Otherwise Elsewhere. . . The title is like reading an implied question. Filled with unwavering eyes, the cover art is abstract enough that you want to open it, if only because it feels like you are being stared at and are not sure what to expect. Or maybe because after staring back at the title (which is scrawled so diagonal across the cover, at first glance you may not even be sure if you read it right), you are thinking ‘where then?’ and ‘otherwise what?’ and hope you will get an answer.

“Otherwise elsewhere ? someone somewhere other than here ? the stable-hand for an equestrian team or the bodhisattva stretched out by the river or the sleepwalking knife-thrower. . .” ?pg 3

Whimsically reminiscent: the poems inside feel like a summer carnival. They highlight the simplicity of emotion as they tap into innocence, vulnerability, and certain strangeness. Poet David Rivard?s thoughts ride like waves of continuous prose that loop from the depths, to the shallow with considerable ease. He takes images we know well and splices them with philosophical meanderings to create something tactile.

In “Plural Happiness,” Rivard amplifies a peaceful summer day with description of curtains billowing and a dinner of peat-smoked scotch, fresh berries, cheese and baguette, and reflects on the accidental nature of happiness. “The Same Bourgeois Magic Wherever the Mailtrain Sets You Down” analyzes the idea of money, challenges those who don?t think it?s important, and questions us to think about why it is. The most masterful piece, titled “Forehead” is a love poem, which in a way denies itself as being a love poem by focusing on the safe closeness that is shared between two people, and not some idealized perfection.

Rivard?s poetry doesn?t attempt to answer life?s questions, instead it seems to pose its own and answer only that Otherwise Elsewhere is anywhere you want to be, whether it is reminiscing about childhood, analyzing religion and politics, or just sitting outside, scotch in hand, enjoying the moment exactly how it is.

Repetition, alliteration, personification, and a certain amount of attention deficit disorder flow through Steve Healey's newest book of poems 10 Mississippi. And like the uncertain river that flows through our Twin Cities, Healey's poems don't even contemplate being lulling and smooth. They are a jumpy, choppy, force of words.

Elements in combat would be an apt description of these pieces and the water element is certainly a heavy weight. Dead bodies found in the river, holding one's breath underwater, ice cubes, fire hydrants and rain showers fill the pages. 10 Mississippi exposes us to the full, sometimes brutal, force of water.

“My feet are wearing green shoes, and when I walk, the grass grows…except that I'm a liar, in fact the grass is dying. It hasn't rained in weeks.”
- pg 50 “Green Shoes”

There is a playful nature to Healey's writing. Many poems begin with a concept that is instantly relatable to the reader. A game of 'rock, paper, scissors' starts a poem called “New Fighting Technologies.” 'Hide-n-Seek' is the intro to “7 Mississippi,” and the common tongue-twister 'She sells seashells by the seashore' welcomes us to a poem called “Intelligent Design.” This last piece also stands out for its focus on alliteration and sound repetition.

Protected by SPF 30 sunscreen, she sells the idea of having sex with centuries of salty seafarers, not the sex itself but the secret saltiness that causes shoppers to salivate.”
- pg 18 “Intelligent Design”

Personification is present in Healey's pieces and some of it is confounding. In the poem “Slow Emergency,” he writes, “She would not become a telephone while another firepit death occurs” and readers may ponder, why is the focus on the phone, or becoming a poem, when the emphasis should be on the man that just jumped into the firepit. At the same time, it makes us ponder at the characters. Healey may be pushing the dispassion of the human element or he may like the way the words present a certain incongruity. In either case, it is quite interesting.

The book, itself, seems to have a lack of organization to the chapters which are littered with too many quotes that don't really seem to enhance, as much as they detract. And while there's no fault with the cover, it would have been interesting to see an old fashioned pinafore sitting next to a shimmering pool with a shadowy figure at the bottom in reference to Healey's “While I Held My Breath Underwater” or a collage of headline clippings about bodies pulled from the Mississippi, as alluded to in many of his numbered “Mississippi” poems.

10 Mississippi is a unique group of poems that are both elemental and political. Healey has written a solid book of poetry.

Under the idyllic and pastoral cover, The Stranger Manual by Catie Rosemurgy is a creepy little book of poems. It juxtaposes the realities of grotesque and pretty: of comic and disturbing. While this seems alarming, it may not be a bad thing. Miss Peach, an ever-appearing character in the verses, is as compelling as Miss Havisham, and just as eccentric.

I had time to consider the ever-so-slightly corrupt taste of your freshly cleaned armpits.
I was always feverish to pry the full smell of you back open. Perhaps stink,
in our antiseptic culture.”
pg 48

The idea of transformation is a binding factor. Along with the many personas of Miss Peach, Rosemurgy also taps into the natural environment with its many-changing seasons.

A man looks good pushing against the air
and is a winter fruit.
A woman looks good rounding out the flat light
and is a summer fruit. Goodbye and hello
to all I haven't eaten.”
pg 8

Rosemurgy presents us with an intoxicating book of poems that asks the reader 'Who is Miss Peach?' This question will drive you crazy, because she is everybody and nobody. The times when Miss Peach is not on the page, the reader can't help but wonder what she is up to next.

The main problem is when someone looks at her:
it's like being born and then born and then born
but never being able to take her first breath.
She asked if I was committed to my current system of breathing.”
pg 17

The pieces have a youthful, just-finished-college tarnish to them. Try as Rosemurgy might to be dismal and introspective, there is an untapped, naďve, enthusiasm that won't let her get too deep and this creates some interesting pieces. These poems are wacked out and brimming with energy. The Stranger Manual gives us fair warning of the truly twisted personalities out there, especially Miss Peach.

Greg Hewett's new book of poems, darkacre, dabbles in property law as well as the physical and abstract definitions surrounding it. The poetry collection’s name is a play on the legal term 'blackacre' which simply defines one property from another, 'whiteacre', for contracts and legal proceedings. Hewett takes this from law to literary, with poems that carry titles like “redacre,” “grayacre,” and “greenacre.”

darkacre conveys deed to whiteacre
at the boundary where snow falls
(or is it petals? ash?)”
-pg 14

The styles of poetry vary wildly throughout the book and this is due to the inclusion of work from five artist books that Hewett collaborated on. Though there are differences, the author has the lucky binding factor of repetition. Recurring imagery produces cohesion and in some ways, it feels like a diary charting Hewett's styles and experimentations. Unfortunately, this does lend the book a certain weakness, because it implies lack of vision and can give the reader a distinct impression of inexperience.

The major strength of this book is the alliteration. Hewett builds words on top of words, as he goes, producing unexpected combinations like 'violent violet' and pairing 'iridescent' next to 'incandescent' and 'mute' just prior to 'modulating'. Every aspect of each poem is wrapped in sounds: vowels and consonants precisely chosen to create a melody while you read them.
Some sections really shine; including a group of poems entitled “The Yam Complex (Between Time and History)”.

Fate has dropped me without wings.
Here I am miniature yet more
Than public, can never get lost or lose
Myself on the treeless ellipse
Between freeway and cathedral.”
-pg 40

Hewett's section called “Cameos” is very well suited for a special printing, but doesn't extend itself as well for paperback form. “Mannahatta;” however, holds up quite well and has a disturbing, voyeuristic nature.

she serves them
touching the cheek of the one
offering cascades of something
like laughter …
_______________________
Their friendship had taken a turn in
Tribeca only one of them was aware of.”
-pg 85

Greg Hewett gives us a book of smartly written poetry. darkacre has a trace of apprehension and a smack of doomsday between its memory-laden pages. Reading it may give you something to think about.

Unincorporated Persons in the Late Honda Dynasty is a colorful and contradictory view of America. The poems are a filled with musings on the century we are living in and the dynamics of love and life.

Tony Hoagland's verses seem to ask if we are just bold adventurers claiming a new democratic royalty or is our empire full of rust spots and loud mufflers as is cruises through a country covered in peeling billboards and half-drunk soda cans and is there any difference?

I too am made of joists and stanchions,
of plasterboard and temperamental steel,
mortgage payments and severed index fingers,
ex-girlfriends and secret Kool-Aid-flavored dawns.”
-pg 76

There is nice coherence to this book of poetry. Intended or not, the table of contents even reads like a list poem, where each title conveys a conversation of emotions set in stanzas. This book has unique potential, from the catchy title to the spirited verses.

Still, there is awkwardness in Hoagland's prose. It isn't clumsy in language or structure, but in its ability to express. Using broad phrases like “for a while the problem got very clear, and the clarity constituted a kind of relief, as if the problem had withdrawn. . . But after a while the clarity began to fade” which don't actually say much of anything are a major hazard. Something is missing in this vagueness and it feels like we are left out of a secret joke known only to the writer, making it hard for the reader to fully commit to the work and get lost in the poet's world.

Another detractor is when the author addresses the poem directly, as in the following bits: “they are excited to be entering the poem” and “I wanted to get the cement truck into the poem” or “I liked the idea of my poem having room inside.” This self-praising just feels unnecessary.

That being said, there are still some excellent politically-charged pieces as Hoagland taps into our ironically humorous life. In one poem, he aptly uses the well-known identity of Brittney Spears to expand on society's misconceptions and subjugations.

Oh my adorable little monkey
prancing for your candy
with one of my voices I shout, 'Jump, jump, you little whore!'
With another I say,
in a quiet way that turns down the lights,
'Put on some clothes and go home, Sweetheart.'”
-pg 20

Unincorporated Persons in the Late Honda Dynasty is an introspective look at ourselves and the country we live in. Hoagland's home-spun soliloquies on American life are both clever and pensive.

In college I had a poetry writing professor who was famous by her own right, but the sister of a far more famous writer. Our assignment was to find a collection of poetry, read it, learn a bit about the writer, analyze the work, and then present our findings. I hopped down the street to the neighborhood indie book store, and plopped down on the floor in front of a relatively small poetry section.

One of those artsy fartsy booksellers interrupted me and asked if he could help me find something. I told him I needed a book of poetry by a female writer, current, something that made sense and wasn’t a mix of code and hubris, less rhyme, more narrative.

I like to imagine he scratched his scraggly beard:

“Hmm …,” he said. “A contemporary female prose poet who is non-esoteric.”

He couldn’t help me. (I ended up with Little Girls in Church by Kathleen Norris, which to this day contains one of my favorite poems “Young Lovers with Pizza.”) But with a single scratch of his beard and the word “non-esoteric” this lit head had soured me on poetry. Until that day, I thought I might become a poet.

Turns out I was looking for Billy Collins. Not so much female, of course, but definitely non-esoteric, contemporary. I don’t read a ton of poetry these days, but when I do it is his. (Or Bukowski, or Simic, I suppose). He could almost be classified as a comedian, penning mini Laffy Taffy lines. He is a total treat, taking short stories about usable objects, scraping off the fat, and leaving behind something simple and funny. In the collection Ballistics more than I remember in his other books, he is very self-referential. He becomes a character in his own words, his poem becomes the subject of the same poem, he stops a piece in the middle to address the reader. The effect is totally charming. More often than not, I chuckled at the last line and then dog-eared the page.

In “Quiet” he says: “It occurred to me around dusk after I had lit three candles and was pouring myself a glass of wine that I had not uttered a word to a soul all day.”

In a super-short piece called “Divorce,” he writes: “Once two spoons in a bed, now tined forks across a granite table and the knives they had hired.”

The title poem, “Ballistics,” is about seeing a photograph of a bullet piercing the pages of a book.

I forgot all about the marvels of photography
and began to wonder which book
the photographer had selected for the shot.”

Raymond Chandler? A history of Scottish Lighthouses, a biography of Joan of Arc, an anthology of medieval literature? He wonders.

But later, as I was drifting off to sleep,
I realized that the executed book
was a recent collection of poems
by someone of whom I was not fond
and that bullet must have passed through
his writing with little resistance
at twenty-eight hundred feet per second,
through the poems about his childhood
and the ones about the dreary state of the world,
and then through the author’s photograph,
through the beard, the round glasses,
and that special poet’s hat he loves to wear.”

Oh, snap, Collins.

Like a CSI television drama, Find the Girl captures our full attention. The poems deal with the death of and lurking danger to girls and young women.

Author, Lightsey Darst's verses urge the reader to tap into the days of innocence when running through fields was brave exploration and lips were stained red by Kool-Aid, not beauty products. Here words seem to proclaim 'we are not too fragile to survive' as they give hope and warning, simultaneously.

Find the girl in time and she doesn't  
wind up in the newspaper with her feet
Photographed bare sticking out from under
a rhododendron bush.
It's real, the bad men who know already
where they would hide the body crouch
In shrubs under her bedroom window
while she talks on the phone.”
-pg 20

Fairy-tale prose blends vivid botanical images with not-so-happy endings. Darst pulls from ancient mythology, children's characters like Gretel and Snow White, and alludes to culturally significant events like the Jon Benet murder and Jack the Ripper to create verses as potent as a poisoned apple. Her contemporary poetry is a string of descriptive narrative told through the eyes of a coroner, or the victim. Some pieces don't feel quite complete and many have a gleaned-from-TV quality, but together they convey a powerful theme.

You will be someone's tragic summer, lovesick
moan as the screen door slams again and June bugs
strike it with confused ardor.”
-pg 22

Darst's writing may make us feel uncomfortable because it taps into the emotions of danger, sexual assault, and murder. Whether or not it exploits the horrors of these brutal events is for each reader to decide. What it does is bring issues a lot closer than a missing person's billboard or a picture on the back of a milk carton, and that is a rare skill. Find the Girl is empowering in a brutal way. Read it and you will find the pages turning, as if on their own volition.

Upcoming Lightsey Darst Events
7 p.m. Wednesday, March 25
Coffman Union Theater: 300 Washington Avenue Southeast Minneapolis, MN
with Laura Flynn, Peter Bognanni, Michael Medrano, and Michael Walsh

7.p.m. Wednesday, April 14
Bryant-Lake Bowl: 810 West Lake Street Minneapolis, MN
Launch party for Find the Girl

7:30 p.m. Friday, April 30
Normandale Community College: 9700 France Avenue South Bloomington, MN
As part of the Great Twin Cities Poetry Read

Jazz music, sassy aunts, and sweet home-cooking are nostalgically portrayed in Philip S. Bryant's memoir, Stompin' At The Grand Terrace.

Technically a book of poetry, Stompin' also contains prose, photos, an extensive jazz who's who, and even a CD of music by Carolyn Wilkins. Bryant's way of storytelling may even inspire you to pick up a jazz record of your own, listen to music filter from those dark grooves, and think about the possibilities of life.

Philip S. Bryant & Carolyn Wilkins perform
7 p.m. Fri. Oct. 9
Loft Literary Center
1011 Washington Ave. S., Minneapolis, MN, 55415

Dizzy, Hancock, Parker, and Armstrong, and others may have inspired the poems, but Aunt Janey, Preston, and family life take center stage and shape the narrative. The first section, titled the same as the book, is all about the relationship Bryant's dad has with his friend Preston.

Preston removed
the album's cellophane wrapper.
A bright gem?
A dark, precious sapphire?
He held the unplayed
shiny black diamond
disc carefully between
the palms of his hands.”
-pg 53

Both men live different lives, but become inspired and animate in the presence of good jazz record and a cold beer. Bryant learns about jazz as he listens to them talk, and learns the ins and outs of how to be a man.
Section two, “Stompin' With Aunt Janey”, is a soul pleaser. Filled with personality and attitude, the main focus, again, is family. There is very little about jazz, but the poems are high-quality and will make you smile.

Janey and my grandmother were in low tones again.
'That baby is ugly.'
'Yes, he is rather homely.'
'And no one knows who the first father is?'
'Uhmmmmmm, huh!'”
-pg 76

The final section is titled “Stompin' at The Corner Lounge: 75th & King Drive and Beyond”. The poems are a delightful hodge-podge of good-byes to great jazz artists, poems with personal dedications, and even Minnesota-inspired pieces like, “St. Peter, Minnesota: Barry Harris”, “Birth of the Cool: Minnesota”, and “Poinciana”.

The wind is raw, drowsy
as a muzzle trombone
groaning next to a
sweet, unsuspecting piccolo-
but that is the
music of jazz!”
-pg 100

Bryant has a very conversational tone that is suited to his writing and with every turn of the page you feel like you grew up right alongside him. Whatever your background, this memoir will touch a nerve. Even so, it is definitively geared towards jazz lovers and music enthusiasts. No jazz library would be complete without Stompin' At The Grand Terrace.

Unrest is an edgy social commentary that expertly blends nature with the chaos of human life. Poet and Master Gardener, Joanna Rawson can look into the fury of a garden with all its encroaching weeds, buzzing wasps, and bold blooms and find a connection to almost anything.

Joanna Rawson Reading
7:30 p.m.
Friday, September 11
Common Good Books, 165 Western Ave North Ste 14, St. Paul MN 55102

The poems are filled with brutal emotion and a starkness that can be beautiful. The stand-out piece “Kill-Box” deals with Mexican immigrants hoping to find a better life across the border, but instead coming to a fatal end in the careless hands of a coyote. Rawson flashes scenes of what their death may have been like and mingles them with the wild sanctuary that exists in a run-down garden landscape.

One reason for bothering at all is fireflies, which defibrillate the wrecked shrubs and rise from the understory like turbo-candles, in flames.”
- pg 13

Each verse in Unrest demands to be read more than once and while praise for the enormity of subjects like the smuggling of illegal immigrants, suicide bombers, and war is justified, poems like “Wind Camp”, “Doorway, with Citizen”, and “Accordingly” give us refreshing views of mundane life.

She studies the grain of the wood. Notes its flaws.
The behind is closed, the ahead is not yet opened – at this moment, just a short while into the fray, she's free of any consequence.
Of course it's summer.”
- pg 49

One poem that faltered was “Four Seasons Read The Cloud of Unknowing to One Landscape”. There is an uncharacteristic preachy tone to it and sections that seem a little outside Rawson's comfort zone, but when she pulls back to her natural style there are some superb verses. For example, page 26 gives us these two lyrical phrases: “…the pulse mimics crickets, until the chain-lightning stops their circulation of iambic song here in this crook of quartz-fraught rocks,” and “…hear the rats at the roots of the wild beets in the ditch, and the soft crushing of box turtles on the warm tar in far-off traffic…”

Vivid, nature-aided description is what makes Rawson's poetry so potent. Unrest is bound to shake your perception and that is exactly the intent.

Let me start out by saying that I am no expert on poetry. The following review is based not on the formal structure of a poem, or what poetry should or shouldn’t be, but based strictly on my love for the written word. Friends of mine would tell you that I’ve never been a huge fan of poetry. Most of it I don’t understand, and if I I do get it . . . well, how good can it be? Doesn’t poetry have to rhyme? (kidding) Actually, friends who know me quite well are aware that I have been expanding my horizons as of late – reading and listening to more poetry. Some I’ve been impressed with. Most of it – eh. Then a friend of mine sent me Girls with Red Hair on Cherry Cadillacs with Bushido Swords by VictoriaSelene Skye-Deme. Just the title told me this was not going to be any ordinary book. The cover alone looks like it could be an advertisement for a Quentin Tarantino movie (a cross between “Kill Bill” and “Grindhouse”).

“For my beautiful women who rise from the gutter into diamond escapades every single day of their lives, who surmount every obstacle and crush every stereotype into fine powder wisps and out of the ash reshape the world’s expectations into their own brand of fire.” And that’s just the first part of the dedication. From there, I knew this book was going to be something special.

This is poetry that I have never experienced before. Skye-Deme’s words come out as raw emotion torn from her soul. And unless you have no feeling at all, it will blast into yours like a cannon shot. Most of the poems are autobiographical with fantasy thrown in (at least that’s the sense I got). It opens with “Gutter Girls,” a creative little revenge piece to a man who shouldn’ta oughta done what he done.

. . . and slowly worked him in between the bars of her hard soul until he came to the conclusion that her dazzling smile had nothing to do with sex and everything to do with humiliation . . .” p.9

Harlan Ellison drained me emotionally with his short story “The Whimper of Whipped Dogs.” Skye-Deme did the same with her poem, “This is How the Horses Scream.” I actually had to put the book down for a couple minutes after reading that one. That, and “You Created Women Like Us – Then You Bitch About Women Like Us” are two incredibly gut-wrenching poems.

Interlaced throughout the book VictoriaSelene throws in snippets of her life. She had a childhood that no child should ever have to endure. Between sickness and abuse it’s amazing that she’s alive today (she actually did die at one point and was brought back). The abuse that she had to deal with was horrific. And like so many abuse victims she tells it from an outsider’s point of view, looking in. There is no sense at all of ‘oh woe is me.’ Totally opposite of her poetry, it’s told very matter-of-fact with an emotionless voice (the contrast works amazingly well). And like so many children of abuse, that pattern followed her into adulthood. Many of the poems document the anger and violence she experienced. She writes about her own anger and hate toward the violence from men (emotional and physical), and finally fighting back to break that cycle. Please, don’t get the feeling that I think Skye-Deme is anti-men. Not true. I believe that she hates injustice of any kind, and no matter the gender. There’s a wonderful snippet of a random act of kindness that I dare you not to smile at the end. There are also a number of poems of love and hope, like “Daughters” and “You Feel Like Silk to Me” among many others.

“Girls with Red Hair on Cherry Cadillacs with Bushido Swords” is a book that needs to be savored. I read it way too fast the first time. I am now reading it again, slowly, and already getting so much more out of each poem. If this is what poetry has been, I’ve really missed out and have a lot of catching up to do. But I have a feeling that this is cutting edge and is going to lead the way to a new era.

A small passage from the poem “Welcome to this Book of Me”

. . . and let me eat the book of you
as I feed you mine.” p.75