Interview with Doug Holder/Co-president of the New England Poetry Club.

I caught up with poet Thomas DeFreitas recently, a well-regarded poet in the area and a former resident of Somerville. We discussed his life and work, and the release of his new book Swift River Ballad.

Thomas DeFreitas was born in 1969 in Boston and was educated at the Boston Latin School. His poems have appeared in Dappled Things, Ibbetson Street, Plainsongs, and elsewhere. His most recent collection is Swift River Ballad (Kelsay Books, 2023). He is a member of the New England Poetry Club.

Thomas DeFreitas

Author of:
Swift River Ballad (Kelsay Books, 2023)
Longfellow, Tell Me (Kelsay Books, 2022)
Winter in Halifax (Kelsay Books, 2021)
https://www.thomasdefreitas.me
https://www.youtube.com/@thomasdef634

Doug Holder: Do you think that the fact you were baptized in Somerville, gave you a good start as a poet?

Thomas DeFreitas: It certainly didn’t hurt! Somerville is (if I may borrow a phrase) a “city of poets”! From current laureate Lloyd Schwartz to my dear friend Hilary Sallick to the tireless and remarkable Gloria Mindock, to present company, there is much to recommend! Also, in the early 1970s, as now, it was a close-knit working-class city, with all of the poetical assets particular to such an environment. You learn stories. You learn colorful turns of phrase!

DH: You told me that you are a huge fan of Dylan Thomas. You like his use of meter and his sound tricks. In some ways do you identify with Thomas because he was a heavy drinker-and that led to his death in the Chelsea Hotel in NYC in the 1950s? You were once a drinker. Is there some sense of tragedy reflected in his poems that you cling to?

TDF: I read in Paul Ferris’s biography of Thomas that Dylan never wrote while drunk. He’d work like mad on a poem, dozens of drafts, and then he’d treat himself to a pint (or usually more!) at the pub. I identify with Thomas’s work ethic and his hostility to the easy, shopworn phrase. But the drink made an impression, and in adolescence I felt that it was somehow “connected” to his creativity. As tragic a figure as Thomas was, I feel the poems are life-giving. They do exert a pull. I’d recommend Seamus Heaney’s fine essay on Thomas, Dylan the Durable? I answer Heaney’s question in the affirmative.

DH: In your poem Dreaming of Somerville you bring the high holy to our burg. William Carlos William had his Paterson, N.J., does DeFreitas have his Somerville? Could you write this way about Arlington, where you currently reside?

TDF: I hope there is something in any poet that can find auspicious occasions for poetry, whatever their environment. I love Arlington! Arlington is my joy. My years in Somerville, East Boston, Amherst, and Chelsea have all made an impression, and I hope I use all my places and experiences in a way that conduces to the making of poems.

DH: Your book has a great deal of well-honed Catholic imagery. For some, the church was a nightmare (including my late wife), others love the ritual, the beauty of the church. Your take?

TDF: I keenly sympathize with anyone who’s been wounded or diminished or disgusted by Catholicism or by any other religious body or practice. I had a better time of it than most folks as an active Catholic, loving the ritual and the fixity, to a degree. But I think that in here in the USA, there’s a malady in Catholicism whereby many Catholics have whittled their creed to one or two hot-button issues. These people call themselves “orthodox Catholics,” though they scorn Pope Francis (whom I love) in favor of following a political figure whose estrangement from gospel values seems glaringly obvious. I’m currently active in a beautiful Episcopal community, St. James’s in Cambridge.

DH: Why should we read your book?

My book and its author will love you for it! I feel that this newest collection is a representative sampling of my work. There are poems of joy and of serious purpose. But I feel the salient note is celebration: celebration of people, of language, of this extraordinary ordinary life.

A Mad Patch of Song

You are the pink mint of floral days.
Pert froth of comic blossoms, sip
of cool blue heaven. You are the trust
of once-braided hair flaunting in a breeze.
Who can compass your jests and gestures
against the green tedium of summer?

Iris among ferns in the dank hollow.
Accidental majesty no curse can hurt.
I will greet you with a mad patch
of song. And you will brighten and blush,
crash into a racket of laughter, nudge me
out of the dust into rainburst and radiance.