Dogtown Poems
By Carl Carlsen
From Poetry of Places in Essex County
Earthen Spheres
Boulders bask on Dogtown Common’s sphere
aligned as tire treads
or a field of asteroids orbiting
that avocado pit on the pitcher’s mound.
Or is it an eye, a hub, a nucleus
or even a navel?
On the outer ring of Dogtown Common
lie three moai from Easter Island.
The one closest has hair
an eye, an elongated chin.
It’s Snoopy resting on his doghouse roof
on his back gazing upward
considering the sphere of the sky:
a zeppelin stormcloud rolling in violet overhead,
blue gray clouds, their dark patches
of rain streaming to the sphere of the earth,
Gloucester in its wake.
What are the chances he’ll get wet?
If I’m Snoopy,
it’s the brightness and warmth of mid-day
to make the most of.
It’s not so bad
to lie here on Dogtown Common
with the asteroids and other moai
and that eye, that nub, that nucleus,
that avocado pit on the pitcher’s mound,
or is it a sombrero?
Celestial Spheres – “… Aristotle proposed that the heavens were literally composed of 55 concentric, crystalline spheres to which celestial objects were attached and which rotated at different velocities with the earth at the center.”
[Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Rochester]
City of Blue Light
In the very front — red ferns.
But it’s the walled city of blue blue rock
this moment’s about.
Sloan has slabbed blues
to the canvas thick and glossy,
confident, authoritative, even aggressive
a century later.
An arrowhead, the head of a horse galloping
toward the big round sun sitting on the horizon,
the last bright spark on the candle’s wick.
This city faces the warmth of the West,
bejewels the muted browns and greens
blue blue blue: sapphire, topaz,
beryl, corundum, tourmaline,
kyanite, lapis lazuli.
Crayola blues:
aquamarine, turquoise, midnight
cornflower, cobalt, ultramarine, navy.
Evening, Dogtown 1916, by John Sloan
No wind, a certain active stillness.
The time of mosquitoes.
The time to catch fish.
The rocks hum
the entire bandwidth
of blue light —
indigo, violet.
They are the multitude of Dogtown.
In the distance: more blue,
sleepy mountains, a tired sky.
In between:
another city,
Gloucester,
darkens . . .
Dogtown is five square miles in Gloucester known for its woods, boulders and glacial rock formations.
John Sloan (1871 – 1951) is considered to be one of the founders of the Ashcan school of American art.
Check out Poetry of Places in Essex County: https://appsprod.northshore.edu/poetry/lynn/index.html
Even Spirits are Moved by Love
Story by Carl Carlsen
The top three demonic possession movies of all time are The Exorcist (1973), The Conjuring (2013), and The Amityville Horror (1979). This kind of popular film was particularly successful in the decade between 1973 and 1982, including The Omen (1976), Carrie (1976) and Poltergeist (1982).
Swept along into the popular imagination by these movies as well as the 1977 publication of the book The Amityville Horror were Ed and Lorraine Warren, who became America’s most famous paranormal investigators because of their involvement with the house that served as the setting for the film. Their notoriety has endured for over 40 years and has been enhanced by being spotlighted in The Conjuring movie franchise.
The golden era of demonic possession movies coincided with the first decade of my three-eighths of a century tenure teaching English at North Shore Community College. When I started in 1974, the college was housed in downtown Beverly, primarily in the former Briscoe Junior High School, a building that had seen better days. As a new instructor, I wanted to teach my classes well and also make a contribution to the college community at large. To do that I became a member of the Cultural Arts Committee, which was charged with bringing presenters of note to the Beverly campus.
Drawing on my graduate degree in the field of Popular Culture, I decided I would look in that direction for inspiration. In August 1977, while driving through Davis Square, I noticed the names of Ed and Lorraine Warren on the marquee of the Somerville Theater.
Perfect I thought; it would be great if they could come to North Shore Community College.
A contract was signed, arrangements were made, and the Warrens were indeed coming to North Shore Community College/Beverly to make a presentation, scheduled for a mid-afternoon. Before that appearance, I was approached by Dan Campbell, a college administrator, about bringing the Warrens over to his colonial-era house close to Beverly Harbor.
They agreed, and after their presentation, a group of about ten adjourned to Dan’s house, which had low ceilings, small spaces and was dimly lit. After some time spent chatting and getting acquainted in a fireplaced living room, Lorraine went up to the attic alone to make contact with the spirit Dan was sure dwelt there. Lorraine was the one who communicated with the inhabitants of the spirit world while Ed gathered photographic and auditory evidence of their existence.
Ten or fifteen minutes later, Lorraine returned from the attic and confirmed the presence of a spirit she said belonged to a young man, maybe in his mid-teens, probably an indentured servant who had been there for centuries and who was, in today’s terminology, intellectually challenged. Since Lorraine’s work would be to persuade a spirit in our world to voluntarily move on to the next one, someone asked, “How do you do that with such a spirit?” Her answer has stayed with me since the moment she spoke, “With a lot of love, with a lot of love.”
This was, as I called it, a real North Shore Community College ghost story. I told it to all my classes every Halloween, but now it seems appropriate to tell it this Valentine’s Day because after all, even spirits are moved by love.