Courier-poet Vineberg adds new volume to his oeuvre
By JANICE ARNOLD Staff Reporter
Somer Vineberg
There have been warrior-poets and shepherd-poets. Then there’s Somer Vineberg, courier-poet.
For 23 years, the ever-cheerful Vineberg has been making deliveries all over Montreal for FEDERATION CJA. But few realize that Vineberg has a lyrical, sensitive side that finds expression through poetry.
Vineberg has just published Poetic Writes, a collection of some 50 poems that represents his creative inspiration over the past couple of years. That inspiration can come at any time, and he says he always keeps paper and pen handy in the car or on his bedside table.
This is Vinberg’s third slim volume in recent years. He published Prophetic Writes in 2001 and Naked Rights in 1997. They came after a long hiatus – his debut anthology, I Declare My Write, appeared in 1966.
Vineberg believes readers will discover a more mature voice in these latest creations. “I think they are my best yet. They gave me a lot of joy to write.”
The latest installment is edited by Glen Rotchin, who previously edited collections by other Canadian Jewish poets, and was published with the assistance of the Jewish Community Foundation of Montreal.
“Poetry is my passion. I’ve been writing poetry since I was 15, and not because I was a lovesick teenager,” says Vineberg, who is now in his 60s.
He credits the late J. Arnolff, an elderly tailor in this father’s menswear store for encouraging him to pursue poetry.
His favourite poet is Lebanese-American Kahil Gibran, whose early-20th-century work is known for plumbing the deepest recesses of heart and mind.
Vineberg says ideas for poems come to him out of the blue.
“It’s like a flash in my head, and I have to stop and write it down.” Frequently, this occurs in the middle of the night. A couple of poems in this collection refer to 2 a.m. and 3 a.m. scribblings. He writes everything longhand.
Some rhyme, but not all. “The beat is in my head. It’s my own style. The important thing is that every poem have a message,” he says.
Despite the sleepless nights, the overall tone of Vineberg’s work is optimistic or, at least, fatalistic. Love is a dominant theme. They speak wistfully of past relationships and infatuations. The fleeting nature of time and the final reckoning are more common in this collection than the others.
Great events have triggered some automatic responses, such as the Kennedy assassination and the 1972 Munich Olympics massacre, which resulted in almost instant outpourings.
In Poetic Writes, Vineberg’s ode to 9/11 is To Osama Bin Laden My Brother, in which sees through the enormity of the radical Muslim’s crime to a common humanity. “We were born with the same blessings…” it opens, and then plaintively asks “Why oh why do you wish me to die?”
But overall, these latest poems are less political. Vineberg prays for a world where people can live in peace.
But thoughts about getting older and what lies beyond this world also seem to have been on Vineberg’s mind.
In Spring Deeds, he writes: “You are here only for a short while/So do your best with a smile/Do good deeds and set your soul free/as if you feel you are floating on the sea./Be prepared because one day the Higher Power will say, come home to me.”
This seems to have been Vineberg’s guiding light all his life.
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