Somerville's Bagel Bards find an "Official" Home.

Somerville's Bagel Bards find an "Official" Home.


( Somerville, Mass.)

The management of the Au Bon Pain in Davis Square in Somerville, Mass. have given the go ahead for the Bagel Bards http://www.bagelbards.com a literary group in Somerville, Mass. to commission the design of a plaque to designate the Au Bon Pain as "Home of the Bagel Bards" It will be placed in the section of the cafe where these poets and writers regularly meet. The Bards, founded by Doug Holder and Harris Gardner in March of 2004, started out in the basement of Finagle-A-Bagel in Harvard Square, and then moved to the Central Square (Cambridge) Au Bon Pain and later to its hopefully permanent home in Davis Square. Doug Holder, a poet and journalist for The Somerville News, stated: "The Au Bon Pain has been good to us. They have provided a space for our Saturday morning meetings and they have helped us
form a community of writers. It also has been an inspiration for his own poetry Holder said:"I have written two collections of poetry based on my experiences there: " No One Dies at the Au Bon Pain" ( sunnyoutside) and "Dreams at the Au Bon Pain" ( Ibbetson Street) Harris Gardner, his co-founder, said that two artists from the group will be commissioned to design the plaque.

"The Bagel Bards is an egalitarian literary group and has writers that rank from professors to paupers, to the published to the unpublished," according to Holder. Such well-known poets as Afaa Michael Weaver, Miriam Levine, Tino Villanueva, Kathleen Spivack, Clayton Eshleman, Dianna Der Hovanessian have attended the group, as well as respected local bards like: Barbara Bialick, Zvi Sesling, CD Collins, Timothy Gager, Irene Koronas,, Mary Buchinger Bodwell, Lo Galluccio, Gloria Mindock, and others. Novelist Paul Stone and Luke Salisbury are regular attendees, as well as playwrights, science writers, journalists and other disciplines. Steve Glines, and Molly Lynn Watt work to put out a yearly anthology of the Bards' work, and Glines founded the Wilderness House Literary review http://whlreview.com an online lit journal.

It was also announced that the Bards have a special shelf at the Grolier Poetry Book Shop, the famed all-poetry bookstore in Harvard Square. Holder said: " This is very gratifying thing to happen. This is a great grassroots group, we all pull for each other, and I hope it goes on for years to come."


* Bagel Bard Poet Barbara Bialick has a framed displayed poem there called: "Sitting Alone at the Au Bon Pain in Davis Square"



Sitting Alone in Au Bon Pain, Davis Square

I like sitting here inside a land of bread,
cookies, square-shaped crescents,
fluorescently lit and bright
like they’re having a party.

The circus breads of life
on display around me
are tempting me to have my own fiesta:

“Just take one mammoth shortbread cookie
painted chocolate on one side…”
they urge, and I rise like cake
from my seat, mesmerized by dough—
butter, wheat, chocolate, and sugar—
the classic signs of civilization,
which fill me with fertile flavor
under my tongue,
already only a memory
begging for more.


By Barbara Bialick
of the Bagel Bards
2008

The Bagel Bards by Miriam Levine

The Bagel Bards

By Miriam Levine






Any group that names itself "The Bagel Bards" can't take itself too seriously. Irreverence rules at the 9 am to 12 noon, weekly Saturday morning meetings in Davis Square, Cambridge, Massachusetts, at Au Bon Pain--I'd call it Au Mal Pain, though one Bard praises the frosted cinnamon rolls.


Last Saturday morning, I asked this informal group of poets to jot down what they liked about the Bards. "Being with The Bards is better than water boarding," Irene Koronas wrote. "Saturday at the bards allows me to go unmedicated for the morning," another Bard commented. And another, "Love it--love it. It's the only place I can come and not be mugged."


Her 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.

She is Professor Emerita at Framingham State College, where she chaired the English Department and was Coordinator of the Arts and Humanities Program.

Born in Paterson, New Jersey, Miriam Levine now divides her time between Florida and Massachusetts. Currently she is at work on a new novel and a poetry collection.



Athena Pappas wrote a poem on the spot: "that moody cepheid/ clears the window/ for the bagel bards/unaware of my pulse." For those of you, like me, who didn't know: a cepheid is a star that has used up its main supply of hydrogen fuel, is unstable and pulsates.


Sometimes a poet will read a finished poem--we are not a workshop--or bring his or her recently published book, but mostly we talk and laugh.


Doug Holder, who with Harris Gardner founded the group in 2004, remembers past meetings: "I know we had the noted Clayton Eshleman visit us. His pants . . . looked for all the world like resplendent pajama bottoms." He also heard Hugh Fox hold forth on his "theories of Mayan Culture and Kaballah." Recently the poet and artist Irene Koronas told me about her 'course of study.' She reads the books that come to her by chance. Lately chance brought her a discarded carton of books by the Greek philosophers--did she pick them up out of the trash? She's reading Plato, and when done with a book, blocks out certain words with colors. I should have asked her, What colors, Irene? And how do you decide what words get the color treatment? Gloria Mindock will soon be traveling to Europe to read from her new collection of poems. She'll be spending time in Romania. Why Romania, Gloria?


Here's to unstable, pulsating stars clearing the windows for this democratic group! Anyone can join.


About Bagel Bard Miriam Levine.....

Her 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.

She is Professor Emerita at Framingham State College, where she chaired the English Department and was Coordinator of the Arts and Humanities Program.

Born in Paterson, New Jersey, Miriam Levine now divides her time between Florida and Massachusetts. Currently she is at work on a new novel and a poetry collection.

http://miriamlevine.blogspot.com

Photo Study of Bards by Melissa Shook and Zvi Sesling

ZVI SESLING ( Photos 1 to 3) Melissa Shook ( 4 and beyond...)

( Click on Pictures To Enlarge)

Upon Hearing of Your Death in Your 34th Year.... (For Mike Amado)

( Mike Amado second from right)


Upon Hearing of Your Death in Your 34th Year

For Mike Amado

I fear losing your brightness to shades of memory,
the way you lean forward when you are being kind,
which is all the time,
the way you build your poetry in spades
and it comes out in hearts,
The way the drum beats our hearts beat the words beat.

Within the hour,
I dig into my box of childhood treasures, so insignificant now,
for two polished Winged Victories for your eyelids,
to pay Chiron’s fee and then dredge up three
lint-covered Valiums for Cerberus,
who like a good dog will eat Anything.
I am worrying that if you can’t translate
into three languages on a good day
you might end up excluded from
The Elysian Fields Anthology.

Nobody’s fault you grew up grappling
with a pain shaking you by the balls
over a cliff, each breath reminding you
when the pain stopped you would be dead,
a promise it kept (like a heartless sundial ever
burnishing the Spoken Warrior’s words).

There is a question poetry asks of common sense:
Is it our language that leaves us incredulous
of any reality that doesn’t measure itself
by a beginning and an end?
Is Plath’s Ariel simply a nightlight
in a black, chaotic universe?
Ah, there’s the rub.
Who was it exactly named the stars?
The constellations? and would that be enough?
To live on in that way? When art crosses the line
becoming myth you might oh so quickly
forget the name of this young poet.
But I would be happy to remember this line
of poetry on any battlefield life takes me,
in any last breath if there were time,
“There is a river I call Sky.”


--------- Linda Larson is a Bagel Bard and former editor of "Spare Change News."

Harris Gardner , Doug Holder and the Bagel Bards to read at the Somerville Library Central Branch 6:30 to 8:30PM April 27, 2009

Bagel Bard Poetry reading at the Somerville Central Library

The Central Library, located at 79 Highland Avenue


Monday April 27 @ 6:30-8:30 pm

Special readings by founders: Doug Holder and Harris Gardner as well as the other Bards.


According to Regie O’Hare Gibson, a Bagel Bard is “a poet that is glazed and ring-shaped whose poetry has a tough, chewy texture usually made of leavened words and images dropped briefly into nearly boiling conversations on Saturday mornings -- often baked into a golden brown.” The Bards featured in this reading represent part of the 51 poet members who come together as writers over breakfast every Saturday morning at the Au Bon Pain in Davis Square. Every poet -- famous, unknown, or somewhere in between -- is welcome to share breakfast with the Bagel Bards while baking up some tasty treats.

Bagel Bard Gloria Mindock will tour Romania in Spring 2009 for her new poetry collection: "At the Heaven's Gates"

Gloria Mindock’s book, “At the Heaven’s Gates” will be published by Cogito Press in Oradea, Romania. with translation by Flavia Cosma.

The editor/publisher, Mr. Ioan Tepelea will write the introduction in her book. Mr. Tepelea has published Gloria’s poetry before in an anthology called “Murmur of Voices” and in the magazine he publishes called, UNU: REVISTA DE CULTURA.

Gloria and her translator are planning a book tour with her publisher in Romania in May of this year.

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