Beyond Baroque Books $8 681 Venice Blvd. Venice, CA 90291 Mr. Naficy, an Iranian expatriate, writes of the horrors of being torn from the ones you love: family, country even the terrain of that country. There is such a poignancy to his poetry, that at times, I had to stop reading and switch to something lighter. Perhaps I’m hypersensitive (many share this opinion), but I firmly believe that, and I’ve said it over and over, there’s nothing like the power of the written word. In this slim volume of poetry, 82 pages, the essence of what I consider to be a good poem: clean, crisp, strong images that do not rely on shock to communicate their importance or validity, all but jump off the page into the reader’s lap. Mr. Naficy’s work should be widely read. Beyond Baroque should be commended for publishing this fine poet. Support your local poetry small press publisher! RD
Kings Estate Press $? 870 Kings Estate Rd. St. Augustine, FL32086-5033 Once again, Gerry Locklin is at it, laying down the line, only this time the line is different, this time it’s personal (as the movie promoters say)! I’ve heard a number of people hemming and hawing about this collection, which details Mr. Locklin’s recovery from pulmonary embolism and the general deteriorism of health associated with a lifetime of teaching English to college students... (uhuh). The consensus is not favorable, but not because the poems are not vintage Locklin -- they are. No, the majority of opinion is unfavorable because these poems show a man as vulnerable as one can get... those hospital gowns make a fine metaphor, you know. Personally, I think this is as fine a collection of poems by Mr. Locklin as I have read in a long time. The style of his writing, it’s honesty and level-headedness, coupled with that underlying dread and wonder of the hospital experience, of having to let go of control to those around you (and some are less qualified than others, at least in the eyes of the patient), all this is captured very effectively by The Hospital Poems. Good job, Ger! RD
Angelflesh Press $? 217 Berry St. Apt H Santa Cruz, CA 95060 William Taylor Jr. is a talented young writer from Santa Cruz. Since he’s just getting started on the poetry road (three chapbooks), and, if you are a collector of the up and coming, I’d recommend getting a hold of all of Will’s chaps. After I read his second chap, The Sad Dumb Beauty of Everything, I was so completely bowled over by his style that I knew I had to include his work in my series, The Little Red Books. Will’s writing is that strong, at least to me. I highly recommend him to anyone interested in exploring new voices in poetry. Write to Angelflesh Press for copies of Will’s chaps. Send some money, he’s a poet and can use it. Watch for Will’s book on Lummox Press, Any Abyss Will Do, due this fall. RD
Art/Life Limited Editions $50 (per issue) POB 23020 Ventura, CA 93002 A couple of months ago, I did a poetry reading up in Ventura and I met Phil Taggert. He expressed an interest in the Lummox and then showed me some examples of his mag, Art/Life, which was on display at the venue. I liked the covers and some of the artwork, so when he suggested I send some poetry to him, I did. I’d pretty much forgotten about, when I received a copy in the mail. Man, was I surprised when I opened it up! Art/Life is a monthly magazine, well, it’s really more like monthly portfolio of original artwork (numbered 1 through 100), poetry and fiction/ non-fiction. It runs 100 copies per issue, 50+ pages per and has been coming out since 1981! The artwork ranges from Mail Art to collage to Computer Art and is pretty much all “modern”. The poetry runs the gamut from Concrete to Text/ Word Art to my style (broken line). Though it may not be as cutting edge as some of the NY mags, I’ve not seen anything else that combines the two arts together so well, especially without the peripheral egotism that goes along with most lit mags (the Lummox included). It’s as if Art/Life is saying: Here it is, you figure it out. It’s a worthy mag to submit your work to. For you collector’s out there, a subscription is a teensy $450 a year, out of the range of most of us, but if it’s not out of your range, I’m sure they’d welcome your subscription (Hell -- I’d welcome your subscription... but if you’re reading this, then you probably already are a subscriber). Check it out! RD
20 pages $5 Smiling Dog Press 9875 South Fritz/Maple City, MI. 49664 One of the biggest mysteries to many involved in the world of underground poetry is: why would a guy with the obvious intellect of Ron Androla spend his entire adult life working the blue-collar labor of a factory when he could obviously do something less menial? Perhaps it all boils down to the "us and them" factor, with us being the poets and literary machinators of the world and them being the materialistic establishment types who sit on fat asses in offices and dictate the meaningless and mundane. Androla doesn't choose the easy trip because to do so would require that he give up the lifeblood of his poetry, the vein to the heart of words connecting his struggles with the corporate Amerikan (his spelling) beast. The factory is an inherent part of Androla's soul and the wellspring for much of his verbal magic. Androla sings the song of the common man loud and often, if perhaps at times in a key that frightens the uninitiated. His words at times spin out tales of struggles to stay pure at heart and Zen-like cool amidst the noise of the world. Having regained a long lost love in recent times, his poetry sometimes celebrates life and love and and the good fortune of that out-of-the-blue reunion. And sometimes, his revelations of life in the factory and the character of his workplace mates--such as are found in this volume--come very near to conventional writing. In "High Production Drama" he takes us into the noise and stink of the factory where he introduces us to some of the characters that inhabit a third of his life. There's the squirrelly "Can Man," a two-tooth dude who salvages aluminum. And Judy, working painful overtime as she battles her way toward retirement and the dream of rest that may never come. And Boner and Sammy and Kevin and the dirty jokes, obscene humor, farts, homophobia, all the ploys men use to ease their struggle through the slow turn of the clock hands in places where hard labor is the rule. But the system does not always extract from the man what it wishes. Disgruntled after a meeting with management during which the fate of the factory is placed in the hands of the production workers, who are urged to be ever more productive, the old rebel gets his chance to gums the works, as in the passage below: I slowed down last night. "75 percent is not ACCEPTABLE!" Barry shouted. I ran about 65 percent. There are many steps involved in the 100-ton No. 1 & carelessness can easily snowball into disaster. I cannot work at break-neck speed any longer, it feels foolish. All the machinery is old & poorly maintained, & so many people get hurt. It's the Company's process, it's the Company's equipment, it's the Company's hateful game.
Yet one begins to understand just how Buddha cool Androla is when one realizes that his work life among the course and savage corrupts his deep sense of humanity not one iota. Indeed, it seems enhanced by all this madness if anything, as seen in the passage below: Today the whirl of Earth is not spinning, it descends, & the descent is a slowness near the bottom of human cosmology. Judy, my knee pain-medicated bad thyroid cigarette-cancered rotting kidney sweetheart, is working overtime, listening to Sinatra on an old cheap radio by her machine, she's probably humming & all her pain is soothed by the memory of sunlight thru her mother's kitchen window. It takes a man with a big heart to write a passage like that, because the concern shines brightly through the fiberglass dust. Androla loves this old broken down woman, purely and simply. He sees and accepts her for what she is--a human being who earns her piece of the pie without bitching and whining about it. I would be remiss if I didn't mention the fine production job here as well. This chap wasn't fired off a Xerox or even run offset, because publisher Dean Creighton takes his printing seriously. The book was run on a Heidelberg Windmill letterpress (having operated one of those cranky sons of bitches my hat is off to Creighton for getting through a 400 press run!), and the some of the graphics are carved linoleum block. Printed in an unusual 9 1/2" x 5" size and perfectbound, this is a neat little offering both for content and construction. JC
42 pages $5 Mt. Aukum Press PO Box 483/Mt. Aukum, CA. 95656 The first thing one observes upon reading this fine book of poetry is that Wilma McDaniel could have been a character straight from the pages of The Grapes of Wrath. Born in rural Oklahoma and gone west with that flood of Okies who sought to escape the Dust Bowl of the Depression Era, the young girl obviously picked up a whole lot of learning along the way. And most of it shines through in the 46 poems collected here. Now an octogenarian, Ms. McDaniel has lost none of her astute ability to see and record the human foibles that consume most of us, nor has her keen sense of humor waned. She writes with the eye and ear of one tuned to the level underlying the obvious and finds that core realm where real things are happening, there beneath the facade people present to the world. An "Old Cowboy Holding on" gets a jab from her humorous tongue in one poem by that name. After briefly detailing the woes of an old cowboy who got his foot caught in a rope and was lucky to have survived a dragging, McDaniel concludes: I know you don't like to hear it but you better figure more on checkers and dominoes and give your spurs to the Historical Society. Not all of McDaniel's poetry is so whimsical, however. In 'Wife of a Sodbuster,' she details the bloody spot on the earth left by a farmer's self-inflicted shotgun death and how his wife planted a rosebush in the spot. The poem ends: Her many sons in future years would plow around the bush with care sniff its fragrance and always wonder if the stain on the ground colored the roses red. Ms. McDaniel wastes few words, as the above examples illustrate. For all the folksy charm that bleeds from these pages, Ms. McDaniel possesses a level of literary sophistication that belies her rural roots and the poverty she escaped. Mt. Aukum publisher Ben Hiatt has done this little volume proud with his nice design and quality presentation. This is a book you can read over and over again without ever tiring of it, and you'll spot something new with each new reading. JC
40 pages $5 Mt. Aukum Press PO Box 483/Mt. Aukum, California 95656 This sterling five-story volume by Jim Valvis is an auspicious first book by one of the up and coming young writers working today. When you read a story like "Every Woman in the World" you know beyond doubt that Valvis is a threat to make it in the real sense. The late Ray Carver, one of Valvis' idols and one of the finest crafter of short fiction of this century, couldn't have handled the story much better. The first thing you notice when reading Valvis' stories is the open honesty; the man is painfully honest, almost embarrassingly so at times. His stories span a range of characters and situations, but they all have a common thread: characters in conflict with a world that is very frequently out of synch and order. From the harried gas station attendant in "Every Woman . . ." to the violent young protagonists in "Devil's Den," Valvis has a way of getting inside his characters' heads and exploring the dark nooks and crannies. His stories are infrequently happy ones, but then such is life, where true happiness seems more the exception than the rule. And so Valvis very often views the world through a glass darkly, but with profound insight and an uncanny ability to draw us into the lives of the characters he has wrought. And he has learned well the lesson that it is character and conflict--and not plot--that drive a short story to a powerful conclusion. Another common thread in Valvis' prose is poverty--of the financial sort certainly, and sometimes, of the spirit. The writer, by his own accounts, has struggled to survive in a world that gives short shrift to people who call themselves writers. Valvis knows that for the most part, writers are broke beings who are rich only in the language inside their heads and the dreams in their hearts. He has worked at menial tasks, the "poor man's jobs" as the lead character says in "The Moon Motel," one of the pieces here, and thus knows the lot of the downtrodden scraping by on a mere pittance. This solid opening paragraph sets the tenor for the story well: I was living in a blue room inside the Moon Hotel. I had come upon hard times. I worked a poor man's job and I lived a poor man's life. I ate whatever I could get my hands on. I rolled my own cigarettes using the cheapest and harshest tobacco I could find. I wore shoddy clothes and my shoes had holes. There was shit in my toilet that wouldn't flush. The landlady would run when she saw me coming, unless the rent was due, and then she would hunt me down. I hadn't had sex in two years. I went to work and I came home. I was twenty years old and time was running out on me. But, dispirited or not, his characters are seldom broken beyond redemption, no matter how much they have suffered. This character has the heart to spend his hard-earned money on repairing a fake gold necklace he found on a beach so that he can give it to a deranged girl at work with whom he's found some common ground--or so he thinks, until she rejects his kindness violently. And even then he is resigned to acceptance, acknowledging finally that the bracelet (ergo, the things we sometimes place too much value on) is obviously fake. Do yourself a favor and buy this book. You can look back on it someday and say, "I remember when" when the name James Valvis is staring out at you from a shelf in some big bookstore. JC
32 pages/$7 Athena Angel Productions PO Box 508, Calumet, MI. 49913 t. k. splake, the graybeard bardic ren dancer of Michigan's Upper Peninsula, is a virtual writing machine. splake has written more poems than all of us have fingers and toes combined, and his published chapbooks amount to near that volume, including several volumes of his outstanding photographs. As I once essayed, splake lives the poem as well as anyone I have ever known and that's not about to change. The Murderous Clown encompasses a smattering of splake's many constant focal points: the beauty of nature, the futility of small lives in backwater places, the inevitability of death, the need for love, and the compulsion to leave some permanent mark on the times through which we all blaze so rapidly. The identity of the "Clown" in the whole Circus of Life is pretty obvious, although the title is derived from a somewhat muddled Hank Marksbury poem included in the inside back cover. splake is frequently at odds with the "suits" in life, those who take the safe route and play the game for the scraps they're tossed. Among those are the academic snobs from whom he escaped when he abandoned a tenured college professorship for early retirement and the opportunity to throw himself into the sea of words full time. He reveals his disgust with such types in the opening stanza of "Negative Bardic Madness": Born toilet-trained, instant suit, tie, pocket/pencil holder adult, rote sweet lullabies of wall/street journal stats, figures. His contempt grows as he later proclaims that such souls are living without panache, destined to die forgotten,/dull shithead loser, failure in god's eyes, hoping/suicide by fire or acid poisons cleansing his rejected soul. On a lighter note, splake hearkens back to his Brautigan roots in "graybard fishing": bookies, rainbows growing plump, swimming/under tree shadows, backwoods beaver ponds/-/gray-grizzled swamper poet no longer tying/delicate royal coachmen, wispy nylon ends,/-/angling now with poems lovingly attached,/barbless lure floating on gentle stream tides. One of the finer poems in the volume is "Dancers," in which splake counter-points his persona with that of the legendary Albert Huffstickler. To wit, the first two stanzas: albert, nervous, noisy metro austin, walking blocks, passing intersection stoplights, daily writing poetry, ruta maya coffee house,
splake, bardic backwater upper peninsula exile, grabbing newspapers, incoming postings, mugga-mugga espresso,"friendly place" table, This is a fine book by one of the better writers working today, and I have just scraped the surface here. You can check out a partial list of splake titles here and contact him at his snail or at tsplake@hotmail.com for more information. JC
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