Harris Gardner makes a home for Bagels and Bards at the Au Bon Pain Cafe in Davis Square, Somerville

(Gardner at the Au Bon Pain cafe in Davis Sq.,
Somerville home of the Bagel Bards)


Article about Harris Gardner ( co-founder of Bagel Bards) in the Northeastern Alumni Magazine




The People's Poet




“It brings community together—a common ground, you might say,” says poet-about-town Harris Gardner, LA’69, reflecting on the unifying power of verse.

Gardner expresses his enthusiasm for his craft by writing prolifically—a collection of his poems, Among Us, was published last year. He also hosts regular poetry events around the Greater Boston area.

He recalls being introduced to poetry at age fifteen by his tenth-grade teacher: “She gave us an assignment to write a poem. And I said, ‘This is fine; I’ll try another one.’ Just because I wanted to, not because anyone told me I had to.”

To share the vitality he’s found in poetry, Gardner, who lives in Boston, organizes the city’s National Poetry Month Festival, featuring both established and emerging poets. The eighth annual fest was held this April at the Boston Public Library. Writers read from their works in a six-hour marathon.

Three years ago, with friend and fellow poetry enthusiast Doug Holder, Gardner founded a weekly poets group called Breaking Bagels with the Bards. The name came from the group’s original meeting place, the Finagle a Bagel in Harvard Square. When that eatery closed, the Bards switched to alternating meetings at the Au Bon Pain outposts in Davis Square and Central Square. High school graduates to PhDs, the Bards run a wide socioeconomic gamut. Anthologies of members’ poems attract applause outside the café walls.

When he’s not schmoozing with the Bards, Gardner can be found at Borders Books in Downtown Crossing, where another organization he emcees, Tapestry of Voices, invites poets to read each month.

This busy artist, who also finds the time to run his own real estate business, believes the literary arts fill a basic need. “Poetry is very learnable,” he says. “At the community level, people can learn to appreciate poetry, to enjoy poetry, to indulge in poetry, and even to write poetry.

“Even if they’ve never done it before.”

— Nancy Rabinowitz, MA’90

"I Want" by Ingerid White

Ingerid White is a new Bagel Bard and she sent me this poem in response to an article she read about the late Mike Amado in The Somerville News.




I WANT


I want to feel

that life isn't a black sky

I want to know in the marrow of my bones

that there really is a place called home



I want to fly

in my mind

like I did in my dreams as a child

I want this bitterness to leave me

I want to smile

again



I want to feel the grass under my feet

soft and pliant against my skin

I want to gaze at the white-streaked-blue afternoon sky

and feel content



I want you and I to know what we mean

when we say what we do

I simply want

me and you

_________________________

About Ingerid White:

I am a 1972 graduate of The Ohio State University, where I earned a bachelor of arts degree in Journalism, with the concentration being in News/Editorial.


After graduating from college, I worked for a summer as a tour guide in my home town of Tampa for Busch Gardens, and then traveled to Tokyo to see if I wanted to marry my fiance - a Japanese exchange student I'd met my sophomore year. I started off teaching American Conversation at a language school, and segued into editing the house organ for Canon, Inc. for the remainder of my two-year stay in Japan.

I returned to the 'States late in 1974, moving soon after to NYC where I worked in advertising and publishing primarily for seven years.

I divide my time currently between Norway and the Boston area, where my son lives. I am currently looking for work here in order to be able to stay. At the moment I am representing a Norwegian author who has recently published a translation of his latest book into English and is marketing it here.

Bagel Bard Pam Rosenblatt's "On How to Read The Manual" Reviewed

ON HOW TO READ THE MANUAL
By Pam Rosenblatt
2009; 26pp; Pa; Ibbetson Street Press,
25 School Street, Somerville, MA 02143
$7.
http://ibbetsonpress.com
to order http://lulu.com/ibbetsonpress


What we have is a poeticized study of how to existentialistically understand reality: paintings, books, friends, lovers, TV, even sandwiches, cats, dogs and, by extension, anything and everything that surrounds us. And ironically, for all its non-poetic-game-playing simplicity, the poetry itself is a real psychic-door opener: “Harris, you asked, How do you read a painting?..../ Look wide-eyed at the work./Close your eyes and open them,/And hope what you see and derive/Are what the artist wants our mind’s eye/To see and derive Let the images/Abstract, realistic, surrealistic/Take meaning in your eyes....//A smile between you and the canvus,/As though you’re best friends,/Understanding each other, /Understanding that the artist/Allowed this to happen....” (“On How to Read a Painting,” pp. 10-11).
Rosenblatt is a veritable reality-transformer, taking the ambiguous and difficult, the almost-impossible, and giving you some rule-games to play to turn everything into acceptably understandable.
The core-secret is passivity, getting rid of all the usual babblings and scrabblings of the psyche that interfere with direct perception, and allowing The Real is stream in on your inner psyche: “View view stars stars stars/In the night’s sky sky/Sky and imagine the amount/ Of time time time it takes/For you to view that star/That may have exploded/Years years years before.../Time/is time...until time is gone/Is gone like youth like seasons/Like nature...” (“On How to Read Time,” pp.3-4.).

THE HOLY FOOL (for Mike Amado, 1975 - 2009)

Beloved Bagel Bard Mike Amado passed away...here is a poem from his friend poet Carolyn Gregory:


THE HOLY FOOL (for Mike Amado, 1975 - 2009)

Tapping congas in a red shirt,
he brought music to all of us
from ordinary life
where magic does not rule.

Non-listeners did not challenge him
when he uttered his poems
directly from an open heart.
He was wiser than his years.

A transplant failed
and years in dialysis taught him
how to blur out time
when needed,
how to fly like an eagle
above his body.

He brought me back to youth
when animals and gypsies caught fire
and those who witnessed
became Holy Fools.

He was one, too,
turning ruin to beauty,
his mortal pain soaring
on careful wings.

--Carolyn Gregory, 1/3/09

Bagel Bard Bert Stern in the Jan/Feb/ 2009 Issue of the American Poetry Review

Bert Stern's two page poem "Wait" is in the current issue of the prestigious American Poetry Review. Bert Stern's work has appeared in the Bagel Bard anthologies, and in "Ibbetson Street," the Somerville, Mass. based literary journal. The Ibbetson Street Press will be releasing a poetry collection of Stern's in 2009. Bert Stern and his wife (pictured above) are the founders of "Off the Grid Press" a Somerville, Mass. press that publishes people over 60--- hey, another perk for the "Golden Years!"

Bagel Bard Robert K. Johnson's poetry collection "From Mist to Shadow" a MASSBOOK of the Year

MASSBOOKS OF THE YEAR/POETRY
Recommended Reading from the 8th Annual Massachusetts Book Awards

From Mist to Shadow:Poems By Robert K. Johnson ( Ibbetson Street Press 2007)




Here is a review from the Midwest Book Review:

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.

Joining the community : A poem by Kim Triedman

Joining the community : A poem by Kim Triedman





The poet and the promoter went to Au Bon Pain on Saturday morning

disguised as the same person. It was a weekly gathering of poets, and

no one knew either of them, so it was impossible to tell who was who.

The poet wore black, as poets will, and the promoter wore an open smile

suggesting much more confidence than the poet had ever had the

good fortune to know. They drank coffee, which only the promoter could

really tolerate, and fidgeted, which only made the poet self-conscious.

At the end of the hour, the promoter had two new readings booked for

the winter and a half-dozen email addresses scribbled in her planner.

The poet had a nervous stomach from all the coffee and the beginnings

of a poem. They left the café together, all smiles and black, and

everyone thought what a pleasant young woman they had just met.



*Kim Triedman is a new member of the Bards, and the winner of the 2008 Main St. Rag Chapbook Competition