4th Street Vagaries by Hosho McCreesh

It's not often that my professional jealousy rears its ugly head.  When, however, I see something smaller than I do, done as professionally (or better) as I do, with poets as good as I publish, well, I do get a twinge of the green monster.

Alternating Current's "Pocket Protector" series, of which 4th Street Vagaries is Book 16, is one of those productions.  According to the legend, "Propaganda Press is the small press portion of Alternating Current; info regarding Pocket Protectors can be found at alt-current.com."

Duly noted (& linked to, above).

The sum and substance of this particular production is a thing both to behold and to be beheld, the later specifically in the palm of your hand.

Kersnuffle!

The poet, Hosho McCreesh, is a wonderful practitioner of the small poem, which makes the whole thing a true delight.  Here's a little taste from the book you can put in your shirt pocket and still have room for the sawed off Camels and your favorite pen.

old tires
   tankards, vats.

retention ponds.

new guy
power-washing
old car batteries
for resale.

in the road,

tires
have worn
something down

to a stain.

                           a man     
     rolling down his window,
 reaching out so he can open
his broken driver's-side door.

everyone,

late

for
something.

There is an overriding sense of despair or at least desperation here.  Who hasn't, at one time or another, been the new guy (washing the resale batteries).   That "something" in the road just breaks your heart with its anonymous something-ness.    Each of these brief, insightful pieces reaches in and just squeezes your heart with a forlorn pain instantly recognizable and painfully reminiscent of similar scenes in our own past and present lives.

Oh, mercy, lord, mercy, mercy me ...

Apart from the excellent work by McCreesh, the layout of this teeny-tiny book is just driving me bonkers with its precision, everything lining up from page to page so nicely and all.   Approximately 60 pages in length, with an illustration on everyone, this little puppy is a steal for $3.  In fact, there are a ton of other great writers in the series including leah angstman, Ed Galing, Michael Kriesel, Alan Catlin, A. D. Winans, and many more.  Get yourself a parcel.  Checks and money orders made out to Angstman Arts and mailed to Alternating Current, PO Box 183, Palo Alto, CA 24302 (for international orders, please first).

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This week's featured poem comes from Lilliput Review, #151 from July 2006.  The piece, by Erik Alan Pohl, has a perfect title that sheds a bright light on an enigma, identifying it for exactly what it is.




On how understanding unravels back to the beginning

Once you tell me cultures
part us, you pull a sutra
from the sacred text.

Such a little thread!

But so strong it held the book binding
together.

The book itself
holding the shelf up
that supported even older books.

Here is a flood of fallen words to drown in.

Erik Alan Pohl

Great Japan!
a bird recites a sutra
a monk beats a bowl

Issa
translated by David G. Lanoue

best,
Don

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The Other Anne Sexton: It Is A Spring Afternoon

I've spent the summer very slowly reading through the complete poems of Anne Sexton for the 3 Poems By discussion group, which will be meeting this Thursday at my other job. I recently posted about this over at a different blog and, in that post, I talked about one of her lesser known poems, "Young," and how it highlighted an aspect of Sexton that one doesn't often hear about. I continue to slowly read through her work, a poem or two at most per day, because frankly it is all I can absorb.

Last week I ran across this poem, again emphasizing an aspect of Sexton not often discussed:

It Is A Spring Afternoon

Everything here is yellow and green.
Listen to its throat, its earthskin,
the bone dry voices of the peepers
as they throb like advertisements.
The small animals of the woods
are carrying their deathmasks
into a narrow winter cave.
The scarecrow has plucked out
his two eyes like diamonds
and walked into the village.
The general and the postman
have taken off their packs.
This has all happened before
but nothing here is obsolete.
Everything here is possible.

Because of this
perhaps a young girl has laid down
her winter clothes and has casually
placed herself upon a tree limb
that hangs over a pool in the river.
She has been poured out onto the limb,
low above the houses of the fishes
as they swim in and out of her reflection
and up and down the stairs of her legs.
Her body carries clouds all the way home.
She is overlooking her watery face
in the river where blind men
come to bathe at midday.

Because of this
the ground, that winter nightmare,
has cured its sores and burst
with green birds and vitamins.
Because of this
the trees turn in their trenches
and hold up little rain cups
by their slender fingers.
Because of this
a woman stands by her stove
singing and cooking flowers.
Everything here is yellow and green.

Surely spring will allow
a girl without a stitch on
to turn softly in her sunlight
and not be afraid of her bed.
She has already counted seven
blossoms in her green green mirror.
Two rivers combine beneath her.
The face of the child wrinkles
in the water and is gone forever.
The woman is all that can be seen
in her animal loveliness.
Her cherished and obstinate skin
lies deeply under the watery tree.
Everything is altogether possible
and the blind men can also see.

Anne Sexton

I see this poem as a companion piece to "Young," portraying a time in a young woman's life when she is on the cusp between adolescence and adulthood. Though both these poems have slightly portentous undercurrents, both also emphasize a youthful promise the idea of which Sexton obviously cherished.

The loss for her of this innocence and for us of Sexton herself is almost too much to bear.



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This week's featured back issue is #164, from July 2008. And the war drags on ...

turned back & got lost.

John Martone

The Numbers of the Dead

which appear in the headlines
to be perfectly round
like the planets

aren't really round.
They only appear that way
when seen from a great distance.

Up close they bulge.
They are gouged, pocked, frigid,
infinitely lonely numbers

divisible only by themselves and one.

Paul Hostovsky

war$pin
war$oil
war$hip
war$ink
war$end
war$aid
war$hit
war$hot
war$how
war$own
war$old
war$pun

LeRoy Gorman

Muddy ditch water,
& dimples beneath
waterspider's feet–

---------tenuous, this life.

Hosho McCreesh

in the footprints
of the warrior...
poppies

Issa
translated by David G. Lanoue

best,
Don