LETTER OF MARQUE: ARTICLE THE TWENTIETH

I knew Bukowski like you knew a rare leaf | Harry Calhoun

Poetry
“Forty poems in three acts”
53 pages
ISBN 978-0-578-01634-4
6” x 9” trade perfect-bound paperback
Published by Trace Publications
Available at Amazon

This paperback is a journey in “three acts” about the passions and relations of human beings, surrounded by nature and questions and expectations, accepting things in the past that cannot be changed and looking ahead to a future that is not just owned, but shared. The title sums up two main “characters” in the book touched on repeatedly: Bukowski and nature, seemingly polar opposites, but obviously the cornerstones of two distinct sides making up Harry Calhoun.

The poems are definitely lavish with nature-speak, naming different flowers, giving them almost humanistic personification, describing the seasons of North Carolina with a fondness in which one can revel only when truly in love with his surroundings. On occasion, the reveling is a bit much, as the language becomes — pardon the pun — quite flowery at times, naming a few too many plants and comparing a few too many things to the taste of wine, but it is, nonetheless, pleasant, and certainly one can enjoy flowers and wine enough not to mind.

The book is divided into “three acts,” mostly with a set-up, confrontation, and resolution flow, although the divisions offer up a bit of gray area as to a clear distinction between the poems' placement within the acts. The main arc running through is that the book starts on a very depressing, negative note, dealing with past events — such as the death and subsequent painful forgiving of the author's mother — and ends up far happier, with the author finding a quite-significant significant other and turning a hopeful eye toward the future.

The poems deal with age, coming to terms with getting older (from “Baseball, behind the trees”):

[ ... ] if I had a mirror

it would tell me
summer is not the only season
that relentlessly rushes in[;]

the aforementioned dealings with the lonely death of the author's mother (from “Bad joke”):

[ ... ] finally got to see his mother

[leveled] by a stroke
and croaking like a seal
and unable to speak
and unrecognizing of her own son

[ ... ];

the author's correspondences with Bukowski, and the parallels this had to other parts of the author's life (from “I knew Bukowski”):

[ ... ]

Never met Bukowski
we just corresponded
I liked Bukowski
and I loved my mother

but I can't say I knew either one
better than the other

[ ... ];

the finding of true love that most definitely lit up the author's life (from “A guest in the house of winter”):

[ ... ]

I wonder why you have placed this fireplace
in the midst of my chilly unlit life,
made me a guest in the house of winter
[ ... ];

the necessity of beliefs, questioning, having the imagination to create what's around you, not just live in it (from “The superstition that sustains”):

I've heard that people in Bhutan
now live unbelieving that the yeti exists
[ ... ]

how I could live these many years
without my mythology
how I could live in barren grasses
and stuck in fields the prey of
owls and wolves and foxes

not knowing I had wings
[ ... ];

to the lessons learned from his beloved black Labrador (from “At four years old, I asked my mother: will I die?”):

my beautiful black Labrador
won't live nearly as long as me
and will give me
a microcosm
of what it will be for me
to age from boy to adolescent to man
to decrepitude

[ ... ].

The topics are universal, and the poems are bursting with personal emotion and the baring of one's soul, stripped down to the sadness and the joys in one equal breath, side by side, taken as the parts that make the man.

Overall, a very decent collection of quite pleasant poems. Nothing shocking, nothing crazy, but subtle stories of overcoming a painful past to find a brighter future that will make you want to go water a flower.

•This book was sent to me from the author because I have corresponded with him.•
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LETTER OF MARQUE: ARTICLE THE FIFTEENTH

Falling Up | Jeff Fleming

Poetry
20 pages
5 ½“ x 8 ½“ chapbook
Nibble Press
Oakland CA USA
nibblepoems [at] gmail [dot] com
$3

This short chapbook reads as one continuous poem divided into chapters, wherein one poem and title represents one full chapter, one move forward in the story of a strange almost-love, the pull of emotions in many directions, disjointed and sparse, leaving you to fill in the blanks with a romantic or tragic weaving of your choosing.

The book is very blue, right away it looks a sorrowful journey, featuring a girl with her hand on a window, looking at and almost touching spots of stars or lightning bugs or raindrops or a sci-fi stream of alien static. The characters inside are just as melancholy and spotted, as this could have easily been a set of poems inspired by the cover picture or one close to it; two wayward characters, equally as lost together or apart, finding each other and losing each other, as cryptic in their interactions as the poems are to us. You don't know much about the characters, yet you feel you know them well or have seen them in the mirrors of lobbies and purse compacts or in the sordid affairs of neighbors and estranged lovers.

On the technical side, Fleming's poems are very narrative, telling more than showing, lots of good similes, not too experimental, just very crisp and point-driven. And he knows how to give you an ending line. Here are a couple of my favorites:

From “Chapter Three: Here to Ride Me Home”:

[ ... ]

Petra nods and begins
walking. Paolo follows
like a slow wake.

From “Chapter Six: Hiding Her Flesh”:

[ ... ] rises
from the crippled
chair and tips
the cap
he isn't wearing.

On the negative side, I'm not a fan of the entire book being in a slanted font with little serifs on every letter, as it didn't look as polished as a cleaner, blockier font. It looked great for the titles, but didn't set the titles apart as much. Another question arises with the presentation of a phantom “you” in the first couple poems, who is unnamed and later disappears. There are clearly two characters in this story we are following; we understand the “he” and the “she,” but then occasionally, the person shifts, and there is a random “you” thrown in. Someone I cannot pinpoint, and someone I don't think is supposed to be there. Maybe a quick brush-up rewrite could edit this “person” out, although you might have to be an editor even to notice.

Jeff's work subtly eats you. Nothing shouts abruptly here, but in the quietest way, Fleming gets under your skin to make you want to grab someone you love and not let go, as you figure out all the intricacies of being, tumbling through it, awkward and strange.

•This book was sent to me from the author because I have corresponded with him.•
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LETTER OF MARQUE: ARTICLE THE THIRTEENTH

Nothing Unrequited Here | Heather Bell

Poetry
32 pages
5 ½” x 8 ½” handmade chapbook
First impression of 100
Verve Bath Press
Available here
$10

To start this right off, let's talk about product: Oh my gosh, the ladies of Verve Bath Press make the most darling of all handmade journals, chaps, zines, and art projects, and this is no exception. This delicate book has a recycled laid brown kraft paper cover, the consistency of a paper grocery bag, with silkscreened or screen-printed words, and an actual paper doily clasped with pewter brads around the book's binding and cover. Holy cute as beans. I must confess, the dainty, beautiful handmade look of this book forced me, out of pure respect for perfect art, to purchase this book.

But the poems are what truly stole my heart. This book is awesome, and I cannot put it in words as dainty as the cover, but this is so worth every penny and moment spent on it. The poems are as they say they are: love poems for JNB, referred to mostly as “you” or “he” in extremely personal writing ripping apart and stitching back together the imperfect-yet-flawless seams of an esoteric relationship.

Some of the poems are tiny stories, easy to follow and visualize, and others are a mish-mash of quick thoughts strewn together, one after another, falling out like crazy drool, tumbling around like windblown leaves at the onslaught of a hurricane, abstract and punchy, tough to follow in an arc, throwing visual after visual at you while you swing at them all.

The author throws punctuation out the window, ending obvious questions and sentence fragments of who's or what's with periods, but once you get past the stopping and starting, stalling and running-full-force nature of the rhythm (and the fact that the writer seems to have an obsession with the bathroom?), the book lets loose into so many good lines that I couldn't possibly list them all. If ever there were a poet to rip off, Ms. Bell is it, with her sexy and sexual words that test the waters of love, dwelling on confusions of marriage, compromises, outsider views of do's and don'ts, from a voice that seems to be quite young, diving into a big love for the first time and growing throughout the words of a love that could also be the last one. The poem, “The Reason You Are Not A Poet,” could just say it all, with its immense details of even the most minute moment:

He's yelling from the bathroom.
You move close to the door to hear.

He says,
I love your hair in my shower. I love your hair in my shower.

You exhale and realize
he will never be a poet, but you love
the way he called your eyes kettle drums one night,
for lack of anything else to say. The way he carved your
names into his kitchen table, misses his shotgun, could be
an advertisement for Ray-ban sunglasses. The way his graying hair
reminds you of Kafka, that he leaves kayaks in your
living room to dry. The way he says good morning
and good night and aches for you. He half nelsons
you into his arms, you laugh, you laugh,

and tonight you lean your head against
the bathroom door and you know

he will never be a poet,
but he's got better things to say,
more love to generate
than Neruda ever did.

He will never be a poet,
but that is what you are here for. To let everyone know
his eyelids look like blades of grass when he sleeps,
his arms are branches, his roots
are you.

I think the only negative I have for this book — other than the British spelling of acknowledgments, which still drives me nuts — is that the margins are slightly wacky, with poems squeezed in to fit onto a single page, margins be damned. There are some stanzas that could have and probably should have gone on to the next page, even a couple of stanzas split up with just one line hanging on the next page where there was plenty of room to move the entire paragraph. I always seem to notice that dangling line like a sore thumb. I would much rather have liked seeing either a smaller font if the poems each needed to be on a single page, or the poems given a slight bit more breathing space with some consistent margins and maybe a necessary extra page or two added to the book to accommodate. Very small price to pay for handmade goodness, though. And you must buy this, margins be damned!

I want to leave you with a couple lines I particularly like and the final note to, really, just get this book. Verve Bath Press makes a beautiful product, and the words stand on their own, definitely. Some of the best, most honest and sincere work I have read so far this year. And now, a couple of my favorite lines:

From “Instead Of “I Love You””:

[ ... ]
Putting your shoes in the shoeboxes, pretending they
are new. Putting your hats in the hatboxes, your voice
in its voicebox. Pretending they are new.
[ ... ]

From “The Last Three Poems Left After The World Disappeared”:

[ ... ] But prayers
make no difference, says
the priest, when you send
them in the wrong direction.
[ ... ]

From “Small Tits” (and yes, I laughed right out loud):

Hello Small Tits. Thank you for not growing
beyond the size of trick candles. I put you in
these big padded bras, sigh,
strap you in for a ride. [ ... ]

From “Woman Considers Killing Love With A Hatchet”:

[ ... ] For men, love
means the soldiers have entered
your mother's house and you can
hear her scream. [ ... ]

Enough said. Buy the book. I believe there is now also a PDF version available.



•This book was purchased from the publisher because I have corresponded with her.•
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LETTER OF MARQUE: ARTICLE THE ELEVENTH

Vishnu: The Train Ride to You | Amanda Oaks

Poetry
8 pages
1 3/4” x 2”
Poems-For-All #709
24th Street Irregular Press
1008 24th St
Sacramento CA 95816 USA
Free, plus postage

This might be the cutest, tiniest chapbook ever, and I am absolutely in love. In love, I tell you. Weighing in at half the size of a business card, this tiny book contains one poem between the most precious little covers ever. Did I mention that I am in love?

The poem, itself, is sweet, a love poem to someone it seems the author has not seen in a while, loaded in metaphors and swinging and swaying like crying willows and gentle rains. The love is real, dealing with personal human moments that are important to Amanda, a talented craftswoman, writing personally, yet universally:

[ ... ] i

could never craft
without you [ ... ]

But the real gem here is the pocket size of this book, and moreover, the idea behind it. The back cover tells it all:

Poems-For-All, scattered around town, on buses, trains, restrooms, coffee shops, left along with the tip; stuffed in a stranger's back pocket. Whatever. Wherever.

That's right, the free little books are scattered all over for the pure joy of spreading poetry to a world that desperately needs it. How lovely. The only problem, of course, is that the books are just too cute to pass on. No stranger or bartender or bus rider is going to get mine. I'm keeping it. Sorry, world, get your own damn poetry.

•This book was sent to me by the author because I have corresponded with her.•
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