Table of Contents 2024 Post

Prose

Tom Ashley, The Carousel
Robert N. Chan, I’m a Congressman, Not a Murderer
Lisa Cristal, The Dune Shacks and the Ocean
Pat Fortunato, The Bike Bitch
Sonya Friedman, Little Red and Grandma Blue
Sonya Friedman, “Waiting for Godot”
Jill Eldredge Gabriele, The “A” Train
Jill Eldredge Gabriele, What’s the Downside
James Gould, Afghanistan Leave
Carmen Mason, Kiku
Judith Meyerowitz, JDawg
Judith Meyerowitz, Sadie
Michael Kessler, Health and Welfare
Mary Padilla, Dispatches
Mary Padilla, Finding the Way
Andrew Shapiro, Two Chapters from My Unpublished Memoir
Susan Smahl, A Hard Rain (A Note on Patti Smith at the Nobel Prize Ceremony)
Susan Smahl, My Night at Rao’s
Lorne Taichman, Cell Soup
Charles Troob, The Continental Baths, 1971
Charles Troob, Metropolitan Diary
Denise Waxman, MacArthur Park

Poetry

Stewart Alter, A Dieter’s Sonnet: (A Shape Poem)
Stewart Alter, Going Beyond
Stewart Alter, Running for President
Stewart Alter, Sometimes
Stewart Alter, Used To
Mark Fischweicher, Boundaries
Mark Fischweicher, Marshland
Mark Fischweicher, plantings
Jonathan Gellman, The Sun and Shadows of Democracy
Carmen Mason, 1984
Mary Padilla, On Staying Afloat
Mary Padilla, Reality
Mary Padilla, Transmission
Mary Padilla, What Is
Mireya Perez Bustillo, Looking East
Mireya Perez Bustillo, Market Day
Mireya Perez Bustillo, The Coney Island Aquarium
Sara Petitt, Sunday Afternoon

Table of Contents POST 2023

Masthead

Letter from the Publishers

Prose

Robert Chan, Artificial?
Robert Chan, The Late Robert Chan
Pat Fortunato, I’ve Lost It!
Pat Fortunato, The Invasion of the Pasta People
Sonya Friedman, Sidney Lumet, Firm Director
Sonya Friedman, Vermont: Second Nature
Judith Meyerowitz, Memoirs of a Brighton Beach Childhood
Judith Meyerowitz, The Advice-Giver
Mary Padilla, As Seen Through the Leaves
Mary Padilla, On Aggression
Sara Petitt, Lunch at La Marine in Paris
Ira Rubin, The Atria Roundtable
Ron Russo, A Stack of Photographs
Ron Russo, Uncle Matt
Mark Scher Death and Dying
Mark Scher, Quest for Meaning
Lorne Taichman, Music Mania
Charles Troob, Shaving
Richard Zacks, Survivors

Poetry

Stewart Alter, Theban Shocker
Stewart Alter, Misplaced
Stewart Alter, The Businessman’s Lament
Mark Fischweicher, For the Birds
Mark Fischweicher, Things that Return
Mark Fischweicher, Unfallen
Mark Fischweicher, Tirade to Dismiss My Fall
Rosalie Frost, Girl-talk
Rosalie Frost, What We Owe
Carmen Mason, Dylan
Carmen Mason, Raccoon
Carmen Mason, Sonnet VII
Carmen Mason, Poemless in Gaza
Judith Meyerowitz, Jump Up Children
Judith Meyerowitz, A Chinese Scholar’s Garden
Judith Meyerowitz, Ode to Sylvia
Judith Meyerowitz, Is This One?
Mary Padilla, Improvising
Mary Padilla, Letter to You
Mary Padilla, Joy
Mary Padilla, Nobody Goes There
Mireya Perez Bustillo, A Cow Jumped Over the Moon
Mireya Perez Bustillo, Bed
Mireya Perez Bustillo Reclaimed
Mireya Perez Bustillo, Cordillera Oriental
Charles Troob, Napoli

Masthead 2021

Publisher, Charles Troob
Associate Publisher, Lorne Taichman
Associate Publisher, Tom Ashley

Prose Editors: Mary Houts and Eric Roper

Prose Readers:
Mary Elwood
Mary Houts
Ruth Kavesh
Sara Petitt
Eric Roper
Ira Rubin
Susan Smahl

Poetry Editor: Mark Fischweicher and Irene Sax

Poetry Judges:
Mark Fischweicher
Carmen Mason
Judith Meyerowitz
Irene Sax

Photo Editor: Jerry Vogel

Photo Judges:
Janna Amelkin
Ron Forlenza
Jonathan Gaines
Lale Odekon
Susan Rauch
Gerald Reisner
Robin Glasser Sacknoff
Claude Samton
Susanne Yellin

With special thanks to Denise Waxman for her help in publishing Voices onto the web.

Letter from the Publishers 2021

We are pleased to bring you the ninth edition of Voices Online.  There was too much turmoil in 2020 to produce an issue, but here we are again, presenting the amazing work of our talented members.
Thanks to the many people who made this issue possible:  the contributors, the judges, and the editors.  And thanks to our new home, the Graduate Center, for a seamless transition to a bright future.
We have dedicated this issue to three people who made enormous contributions to Voices Online and are no longer with us, Peter Houts, Marshall Marcovitz and Mary R. Smith.
Soon it will be time to start thinking about the next edition.  We invite new and newer members of the Lifelong Peer Learning Program to come aboard as contributors and leaders of the process.

Charles Troob, Publisher
Tom Ashley and Lorne Taichman, Associate Publishers

Surfing

by Carmen Mason 

Pythagoras lived when kids
didn’t wield box cutters and guns
or stand on lines for free condoms
missing class
when fuck-you shirts weren’t even
dreamed of by
lovehaters and childhaters
When homework wasn’t necessary because
each moment was an assignment for life
He lived when the parts still equalled the whole
and the whole was a holy thing
He    then Empedocles and later
Euclid believed the
world and all its matter mattered
and Pythagoras suggested that if you don’t get it right
you can come back and try again
in Samos or some other place and
body-state     say a fish or a goat
or a flea or Shanghai

To be brief     Pythy
opposed the taking of life
the eating of flesh or anyone who killed
or prepared animals for diet 

So I think all these drive-by shooters
babyburners     peoplerapers
mindmarauders    ethnictrashers
racelashers     fuckshirt peddlers
drug and craprap hustlers
should die     just die     then come back and try again 

I’ve been writing prose and poetry since I was six. Won the Ist prize in Seventeen Magazine’s short story contest at 17 and several poetry prizes through the years. I write because I cannot help myself. I write to empty out the thoughts I cannot hold inside a day or hour more.

 

 

 

Masthead – Fall 2019

Charles Troob, Publisher

Lorne Taichman, Associate Publisher
Tom Ashley, Associate Publisher

Prose Editors: Mary Houts and Eric Roper

Prose Readers:
Eileen Brener
Mary Elwood
Mary Houts
Ruth Kavesh
Sharon Lewin
Sara Petitt
Eric Roper
Ira Rubin
Ettie Taichman

Poetry Editor:
 Mark Fischweicher

Poetry Judges:
Sylvia Brill
Mark Fischweicher
Carmen Mason
Carol Schoen

Photo Editors: Peter Houts and Jerry Vogel

Photo Judges:
Janna Amelkin
Harold Berkowitz
Bob Feinstein
Susan Herman
Peter Houts
Marshall Marcovitz
Gerald Reisner
Robin Sacknoff
Claude Samton
Susan Winston
Susanne Yellin

Letter from Publishers – Winter Spring 2018

Letter from Publishers–Fall-Winter 2018

Dear Colleagues,

This is the seventh online issue of Voices.   We feel honored to be able to present such interesting and beautiful work to you.
We would like to thank our editors, judges, and readers, who have selected this work and prepared it for publication.
Take some time with Voices—we’re sure that you will be as impressed as we are by the extraordinary talents of IRP members.

Sincerely,

Charles Troob, Publisher
Lorne Taichman and Tom Ashley, Associate Publishers

Masthead Winter-Spring 2018

VOICES: 2018

Charles Troob, Publisher
Lorne Taichman, Associate Publisher
Tom Ashley, Associate Publisher

Prose Editors: Mary Houts and Eric Roper

Prose Readers:
Eileen Brener
Mary Elwood
Mary Houts
Ruth Kavesh
Sharon Lewin
Sara Petit
Eric Roper
Ira Rubin
Ettie Taichman

Poetry Editor:
 Mark Fischweicher

Poetry Judges:
Sylvia Brill

Mark Fischweicher
Carmen Mason
Carol Schoen

Photo Editors: Peter Houts and Jerry Vogel

Photo Judges:
Janna Amelkin
Harold Berkowitz
Bob Feinstein
Susan Herman
Peter Houts
Marshall Marcovitz
Gerald Reisner
Robin Sacknoff
Claude Samton
Susan Winston
Susanne Yellin

 

Harriet Sohmers Zwerling 1928-2019

Harriet Sohmers Zwerling joined the IRP in the Fall of 1996.   Her Wikipedia bio     describes her as “an American writer and an artist’s model.”  We knew her as an inimitable and indomitable colleague.   In her last years she required a walker to preserve balance, but she still went everywhere in her little red car.

Harriet spent most of the decade of the 1950’s in Europe, a period she chronicled in her memoir, Abroad:  An Expatriate’s Diaries.  She was associated with many of the most famous literary figures of the time, including James Baldwin and Norman Mailer.  She had relationships with both Susan Sontag and Maria Irene Fornes. and she appears in documentary films about both these women.

She then returned to the United States, married, and had a long career as a public school teacher in Brooklyn.   She is survived by her son Milo, a musician.

Harriet was open about her sexual activities and interests, and her writing was vivid and fearless.  She was a regular contributor to Voices, and her first book, Notes of a Nude Model, includes two pieces originally published in Voices.

Mary Elwood sent us the following remembrance of Harriet:
“Harriet went to Black Mountain College, a famous progressive school in North Carolina which lasted from the Thirties to the Fifties.   A few years ago, IRP offered a study group about the College, and Harriet graciously agreed to address our class about her experience as a student.   She was fascinating, bringing immediacy to a history that was already a bit misty.
“Harriet didn’t tell the class, but favored us coordinators with her memory of having Anni Albers look over at H. in the BMC dining hall, and remark to her husband, Josef (both were mainstays as instructors at the College for more than fifteen years),  ‘That girl herself is a work of art,’  “

Here are links to Harriet’s pieces that appeared in Voices Online.

Her prose:
https://lp2voicesonline.com/the-block/
https://lp2voicesonline.com/55-christopher-street-the-old-days/
https://lp2voicesonline.com/the-canal/
https://lp2voicesonline.com/beach-point/
https://lp2voicesonline.com/the-scorpions-tale/

Her poetry
https://lp2voicesonline.com/ode-to-stolichnaya/
https://lp2voicesonline.com/grasshopper/
https://lp2voicesonline.com/three-afternoons-at-beach-point/
https://lp2voicesonline.com/the-neverweres/
https://lp2voicesonline.com/artemis/
https://lp2voicesonline.com/dunes/
https://lp2voicesonline.com/bayscape/
https://lp2voicesonline.com/persona/

 

Masthead 2018

VOICES: WINTER-SPRING 2018

Charles Troob, Publisher
Lorne Taichman, Associate Publisher
Tom Ashley, Associate Publisher

Prose Editors: Eileen Brener and Mary Houts
Prose Readers:
Mary Elwood
Ruth Kavesh
Eric Roper
Ettie Taichman
Elaine Greene Weisburg
Harriet Sohmers Zwerling

Poetry Editor:
 Mark Fischweicher
Poetry Judges:
Eileen Brener
Sylvia Brill
Carmen Mason
Carol Schoen

Photo Editors: Peter Houts and Jerry Vogel
Photo Judges:
Harold Berkowitz
Bob Feinstein
Rosalie Frost
Peter Houts
Marshall Marcovitz
Susan Rauch
Robin Sacknoff
Claude Samton
Roy Sanders
Susan Winston
Susanne Yellin

Arts Editor:  Carol Millsom