Happy New Year all! In the upcoming days and weeks Ahadada will be rolling out all sorts of new content and projects.

Until then may you be safe and happy!

This was forwarded by Ed Baker to me from Henry Ferrini:

“Vincent Ferrini died December 24th. His death was the result of a recent heart attack and bout with pneumonia. He resided at Den Mar Nursing home in Rockport since last May after returning from his latest reading at Beyond Baroque Literary Art Center in Los Angeles. He was 94 years old. For anyone who knew Mr. Ferrini his passion and engagement for the art of living will always be remembered.

If the poet were writing this obit he would say he did not die but rather merged into the pleroma. The pleroma was a word on his mind during the last few years. In Greek it means, “fullness.” The early Christian Gnostics saw it as the dwelling place of spirit and to scores of people in his community Vincent was the spirit & conscience of Gloucester.

Venanzio Ugo Ferrini was born in Saugus, Massachusetts on June 24, 1913 to John and Rena Ferrini. His parents emigrated separately from Abruzzi, Italy to work in the shoe factories of Lynn. Vincent’s own experience in the shoe factories and during the Great Depression instilled a great sensitivity for the life of the working poor.

In high school he found that books contained the keys to discovery and it was then that he resolved to become a writer. Ignoring his father’s admonition that a son of a shoe worker could never become a poet, he graduated from Lynn Classical and not having the money for college, pursued his education in the Lynn Public Library spending each day reading, studying, looking for answers to illuminate why humanity settled for poverty and war. When the Great Depression hit, the young bard worked as a teacher in the WPA as he worked his first volume of verse about the people of Lynn. In 1940 at the age of twenty-seven he published “No Smoke.”

A simple poem by the poet tells a great deal about the man.

Folk Song.

I pass
by day
and by night
no one has
seen me

if you ever
want to find
me and know me
leave behind
yourself
and enter
the caves
of other
people.

there you
will find
me
who is
yourself.

Henry Ferrini’s letter continues:

Mr. Ferrini married Margaret Duffy a schoolteacher in 1942. The couple had three children Sheila, Owen and Deirdre. In 1948 his young family left Lynn for Gloucester. Working at the GE by day, he soon gave up the security of a weekly paycheck to make a living as a frame maker. As he said in his 1975 autobiography, Hermit of the Clouds, being an independent craftsperson provided “the freedom to write when the poem is hot within.”

Mr. Ferrini’s move to Gloucester marked a shift in his poetry from the political and social to the personal and cosmic. Gloucester became a dream place that he made his place. Here his poetry and his life would find no separation.

In the late 40’s after reading a Ferrini poem in a small magazine the poet Charles Olson paid the poet a fan call. Olson first addressed the Maximus Poems as letters to Mr. Ferrini and even after an excoriating attack; the two men remained lifelong friends.

In the sixties after the death of his daughter Deirdre from leukemia, Ferrini’s marriage ended. He later married the artist Mary Shore. When his second marriage ended in divorce he moved back to his frame shop at 126 East Main Street. The little shop became a nexus for many artists and writers who came to Gloucester.

Vincent’s view of the individual, the family, the community and the nation working together for the common good compelled him to write not only to the Gloucester paper but the Globe, the New York Times and the Nation. At city hall he voiced his concerns at hundreds of council meetings. His focus was always the preservation of his city from the wildfire greed that will destroy the spirit and originality of his city.

Overcoming all odds Mr. Ferrini chose life as a poet. He was an academic outsider who lived with no financial remuneration from his labor. His vigor, unbound creativity and compassion kept him publishing for over 67 years producing 31 volumes of poetry, four volumes of plays and an autobiography. He is the subject of his nephew Henry Ferrini’s film, “Poem in Action.”

Mr. Ferrini leaves his daughter Shelia Ferrini of Boston, his son Owen Ferrini from Gloucester, two grandchildren, Ben and Cara Ferrini and dozens of extended family and friends whom he will continue to inspire. His younger siblings Yolanda, Dante and Lindo predeceased him.

A celebration of Vincent Ferrini’s life will be held at a forthcoming date. His upcoming book of poetry “Invisible Skin” is slated for release in the spring of 2008. Literary requests can be sent to Sheilaferrini[at]aol.com”

As Cid would say—the work endures/the man endures. Long live Vincent Ferrini!

Happy holidays from Ahadada in Toronto! Just received the following in the mail from Jesse when the post resumed after Christmas. Welcome the newest passenger aboard Swedenborg’s Airplane! Going to place the in the Swedonorg’s airplane archive tonight!

More soon from us!

We generally don’t talk much about politics, but in this case we want to be perfectly clear. Obama is the only candidate who doesn’t depress us. Jesse [agreed!—Dan (wish I could vote)

2007 brought five new books and two e-chaps. Not too bad. Ahadada Books was mentioned in the Chicago Tribune, the Los Angeles Times, and other places. The good news about our small venture continues. Our best to our customers, visitors, authors, almost-authors and helpers-out. To those submitting queries: PLEASE CHECK OUR SUBMISSION GUIDELINES FIRST. WE WILL ABSOLUTELY NOT RESPOND TO GENERIC QUERIES, SPAM SUBMISSIONS, OR SUBMISSION OF LINKS.

Overcast weather in Shin-Urayasu, Christmas day (where it’s just another day), but rest assured it’s not at all overcast in my heart. Jess

>2: An Anthology of New Collaborative Poetry
Sugar Mule Press

I’m actually in this attractive, 222 page book, with a great cover featuring a visual poem by Kathy Ernst and the wonderful Sheila E. Murphy, an editor of this opus. I have to say that I’m very happy to have a collaborative sequence I wrote with wordsmith Alan Halsey included, and to find myself a part of a constellation of envelope-pushing post-post-post modernists. There is indeed some good (or if not good, at least mind-stretching) writing from everyone here, except for a sequence of gauche sonnets by Jennifer Hill-Kaucher that Dan Waber gamely rescues from banality with his racy decostructions of the form. I guess my real problem with this anthology, however, is in its over-generosity to four people: John M. Bennett, Jim Leftwich, Geof Huth, and Jukka-Pekka Kervinen. They appear in various combinations a grand total of 20 times with about 61 pages given over to them (not counting biographical statements). If they managed to present us with totally different virtuosic styles of “poeming,” this over-representation would be at the very least instructive, but it seems that these four are intent on constantly disproving the old adage that two heads are better than one. One text written solely by John M. Bennett seems about the same when written by John M. Bennett and Geof Huth (maugre the “correction” by Bob Grumman). A text by Bob Brueckl and Jukka-Pekka Kervinen seems not to differ a hair from Jim Leftwich and Jukka-Pekka Kervinen, except in line spaces and type-faces. One or two examples of these writers would have allowed readers an adequate representation of their talents and would have opened the way for a wider selection of collaborations from vital writers who are not included here, but should be. Perhaps a public “come-all-ye” on the Buffalo Poetics List by editors Murphy and Weber would have resulted in more variety of names and styles and upped the interest of this anthology. At the very least, I hope Bennett, Huth, Leftwich and Kervinen have done their best to buy lots and lots of copies to help support the generosity of the editors and publisher.

So I’m starting to catalog and place online the vast — and I do mean vast — archives that Jesse and I have collected over the years. As I was sorting through some audio, I came across a tape that Jesse Glass had recorded with Martin J Rosenblum and Steve Nelson-Raney in the spring many decades ago.

So, we’ll offer the full audio up here shortly — but what really struck me (just glancing at the photo) was how much a grizzled Jesse looks like a grizzled Joaquin Pheonix.

If ever a biopic were to be made of the Glass life — I’d cast Pheonix in the lead role.

One of the last “greats.” Still trying to process this. Jess

Trying to catch up here on a back-log of new books that have come my way and would like to briefly mention two:

Skin Museum by Jane Joritz-Nakagawa. (Avaunt Books, 2006.) The poems remind me more than a little bit of Denise Riley’s work: edgy, language-oriented, with an encoded message.

Thought Colors by David Jaffin. Shearsman, 2007. Jaffin is surely one of the most prolific poets ever. This new collection weighs in at a hefty 352 pages. Jaffin wrote a note several months ago requesting that I help him achieve fame. This is all I can offer, David. Good luck with your agenda and every best wish, Jesse

I have more books laid away and when time presents itself I’ll comment.

That’s the memorable final line from an unsigned Chicago Tribune review of Masako’s Story by Kikuko Otake that ran on November 9, 2007. Because I don’t subscribe to the Tribune, I had to do a bit of searching around to find a cached version. How wonderful finally to see this review! Most of it is a retelling of what we’ve already said in other postings here, but that final　line really says it all. We did our duty in publishing this book and we certainly wish the author continued success. The Los Angeles Times, Donald Richie of the Japan Times, The Mainichi Shimbun, Hiragana Times, and now the Tribune all prove that the intellectual lights of The Daily Yomiuri, who refused to review the book last summer because “it wasn’t literature” were burning a little low at the time. Happy to say that we no longer subscribe to that paper. I make the trek over to the train station to pick up a Japan Times instead. It’s good for my health. Jess