Poet Lee Eric Freedman

There’s an old adage about writing: one becomes a novelist, but one is born a poet. In other words, a poet’s way of clearly looking at the world coupled with the need to express what they see is almost a character trait, like brown hair or blue eyes.

Swampscott writer Lee Eric Freedman is a poet. Attracted to the “undiscovered and the hidden,” he adds that “it’s the randomness of everything, that I love.”

 His work reflects this openness. His poems aren’t tiny bits of dry offerings on a large empty plate—they are full, full of images, full of sensations. Always there’s an interaction, either between people, a person and the physical world or the person and his creative self.

The poems have a push. They are often little staged dramas that lend themselves to public reading. They are musical and alive and often witty. Like these lines from the poem Order Up! – Taos, New Mexico, 2001:

Savory aromas ramble throughout the bustling plaza

I order the Pad Thai Noodles

Hot wok sputters, sizzles and sings

She’s about fifteen, curtain of black hair shines

The scene is set; you can smell the food cooking, and you wait for what will happen between the girl and the narrator.

A graduate of Salem State with a degree in Biology, Freedman “started writing in 1987 just by accident. I was in college and a friend of mine told me he was starting a band and he and his friends were looking for a couple of songs. I said, I can do that.”

The band never took off, but Freedman’s writing did. As general manager of the Salem State radio station WMWM, he met the editor of Soundings East, the Salem State Literary Magazine, who encouraged him to submit. He did, had a poem accepted and did a public reading.

Freedman was hooked. He says of the performance aspect: “to get up in front of people and read them what you’ve written … I find it exhilarating.”

Meeting Neil Zagerala, manager of Vinnin Liquors, who for two years ran a magazine about music and poetry and beer called This Magazine, cemented Freedman’s presence in the local poetry scene.

Freedman wrote poetry and music reviews, and attended This open mikes at The Red Room of Giles Café in Salem. He became a regular at the Hooper Mansion Sunday night open mikes, and reads now at Speak Up! at Walnut Street Café in Lynn, and Readers and Writers in Hamilton.

He hones his craft as a member of Tin Box Poets, who meet once a month at Panera. He also “learned a bucket load” from summer workshops at the Taos, New Mexico Institute of Arts with poets Levi Romero and Anne Fitzgerald.

Robert Frost remains his favorite poet. For this Freedman credits Mrs. Barrett at the Hadley School for having her students memorize “Stopping by Woods On A Snowy Evening.” Frost’s sense of the poet’s isolation in a sensory world is echoed in some of Freedman’s work.

 Music is another inspiration. In addition to running WMWM, Freedman has managed a record store and worked for Ryco Music in Salem. Music helps him to create, and he’s often begun poems at concerts.

 He writes of this connection: “I taste both the poetry and the music as the marrow of a large roasted beef bone.”

 Freedman’s poems have been published in a wide variety of places; in 2010 he won First Place in the annual Naomi Cherkofsky Memorial Poetry Contest. He looks forward to his book, to be called American Solitude, after a poem about Edward Hopper, and the underlying solitary nature of all his poems.

 Asked why he writes, Freedman shrugs modestly. “I’m not out to change the world.”

 One senses, though, for this poet, not writing would be more difficult.