Doug Holder

was born in Manhattan, N.Y. on July 5, 1955. A small press activist, he founded the Ibbetson Street Press in the winter of 1998 in Somerville, Mass. He has published over 40 books of poetry of local and national poets and over 20 issues of the literary journal Ibbetson Street. Doug Holder is the arts/editor for The Somerville News, a co-founder of “The Somerville News Writers Festival,” “Newton Free Library Poetry Series” and is the curator of the in Newton, Mass. His interviews with contemporary poets are archived at the Harvard and Buffalo University libraries, as well as Poet’s House in NYC. Doug Holder’s own articles and poetry have appeared in several anthologies including: Inside the Outside: An Anthology of Avant-Garde American Poets (Presa Press) Greatest Hits: twelve years of Compost Magazine (Zephyr Press) and America’s Favorite Poems edited by Robert Pinsky. His work has also appeared in such magazines as: Rattle, Doubletake, Hazmat, The Boston Globe Magazine, Caesura, Sahara, Linden Lane, Poesy, Small Press Review, Artword Quarterly, Manifold (U.K.), The Café Review, the new renaissance and many others. His two most recent poetry collections are: “Of All The Meals I Had Before…” ( Cervena Barva- 2007)) and “No One Dies at the Au Bon Pain” ( sunyoutside-2007). His collection “THE MAN IN THE MIDDLE OF THE MIDTOWN TUNNEL” went out in 2008. ( Cervena Barva Press) Doug Holder holds an M.A. in Literature from Harvard University.

“A journal and publisher of poetry.”

Ibbetson Street publishes the best of the small press. Our press is nationally distributed. We have received notice in The Boston Globe, Harvard Review, Small Press Review, PRESA, and other repsected journals. We have published poetry books by Robert K. Johnson, Gloria Mindock, Abbott Ikeler, Helen Bar Lev, Lo Galluccio, Irene Koronas, Molly Lynn Watt, Patricia Brodie, Linda Larson and many others. Ibbetson Street has been featured on TV shows on Newton Cable, Boston Cable, Cambridge Cable, Somerville Community Access TV, as well as a feature on MIT Radio. Our magazines and books are carried at a host of independent bookstores in the area. Ibbetson Street is now listed in the Index of American Periodical Verse.

DORIAN BROOKS, a poet and an independent scholar in women’s history, has published widely in the small press and in one book–A Pause in the Light. | RICHARD CAMBRIDGE’s, award-winning poetry, including the Master’s Slam (1997 National Poetry Slam) often explores issues such as the impact of the US blockade on Cuba. He curates the Poets’ Theater at Club Passim in Cambridge. | LINDA HAVILAND CONTE; began her study and practice of poetry at Connecticut College with William Meredith. She helped produce the Poetry at the Media Lab series at MIT. | ED GALING | RALPH HASELMANN, Jr. | DOUG HOLDER, is the founder, publisher and co-editor of The Ibbetson Street Press. His work has appeared in BostonPoet.com, FRESH! Literary Magazine, Boston Globe, Spare Change and others… | JOANNE HOLDRIDGE, is an instructor a Bunker Hill Community College in Chalesown, MA. Her work has appeared in Pinyon Poetry, whiskey Island, Wisconsin Review, Spare Change and others. | ROBERT K. JOHNSON, is a retired profesor of English at Suffolk University. He has been published widely and rns the Newton Free Library poetry reading series. | B.Z. NIDITCH | JACK POWERS, the founder of the Stone Soup Poets, has produced over 1,500 consecutive weeks of poetic performances. He has read in Europe, Russia, and the U.S. Jack is one of five recipients of the first Anne Bradstreet Lifetime Achievement Awards. | LYN LIFSHIN | SUE SULLIVAN,  is an expressive therapist and a regular contributor to The Ibbetson Street Press. Her work has also appeared in Spare Change and Pine Island. | RICHARD WILHELM worked as a VISTA volunteer in 1969-1970. He has exhibited paintings at the Piano Factory in Boston and at Cambridge Center for Adult Education. He is the Art Editor at Ibbetson Street Press. | MICHAEL ZACK | and more!

More on Doug Holder can be found here…

What It Is

– for Todd Moore’s 70th

said The Kid is 3 score
& 10 & the lingering musk of
pussy tingling on the tongue of time
the poem dancing in the raw
like an outlaw
under some eyeless sun
& the feeling that
there is still something left
& juice enough
to get it right
between the lines
between the sheets
between the devil & the
distractions

what it is said The Kid
is the machinery of Dillinger’s
opus magic poking stars into
the epic story of this godless nite
working the duende big dick
fearless my great act of faith
as the poem dangling from
death’s tree bleeding into
the earth like so many
lost metaphors flickering
in the back seat of a Chevy
made for fucking & a quick
getaway

what it is said The Kid
is one more dream amigo
one well placed word like a
shot in the dark
& the truth somewhere in the
winking eye of a great whale
on some lonesome highway
south of any moral
north you could conjure
while rimming the gold
off Billie’s blonde peach
your hot hard
Thompson spilling
like a prayer

Todd Moore’s and S.A. Griffin’s books are available via our THE SHOP page here…

Mumia Abu-Jamal, Kathy Acker, Ai, Miguel Algarin, Rafael F.J. Alvarado, David Amram, Rudolfo Anaya, Sini Anderson, Hannah Aquaah, Penny Arcade, Amiri Baraka, Julian Beck, John Bennett, Mark “9-Box” Benyo, Ted Berk, Wallace Berman, Steven J. Bernstein, Father Daniel Berrigan, Iris Berry, Umar Bin Hassan, Max Blagg, Jennifer Blowdryer, Cecil Boatswain, Laurel Ann Bogen, Joe Brainard, Richard Brautigan, Ray Bremser, Douglas Brinkley, Jim Brodey, Eric Brown, Lenny Bruce, Michael Bruner, William S. Burroughs, Regie Cabico, Cal, Steve Cannon, Jim Carroll, Michael Carter, Neal Cassady, Jim Chandler, Neeli Cherkovski, Justin Chin, Andy Clausen, Allen Cohen, Ira Cohen, Leonard Cohen, Wanda Coleman, Gregory Corso, Jayne Cortez, Peter Coyote, Steve Dalachinsky, Maria Damun, Alejo Dao’ud Rodriguez, James Dean, Ken DiMaggio, Diane diPrima, Edward Dorn, Lawrence Durrell, Bob Dylan, Evert Eden, Herby Ehinger, Maggie Estep, Janice Eidus, John Farris, Jim Feast, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Israel Fernandez, Daniel Ferri, Bonnie Finberg, Karen Finley, Frank Fissette, Bob Flanagan, Merry Fortune, FrancEye, Rebecca Fransway, Patricia Freed Ackerman, Reg E. Gaines, Nelson Gary, Kathi Georges, Amy Gerstler, John Gilmore, Allen Ginsberg, John Giorno, Buddy Giovinazzo, Michael Gizzi, Mike Golden, David Gollub, Gerry Gomez Pearlberg, Matt Gonzalez, Jeff Gordon, S.A. Griffin, Che Guevara, Woody Guthrie, Fritz Hamilton, Q.R. Hand, Joy Harjo, Helen A. Harrison, Kurt Heinz, David Henderson, Gil Scott-Heron, Victor Hernandez Cruz, Daniel Higgs, Jack Hirschman, Abbie Hoffman, Sara Holbrook, Mikhail Horowitz, David Huberman, Herbert Huncke, C.X. Hunter, Hank Hyena, Bruce Isaacson, Kathe Izzo, Joan Jobe Smith, Hettie Jones, Janis Joplin, Lenore Kandel, Vampyre Mike Kassel, Alan Kaufman, Bob Kaufman, Jack Kerouac, Jan Kerouac, Ken Kesey, Klipschutz, Doug Knott, Ron Kolm, Tuli Kupferberg, Michael Lally, Philip Lamantia, Paul Landry, Jennifer Lee, David Lerner, d.a.levy, Joel Lewis, Tsaurah Litzsky, Gerald Locklin, Philomene Long, Sylvere Lotringer, Dominique Lowell, Danny Lyon, Norman Mailer, Judith Molina, Gerard Malanga, Taylor Mali, Marvin Malone, William J. Margolis, Lisa Martinovic, Ellyn Maybe, Joe Maynard, Michael McClure, Jeffrey McDaniel, Kaye McDonough, Thomas McGrath, Tony Medina, David Meltzer, Ann Menebroker, Sarah Menefee, Sharon Mesmer, Jack Micheline, Bobby Miller, Henry Miller, Mike M. Mollett, Todd Moore, James Ryan Morris, Tracie Morris, Jim Morrison, Henry J. Morro, Eileen Myles, Gerald Nicosia, Harold Norse, Alice Notley, Maura O’Connor, Frank O’Hara, Marc Olmsted, Neil Ortenberg, Simon J. Ortiz, Ron Padgett, Kenneth Patchen, Stuart Z. Perkoff, Pedro Pietri, Miguel Pinero, Vytantas Pliura, Charles Plymell, Jackson Pollack, Janine Pommy Vega, N. Pourjaundry, Richard Pryor, Jill Rapaport, Ishmael Reed, Loe Reed, Roger Richard, Steve Richmond, Frank T. Rios, Larry Rivers, Luis Rodriguez, Sheree Rose, David Roskos, Barney Rosset, Thaddeus Rutkowski, Sonia Sanchez, Jimmy Santiago Baca, Sapphire, Tony Scibella, Susan Scutti, Hubert Selby Jr., Assata Shakur, Tupac Shakur, Bill Shields, Danny Shot, Herschel Silverman, Bucky Sinister, Hal Sirowitz, Marc (So what?) Smith, Patricia Smith, Patti Smith, Gary Snyder, Sparrow, Julia Stein, Claude Taylor, Marvin Taylor, John Thomas, Hunter S. Thompson, Mike Topp, David Trinidad, George Tsongas, David L. Ulin, The Unbearables, Melvin Van Peebles, Julia Vinograd, Albert Vitale, Fred Voss, D.R. Wagner, Tom Waits, Anna Waldman, Scott Wannberg, William Wantling, Carl Watson, ruth weiss, Philip Whalen, Walt Whitman, Carol Wierzbicki, Jack Wiler, William Carlos Williams, Peter Lamborn Wilson, A.D. Winans, Bana Witt, David Wojnarowicz, Eve Wood, Kathleen Wood on 685 pages go here…

when machine

guns are
talking
death
makes it
his business
to listen

poem by Todd Moore

Todd Moore | Photo: Pete Jonsson

Pushing the envelope. And, in poetry, that’s the name of the game, isn’t it? Trying to see how far you can go before you fuck it up. Because, in poetry, there is a very fine line between writing a poem of pure genius and just fucking it all up classic trainwreck style. Lorca never touched on the subject of fucking up in The Play And Theory Of The Duende. But, the implication there is that if you refuse the duende or if you squander it, then you will fail, you will fry in the heat and the energy of the duende. You will burn, baby, burn.

Strangely enough, there is some kind of peculiar death wish allure to fucking up as a poet. The trick, if you can pull it off, is to come to within inches of oblivion and still write that one all time poem that makes your bones and then sends fracture lines all the way through them, both almost at the same time. The trick is to write ARIEL before sticking your head in the oven. The trick is to write THE BRIDGE before diving toward the sharks. The trick is to write POET IN NEW YORK before the fascists come to rub their rifles all over your body. The trick is to paint GUERNICA, have the canvas rolled and be long gone before the stormtroopers pull up to your house wearing black shirts, driving black cars, black rage, black guns, black everything.

The temptation in poetry is to fuck up and fuck it all up in the epic manner. And, this coexists right along with the ambition to write the greatest poem ever. And, lets not be coy here. If you are a poet, you are probably the most arrogant son of a bitch on the face of the planet. You are the equal of Whitman, Shakespeare, Homer, and you are a hundred times better than the poor bastard on open mike night who is signed up to read just before you. If you are a poet, you have an ego the size of the Grand Canyon. And, if you don’t, then you are already finished though you may not know it. And, nobody is going to tell you because the sweetest revenge of all against mediocrity is to just let you swing and kick in the wind.

Almost anyone can fuck up and most of us do at one time or another but it takes a towering genius to fuck up in the grand beyond grand manner. Only Jack Micheline could have died on a BART train. Only John Berryman could have taken a header off a Mississippi River bridge with DREAM SONG Henry talking to him all the way down to the ice. Only d. a. levy could have danced his 22 rifle across his apartment floor before giving us the ultimate poem and blowjob of death.

The trick, the real trick is to write a masterpiece of a poem while balancing a razor blade on top of a vein. The trick is to play russian roulette with Mayakovsky’s nerve and Mayakovsky’s style. It almost seemed as though the gesture of putting the gun barrel against his chest was a kind of performance poetry that, if he didn’t invent, he sure as hell perfected. The trick is to drink as hard and as long as Charles Bukowski or Kell Robertson and still be able to write something as solid as BURNING IN WATER, DROWNING IN FLAME, or A HORSE CALLED DESPERATION. The trick is to do eight through Raton Pass in the dead of winter across black ice while writing the poem to end all poems about Billy the Kid Tony Moffeit style.

The trick is to have style in the first place. When the fascists shot Lorca, the one thing they couldn’t kill was his style. And, I’d like to think that at least one of those mothers had to know that. Had to realize that no matter how many bullets you fire into a corpse you can’t kill a poet’s style. The trick is to have style even in the face of death. Death has no distinctive sound but a great poet does. The trick is to have style because no matter what that is your sound, no matter what that is your look, that is your swagger down the corridors of oblivion. And, it doesn’t matter how many third raters, how many envious wannabes try attacking you for who you are, where you came from, or what you have become. Because style is the essence of your authenticity, style is your armor, and style is the very core of what you can do when nobody else can do it as well or with as much courage and grace.

Style saved Lorca when nothing else could. Style gave Micheline the permission to die en route from nowhere to nowhere. Style made Bukowski really look like somebody while he was drinking and strolling down Sunset Boulevard or Rodeo Drive or some no exit broken down skidrow street in deathtown L. A. Style was Slinger Ed Dorn wearing that kickass cowboy hat while leaning into the camera. Style is the gutbucket gravel going way back inside Tony Moffeit’s voice while he belts out Voodoo Casanova. Style is Mark Weber reading anything from PLAIN OLD BOOGIE LONG DIVISION. Style is all about Dennis Gulling writing a death trip poem at the bottom of an insurance claims form. Style is Dillinger who was nothing but style.

The thing about style and fucking up is that they are intimately and recklessly entwined, related, the blood idiot twins who can make you look way beyond wonderful or they can exile you to the shithouse of the ho hum, the boring, the furiously banal. One thing to remember is you can’t make yourself have style. It doesn’t work that way. It just comes as a byproduct of the madman inside you. Just as you cannot will yourself to write a great poem, you cannot fake style. If you try to fake style in a poem or in the way that you live, you are truly done for. All of your poetry cred and all of your street cred are gone, sayonara, bye by, and don’t let the door hit you in the ass on the way out.

The interesting thing about style and fucking up is that they somehow balance each other out. You can die like Plath with your head in an oven and still survive through the powerhouse poem. You can die like Mayakovsky, with your blood swimming all over your blood and still make it clean because you taught Frank O’Hara how to write some of the best poetry ever. And, you can die like Berryman whose DREAM SONGS have somehow become part of our death songs. This is when the poem becomes a truly unbeatable style.

And, fucking up becomes the darkest of all myths. Mayakovsky died in a flash of gunfire at the age of thirty six. He looked good, he looked very good. The cameras loved his scruffy streetfighter fuck you demeanor. And, now his Rodchenko face appears far more interesting than Pasternak’s which took a savage beating from dealing with Stalin. At the other end of the spectrum is Bukowski’s face which survived a teenage bout of acne and god knows how many rights to the jaw. Which makes him look ugly and makes him look alive with electric charisma.

The trick is to fuck up and become a living legend. The trick is to fuck up all the way to the fame.

an monsieur k. modyfied image based on an original illustration by Jean-Claude Claeys

lisa was

drunk when
she took
off her
clothes in
front of a
toulouse
lautrec can
can girl
poster like
sonny asked
& was
shaking her
tits when
he shot her
3 in the
chest one
in the throat
then death
stuck his
tongue in
her wounds