tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-81395571873327585162023-11-16T02:45:03.523-08:00BERT STERNDoug Holderhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05003269684850096238noreply@blogger.comBlogger27125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8139557187332758516.post-43805708208728712282014-03-11T10:54:00.000-07:002014-03-11T10:54:08.651-07:00Will spring return?God, Facebook. Years now since I've looked at it, but I'm big with this universal theme, the possibility of spring. We've all sometimes given up hope during this endless winter, though we know how dangerous that is. Without hope for spring it's as if we're in some circle of Dante's Inferno -- an eternal winter, eternal hopelessness. Icicles dangling from the tip of your nose, eyelids frozen together, toes perpetually falling off from frostbite. Something like the killzone on Everest.
For me the best part of spring is the signs. I have to stretch my neck to see the patch of snow in a neighbor's yard, and the patch is pathetic. Driving by the carwash, I saw a dozen cars lined up, expressive as the return of migrating birds. Any day now I'll hear the first motorcycle. But the major indicators for me are the buds on my naked Japanese maple. All winter the hard knots of winter buds looked frozen solid, coiled as if they'd never uncoil again. I don't know exactly what modicum of life goes on in those hard coils, just that it's hunkered down as tight as life can be.
That tree's my window tree, the one I look at when I'm working at the computer. I take it in many times each day. And this mild morning I'm almost sure I see "it' -- not so much a greening as a faint golding ("nature's first green is gold," as Robert Frost said). It's like the moment when you look at a woman in a certain way and she returns that look. Yes, it will be, it will be.Bert Sternhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14647362879474102205noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8139557187332758516.post-63989700761675438302011-02-21T10:30:00.000-08:002011-02-21T10:36:43.774-08:00How Tolstoy First Conceived of Anna Karenina, as told to Vladimir K. IstominI was once lying on this divan exactly as I am now, in this very room after dinner. Then too there was twilight. I was tired and fighting sleep when all of a sudden a naked female elbow appeared in front of my eyes. I, unintentionally, began to look at it more closely. The elbow reappeared and before my eyes it gradually assumed the shape of a bare necked woman in fabulous ballroom attire. Her face was beautiful and she was looking at me with her pensive and suffering eyes. It seemed to me then that I could not tear myself away from this apparition for a long time. Finally it disappeared in the same way as it had appeared. But ever since then it never left me. I carried the image in my soul, had silent conversations with it and without realizing it, I discovered its secret. From then was born a burning desire to reveal this secret and I could find no peace until I got down to it.Bert Sternhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14647362879474102205noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8139557187332758516.post-1913645530383042582011-02-16T09:59:00.000-08:002011-02-16T09:59:39.526-08:00wood thrush singing<iframe width="425" height="344" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/1x3z_vK9Po8?fs=1" frameborder="0" allowFullScreen=""></iframe>Bert Sternhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14647362879474102205noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8139557187332758516.post-61527920508954697132010-12-15T10:00:00.000-08:002010-12-15T10:03:44.186-08:00Modern timesYesterday I called them to straighten something out. Their machine immediately told me how proud they were to serve me, then put me on a five minute hold. During the five minutes they renewed their welcome every thirty seconds or so. At the end of that time they switched me to another program asking how much I loved the service. After telling them insofar as their questions allowed how I didn't love it at all the line went dead. Five minutes invested in banging my head against a stone wall. Ah, modern timnes.Bert Sternhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14647362879474102205noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8139557187332758516.post-80504954959142041682010-12-15T09:57:00.000-08:002010-12-15T09:59:46.367-08:00Bon appétitDid you read Calvin Trillin's recent piece on Mosca's restaurant, outside New Orleans. Here are some of the dishes he savored.<br /><br /><br /><br />Shrimp Mosca<br />Serves two to four<br /> <br /> <br />Ingredients<br />2 lbs. large, whole fresh shrimp<br />¾ cup olive oil<br />1 tsp. salt<br />1 tsp. freshly ground black pepper<br />1 tsp. oregano<br />1 tsp. rosemary<br />3 bay leaves<br />6-10 cloves unpeeled garlic, mashed<br />½ cup dry white wine<br />Procedures<br />1. Place all ingredients except wine into a large skillet.<br />2. Cook over medium-high heat for fifteen to twenty minutes or until the shrimp are pink and the liquid produced by the shrimp has almost completely disappeared.<br />3. Stir occasionally.<br />4. Reduce the heat and add the wine.<br />5. Cook at a low simmer until the liquid is reduced by half, about five to seven minutes.<br />6. Serve the shrimp hot with the pan juices.<br /><br /><br />Chicken a la Grande<br />Serves two to four<br /> <br /> <br />Ingredients<br />3-lb. chicken, cut into eighths<br />¾ cup olive oil<br />1 tsp. salt<br />1 tsp. freshly ground black pepper<br />6-10 cloves unpeeled garlic, mashed<br />1 tsp. rosemary<br />1 tsp. oregano<br />½ cup dry white wine<br />Procedures<br />1. Heat olive oil in large skillet until hot.<br />2. Add chicken pieces.<br />3. Turn chicken often, cooking until browned.<br />4. Sprinkle chicken with salt and pepper.<br />5. Add garlic, rosemary, and oregano, stirring to distribute seasonings.<br />6. Pour the white over the chicken and simmer until the wine is reduce by half.<br />7. Serve chicken hot with pan juices.<br /><br />Chicken Cacciatore<br />Serves two to four<br /> <br />Ingredients<br />3 lb. chicken cut into eighths <br />¾ cup olive oil<br />1 tsp. fresh ground black pepper<br />6-10 cloves unpeeled garlic, mashed<br />1 tsp. rosemary<br />1 tsp. oregano<br />½ cup dry white wine<br />1 ½ cup tomato sauce<br />Salt to taste<br />Procedures<br />1. Heat olive oil in large skillet until hot.<br />2. Add chicken pieces.<br />3. Turn chicken often, cooking until browned.<br />4. Sprinkle chicken with salt and pepper.<br />5. Add garlic, rosemary, and oregano, stirring to distribute seasonings.<br />6. Remove the pan from the stove; pour the wine over the chicken.<br />7. Add the tomato sauce.<br />8. Return to heat.<br />9. Simmer ten to fifteen minutes until wine and tomato sauce has blended and thickened.<br /><br />Roasted Potatoes<br />Serves six<br /> <br />Ingredients<br />7-8 peeled potatoes, halved<br />1 tsp. salt<br />1 tsp. black pepper<br />1 tsp. oregano<br />1 tsp. rosemary<br />½ cup chopped onion<br />3-4 cloves garlic, crushed<br />½ cup olive oil<br />½ cup dry white wine<br />2 cups water<br />Procedures<br />1. Place potatoes in eight-inch-square baking dish. Sprinkle salt, pepper, oregano, rosemary, and onion over potatoes.<br />2. Add crushed garlic.<br />3. Pour olive oil, wine and water over top of potatoes.<br />4. Cover baking dish with foil.<br />5. Place in 450-degree oven for one hour.<br />6. Remove foil and bake another thirty minutes or until brown.Bert Sternhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14647362879474102205noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8139557187332758516.post-72251837828537137862010-12-13T08:27:00.000-08:002010-12-13T08:42:06.216-08:00Motion and StillnessLast few days rabidly social: two book signings, Grace Paley annual reading, Bagel Bards, evening with Brooklkine poet friends. Next Monday we head up to the Adirondacks for a Christmas week. Almost always, as I step out of the car I feel layers of tension melt away. Ah, a life of just looking around at snow in trees, mountains coming in and out of clouds, snow falling, the excellent company of my sister-in-law, who is the very spirit of the mountains.<br /><br />Off the Grid matters move like a string of train cars in a switching yard -- a few steps forward, a few back, big clanks, big silences in between. We're still short the money we need to launch the contest, and every week the complications of the project reveal themselves. But I still expect to announce our contest this spring. I'm very set on building something tht, if anything is, might still be around in another ten years.<br /><br />Bright moments: how alive Grace remains in her work. And, ah, scenes, inhaling their neighbor's honey-cured bacon through a hole in the wall, making her scatter breakfast with Bob "more grand."<br /><br />Listening to a former president of Smith introduce the reading by our friend (and OTG board member) Gwen Jensen-- and find her so down to earth. And Keven Bowen's easy, egoless eloquence in his intro to the Payley reading. And hearing Gwen read from poems in which Tam was deeply involved, and Allen West, our most recent OTG poet, read poems that Tam and I saw through to a book.Bert Sternhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14647362879474102205noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8139557187332758516.post-29949474022111686422010-12-06T15:10:00.000-08:002010-12-06T15:12:15.571-08:00Miracle CureI've been coughing and hawking since the end of a three-week cold. This morning I drank a tsp of honey and three tbsps of cider vinegar. Viva la difference!Bert Sternhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14647362879474102205noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8139557187332758516.post-74649715417781094142010-12-04T12:40:00.000-08:002010-12-04T12:41:12.513-08:00Who Makes the RulesDear Paolo, Maybe it's time to drop this, but I think we're both the kind of guys who need to have the last word, even when there is no last word. As for the difficulties of politicians and diplomats, I don't seem them having difficulties. They know who they're working for. When the billionaires say, no, we can't continue unemployment benefits, etc., etc., because that would cut down on our billions, people just seem to not their heads to some kind of higher wisdom. They want to "obey the rules," apparently, no matter how destructive those rules are to their well-being. To me, the USA is a nearly pure plutocracy, and, owning most of the money, they also own most of the media, without which it would be much harder to make people believe lies. I agree, there are good billionaires and pols out there, but they're exceptions. The rule is corruption.<br /><br />Love,<br /><br /><br />BertBert Sternhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14647362879474102205noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8139557187332758516.post-42678121724187065762010-12-03T18:13:00.001-08:002010-12-03T18:13:34.196-08:00The spoon:<br />A lesson on how consultants can make a difference in an organization. <br /><br /><br /> Last week, we took some friends to a new restaurant, 'Steve's Place,' and noticed that the waiter who took our order carried a spoon in his shirt pocket. <br /><br /><br /> It seemed a little strange. When the busboy brought our water and utensils, I observed that he also had a spoon in his shirt pocket. <br /><br /> <br /> Then I looked around and saw that all the staff had spoons in their pockets. When the waiter came back to serve our soup I inquired, 'Why the spoon?' <br /><br /> <br />'Well, 'he explained, 'the restaurant's owner hired Andersen Consulting to revamp all of our processes. After several months of analysis, they concluded that the spoon was the most frequently dropped utensil. It represents a drop frequency of approximately 3 spoons per table per hour. <br /><br /><br />If our personnel are better prepared, we can reduce the number of trips back to the kitchen and save 15 man-hours per shift.' <br /> <br />As luck would have it, I dropped my spoon and he replaced it with his spare. 'I'll get another spoon next time I go to the kitchen instead of making an extra trip to get it right now.' I was impressed. <br /><br /> <br /> I also noticed that there was a string hanging out of the waiter's fly. <br /><br /> <br /> Looking around, I saw that all of the waiters had the same string hanging from their flies. So, before he walked off, I asked the waiter, 'Excuse me, but can you tell me why you have that string right there?' <br /><br /> <br /> 'Oh, certainly!' Then he lowered his voice. 'Not everyone is so observant. That consulting firm I mentioned also learned that we can save time in the restroom.<br /><br /> <br /> By tying this string to the tip of our you-know-what, we can pull it out without touching it and eliminate the need to wash our hands, shortening the time spent in the restroom by 76.39%.'<br /><br /> <br /> I asked quietly, 'After you get it out, how do you put it back?'<br /><br /> <br />'Well,' he whispered, 'I don't know about the others, but I use the spoon.'Bert Sternhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14647362879474102205noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8139557187332758516.post-64426317732764500082010-11-30T13:01:00.000-08:002010-11-30T13:10:25.009-08:00IntervalAn elderly gent is poking in his closet, looking for a beloved pair of brown oxfords. He pokes and he pokes and then it dawns on him. He took them to a shoemaker to resole twenty-nine years go but forgot to pick them up. But he remembers the name of the shoemaker and, lo, there's the address in the book. So he drives over, steps in, and, yes, he even remembers the shoemaker, though he's older now. <br /><br />"Look," the guy says, "you're going to think I'm crazy, but after twenty-nine years I just remembered, I brought a pair of brown oxfords here twenty-nine years ago to be resoled, and then forgot to pick them up. I don't suppose there's any chance that you have them?"<br /><br />Without batting an eye the shoemaker goes to the back room, and he's gone a long time. But then he comes back and tells the guy, "Sure, I still got 'em." The guy's so tickled he can hardly contain himself. What glorious karma, for them to be still there. "Great," he says, "can I have them?" The shoemaker thinks for a moment. then, "Sure you can have 'em. They'll be ready Thursday afternoon."Bert Sternhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14647362879474102205noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8139557187332758516.post-80608126241405199582010-11-30T08:47:00.000-08:002010-11-30T08:50:52.246-08:00Something BorrowedYesterday afternoon, as I was walking up steep School Street Hill, a likely lad was plunging down on his bike, his hands dancing high over his head. Me oh my, as a whiff of his energy coursed through me!Bert Sternhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14647362879474102205noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8139557187332758516.post-21184686688493559692010-11-29T09:46:00.000-08:002010-11-29T10:01:26.506-08:00SauceToday I'm thinking of last night's lamb stew. The key is rosemary and white wine, but lacking wine I used saki instead. Flour the lamb and brown it. Sauté abundant onions and carrots. How much flour you allow into the sauté determines thinness or thickness. Some add tomatoes and tomato paste. No time. I stick to the way the French make it, though I also put potatoes in. Balance the veggies strongly against the meat. Help the lamb forgive you.<br /><br />Today spaghetti sauce with sausage. With plenty of oregano and capers. Black olives if I have them. Red wine, which I do have. Sauté onions and carrots. Brown sausage meat out of the skin. Canned tomatoes, tomato sauce. I haven't cut an onion yet, or browned a sausage, but I smell the sauce.<br /><br />Today, poetry sauce is Sir Walter Ralegh's translation of Aeneid, vi,724-7, in Raleigh's History of the world:<br /><br />The heauen, the earth, and all the liquid mayne,<br />The Moones bright Globe, and Starres Titanian,<br />A spirit which through each part infus'd doth passe.<br />Fashions, and workes, and wholly doth transpierce<br />All this great body of the Vniuerse.Bert Sternhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14647362879474102205noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8139557187332758516.post-18230439850096149382010-11-28T09:34:00.001-08:002010-11-28T09:40:18.233-08:00ChinaIn 1984-85 my family and I lived on the campus of Peking University, where I was teaching. During that year I regularly visited a 97-year-old American who had been in China continually since 12923, a year after the Chinese Communist Party was formed. Fascinated with the stories he told me, some of them coherent, some not, I launched a research project that continued after I returned to the States and through a second visit to China to attend his 100th birthday celebration, followed in tend days by his death. Winter's story is that of a sensitive and keen participant observer who puts his listener/reader in touch with both the nuances of Chinese social life and also the violence of China's modern history.<br /><br />Now, through a series of karmic coincidences, I am excited to be working with the manuscript again.Bert Sternhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14647362879474102205noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8139557187332758516.post-77779120472600207272010-11-26T11:14:00.000-08:002010-11-26T11:20:07.330-08:00Day after ThanksgivingAt the dinner table last night at my daughter's home, with a wildly diverse bunch of people, including a macho sheriff, I ate what maybe the biggest meal in my life. A heaping plate and then a second heaping plate. That's not usual for me. I'd fasted the day before and maybe that explains it. But I've gotta admit that the second plateful was as good as the first.<br /><br />Two of my three children were the red. So good simply to enjoy them. And my grandson, now almost eleven, who holds a very big warm place in my life. How could I not be thankful, basking in the warmth of a peaceful family.Bert Sternhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14647362879474102205noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8139557187332758516.post-35339928606998098122010-11-25T08:12:00.000-08:002010-11-25T08:20:59.056-08:00How about this -- opening poem in Jerry Rothenberg's Cincealments & CaprichosTHE SLEEP OF REASON<br /><br />for Clayton Eshelman<br /><br /><br />Words imprinted on a sign <br />by Goya glowing<br />white against a surface<br />nearly white:<br />"the sleep of reason<br />that produces monsters."<br />He is sitting on a chair<br />his head slumped<br />resting on his arms<br />or on the marble table,<br />pencil set aside,<br />his night coat open<br />thighs exposed.<br />All things that fly at night<br />fly past him.Wings that brush an ear,<br />an ear concealed,<br />a memory beginning<br />in the house of sleep.<br />His is a world where owls<br />live in palm trees,<br />where a shadow in the sky<br />is like a magpie,<br />white & black are colors<br />only in the mind,<br />the cat you didn't murder<br />springs to life,<br />a whistle whirling in a cup,<br />gone & foregone,<br />a chasm bright with eyes.<br />There is a cave in Spain,<br />a feral underworld,<br />where bats are swarming <br />among bulls, <br />the blackness ending in a wall<br />his hands rub up against, a blind man in a painted world,<br />amok and monstrous<br />banging on a rock.Bert Sternhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14647362879474102205noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8139557187332758516.post-24436411351594153092010-11-25T07:58:00.000-08:002010-11-25T08:08:41.767-08:00Nuthin' MuchNobody's asking me for a diary, but I'm enjoying this. Yesterday, in conversation with a friend at the Rockefeller Archives, a project I'd put aside some twenty years ago leaped back into life, and I had a chance to reflect on the odd twists of kharma. I say "reflect," but that suggests an insight, something profound. No, just the same old same old: things come and go, and once in the while some unhatched egg stirs and there's the chipping beak and then the peep peep. Now I can only wait to see if a chicken is to follow.<br /><br />Now that I'm beginning to grow up at the age of 80, I find that I have a gift of gratitude that often enough shapes my days. No point listing all that I have to be grateful for including family, which I didn't properly value in the past. And also the grace of awakening each morning with the feeling that I can help make the day interesting and loving.Bert Sternhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14647362879474102205noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8139557187332758516.post-57893103579769776062010-11-24T10:56:00.000-08:002010-11-24T11:08:10.375-08:00a herringI promised jokes. Here's a joke I think of as hermetic, because only old school Jews get it.<br /><br />Two old friends, out of the same shtetl, met a couple of times a week for tea in Manhattan, always the same time, same place. Sp they're sitting there, as they always did, staring into their tea cups because everything they had to talk about they'd already talked about. Finally, one of them looks up, still a little dreamy from the tea steam but rising on the wings of an idea. "Okay, Shimel" he says, "wot's green and you hang it on the vall and it vistles." <br /><br />Shimel is still mostly in his tea cup, but slowly he raises his head, half dazed, half quzzical, and says, "Green, you hang it on the vall and it vistles? How should I know because there's no such thing. C'mon, you tell me." So Chaim, the first man, replies, "A herring." Shimel's astonished. ""A herring?! A herring is green?" Chaim says, so you pain it green." "Okay, okay, a herring, a herring hangs on the vall?" Chaim, simply, "So you hang it on the vall?" Now Shimel is getting exasperated. "So now you gung tell me a herring vistles?!" Chaim lets the moment hang, then, "So it doesn't visel."Bert Sternhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14647362879474102205noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8139557187332758516.post-42458867897389522592010-11-24T08:32:00.000-08:002010-11-24T08:33:58.099-08:00Stone SoupLast week I read at the Out of the Blue Gallery in the Stone Soup series. Jack Powers was very much present, though he died more than a month ago. He continues to be a good presiding spirit, as does Chad Parentau, who has been running the series for five years. For me, the evening had a couple of highlights. On the open mike John Stern perfectly recited poems ranging from Emma Lazarus through Shakespeare to Robert W. Service -- all paramount recitations, the spirit of the words perfectly embodied in John's voice and gestures that changed from poem to poem. To hear John's Lazrus is like hearing the Statue of Liberty speaking. Also at the open Mike was the inimical Billy Barnum. Toothless, spastic, dressed in a witch's brew of exotic clothes and drapery, Billy recited an allegorical poem of his in which a male erotic figure visits a female loneliness. The language, as it usually is with Billy, was inspired, and his body movements were hypnotizing grace. Out of the Blue, host of three series that I know, can sometimes feel like the wild west, but it can also be the scene of astonishing performances.Bert Sternhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14647362879474102205noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8139557187332758516.post-79238262033285197302010-11-24T08:29:00.000-08:002010-11-24T08:30:20.790-08:00<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height:13.35pt"><span class="apple-style-span">Last night, with a class of men on probation out of Dorchester District Court, I took part in a remarkable discussion of the Tolstoy story, "Korney Vasielevitch." The story is about a rich man hungry for more, who, returning from a business trip, finds that his wife has been cheating on him. Under real provocation by her taunts, he falls into a rage, beats her savagely, and also permanently cripples the arm of their young daughter when she stands between him and his wife. Korney leaves the house the next morning and for seventeen years wanders deeper and deeper into denigration. At the end of that time, a drunken tram still driven by rage against his wife, he returns home. What follows is a drama of forgiveness that contains a range of moral subtleties not easily resolved.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height:13.35pt"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> <!--[endif]--><o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height:13.35pt">The men were magnificent, not only interpreting and asking just the right questions, but also seeing the analogies to their own lives. One of the subjects that came up is whether everyone has a core of goodness, no matter how veiled. For eight weeks, through the course, the men have been rediscovering their own goodness, and it was a remarkable occasion to feel how much that discovery was in the air.<o:p></o:p></p> <!--EndFragment-->Bert Sternhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14647362879474102205noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8139557187332758516.post-24028276416804027642010-11-24T08:07:00.000-08:002010-11-24T08:17:16.441-08:00itting BottomLast night, with a class of men on probation out of Dorchester District Court, I took part in a remarkable discussion story, "Korney Vasielevitch." The story is about a rich man hungry for more, who, returning from a business trip, finds that his wife has been cheating on him. Under real provocation by her taunts, he falls into a rage, beats her savagely, and also permanently cripples the arm of their young daughter when she stands between him and his wife. Korney leaves the house the next morning and for seventeen years wanders deeper and deeper into denigration. At the end of that time, a drunken tram still driven by rage against his wife, he returns home. What follows is a drama of forgiveness that contains a range of moral subtleties not easily resolved.<div><br /></div><div>The men were magnificent, not only interpreting and asking just the right questions, but also seeing the analogies to their own lives. One of the subjects that came up is whether everyone has a core of goodness, no matter how veiled. For eight weeks, through the course, the men have been rediscovering their own goodness, and it was a remarkable occasion to feel how much that discovery was in the air.</div>Bert Sternhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14647362879474102205noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8139557187332758516.post-76098143514662799762010-11-20T08:36:00.000-08:002010-11-20T08:41:23.126-08:00For five years Tam Lin Neville have edited Off the Grid Press. We've published five books, two of which have won significant prizes, and all of which have received national attention. Now we are in the process of becoming a non-profit company, and we are now raising money to launch our first contest. We plan to publish two books a year by poets over sixty. <div><br /></div><div>This move allows us to enter the mainstream of poetry presses, and, with the help of a strong board whose members are Lee Sharkey, Gwen Swenson, Roger Mitchell, Alex Neville, and Kevin McCrea, we anticipate a lively future.</div>Bert Sternhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14647362879474102205noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8139557187332758516.post-33476410109028607552010-03-16T03:36:00.000-07:002010-03-16T03:39:19.601-07:00Jewish Book World ( Spring 2010): Review of Bert Stern's poetry collection "Steerage"JEWISH BOOK WORLD (SPRING 2010)<br /> POETRY <br /><br /> REVIEW: STEERAGE BY BERT STERN ( Ibbetson Street Press—2009)<br /><br /><br /> Like children of the Holocaust, those whose parents suffered from pogroms or who were forced from their homeland because of religious persecution carry the scars forever. The cost of such escape never seems to leave Bert Stern, one example of an adult son who knows, as he states so directly in “Lotty is Born.” “…let him tell me if they can/if I am recompense for what they endured.” The remaining five parts of this notable collection might be described as an appreciation of beauty and fragility of life thereafter. In the title poem, Stern notes the full effect of such survival, “…he said what he hoped, / as if God gave us life/as we want it. But order is like houses children weave from grasses, twigs/and leaves.” Nature as it appears in upstate Buffalo, New York is a repeated mirror image of deep beauty and death, with the latter being existentially, not morbidly, depicted. One other outstanding poem is “Midrash: Abraham” in which after his son remains after the great sacrifice “…broken there, complete and alone, /bent by perfection.” Steerage is a celebration of new life forever reviewed by the past.<br /><br />--Deborah Schoeneman<br /><br />**** To order “Steerage” by Bert Stern go to Amazon.comDoug Holderhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05003269684850096238noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8139557187332758516.post-81313982867132038502009-10-07T00:32:00.000-07:002009-10-07T00:46:40.945-07:00Steerage, by Bert SternSteerage, by Bert Stern,published by Ibbetson Press 2009 http://ibbetsonpress.com<br />Review by Anne Brudevold <br /><br />Bert Stern’s, Steerage, like a good wine or violin, is best savored, sipped, tried out and conversed with as you experience it, for a long time. Few authors invoke that involvement—the conversational mode. Stern is one. You are on the page with each speaker, dispassionately looking life right in the eye from different points of view. Stern takes on the world, and the world answers back, in infinitely engaging moods and plain, evocative language, often near-rhymed. “As I cross the yard,/ rope scrap hanging /from maple limb/hootchy-kootches/ in the wind,” (Country Cow)<br /><br /> <br />Stern is not intrusive. He’s the fly on the wall.<br /> <br />Didn’t want to be born, this child,<br />herself back, upside down, Aunty<br />could not get her turned, afraid, mother<br />screaming, did God know what He was doing,<br />was this to be chosen, crying out<br />under leaden skies among enemies,<br />without meat, making soup from barley<br />and bad potatoes, maybe a shank bone?<br />For this the muzhiks had spared her,<br />God in his eye. (Lotty is born)<br /><br /><br />His transparency strengthens the images he evokes. His graphic description of experiences of his ancestors during and since their emigration, and their experiences in the New World is so involving that I found myself muttering as I read, and my friends saying, “What? Oh, you’re talking with Bert.” <br /><br /><br />His language is plain. Especially in Part 1: Changing Places the many inversions give a Jewish or foreign cast to some of the poems. “A gold star we embroidered/ on black to lay over the coffin/bright star, to shine under the dirt.(Hannah remembers) The language becomes more American in the second part, but echoes of inversions and accents remain. Part 2: Spring and Fall “Always a white-throated sparrow/singing on a mountain top, and somebody/there listening to it for the first time.” (White Throated Sparrow)The progression of language characterizes the speaker, first invoking the steerage of the boat, then settling in the new country.<br /><br /> <br />Stern, as well as being a large-scale poet recording the historical generations of emigrants, is a master of the pithy statement. “No, make the heart/ walk the streets with a rice bowl/.” <br /><br />Many times he walks the line between death and life, tragedy and humor, as in Last Things<br /> Summer ended. We packed up, we packed it in.<br /> Tomorrow might have been another day, but now, not.<br />We packed the room in in, and stashed it in a matchox.<br />She said, there’s nothing much to do<br />with the sea wind ruffling the curtains<br />I said, leave the clouds alone, they belong here.<br />Back and forth about the sky and weather.<br />What shall we do with the children?’Not pack them off to camp, but pack them into boxes<br />like machine gun slugs…..<br /><br /> <br />This chapbook sticks close to its theme; the effect is somewhat novelistic and can be compared to Dickens, close observation combined with descriptions of social conditions and change. <br /><br /> The central metaphor, steerage, is presented as individual poems, but I experienced it as a long poem cycle It is a handsome book with plain, elegant front and back covers by Joan Braun. The poems might represent the bottom hull boards of the ship where the immigrants were herded for the long voyage overseas, and the hard conditions that prevailed once (and if) they survived. They speak to the plain, the hard and the human. On another level, the metaphor speaks to steering through different ages and stages of life. In Parts 3: How Re Katzman got to Heaven, Part 4,Last things, Part 5: Wait, and Afterword, a religiosity beyond specific doctrine calls on Biblical references, stories of Jacob, Abraham killing his son, Jewish food and customs, on how a pretty dirty man got to heaven, and ponders the death of others and his own to come.<br /> “Steer me, steer me, flutters from us<br /> board me and steer me, for I’m adrift <br /> in my life…<br /><br />This rich chapbook can take you far and near. So many layers. Get Steerage it and let it steer you a while. <br /><br /><br />“Hannah Remembers”<br /> <br /> But my mother was under earth.<br /> They had washed and wrapped her<br /> in linen, white, without knots,<br /> so when the time came, Messiah<br /> could unwrap her and sweep her naked<br /> back into the light.<br /><br /><br />Steerage<br /> Six apples my mother bought on the pier and wrapped in her shawl with things we’d need every day.<br />The things we didn’t—three linen napkins, a handful of silver spoons my mother got from her mother<br />when she married---these we kept in a hamper with handles we’d schlepped up the steep plank.<br />Steerage stank, even before we went down iron stairs with no railing. Babies were crying.<br /><br /><br />** Anne Brudevold is the founder of the Eden Water Press. She is the editor of the "Home Journal Anthology"Doug Holderhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05003269684850096238noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8139557187332758516.post-82902031079427560292009-05-25T14:31:00.000-07:002009-09-07T11:37:03.009-07:00Steerage by Bert Stern / Review by Hugh FoxSteerage by Bert Stern<br />Ibbetson Street Press<br />25 School St.<br />Somerville, Ma. 02143<br />$15<br />http://ibbetsonpress.com<br /><br /><br />Order: Amazon.com: Go to: http://tinyurl.com/no8dhz<br /><br /><br /><br /><br />Review by Hugh Fox<br /><br /><br /> A vital part of the Somerville-Boston literary scene, on the surface Stern’s work just seems like part of the usual poetry game of taking daily reality and turning it into post-modern puzzles: “This morning, otherwise idle,/I stir milk into sunlight./At once, the maple leaves/seem to come from another planet/though they sigh to me as before,/roused by wind and as real as my fingers.” (“Wings,” p.30).<br /><br />But don’t be fooled, the word-reality games are just part of the much larger world view. Stern is a twentieth century Jew who is torn between contemporary secularism and reformed Judaism that is light, practical and easy-going, and ancient Judaism that dominated and controlled the totality of life, from which nothing escaped. Part of him longs to go back to ancient times and turn his life into all-inclusive sacredness and discipline. I even suspect that the whole last section of Steerage about Jacob is a kind of re-working of the story of Jacob in the bible:<br /><br /> “Jacob was holding her and she felt like fire./Death stood to the side, embarrassed./The girl hugged Jacob with her week arms./She said now. She said this. The girl said this/now was always as it is now.....//God is sleeping but He is coming./Now./Wait./Remember a leaf....Say how the stars live,burning./How the stony icicles of this grotto live,/drip, drip, as if breathing. “ (p.88).<br /><br />Not the whole Jacob story, but always the sense of The Divine off in the background, waiting to return. As Roger Mitchell points out in his introduction to Steerage, there is a constant awareness in Stern’s mind of the paradoxically absence-presence of his ancient Jewish heritage, and he quotes the end of “Blackberries,” which I see as the key that opens Stern’s whole complex world-view:<br /><br />"...I smell my elders almost benignaround me, and I eat the berries they send forth as seed. (p.36)<br /><br /> I mean here we are in a secularized, cyberneticized world that all but ignores not just scripture but whole lost ways of daily life, ways of life that forced us into vivid perceptions of the reality that surrounds us, not abstract but very much an almost buddhistic sense of total Nowness.Testament is full of memories of the past that are keys to opening up the perception of the present. It’s a meditative exercise in scriptural perception that opens up to the voices of the much too ignored past that keeps the Now from turning into the Eden that it should be:<br /><br />"Words redden the skin of things,he sang to the wren at the door,I soothe them with silence I gatheruntil prayer cries out from my bones.But words buzz like flies in swarms,Oy, Adonai, strike down these burning angelsthat guard Eden’s gate(“How Reb Ketzman Got to Heaven,”) p. 43<br /><br />**************************************************************************************<br /><br /><br />*Hugh Fox was born in Chicago in 1932. He spent his childhood studying violin, piano, composition and opera with his Viennese teacher Zerlina Muhlman Metzger. He received a M.A. degree in English from Loyola University in Chicago and his Ph.D. in American Literature from the University of Illinois (Urbana-Champaign). He met his first wife, a Peruvian woman named Lucia Ungaro de Zevallos, while at Urbana-Campaign and was a Professor of American Literature from 1958-1968 at Loyola University in Los Angeles. He became a Professor in the Department of American Thought and Language at Michigan State University in 1968 and remained there until he retired in 1999. It was at MSU that he met his second wife Nona Grimes. They were married in 1970. He received Fulbright Professsorships at the University of Hermosillo in Mexico in 1961, the Instituto Pedagogico and Universidad Católica in Caracas from 1964 to 1966, and at the University of Santa Catarina in Brazil from 1978-1980. He met his third wife Maria Bernadete Costa in Brazil in 1978. They've been married for 28 years. He studied Latin American literature at the University of Buenos Aires on and OAS grant and spent a year as an archaeologist in the Atacama Desert in Chile in 1986.Doug Holderhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05003269684850096238noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8139557187332758516.post-30169551460327501982009-05-20T06:49:00.000-07:002009-09-09T07:01:16.101-07:00Bert Stern's "Steerage " A classic poetry collection with a classic theme!<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj7mRR4YqIgm0CQ8JT0RPC4SbkRzmmU72w_v-ydwecA9EZyHE86At2zvSvUEtg5Jx6OcyQ4Yn7T8lh7U5ZouaTD2iqmv0hROIXJpfWymE_xgLOA2OkENa-oZZy-daSLhXrFhHEXc_oknr0/s1600-h/BS.jpg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 150px; height: 220px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj7mRR4YqIgm0CQ8JT0RPC4SbkRzmmU72w_v-ydwecA9EZyHE86At2zvSvUEtg5Jx6OcyQ4Yn7T8lh7U5ZouaTD2iqmv0hROIXJpfWymE_xgLOA2OkENa-oZZy-daSLhXrFhHEXc_oknr0/s320/BS.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5337903616502972930" /></a><br /><br /><br /><br />$15 $2 shipping and handling<br /><br /><br />Review by Miriam Levine:<br /><br />Bert Stern<br />Steerage, paper, 93 pages<br />Ibbetson Street Press<br /><br />BURNING STARS, JADE SILK, CAMARROS<br /><br />We’ve heard a lot about American individualism; and, in American literature, about writers like Melville, who have what one critic has called, the voice of “the imperial self,”: majestic, heroic, grand. In “Walden,” Thoreau, though a less imperial writer than Melville, still creates a narrator who lives heroically alone in his tiny cabin in the woods and sees few people. He’s a man without family. In actual life, Thoreau walked daily to Concord village to see his mother. In contrast Bert Stern writes about his deep connection to the living and dead. He sheds his ego and takes on the voices of his ancestors who immigrated to America from Eastern Europe. Though him, we hear his dead mother’s account of the voyage. The family is out to sea; order falls apart; the family loses its center. Sailing in limbo, his mother says, “Nobody talked. We could not look at the sea or the dead sky/ above us. We hung between these. We would be here always.”<br /><br /><br /><br /><br /> In “Lotty is Born” Stern bears the weight of generations: “All suffered to bring me here to this room/ where I write, bigger than the house/ my mother was born in.” Beautifully, in fluid lines, he registers a dissolving self: “I am somebody’s dream . . . let them tell me if they can/ if I am recompense for what they endured.”<br /><br /><br /><br /><br /> A descendent of those who in steerage endured the stink of “of seawater and piss, animals and human sweat,” Stern brings his ancestors into the light. His mother says, “my spirit was waiting for me, dancing on the shore.” The spirit is feminine, like the Shekinah: the principle of immanence, the divine showing itself. I’ve heard the Shekinah described metaphorically as a single green leaf that keeps falling to earth but is never seen to land. Stern refers to the Shekinah in “Hannah Remembers,” notable for its sense of shining, never-ending time: “Evenings that went on forever/ still unfolding.” In “Driving Home from Elizabethtown” the poet is gathered into transcendent light:<br /><br /><br /><br />. . . I am ready to fall<br /> with the turnings of poplar<br />and oak. Through the windshield<br />even the thin rain that takes on<br />gold light from the sun in its falling<br />is fuel for the burning.<br /><br /><br /><br />Stern’s “Wait,” the long poem, which comprises part five of “Steerage,” is a triumph, sweet and mysterious. The Shekinah takes the form of a dying girl who lives inside the man Stern calls “Jacob.” “He called out to her as one might/ throw a flower at a star.” The girl keeps falling, imperiled, but she comes back to life: “she’s close as your skin, still humming her tune.” Stern gives the girl a voice: “She said this. The girl said this now was always as it is now.” Nothing is lost. Time is eternal. The poem ends by connecting a tender earthly image—“the turnip’s sweet spheroid,/ its little tail”—with an image of fire and living water: burning stars and icicles dripping as if they were “breathing.”<br /><br /><br /> Besides water-fire-falling-burning poems in which Stern invokes a self’s dissolving in radiant never-ending time, there are poems about closely observed everyday life. (I prefer the spirit-Shekinah and daily-life poems to the fable poems, “What the Teller Knows” and “Early autumn in the Mountains,” which seem unreal to me.) Stern writes about his neighbor, Kenny, a Vietnam war veteran; he watches him capably “sizing boards with a handsaw,/ setting them snug.” But at night, in his dreams, he keeps shooting at a girl who is “hardly a shadow.” He describes Kenny’ son, “washing his car,/ a black Camarro/ with V8 engine,” and the everyday of American life with its skateboards and televisions playing all night in store windows.<br /><br /><br /> “Tea,” which I’ll quote in its entirety, demonstrates the lyrical beauty of Stern’s poems. Here, the feminine appears as a muse. “Tea” is also a love poem that recognizes the separateness of the beloved:<br /><br /><br />That clear song—<br />was it you while I slept,<br />slipping down in your jade<br />silk to feed the stove<br />with pine and drink your tea<br />alone, at down, as you like to do?<br /><br /><br />Stern could be describing his own clear song: tender, lyrical, beautifully phrased.<br /><br /> *Miriam Levine's most recent book is The Dark Opens, winner of the 2007 Autumn House Poetry Prize. She is the author of In Paterson, a novel, Devotion: A Memoir, three poetry collections, and A Guide to Writers' Homes in New England. Her work has appeared in Harvard Review, The Kenyon Review, The Paris Review, and Ploughshares, among many other places. A recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts writing fellowship and grants from the Massachusetts Artists Foundation, she was a fellow at Yaddo, Hawthornden Castle, Le Château de Lavigny, Villa Montalvo, Fundación Valparaíso, and the Millay Colony for the Arts.Doug Holderhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05003269684850096238noreply@blogger.com0