Author: Mather Schneider

2011, NYQ Books

Filed Under: Poetry.

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What Alan Catlin, the Schenectady bartender/poet has done for the seamier side of the drinking trade, Mather Schneider, in He Took a Cab, has now done for the taxi business in Tucson–but it could be anywhere where cabs are hailed and hacks are stiffed for a tip.  Where Catlin showed us, with great sympathy and understanding, the habitués of bars, Schneider gives us an inkling into the lives of not just his autobiographical cab driver-persona, but also the fares he drives to and from the airport, to bars, to doctor appointments, to fast food restaurants, to john appointments, and elsewhere.  And as often happens in cabs, people reveal themselves in a word, phrase, or gesture; and Schneider reveals himself as well.

These poems give us a slice of the harder side of life, the other side of the tracks, the places we’ve either never seen, except to drive through to someplace more picturesque, or the places we’ve been all too glad to escape from.  I confess I feel a particularly affectionate affinity for Schneider’s cabbie persona and his fares, since I drove a cab more years ago than I care to think about.  But that disclaimer aside, this is a strong collection, maybe not for the weak of stomach, but a much needed look at what Fred Neil called in his great song of the same title, “The Other Side of This Life.” …
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Author: Sarah Gorham

2011, Four Way Books

Filed Under: Poetry.

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You can already tell by the title of her new collection that Sarah Gorham has a sly, subversive sense of humor.  From modified “prayers” saturated with irony to a five-part reflection on bureaucratic and other absurdities associated with a frankly horrific accident, Gorham regards the world with a disengaged, puzzled fascination, and at its best it is as if you see things through her eyes for the first time.  Her poem, “Detach,” captures this attitude, evident throughout her poetry:

Detach

Thank the stars for distances between

stars, for broad mountain meadows

that shrink your troubles to ants

carrying leaves five times their size.

The sun is 91 million miles away;

not too far, not too close.  Be like that.

Perch in a look-out tower, overseer of campfires

and dangerous breezes.  You’ll spot the heat,

pick  up the phone.  Let others

put their faces in the fire.

The world is a wondrous place if you twist your head and look at it from a different angle.  “Odd place for a sculpture,” she begins the poem, “Bust of a Young Girl in the Snow.”  Indeed, Gorham’s logical leaps from line to line are breathtaking.  “I long for babies,/but never more than mountains./My view of the Jungfrau: peaks like starched/petticoats I could bury my face in./She is a cold confection, a meringue/I feel in my teeth.  When I am/in the presence of mountains,/there will always be enough sex./But never enough mountains,” she concludes the poem, “Three Sides to the Mountain That Are Really One.”

…
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Author: Jéanpaul Ferro

2011, Honest Publishing

Filed Under: Poetry.

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Jazz, the latest release from 8-time Pushcart Prize nominee Jéanpaul Ferro, is a jolting collection of poetry full of exuberance and vulnerability.  Recently nominated for both the 2012 Griffin Award in Poetry and the 2012 Kingsley Tufts Award in Poetry, Jazz is one of those rare collections that captures the true essence of 21^st Century life.

There is an underlining disquiet within the lines of Jazz that seems to mirror the horrific headlines of each day.  The characters of Ferro’s world inhabit a cold and heart-breaking reality that often breaks apart into tragedy.  One of the truly remarkable accomplishments of this book is Ferro’s ability to remain neutral while still capturing the vitality that truly great poetry is readily able to capture. …
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Author: Shelley Puhak

2010, Black Lawrence Press

Filed Under: Poetry.

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Steeped in the bleak history of mid-twentieth century Europe, Shelley Puhak’s award-winning Stalin in Aruba nevertheless brims with a dark humor.  The poetry, lyrical, full of fresh, vivid imagery, is saturated with grim irony.  Even the title suggests this, juxtaposing one of history’s most monstrous dictators with an idyllic vacation island.  In the eponymous poem, indeed, Stalin’s infamous liquidation of his enemies and undesirables blends into the techniques of photographic manipulation, cropping, chopping, clarifying pictures, as if genocide were merely an option in a Photoshop program.   “Purging the Aunties,” a poem based on Stalin’s arrest and execution of many of his female relatives, is likewise set during two birthday celebrations for touchy Uncle Soso, again juxtaposing the horrific with the mundane, bringing to mind the macabre image of skeletons dancing during the Black Plague. …
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Author: Nathan Leslie

2009, Hamilton Stone Editions

Filed Under: Poetry.

Known mostly for his fiction – six collections of short stories last I counted – I nevertheless became acquainted with Nathan Leslie when we both had poems in Red River Review in 2001 (one of these, “Chip,” is included in Night Sweat).  While his fiction collections often cohere around a theme – motherhood (Madre), cars (Drivers), faith (Believers) – Night Sweat is a selection of poems that span a decade and sometimes seem so different, one from another.  This collection is divided into seven discrete sections, an eclectic mix of theme, form, and focus.  Thus, to get a handle on Leslie’s work and the vision it embodies we need to approach this collection in terms of style.

While he writes the occasional form poem – there are two ghazals in the final section and the book opens with a series of exphrasis poems, based on works of art – Leslie primarily writes free verse poems and keeps the language spare and descriptive.  Whitman-like, he is fond of lists, but rather than cataloguing a stream of examples or representatives, Leslie uses the technique to paint a picture.  “On a boat in the Severn we caught/eels, crabs, bluegills, croakers…” (“A Fishing Poem); “Though I hiked the juniper/trails – spying lizards, coyotes, hares and hawks…[the wrentit] plucking toyon berries,/wasps and caterpillars…” (“Wrentit”);  “My sister and I found/washing machines, tires,/rusted box springs, hordes/of brown bottles, beer cans.” (“The Creek”); “in Indian Lake dotted with wildflowers,/moss, lichen, scrub bushes and beetles…” (“The Lake”); “a dragon stem goblet for mother,/topaz wings, a Sarpaneva sculpture/blown in a burned wooden mold/for Anne, a lavender opaline/bell gilt with a bronze mount for me.” (“Glassware”)  These aren’t lists so much as details freed from the fog of prepositional language, as if Leslie is carving a statue from a block of wood, only the material is the concrete language of nouns, things. …
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