Art as Therapy/Shameless Plug

I’ve been surprised lately by learning about things that happened in my hometown of Cleveland (Ohio) when I was a kid. The biggest surprise came in the form of a movie called “Kill the Irishman” which I saw online through Netflix. I’d never heard of Danny Greene that I can remember until I saw this movie the other day. Now I want to read the book by Rick Porello to learn more about what happened to the mafia after Danny Greene was killed.

Another thing I’m remembering lately is something I knew of as it was happening, although I didn’t think at the time it was such a big deal. Cleveland’s WMMS radio was named by Rolling Stone magazine the nation’s best each year from 1979 to 1987. I had no idea. If you’re from Cleveland, you know a thing or two about rock ‘n roll unless you just don’t pay attention to popular culture. I graduated from high school in 1985, and I remember when petitions were circulated to gather support for the construction of the Rock ‘n Roll Hall of Fame. One of the DJs at WMMS, Kid Leo, actively promoted the cause of bringing this Hall of Fame to Cleveland, but I only know of this through the nice entry Wikipedia has for “The Home of the Buzzard” as I remember it. Nowadays, WMMS is promoted as “Cleveland’s Rock Station”. The graphic logo of the Buzzard has been replaced with a pair of orange wings and what looks like a sign for U.S. Route 100.7WMMS between them. What I remember clearly are the station promos done by Sting (“This is Sting of The Police, and when I’m in Cleveland I listen to WMMS ooo-ooo-ooo”) and Pete Townshend (“This is Pete Townshend, and I’d like to remind you that rock ‘n roll will always, always, always, always, always, overcome … eventually”) and the station itself (“The Rock Capital of the World”) (“Buzzard Radio”) etc.

This remembering started about three weeks ago when I remembered a recipe for fish soup that I haven’t made for years. Don’t know what made me think of it, but I’m glad I did. I made the soup again shortly after I thought of it again, and again I was glad I did. Then I got into a conversation with a friend, and I mentioned an out-of-body experience I had when I was a teenager. I had heard a song on the radio, a rock song, which told a sort of detective story about the man in the jar (who had no face). This man, “he wanna get out/he’s smashing the glass.” It’s a song by The Sensational Alex Harvey Band. If you’re from the United States, but not from Cleveland, then apparently (according to the nice article about WMMS at Wikipedia) there’s a good chance you’ve never heard of The Sensational Alex Harvey Band. Anyway, when I was a kid, this tune hit me like a mallet over the head. I didn’t think of it at the time, but it seems to me now that Alex Harvey, by composing and performing this tune, was metaphorically smashing whatever glass he had in mind. After all, he concludes in the song, “I must be the man in the jar.” Shortly after I heard this song, I drew a picture of a man in a jar; then, while I was asleep, I dreamed I got up out of bed and walked across my room to sit down at my desk. The picture I had drawn while I was awake was plain to see in my dream. Soon, in my dream, I walked back over to my bed and sat down. I swung my legs up to get into bed, and as I did so I saw in my peripheral vision that my legs were already under the covers. I was putting my legs into my legs. Then I laid back, and as I did so, I felt in my dream like I was falling. The next thing I knew, I felt my heart thump strongly (I had happened to fall asleep with my hand on my chest). Then I woke up and my heart beat rapidly. I was a little startled, but it wasn’t scary. I felt a bit relieved by the whole experience. At the time, I had been feeling sort of trapped. I wouldn’t have known though what to say to anyone about that feeling. I believe my experience of the art of the song and my drawing to go with it were therapeutic for me. Maybe, for Alex Harvey, composing and performing that particular tune were therapeutic for him.

Last, but not least, the shameless plug. Here is a poem from my chapbook Philip & the Poet (available from Mayapple Press). Writing it was a therapeutic experience for me. I was able to gain a perspective on certain past events of my life and certain attitudes and patterns of thought that I can see now are better left behind rather than played over and over like, well, a broken record.

 Driving Home

Today I got a haircut. God cut it.
“How many hairs have I got?” I asked.
“Everybody’s gotta be a wiseguy,”
says God. I laughed. Really I was joyful.
“How come I’m not joyful more often?”
“Trust in my Word,” God says. I give him
a dollar tip. “Thanks, now I can get my
mother that operation.” “You’re killing
me,” I say. “That’s just your cross,” says God.
“All part of the mystery, you understand.”
I leave to visit my relatives in Cleveland.
 On the turnpike, as I stop to pay the toll,
it’s God taking my change. “You’re on
 the right road,” says God. “Keep going.”
God reminds me, “Trust in my Word.
My Word goes out and does not return
until it is fulfilled,” says God.
“Is life like that too? I go out and don’t
return until I am fulfilled?” I ask.
God smiles at me and winks. “Next,” says God.
Haven’t I seen that smile somewhere before?
When I get to my father’s condo, I see
my father looks just like the barber.
Then he looks like the toll-booth attendant.
Then he looks like my father again.
Before I can say anything, he says,
“I’m glad you’re here. How was the drive?”
I begin to cry. “I’m sorry,” I say.
“The drive was fine.” Suddenly I turn
into a cross and lean on my father’s shoulder.
He smiles as though nothing has happened.

108 Beads per Rosary + 108 Poets per REVOLUTIONESQUE

Harriet @ Poetry Foundation remarks, “you’ve got to check out Esque Mag Issue 3 … It’s beautiful.”

 

Announcing Esque (click!)

For the third issue of esque, REVOLUTIONESQUE, we asked you to tell us about the revolution. We didn’t define what we mean by that. Whether it lives in your home, in the financial district, or the district of your heart, you defined your revolution and told us what it is. 
 Here are y/our findings.

108 poets talk about the revolution:

Alex Dimitrov, Alex Rieser, Amanda Deutch, Amber West, Amish Trivedi, Amy Lawless, Anja Mutic, Anne Fisher-Wirth, Annie Finch, Becca Klaver, Betsy Wheeler, Bonnie MacAllister, Brad Liening, Brenda Iijima, Brian Howe, Cara Benson, Ching-In Chen, Chris Martin, Chris Pusateri, Christina Davis, Claudia Serea, Cynthia Arrieu-King, Dale Smith, Dan Hoy, Dana Teen Lomax, Danniel Schoonebeek, David Baratier, David Brazil, David Buuck, Diane di Prima, Donna Fleischer, Dot Devota, Dustin Luke Nelson, E.C. Messer, Elise Ficarra, Elizabeth Treadwell, Emily Kendal Frey, Erin Lyndal Martin, Evie Shockley, Filip Marinovich, Franklin Bruno, Gloria Frym, Hank Lazer, Harold Abramowitz, Hugh Behm-Steinberg, J/J Hastain, Jan Clausen, Jan Heller Levi, Jared White, Jeffrey Grunthaner, Jennifer Karmin, Jennifer Mackenzie, Jessica Reed, Jocelyn Lieu, John Ashbery, John Colburn, Jon Cotner, Joshua Ware, Kate Schapira, Kathleen Ossip, Kimberly Alidio, Kristin Prevallet, Krystal Languell, Larry Sawyer, Lars Palm, Laura Carter, Laura Hinton, Lauren DeGaine, Laynie Browne, Liesel Tarquini, Lily Brown, Lisa Samuels, M. G. Stephens, Magus Magnus, Maryam Alikhani, Matt Clifford, Maya Pindyck, Meena Alexander, Megan Volpert, Michelle Detorie, Mike Palmer, Nicholas DeBoer, Nikki Wallschlaeger, Noelle Kocot, Ossian Foley, Paige Taggart, Patricia Spears Jones, Paul Cunningham, Paula Cisewski, Peter Ciccariello, Phillip Griffith, Piotr Gwiazda, Rachel Eliza Griffiths, Rachel Levitsky, Ray Gonzalez, Richard Loranger, Ricky Ray, Rita Stein, Rob MacDonald, Sara Jane Stoner, Sharon Mesmer, Sophie Podolski trans. Paul Legault, Stephanie Gray, Thom Donovan, Todd Colby, Tony Mancus, Vincent Katz, Zvonko Karanovic trans. Ana Bozicevic

With a special Naropa section featuring:

Allan Andre, Angela Stubbs, Ariella Ruth, Jessica Hagemann, Lauren Artiles, Lindsay Miller, Matthew Wedlock, Meryl DePasquale

Please share widely, with gratitude,

Amy King & Ana Bozicevic
http://www.esquemag.org/

Apostrophe, Odes, Ekphrasis, Oh My!

 

*Click for Poetry Workshop Info*

The Rooster Moans:  Poetry Cooperative
Dates: July 8 – August 4, 2012

With Amy King

For as long as we can remember, poets have addressed the sun and moon, distant lovers and heroes, while also separately singing odes to the gods. The Surrealist painter Leonora Carrington once said, “We learn about the soul, and we have to listen to the soul.”  Just as some poets use music for inspiration, ekphrasis is not simply a description of an art work, but influenced by the art work and, sometimes, the artist’s life. Carrington’s own paintings evidence her own efforts towards querying the world she inhabited beyond the limits of perception; her life also reveals many lively, unconventional turns that inspire and provide unexpected permissions, something poets often require — consciously or not.


In the course of this workshop, we will look at a the work and lives of a variety of artists, as well as poets, and consider how ekphrasis can extend beyond mere description of the visual arts but may also be combined with address (apostrophe) or incorporate the ode as a means to reflect appreciation, and content from, an artist’s work.

"Amy King’s poems seem to encompass all that we think of as the 'natural' world ..."

                                                                                                               --John Ashbery 

Book Review by Joy Leftow: The Weight of Wings by April Bulmer

Book Review: The Weight of Wings by April Bulmer

Reviewed by Joy Leftow

I first saw April Bulmer’s poem, “Mai Po,” on another poet’s website while browsing online looking through websites of other writers who had other commented on my work or glanced through my blog. The poem, “Mai Po,” touched me and brought together universal qualities of longing, sadness, the passing of time and personal search. I immediately googled April Bulmer, located her and told her I wanted to review her book, The Weight of Wings.  Ms. Bulmer kindly forwarded a copy of this small but packed-with-valuables collection to editor Brad Eubanks and myself since he too was enthralled with her writing. The Weight of Wings is a mixture between a novel and a spiritual journey, written in poetic verse. First I read the book to myself, stopping and browsing along the journey. I paused to engage with the spiritual theme and read the small-but mighty book through to its end. To absorb more of the work and to examine how it sounded when read aloud I read it to a poetry co-conspirator. After reading several pages, I asked if he was bored. “No,” he said, he appreciated my reading and would I continue. Thus I completed my second reading.

Later I sat and examined the fine papyrus paper purposely frayed and roughened at the edges of this sixty-page manuscript, running my fingers across it. The feel and look of the paper made it feel sacred. I opened the book. I measured it as though its measurements would reveal its meaning. The frayed cover measured 5 ¼ x 5 ¾ inches and the pages within were 5 x 5 inches. It was typeset with Cochin, “a font named for a family of 17^th and 18^th century Parisian engravers.” [1] This made me feel the weight of time while experiencing a journey of verse.

Lulled into the rhythm and pace of the words I discovered a range of characters. I decided to list and outline each character to define where they fit in the text.  Next, I realized there are over twenty characters and some reappear. The voices follow themselves or a member of their community.

It was there I stopped counting. I began concentrating on the threads that run through the prose. What connects all the characters is a personal relationship to their savior, “Most blessed of Women is Rosie, earthen vessel in whom Jesus now grows.”[2] Each character struggles to maintain their faith and purity while simultaneously trying to survive in a sometimes harsh, unforgiving environment where loss, pain and loneliness intertwine with passions and desires. They are either residents of a convent or live in a nearby religious center. Thus they are connected through their faith as well as their losses.

The first poem throws us right into the battle.

Mr. F. Johnson

I laid down by the little plot, my heart tethered to the stone.

And God fell upon me like a warm blanket, though I still

shivered in the cold.

I prayed early that evening. God my horsepower. For Him my

faith cantered, unreined. But your death, daughter, was a saddle

a dark weight; your body folded untidy as a map in the rumble

of the black coupe. Heart a compass, the needle spinning dizzy

till it stiffened north.

It is noteworthy that much of Bulmer’s poetry appears in theological reviews such as The Anglican Theological Review, as well as in feminist publications and anthologies. Some of her other works are, Spring Rain, Oh My Goddess, Holy Land, The Goddess Psalms, and A Salve for Every Sore, all published by the well-known Serengeti Press. Bulmer utilizes simple language that becomes complex and has layers of meanings hauntingly presented.

In an email Bulmer explains, “The mention of ‘bruised bone’ and ‘oracle’ in ‘Mai Po’ are references to ancient Chinese divination practice. These early people heated bones and tortoise shells to read the cracks and lines that appeared.” Bulmer visited the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto years ago and toured an exhibit of these inspiring spiritual relics.

Bulmer’s works encompass every man’s struggle between good and evil; she brings us back to basics. In a world where every bad deed is counted and dividends for rewards run steep, stakes are high. Brimstone and fire tactics often help the populace behave and survive. Putting your best foot forward is what’s expected although humanity has always struggled with issues such as greed or lust. These desires coincide with our desire to be good and do right.

Bulmer brings profound new meaning to our inner struggles and brings to light the uncertainty that the only reward we receive in this life is the confirmation that if we are good enough, we will enter the kingdom of God after death. Sometimes reaching for the light at the end of the tunnel seems useless when suffering and loss are all we know. Here may be the point. All of Bulmer’s works dance with the desire for the universal search for truth and righteousness while trying to survive the day in a human body with desires and needs. It gives the word guilt more power.

As I spread my wings though the poems, I was carried through a dream-like sequence of events, mixing eroticism and religion with hints of sexual behavior. In addition the characters always attempt to make sense of themselves and their struggles in a way they can understand.

           

I thought God so loved the Virgin, he himself stepped out of his

  work pants, hung his belt on a nail. I wedded him in a bridal gown…

But God so loved me he sent Diamond. …

I trip on my way to chapel …  The thorns

break my skin, my ankles and calves bleed. Diamond takes me

to his shed where he stores his tools and bags of loam, lays me

down on a burlap sack: a leak in the roof,  a hymn gentle from

the chapel….A hot drink, eggs scrambled

over fire, crusty bread Diamond hacks from a loaf. When the

cinders die, shadows sweep the ashes.

When I got to “Annie,” I wondered if I was misunderstanding. I worried so that I finally wrote Bulmer and asked her if I was on point, raising several issues.

My new dog liked the smell of my yellow soap, thanked me

with kisses to the elbow, wrist and knee. He growled a little

when I clipped his nails and when I snipped at his dewclaw

he broke the skin on my left thigh. I bled.

He didn’t like it among the brooms and buckets, whined for hours.

He was asleep on the rag bag when I opened the door. I carried

him to the bedroom, his body warm against the sleeves of my

cotton night dress. We slept cheek by jowl.

At noon he stood at the window like a little man, wiped the dew

from the window pane and cried. It was the sheriff and a vigil of

town folk at the front door. They kicked at me with their hob-nailed

boots, struck me with shovels and frying pans. The sheriff shot my

dog--a weight he slung into a burlap bag and carried to the river.

Sunday, and no heaving and crying at church. All cheeks were dry.

But as the choir rose, I heard a high-pitched howl, a soulful baying

that swelled my heart to a full moon.

“Did they really kill the dog and beat the woman because the two had sex and they had to be punished?” I wrote her. Bulmer replied, “My fantasy worlds are a little bit eccentric (as you gathered in reading about the woman who slept with her dog). I have a low-key life. I don’t think anyone would be interested in reading about it. You highlighted the major themes of the book.  Thank you for your keen reading.”

And my heart swelled to meet the moon and I too heard the cries of a dog dying for doing the forbidden when obviously a dog wouldn’t know better. I wondered too at the charity of letting Annie live. I figure they released her so she might repent her sins. I wondered how the townspeople knew what she and the dog had done.

I recommend all of Bulmer’s work heartily. It is not for the feint of heart--neither is it for prudes. I love the lilt of Bulmer’s words and how they continue to sing in my head, resonating long after the reading is done.

April Bulmer was born and raised in Toronto, but now lives in the small city of Cambridge, Ontario.  She has published six books of poetry.  Many of her poems deal with women and spirituality.  She holds three Masters Degrees in Creative Writing, Religious Studies and Theological Studies.  The prose poems that appear here are excerpts from her second book The Weight of Wings (Trout Lily Press, Stratford, 1997).  Each piece in the collection deals with the spiritual life of a character in fictional Sweet Grass, Saskatchewan.  April's newest manuscript is entitled "Women of the Cloth."  To contact her and order books:  aprilb@golden.net 

Article first published as Book Review: The Weight of Wings by April Bulmer on Blogcritics.

---

[1] Final page, text

[2] Mrs. Gross, page 11

Amy King writes:  A review once described my work as “moving between the registers of the fabulous and the mundane;” as I write, however, I don’t purposely aim to interlace tonalities – I amass, pile, and occasionally flatten as I beat my matter into text. 

Poetry needs no one new party to lead it into the fraying future; if we’re to save the world, let’s raise a revolution as shapeshifters. In other words, this book is about metamorphosis through a radical cherishing. I am ravished by the world, aren’t you?

Please support Small Press Distribution - here.  

~~~~

"Rarely have the nude and the cooked been so neatly joined” as in Amy King’s I Want to Make You Safe. If “us,” “herons,” and “dust” rhyme,  then these poems rhyme. If that makes you feel safe, it shouldn’t. Amy King’s poems are exuberant, strange, and a bit grotesque. They’re spring-loaded and ready for trouble. Categories collapse. These are the new “thunderstorms with Barbie roots."
                                                                                                   — Rae Armantrout 
 
Vulnerability, fragility, and anxiety are all flushed out into the open here and addressed with such strong sound and rhythm that we recognize a resilient, defiant strength within them. King puts relentless pressure on forces seemingly beyond our reach and, in bringing them closer, exposes their own vulnerable centers. This is a poetry equally committed to language as a tool with social obligations and language as an art material obligated to reveal its own beauty. King’s language does both magnificently. 
                                                                                                    — Cole Swensen

Amy King’s poems seem to encompass all that we think of as the “natural” world, i.e. sex, sun, love, rotting, hatching, dreaming, especially in the wonderful long poem “This Opera of Peace.” She brings these abstractions to brilliant, jagged life, emerging into rather than out of the busyness of living: “Let the walls bear up the angle of the floor,/Let the mice be tragic for all that is caged,/Let time’s contagion mar us/until spoken people lie as particles of wind.
                                                                                                    — John Ashbery

I love Amy King's smile in photos of Amy King, Amy King's exuberance and looping, bashing panache (flamboyant manner, reckless courage) in the poems of Amy King, I'm going to say Amy King every chance I get in this blurb to make you think "I gotta read me some Amy King," especially if you're "looking for anything/that will pull the cork, boil the blood/of displeasure," as only the poems of Amy King can in the world in which Amy King is King (and Queen).     
                                                                                                     — Bob Hicok 

The first poem I read by Amy King was "MEN BY THE LIPS OF WOMEN" and it struck me with a force I had previously felt on encountering masterworks by Lorca and Dylan Thomas.  I won't live long enough to see if her poetry will continue to equal the magnificence of theirs, but the fact that she achieved it once (at least) proves to me it could.     
                                                                                                      — Bill Knott 

~~~~

Randall Radac aka John Lee Brook has a new book!

Posting below by editor Joy Leftow, is a short interview with Randall Radac who has had poetry and art published in The Cartier Street Review.

http://www.headpress.com/ShowProduct.aspx?ID=96

Available at Amazon and Barnes and Noble is the best price. Amazon wants more than the price of the book to ship it.


JL: How did you came to write this book?


RR: After meeting some members of the Aryan Brotherhood in jail, I observed they are fascinatingly violent people with almost magnetic personalities. I decided to write a book about them after doing some research and discovering very little had been published about them.

JL: Radac, how bout some spice on this latest publication?

RR: The book is written under my pen name, John Lee Brook and it takes a close look at a White Supremacist Gang. The FBI has says, “In for life and out by death”, the Aryan Brotherhood known as “The most ferocious and notorious of any of the prison groups.”

As an ex-convict in close contact with the Aryan Brotherhood I've written a devastating exposé, revealing how the notorious white supremacist prison gang has become perhaps the most powerful criminal organization in America, an achievement much more remarkable considering that the majority of its members remain behind bars, and its infamous Commission—the folkloric threesome, Thomas ‘Terrible Tom’ Silverstein, Tyler ‘the Hulk’ Bingham and Barry ‘the Baron’ Mills—are kept in maximum-security solitary confinement, as the US government makes an open effort to subdue the organization by any means necessary.doctorradic@msn.com

JL: Any other little blurb, RR?

Yes, despite government efforts to curtail them, the Aryan Brotherhood continues to thrive. My book Blood In, Blood Out demonstrates how a combination of Machiavelli, Nietzsche, meditation, secret codes, brutal violence and sheer will enable its buried puppet masters to continue to tug at the strings of an organization at the forefront of the black market trade in drugs, arms and money laundering. In Blood In, Blood Out, John Lee Brook provides both an extensive overview of the Aryan Brotherhood and a thrilling look at its untold recent history.

About the Author:
John Lee Brook’s study of the white supremacy movement has led him to strange places, where he met hard men with strange beliefs. Blood In, Blood Out: The Violent Empire of the Aryan Brotherhood (Headpress Publishing/June 2011) is his first book about white supremacy.


Publisher: Headpress, June 2011
Language: English
ISBN-10: 1900486776
ISBN-13: 978-1900486774


To contact RR, write: johnleebrook@hotmail.com or doctorradic@msn.comjohnleebrook@hotmail.com

"I Read This": Poetry South 2010

One of the many things I am grateful for is the New Pages website. I happen to live near the owners, Casey and Denise, and I have begun to read magazines they give to me in order to write a review. For my first effort, I read and wrote about the 2010 issue of Poetry South. It is 64 pages jammed with 49 lyric and narrative poems, among other things. My whole review comes to less than 400 words. If I were you, I'd grab a cup of coffee, enjoy the full review, and then read more reviews at New Pages.

Book Review - 39 Poems by Charles Butler

Article first published as Book Review: 39 Poems by Charles Butler on Blogcritics.org

39 POEMS by Charles J. Butler

ISBN 978-0-9772718-8-7

Publication date 2010

74 pages

No Shirt Press, Brooklyn, NY

Reading through the 39 Poems brought to mind Hitchcock’s movie, The 39 Steps because each poem stretches the reader and the page towards the next poem and set of steps without explaining where he is going. Also the poems on the pages of the book are laid out in emulation of climbing up and down steps so that while reading I felt like I was skipping steps. Each poem relates to life’s struggles; the various ways love affects us and how meaningful respect is. He writes about everyday things moving us up and down steps lyrically and emotionally.

Butler describes how one can be oblivious to a murder and walk across bloodstains on our big city streets without recognizing them in the book’s first poem, Crimson Stroll. Suddenly while stepping over the red brown stains, the author recognizes it for what it is, seeing a stark vivid beauty of someone’s life bled out on the streets.

Someone’s life bled out

At your feet

              Think on it

                             Times you bled

Times you made others bleed

            Look on it

            Big dark path on 8^th ave

            Brooklyn side

                                    in your way

look on it

the fuel that moves us all

dried out on a dirty sidewalk

who bled …

are they dead

                        look at it

a dark stain

                        it’s almost…

beautiful

            a bit of Canada                         flashes up your neck

and ears

back in the world you move around it

and move on

                        wishing for cold rain

to wash away the stain   human sin

most of all

                           your own

We’re all here – all human and suffering –  and this is the grist for this author to describe how we’re all the same and different at the same time, but he wants to show us that we have the capacity to be and do more that drives us and of course this is what drives this poet to create poetry. The stains our lives create must contain beauty otherwise why do we exist? Butler’s struggle is to align himself with the humanity in all of us, despite the murder the chaos, the beauty the differences between rich and poor, black and white, and he struggles with it all, climbing up and down, retreating and coming to terms with wrongs and rights and even the grays and imperfections.

The problem is that our climbing stretching and reaching is never done. You go up you descend and then you begin all over again because that’s the way life is, it’s never done until you’re done - or dead and gone - is more like it - or if you’re a quitter. Butler is no quitter and no matter how far down he’s gone – he bounces back to reexamine his roots and the course of his life, fighting to stay in touch with his spiritual side. This spiritual side is at the root of Butler’s talent, as he controls his anger hurt and humiliation when he’s experienced racism. For any of you who have never experienced racism, normal is a good place to start to understand what it’s about when you get stopped on the street because of the color of your skin.

                                    nature of the beast

now

            I’m not gonna say I’ve lost

count o’the many times I’ve been blackstopped

but

            it’s more than a few

remember

                        I’m 16

walkin’ on a bed-stuy street

goin’ noplace fast

            blue n’ white rolls up on me

unis pile out …

            nicely they ask me if I’m carryin’

a gun

            nicely I say no

nicely

            they  ask if I would submit

to a search

                        mind you             they don’t have

to ask me

                        a goddamn thing

and they know it

I know it

                        An’ the brother

watchin’ this

                                    who wishes right now

he was            

            someplace else

knows

            it

nicely

            I say

                        go ahead

I can relate to this struggle and suffering. All my life as a Jew and especially in my childhood I was called a Christ killer. The recent advent of the Mel Gibson movie and his ensuing drunk arrest and slurred comment about Jews brought it home to me again. But this is a tactic of the upper echelon. They want to keep us all at each other’s throats so we will keep our busy bee status and keep making the rich richer. It’s a means of control and humiliation and it makes us hurt. Mr. Butler knows this hurt intimately and writes about it poignantly.

           

39 Poems cover a range of experiences; awareness of the haves and have-nots, racism, love, hurt, abandonment and loss, and more importantly the urge to understand and come to terms with it and explain what it’s all about. After all this everyday stuff is the mesh of our lives. The ability to sublimate sets humans apart from other species, to take our hurts and pain and transcend them for the greater good – to create beauty in ugliness is the work Mr. Butler attends to.

In DMV rag, Butler speaks for all of us who have ever been to the DMV.

We’re in the dmv now

                        Hundreds of black

And brown faces

                        some whites

all of them wanna be someplace else

but here we are …

                                    it’s all mad

gotta be

            half the world is on fire            an’

the other is on line waiting for their number to be called

lookin’ for a place t’ sit

an empty seat

is like

            fool’s gold

Don’t we all feel like this when we visit official offices, public school registration, social security, Medicaid, even the closed down US passport passport bureaus, and welfare’s the worst. I have a poem about it called, “Welfare’s Still A Bitch!”

The searching and questioning never stop just like in the movie The 39 Steps, there is always another side to examine to analyze understand and conquer. His poems speak to maturity and growth and show how youth and mistakes although unavoidable are only part of climbing and descending those steps, a poem for each step.

In word one baby, Butler explains why a writer writes.

why 

write?

writing                         since he was eleven

thru                        good days

                                                and dark times

the pain of living

                                                the come hither call

of death

            and madness inbetween

even hung                        ‘em up for a time

didn’t last

why write?

he’s free

Is the author describing himself here or is he speaking for everyone? We all know writers write about what they know and well, … if they write about what they don’t know … everyone knows that doesn’t work. Artists from time immemorial have been known to describe angst which often spurs their creative urges. Does every writer experience angst? I can’t speak for every artist. Many writers have spoken and written about their angst yet angst alone doesn’t make a man an artist. There is some other indistinguishable indefinable something that inspires a writer to create, that makes his writings stand out among others, something that prods him to spend his time writing while others commune, have sex, watch tv or do other things while writing remains a lonely task which takes time.

Words don’t miraculously appear on the page. Writing is what gives Butler the freedom he speaks of above. His words create a freedom that exists nowhere else around in our world and he helps the reader to feel it too. Through that freedom we see what he sees; a stark world filled with fertility and barrenness that provides us not only with a place to survive but a place to grow and thrive. The growth in Butler’s poetry and words inspires me too. I recommend 39 Poems sincerely and without any reservation.

Mammoth Bones & Contemporary Beef - Bernard Alain - reviewed by Joy Leftow

Mammoth Bones & Contemporary Beef, a witty new chap that may be small but wallops a strong punch that will knock you silly and leave you begging for more.

The editor in me kept looking for that one line that needed help. I finally gave in to his sparse economy of language that flows with an unconscious rhythm and wry dry humor. So dry it made me thirst for more, and I read the entire 36-page chap in one setting that went more quickly than I liked because I couldn't stop reading and laughing. I chewed as much meat from those mammoth bones as I dared!

Congrats Alain, you made a big hit with me - and … what? You thought I’d leave it at that because we used to edit the same mag? Gimme a break. I laughed so hard my eyes teared up and I cried.  Not once but several times over a couple of hours. The honesty is over the top handed to us on a pedestal. The chapbook's cover with its mammoth creatures mimic the poems. They are bigger than life and than all of us together. Thank his mom, Anatholie Alain for that, for keeping the organic life form emerging from Alain’s third eye blind.

The hallucinations
have started
The pain more severe
disturbances of the
heart
…
sitting in a dory
out east
not giving a rat’s ass

Only a poet (and sometime even poets don’t) know how to lay out the work so true to form that it remains poetically true to its sparseness and economic wording. He references other poets to let us know he wonders if he matches up, makes the cut or has he been circumcised like most of us. He experiments with sounds and placements of vowels instinctually letting the poem find its own roots and meaning. He lets the poem decide where it needs to go,

The slow process of submission
The eventuality
Arriving at some maniacal correction
For the s’s

So obsessed he
Was possessed
…
who was he kidding

even Blake thought he might’ve liked the
devil

The words evolve to take us on a journey – a rampage inside ourselves where we explore to learn more about why we are who we are. Who else but writers would care where we are spiritually talent wise in life, and who but a writer would mix the two. The book sold out on Amazon but is available here.

Far From Kiltartans Poor He Died

---

William Butler Yeats poems in memory of Major William Robert Gregory celebrate him as an Irish airman, not giving the fact that he was a lover of the empire and stood against everything the poor of Kiltartan loved or wanted.

This poem explored that aspect of Lady Gregorys son, who did not share his mothers politics.

He died far from Kiltartans poor being shot down by friendly fire in Italy, and far from for them in fighting for Crown and Country.

----------------- The Poem -------------------------

Far from Kiltartans poor he died
As to fight for his dream he tried
To outdo his enemy he vied
Only by his own to be shot down

And a poet who of the war vowed not to write
As it was no a writers war to fight
Nor a fit subject for verse in his sight
Wrote of an allied airman who fought for the crown

For far from the cause of liberty
So for Serbia and Belgium to be free
And Ireland too - far from that he
Wore uniform among the clouds

It was for empire to remain great
To be the worlds most powerful state
White, English, of the Reformed faith
He died, far from Kiltartans crowds

For it was far from fighting for Kiltartans poor
He died far from Kiltartan it is sure
He desired to keep them so, his heart was pure
British, to the very bone.

And the Kaiser, whose forces he faced
Whose Empire his own displaced
Was no more Kiltartans enemy disgraced
Than was the Hero from among their own.