Advocate Correspondent

BELMONT – “When I think of the billions of dollars, the vast reserviors of resources, the terrible cost of all the wars we wage upon ourselves, I realize that in human terms the causes are legion,” wrote poet and longtime social activist Marc Goldfinger of Belmont in a recent essay A Time to Risk Peace. “The gods have different names, skin is dark, skin is light, the smell of another’s food is funny, another is an ignorant savage, another is an ignorant man, some bow to the East, some bow to the West, some want their share and others’ too,” he said.

“It isn't always the country with the most modern weapon system, the most aircraft, and the largest armies which wins,” he continued. “Right now, no one is winning except the terrorists. Innocent people died here. Innocent people are dying over in Afghanistan.

“Every time the bombs drop, the recipe is completed for more terrorists to be created. They will become the enemy of whoever they perceive to be the most arrogant power that bullies their torn land into submission. A terrorist is born every minute. He lives in poverty, his skin is the wrong color and his life is nothing like ours here in the United States. Because the survival rate is so poor there for children, only the strongest remain.”

Goldfinger, who served for many years as Executive Editor of Spare Change Magazine, the Cambridge-based publication by and for the homeless community, has penned five books, The Resurrection of Sylvia Plath, Tales of the Trail, Poison Pen, The Rites of Wolves, Wheels Out of True, has been published in many poetry magazines, put a poetry/jaz CD out with local jazz musician Jeff Robinson, and was included in Ibbetson Street Press’ 2000 anthology City of Poets. Goldfinger’s fascinating personal saga reflects an ascent from the veritable bottom of society, when he was imprisoned in 1982 for drug convictions stemming from heroin addiction, to a respectable position among local literati.

This past Sunday evening, Feb. 16, he hosted an antiwar poetry reading at McIntyre & Moore Booksellers in Davis Square, Somerville. Ibbetson Street Press proprietor Doug Holder was contacted by McIntyre and Moore to organize the event, in response to this past week’s wave of national Poets Against the War (poetsagainstthewar.org) readings, stemming from Laura Bush’s cancellation of a White House poetry reading upon learning of participants’ intent to express their opposition to the impending war with Iraq.

“I thought Marc Goldfinger would be a great host because of his editorials for Spare Change against the war, and his history of activism,” said Holder. “I am grateful that an independent press and bookstore could work together for a common goal.”

For the event’s focal readers, Holder invited Steve Almond, whose bestselling My Life in Heavy Metal resulted in his inclusion in this year’s Boston Globe Authors’ Series distinctions, Jack Powers, who has hosted the Stone Soup Poetry group for over 30 years, and author Anne Tom.

“This event showed that the pen can be very mighty against the sword.,” said Holder. “First Lady Laura Bush presumed, that by cancelling what she envisioned as a ‘nice nice’ White House poetry event, that she could just stop the poetic rabble rousers in their tracks.” Not so. Her decision has sparked a major grassroots effort among national scribes to exercise their rights to free speech and, in this case, dissent, with full throttle.

“I took part in this reading because I believe that the war machine drains the human species of all its vital resources and will doom us to extinction, or something close to it, if it is not stopped,” said Goldfinger. “It is past time. The human species needs to grow up.”

Goldfinger grew up in Livingston, New Jersey in an Orthodox-rooted family, and was bar mitzvahed at its Temple Emmanuel. He began writing poetry in junior high school.

Goldfinger arrived at his philosophy through personal experience. “I was the only child in my first-grade class who wore glasses. I was also Jewish, which made me more of a minority. I was chubby and short and not a good fighter, which meant that I was afraid of those who bullied me.

“I thought of myself as a coward. By the time I was 12 years old, suicide was an option.”

He, however, adopted social skill which enabled him to cope. “I learned that the bigger stronger guy doesn't always have to be the winner of a fight. Technique was everything.” He stopped trying to fight back, and began to write.

But the experience was not without emotional scars, which, following involvement in the Vietnam-era antiwar movement, led to his drug addiction. “Because of my previous lifestyle, everything I wrote from 1962 to 1982 has been lost forever,” he said. “My book Poison Pen – Writings from Prison, was written while I was incarcerated for a year for nonviolent drug convictions.” He conducted readings in prison and, following his release, became active in the Seabrook Nuclear Power Plant opposition group Clamshell Alliance as well as other social and literary causes. “I have been a practitioner of nonviolence for most of my life,” he said, adding that it is a practice which does not come naturally to the human species. From then, he thoroughly cleaned up his act and devoted himself to poetry and nonviolence.

“I write poetry because I am compelled to do this,” he said. “I believe it is a gift. Like the poet Jack Spicer said, ‘We are merely the dictation machines for the gods.’

For more information on Ibbetson Street Press, please visit http://homepage.mac.com/rconte/ and for McIntyre and Moore Booksellers, http://mcintyreandmoore.com.