Reviewed:
Euclid Creek - Michael Ceraolo
ghost on the road - John Clarke
Outspoken! - Sara Holbrook and Michael Salinger
Euclid Creek
Michael Ceraolo
Deep Cleveland Press, 2006
$10, plus $2 shipping & handling
Other news… Michael Ceraolo’s much anticipated Euclid Creek is now available from Deep Cleveland Press:
This 130-page epic poem traces the origins of Euclid Creek and proceeds to illuminate hundreds of years of Northeast Ohio history as it meanders like the flow of water through people, places and events that have shaped the destiny of the land that we call home. A must read for denizens of the Western Reserve.
Here are some excerpts I published on thecitypoetry.com:
I'm hardly an unbiased reviewer, having had a relationship with the author. What attracted me to Mike was his seriousness in attacking poetry. He has been published--probably over 300 times--by various poetry journals all over the world. He commits hours every week to research. I had the pleasure of watching Mike compose new poems which over time were added to the epic of Euclid Creek, a gigantic organic growing thing.
The material is really a holistic history of Cleveland, not just of Euclid Creek. The creek is the hinge on which he lays the story of Cleveland. I think Euclid Creek is the most important historical account of Cleveland in poetic form.
The epic is a vehicle for Mike's passion for the plight of the working class and his rage against gilded class ruthlessness. There are also quick glimpses into his life, like beams of sunlight punching tree cover, and conscientious passages about nature and animals and Native Americans. One of my favorite passages for its preciousness and poignancy:
The Uneasy Co-Existence
The four-, six-, and eight-legged crawling and flying people
and the finned and flippered swimming people
greatly outnumber and outvote me
here as they do everywhere
But theirs is no tyranny of the majority,
for they are respectful of minority rights
And it would surely be a sacrilege
for a non-oppressed minority
to attempt a coup by trying to impose
the doctrine of might makes right
And so they and I have entered
into a non-aggression pact
But outside the park there remains
the uneasy co-existence with the two-legged people:
the crows,
with the ancestral memories of the forest
encoded in their genes,
waiting by the side of the freeway
for the rush hours to end
so that they can feast on the squirrel
who played chicken
with the cars
and lost;
and the groundhog,
celebrated one day of the year,
ignored or reviled the rest of the year,
lying squashed
at the edge of the road;
and a rabbit,
who has escaped from that green cage we call a park
and wandered into someone's backyard,
where it sits sucking nourishment
through the stem of a dandelion
as though sipping through a straw,
thankful that no one has put poison on the plant;
and a different rabbit,
or maybe the same one,
hopping frenetically,
with only its tail visible
as the swirling late-season snow
falls to its doom,
giving the illusion of a moving snowball
as it struggles to find food;
and a raccoon,
poisoned
for having the audacity
to eat what the humans
didn't even want any more;
and bees and wasps and hornets,
exterminated
for attacking those
who tried to destroy their homes;
the robin
lying belly up
in the driveway,
having sampled
the seed stuck
in the spilled oil;
and another bird,
despondent over the destruction of its home
in the name of development,
committing suicide by a kamikaze dive
into the grille of a moving car;
and the homeless skunk,
driven into the diurnal world
by the breaking of its biological clock,
wandering with the eyes of an unmedicated schizophrenic,
finally lying down,
seizing,
and dying; ~
Lady K
ghost on the road: new & selected poems
John Clarke
tall-lighthouse, 2006
£7, postage free worldwide
We met John our first time in London where we read with him at Cabaret Poetica, and he and Kathy read at Jazz at the Am. I'm glad we heard him live because John doesn't read, he performs - preferably in collaboration with a live jazz band. Now when I read his words, I hear in my head his rhythmic, repeated vocal cadences.
John's church is Jazz, his minister Jack Kerouac, his acolytes Charlie Parker, Bird, Dizzy Gillespie, John Coltrane, with Jimmy Smith on organ. Clarke's poems weave the riffed runs of Jazz and Beat jive into his basic message of "to be or not to bop."
This 63 page collection consists of 47 poems gathered into four sections: Jazz, Flipside, Spontaneous Combustion, and Sensitive Areas.
My personal favorites are "Dizzy Happening" (to be or not to bop), "Revelation Blues" (you've done it all, seen it all / couldn't go back if you tried), "Visions of Kerouac" (face of America trying to make sense / of everything that has happened), and for its title alone there's "Tichnoch, Cabinteely, Poulaphuca" (three Irish towns his father used to use as a mantra). He ends the book with this short succinct poem:
Reading Bukowski
twenty poems to go
but I still want to turn
back to the beginning
in case I've missed
something bitterly
crucial,
before the rain spreads in
throughout
the country
and the music on the radio
turns sour
I've read the collection three times, enjoying it more each time.
This is John's first full collection following the success of Traveling Without Arriving (2001) and jazz & other religions (2002) both also published by tall-lighthouse.
ghost on the road sells for 7 pounds, which translates to 10.43 Euros, or $13.75 US. Contact www.tall-lighthouse.co.uk for order information.
Steven B. Smith
Outspoken! How to Improve Writing and Speaking Skills Through Poetry Performance
Sara Holbrook and Michael Salinger
Heinemann, 2006
$24.50
Sara Holbrook and Michael Salinger left a copy of their new book with us: Outspoken! How to Improve Writing and Speaking Skills Through Poetry Performance. Initially, we planned to read the book and then donate it to the local library. It's difficult to for us to keep books. We carry all our possessions on our back when we move from temporary home to temporary home. But we're keeping this book.
Outspoken! is written for teachers of students in the sixth grade and above. Yet it is a solid resource for anyone who wishes to hone creative writing and public speaking skills. There are tips on voice projection and how to use a microphone. And importantly, how to hold the attention of an audience through use of appropriate tone and gesture.
A common thought is that writing ability comes from divine inspiration or is innate, a tool of the inscrutable few. But Outspoken! encourages everyone to express themselves creatively. Its exercises demonstrate motley, varied approaches for creating robust poems. Irreverent tidbits throughout the book maintain the tone. It's an easy, stimulating read:
You know that gook that is left in the bottom of the pan when you walk away from the stove and burn the soup? That's poetry. To get to the gook, you have to boil the excess words out of a piece of writing.
Michael: I like to tell kids that prose is a pitcher of Kool-Aid--poetry is the powder.
Sara: I like the gook. Basically, there are two ways to approach this rendering process:
- slash and burn
- pick and prioritize
Salinger and Holbrook are nationally recognized slam poets. They teach performance poetry workshops for teachers, fellow poets and students. The material in Outspoken! benefits from their teaching and performance experience.
Lady K