On Either Side of the Charles

by Doug Holder. Ibbetson Street Press, 25 School Street Somerville, MA. 02143.

Book Review by Michael Basinski

Doug Holder’s the circus-master of a whole slice of Boston banana pie poetry world. Great to greet him here on these pages with his poems. This I write because mostly he is busy introducing this poet to that poet and promoting, promoting promoting the poem and poets. He is a person that makes a community of writers, which no one may and or can deny, and he should be made a Knight of the Round Word by the great Popes of the Poem and Popeye! He is already that in my eyes. So when I read his works, it was with great gobs of joy that I felt such bubbling joy at his very easy way of capturing instances of the common and making them high holy. Ginsberg asks at the end of Howl, ‘Is baseball holy?’ Or was it Kerouac in Pull My Daisy ’ doesn’t matter. Holder does make it all holy… his poetic sitting and pondering by the Charles River, like young Whitman penning the happening which he and Walt Whitman, and Ginsberg and Kerouac all know is the happening, ever rolling, running river of poetry.