January 23rd: G. Emil Reutter Features



Stone Soup Poetry meets from 8-10 p.m. every Monday at the Out of The Blue Art Gallery at 106 Prospect Street with an open mike sign-up at 7:30 p.m. Visiting Stone Soup from out of state for the first time will be poet, fiction writer, and essayist G. Emil Reutter.

G Emil Reutter is an author/poet from Lower Bucks County Pennsylvania. His home base is The Five Points Java Joint where he reads normally on the 3rd Friday of the month with the Madpoets Society. He currently has a chapbook of poetry entitled Asphalt Road (2004) and two collections of short stories/essays/poems entitled Life Views (2004), The Jonesville Collection (2004) available as ebooks at Stonegarden Publishing. A number of manuscripts are in submission status. His poetry/prose/essays have been published widely in the small and electronic press.

A sample poem of Reutter's is included below.

saturday night sinners

troubadours sing songs whose lyrics

have long lost their meaning

tina circles dave on the dance floor

as she eyes up johnny at the bar

who chugs another beer wondering

where his wife is

the band sings “born to run”

tina laughs at the crowd dancing

changing the lyric to “born to jog”

or “walk really fast”

dave scores a blond and leaves

tina saddles up next to johnny

listening to the cheat on me blues

waiting for him to take her

where she wants to go

sunday morning comes

as dave picks the tinted blue hair

from his pillow

johnny and his wife enter the church

tina walks by and winks

as johnny notices

the pastor eyeing up his wife

dave runs in sitting down

not noticing the blue haired lady

until she places her hand on his knee

cringing knowing he can’t get away

and here they all sit

saturday night sinners

in sunday morning forgiveness

--G. Emil Reutter

Click here to visit G. Emil Reutter's website.

January 16th: Elizabeth K. Doran Features


Photo by Bill Perrault

Stone Soup Poetry meets from 8-10 p.m. every Monday at the Out of The Blue Art Gallery at 106 Prospect Street with an open mike sign-up at 7:30 p.m. Returning to feature at Stone Soup is local poet and regular open miker Elizabeth K. Doran.

Elizabeth K. Doran has been influenced as a poet by modern women writers such as Sharon Olds and Louis Gluck. Although she would never want to be called a "nature poet" nature is always present in her work. "Nature is part of the environment we all share and informs my sensibility," she says. Elizabeth is drawn to syllabics and loves long syllabic lines. A major influence is Eugino Montale who in 1975 was awarded the Nobel prize for literature.

She is published in Poises and Spare Change news and has read at many Venues in Boston and beyond. She is the former host of poetry at Gallery Diablo.

A sample poem of Doran's is included below.

The Sinners

A woman stands in the middle of the square
she is covered in layers of blue cloth her eyes are hidden.
Men begin to gather, collect stones.
Somewhere under the cloth a heart beats.
It is said those without sin should cast the first stone.
But a sinner picks up a rock and throws it
then there is a frenzy of sinners casting
stones until their rage subsides.
Her god surely heard her heart beat
until it stopped.

--Elizabeth K. Doran

January 9th: Tom Daley Features



Stone Soup Poetry meets from 8-10 p.m. every Monday at the Out of The Blue Art Gallery at 106 Prospect Street with an open mike sign-up at 7:30 p.m. Featuring for the first time at Stone Soup on January 9th will be poet, performer teacher, producer and recent chapbook author Tom Daley.

Tom Daley leads poetry writing workshops at the Boston Center for Adult Education and starting January 15, 2006 at Jeff Robinson's Online School of Poetry. His poetry has been published in a number of journals, including Prairie Schooner, can we have our ball back?, 32 Poems and Poetry Ireland Review. His chapbook, Canticles & Inventories was published in the fall of 2005.

Click here to read two poems by Tom Daley.

Click here for the home of Jeff Robinson's Online School of Poetry.

January 2nd: Raffi Wolf Features



Stone Soup Poetry meets from 8-10 p.m. every Monday at the Out of The Blue Art Gallery at 106 Prospect Street with an open mike sign-up at 7:30 p.m. Featuring for the very first Stone Soup gathering in the new year will be Raphael Wolf.

Raphael Wolf was Bill Barnum's editor in the mid '80's, Rent Free (about homelessness) and I Wish That My Room Had A Floor (about mental illness). He has also had poems, articles, and short stories printed in Spare Change.

December 26th: Doug Holder Features



Stone Soup Poetry meets from 8-10 p.m. every Monday at the Out of The Blue Art Gallery at 106 Prospect Street with an open mike sign-up at 7:30 p.m. Returning to the venue next after his unfortunate cancellation in October will be Ibbetson Street publisher Doug Holder.

After many years of publishing numerous small press poets through his own Ibbetson Street Press, including his own chapbooks (Dreams At The Au Bon Pan, On Either Side of The Charles, waking In A Cold Sweat), Doug Holder finally gets to sit back and enjoy simply being a published author, thanks to Yellow Pepper Press. On the 31st, Stone Soup Poetry will premiere Holder's new chapbook Wrestling With My Father, which has earned advance praise from poets such as Harris Gardner and Hugh Fox.

Most recently, Ibbetson Street Press published Sanctus! Sanctus! Sanctus! by past Stone Soup feature Ann Carhart. Also The Somerville News Writers Festival, created by Holder and Heat City Literary Review Editor Tim Gager, took place on November 13 at the Somerville Theatre (see the link at the end of this post).

A sample poem of Holder's is included here.

Another...in a series of turning fifty poems.

My Life: In Contrast With Others.

There is no need for comparison.
Nor is there time.
What I wanted before
has been rendered to caricature.
The Phantom that pulls and pulls at me
I will never clearly see--

The only contrast
will be that short,
tenuous last breath
that will surely be,
the death
of me.


The Ibbetson Street Press website.

The Yellow Pepper Press Website.

The Somerville News Writers Festival.

December 19th: Philip E. Burnham, Jr. Features



Stone Soup Poetry meets from 8-10 p.m. every Monday at the Out of The Blue Art Gallery at 106 Prospect Street with an open mike sign-up at 7:30 p.m. Featuring December 19th will be poet Philip E. Burnham, Jr.

Philip E. Burnham, Jr. was born in Rochester, New York, and grew up in New England. He is a graduate of Harvard College and served as American Vice Consul in Marseille, France. After receiving a doctorate in Medieval History from Tufts University, he taught in public and private secondary schools and colleges in the Boston area. He has published three books of poetry, My neighbor Adam (2003) and Sailing from Boston (2003), and his newest, Housekeeping (2005). He lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts. A sample poem is included below.


Voices of The Dead

From the radio, voices of the dead
Fill the kitchen like Christmas cinnamon
This low, late december, sun day pink red
Cloud, yellow morning, disembodied sounds

Of music for opera, concert stage
Performed as a lyric necrology,
A year's sum of loss, encore passages
To other shores, scores with these noteworthy

Musicians, their places left to the young
Who play muted instruments, the tempo
A reverence for keys, strings, brass, winds, drums
Voices untuned, unstrung, adagio.

But your songs for children and for love were
Never recorded to be replayed when
You were out of touch, time; their echoes bear
On my hearing as ocean waves wear through

The icy gates of great December's end
and winter's opening, songs whisper in
My heart's good ear where I may often spend
Time's purse to recall you as I listen.

December 12th: John Sturm Features



Stone Soup Poetry meets from 8-10 p.m. every Monday at the Out of The Blue Art Gallery at 106 Prospect Street with an open mike sign-up at 7:30 p.m. Making his debut feature at Stone Soup is John Sturm, orator of great local renown, performing "The Raven," among other works by Edgar Allen Poe.

John Sturm has been performing at open mikes for the last few years at The Cantab, Club Passim, Out of The Blue and other venues. He has twice performed at Forsyth Chapel for e.e. cummings' birthday anniversary. Although he writes almost nothing of his own, he will include several haiku and at least one longer poem of his own. A sample sonnet and haiku are included below:



When our little pups stretch out for belly rubs
Or beg for Snaussages with pleading eyes
When our best exercise is walking them
Or throwing Frisbees till they tire us out

When we delight in all the tricks they do
Rewarding them with kibbles and with praise
Or watch them running free within a yard
Bringing sticks or rubber balls for us to throw

When in the living room they find the sun
Or in the winter lie before the fire
And seem asleep yet stay alert
For any sound which threatens us

They've added joy unto another day
And shown their loving in the way they play



No love poem has
the eloquence of lovers
Silent--eye to eye.

Tonight

Vicki Bosch Murray Features