Somerville, Massachusetts, a city on the
outskirts of Boston and Cambridge, has often been called the "Paris of
New England." Maybe at one time, when the city was a down-at-the heels
old industrial town, it was said with tongue in cheek – but no more.
The UTNE READER opined that Davis Square is the hippest Square in the
country, and a study in the tony literary magazine GRANTA reported that
Somerville has more writers per-capita than Manhattan. In this charged
literary milieu, I am able to entertain my passion for interviewing,
more specifically: interviewing Poets and Writers. I happen to be very
lucky to be the Arts Editor for The Somerville News, and to have my own
column "Off the Shelf." This gives me a sort of license to tap the rich
lode of writers and artists who live in my burg. I have interviewed
people in my favorite café Sherman in the Union Square section of the
city, in my study on School St, on my Somerville Community Access TV
show " Poet to Poet: Writer to Writer," in the offices of The
Somerville News, and at my regular writers' group the "Bagel Bards," to
name a few spots. I decided to compile the many interviews I have
conducted in a collection "From the Paris of New England: Interviews
with Poets and Writers." (Ibbetson Street). Here is a review of the
book by Hugh Fox, who was a founding editor of the Pushcart Prize:

From the Paris of New England:

Interviews with Poets and Writers.

By Doug Holder

2009; 133pp; Ibbetson Street Press,

25 School Street, Somerville, MA 02143.

http://ibbetsonpress.com

http://lulu.com/ibbetsonpress

It's
really true, Somerville, Massachusetts, right next to Cambridge, is a
kind of New England Paris, all kinds of little eateries and galleries
and everything-else-ries, like an Asian market, a Peruvian cafe, you
name it. And what Holder has done here is to take the interviews he has
done with Somerville (and other fancy-wancy, avant-garde, or
no-guard-at-all) writers, bookstore owners, publishers, etc. and put
them together in a book — with photos.

Masterfully done,
Holder really brings the Somerville lit-world alive, alive, alive.
There's Louisa Solano, who ran the Grolier Poetry Book Shop for over
thirty years, talking about Robert Lowell, Philip Levine, Bukowski,
Kerouac, Ginsberg, Ed Hogan, there's poet Lisa Beatman, talking about
her recently published working-class-centered poetry (author of
Manufacturing America: Poems From the Factory), there's poet Martha
Collins who established the Creative Writing Program at U/Mass Boston
and who teachers Creative Writing at Oberlin College, there's Dick
Lourie, poet-musician-publisher (of Hanging Loose mag and publishing
house) talking about the old (and new) days in Somerville, Beat poet
and organizer Jack Powers, Eva Salzman, who has spent years and years
in England, there's poet Afaa Michael Weaver, a professor of Literature
at Simmons College in Boston talking about being an African-American
poet in a community that gives you the space to be eccentric, poet
Sarah Hannah, a professor at Emerson College in Boston, talking about
Ph.D.'s versus poetic creativity, there's poetic genius Lo Gallucio
talking about psychological problems and creativity, poet-publisher
Gloria Mindock who glories in the richness of cultural life in
Somerville, filled with writers, painters and actors…..

It
would take another book to just write about this book, that's how rich
it is. Interviews with Mike Basinski, Errol Uys, Lan Samantha Chang,
Miriam Levine, Mark Doty, Claire Messud, Ed Sanders, Robert Creeley,
it's a veritable Who's Who of artistic souls in Somerville. You go to
the Bagel Bard readings in Somerville, hang around with the Somerville
poet-artist gang, and it is like going back to Paris at the end of the
nineteenth, the beginning of the twentieth century.

*Hugh Fox is a founding editor of the Pushcart Prize and author of "Way, Way Off the Road: Memoir of an Invisible Man."

Breathe, Smell

The breath of the unshaven Russian on the other

side of the counter smells like decaying

rats in a trap

The beautiful woman at another counter has

blue eyes like marbles and yellow hair of a

distant sun but her perfume is

like rancid butter

Another man has the odor of a thousand

smoked cigars snuffed out and left in the closet

to grow putrid

There are times the nose wishes to be buried

in roses, greased by orange zest or trapped in

a pecan pie

The nose knows beauty and ugly

as for danger and safety the nose tells the eyes what

to look for

–Zvi A. Sesling