Up Rising: Rena Rosenwasser’s Elevators

I wanted to hold onto up, space of the

 

future, new building

 

You

 

               -  Rena Rosenwasser, Elevators

All manner of bodies can be seen as physical structures: our bodies are houses, our art is a cathedral, relationships are pieces of architecture buried under layers of miscommunication, missed opportunity and regret. Nowhere is this more clear than in Rena Rosenwasser’s newest collection of poetry, Elevators. In these poems, the narrator is a traveler, a lover, an artist, an archaeologist, expounding on and exploring the physical structures that we have built with our own hands. 

The collection is comprised of seven individual poems, often functioning within themselves as separate poems born of the same idea. The very first poem shows us what we might expect, what to look for. The main vehicle for the first poem is art, and the three-paneled painting invoked in the title “Triptych” shows us we will be investigating threes. (The most solid structure in nature is reported to be the triangle, and this triptych certainly harkens back to the pyramids of Egypt, a theme that recurs most often throughout the collection.) But now, the poet wants to draw our attention first and foremost to the structure of a relationship. Can the reader at first glance think of the narrator’s relationship as a solid one when so many words of loss are present?

 

Not to be undone. Not to be riddled with images. Or lost in compartments.

 

Two floors up or on the ground. Stucco cracks in the middle of night and

 

pieces fall. Sometimes I am sleeping when the falling happens. (Italics mine.)

 

 

 

Each negative word reinforces the idea that something is missing, that the structure in which we are exploring is filled with pitfalls and holes. Yet, ever familiar is the Lover: the one in the cast of characters upon which this entire poetic exploration is hinged. The poet makes clear that there are things we do not know:

 

The house has the appearance of two floors. At least two inhabitable

 

stories but if I extend myself I can see there is another floor below the

 

two we are situated on. Is there a key somewhere that has eluded me?

 

 

What we do not know could be the third person that has entered the relationship, though we do not know if the narrator is the one considering an infidelity, or if it is the Lover:

Two women ride on. They watch distant Umbrian hills fade away. A third

 

woman’s name is on a card that one of the two women has written. I read the name as the card slides back and forth along the narrow roads.

 

 

 

The relationship worries are only one way to read the structure of the narrative. Another commentary could be the ways in which the church and the obviously lesbian lifestyle in the collection are at odds with each other. That is perhaps a more feminist approach than is necessary since relationship concerns are obviously not limited to lesbian relationships. But this viewpoint illustrates one of the things I like the most about Elevators. There are a myriad of ways this work can be read and re-read. Like broken pottery unearthed from an archaeological dig, the pieces can be torn apart and restructured into many different shapes.

Perhaps the solid structure of “Triptych” makes the poems easier to comprehend at the outset. The structure is forty-seven stanzas of three lines each. Further on, the poems become harder to understand syntactically. Here, one must rely on certain keywords and phrases that put the poems in perspective.

“Gurgling in the Monster Depths” has as its most obvious trait, a solid, repetitive structure. The first part of the poem is a structure “riddled with holes” that sits upon a solid foundation of words. The dramatic differences between the sections are its strongest commentary. We are not given exact meaning through syntax in the top section of the units that make up this poem. We are given subject matter.  The very first complete statement of this poem, “WORDS TRANSGRESS”, shows us that we cannot count on the actual words to hold up their end of the bargain. They do not comply. They do not do as they are told. Here, the reader is presented with the subject matter of identity, of queerness, of masks presented to the world. (Here also will be our first glimpse into the death masks of the pyramids and the wrappings of mummies: subjects of which Rosenwasser seems to be quite fond.) The sentence structure of the first section of each poem is non-existent. We find subjects missing verbs, adjectives with nothing to modify. Yet, the intention is clear: where identity is concerned, our ideas of self and how that self relates to society are not always clearly defined. What are we to make of words that do not adhere to the places we have given them? What are we to make of words we cannot pigeonhole in order to feel more comfortable with them? But again, the poet gives us a solid foundation for such words. In the bottom section of each poem, we are given sentence structure to counter our feelings of misplacement. Whether or not we understand the actual meaning of a sentence, the fact that it has structure (that verbs follow nouns and that adjectives have objects to modify) makes us feel somewhat centered again. But the poem forces us to investigate our feelings of discomfort when we are confronted with language that defies our expectations.

And now, perhaps, is a chance for us to rest. The most incomprehensible poem in the collection is also the shortest. Yet, it is most clear in this poem that there are many things we do not know. There is an internal life in this poem that is hidden from us. The poem resides in the liminal space between sleeping and waking:

 

drift        sleep’s sheeted sounds        starched

 

perimeter

 

motion the bed round                         Father…

 

 

 

The poet drives us to sleep immediately, thus obtaining a license to speak less than coherently about this liminal dream space. We know that  “Father” is involved, but the ellipsis hides his emotional import from us.  The very existence of the poem is fragmented. As the title of the poem suggests, there is no narrative.  No clarity. No closure.  This poem also signals a shift in the arc of the collection. No longer will the poet make the ideas contained within easy for us to understand. The hand-holding is finished. The Traveler persona adapted by the narrator for the previous poems shifts now to the Archaeologist, signaling that the reader must now do the work.

What better place for us to truly begin than with “Real Mummies Wait Out the Hours?” Setting: Egypt. Lore: Egyptian mythology. The reader must begin by understanding the purpose of the gods the poet has chosen to punctuate the story. The significance of Shu, translated literally as “he who rises up”, is the personification of the title “Elevators.” The elevator’s primary job, as its name suggests, is to rise up, so Shu is the obvious choice as a vehicle for the poems that follow. Here, also, is the idea of collapse. If Meidum is a collapsed pyramid, the structure of the poem also mimics collapse. The stanzas appear to the eyes as inverted pyramids, the lines becoming smaller and smaller as they proceed down the page. The footnotes also direct us to the “breaking apart” of sections of the mummies in order to find the artist’s color mommia brown. (A reader may also spend time considering and re-reading the idea that mommia brown was used to make shadows on canvas and how the dead have long been considered shadows of their former selves. The poet’s preoccupation with mummies lends credence to this view.) The Archaeologist will visit Luxor, the necropolis and will read The Coffin Text. The reader, as Archaeologist, will consider the many allusions to death and the difference between the physical body (Ba) and the soul (Ka). The spacing inherent within the poems is reminiscent of an archaeological dig: pieces of pottery, the remains of a hearth, bones. It is our job as readers to piece together the meaning in these objects—if indeed there is any—based on what we know of the lore of the people whose artifacts we unearth.

“Structure Breaks” brings on a replay of the structure of the previous poem, “Gurgling in the Monster Depths.” In this poem, the bottom stanza has become larger (seemingly creating an engorged foundation) and the upper stanza has shrunk. Does this indicate that the reader should now be becoming more comfortable with the idea that language (and perhaps relationships) do not always behave in the ways we expect? Have we grown more comfortable with transgression?

The book’s title indicates that we should find a certain kind of closure in the final poem. What does the elevator have to do with the book’s overall vision? What, if anything, are we supposed to glean? In this way, the final poem is perhaps the most daunting for the reader. If one is expecting a swift, final act of closure, one will not be granted. This act of defiance could be the aim of all language poetry: to resist the “natural” inclination towards closure. The human eye depends on closure: a filling in of missing information based on patterns. While Elevators is full of patterns, it does not deliver the succinct ending a more traditional reader may be expecting. The setting of this final poem is obviously New York; but it is the poet’s New York. Buildings rise without actual structure. Whereas the poems make the structural objects feel tall, there is distinctly little detail about them:

Skyscraper

 

fire-resistant steel

 

How I spent the afternoon

 

turning Eiffel’s bridge vertical           Possible  plumb-

 

 

 

referent-

 

line

 

 

We are given no walls, no foundations. Our reading of this final poem is fragmented. Does it give us the idea of how little we actually know about the United States’ most iconic city? Does it impart us with some understanding of how structurally unsound is our knowledge of the world? Only the reader can decide this for herself. But through this decision-making process, she becomes a character inside the unfolding drama. She is New York. But something else also happens: we see the pull of the elevator. If we look closely, we understand that the purpose of the elevator is to test our view of the world in which we exist. Stepping into the elevator takes faith. It also requires a certain amount of optimism. There is a joy in leaping to the top floor of our existence, of embarking into the unknown. Essentially, the poet gives us a choice. Stay on the ground floor, with all of its seeming certainty, or brave the elevator, allowing ourselves to be lifted out of the mundane, the accepted, the normal. The poet gives us her choice, even though she allows us to decide for ourselves:

When we roam our own     Nouveau

 

 

 

 

 

York

 

join me

 

 

 

let the platforms rise

 

 

 

Rena Rosenwasser
Elevators

Kelsey Street Press
ISBN: 978-0932716750
Pages: 72

“Handing The Cask”, poetry by John Swain, published by erbacce press, UK. Reviewed for Full Of Crow by Lynn Alexander.

I keep saying that John Swain is a poet to watch, and I have published as much of his poetry as I could get my hands on including “Burnt Palmistry” and “The Feathered Masks” as well as including two of his poems when I guest edited the September 2011 issue of Graffiti Kolkata Broadside. His work has been nominated for awards and prizes and has appeared in Red Fez, part of our small press family.

The late Nobius Black of Calliope Nerve stated that John Swain “paints the world in words.” Sandy Benitez of Flutter Press said that “he has only begun to enchant us.” And I couldn’t agree more.

John Swain is a humble, reluctant artist who seems to shy away from the trappings of ambition and persona and somehow remains above all of that. It is this tendency that is part of his charm because it is refreshing, his work speaks for itself, and it reaches you without imposing. You want to let it in. In my opinion, some arrogance would be well deserved- but you won’t find it. When I first started reading his work, I couldn’t help but wonder: where the hell has this guy been? But every poet has their time, and here’s hoping that we continue to hear more from him. 

His latest collection from UK-based erbacce press, Handing The Cask, is an assemblage of poems, many have appeared online but you will still want to get the book because you will likely revisit them, as I do. Swain’s vibe is introspective, thoughtful, romantic, surreal, an exertion of unique descriptions and oddly coupled terms that together bridge the physical world with the ethereal:

Rain became another queen of the peak,

she tore at her breast to strengthen the young.

(Binding of Branches)

Twilight grants relief to the person I am seldom

like dogs emerge from burrows to scavenge

the elusive paths illuminated by absence,

I held a weathered limb to stable my ranging.

(The Offered Garments)

The frozen river kept the skeletons of horses

in a pyramid diamond

I knelt in my wound like the drowned rider

(Over the Broken Room)

Nature, rendered in her primal environment, beautiful and cruel, qualities found in the writings of one of my favorites, Annie Dillard. Swain is less apart from the physical world as he floats peripherally in transcendent verse, as he is rooted in the firmament of the landscape as it truly is, acknowledged and honored:

I turn the loose earth

searching the murmurs for presence.

(Epitaph Seven Years Past)

Nature is not apart, but of this realm, creatures the constituents and mesh of her dominion:  

The crows rejoice in their roost at the calm darkening. (Invocation on the Gravel)

Scattering of Migrations

At scattering of migrations

these blue movements flood

as every bird becomes the sky,

as every fish becomes a wave.

We rain

lit into the unceasing horizon

where sunset halves the world

in silhouette of man and woman.

The transient nature of physicality, and shared consciousness of mortality:

I was glad

my reflection vanished

(Queen Anne’s Lace)

Inheritance

I fear for the unborn

and fear for the wild,

all that passed between us

will drift away.

And as glass beads fall

from around your neck, 

this fear is the extent

of our natural inheritance.

Handing the Cask is available now from erbacce, information here. 

Josh Olsen’s new fiction collection “Six Months” is available now from Tainted Coffee Press.(info). Reviewed for Full Of Crow by Lynn Alexander.

I met Josh Olsen recently in Toledo where we read together at the Zygote In My Fez poetry festival at the Collingwood Arts Center. I was already impressed, having read some of his fiction online, and I was looking forward to hearing him read from “Six Months” which is his new collection of fiction published by Brian Fugett at Tainted Coffee Press. Josh Olsen was not only funny, but somehow also struck that balance of sentimental and… twisted. I realized that this was exactly what I liked about his stories- tender moments with his children ending in a punch to the testicles- stories that are honest and heartfelt, but remind us that he is still a pretty sick bastard. Don’t be fooled by the carseat.

I don’t want to say that this book conveys a specific “male point of view”, but it definitely explores masculinity and what it means to “be a man” against the yardstick of other men, both real and approximated: the estranged father, stepfather, the previous owner of his home who shoveled the snow on the driveway into his nineties. The narrator feels a twinge of shame. Had the neighbor, in mentioning this, seen his wife out there shoveling the other day? Was this a revelation, or an indictment?

Olsen begins to ease into his exploration of shame, and gender and societal expectations for an evolving “man of the house’.  He is charged now with home improvements, ripping up rugs, pleasing his wife, providing for the kids, feeling the pinch of finances.  He has “an office” now, which is significant, and translates into “real job”. He has a home, family, and with that comes the pressure and the questioning about “suitable environments”. Should he be proud or horrified when his daughter sings PJ Harvey lyrics? Is it time to watch his actions more carefully? But he isn’t sure that he wants to embrace that guy.

He is a modern man, my generation, and like many of us who wrestle with these things- he doesn’t want to censor the household or push gender expectations onto his wife or even himself. Despite his baggage, he is a man who knows better. And yet… he is nagged by shame and ambivalence. He tries to cut onions for his wife to help out, and fails. His mind wanders to comic books and Garbage Pail Kids, things stored in boxes that he wants to share with them. He wants to share who he is, honestly. But can he?

There is an imagined impotence, and he finds himself conflicted by contradictions. He pees sitting down, yet he tells his son that wiping himself is “what girls do.” He tries to do right by all, carting kids to parks and birthday parties- but feels guilty because he craves alone time. He appreciates his independent wife, in contrast to the mother who appears painted in make-up, in “man-pleaser” costume, reeking of perfume. He rejects the idea of desperation.

In these subtle, casual scenarios, he is prone to assessing his masculinity and succumbs to a level of floating performance anxiety.

Many readers will relate to his ambivalence about “normalcy”, and grappling with the rules of parenthood. What should the kids be exposed to? What do the day to day interactions of a normal family look like? We are confronted by expectations about how we are “supposed” to act when we settle down. For some of us, this part is very difficult because we don’t want to accept that version for our children. On the other hand, we don’t  want them screaming profanity in school. Right? And yet there is humor to be found in their innocent rebellion in a world that will suppress them, soon enough.

He fantasizes, and escapes, the mind so often wrestling with the desires of the body, in ways that cannot be allowed to surface, made manifest. We have “inappropriate thoughts”. How much truth can a man admit to? He considers that underneath, we are animals, mitigating our features.

He wonders about the neighbor, hugging his daughter in her bikini. Does he ever feel like grabbing her? When two women pray instead of making out, he is disappointed.

He wants to feel that this culture is open, permitting, that his “deviant” inclinations might be shared by the neighbors. He craves some subversion in his suburb. He knowingly masturbates in front of an open window, in full view of the neighbors with their little dogs. Why?

This character, throughout these vignette snippets of daily life, is examining himself, taking as much as he can into consideration. In the end, however, we are not put off by his admissions. We see that a man can be childish, and permissive with reservations. We are reminded by his candor that thoughts are just that- thoughts, that need to be explored honestly.

HIJINX FOR A SAD AND DECLINING EMPIRE

2011, Numina Press, 190 pp.

Ostensibly a madcap political caper with two narrators, James Warner’s debut novel “All Her Father’s Guns” is in fact the story of two men who are desperately seeking to redefine the meaning of their lives in a world that is becoming more and more dominated by the females in their lives.

The two characters at first glance could not be more different:  Reid Seyton, a British expat academic about to lose his job in a bottom feeding academic program (“The Department of Theory”) at the University of California, and his father-in-law Cal Lyte, a Libertarian venture capitalist who has more skeletons in his closet than a Halloween supply store.

It’s not really much of a spoiler on my part to reveal that all of Cal’s narration is in fact channeled by Reid, who over the course of the novel has found himself slowly becoming his father-in-law.  Warner sells the transformation of Reid into his father-in-law so seamlessly the reader can easily buy into the authenticity of “Reid’s narrative.

“I feel Cal’s presence closer at hand.  He’s wherever crazy American’s go

when they die. So even though I had to write the even-numbered chapters of

this book for him, I don’t feel that I’ve taken too many liberties.  Cal sees

through my eyes sometimes, and his voice takes up residence in me. Exor-

cism’s dangerous, because of the extreme act of identification required…did

I exorcise Cal, in the end, by channeling his story, or has he possessed me?”

-          Reid Seyton, in “All Her Father’s Guns” Epilogue

-           

Reid hasn’t fully become his father-in-law, neither as a fanatical born again Christian or as a pro-life advocate.  But the answer to Reid’s question somehow lies in the genuine bond of loss that exists between Cal and Reid which to reveal here WOULD be a spoiler. If anything, this revelation towards the end of the story encouraged me to go back and re-read many of the even numbered chapters (the odd numbered chapters are all from Reid’s point of view) to get a better grasp of the character arcs.

This isn’t something a reader would normally do with a book that is, at its heart, a satire of California culture in the early part of the 21 century’s first decade. It might seem a bit niche at first, but Warner has a gift for communicating the dysfunction of the crumbling American empire through the prism that is the nation’s “wild West” ethos.

It is Cal’s motivations which drive so much of the novel’s plot, using his resources from ill gotten venture schemes and a questionable network of gun enthusiasts in the god-forsaken reaches of the Nevada desert who combine fundamentalist religious fervor into their life model to try and destroy his ex-wife Tabytha’s Congressional campaign.  But something about his past marriage and family life haunts him, the same way Reid’s loss of his father in childhood haunts him.  But even in these somber, serious life moments, Warner finds laugh out loud moments in the spaces:

“My grandfather, fetched from the sanatorium for the reception tried to

cadge cigarettes from everyone.  Listening to the vicar drone on, I asked

myself who’s going to finish the story?

“Viorela Kescu told me once that we all live in the shadow of collapsed

meta-narratives and I knew at once what she meant.  I’d never know how

the Fox King found the Golden Key…I’d never know my father well enough to

complete his story.”  -  Reid discussing his father’s funeral.

The story referenced above by Reid, the Fox King’s search for the Golden Key parallels his and Cal’s own search for their truth.  And while many a man with a mid-life crisis knows this analogy all too well, the right…or the entitlement men have always reserved for themselves in this quest has become obstructed by the females whom they have come to depend on for emotional and (often) financial support, while frequently taking them for granted, even those more peripheral to the story like Department of Theory rock star Cindy Wong:

Moments later I ran into Cindy Wong who was leaving the airport

Bookstore, wearing a T-shirt promoting the Black Spider Weretiger Dragon

Association.

“They sound like people not to mess with,” I said.  “Whoever they are.”

“Reid! What are you babbling about as usual?”

“Just reading your T-shirt, sorry.”

“You can read my T-shirt as much as you want, Reid,” Cindy said. She’d

dyed her hair crimson, which always looks sexy on Asian women.  “Hey,” she

said, “that color really suits you.”

“Beige. Is that even a compliment?” One of her uncanny abilities was to

go through the motions of flirting with me without permitting me the slightest

illusion that I was remotely in her league. She was wearing leopard print jeans,

and I wondered if there was some evolutionary reason why predator-skin patterns

are sexy. Do men deduce that women so attired can flay large feral cats and will

therefore be good at protecting putative offspring?

Enter Lyllyan, Tabytha and Viorela Kescu, Cal’s Lacanian therapist who also doubles as his lover.  Warner draws them all in the same loving caricatures he renders the men of this story in, so they add consistency and believability to plot turns that otherwise might seem outlandish: Viorela becoming pregnant with Cal’s child; Lyllyan being into Bob Marley; Tabytha taking her daughter to get an abortion…and come to think of it, Tabytha functioning through anything given her predilection for self-induced disorientation.

Warner’s portrait excoriates the circus that has become electoral democracy in the United States, and the political models that an unchecked two-party system has given rise to, and much like a twenty first century Joseph Heller, he demonstrates that the only logical response to this state of affairs is an equally unchecked absurdism, since these types of politics tend to be a reflection of the same mind sets that views wars of occupation as sustainable.  The nation’s right wing has become more relentless and exploitative than ever.  The left-wing has become more hopeless and distracted than ever.  And all the while, the pursuit of ringing or silent cash registers creates the background soundtrack for the never ending wars of influence.

The author beautifully captures a slice of one of the modern world’s continually shrinking eras of cultural discord, in this case, the period from the late 20th century tech-boom to the rise of the neo-cons just before the great recession of the 21^st Century, a period that also encompasses the arrival and evolution of the post 9/11 world.  It may at times seem like a very paranoid and publically anxious time, but the speed at which Warner’s novel unfolds, while touching on the very familiar theme of needing to understand, and thus evolve our families in their wholeness, broke or otherwise, gets the reader to feeling that even these desperate times are in fact, merely passing.

“We were here and we were really here. It kept us breathing.” (7)

It strikes me that they gather beneath the full sun, seeming to celebrate time’s passage rather than indulging in lamentation.

“...always to glorious burning.” (7) This is in contrast to the typical themes of the so-called human condition, creatures tethered to dread, in constant fear of our own mortality and with an often painful awareness of our insignificance. Living with the spectre brings a certain pressure to bear, beings set out to live in ways that maximize perceived “significance”: progeny, legacy, endurance of the corporeal made manifest through enduring actions and accomplishments. How to make one’s mark? How to distinguish one’s small life from an expansive tribe, exponential, a pool that consists of others with the same preoccupations, both present and ancestral? We compete with history. We want to BE something in our own right. We want to be enduring, somehow, different perhaps in the way that Muntz makes a distinction between a story and a legend. We want to be more than a story, we want to be embellished and etched into permanence, to linger.

But what is permanent, what is transient? What is real? Philosophers consider the “brain in the vat”, stimulated by electrodes, an artificial sensorium, a manufactured reality. What’s the difference, as far as that brain is concerned? What does it mean to be present, corporeal? As there is the myth of endurance, there is also the myth of objective reality. Do we know what exists, and where?

“To be, one violates nonexistence, becoming solid. I’m not sure what that means but by necessity it affects me, whole pressurized oceans of the invisible.” (87)

Kyle Muntz, I think, wants us to consider this because this novel presents the reader with beings and anti-beings, physically present and those that are ghost-like, who neither occupy space nor make claims on physical experience in the “traditional” sense- that is, they do not experience being alive as those that hunger, breathe, sleep. What does it mean to be alive, really? The fulfillment of criteria, the connection between a mind, body, environment- how do we know what is real? Muntz ignores known science. He ignores our laws. He creates from a place of wild indulgence that I envy.

There is a physical liberation at play in these pages, but also one of a more existential sort, beings that have somehow transcended physicality in a linear, narrow sense and who are somehow experiencing something that resembles being alive but on another plane. These realms will be a challenge to the rigid reader, a delight to the type that can kick back and let their minds just go with it all, immersed in what Muntz has accomplished. This book is beautiful, and strange.

I don’t want to review it, I want to honor it.

But getting back to physicality and mortality, it is difficult to wrap one’s head around “liberated” beings, beings that have cast this pressure, this drive aside. Who are these people that gather at the highest point in the valley, to welcome the burning of their moments, the passing of their own lives, their footsteps-eager- toward oblivion?

We know that these characters are strange, alien, they do not see things the way we do. It is said that the mind can only dwell on tragedy for so long, and then it shuts off- lest we go mad. Some cannot seem to shut it off and do seem to go a bit mad. How were these people able to get to a place of freedom?

We need to learn about them, and do so in the context of the environment Muntz has created. His is not only a work of experimental fiction but of experimental sociology.

“Memory binds them to smallness”

This society has been rendered over time, a freedom has evolved, but they are still connected to the past and to a time when “smallness” perhaps drove them, as it drives us. What drives them now?

Are they a society at peace with the transient nature of existence?

“He had no answer, ‘all things are transient’.(97)

“All that exists diffuses, all that is created comes, in some way, from that which exists already.” (97)

“…all existence is just a story that hasn’t ended yet; or without beginning.” (67)

The reader will notice that it becomes very difficult to ascertain WHAT kind of society we are dealing with. Consider the market with various stalls, five, two selling more than one item and one not selling anything. Consider the theme of followers, who may or may not have been present, they don’t remember. Are these people, have they passed through a gate or are they waiting? The village centers around children, ‘disgustingly naive’, is that because of legacy? Who maintains a legend perpetuates permanence to some extent. The teller must not only live, but keep living lest the legend also be buried.

What kind of society, what kind of world? What is their gravity, their sense of solid, what burns, what moves? Things resemble other things, or else they resemble themselves but look nothing like what is familiar. What is familiar becomes foreign, perception intermittent, things are at once known and strange, accepted and suspect. Even spaces shift their shapes.

“Life had new singular patterns. Waking, she rose into that same alien landscape, except it was just her alien room, distant and unreachable. A honeycomb fallout, tessellation in rhomboid chambers.” (71)

“I left no marks in it, soon I came to a place that wasn’t a place.” (85)

“For a long time Gidian became a sphere curling in on itself.” (121)

The river, or rather, the behavior of a river, seems to embody the idea of moving energy and takes on something galactic- the osmosis like the diffusion of particles, the linear path, speed- perceptible like time but regulated by arbitrary measurements and anthrocentric law. Jacob dreams of the river, the shaking of the world and the stones unanimously gray.

“An edge formed, and fathoms, and thunder, and he ran through a deep scarred field, through the rim of giants rising- and stood at the edge of a plateau jutting past the edge of the world, onto an endless torrential waterfall, where distance had no boundaries, and oceans fell into ransacked eternity, bypassing galaxies and cosmic formation… an emptiness entirely without sound, shape, or feeling.” (130)

Why is there something instead of nothing? Humans have asked this for as far back as they could ask things. Is this the nothing, the ultimate reduction of all, that he has attempted to construct here? A river has a beginning, it can be traced, and we assume the path to be linear and with characteristics that we can discern and follow. But is life really this way, something that goes back to a square one? And what would it look like?

“It is impossible to know the valley without having been there.” (198)

“Most trails end at the wasteland. Very few take them, but in a sense there is only one trail, all connected by filament and web. Some say it is possible to travel them all without ever overlapping, but this statement remains unproven.” (199)

I can’t say for sure what directions you will be moved toward by the work of Kyle Muntz, I can only describe where he takes me and somehow I end up in outer space, my imagination grasping at the vastness, wondering about physicality and particles, things that flow whether in water or solar winds, being here and having never been, and something in his writing opens up a chasm between my body and my mind. “Sunshine In The Valley” is indeed trippy, and unlike anything I have seen in quite some time. If he has a formula, you won’t find it.

I don’t usually mention personal details about an author, but Kyle Muntz happens to be young and bright and he should know that behind his back, many of us are stunned by what he has already accomplished and are excited because he is starting his writing career with work that already bears the sophisticated complexity that so many writers want but can only approximate. I don’t think one can develop into a writer like Kyle Muntz, I think there is something to his thinking that is a manifestation of his unique way of seeing, and he has been able to align perception and imagination and translate it through metaphors. Despite his obvious language skills, I get the sense that he has a strong visual side because I can so easily envision a visual adaptation, can see sparse dialogue with images rooted in his descriptions. I would not be surprised at all to see him exploring media and growing in his creative work toward the use of  audio,visual art, photography, animation, and their various modern combinations.

Kyle Muntz is also the author of “Voices” from Enigmatic Ink, and the forthcoming “VII”, also from Enigmatic Ink. “Sunshine In The Valley” was published in 2011 by Civil Coping Mechanisms.

Lynn Alexander can be reached at lynnalx@gmail.com. (website)

Read the last review of Wolfe’s work here: Review of Jennifer C. Wolfe’s “Healing, Optimism, and Polarization”, BlazeVOX Books.

Once again Jennifer C. Wolfe takes aim at American politics in her newest collection of poetry, forthcoming from Buffalo’s BlazeVOX books. In them, Wolfe goes beyond the current political climate to explore the role of the media and pundit-ainers who “report” with seemingly unprecedented partisan bias, and do so shamelessly. She is critical, and she doesn’t pretend otherwise. She is a political poet and she goes with it, her point of view obvious, and in my opinion the targets are pretty deserving of her scorn. As Wolfe argues, though, it isn’t so much about specific people as much as it has come to be about a certain mindset. And while few of us take a naive view of harmonious co-existence, the nastiness often catches us off guard and we find ourselves wondering if we are watching an episode of “Punkd”.

Are they for real? But the sad thing is, as we read these poems, we are reminded that they are. We are reminded of some of the most egregious and ridiculous examples of politicians and their antics, reliving our ‘head shaking moments’. This is Wolfe’s diorama: an assemblage of some of the ugliest vitriole that the political arena has to offer. Wolfe will remind you of bridges to nowhere, elementary school style hand scribblers, crosshairs as “humor”, the golden 2012 ticket, memoir fiction, selective amnesia, and more. She covers a lot of ground, and if you share her disgust, much will resonate. Unlike many political poets, Wolfe doesn’t throw blame in one direction. She includes our culpability as well, as citizens often asleep at the switch. So many of us buy into these “talking points” and the facts- as can be discerned, anyway- are relegated to the back burners. We eat what we are fed and we don’t care if it is good for us, we care that it appeals to our lower selves, the selves that emerge when we watch Jerry Springer, something in our nature. It is some strange fascination with conflict, with discord, with drama, with one-upping, with smirks.  It doesn’t have to be true. We can suspend our ability to discern reality, like the days of Wrestlemania, when people everywhere thought Hulk Hogan was real even when we saw the smoke and mirrors. We know better, and yet we want something that distracts us perhaps from the truth. The truth isn’t fun.

It doesn’t even have to make sense. It only needs to be repeated, the gimmick steadfast, and whenever possible the reality and difficulties facing so many Americans today can be obscured, as long as the formula is followed, including boasting about tax cuts despite record spending, national security, and who remains more true to the supposed intentions of the “founding fathers”. (The actual writings of said founding fathers are irrelevant, and the idea of our nation being founded in part so people would not have the myopic intolerance of a state sanctioned theocracy seems also to elude them, strangely enough…) Wolfe explores these issues, and more, in her direct style.

She starts with Fox News’ Greta Van Susteren, one example in a pool of many that could have been described with similar terms. She quickly moves on to the catalog, laying down layers of squawker indictments. The key concern of Wolfe’s, as in her previous poetry collection from BlazeVOX,  is the polarization, the agenda of divisiveness that one would think to be at odds with the right’s purported “patriotic unity”. What they mean, we clearly see with the likes of Fox and co. and talk radio, is that this unity is based on an agenda of conformity to a pretty specific platform, discourse be damned. To be patriotic is to tow the line, and often to lie and agree to be lied to. It is to be a perpetual revisionist, to love the sound of your own voice more than the sound of your neighbors with genuine and valid concerns, to lose sight of accountability beyond the rabid assignment of blame to those they see as the opposition.

And that is one of the problems, as it matters little what politicians actually do. They will be blamed and credited along party lines, irrespective of history and chronology. We see history being rewritten as we are living it. Perpetuating it is a profession. They are part of “journalism”, pundits, they are “expert commentators”.

Wolfe seeks out this dynamic, shining the light. She does so by looking both at the actors and issues themselves, and how partisan politics often plays out in the media coverage of issues and current events. She doesn’t shy away from the influence of race, class, and gender and she brings an awareness of the role of corruption and special interests, such as through lobbyists and the career power seekers.

The poems give us a “who’s who” in contemporary politics, from Jan Brewer to Michele Bachmann to Tony Hayward. She identifies the key players, like Palin, and speculates about their persistence. (sometimes, their baffling persistence)

As I stated when I wrote about Wolfe’s previous poems, it is difficult to be a political poet and there is debate among poets about its place, some argue that it is our duty to comment and criticize. Some argue that politics have no place in a poem, and that there is no obligation to go there, or that the poem should never be burdened by an “agenda”.

I always say, and will say again here, that there is room for diversity and for poets of all stripes and persuasions, with or without a message, with or without a sense of obligation to delve into politics or social commentary. That Wolfe has decided to put her views out there is something to respect in my opinion, in an age where people worry about perception and often try to play it safe. Her poems are clear, straight, accessible, and reflect many of the news interests of regular people, from disasters to profiteering, the stuff of conversations.

Look for this soon over at BlazeVOX : here.

“Jazzbo Wind”, by Michael Layne Heath, published by Kendra Steiner Editions, reviewed by Paul Corman-Roberts for Full Of Crow.

Michael Layne Heath’s poetry is about nothing if not music.  An original Washington DC punk rocker expatriated to San Francisco, Heath has found himself a nice little home with Kendra Steiner Editions, a poetry press that has now also become, surprise, surprise, a music label as well.  KSE publisher Bill Shute has had a long standing commitment to independent rock and roll and literature, and he’s got the writers to back up the commitment from the literary side of the enterprise with other rock  writers like A.J. Kaufman and Doug Draime.

Heath however, may be the most “Rock & Roll” of poets in the KSE house.  While the long periods of his life living hard and broke in pursuit of the glory of the literary and rock music lifestyles have been well documented in previous titles, his third and most recent title for KSE, “Jazzbo Wind” represents another significant step forward in his commitment to deeper poetry. Gone are the exploits of the fire breathing exploits of the street hustler (though they do get a nod in his poem “Golden Gate Park, 1992.”) Instead, Heath opens the collection with a surprising quatrain which even rhymes on the B lines (& how often do we see that anymore?) romantically titled “The Last Testament of Charlie Nothing,” quite literally a smart and satisfying pop song from a traditional rock writer.

But in between the bookend poems (the title poem concludes the chap) Heath digs deeper:

Look out honey
They’re misusing technology
Too busy looking in their hands
To make nary an apology

Consider this then
My clawing out of the corner
I was forced into by your mediocracy

Consider this then
Your final notice
Your welcome mat heartily shredded
Your contact unwelcome
And overtures better off recycled
Like the a capracio scores of historical discord

For I altogether prefer
Sure shot poems from
Occasionally damaged but
Invaluable players

From “Out Lemons Out”

The most refreshing thing about Heath’s poetry is that it’s not afraid to be poetry, that is, it’s not too cool to be poetry…which is actually the essence of real cool.  Heath praises other poets in the Bay Area; he touchstones on musical influences and genres, and yes, as pointed out previously, he rhymes.  It’s poetry that is comfortable with itself as poetry, and this conceit forms a kind of freedom for the writer of such poetry, and Heath makes the most of it to tell his truth, which is easy to see as real and genuine.

An exchange of angry words, empty wine bottles
Rolling across scarce cubic feet of
Worn carpet, exposed varnish wood.

An emaciated frame, once termed consumptive
Franklin topiary skull, stunned afternoon drunkard
Sitting emotional yet mute amidst his archives.

In the car going home,
A new Rolling Stones song on the radio,
Resolved to burn creative writing notebooks,
Avoid corpuscular imperative;
Pick up a guitar, a microphone.
Take a safer, healthier path.
(It didn’t last)

From The Bloodline of Words

In other words, Michael Layne Heath will always have roots as Rock & Roll poet, but his poetry has long since transcended that simplistic label.

Visit Kendra Steiner Editions here.

The following is from Bill Shute, for KSE, about “Jazzbo Wind” and Michael Layne Heath:

KSE is proud to announce the publication of the sixth poetry chapbook (his fourth for KSE) by San Francisco’s MICHAEL LAYNE HEATH, “JAZZBO WIND” (KSE #185). Mr. Heath was one of the founding-fathers of punk-rock writing with his seminal VINTAGE VIOLENCE ‘zine, covering the under-rated Washington DC area scene in the late 70′s, and then moving into the early 80′s he was a fixture at other ‘zines of the day such as CAPITOL CRISIS and TRULY NEEDY. He’s been one of my favorite writers for 30+ years, and he was one of the first authors I approached to join the KSE family.

Michael moved to San Francisco in 1992 and began taking his work to new levels as he moved into poetry, a perfect fit as his writing always had the specificity and detail and metaphor needed for verse. With the  musicality one would expect, a timelessly hip voice, a mastery of reference and allusion, and a gritty streetwise presence—along with a cynical wit and a unique ability to capture the delicious pain of longing and physical desire in a way that is neither cloying nor cliche-ridden—Michael’s poetry is a breath of fresh air in today’s phony poetry world of post-Bukowski losers and posers and pretentious academic pasticheurs.

Like Corso or Patti Smith, Heath often writes from a poet-finding-his/her-way-in-a-barren-world persona, on the hungry streets and in the seedy transient hotels of San Francisco, seeking transcendence through a cheap thrill, looking to score, looking to connect with a fellow member of the diaspora, his head full of ornate Nino Rota film soundtracks and trippy Jamaican dub, his stomach empty, his heart overflowing, paying for drinks with pocket change, selling his Kerouac books and Prince Far I albums to pay the overdue rent, wondering if that lanky, ponytailed, sandy-haired, jean-jacketed guy from the midwest at the other end of the bar notices him, and wondering how he can get busfare home…if indeed he goes home tonight.

Michael Layne Heath creates/evokes a rich sensory world in his poetry, and we readers share in the poet’s insights, fears, and small pleasures. He’s intimate without being confessional, and he always leaves a lot unsaid, so his work cries out for multiple readings and also begs to be read aloud and savored. JAZZBO WIND may be only an 8-page chapbook, but it’s got far more content and far more depth than most 300-page books. Mr. Heath is, to me, one of the ten most essential poets writing in America today…no surprise that one of his earlier KSE chapbooks was listed as one of the ten best reads of the year (2007) in Arthur Magazine. This is a hand-assembled, hand-numbered edition of 67 copies, available for $5 postpaid ANYWHERE.

“This Reality Of Man”, poetry by Michael Aaron Casares, published by Lizard’s Tale press, 2010. Reviewed by Lynn Alexander for Full of Crow.

Michael Aaron Casares takes a candid look at humanity, as an observer at times, at other times a participant. He asks us how we spend our time, what we are entitled to, what it means to live with authenticity, to be a “citizen” with responsibilities, to touch down inside our own lives in the context of the “mad swirl”. We live in a vast unknowable, without any sense of how these pieces fit together.

He doesn’t make the case that they do fit together, context being relative. He acknowledges that even he is at times scribe, at times “scribbler”.

They aren’t all related thematically, as poems that have been gathered together from various publications where they first appeared. It does create a cohesive sampling of his poetry, however, as a collection. Some of the poems are at times only peripherally political, at times they are overtly so. (Taxed Wages, Bastard Practices, Corporation And State-Kill The Bank, etc.)

Casares takes a curious view of our icons, from Jefferson to Darwin to Freud, and the intellectual act of trying to make sense of things. Should we trust them, and their conclusions? Our history books are full of lies, “history books like fiction” , and we are convinced of ideas that are biased in favor of the powerful,  that perpetuate the status quo, consumption, competition…war…the convoluted messages of individualism, and “survival”, what that entails, what the goals are.

“breaking our backs to preserve a lifestyle”.

“believing our foundations steady”.

In his poems, Casares is often concerned with the regular person, the citizen victim, the powerless, and the relationship with the State and the Corporatocracy. He takes aim at the banks, at international monetary policy, at the war economy. But they aren’t all political, they are also about the self in search of meaning, purpose, connection. The role of the poet, the recorder, the celebration of regular people, and regular things.

Stand outs:

“Obtusely Abstract”

…no slinging slang to

correlate the vernacular with the layman

“Iconoclassic”

We will discover the tempered beauty of history on this fictional bus ride,

this mind-myth produced

“Integer”

Pulsars sweeping through the sky,
I become the sun of distant system
far away wanting nothing more than to warm
your life. Visible hadrons in the sky, naked
to the distant eye cannot see what hopes
and dreams are locked inside my heart. Expand,
I breathe deep with cosmic lungs the dust of stars,
inhale the swarm, fragmentary like eclipsing
planets of the sun. Light is fractured into shards
and melt into thin clouds, glowing, emanate
celestial swans with twinkling eyes and dazzling tongues.
Whisper far sweeps swift into this space, gregarious
place of mild chatter hearth with heart deep warmth
inside, pulsing, beaming, still alive.
“Resolution”

Eyes are missing, because they choked
on these they drowned. The
celestial wind breathes softly
longing for my brothers.

Michael Aaron Casares is based in Austin, Texas, where he runs and independent press called Virgogray and an online poetry blog called Carcinogenic Poetry. The cover art is his work as well.