard and I would sit down with folks and workshop their poems and some even saw their work appear in my literary column in The Somerville News.

Other clients expressed interest in literary journalism, and in this regard I was able to help as well. For many years I have been the arts/editor for The Somerville News, and I have frequently gotten internships for students, friends, etc… I can remember one client, a law school dropout, who seemed to have lost direction. He got an internship at the paper, secured a paid editorship, and then went on to the Boston Herald organization. Another client got her first clippings at the paper, which made her professional journalist father beam with pride.

I have also hooked up clients with literary internships, with magazines like “the new renaissance,” as well as other publications. One client was studying for his PhD in Psychology but also had a strong interest in mystery and science fiction writing. I introduced him to the world of little magazines and online publishing and he racked up an impressive number of publication credits in a short time. We even appeared in the same online journal: his story, my poem.

I also have an affiliation with a local art gallery in Cambridge, “The Out of the Blue Art Gallery.” A number of clients have held volunteer jobs there, helping with publicity, with sales, and other duties .One recent client volunteered at the gallery and made a connection with an organizer at a local film festival. She wound up getting valuable experience writing press releases for the festival.

I find that patients that are involved in the arts have a greater sense of self-esteem, and it helps them get involved with the community, the larger world, hopefully realizing the mission statement of our program, namely transitioning clients back into the community for a fruitful and productive life.

Where the Mountain Meets the Moon by Grace Lin




Where The Mountain Meets The Moon
By Grace Lin





The book "Where The Mountain Meets The Moon," by Grace Lin is a timeless story of a young girl (Minli) who leaves home in hopes of improving her family’s fortune. The reader joins Minli on this quest for future happiness, and is taken on an adventure that interweaves Chinese folklore and mythical creatures, while teaching lessons on tolerance, compassion, and patience.

Although the story focuses on the Chinese culture, it is easily for people of all cultures to relate to. The author’s beautiful illustrations combined with her wonderful story telling style make this a “page turner” for young and old alike.


------Robin Weiss.

*Robin Weiss is a photographer and program director at McLean Hospital. Her photographic work graced Ibbetson 23. This is her first review on the Boston Area Small Press and Poetry Scene.

Tuesday, June 02, 2009

"Anthem" by C.L. Bledsoe

“Anthem”
C. L. Bledsoe
Cervena Barva Press
www.cervenabarvaress.com
$15.00

Review by Renee Schwiesow

Beneath the madcap stitch Bledsoe takes us on from hopeful to sardonic there is a thread that unravels to offer us more as each month poem within “Anthem” reveals its season. I was drawn into his unique observations with “Awakening,” an appropriately titled opening work that leads us toward “January.”

This is the month of lying
to ourselves
on couches
Life is waiting
for the bone toes to clip-clip through the door
find us sprawled about the business
of next

Just before “February” he pulls me into the life of a school janitor who makes me ask myself if Schneider could, just possibly, have had an internal depth that we were unaware of during our viewings of One Day at a Time.

And as March, “the Wednesday of months” rolls by, television makes its appearance on the page in the work, “Growing Pains in Syndication.” I was grinning by the time I read “Dr. Seaver, you never came for me,” and tearing up with laughter when reading the line, “Mike, you bastard, I trusted you,” which led to

Sat through Left Behind, for your
special message at the end, and it was all about the marketing.

I have to admit that by the time I reached,

And Maggie, what is there to say
between the two of us? Is your hair even blond?

I was still rollicking, holding onto “Mike, you bastard, I trusted you,” when I was slammed with, “Your eyes, empty and waiting.” And I recollected myself to absorb the impact of the entirety of the work.

While Bledsoe has been published in over 200 journals and anthologies, “Anthem,” published by Cervena Barva Press, is his first full-length collection. He is a three-time Pushcart nominee and his poetic resume is well expanded upon with works such as the title work

slough it off like skin. . .

find a place or make it in yourself
they’ll never touch
wrap it in lead fire make it hot
to touch hate can motivate
but it burns out like a bad light bulb
and must be replaced. . .

Behind the frogs and death and absinthe squirrels, beneath a how-to on what to do with locked doors, Bledsoe’s words jar us from January’s couch, beg us to read between his lines before we become the aging starlet of December’s grey light. They beg us to sing from his Anthem

. . .if it helps
hot showers loosen muscles
cold showers loosen hate

C. L. Bledsoe
Cervena Barva Press
www.cervenabarvaress.com
$15.00

Beneath the madcap stitch Bledsoe takes us on from hopeful to sardonic there is a thread that unravels to offer us more as each month poem within “Anthem” reveals its season. I was drawn into his unique observations with “Awakening,” an appropriately titled opening work that leads us toward “January.”

This is the month of lying
to ourselves
on couches
Life is waiting
for the bone toes to clip-clip through the door
find us sprawled about the business
of next

Just before “February” he pulls me into the life of a school janitor who makes me ask myself if Schneider could, just possibly, have had an internal depth that we were unaware of during our viewings of One Day at a Time.

And as March, “the Wednesday of months” rolls by, television makes its appearance on the page in the work, “Growing Pains in Syndication.” I was grinning by the time I read “Dr. Seaver, you never came for me,” and tearing up with laughter when reading the line, “Mike, you bastard, I trusted you,” which led to

Sat through Left Behind, for your
special message at the end, and it was all about the marketing.

I have to admit that by the time I reached,

And Maggie, what is there to say
between the two of us? Is your hair even blond?

I was still rollicking, holding onto “Mike, you bastard, I trusted you,” when I was slammed with, “Your eyes, empty and waiting.” And I recollected myself to absorb the impact of the entirety of the work.

While Bledsoe has been published in over 200 journals and anthologies, “Anthem,” published by Cervena Barva Press, is his first full-length collection. He is a three-time Pushcart nominee and his poetic resume is well expanded upon with works such as the title work

slough it off like skin. . .

find a place or make it in yourself
they’ll never touch
wrap it in lead fire make it hot
to touch hate can motivate
but it burns out like a bad light bulb
and must be replaced. . .

Behind the frogs and death and absinthe squirrels, beneath a how-to on what to do with locked doors, Bledsoe’s words jar us from January’s couch, beg us to read between his lines before we become the aging starlet of December’s grey light. They beg us to sing from his Anthem

. . .if it helps
hot showers loosen muscles
cold showers loosen hate

Sunday, May 31, 2009

These Poems are not Pink Clouds by Timothy Gager




These Poems Are Not Pink Clouds
by Timothy Gager
http://timothygager.com
Propaganda Press, $7.00
alt-current.com
alt.current@gmail.com





A review by Mignon Ariel King





It's finally truly Spring. The biting Atlantic breeze has subsided, and buds pop open while birds sing. But don't get too depressed if you're both a curmudgeon and a secret romantic who longs to crack open a satisfying poetry collection. "These Poems Are Not Pink Clouds" by Timothy Gager is the cure for Spring fever. In "Harvard Square":


boys sit high on the wall
laughing, to girls
below speaking up
in some open aired
mating ritual


The narrator remembers another time, when he was 16, watching his girl try on clothes "and a beaded dress/made you more/beautiful than/a haunted gypsy/made me kiss you...." The book is an interesting mix of music, wistful lust, and a philosophy that casually mentions how it all might float away even if we try not to blink, for "...no one/really sees the sun/by staring... (from "bull"). The narrator never quite stares at anything; he remembers, reflects on recent choices and interactions as well as those of the past.


Bordering on a mid-life complaint that the good ol' days of youth will never come again, the narrator swerves at the last minute to admit: "There were no cheerleaders/to kiss at Mooney's house/only bad habits..." (from "out with the cool kids"). There are a lot of surprise endings here, but nothing too crafty. The revelations seem natural, shaped by a voice that refuses to kid itself or the reader. The expert writing style is not bogged down by the poet being overly pleased with his own clever devices. There is plenty of humor, but nothing is cute about the collection other than its pocket size.


In "Howdy from Ohio" a "man breaks into a smile/which is fighting a duel with my wince...." The poem analyzes regional cultural differences, the Boston-dwelling narrator trying to stay in his emotional cocoon when feeling virtually assaulted by the Ohio man's habit of greeting total strangers with a smile and hand pump. Yet the crabby narrator has a soft spot for women. "The Things I'd Say" is a love poem so completely lovely that it's impossible to pick out a few memorable passages to quote. Then, a slight mood shift reveals "How Runs Are Scored" in a sorta love poem that manages to compare sex to baseball in a giggle-producing manner that does not offend the female reader. No small feat.


"$149.99 Per Week" is a dismal reference to a dismal hotel room from the narrator's childhood. It's important to the collection as a whole in that suddenly the reader notices the abundance of travel references here, and rarely are they positive. The totally unsentimental "I Heart NY" describes one rather unpleasant stay in New York in which "a man sneezes into a rack of clothes/on the sidewalk...." The literary-history-minded reader might get excited at the title "Summer Job, Concord Ma.," but don't. Is the Narrator shelving books? No. Working the bait shop near Walden Pond? No such luck. The hapless college kid is peeling onions and dumping trash at a fast fish shack in the middle of nowhere! Don't worry, though, things get worse in this narrator's journeys.


In my personal favorite of the collection, "Sweet, cold Chicago" is dirty, drizzly, lonely, hostile. The fantasy of going wherever one pleases, being left entirely alone, and sleeping in a car is shattered by this miserable narration. It's not the most cynical poem in the bunch, however. That honor goes to the title poem, which sums up the mood of much of the collection: disgruntled yet curiously hopeful. "My Poems are Not Like the Pink Clouds of Cardiff" also notes, "Water is not really blue." If you like your poetry both sweet and sour, this one's for you.

Dreaming in Black and White: Wisconsin Noir and the Justified Poem

Wisconsin’s First Form

Dreaming in Black and White:
Wisconsin Noir and the Justified Poem


By Michael Kriesel

Crossover poems are increasingly popular in Wisconsin’s thriving poetry community: a member of my online writing group is churning out a series of great science fiction poems, pithy vehicles for social comment; my own manuscript of occult-themed verse is making the rounds of the book contests; and at a recent writing conference a Milwaukee poet handed me his latest chapbook, Misadventures of the Paisley Cowboy.
Then there’s the hard-boiled crime genre being worked by Madison area poet John Lehman, who recently published a book of verse noir—Acting Lessons, Parallel Press, 2008. Filled with murky mazes and existential ambushes, the work is in a short form devised by Lehman a few years ago, called the Wisconsin justified poem.
Looking like cubes of newspaper column, the poems are defined not just by their form, but also by a noir-ish feel and tone. They usually explore Wisconsin topics, are often rural, and at heart “inspired” by Wisconsin winters.
Here’s a taste, from Closed Until Spring:

This is the season of Ed Gein
and Jeffrey Dahmer. Sleep days,
fish through ice, pry firewood
from frozen mounds of snow.
Buy wine at the gas station. Court
darkness. Speak to no one. This
is winter in Wisconsin. Write
horror stories. Embrace the cold.

John Lehman, Acting Lessons

“They give the impression of a rigid form,” Lehman explains, “so that the language within the poem can be casual and conversational…more Midwest, and yes, more Wisconsin. They resemble their larger cousin, the prose poem.”


Magic Lunch Box

If you’re unfamiliar with prose poems, here’s a quote by Louis Jenkins, an acknowledged master of the form:
“Think of the prose poem as a box, perhaps the lunch box dad brought home from work at night. What’s inside? Some waxed paper, a banana peel, and half a peanut butter-jelly sandwich. Not so much, a hint of how the day has gone perhaps, but magic for having made a mysterious journey and returned…the prose poem is a formal poem because of its limits. The box is made for travel, quick and light. Think of the prose rectangle as a small suitcase. One must pack carefully, only the essentials, too much and the reader won’t get off the ground. Too much and the poem becomes a story, a novel, an essay or worse…the trick in writing a prose poem is discovering how much is enough and how much is too much.” (Nice Fish: New & Selected Prose Poems, Holy Cow! Press 1995.)
The prose poem has a dual nature, as its name implies. “On the one hand, there’s the lyric’s wish to make the time stop around an image, and on the other hand, one wants to tell a little story,” comments Charles Simic, a former U.S. Poet Laureate. “It must dazzle, and it must also have a lightness of touch. I regard the comic spirit as its true Muse.” (The Poetry of Village Idiots, Verse 13, no. 1, 1996)


The God Of Flow

All of the above holds true for the Wisconsin justified poem. But John Lehman cites an additional element—flow. It’s what gives poetry its real dynamic, claimed Robert Frost.
“Most poets break lines by phrases or concepts,” says Lehman, “but Frost carries us with his flow from one line to the next, then stops us in our tracks. ‘His head carved out of granite O, / His hair a wayward drift of snow, / He worshipped the great God of Flow / By holding on and letting go.’ (These are lines about Frost by Robert Francis.)
“Frost believed we further enhance the dynamics of the poem’s flow by stretching the spoken sentence over the line of poetry,” Lehman explains. “Frost’s famous narrative poem The Death Of The Hired Man is a classic example.”


Pulled Around The Corner

The Wisconsin justified poem, unlike the standard prose poem, pays attention to line breaks and their relationship to sentences. It pulls the reader around the corner and only stops movement when the end of a line corresponds with the end of a sentence. In addition, the lines seldom end with prepositions or articles, but with nouns, adverbs and verbs.
As forms go, it’s a soft one. The rules are few and fluid: conversational style, noir tone and Wisconsin topic. Keep it short and justify the text.
“I think its informality seems particularly suited to the voice of a Wisconsin narrator who might romanticize a little more if the winters weren’t so long and so dark,” muses Lehman. “The mutterings of someone in a farmhouse kitchen alone, late at night listening to the wind.”


Film Noir’s Influence

Film noir’s a big influence on the poems. “In a way the noir films were not realistic,” observes Lehman, “but a kind of theatrical romanticizing of the forties. People enjoyed them partially because they were escapist.”
That escapism sometimes bleeds into a comic surrealism, as in The Nut Bread Murders:

A friend sends a loaf of nut bread that’s dense
as a kiln-dried brick. I tell my wife it reminds me
of something my first wife would bake. Is this
a mistake? No, because upon hearing it she
makes me a fluffy coffee cake with a brown-sugar
and chocolate-chip topping, and I deduce there
may be a lesson about women here (how one
can be played against another). So I call my
first wife who asks what the hell I want. Hmmm.
Later, I decide to put her in a novel I’m plotting
as a character out to poison everyone with her
goddamn nut bread while I, the hero, am saved by
a stripper named Brown Sugah. Writing comes fast.
It’s February in Wisconsin and I am going nuts.

John Lehman, Acting Lessons


Giving It A Try

As a poet who’s muttered his way through his share of Wisconsin winters, the first time I saw the form it intrigued me enough to try it. Eventually I had a short manuscript that won a nationwide book contest, demonstrating the form’s appeal even to non-cheese heads (though the judges were fellow Midwesterners, over in Indiana).
Here’s the title poem from that collection:

Soul Noir
I just walk out of the Neon Toad
when this big guy grabs my shirt,
spins me around like a carnival
ride and slams me up against the
bricks. All I see is cartoon stars
but his voice cuts right through.
“Lie to yourself on your own time,
punk.” Then I’m on the sidewalk
sitting up and no one’s there. It
was my conscience. Bastard finds
me anywhere.

Michael Kriesel, Soul Noir

Soon after I started writing in this form / genre, I came to understand that noir’s romanticism also can be viewed as starkly stripped-down realism. Its flavor is similar to the oddball existentialism running through Wisconsin’s landscape like a vein of smoky quartz. Maybe that’s why the two combine so well. I offer another of my own examples:



Wisconsin Noir
Waiting for the sheriff, Ed Gein forks
apple pie in Plainfield’s only diner.
Barns slump like slaughterhouse cows.
At the crystalline heart of the state, Rib
Mountain oscillates: quartz monadnock
tinting our dreams through winter nights.
In the end, spring arrives, green and gold.
The Packers win the Super Bowl.

Michael Kriesel, Soul Noir


Transcending Landscape

The Wisconsin justified poem transcends regionalism by combining a specific form with a specific tone. The form’s uniquely suited to the tone of the material expressed. But it’s the tone most of all that gives the poems their distinct character—not unlike the dialogue in noir films.
These poems work the way haiku and watercolor do to capture the mood of a place, expressing the way our lives resonate with our state and sometimes finding In the Middle of Nothing, Greatness:

I pass a sign on Highway 26 that states
Juneau is 5 miles away, Oshkosh 53.
I saw the same sign just ten minutes ago,
but listen, when I check my gas gauge
(then, it had been a little below a quarter)
now, I swear, it shows half full. And there,
around a curve, against the steel November
sky, in a field of cornstalks far as a crow can
see—are you ready—rises an assemblage
of grain elevators more magnificent than
the Cathedral at Reims.

John Lehman, Acting Lessons

In Sprecher’s Tavern Lehman observes: “Living in Wisconsin is a lot like the tavern that sells rifles and beer. It doesn’t make much sense but it feels right when you’re there.”
That’s how these poems work. But how well do they work? Does it feel right? That’s the final test…and something only poets and readers and time can decide. The best test of any form is whether the force it contains could manifest as well in any other shape.
Here’s hoping more Wisconsin poets add to this new genre—a form and tone unique to where we live.



Acting Lessons
By John Lehman
2008; 38pp; chapbook;
Parallel Press, University of Wisconsin-Madison
728 State St., Madison, WI 53706. $10.
ISBN 978-1-934795-04-0

Shorts: 101 Brief Poems of Wonder and Surprise
By John Lehman
2005; 96pp, paper;
Zelda Wilde Publishing
315 Water Street, Cambridge, WI 53523. $11.95
ISBN 978-0-9741728-2-8

Soul Noir
By Michael Kriesel
2008; 24pp; chapbook;
Platonic 3Way Press
POB 844, Warsaw, IN 46581. $5.

I’d like to thank Carroll University Poetry Professor B.J. Best
for his help in preparing this article.

JULIA CARLSON’S "DRIFT": BOOK REVIEW

JULIA CARLSON’S DRIFT: BOOK REVIEW
by Linda M. Fischer


Julia Carlson has few illusions about the “drifting slumbering lives” we lead—at best
a tenuous existence. Her thematic concerns are mortality and consequent loss, and the concomitant search for meaning or redemption. In her chapbook Drift she explores lives that have touched hers—a widower whose anguish over the loss of his wife is compounded by guilt, the spectacle of a neighbor’s house being burned to the ground upon his death, an aged Comanche in South Dakota reflecting on the tribal life obliterated within his living memory, her boyfriend’s grandfather leaving a lifetime of memories behind in Oklahoma and moving east to live out his twilight years, the passage of what we know of life in “Places to Go” (dedicated to Mike Amato), concluding with its redemptive final lines:

Life depends on forward movement
And walking upright towards the end

To the final demise where things no longer matter
Cannot matter and no further explanation counts

But most of all the great wall where standing
We breathe leap easily and fall laughing at last.

Attuned to the brevity of life, she chides the lovelorn in her opening poem: “Have you made up your mind about life (and/or) death…hurry up and decide…The sun is red-hot; it’s sinking fast and setting soon.” She affirms this urgency in “Kingdom,” enjoining a young girl to stop by a meadow of an afternoon and drink in its loveliness—“This moment belongs only to you/ You never know if you will see it again/ And some will never see it at all,” a carpe diem theme that reappears in “Stabbed to the Heart” where she is being driven by “relentless demons/ Hoping to beat them to the finish/ Before they finish me off/ Once and for all.” In taking stock of her own life (“Sixty”), her birth coinciding with the extinction of the Caspian tiger, Carlson would hold her inevitable demise at bay, praying fervently “that somehow somewhere/ A piece of his wildness lives in one still.” I can relate to that!

------Linda Fischer is a regular contributor to "Ibbetson Street" Her poetry has appeared in the Atlanta Review, Mobius, Byline, and others...