Reviewed by: Victor Schwartzman
Victor has never met Todd.
But there is a story about why he wrote this review.
After a review by Christopher Robin (who else?) on a book of poetry co-authored by Todd, Victor sent Todd his standard email. It is longstanding ULA Book Review Blog policy (since three months ago) to send authors an email that their book has been reviewed. The idea is, respect authors enough to let them know their book has been reviewed.
However, I was told after sending the email that Todd wondered if it was some sort of spam, was a sneaky request for money, or whatever—spam on the internet can lead us to believe that an email from an unknown person is an attempt to get our money, one way or another—either by selling us penal enhancements, the opportunity to help someone from Nigeria invest twenty million dollars, or to let us know we have won a lottery we never entered. I was offended by the idea an author thought I was asking for money, although why I was offended is hard to say, since Todd is a total stranger and my emails can be even stranger. Like that last sentence.
Anyway, I decided I should read something of Todd’s as one way of showing my good faith, and found a used copy of Dillinger’s Thompson on Amazon. My, this is a long paragraph.
Where can you find this book? It's out of print, and thus available only in used bookstores (or through Amazon's network of bookstores). I found it through Amazon.
When Elliot Ness was shooting his hot seed from his Thompson sub machine gun, was he masturbating?
Todd Moore sees the 1930s’ weapon of choice--for both criminals and police—as erotic. In seeing the Thompson as erotic, he’s making a statement about how Americans see violence and power. What counts is indeed size, and how you use it—as the narrator basically says to J. Edgar Hoover while ridiculing him, the narrator’s Thompson is bigger than Hoover’s.
This book is short. I got it a few days before writing this review. I thought I would take a look at it before going to sleep. I figured I'd glance at it. Instead, I read it through. The poetry was instantly compelling, probably because it went straight to the heart of the dark side of the American dream.
The book is 53 pages. 12 of those pages are an introduction. The rest is a single poem whose individual lines are rarely more than three or four words.
In the introduction, Todd writes of the romance Americans have had with the Thompson sub machine gun, and then relates that romance of violence to his own childhood. He did not have an easy time, a street thief living in a sleazy hotel full of “marginal underworld toughs and amiable sociopaths”, finding escape in movies which reflected his life: “I remember shoplifting some stuff out of a five and ten just to get enough money to see The Asphalt Jungle. I remember putting a scar on a kid’s face right after coming out of The Big Sleep.”
In the context of American violence, automatic weapons are erotically charged, the ultimate. They spit out the lead without stop. And, of those automatic weapons, the Thompson is the classic, both from reality and the movies. “Maybe the marriage of Dillinger and the Thompson sub machine gun is the most subversive of all American couplings. It is one of the most extreme metaphors I can think of because it depicts the dark side of this country and it is a vision which will not go away.” In reading those sentences, I thought of the the coupling of America's foremost criminal with America's foremost romanticized violence, and then I thought of the current US President, who enjoys the image of himself as a quick draw cowboy, but who would never allow himself to get within miles of a shoot-out.
The poem that follows the introduction is part of a longer work Todd has been writing for thirty years (this book was published in 2002) and, at that point, totalled 50,000 lines.
There are four main characters: the narrator (at times Dillinger, at times perhaps Todd himself), Billie (his “woman” whom he sees only in carnal terms--they don’t talk about books), and Lester (a fellow criminal). And the fourth character: the Thompson sub machine gun.
The book begins with the gun.
Todd describes the weapon in erotic terms, unable to resist it:
…I can’t or don’t
want to resist
it knows the shape
the precise curve
the tight feel
of my trigger
finger the way
my mouth knows the
geography of a
woman’s breast i
want to hold that
gun in my lap…
The lines quoted above also help illustrate why the poetry is compelling. The language is direct to the point of being stark. The lines are short, and they are broken up in a fascinating manner, with “sentences” beginning part way through a line, or ending on the first word of the next line. It is not just a way of keeping your attention or making you read. There is a remarkable rhythm the writing establishes, pushing the reader along (not dragging, not pulling, pushing).
The writing is full of stark images that do not have any affectation, a mix of poetry with prose. In one section, getting shot by a Thompson is compared with being on the receiving end of having sex--getting fucked, not making love, with the bullets entering victims like a penis enters a body. In another section, Al Capone’s Thompson is described in loving detail.
This is poetry with intent and power, not poetry where the poet is desperate for the reader to whine with her/him about her/his navel. There is a lot more that I could write about this book, but this review already feels remarkably long, given it is about a single poem from a relatively short book. But Todd’s poem has that onionesque quality: the more you look, the more layers you see. Though unlike an onion it didn’t make me wanna sob, it was way too in my face for that—this poem is not a emotional kleenex you cry about, it is a dare.
Showing posts with label Outlaw Poetry. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Outlaw Poetry. Show all posts
Tuesday, January 30, 2007
Friday, January 05, 2007
New American Underground Poetry Vol. 1:
Reviewed by: Charles P. Ries. You may find additional samples of his work by going to: http://www.literarti.net/Ries/ and you may write him at charlesr@execpc.com
Does Charles know any of the 32 poets in this anthology? Well really: he does not live in California to begin with, and if he spent all his time meeting other writers, when would he have time to write his own stuff? Give the guy a break, eh? You really are way too demanding!
Author: New American, copyright 2005. Alan Kernoff. Anthology issued by Trafford Press. Distributed by Zeitgeist-Press. (http://www.zeitgeist-press.com/) 323 Pages / Price: 23.00
TO ORDER GO TO: http://www.zeitgeist-press.com/
Context, talent and emerging form are the co-parents of art movements. When these three aspects of great art collide (as they seldom do) a child is conceived. A creative voice so unique in its character that when it is seen, heard, or read it guides the reader unmistakenly back to its place of origin.
As I read the thirty-two poets whose works comprise this expansive anthology entitled, New American Underground Poetry Vol. 1: The Barbarians of San Francisco - Poets from Hell, I welcomed the raw honest energy I found in these long narrative poems. I felt as if I was there with them, listening to them. They called themselves the Barbarians. Every Thursday night from the mid-late 80’s through about 1994, their home was a tiny wine and beer tavern located on twenty-second and Guerrero in the Mission District of San Francisco. For just under ten years it was the home of a perfect storm - a Thunder Dome in which spoken word poetry of high emotion, insight, and humor was delivered and refined. This excerpt from David Lerner’s, “Mein Kampf” addresses the objective of their collective efforts, “all I want to do / is make poetry famous // all I want to do is / burn my initials into the sun // all I want to do is / read poetry from the middle of a / burning building / standing in the fast lane of the / freeway / falling from the top of the / Empire State Building // the literary world / sucks dead dog dick //I’ll rather be Richard Speck / than Gary Snyder / I’d rather ride a rocket ship to hell / than a Volvo to Bolinas.” And indeed this desire to raise poetry above its lost status as a mainstream literary art colors many of the poems in this collection. These writers wrote and spoke words that could not be confused. They were metaphor lit and smash mouth rich.
Context: The back room at Cafe Babar. A tiny performance space of only about 30' x 30', with wood bleachers and corrugated aluminum siding stretched over the walls. At critical points, the poet could hit the walls and the entire small room would vibrate. Often, there were 75-100 people stuffed shoulder-to-shoulder, crowding the halls and every spare inch of space, hungry for what the poet could do. "The Babar crowd was pretty merciless," says Zietgeist Press Co-Founder and Café Babar regular, Bruce Isaacson. "There was no polite applause or lukewarm response. If they loved you, they let you know, and if they didn't, they really let you know: hoots, whistles, heckling. Even beer glasses would sometimes get tossed at the stage."
Talent: In the forward to this anthology, co-editor Alan Allen described the odd mix of tribal members to this scene, “The barbarian poets were broke. Won the west-coast slams but couldn’t afford the tickets to go East to compete. Lived only to write, to perform, to read. Many were without jobs (with notable exceptions), or disabled, or addicted, or worked in the sex industry. Most struggled to pay the rent, or eat well, wore thrift-shop clothes. IQ’s were the highest, hearts the biggest, poems what mattered most. Was all about feeling their voices, their words, their lines, their lives.” This collision of wild and diverse poets, writers, musicians, and performers created the ethos of that moment including: Laura Conway, Joie Cook, David West, Eli Coppola, David Gollub, Vampyre Mike Kassel, Kathleen Wood, Zoe Rosenfeld, Sparrow 13 LaughingWand, Q.R. Hand, Alan Kaufman, and numerous others who would go through the baptism of fire that was Café Babar. These writers and many more are featured in this exceptional collection of poetry.
Emerging Form: Richard Silberg in his introduction to The Babarians of San Francisco - Poets from Hell says, “As opposed to movements that have centered on magazines, a college, a writers group, the Babarians have forged their work in a performing space.” He goes on to say, “Barbarians focus on that performing voice. The Barbarian voice goes for personhood, somewhat like the voice of Bob Dylan’s lyrics, or a comedian’s voice, or the voice of a TV newsman. Emphasis is shifted from the page to performance. The poem on the page is more like a script or a score.” Berkeley Poet Laureate Julia Vinograd told me, “This period was an explosion of poetry and Café Babar was at its epicenter. The work was unlike anything that had been done before; we fed off each other. New things were being said in ways that were forceful, serious, and funny. The best of the young poets of their time read there along side total unknowns.”
The November 4, 1992 issue of the San Francisco Bay Guardian described the poets reading at Café Babar as, “The Best poets working in America today. The cradle of the American avant-garde tradition. Formed in the crucible of real economic despair & political threat. Poets of lowered expectations & political rage. Café Barbar is the symbolic crucible of the spoken-word scene where gather the keepers of the flame – the poets doing poetry before it caught the public eye.”
All the poems in collection were written to be heard and grasped quickly. They speak to the world in which the writer lived. Here was a tribe and a moment in time that personified what is best about poetry – raw, straight forward revelation. Emotional honesty delivered in a manner that demands attention.
Here are two short excerpts from The Barbarians of San Francisco. The first is from “I Was a Teenage Godzilla” by Vampyre Mike Kassel. “When I was ten / I was hit by a very small nuclear warhead / which slipped out of a torpedo tube / while my cub scout pack was visiting / the Navy submarine U.S.S. Caligula / on a field trip. / The incident was hushed up. / The other cubs perished / but I mutated into a Teenage Godzilla / just like in the movies. / Only I was still only five feet ten inches tall / Just a friendly li’l two legged radioactive Komodo dragon / It wasn’t so bad / My parents were pissed / but the government paid them off / and they just had to kind of live with it.” And another from Sparrow 13 LaughingWand entitled, “Larry Said”: “Oh the filthy chalice of his skull / blown apart in New York / Oh, his razorback heart and his lead sugar mouth, / Larry said his mother died in a house fire / while he was in the joint / Larry said it was political. / Larry told / the dumbest arrest story I ever heard / how he broke into a liquor store and got too drunk to escape. / The Nevada beauty of his tomcat ass could / scratch your eyes out. / Larry said he was an honest thief. / Larry said I wasn’t queer / because he love me. / Thanksgiving we had lentils under my tarp / in a storm at Davenport. / Larry wasn’t a queer / because I really wasn’t a man.”
They stood stripped naked before a crowd of true believers and had to sell it. They had to make it real, and they had to make it work or they were shouted down. Posers were persecuted at the Café Barbar.
Does Charles know any of the 32 poets in this anthology? Well really: he does not live in California to begin with, and if he spent all his time meeting other writers, when would he have time to write his own stuff? Give the guy a break, eh? You really are way too demanding!
Author: New American, copyright 2005. Alan Kernoff. Anthology issued by Trafford Press. Distributed by Zeitgeist-Press. (http://www.zeitgeist-press.com/) 323 Pages / Price: 23.00
TO ORDER GO TO: http://www.zeitgeist-press.com/
Context, talent and emerging form are the co-parents of art movements. When these three aspects of great art collide (as they seldom do) a child is conceived. A creative voice so unique in its character that when it is seen, heard, or read it guides the reader unmistakenly back to its place of origin.
As I read the thirty-two poets whose works comprise this expansive anthology entitled, New American Underground Poetry Vol. 1: The Barbarians of San Francisco - Poets from Hell, I welcomed the raw honest energy I found in these long narrative poems. I felt as if I was there with them, listening to them. They called themselves the Barbarians. Every Thursday night from the mid-late 80’s through about 1994, their home was a tiny wine and beer tavern located on twenty-second and Guerrero in the Mission District of San Francisco. For just under ten years it was the home of a perfect storm - a Thunder Dome in which spoken word poetry of high emotion, insight, and humor was delivered and refined. This excerpt from David Lerner’s, “Mein Kampf” addresses the objective of their collective efforts, “all I want to do / is make poetry famous // all I want to do is / burn my initials into the sun // all I want to do is / read poetry from the middle of a / burning building / standing in the fast lane of the / freeway / falling from the top of the / Empire State Building // the literary world / sucks dead dog dick //I’ll rather be Richard Speck / than Gary Snyder / I’d rather ride a rocket ship to hell / than a Volvo to Bolinas.” And indeed this desire to raise poetry above its lost status as a mainstream literary art colors many of the poems in this collection. These writers wrote and spoke words that could not be confused. They were metaphor lit and smash mouth rich.
Context: The back room at Cafe Babar. A tiny performance space of only about 30' x 30', with wood bleachers and corrugated aluminum siding stretched over the walls. At critical points, the poet could hit the walls and the entire small room would vibrate. Often, there were 75-100 people stuffed shoulder-to-shoulder, crowding the halls and every spare inch of space, hungry for what the poet could do. "The Babar crowd was pretty merciless," says Zietgeist Press Co-Founder and Café Babar regular, Bruce Isaacson. "There was no polite applause or lukewarm response. If they loved you, they let you know, and if they didn't, they really let you know: hoots, whistles, heckling. Even beer glasses would sometimes get tossed at the stage."
Talent: In the forward to this anthology, co-editor Alan Allen described the odd mix of tribal members to this scene, “The barbarian poets were broke. Won the west-coast slams but couldn’t afford the tickets to go East to compete. Lived only to write, to perform, to read. Many were without jobs (with notable exceptions), or disabled, or addicted, or worked in the sex industry. Most struggled to pay the rent, or eat well, wore thrift-shop clothes. IQ’s were the highest, hearts the biggest, poems what mattered most. Was all about feeling their voices, their words, their lines, their lives.” This collision of wild and diverse poets, writers, musicians, and performers created the ethos of that moment including: Laura Conway, Joie Cook, David West, Eli Coppola, David Gollub, Vampyre Mike Kassel, Kathleen Wood, Zoe Rosenfeld, Sparrow 13 LaughingWand, Q.R. Hand, Alan Kaufman, and numerous others who would go through the baptism of fire that was Café Babar. These writers and many more are featured in this exceptional collection of poetry.
Emerging Form: Richard Silberg in his introduction to The Babarians of San Francisco - Poets from Hell says, “As opposed to movements that have centered on magazines, a college, a writers group, the Babarians have forged their work in a performing space.” He goes on to say, “Barbarians focus on that performing voice. The Barbarian voice goes for personhood, somewhat like the voice of Bob Dylan’s lyrics, or a comedian’s voice, or the voice of a TV newsman. Emphasis is shifted from the page to performance. The poem on the page is more like a script or a score.” Berkeley Poet Laureate Julia Vinograd told me, “This period was an explosion of poetry and Café Babar was at its epicenter. The work was unlike anything that had been done before; we fed off each other. New things were being said in ways that were forceful, serious, and funny. The best of the young poets of their time read there along side total unknowns.”
The November 4, 1992 issue of the San Francisco Bay Guardian described the poets reading at Café Babar as, “The Best poets working in America today. The cradle of the American avant-garde tradition. Formed in the crucible of real economic despair & political threat. Poets of lowered expectations & political rage. Café Barbar is the symbolic crucible of the spoken-word scene where gather the keepers of the flame – the poets doing poetry before it caught the public eye.”
All the poems in collection were written to be heard and grasped quickly. They speak to the world in which the writer lived. Here was a tribe and a moment in time that personified what is best about poetry – raw, straight forward revelation. Emotional honesty delivered in a manner that demands attention.
Here are two short excerpts from The Barbarians of San Francisco. The first is from “I Was a Teenage Godzilla” by Vampyre Mike Kassel. “When I was ten / I was hit by a very small nuclear warhead / which slipped out of a torpedo tube / while my cub scout pack was visiting / the Navy submarine U.S.S. Caligula / on a field trip. / The incident was hushed up. / The other cubs perished / but I mutated into a Teenage Godzilla / just like in the movies. / Only I was still only five feet ten inches tall / Just a friendly li’l two legged radioactive Komodo dragon / It wasn’t so bad / My parents were pissed / but the government paid them off / and they just had to kind of live with it.” And another from Sparrow 13 LaughingWand entitled, “Larry Said”: “Oh the filthy chalice of his skull / blown apart in New York / Oh, his razorback heart and his lead sugar mouth, / Larry said his mother died in a house fire / while he was in the joint / Larry said it was political. / Larry told / the dumbest arrest story I ever heard / how he broke into a liquor store and got too drunk to escape. / The Nevada beauty of his tomcat ass could / scratch your eyes out. / Larry said he was an honest thief. / Larry said I wasn’t queer / because he love me. / Thanksgiving we had lentils under my tarp / in a storm at Davenport. / Larry wasn’t a queer / because I really wasn’t a man.”
They stood stripped naked before a crowd of true believers and had to sell it. They had to make it real, and they had to make it work or they were shouted down. Posers were persecuted at the Café Barbar.
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