Advocate Correspondent

CAMBRIDGE - On any given Monday evening, the sweet sounds of the spoken word emanate from the caverns of the Middle East complex in Central Square, Cambridge. Here, denizens of the art of poetry gather under the auspices of Jack Powers’ 30-years’ running institution, Stone Soup Poetry.

Poetry in America is always a tough sell. But for those who listen and delight in its beauty and depth, nothing is finer. The late US Poet Laureate Joseph Brodsky, who set the American poetry audience at 1 percent, nonetheless waxed that this equaled 2.4 million, very fortunate people. "The last century and a half of American poetry," he enthused, "dwarfs even jazz and cinema, in my view."

"To live in this city at this time," says author and Boston Globe columnist James Carroll, "is to be surrounded by guardians of the shocked angels, our host of poets. Who are we to let nothing come of their art? Who are we not to feel their presence as our city’s treasure?"

At Stone Soup, anything goes, from unhewed street to prosaic, academic writing. Poets of all ages and stripes ascend the podium and bequeath their most personal and heartfelt offerings to the respectful listeners. The bases for their declarations encompass all aspects of their multicolored existences.

Ian Thal, Doug Holder, Marc Widershein and Larry Lewis are among the regulars. Each persona, shaped by distinct sociological influences, solidly contributes to the scene. All, perhaps surprisingly in this secular hodgepodge of a literary underground, profoundly and proudly assert their Judaic core.

"I consider myself to be an American artist," says Thal, a 30-year old D.C. native who holds an M.A. in Philosophy from Boston College. "As an American, I take part in many cultures that inhabit the continent, but it is also a matter of putting one’s own culture within that context. One of the missions I face and will face is how do I become both a Jewish artist and an American artist?"

Raised by secular, politically oriented parents, he was ingrained with a social consciousness early on. "My first mentor was a philosophy professor who lived across the street," he recalls. "She was an African-American woman who was very interested in the parallels between the Black and Jewish experience. She later went on to become Assistant Secretary of Education."

A board member of Stone Soup, he is characterized by his hat fetish. "Hey, maybe that’s the Orthodox in me," he quips.

Thal’s Jewish identity is assuredly evident. He created a stir in 1994 when, after a Holocaust-denying ad ran in BC’s The Heights, he took 16 bales of the paper and arranged them into a swastika in the main quad. This act was noted in the Globe and on 60 Minutes, and resulted in much public debate on the subject.

Thal recently attended a presentation on Yiddish poetry, which he plans to study.

Today, he substitute teaches in the Boston School System in urban, underprivileged schools.

"One aspect of Jewish thought that shapes my poetry," he muses, "is the richness of meaning contained in words. Kabalistic, Midrashic and even Talmudic thought comes from a deep meditation on meaning and openness to interpretation -- a practice that contemporary philosophers call ‘hermeneutics.’ Though a secular Jew, I find that that care for the richness of words is central to my love of poetry and my Jewish identity."

Thal’s "Creator’s Manifesto" was inspired by poet and musician Patti Smith’s performance of Allen Ginsberg’s "Footnote to Howl" which, he says, proclaims the whole world holy.

"The ‘bet’ ", he continues, "is the second letter of the Hebrew alphabet and of course the first letter of the Torah. ‘Scision’ is ‘to cut’ as in ‘scissor’ or ‘incision’, but it also implies decisions. The piece was inspired by the Kabalistic notion of mitzvah as furthering the creation."

"And in my mind, the act of poetry is a mitzvah."

Doug Holder came to Boston University in 1973 from Long Island, and he holds an M.A. in Literature from the Harvard Extension School. "Poetry was a natural evolution from my journal writing, " he recounts. "I have a creative family; my Brother Donald won a Tony award for lighting in The Lion King."

Holder’s poetry involvements are expansive. He is Assistant to the Poetry Editor at Spare Change magazine, serves as the Boston editor for Poesy magazine, is the President of Stone Soup Poets, was recently nominated at the Cambridge Poetry Awards, and has conducted poetry workshops for Newton Community Education, Arlington Arts Association and at McLean Hospital.

He also promotes the works of other poets. Ibbetson St. Press, which he co-founded, puts out a twice-yearly poetry collection as well as "chapbooks," and he runs a small publishing house, Singing Bone Press, which recently released "City of Poets: 18 Boston Voices."

"You can't help the fact that your past, your ethnic background informs your work," Holder maintains. "I am not a religious Jew per se, but my poetry has many references to Jewish culture. I think the only way to understand yourself as a person, or poet, etc., is to know where you came from, where your roots are firmly planted."

Holder wrote his master’s thesis on Henry Roth; he wished to explore the generation before him:

"The secrets, the conflicts that were hidden behind a mask of obscure Yiddish utterances. From studying the man and his work, I learned to use my Jewish background as a rich vein of material."

He has written a series on ethnic foods. "That evoked a whole universe of thoughts and emotions from a simple taste or a smell. A darkened delicatessen under the elevated tracks in the Bronx in the early 60's, with my father, was a perfect setting for a poem about my childhood. The last bite a dying Uncle took from a kosher hotdog was a great focal point to define the life of the man."

"The conflicts of Jewish assimilation in a Gentile world, the children's revolt against the immigrant parents, the anti-semitism or self-hatred of Jews themselves, these were things I always wanted to explore. I may not go to Temple on a regular basis, but deep in me is that sense of myself as a Jew. It comes out in my work as naturally as my next breath. I remember in one poem I wrote, I AM A JEW, I dealt with the problem of trying to deny your true identity":

During the day/ you down the white bread/ secretly savor the dark rye/ and know in the dead of night/ the blood doesn't lie

"You can't repress in writing that which is intrinsic to your sensibility."

'

by Ian Thal

Poets, believe your poems are for dwelling within.

Poets, believe your words are worlds, walls, windows and the wind.

Poets, believe your lines to mark your lands, your stanzas to be your cities.

Poets, believe your readers wish to be led by you to the dwelling words you have scisioned from that first violently elegant bet.

by Ian Thal

Monday night is and is not

the fifth night of Hannuka

and is and is not Christmas night as well.

I am not at home

seated on a Red Line train

neither lighting candles

nor singing the blessing

crossing the river

on my way to break bread

with poets, for it is Monday night.

I look out from the Red Line train

rapid transiting

across the salt & pepper shaker Longfellow Bridge.

Boston is lit up like a festival of lights.

Suddenly the city receding slowly to my left

has become my menorah

and I whisper the blessing.

Suspended

In your jellied texture.

A mish'n

clumps of sweet fish.

With a slice

such pungency

nostrils receptive

to the primal aroma.

The taste

a perfect template

to my memory.

Then...

the horse radish-

I won't complain

such joy

but such pain!

appeared in the Bay State Echo

by Doug Holder

I sit in the deep creases of her sun dress

a purple flourish of fabric flowers

stunned by the musty cabal of her perfume

my head resting on her soft deflated breasts

she exchanges Yiddish for English with mother

tit for tat.

I am trapped...

my stomach leaden with chicken fat

Bronx cheers from the pavement below

I'm in familial ground

nesting in the lap of a long dead grandmother

with my mother's jealous eyes

fixed on me.

appeared in the Harvard Mosaic.