| Poetry
Book Reviews by Ralph Haselmann Jr. Lucid Moon Poetry Website (Jan/Feb/Mar 2001) A Far Rockaway Of The Heart, poetry book, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, 1997, 150 pages, softcover, $10.95. New Directions Publishing Corporation, 80 Eighth Ave, NY, 10011. Available at your local bookstore or by special order. Forty years after his A Coney Island Of The Mind (which has sold over 800,000 copies), Lawrence Ferlinghetti returns with A Far Rockaway Of The Heart, written in a "poetry seizure" that lasted one year. The poems are crisp, insightful, a little distant and distracted, but worldy and often humorous, with references to geography, literature and the arts. The poems are numbered instead of named, which makes them seem a little generic and in an assembly line, but what he has to say in the poem itself is interesting. #83 reads "A lion came to my window and leaped in as I ran out naked slamming the door of the cabin and closing the window and looking in at the lion. He was trying on my hats and looking in the mirror and browsing on my pot plant. After a while he lay down with his feet in the air and I ran off into the world without the baggage of my clothes and my name and soon developed a long tail a noble look and a mane and a taste for MGM movies" Ferlinghetti writes about more serious topics too in softly poetic turns of phrases that sing. #71 reads: "Shadows of seabirds skim the waves Halcyon makes its nest at sea floats where nothing floats except seaweed hair of the seaman's goddess deep sea drowned And I too have seen it I too have heard it the voiceless keening the sea's lips lapping off Carrara or Andraitx Puerto Majorca 1950 where the dory listed leeward and the flung net fished the murex up drowned dark maiden figlia di mare upon a shard of Grecian urn (jettisoned in turn) and none shall reach it now aie…aie…none shall hear it the broken singing" Ferlinghetti writes colorfully of a time and place that magically exist forever in our hearts and minds. A Season In Hell, Poetry book by Arthur Rimbaud, translated by Paul Schmidt, with photos by Robert Mapplethorpe, 1997, 90 pages, $22.50, hardcover, Bullfinch Press, Little, Brown and Company, New York. With text in French and English. This is the definitive 1967 translation by Paul Schmidt of Arthur Rimbaud's legendary epic A Season In Hell, with photos by Robert Mapplethorpe. It makes for a nice pairing, with photos of Mapplethorpe 's hand in fire; horns on his head; and arching backward in the nude like a strange satyr. Schmidt has captured all of the fire and passion of Rimbaud's original language. I have read four translations of Rimbaud including Wallace Fowlie and Bertrand Mathieu, and Schmidt's is the best with Mathieu coming in second. Rimbaud is at his wildest and most disparaging here, battling the demons of his relationship with Verlaine. This book is beautiful to behold, and was unfortunately found at the discount rack for $7.99 at Borders. Of course at that price it was fortunate for the consumer, but some of the beauty and danger of the book was diluted. I recommend this book if you can find it and better yet Paul Schmidt's translation of the Complete Works Of Rimbaud, 1967. Chapped Lap, poetry chapbook by Frank Moore, $5, 40 pages, Inter-Relations, PO Box 11445, Berkeley CA 94712. Frank Moore is a famous performance artist who is crippled in a wheelchair and can't use most of his body, yet he has managed to produce paintings, videos, poems and runs an internet radio station in Berkeley California with artist Michael LaBash and partner Linda Mac. I'm consistently amazed by Frank's gung- ho talent and can-do spirit. I interviewed Frank and the results are posted in the archives section of my Lucid Moon website at http://www.lucidmoonpoetry.com. I have had the pleasure of knowing Frank for three years and he is quite a lovable character. This book is a mini boxed set of his recent poetry and is a joy to read. The poems Connie, Jesse and You Ain't No Deer tip the hat to some women in Frank's life. Frank makes some pointed social commentary with the poems Art Is A Bitch, Mutation Is Evolution and A Rant On An Open Mike. The poems I Came To Play and Their Cuddling Cacoon celebrate the concept of Eroplay, sensual touching that is childlike and erotic and fun for all. The poem Tortures is very touching, how Frank was verbally abused and neglected while growing up , how he was made to feel like a monster for his deformities: "My high school teacher made me eat clorets because my breathe and body odor stank bad. College wouldn't take me because my slobbering would offend and distract other students. Airlines used this logic to not let me on their planes. Rubbing myself into climax in college, nothing came out like before. Orgasms weren't messy like before…before that bladder operation. Curious, I went to the college nurse who checked with the doctor who didn't see any reason to tell a 27 year old virgin ugly rag doll about the side effect of the operation of no mess orgasm..After all, rag dolls don't have sex or kids, we don't want to have more rag dolls!" Frank ends this piece with "All in all, life has been good!" You have to admire Frank's innovative spirit and through this collection you come to know Frank a little bit and feel for him. Not pity, but empathy and you recognize his prodigious talents and worth. Frank Moore is a true artist, and a brother of the road. This chap has cool zany drawings by Michael LaBash and Frank Moore. Highly recommended. Visit Frank Moore's Web Of All Possibilities at http://www.eroplay.com and his Luver Radio at http:/www.luver.com for a cool head trip. I had two shows on Luver for a year and it was a wild ride, but exhausting. I had nights of pure joy listening to Luver. I hope I can connect with Frank Moore again in the future, he's quite a colorful guy. Cold Comfort: Selected Poems 1970-1996 and Before It's Light: New Poems, poetry books by Lyn Lifshin. Paperbacks, 1998, 280 pages, $14 and 1999, 240 pages, $16 from Black Sparrow Press, 24 Tenth Street, Santa Rosa, CA 95401. Lyn Lifshin is the most prolific poet in America today, along with Errol Miller and the ghost of Charles Bukowski. She has written over 100 books of poetry, and I came into reading these two collections wondering whether all 100 books were really good or not. Lyn writes in a column like Bukowski, but whereas Buk threw in a beautiful, twisted turn of phrase that made the poem stand out, Lyn etches out memories of quiet dignity and small details. The layout of both books is similar, separated in chapter headings such as Biography, Family, Mothers/Daughters, Other People…There she writes about the wacky parade of celebrities like Lorena Bobbitt, Marilyn Monroe, Jesus, Madonna, etc. These poems in the last chapter of each book are more for shock value and are less like the rest of the book, which are heartfelt and rich in detail and description. Falling To The Ground, He Traces Stars from Cold Comfort reads: "light is bending into the hills. This day unwinding. How dark moves in now. Close by and uncertain, he watches shadow and light print your body, how your flesh is shining, moon-pale. Fresh herbs and seeds and the bright leaves folding, briars grey in the distance. Stillness. Birdless. The quiet river. And your head on his thigh is lovely, startling. As if to keep him from sleep, the curve of your back draws him in. And your warm hair that smells of flowers pulls him tight against your skin. Later, you twist away, coil from this last sun. Nothing stays but earth chill. Grass in his hand disarms him. Restless and falling to the ground beside you, he traces how far away the stars have grown, and those dark mouths that live in your sleep. O eve, do you dream how your terrible sighs blind him". Some beautiful lines in there in both collections. Lyn is a one-woman poetry factory and an institution, and while quality, not quantity should be the rule of thumb in judging her prodigious poetry output's merits, the truth is, at the heart of it all lie very good poems. Write on! Drinking With Bukowski: Recollections of The Poet Laureate Of Skid Row. Memories/poetry edited by Daniel Weizmann. 2000; 228 pages; $15.95; softcover paperback, published by Thunder's Mouth Press, 841 Broadway, Fourth Floor, New York, NY 10003 Available at your local bookstore or by special order. This is a cornucopia of friends of Bukowski reminiscing about our man, the most popular poet in the world, seven years after his death. Fine pieces from Gerald Locklin, A.D. Winans, Jack Grapes, Todd Moore, Wanda Coleman, Raymond Carver, Steve Richmond, Karen Finley, Raindog, Joan Jobe Smith, Fred Voss, Sean Penn and Buk's wife Linda King, among others. The pieces are funny, raw, brutally honest and warm. It shows Bukowski to be at times charming and at other times a drunken brute asshole, but always lovable. I could not put this book down and will return to it often. A terrific memento of our favorite poet. With a bibliography of Bukowski's work. Loading Las Vegas, Novel by Charles Potts, 1991, 188 pages, $10 from Current, PO Box 247, Walla Walla, WA 99362. A Cyberpunk pulp novel about a reporter named Annette Fauber who interviews and falls in love with Bill Stinet of Eromat Software Corporation. Eromat is on the cutting edge, producing the latest technological advances in software, such as VIPER, DREAMWARE and ODOR, a software that allows the computer to emit smells. Along the way they deal with and outsmart Frank Clemons, a reporter who writes a seething critical piece on the company. This was a fast-moving, smart and funny novel, but it just sort of ended abruptly, and then we learn on the last page that a sequel is forthcoming. I could have done without some of the technospeak, but I guess that is essential to a cyber story. This novel won First Place Novel in the 14th Annual International Literary Awards in 1991 when it came out and it is deserving of that award. It's a real page-turner and I had fun reading it. love sex death dreams, poetry chapbook by Kevin M. Hibshman, 2000, 40 pages, $5 from Green Bean Press, PO Box 237, NYC, 10013. This is a mini-boxed set of the last decade of Hibshman's brilliant brand of poetry. Kevin is a modern day Rimbaud, writing wild poetry that tears at your soul and screams to be heard. At times gentle and loving, other times fierce, bold, and sexual, Kevin Hibshman is one of the best poets writing today. He is certainly one of the favorites at Lucid Moon, along with H. Lamar Thomas, Gary Jurechka, Wayne Wilkinson, Robert L. Penick, Ana Christy and Ashley Morris. The poem Sylvia Plath captures perfectly that doomed poet's soul: "little black frightened pigeon splattered in the chrome grill feathers blood oil". Running towards oblivion reads: "I am running towards oblivion w/a cigarette in each hand and a bottle in a backpack. I am running towards oblivion as the ghost of rimbaud points and laughs. I am running towards oblivion w/ an empty stomach and a truant's guilt. Running out on you. on love. On promises and hopes that have kept me idle. I've seen enough of your christian work ethic to know it sucks. Payday never comes. I am running towards oblivion as trash turns to art. Skipping the unemployment line this time. I am running towards oblivion like a crack-up on the race track. I can see orange flame and I smell like gasoline. Like a plane crash. Ten seconds till we hit the ocean. Splish. splash. I am running towards oblivion w/ no bus fare to get back." Endlessly inventive and imaginative, this is the stuff of great poetry. Highly recommended. Printed in Kevin's hand, with cool cover illustration by Barb Yordy. Picnic On The Moon, poetry book by Charles Coe. 1999, 80 pages, softcover, $12.95. Leapfrog Press, P.O. Box 1495, Wellfleet, MA 02667-1495. Available at Amazon.com or through special order at your local bookstore. Picnic On The Moon is a superb collection of crisp, clear, honest , vibrant poetry by jazz and popular vocalist Charles Coe. HE grew up in the 1960's and the soulful music of such r&b and jazz artists as Marvin Gaye, James Brown, The Allman Brothers, Ella Fitzgerald and Charles Mingus inform his poetry. Like Marvin Gaye and James Brown, Coe has a social consciousness that is touching and profoundly heartwrenching. Something In The Air reads, "…But I know there's something in the air. And it's so close. Can't you feel it? Wait! Stop! Look left! Look right! Listen to your red blood sing in rhythm with the sweep of Mama Nature's broom, all you children with Technicolor hair and pierced noses trying to look so tough and cool, and all you pissed-off teenage mamas stomping down the sidewalk, draggin' your kids behind, and all you crazy drivers pushing two thousand pounds of carbon Monoxide and bad attitude, why don't we all just slow it down, on this first real day of spring, and take a big breath of something in the air that's crisp and green as a baby leaf?" In poem after poem, Coe dispenses wisdom and a knack for saying the right things in modern times that ache for and demand such wisdom. In the title poem, Coe muses, "…The Moon sounds like the perfect picnic spot--a great place to bask in the warm solar breeze and take a break from the earthly roar and rumble…Don't be sad when we climb into the shuttle for the trip home. For we each will carry back a cool and quiet place within ourselves and the next time we wake to the sound of gunfire we can gaze into the night sky and remember when we nibbled grapes at the crater's edge and watched the children kick up clouds of lunar dust, their faces smeared red--not with blood--but ketchup and raspberry jam as they romped beneath a blue-green earth that glittered like a fragile and precious jewel across the trackless miles of space." God bless Charles Coe, and let us now praise his particular brand of poetry. He has a lot to say and he says it splendidly. Rimbaud: A Biography, by Graham Robb. 2000, 552 pages, hardcover, $35, available at your local bookstore or through special order from W. W. Norton & Company, Inc., 500 Fifth Avenue, NY, NY 10110. This a remarkable, intense, finely detailed new biography of legendary 19th century poet and enfant terrible Arthur Rimbaud. Biographer Graham sheds new light on Arthur's homosexual relationship with Paul Verlaine, offers crisp criticism of Arthur's amazingly precocious poetry and offers new details on Arthur's travels and trading in Africa at the end of his life after he stopped writing poetry. Arthur was not a failed businessman as had been previously believed, but through recent letters and receipts that have come to light, it is shown that he actually made a small fortune gun running and trading in the Sudan and Choa. The second half of the book details his dealings in Africa: "(In his letters), Rimbaud exaggerated the heat of the sun, the stinginess of his employers and his own incompetence -- why not also his financial hardship? The only real mystery is this: why has Rimbaud's tale of woe been accepted as the truth? Why, when the whole shape and meaning of his life in Africa depend on it, has the biography of his money never been properly pieced together? Like the tragic tale of Mozart's obscure burial, Rimbaud's fictitious failure in Choa is part of an edifying fable that makes the absurdity of his end more bearable. It turns the sudden precipice into the tale of a neat parabola. The hero's transgression -- squandering his talent, denying the religion of Art, being too original, etc., is punished by failure in the material world. His death is cloaked in a comforting logic and attributed, without evidence, to a fate-like agency: usually inherited disease or mysterious bad luck. Fake reports of Rimbaud's death-bed conversion are rightly derided, but the idea of ineluctable decline is accepted in its place. Either way, Rimbaud's life is used, in spite of his own philosophy, to prove that human existence is subject to a superior form of administration." The epilogue details how Arthur Rimbaud's younger sister Isabelle took to erase all traces of Rimbaud's deviant life with Paul Verlaine after his death, as she married Paterne Berricchon, an early biographer of Rimbaud, and with him she schemed to forge letters from Arthur to present a sunnier outlook, including his fictitious death-bed religious conversion, to please her mother, and burned incriminating love letters from Arthur to Paul. How sad that these important pieces of history are lost forever, they would have been a fascinating drama to read. Fortunately enough of Rimbaud's early letters and poetry have survived. This book easily replaces Enid Starkie's biography as the premiere biography of Rimbaud, and along with Arthur Rimbaud by Benjamin Ivry, a study of Arthur Rimbaud's homosexuality as it relates to his Art and life, is the newest and most important study of the young genius poet Arthur Rimbaud. A magnificent accomplishment by Robb. So Much For Paradise, poetry chapbook by Jack Phillips Lowe, 2000; 36 pages; $3 to John Berbrich at Bone World Publishing, 3700 County Road 34, Russell, New York 13684. This is a superb collection by Lowe, topical, funny, cranky, almost surreal where he talks to angels and muses and he muses on the memory of Kerouac, Blake, Whitman, Miller and Bukowski. Safe In Heaven? reads: "I'll bet about now, Jack Kerouac wishes he hadn't prayed his way into Heaven. About now, he's probably tired of Allen and Bill dragging him onstage to read with them, resurrecting the fame that destroyed him. About now, he's probably haunted by the 4 women who shadow him like a Greek chorus, demanding vindication, satisfaction, confirmation. And now, he's probably disgusted with standing outside the golden gates of the high class neighborhood that God reserves for saints. It probably churns Jack's guts as Gerard presses his face between the gilded bars and blows raspberries at his older-younger brother. About now, he's probably depressed by the way Heaven's filling up with Yuppies, who assault Jack with stories about how earning those millions on the stock exchange also earned them the heart attacks they died from. He's probably sick of these squares telling him that they loved his Gap ad, and asking him, "What book did you write again?" About now, Jack probably sneaks out alone among the clouds, pulls forlornly on a bottle of near-beer (for Heaven is dry), and looks out over the edge of Eternity. He jealously peers through the stars, past the Earth, and down into Hell, where Charles Bukowski sits quietly in an air-conditioned bar, sipping mug after frosty mug of the genuine malt liquor that Henry Miller keeps sending to his table." Clever, endlessly inventive, this little chap packs a wallop of great ideas in a short amount of space. Well worth a look. Cheers to Jack Phillips Lowe, have one on me. With Cool cover illustration by Tracy Cox. Thawed Stars poetry book by Alice Pero, 1999, 146 pages, $12 plus $3 s&h from either SunInk Publications, Palo Colorado Road, Carmel CA93923 or from the auhor Alice Pero at P.O. Box 1089, La Canada, CA 91012. California residents add 8.25% sales tax. Thawed Stars by Alice Pero is a bright, colorful swirl of cosmic poetry and of everyday life told in vibrant rich descriptions. Pero is a remarkable poet, always finding new ways of saying things in a memorable way. Her poems delight with optimism and advice for the exploring souls who wander into her rainbow world. Moon Warning reads: "When you rise to kiss the moon do not lose yourself in her craggy crevices or flatten yourself on her smooth contours / Keep your distance lest you float into moon's delirium / Do not ponder her thoughts Ride in your own dimension You have no need to tangle in imponderable moon threads or dance in her folly / when you rise to kiss the moon consider only her craft though she may astonish you with her cool beauty Admire the carvings of millennia, the many faceted shards of her surface, the intricate patterns of her nubs / But do not linger in moon's heady swoon or breathe her quivering air / Keep your eye calculating the radiance Know the luna's luminating kiss and steal away before you are stolen by moon madness." Iloved this book, it's a nice antidote to my own depressing poetry. Pero is a shining star on the poetry horizon and I look forward to reading more of her positive, breathtaking poetry. The Time Of The Assassins: A Study Of Rimbaud, poetry essay by Henry Miller, written in 1946, published in 1956, 161 pages, 2nd edition, hardcover, out of print. New Directions, NY. I found this charming book through RWD Book Search (Rwdwd@micron.net) on the internet, for the expensive price of $160, but it is worth every penny. It is a little black book with die-cut windows out of which peer the eyes of Arthur Rimbaud and Henry Miller from portraits on page one. In his famous poem from A Season In Hell, Arthur Rimbaud remarked, "Now is the time of the assassins." He was in part making a pun on the word hashish, which he was smoking at the time, and also commenting on the assassination of President Lincoln. Henry Miller uses this phrase as his title. In the epilogue, Miller notes all of the great literature published in Rimbaud's time (mid to late 1900's) and he comments on the dangerous times in which we live: "What revolt, what disillusionment, what longing! Nothing but crises, breakdowns, hallucinations and visions. The foundations of politics, morals, economics and art tremble. The air is full of warnings and prophecies of the debacle to come--and in the 20th century it comes! Already two world wars and a promise of more before the century is out. Have we touched bottom? Not yet. The moral crisis of the 19th century has merely given way to the spiritual bankruptcy of the 20th. It is "the time of the assassins," and no mistaking it. Politics has become the business of gangsters. The peoples are marching in the sky but they are not shouting hosannas; those below are marching towards the bread lines…" It is in this atmosphere of chaos that Arthur Rimbaud's poetry is born, and it will shake and rattle the very foundation of French literature. Rimbaud was the first modern poet, along with Walt Whitman in America. Rimbaud lived a hellish existence, a life of suffering which Miller compares to his own life and the life of abstract expressionist painter Vincent Van Gogh. Van Gogh died at almost the same age as Rimbaud a year before Rimbaud in 1890. Miller also talks about Rimbaud's harsh mother and his need to escape the womb, like Miller. Here again Miller identifies with Rimbaud's life and his odyssey of self destruction, and muses on Rimbaud's meaning in beautiful descriptions throughout this book. I found this book to be endlessly fascinating and charming, full of life and spirit and poetry and intelligence. When the late actor River Phoenix was considering the role of Arthur Rimbaud in the film Total Eclipse (the role later went to Leonardo DiCaprio after River's death on 1993), he read Henry Miller's The Time Of The Assassins and carried it around in his pocket, showing it to friends and reading passages from the book to all who would listen. River cherished this book, as do I, and I am overjoyed that I found this rare 2nd edition hardcover copy. If you can find this book, I urge you to buy it, for it is profoundly inspiring. Valga Krusa, novel by Charles Potts, PO Box 100, Walla Walla, WA 99362. 1977, 443 pages, softcover, $20. This is an epic brick of a book account of Tsunami, Inc. and The Temple editor Charles Pott's 1968 breakdown. Throughout the novel, we get a good feeling for the times as Charles hangs out with friends, publishes his poetry zines, dodges the draft (in a hilarious episode where he talks back to the draft officer in a cranky funny George Carlin like manner), and finally cracks and is sent to the nuthouse. The first half of the book is called The Yellow Christ, after a painting by Gaugin, and the second half is called Shit Crackers, after I don't know what! The second half offers an invaluable portrait of what is going through a person's mind who is having a nervous breakdown due to lack of sleep for a week. Paranoia sets in, and the author misinterprets everyday occurrences and thinks the police who take him away are actors in a play. You really feel for Charles' plight. In the hospital ward he is raped three times by an old horny black man who wants a piece of young white hippie ass. The scene is brutally frank, tragic and funny all at the same time. The book ends on a positive note with Charles about to get out of the hospital and offering an old lady patient some strawberries to eat at dinner time. This novel was a fascinating read and I'll never forget it. Charles Potts is brave (and crazy) to have written it and shared it with us. Please send poetry books, chapbooks, cds, broadsides or whatever for review to Ralph Haselmann Jr. at 67 Norma Road, Hampton, New Jersey 08827. I will review them within 1-2 months and send you a copy of the review. Publishers have my permission in advance to reprint any part of my reviews as long as they send me a copy of what it appears in. The reviews go out to several small press discussion lists, after which they will be archived on my Lucid Moon Poetry Website. Happy New Year! Ralph Haselmann Jr. HOME PAGE & ARCHIVES
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