2002 SPRING / SUMMER / FALL / (Winter is shifting to our first issue of the calendar year,
so there will be no Winter listing for 2002)From Fall 2002 MONSTER FASHION
By Jarret Keene, Manic D Press, 2002, 82 pgs., $13.95, paperback
ISBN 0-916397-77-7. Poetry.Monster Fashion has the brightest cover design I’ve even seen for a collection of poems. It’s basically a comic book cover by the esteemed Jack Kirby, of Incredible Hulk fame. In the drawing, a futuristic babe clad in a metal halter-top and winged headdress points her laser gun at an off-cover green-armed menace. The fires of some hell roar behind her; someone’s demise is imminent, and the reader is here to observe. The colors by Ken Steacy are brilliant, and Manic D Press did a laudable job with the printing. Covers of this caliber demand that you pick up the book to see what’s inside.
Keene has a smart eye for the everyday irony of life in America. He starts with advice from a church sign in Kentucky: Stop, drop, and roll won’t help you in Hell. The layers of irony are geological. The phrase comes out of public school fire safety courses; the church co-ops it as a threat if you don’t redeem yourself; and Keene plunks it down with a postmodern tone that lets us know he saw that sign and laughed for three days straight.
Which brings us to the title poem. The four-part “Monster Fashion” chronicles the vampire dress, the Frankenstein jeans, the Wolfman cardigan, the ghost sandals. Of the Wolfman cardigan, Keene writes: Buy now, because these days/ Everybody’s endangered and there’s always/ someone panting in your ear. Look soft. With the ghost sandals, he slides in a religious reason for admiring sandals: Mary, God of Mothers,/ Tramped to Golgotha on a pair/ Of open toe slingbacks. Got there/ Just in time.
An ambitious young poet, Keene, who is 29, gives due homage to the pop culture of his generation. Some stodgy old-timers might still dis pop culture, claiming it irrelevant and churlish, hardly suitable as the source for poems, but Keene knows what’s up – pop culture is here, and it must be dealt with. It’s the futuristic babe caught between the monster and the fire; it’s the monster that has trapped her; it’s the fire hot for all.
Mad magazine’s mascot shows up in “The Love Song of Alfred E. Neuman,” an obvious take on T.S. Elliott. Let us worry then, you and I,/ When the fold-in reveals itself as a high begins the 15-line poem. The obligatory punk rock poem, unabashedly titled “Punk Rockers,” written in rhymed couplets, gets a new shine with an intro from closet punk Emily Dickinson, who wrote: And when they were all seated,/ A service like a drum/ Kept beating, beating, till I thought / My mind was numb. Nice. Keene wraps up that poem with a trademark jab at the movement: Don’t want to heed the protest song?/ Won’t hurt to play it all night long.
Keene has a driving awareness of forms in poetry. Many of his poems’ titles function as inquiries, such as “What Denis Johnson Said When I Gave Him A Pair of X-Ray Specs.” Johnson, a postmodern novelist, apparently said, among other things, Hearts? Shit. They beat/ As stupidly as before.
Keene’s skill and linguistic bravery with speculating on what real people might say or do shows a lot of confidence in his poetic voice. It also shows that he’s willing to catapult himself and his readers beyond the merely autobiographical poem, although most of his work seems to be based on his own experiences and reactions. Keene mixes cynical humor with honesty and insight, a poetic potion that makes his work edgy, young, and so real, so valid, one wonders how he can get away with a comic book cover and not one but two poems about Wile E. Coyote and the Roadrunner.Or maybe that’s the point.
Jen Hirt
PIEDMONT PHANTOMS
By Daniel W. Barefoot, (Vol. 2 of NORTH CAROLINA’S HAUNTED HUNDRED series), John F. Blair, publisher, 2002, 187 pgs. $7.95, paperback
ISBN 0-89587-258-7 FolkloreThese forty tales from forty counties in the midsection of North Carolina are a fairly entertaining read in the realm of folklore. Many states have similar books in this local ghost story genre, and author Daniel Barefoot has done a commendable job documenting a tale for each county in the state. In the preface, he states that what’s unique about this series is the thoroughness – many of these hauntings and happenings are in print for the first time, having enjoyed a long run as spoken stories. Although it’s unclear which stories are well known and which are not, there’s no doubt that Barefoot has made a strong effort to really document the Piedmont phantoms. Readers hungry for a spook around every corner will be pleased.
The book is organized alphabetically by the Piedmont region’s counties, starting with Alamance and ending with Yadkin. Each chapter is introduced with an enlightening epigraph that informs the story quite cleverly. Barefoot has chosen quotes from literary horror dabblers Poe and Dostoevsky, among others.
Many of the stories have the standard “old ghost haunts antebellum mansion” plot. Barefoot, who is a respected historian in North Carolina’s General Assembly, does a nice job summing up the real-life events preceding these hauntings. This is no easy task, given that each chapter is limited to a couple pages and many of the pre-ghost details could fill entire history books. The only drawback is that in the interest of privacy, he has changed identifying details of certain haunted mansions. This might not thwart locals, but tourists might be confounded if they’re on a North Carolina ghost hunt.
While the book relies on the traditional Americana ghost stories featuring crimes of passion, war, treason, and treasure, a few unusual stories truly standout. For example, Anson County has a haunted cave with a presumed “Devil’s Racetrack” nearby. The Davie Country story tells an absolutely true tale about how a ghostly encounter with a deceased father, later allowed as legal evidence in court, allowed a family to unravel a mystery of the father’s will and estate. Mecklenburg County features a rare instance of a ghostly object — apparently the foundations of an old building at Davidson College materialize during hot, dry afternoons. And Scotland County hosts its own “Mystery Spot,” one of twelve such spots in the nation that draw the curious off the interstates to marvel at tricks of gravity and optical illusions. Barefoot reports that physicists have even spent time trying to figure out this one, which makes it far more interesting than the typical supernatural report.
The drawbacks to the book are minor. The writing is straightforward and at times trite, with a few chapters starting with nearly identical phrases of the “throughout recorded history” variety. Most of the supernatural happenings are left unexplained, which is part of the fun of ghost stories, but some of the chapters exchange worthwhile post-haunting speculation for too much pre-ghost factual history.
Overall, however, Piedmont Phantoms is a strong folklore offering. These phantoms are uniquely Southern and uniquely American, making the book an interesting regional read.
Jen Hirt
SOULS LIKE MOCKINGBIRDS
By Miriam Axel-Lute, Pompelmoose Press (2001) 34 pgs., www.mjoy.org/poetry.html $5. Poetry.Souls like Mockingbirds, Axel-Lute’s first collection of poems, introduces a poet, just 27, well worth reading. What sets her apart from many other young poets is her omni sexuality and a religious devotion that any spiritual person can respect. When her poems sing, they reinforce her strong feelings.
Some examples include “December Rose,” which ends, My roses / she said / have become / rose / hips. / And that’s / where the / sweetness is; “Letter-writing in an Age of Email,” which begins, I’d forgotten just how sexy this can be— / to know the neat small curves of your handwriting / better than I remember your face . . .; “For the Gay Man Who Asked Me If I Was Attracted to Butch Women,” a list poem in which the speaker finds herself attracted to just about any sort of man or woman regardless of sexual orientation; and “An Argument Against Exercise,” which concludes, Yes, I sing the praises of sore butts / sore thighs, sore cunts / that remind us / that our many—compartmentalized lives / are whole.
Other compelling poems in Souls like Mockingbirds are devotional and include “Miriam Cast Out,” a first-person account spoken by the biblical Miriam, in which she reproaches Moses, saying, I am weary from caring for your people / while you distracted God / with your need for rules, and “Prayer for the Evangelist on the B Train,” which asks both “God’s forgiveness” and that the Goddess tend whatever wounds are . . . uncovered with sunshine and water and mischievous tenderness.
At times, however, Axel-Lute can sound like a tract, referring to all the stories of pain and powerlessness or she can be vague—“my delicate things”—when she needs to be specific, but such shortcomings are rare among the seventeen free-verse poems in this volume. The reader will more likely remember the lovely metaphor in “Tomato Soup,” for the way a lover weaves a reed basket I can be safe in, / cushioned with the / unmatchable understanding / of soft cheek on soft cheek.
George Held
TIDAL AIR
by Ed Byrne, Pecan Grove Press (2002) $12. Poetry.Edward Byrne’s Tidal Air is comprised of two powerful poems of elegy and celebration. This book is physically attractive, its cover an impressionist seascape; Pecan Grove books are noted for the care editor Palmer Hall takes in their preparation.
Byrne’s poems are an analysis of family relationships and the bonds between father and son. The poems balance each other and provide a sense of continuity— “Whole Notes and Half Tones” describes a the speaker’s child’s illness and recovery, while “Cormorants in Morning Light” narrates his father’s illness and death. These poems are held together by form as well as theme: the poems are segmented, but each segment is in couplets that are balanced between control and freedom, flexible lines that contain variable syllables (generally between 9 and 13.) The segments are named, and the names relate the elements of human experience to elements of nature.
The tone is elegiac, although the child recovers; the poems explore the sadness of the passing of generations. There is a sense of mythic narrative throughout Tidal Air; despite the fact that both halves of the diptych center on an illness, this is not clinical illness poetry but rather rite of passage poetry. The concluding section of “Cormorants” suggests the effacement of the father-son tragedy into the larger scene:
Beyond the point, the first blinding shards// of sunlight start to skitter across the water’s/ surface, backlighting this colony of cormorants// perched and poised upon a collection of coastal/ crags. Clustered together with spread wings, // Dark arcs of shadow drying in a light sea breeze, / they resemble sketch marks of charcoal or black // Fans-perhaps in days gone by, props of burlesque / dancers-or an array of shawls worn in mourning.Birds, all kinds of birds, feature in these poems, marking the incidents of remembered happiness as if reminding the reader that these moments are both irretrievable and permanent. The cormorants, kestrels, crows, sparrow hawks are like a chorus, setting the tone and communicating the interwoven light and dark of the experiences of parenthood-becoming and being a father, having one and losing him.
Nothing can take away the past, the poems suggest, but neither can it be possessed; it is untouchable and immutable, foundation of present meaning and identity.
This is a moving and memorable book.
Janet McCann
WIDOW’S BURDEN
by Robert Cooperman, Western Reflections Publishing Company (2002), 131 pgs. (Paperback). Poetry.Not very often does a reviewer find a collection of poetry so refreshingly off the beaten path that even a road map won’t return the creative mind to an accepted route of travel. It is to this end that Robert Cooperman’s Widow’s Burden is an engaging romp through the human condition with all its vices and virtues, which makes use of a genre platform not common to contemporary poetry.
This is not typical wholesale poetry. Cooperman’s verse sparkles. Neither is it the flaccid objective tour de force poetry disguised as autobiographical, which is so rampant today. No shameless self-promotion. No excess pageantry. Cooperman is the consummate raconteur, spinning the yarn in Biblical proportion, blending a tapestry of Old West poetic vernacular dribbled atop fictional premises (e.g., characters, plot, storyline, etc.). Yes, it is that delicious. The poems not only reminisce in a Mark Twain dialect, but are pleasantly successful in bringing to mind Twain’s short stories.
Moreover, the self-effacing deconstruction displayed by Cooperman shows that poetry can indeed remove itself from the dogged gravitational pull of the individual, attain escape velocity, and move into a realm of creative license dominated by fiction alone and long forgotten in the poetry of Victorian England.
The audience is not haunted by poetic solipsism here. Cooperman tactfully removes himself from the equation. And once we are free to defrock the author of his privileged interference, we are free to let our minds wander with the breadth and scope of this ingenious project.
To begin, the collection itself is told by a supporting cast of gold-town inhabitants as their lives are interwoven by the stories they tell. Particularly captivating is the graphic poem “John Sprockett Recalls a Horrifying Incident from His Years with Raiders in Bloody Kansas,” in which the unfortunate man finds himself witness to the savagery of a captain and his men who gang rape a group of women farmers.
“Mary LaFrance Learns Why Reverend Burden Missed Their Appointment” is a powerful poem of revelation and self-discovery. Euphemism marked by childlike ignorance resounds in such lines as I could sell some, and find a squaw/ who knows how to get rid of/ unwanted gifts from men who leave.
In “Reverend Burden Compares Mary LaFrance With His Wife Lavinia,” Cooperman alludes to the mystery of the Trinity as a love triangle that sees the Reverend torn between his affections for Mary LaFrance, one of the town’s many saloon girls, and his commitment to Lavinia. The line My wife never presented me/ with proof she’s strong/ in the Lord: a son further does justice to the idea that Reverend Burden is a kind of typology for the Old Testament Abraham, while Mary is Hagar, and Lavinia is the barren-wombed Sarah. Yet it is a love triangle gone terribly wrong. For Reverend Burden is not the faithful patriarch and moves to seduce Hagar, while Lavinia plays paramour to a half-breed “pagan” named William Eagle Feather.
Beneath the surface quality of the poetry, it’s an interesting hypothesis that Cooperman toys with, were Abraham not faithful to Sarah or God and were Sarah not the mother of the faithful. In the end, only John Sprockett, the poet/killer is there to bring justice. The Biblical imagery plays out on a stage in which the characters become the very quintessence of their belief structures.
Without taking too much liberty on the part of the author’s intention, the collection sorts through allegory. Cooperman’s use of allegory, whether intentional or not, is cleverly brilliant. The characters are all too rich to dissect in this short review, but throughout the lines this question lingers: Is John Sprockett God, An Angel of Death, or both? In the end, the pastor’s plea If only I could find/ some Bible precedent is laden with irony that the astute reader will certainly enjoy.
Perhaps this is all overkill, but for a person versed in Theology, Cooperman supplies a wellspring of biblical allusion. Yet, it’s accessible enough that the layperson will hardly be overwhelmed.
This is one of best books of poetry I’ve read in a while. And it faithfully captures a place and time that will remain a thing of intrigue in American history for future generations. Widow’s Burden is a strong and impressive collection that should find its way to your bookshelves and be read with respectful attention.
Frank S. Palmisano, III
PENNIES FROM AN EMPTY JAR
By Mike James, Elemenopç Publications, 2002, 64 pgs. (Paperback)Reading Mike James’ collection reminds me of a popular 1980s Saturday Night Live skit called “Deep Thoughts.” Here, our TV screens would expand into a beautiful landscape picture, as a man’s voice would narrate words that scrolled from bottom to top. These were the words of that rara avis, Jack Handy. The irony, of course, was that Handy’s thoughts were far from deep. In fact, they were evaporating puddles. His wit was camouflaged as wisdom that was intended to tickle the viewer’s funny bone. So it is that James’ thoughts are sometimes camouflaged as poems, although in this case, he would have us sincerely believe that all of them are.
While sometimes less is more, James is a wordsmith whose economy is sparse in wording though not always big on thought, so much that even the powerful line we expect to engulf us at the end of the poem sometimes falls into cliché.
Poems like “A Simple Tale,” “Stubborn Pastoral,” and “Homecoming” fall inevitably flat. The reader is left canvassing the margins for substance, finding none. These are bland descriptions, unfinished memoirs like fragments of diary entries. And there are poems, appropriately named “Fragment 121”, “?194”, “?95”, and “?101” that reinforce this dynamic. “Postscript to a Cover Letter” appears to be a crude lamentation by the author who regrets that it was only his cover letter and not his poem that was received with any interest.
On the positive side, there are elements of metaphor that jump from the page. The poems are light and don’t require too much effort. You can read this collection quickly thanks to the typographical simplicity (à la William Carlos Williams), which maintains a stream of consciousness feel in its delivery. This is a plus, since it welcomes a second or third read without much challenge. There is substance to be had, and when he’s on, James is able to deliver some of the most compact metaphors and images around. Some are left bubbling in the coffers of the imagination. Some settle in the heart and sing with the bluebird.
Poems like “Oral History,” “Psalm: The Darkness,” “The Door,” and “Postscript” are beautiful pearls of wisdom cut straight from the omphalos of the philosopher’s stone, with lines like Darkness is/just the bruise the sun leaves tremble in the mind’s ear. In “Waking to Light,” the title is the centrifugal force of the work. The lines gather around these three words with seamless ease. In the poem “No Stress,” James reminds us that there are other activities to surround ourselves with when the poems don’t come.
For James the irony is undeniable. His poems make up a mixed bag of inspiration. Sometimes they come; other times, they do not. Nevertheless, if you want to avoid descriptive rambling, endless hubris, James never disappoints. He is well aware of the life he leads, which makes his poetry brutally honest.
Frank S. Palmisano, III
TOUCHED BY EROS
poems edited by George Held, The Live Poets Society, 2002,
92 pgs. (Paperback). Poetry.
Although the original sense of the Greek word “Eros” included the entire range of all things related to love and not just the sexual or erotic, it wasn’t until the advent of Christianity that Eros became part and parcel with sexual, physical love. Thus, the editor is of a Post-Christianity persuasion, except for the simple retraction in the Introduction that the vision of Eros is limited by the poetry submitted. True.
Nonetheless, the majority of these poems are powerful testaments to sexual courtship. It is something of a charmed circle that even Stendhal in his darkest observations on love could appreciate. And yet it’s a far and resounding cry from the great Sumerian king Shu-sin to whom the first recorded love poem was written sometime around 4000 BC (known only as “Istanbul #2461”).
The thematic drive of the anthology brings the reader through a macramé of feeling, from voyeurism to raw sexual mastery. Yet Held is not lying when he imagines that the poems he selected fit the mold of Suzanne Noguere’s poem “You Say.” The imagery of interlocking pieces, the essential connections that bind symbiotic life forms with matter, are apparent in many of poems, as in the line Ah, my hermit crab,/I say they call you home/where you enter and fit.
What you realize quickly is that despite the varied sexual preferences expressed in this work, humankind is committed to sexual expression in all its forms and the participating drama that goes with it. If this is what Held sought to accomplish in selecting these poems, then it works quite nicely.
Several of the poems tackle saucy and controversial subjects. Most memorable are Gwen Hart’s “Friday Night in Concordia, OH,” which reveals the torment of a young babysitter engorging her sexual lusts in the closet of the man whose children she is watching. R. Yurman’s “Jacking Off,” captures in stunning detail the need for comfort not commodity in the act (or shall I say “art”) of ejaculation. Both of these poems make declarative statements and never wink in doing so. They are brassy and defiant. And yes, there is something wholesome to be said about “eating pussy” in Crist’s self-named poem. Such poems help anchor a more tethered and tame group of poems and give the collection a slight edginess reflecting a sensitivity to pop culture where the trend might be to lapse into obnoxious and useless profanity.
However, some of the poems are stiff, their subjects strung along by disconnected descriptive language, and add nothing to the collection but rather attempt to drag it mercilessly into the undertow of cliché that travels beneath the surface of dangerously trite concepts such as Eros. Michael Waters’s poem “Two Baths (1)” shows he is no novice at using language, if that were all that was needed to make a poem. Littlecrow-Russell’s poem, which starts out beautifully, becomes quietly incomprehensible. Attacked by metaphors that don’t work, the reader is left to ponder how the lover gathered in the other’s arms is like eagle feathers across a crow’s wing. Further, not many people easily relate to the feel or sight of deer-skin soft welts.
After all, the temptation in these types of poems is to compare the lover or loved with everything. And where some poems start out with the promise of a strong showing, they seem to lose their rhythm and fall limp and withered. Sharon Kraus’ “The Scar” is another example of a good poem whose subject outpaces word choice and finally loses steam.
And of course, no “love” anthology is complete without the sappy poems. Marion Menna’s “First Encounter” ends with the less than memorable lover spitting the words endless?endless into his beloved’s ear. The repetitious “Cleo” is a sophomoric tribute to the body, more annoying than insightful.
With the exception of a few poems, the writing as a whole sparkles, and the collection is one of the best to date on the subject of sexual love. After reading it, I was drawn to the person I love, making a play to recapture some of the feeling so eloquently expressed in this handsome collection.
Frank S. Palmisano, IIIBack to Top
From Summer 2002RAISING THE DEAD
by Ron Rash
Iris Press (2002) 75 pgs.
ISBN: 0-916078-54-X. $15
PoetryI didn’t expect to find ghosts in the pages of a book of poems. Ron Rash has conjured the forgotten dead with such truth and quiet power that I sometimes wonder whether he is more of a necromancer than a poet. Raising the Dead chronicles the history and destruction of the Jocassee Valley in the South Carolina Mountains. In the early ‘70s, Duke Power Company built a dam that turned the valley into a reservoir. As a result, hundreds of bodies had to be dug up and reburied, and Rash finds this event to be an eerily poignant symbol of the restlessness of the human spirit, a symbol of the way in which the living are bound to the dead, the dead to the living.
The lyricism here is powerful in its gothic evocations. “Last Service,” the opening poem, is a dense rite of “rolling graveyards,” “quick-dying streams,” “obsolete bridges,” “hymns of resurrection,” and “farms already lost in the lake.” This poem is one of many that serve to complete a portrait of a place forsaken by both God and man. Yet the landscape and its people are so vivid and believable as to be significant in their otherworldliness.
Rash’s work here transcends the exquisite craftsmanship of his previous books and achieves something closer to transubstantiation. As an example: “The Search.” It’s winter and a search party combs the woods at dusk for a senile black woman who has wandered far from home. The first night is fruitless, and so is the next day. Finally, they find her “back against a tree like she’d been waiting.” Here Rash achieves lift-off; his language becomes lyrical, incandescent: [a] harvest moon broke through a patch of clouds./ We raised her in its light and lantern light,/ and looked into a face the frost has burned/ as white as dogwood blossoms in the spring./ A soft breeze stirred the leaves and then lay down,/ the way a weary hound settles to sleep./ It was so quiet. No one seemed to breathe.
These poems are shadowed by death. The Great Equalizer has rendered them all the same color. The moon—symbolic of the afterworld—has harvested another soul. Death has left them breathless, speechless; it is everywhere present and offers no release from the unendurable. What else can these white men do but return her to the “hollow far up Painter Creek”? It is Josh Burton who “held her first, cradled her against his chest, stumbled down the ridge.” They each take a turn carrying her down to the valley, as they should, because they owe her that much, this woman they’d barely known when she was alive. Rash reinforces the notion that the dead are helpless and require the living’s care to find peace, a proper burial, simple respect—those things that Duke Power Company never obliged when they uprooted the dead and flooded their graves.
In Rash’s South, few profit from and many struggle with death’s aftermath—financially and spiritually. These are people who have nothing except severe dignity and a deep respect for each other’s fleetingness. They are gone now, and we will never see their like again, except for the brief glimpses of embodiment, horror, and benediction Rash bestows us in his poetry.
Reviewed by Jarret Keene
DOSSIER
by Stepan Chapman
Creative Arts Book Company (2001) ISBN: 0-88739-280-6. $13.95
Short StoriesOne of the great pleasures in the life of a chronic reader is the discovery of a previously unread author as talented as Stepan Chapman. Dossier is a jewel box filled with uncanny treasures. I can hardly wait to get my hands on his novel The Troika, winner of the 1998 Philip K. Dick Award.
About halfway through, I thought I had the first story in the collection, “The Rainmakers” figured out. I was wrong of course: utterly wrong. So what if the story didn’t end with the Ray Bradbury twist I mistakenly expected? I was more than satisfied, and well surprised: nice piece of misdirection, that.
Even though I am generally intolerant of third-person writings, “The Quest” hooked me in the very first paragraph: You’ve been hiking across this terrain for weeks, uphill all the way. When landslides roll past, you dodge muddy cardboard boulders.
This piece is by turns odd, bizarre, astonishing, manic, disheartening, and frightening. The finale is utterly and doggedly real—and don’t forget to gulp down that near toxic dose of your favorite antipsychotic medication before unfurling your ragged, leathery wings to flap the acrid smog away from the suddenly yellowing pages.
“Minutes of the Last Meeting” slouches sideways through time to a distorted reflection of Imperial Russia. The range of its invention is vast as Asia herself, and it tosses off ruinous images by the cluster. Jules Verne, may I introduce Dr. Oppenheimer!
In “At Her Ladyship’s Suggestion”, Chapman delineates an edifice of Gormenghastian proportions within a mere 26 pages, and redefines the meaning of decay in compound and dumbfounding variety.
A number of mythic shaman encounters with inhabitants of the Inuit spirit world are included for your edification; these stories are inhabited by cantankerous, willful people who are at times obtuse, but always human.
Those familiar with the short stories of the late John Collier will no doubt also appreciate Chapman’s forthright, burnished style. Repeat after me: this is not science fiction… this is not science fiction… this is not science fiction.
Reviewed by Bill Wesse
All Weekend with the Lights On
by Mark Wisniewski
Leaping Dog Press Book #2ISBN 1-58775-002-3 $14.95Short Stories
Mark Wisniewski’s stories are gritty stuff. All Weekend with the Lights On includes short stories of love, lust, loss, rejection, horror, acceptance, as well as occasional and perhaps surprising in contrast, hope and humor. Characters are real people, working class men and women, young and old. They are not necessarily ones we would like to identify with, but ones who touch close to home at unexpected moments and in disturbing ways.
Wisniewski paints with voice. One of the more haunting stories in the collection, “Unknown Rook”, is told in the excited tone of a baseball fan recalling a recent game and performance of a new star rookie. It is only after being caught in the character’s excitement that we realize the narrator has been witness to a much more horrific spectator event.
The voice of a young woman, a high school basketball player, tells the story of “Birdie.” Birdie is the new freshman star of the Girls’ Varsity team. We learn more about how different Birdie is as she faces the hostility of those who think she plays “too well for a girl.” Though this is Birdie’s story, we learn about the narrator and her acceptance of those who are different especially as Birdie reaches out in a moment of vulnerability and humiliation.
Many of these stories are snapshots of the lives of people as normal and bizarre as the rest of us. “The Work I’ve Invested” takes place over a few minutes in Central Park as the main character, Ron, holds a dogless leash. He interacts with two other people in the park and as they share with him far more than even a close friend would want to know, we begin to get a picture of Ron. His silences and observations about the others build a picture of his loss.
In the story “Airstrip”, Wisniewski captures the naivety of a young college student approached by a woman in a pastoral setting. She convinces him to ride their bicycles beneath a landing plane. Sure that this is a strange and surreal foreplay, he returns to meet her each evening. Only at the fiery end of this tale does the student, as well as the reader, realize the real objective of this deadly game.
Wisniewski’s stories leave a shadow, a bruise that begs to be touched. Readers will want to contemplate the subtleties of this work. They will want to spend time considering the central character of each story, who was it really about? They may find that these stories touch familiar notes and present truths with which they may not be comfortable. Wisniewski’s stories are certain to haunt long after the lights are out.
Reviewed by Rowanne Joyner
BONE & JUICE
by Adrian C. Louis
Triquarterly Books, Northwestern University Press (2001)
ISBN 0-8101-5116-2, $16.95I read my first Adrian C. Louis poem in a 1992 issue of Coffeehouse Poets’ Quarterly. I heard his voice and knew the tone: restrained anger. It was one of those moments that stays with you, like a scene from a movie the mind replays again and again, O this chapped-ass cowboy hell. O this cow turd state of mind.
I feel I know Louis, although we’ve never met. I’ve heard his voice in the next room, turned the pages of his life and it is real to me, even though we come from different worlds. I have walked the streets of San Francisco with him, ridden shotgun in his T-bird on a dusty road to White Clay, Nebraska. I’ve endured the madness of aging love, the love of aging madness, his voice in the next room guiding the way.
Since that first encounter, I’ve purchased or otherwise acquired six of his books. Bone & Juice is the most recent and probably the most valued because it found me.
Like many of his previous books, Bone & Juice speaks to us about the hardship of reservation life, about reconciling the dominant religion with the Indian heart, about prejudice and poverty—but not just socio-economic poverty—a poverty of spirit. This is a collection of love poems written by a hardened man who has overcome addiction and alcoholism, feeling his age, his mortality, skidding toward the end while desperately trying to hold onto what he values most in the world: a wife who is slowly dieing of Alzheimer’s.
He sets the stage with his first piece, “Valentine From Indian Country”: Yes, this is Indian Country/ and we are bone and juice,/ twelve frothy ounces of moon/ drool, a touch of inexact wistfulness,/ wry evaporation, and eventual extinction. In America there is no truer place/ for us to worship our terrible beauty.
From there he guides us through visits with his wife who lives in a nursing home and their sad, yet childlike relationship. We hear their silly laughter as he howls, the Moon, the Moon-ee-o! and when he drives down the road with her in the passenger seat, his lower denture wedged on his nose, and they come across a Dead Skoonk.
He intermingles these vignettes with the loneliness of being without his wife’s companionship, the temptations of alcohol, other women, suicide. The growl of the language used in previous collections has mellowed, but the gravelly tone of a man who has downed his share of shots, smoked his share of Marlboros, and burdened a fair amount of heartaches is here.
In the end we envision him driving into his sunset on a dusty reservation road, listening to Waylon and Willie as he leaves us with this message for his wife: Upon the ghost road,/ hand in hand,/ our dry lips dark/ with cherry blood,/ we’ll sing our song/ of what was us./ When the chokecherries/ ripen, look for me.// I’ll be there, I promise.
Highly recommended.
Reviewed by M. Scott Douglass
THE HUNGRY WALKER
Poems by Kevin Bezner
Volcanic Ash Books (2001)
ISBN 0-9700980-1-4, $14.
PoetryThe Hungry Walker begins as a journey through family history. The first section is one long poem, “Buffalo,” wherein the narrator (Bezner) attempts to learn something his roots and starts by searching for his grandparents’ headstones. They were immigrants buried in separate cemeteries, …As in/ life, in/ death, apart…
His journey eventually leads him to the Veteran’s Cemetery in Bourne, Massachusetts where his father is buried. The impetus for this journey seems to be centered around his father’s death. We experience the sadness of distance, the anger of betrayal, and the redemption that accompanies forgiveness.
From there, Bezner uses historical moments like stepping-stones in a stream of thought that culminates in “The New World,” which dissects the value of human interference in the natural process.
The third section is a strange series of dream sequences. This is my least favorite section of the book, possible because I’m too literal or perhaps these poems are too abstract. Parts left me challenged to understand the purpose of this section within the continuity of the collection. They are dark and sometimes violent which contrasts the almost lilting cadence of Bezner’s voice.
Don’t get me wrong, these are strong poems, but they seem out of place in a collection that navigates through Bezner’s Catholic rearing and in one poem, “Mark’s Jesus,” gives us a synopsis of the Book of Mark, updated to a John Carpenter like movie version. It’s almost as if Bezner were saying, “This is what I’m protecting you from.”
Bezner reemerges into the light of reality like a ghost among the living, always full/ of desire always// looking// the hungry walker/ passing by// the restaurant’s/ window… In my opinion, he hits his stride here with short image-rich poems like “Stones” that returns us to the three pebbles he left at his Father’s grave earlier in the book.
In the end, we’re back to Eleanor and Feodor, his grandmother and grandfather and a journey of self-discovery, filling the gaps of what is known of their lives with what is known of the time period as a whole. The Hungry Walker, having the need to know them as I can.
Reviewed by M. Scott Douglass
WHAT WE HAVE LOST
New & Selected Poems 1977-2001
By Jeffery Beam
A Spoken Word CD, $20 ppd.
Green Finch Press, PO BOX 83, Chapel Hill, NC 27514.What We Have Lost, New & Selected Poems by Jeffery Beam, is more than a collection of recorded poems, it’s a multimedia production that takes advantage of available technology. This two CD set encompasses poetry, music, and even short video clips.
Both CDs begin and end with classical music by Bo Newsome that is well suited to the soft pastoral cadence of Beam’s voice. Each disk is broken up into chapbook like segments and the package includes an eight-page two color pullout that serves as a program with a written introduction by Beam and a table of contents.
However, if you want the full experience of this production, you need a computer. This is where the fun begins. The program guide provides instructions to access the CD for both MAC and PC formats. Each CD contains photographs of Bream as well as the text version of each poem. There are also text versions of interviews, including one originally run in the Fall 2001 issue of Main Street Rag. But most impressive are the video clips and internet links to other video recorded performances.
If you’re already a Jeffery Beam fan, you’ll enjoy the sound of his voice as he reads. As a poet, I think he is much more effective when he’s in performance mode. However, I could do without the sung portions. While they often resemble Gregorian chant, I tend to believe that those who sing a cappella need to have a sweeter tonal quality. On the other hand, after viewing the video portion of the CDs, I could see Beam swaying with the cadence of his words as I listened to the audio only files.
This is a great production, masterfully put together, and stylish down to the most minute detail. The music portion is soothing and the design for both the pullout and the CD is esthetically pleasing, though occasionally graphic.
The same can be said of Beam’s poetry which ranges from earthy, in touch with nature, as in “Poems from The Broken Flower” to “All The Little Children of the World: A Selection of Children’s Songs and Poems” to “Poems from The Beautiful Tendons: Uncollected Queer Poems.”
The children’s section was a little too childish for my tastes and although Beam admits in his introductory “some will certainly find poems that are not to their liking,”—referring to the sexual nature of the poems in “The Beautiful Tendons” section, I didn’t find anything here that I would consider offensive or distasteful (though some might).
What We Have Lost is a collection of well-constructed lyrical poems, carefully packaged in a multimedia presentation that is extremely well suited to the new millennium.
Reviewed by M. Scott Douglass
