Coop Reading with Lisa Beatman

Is for Ladies Only

By Susie Davidson

CORRESPONDENT

It’s Ladies’ Night at the Harvard Coop on Oct. 15 as author Lisa Beatman shares the poetry and tales of her new book, “Ladies Night at the Blue Hill Spa” as part of the bookstore’s Author Series.

The collection’s theme is of inner beauty; the Blue Hill Spa a women’s steamroom in Norwood. For Beatman, who holds a 1990 Masters in Public Administration/International Programs from the JFK School of Government and teaches basic skills to immigrants at Ames Envelope factory in Somerville, the spa is the common denominator.

“It is ‘so’ not an upscale health club,” she noted. “This is an old-fashioned, big old steamroom with lots of women in various stages of undress sprawled about. There is a friendship, a kind of honesty that you get when you are in a bath naked together, that is different from the kind of friendship you have when you wear clothes. You are kind of protected from the outside elements.”

When the author was ten, she survived a fire which left her with a scarred torso. Like her own flawed imperfection, her characters reflect a gamut of stoic self-preservation in the face of constant challenge amid the realities of existence. In her poems are the breast cancer survivor finding solace in a steam room and a bottle, the paunchy husband who rediscovers romance with his own wife in a motel “tub-4-2.”

“Ladies Night at the Blue Hill Spa,” said Beatman who began writing following a painful divorce, “strips us naked, making us come to terms with our own skin and bones. I advise people to read it in their tubs, spatter it with their bubblebath and tears.”

The book is divided into four sections. “Body of Light” was inspired by the Norwood Spa. “Pearl” prosaicly depicts a Jewish girl’s relationship to her “bad” hair. “Body of Earth” deals with a sense of place, region, home, a middle-aged woman celebrating physical change. Lastly, “Body in Motion” includes a story soon to appear in the Jewish feminist quarterly Lilith Magazine, and bread, body image and redemption vie in its memoir piece “Set to Rise”.

At Harvard, Beatman found her study group partners more educational than the professors. “Nahum, head of Hadassah Hospital in Jerusalem,” she cited. “Dean, of the Canadian Parliament. Maggie, director of battered women's shelters for the state of Minnesota. The Iran hostage situation examined by a class including both Palestinians and Israelis. I would sometimes just sit in class with my jaw hanging open, listening to the sound of textbook case studies being ripped apart with a forensic ferocity. The hardest part of that program was having to choose a limited number of courses.”

Advised to take financial management courses, she chose to remain put. “I figured, any job worth its salt would pay me to take an accounting course at a local community college, but when would I ever again have the opportunity to sit at the feet of Robert Reich?”

Beatman’s upcoming readings are Nov. 1 at the Blue Hill Spa in Norwood, Dec. 12 at Borders downtown and Feb. 11 at the Newton Free Library.

Ladies Night at the Blue Hill Spa is available locally at the Harvard Coop at 1400 Mass. Ave. and the Grolier Poetry Book Shop at 6 Plympton St.