Berklee’s FUSION Magazine is proud to present String Quartet, the first book of poetry by Berklee’s own Pat Pattison. Pat travels this wide world as a lyricist, songwriter, author, and clinician. The poems presented here sound “the music of what happens,” revealing great depths through the same mastery of form found in his lyrics.

Stars at Home The deep twinkle of carbonation flow out over the vast midnight sea, frosting The edge of tall, round glass; some eyes perceive this as the end of everything.
I sit in an old Adirondack chair, painted red, beer in hand, not more than thirty feet from my childhood bedroom, where green glowing plastic wannabes mocked me in the dark. my head falls backward over the wooden lip and I sip in wonder; the stars I used to know
Grey-Scale Can’t Spread Everywhere Purple wildflowers sprinkle through the yard in an act of resistance alongside tufts of Kentucky bluegrass; red tulips flow from under fences, and that old pear tree, who’s rose-colored petals pour down onto the reservoir of weeds, stands a centerpiece in a quarter-lot oasis ...

We wrote six poems this semester, four in fixed form and two in Free Verse. We spend a good deal of energy in class workshopping each poem, with students often marveling at some aspect of a classmate’s poem, perhaps making…

A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night — First Kiss Scene   Interior – Black and white. The VAMPIRE’s bedroom – Night   POSTERS cover the walls: Michael Jackson Thriller cover, Madonna Madonna cover, lots of other posters. There’s a BED in the background, a DISCO BALL hanging from the middle of the room, a RECORD PLAYER against the right wall. It’s Halloween.   ARASH, dressed as a vampire, is lying face-up on the vampire’s bed. He’s on the comedown from E. The vampire is facing away from him, standing in front of the record player. She puts a record on. He’s lying still. She starts the record…   0:14 – “Death” by White Lies is the song.   0:37 – Arash stirs.   0:48 – Lyrics start / "I love the feeling when we"   0:50 – "lift off" ...

(The following poems were composed utilizing the Modernist aesthetic as represented primarily by T.S. Eliot, among which are included any one or more of following: “Feeling” through words, phrase, and images; fragmentation and juxtaposition; stream of consciousness; irony and self-mockery;…

(The following poems were composed utilizing the Post-Modernist aesthetic as represented primarily by William Carlos Williams, and aimed for some of these elements: immediacy, alertness, speed, western dialect, poem as object on the page, poet as presence –seeing through the…

We wrote six poems this semester, four in fixed form and two in Free Verse. We spend a good deal of energy workshopping each poem, with students often marveling at some aspect of a poem, perhaps making suggestions for edits…

Every year, Mass Poetry brings together professor-nominated undergraduate poets from over 15 colleges in the Greater Boston area. With a professor or faculty’s guidance in practicing and revising a poem, one young artist from each insituion performs an original set…