RUSSELL STREUR: TWO POEMS

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Numbers Game

I used to be somebody.

Had the figures to prove it.

Five nine six four on red

That’s Mister to you

Confirmation one F E and eight and eight and G

EMC zero zero four zero four three in LA

Eight two zero seven in gold

Get out of my way

Nine two double three to clear

And bigger numbers too

Ten pass to the Euro set

Channels on the satellite

Back door code

To the Diamond Lounge

Pins and passwords everywhere

Dot com planets at my fingertips.

Cashed in all my chips

On a Degas whim one day

For a place in the woods

And a river bed.

Now I’m off the screens

In a green ballet

Out of the loop

Up the creek

Without a mouse

I’m the man without a number

On the Quay D`Orsay

No more front row seats

No more safety net

No more cable TV

I’m disconnected

I’ve lost my place in line:

Add it up Bobby:

I get treated like I’m nobody now

Like I am just

Another name.

Thrill Ride 

(Greetings from the Mouse)

Caution:

This amusement ride involves

High speeds

Sudden drops

Sharp turns

And unexpected stops

In underground torture cells.

True believers

                        Move forward now.

Gates are to the left

                                For those with heart conditions.

Persons prone to motion sickness

                                                      May board the special train.

We’ll get the rest of you later.

MADE IN AMERICA by Robert M. Zoschke

A somewhat belated review

Street Corner Press
corner of Armitage & Clybourn
Chicago
Illinois
60614
$14

     I like this book a lot because it sounds like no one but the author. Zoschke doesn't pose: when he's pissed off, he's pissed off ('Bored on the Fourth of July, 2008); when he's tender, he's tender ('a dog of a poem'); and he's great at painting the Wisconsin landscape he lives in with words ('Ides of March sarong'). How often do you get that sort of range.

     He's a poet of place without the sentimentality that usually involves. We know exactly where he is -- what it sounds and smells like, who lives there with him ('the swords are in little hands'; 'are you a...';'Listen') -- and we know how he got there ('Elegy for the Pistol', among others). You could make a movie out of that last poem, no problem. It's almost an elegy for a better, bygone America.

     Rob's a poet of ideas too, maybe without wanting to be: Lawrence Ferlinghetti is quoted at the start of the book as saying, 'I'd rather be writing love poems'. The very fine and scandalously unacknowledged Dave Church is remembered in 'when the pen is the needle and the paper is the spoon', which contrasts Church's remarkable poetry with that of an English professor taking a workshop in 'rotgut academician flatulence'. Why's Dave dying at the wheel of a taxi when a poet not fit to shine his shoes thrives and prospers? Anybody who has read Church or been to a university poetry workshop will know Zoschke is telling the truth.

     But the centrepiece of 'Made in America' is the love poem he would rather be writing. 'What Matters Most' tells beautifully and forcefully of the birth of Amelia and Hannah, Rob and partner Joie's two daughters. You're there in the delivery room with them experiencing every nerve-wracking, hair-raising, heart-wrenching, joyful moment of the double birth, and the description never slips into bad taste. What a generous and brave man he must be to share the most personal experience of his life like that; and what art, not to let it get awkward for one minute.

     An extensive collection of pictures of family and friends completes the book nicely: he's a proud man and why not? Too many poets in the small press and the mainstream hide behind postures, and self-conscious trickery. As a squeamish Buddhist I could have done without so many photos of dead fish, but it's a small price to pay for these treasures.

GERALD NICOSIA IN ENGLAND

Gerald Nicosia, poet and legendary biographer of Jack and Jan Kerouac, will be in England at the end of this month to talk on Jack and take part in a poetry reading.I quote Gerry himself:


My talk on Kerouac—called “The Writer Kerouac, the Mythological Kerouac, the Popular Kerouac, and the Real Kerouac”-- will be at the English Faculty lecture hall, 5PM, Friday October 22.  The address is 9 West Road, Cambridge.  For further information, contact Malcolm Guite at St. Mark’s Vicarage, Cambridge, 01223 694249.  The next night, Saturday October 23, at 8PM, I will give a poetry reading along with Malcolm Guite and Keith Dersley, to the accompaniment of a jazz group called RipRap.  This will take place at the Memorial (Unitarian) Church in Cambridge, Emmanuel Road, near the bus station, in central Cambridge.  Again, Malcolm Guite would be the person to give more specific details.


I'm sure anybody who's in Cambridge that weekend will be glad to support these events. It isn't every day a writer of Gerry's calibre makes it over here to good old Blighty.