WRITER/ARTIST/PEFORMER
THE SHAMELESS OLD LADY
Helen Duberstein "has gathered the past and the present into a tight fist, and is preparing herself for new onslaughts," says Arthur Sainer, one of the Village Voice's original writers and critics, in his preface. These are poems from the early '60s to the early '80s, mirroring the feminist and anti-war movements within which this New York City poet has been fully engaged, heart, mind, body and voice.
Whether walking, running or crying from these very alive pages, Duberstein's art is used to confront autobiography - as audaciously, says Sainer, as Proust.
...the sweetness of me made life bearable then/ in the harshness of his life wherever it was lived.
In the distinctively filmic later poems, Duberstein manages to frame the unforgettable on the unsparing screen of the artist's memory, where it is exposed as the unthinkable:
She left her house as she left her house as she was taken from her house from her home she held back she cried she spilled tea.
There is no mistaking the she, the pulsing her that brings even the cat to life, ...the arch rump /led mane, her hiss, her paw electron/ically willed. This poet, says Sainer, "is always engaged, she is always prepared to render her sense of the movement of the universe as visionary." She "sees the ongoing struggle as liberal, urban, educated, committed, witnessing woman." And this woman tells the truth. Doctors/don't come. /Daughters/ come.
Helen Duberstein is the author of four books of poetry, and has won a number of grants and awards; The Dream of Rewards, a novel, was nominated for the Pushcart Press' 10th Annual Editor's Book Award. Her fiction, reviews, articles, and columns have appeared in The New Republic Commentary, The Village Voice, and many other publications. Also a
playwright, Helen Duberstein participated in the early formation of The Living Theatre, was a member of the Circle Repertory Theatre Company and worked with The Theatre for the New City. Her plays have been performed Off Off Broadway, in regional theaters, in Europe and South America. She is a resident of Westbeth, the artists community in New York City's far west Village.
SHADOW SELF & OTHER TALES
Preface by Blair T. Birmelin
Helen Duberstein's Shadow Self & Other Tales, collected stories with twenty of the author's lively pen and ink drawings is the second book of Duberstein's published by Ghostdance in two years.
"These stories are fascinating reminders of a bohemia that is gone. They recall an era when free love and sexual liberation still meant male chauvinism and the oppression of women, when the artist and intellectual had immense prestige, and women were there to serve them. Helen Duberstein vividly charts the confusions of some of those women, and their struggles to orient themselves in a free-floating world with no guides."
- Edward Field
"I congratulate Helen Duberstein on prose so mysterious, so detached, and yet so capable of rendering the live heart of the matter."
- Sheila Kohler
"Helen Duberstein recreates sights and sounds whole, recovering the universe of childhood. When a literary history of our time and place is written her name will be recovered in like vein."
- Spencer Holst
Best known as a poet and playwright, Helen Duberstein is also the author of prose pieces published in various avant-garde quarterlies, as well as in The New Republic, The Village Voice, and other publications. The just released Ghostdance Anthology contains many of her poems published during the seventies, along with a critique of her poetry. As a playwright, Ms. Duberstein participated in the early formation of the Living Theatre, was a member of the Circle Repertory Theatre Company, and worked with the Theatre For The New City. Her one-act play, The Cord and The Track will be published in Facing Forward, and Mme. Axe or How We Create will appear in Arthur Sainer's New Radical Theatre Journal with a critique of her work in theatre from the sixties to the present. Ms. Duberstein is a resident of Westbeth, the artist's community in New York City's far West Village.
This softcover edition (ISBN 0-939520-09-5) is available for $15.95 plus $3.00 for shipping and handling through Ghostdance Press, P.O. Box 30123, Port Authority Station, New York, NY 10011. For credit card orders only call (800) 637-2256.
Photographs of the book and/or the author are available on request.
NANCY'S HOUSE
We drove along the concrete highway and onto the black top from there we crossed over a bridge
the road we were now on was a railroad bed and the ties had mostly all been taken
we turned from that to an overgrown road and that led to the clearing on which stood two old stone houses, one intact with a shingled peak roof the other a ruin through the tower window could be seen the trees and tom and some boys were mixing concrete and mounting scaffolding pushing wheel barrows and tom was sweated and stripped to the waist and pouring concrete to stabilize the building and keep it from self destruct or the destruction of the neighboring boys and or hunters who might have used the isolated construction for shelters and the fires they built mounted and destroyed the buildings and we went into the building with the roof and the windows were closed over with metal sheeting
the windows had been purchased and the frames built to put them into place the iron i beams were holding up the second floor and the supports for the walls were in mark's room and molly's room across the catwalk from tom and nancy's room and the bathroom which will have a crazy quilt covered tiling that nancy will design up over all the walls and the room for guests or for nancy's mother and the kitchen will
open out to
the patio and we walked up the path to the first stone quarry and the path to the second stone quarry and the cable was all rusted and the poles that held the cables were all down and the metal rusted and the huge stone lay and the water collected in the quarries and the frogs and the toads and nancy smoking a cigarette and grinding it out in her own woods in the tower we stood
in the tower we stood overlooking the land and the scaffolding of the other demolished building and there will be an art school there and the building had to be saved and there is no electricity nor water and we bought a parcel of land because the shape of the land would give us a house in our view from the window
we will or wouldn't mind selling a five acre parcel at another end of the property we will finance the children's education that way.we would like to have I would like to have people here in a community that will have our friends, the top quarry would make a good spot for a house on the hill overlooking the land it is hilly but not mountains the glaciers burped the glaciers burped here and the land rolls and there are woods some first growth trees the stone was used for the buildings and not the trees the stone was used for the buildings but the quarries are all played out and no one builds houses like that anymore the thickness
the thickness of the wall these two houses set in the clearing built like that without machines nor electricity those houses were apartments very small inside the structures and the workers of the quarries and their families lived there we
we had to tear out the apartment structures and the stairs
We
we built this marvelous wood with the window that will have green plants and form the focus of the conversations and we will look down from the second story into the well of the living room and the conversations will be happening there and
we will see all of that but just now inside the structure there are the supports for the walls and the exposed iron beams and, oh yes, tom's study and nancy's studio
tom's study on the first level, very acoustically walled and nancy's studio on the third floor
they will build an apparatus to raise and lower the work and a studio and an art school perhaps in the half demolished structure that tom is shoring up.