Brian Fanelli

[REVIEW] strange theater, by John Amen

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strange

 

NYQ Books

112 pages, $14.95

 

Review by Brian Fanelli

 

In his essay “Litany, Game, and Representation,” poet Tony Hoagland says that American poetry is informed by “new tensions, new understanding, and new possibility.” He adds that American poetry currently has no preference for “narration, description, or confessions of the autobiographical self,” and poems of the “new poetry” shoot off in dozens of aesthetic directions. In many ways, John Amen’s latest book, strange theater, is very much of the “new poetry” that Hoagland defines. The collection contains different aesthetic directions, prefers the surreal over straightforward narrative, and though many of the poems are dedicated to people, the poems generally resist the confessional and autobiographical.

There were shades of the confessional in Amen’s previous collections, but strange theater relies more on strange and unusual images and poetic leaps of imagination. In the beginning of one poem, “yr opportunity,” there is an image in the opening stanza about scorpions crawling across someone’s palms on a Saturday and waltzing, dragging along violins. In another poem, “the son we never had,” there are hints of confessional narrative in the opening line, but the poem, like many in the book, turns to the uncanny and the surreal, perhaps as a way to address more complex issues or even memory.

the son we never had
crawls through our kitchen
linoleum cracking beneath his impatience

he studies us as we sleep
sifting through our trophies & urns
clutching his banister of space

he wanders the dim corridors
glimpsing a bedroom that might’ve been his
streaking invisible prints on panes & ledges

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[REVIEW] Breakable Things by Loren Kleinman

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Winter Goose Publishing

71 pages, $12

 

Review by Brian Fanelli

 

Loren Kleinman’s third collection of poems, Breakable Things, has more than one reference to Charles Bukowski, and similar to Bukowski’s work, Kleinman’s latest effort contains more than one poem about drunken revelry and sexual adventures. However, the poet pushes deeper, beyond poetry about wine and sex. Breakable Things draws a stark connection between love and violence, either mental or physical, while highlighting themes of loneliness, trauma, passion, and moving on from past relationships.

Immediately, the opening poem establishes the theme of loneliness and longing, which haunts much of the collection. In the book’s title poem, the author establishes surreal imagery and juxtaposes it with a speaker whose fragility is exposed by the closing stanza. In the opening stanza, the speaker states, “My kitchen/is the only thing that exists/one room/floating up/above New Jersey’s faults lines,” before confessing in the second to last stanza that she is alone, eating, smoking and drinking in the kitchen, “the only girl in the world/hiding in cabinets/next to breakable things.” Images about lights circling around the speaker and the ceiling acting as its own solar system make the reader feel as buzzed as the speaker. What grounds the poem, however, is the confession in the closing lines, the fact that even the alcohol isn’t enough to comfort the speaker. Continue reading →

[REVIEW] ALL That Remains, by Brian Fanelli

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Unbound Content
75 pages, $15.00

 

Review by Patricia Kinney

 

All That Remains might be Brian Fanelli’s first full-length collection of poems but this book is definitely not a B-side begging to be forgotten.  While the punk rhythms and mosh pits in some poems like “The Quiet Fan,” “Reunion,” and “Natural Cool” echo Fanelli’s chapbook, Front Man, (2011 / Big Table Publishing) this collection shows maturity in a voice that is looking back on lost ideals while embracing the future, both emotionally and economically.

All That Remains features characters with authentic voices in tight lines and rhythms that haunt like the lines in a Bob Dylan song.   You almost want to sing along with the sentiment in poems like “Ride Home, Rutgers, November,” as though the words belong on album liner notes:

His dustbowl growl
reminds me of cool
autumn nights we plucked LP’s
from milk crates,
listened
to the scratch of the needle against wax.
Now I drive
home
from her place
alone …

And yet, there is wisdom in these carefully crafted lines that you won’t gain from reading lyrics printed on cardboard.

Break-up poems easily turn sentimental in the hands of a less accomplished poet, but Fanelli handles the emotion with seamless rhythm:

… recall her words-
We should see other people–
and how I looked away,
focused
on the fat Oak tree center campus
its last few leaves
clinging
against the pull and push of winds
as forceful
as bursts of harmonica blues blasting
through my car’s stereo,
bringing me back to nights
at her apartment,
listening to Dylan snarl
over acoustic chords.

Fanelli is also politically savvy without preaching, calling attention to the burden of the blue-collar lifestyle, echoing Bruce Springsteen in poems like “After Working Hours.”  This poem about a couple meeting in the kitchen after a day’s work could be any U.S. laborer, with “her back hunched from years behind a counter” or “buzzsaws grinding down wood, hammers pounding nails.”  At the same time, there is a concreteness of image that makes us aware of this specific couple’s plight: “When they wake, they speak nothing / of his blistered fingers and swollen knuckles, / her headaches caused by nagging customers. / … She picks up the paper, then slips her hand over his, / feeling warmth beneath his callouses and cracked skin.” You can’t help but think of Springsteen’s “Thunder Road,” while reading and, like Springsteen, Fanelli gets down to the sheer grit at the core of these characters and creates a feeling of celebration with precise images and deliberately strong language.

Like a Dylan or Springsteen record deserves more than one spin, Brian Fanelli’s All That Remains is a book that deserves more than one read.  Rich in small town culture, this collection is filled with characters that have overcome the losses in life, but it doesn’t forget those who have not. It is down-to-earth and true to those often overlooked groups, the young idealists and the rural working class.  Fanelli’s lyrical rhythms whisper and howl, croon and screech, reminding us there will be repercussions for every loss.  At the same time, the collection leaves us with the extraordinary hope that it seems only music can bring.  For whenever the music stops and all that remains are the ghostly echoes of silence, there will always be the remnants of a song.

 

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Patricia Kinney is working on her Master’s degree in English/Creative Writing at the State University of New York in Binghamton and was recently accepted into the PhD program there.  Her poetry has appeared in Indigo Rising, Adanna, and Yes, Poetry.  She lives in rural Northeastern PA.

 

[REVIEW] Square Feet, by Lori A. May

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squarefeet_frontcover
Accents Publishing
65 pages, $12

 
Review by Brian Fanelli

After having met editor, essayist, book reviewer, lecturer and poet Lori A. May during my M.F.A. work at Wilkes University, I wondered how she managed to balance a successful writing life with her travels, which include year-round trips in various cities to guest lecture or teach workshops. So, when I learned of her new full-length book of poems, Square Feet, I was curious if her travels would be documented in the book. Instead of writing about life on the road, however, May’s latest collection is grounded in one particular place, the domestic home. Shifting from first to third person, and relying mostly on short narrative and lyric poems, May’s work hones in on a married couple and their struggles in maintaining a happy marriage.

The book opens with a few third-person poems that introduce readers to the wife and husband, specifically their desire to keep a good home and find happiness in the myths of the American Dream. In the opening poem, “Place Settings,” for instance, the reader learns how the wedding gifts gather dust, saved for “special occasions,” while the wife imagines celebrations, but “rarely cares to entertain.” Yet, she imagines meeting the right couple that will appreciate such fancy chinaware. The small details make the poem engaging, specifically the lines about the saucer cups sitting pretty, unused, which makes the reader question why the couple keeps all of the fancy silverware if it serves no purpose other than decoration. Continue reading →

[REVIEW] Riceland by CL Bledsoe

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riceland

Unbound Content
125 pp/ $16

Review by Brian Fanelli

Since the financial crash of 2008 and the recession that followed, much attention has been given to industrial cities like Scranton and Youngstown, places whose economic problems are exacerbated in hard times. In CL Bledsoe’s latest collection of poems, Riceland, the author draws attention to another part of America that extends beyond the rust belt—the American farmland, in particular the Arkansas farm where the poet was raised. Bledsoe’s latest effort is an odyssey through childhood and adolescence, and it is a fine study of working-class themes, family dynamics, and the loss of small, family-run farms.

We are introduced to the father of the family in the opening poem “Roaches,” when the speaker confesses that Dad “worked long hours/and stayed drunk,” while the son too knew the pains of farm labor because he “came in from the rice fields/too sweaty to sleep but too tired not to.” Among the conflicts in the house, including the father’s bouts with alcoholism and the mother’s disease, the son tries to find beauty, and in the case of the opening poem, he listens to nature, more specifically to roaches singing. The poem ends with the image of him crawling into bed, pressing his face against the wall, listening for the roach songs. This desire for beauty, for an escape from daily struggles, is a theme throughout much of the book, and Bledsoe lays it out well, as early as the opening pages. Continue reading →

Mantle by C.S. Carrier (A Review by Brian Fanelli)

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H_NGM_N Books

$12/ 82 pgs

 

As a poet who started out as a prose writer first, I’ve always been drawn to narrative poetry, work that is character driven and uses some of the tropes of fiction, while still elevating language as only poetry can. C.S. Carrier’s second full-length collection of poems, Mantle, is not work I am typically drawn to. However, as early as the first page and first poem, Carrier’s book grabbed my attention and didn’t let go until the final page. His lines are gorgeous and wild, his images surreal and sometimes deadpan, and his language a reminder of the energy a single poem can contain.

 

The book opens with the haunting poem “Back in the Day.” Here Carrier blends surrealism, history, and child memories all in a few short stanzas. In one stanza, the poem contains an image of a praying mantis with a Bible wedged in its mouth, and in another God, labeled as an absentee ballot, floats away “on a bowl of magma.” These lines are balanced with references to politics, including Tehran and Ronald Reagan. Other imagery is apocalyptic, even in the first stanza: “I climbed the oak in the yard/The oak began dying/Blood was fermenting in Iran.”  Though the poem’s bizarre images and references to childhood and politics make little sense at first, there is much to enjoy, especially the strange, juxtaposed images. Continue reading →

The New Arcana, by John Amen and Daniel Y. Harris (A Review by Brian Fanelli)

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NYQ Books

109 pages/$14.95

 

Too often, poetry is reduced to long-winded lectures in a classroom or pages in obscure literary journals. It’s rare to find poets willing to joke about what the process has become and the race within the academy to add more journal credits to one’s academic CV, but in their collaborative, mixed-genre collection, The New Arcana, John Amen and Daniel T. Harris offer a blazing satire of academia and a critique of the hyper-consumerism in American culture.

The New Arcana is broken into five sections and filled with absurd characters that had me laughing harder and harder after each turn of the page. The book mixes poetry, fiction, drama, and random photos that look like they were pasted from a Google search. The result is a hysterical satire that should be read by academics that take themselves too seriously.

My favorite section is the first, which features the characters Jughead Jones, Sadie Shorthand, Yolanda the Crone, Albert the Bore, and others. For the most part, Jughead and Sadie were the most memorable to me, especially since the first few pages highlight some of their ridiculous, pseudo-intellectual lines. On one page, Sadie says,”Mathematics is a thousand ladders to nowhere. Theology is a newborn sibyl cooling in the darkness.” Their actions remind me of hipster intellectuals I knew in college, trying to outsmart each other in dive bars or diners. Continue reading →

Water-Rites by Ann E. Michael (A Review by Brian Fanelli)

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Brick Road Poetry Press

112 pages

$15.95

 

 

Over the last few years, the world has faced multiple natural disasters caused by extreme weather and rising temperatures. This most recent summer, the United States suffered severe drought, the worst since 1956. Ann E. Michael’s collection of poems, Water-Rites, is a reminder to pay attention to our environment and how our actions impact it. Beyond that, her lyric poems focus on love, loss, grief, and a questioning of the universe, while also linking the memory of departed loved ones to nature.

Water-Rites is divided into three sections. The first deals with nature and sometimes childhood. The second deals with grief, and the third with redemption. One of the strongest poems in the first section is the book’s title poem, “Water-Rites.” Michael creates a speaker who feels guilty for taking long, hot showers, considering how such an act would be a luxury in other parts of the world.

I take my shower,

lean into water’s hot steam

too many minutes

lathered in steam, guilty skin,

greedy pores

knowing the well empties

and the earth’s in drought.

The poem also address turmoil in the Middle East, often caused by oil, which Michael also links to water, writing, “Oil will get you water/water will buy you oil/Barrels and tanks/tanks and barrels/each has meaning/for water and warfare.” Continue reading →

American Poet by Jeff Vande Zande (A Review by Brian Fanelli)

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Bottom Dog Press

160 pages, $18

 

American Poet is a novel filled with scenes that are all too familiar to anyone involved in a local poetry community. Jeff Vande Zande successfully depicts awkward open mic nights, workshops, and competitive M.F.A. programs that sometimes breed more big egos than community, but by the conclusion of his book, he reminds readers how much of a communal force poetry can be and how it can revitalize struggling towns.

Set in Saginaw, Michigan, the novel centers around Denver Hoptner, a recent college grad struggling to find his place in the world after graduating with a B.F.A. in poetry. Early on in the novel, Hoptner floats from job interview to job interview, and one of the novel’s funniest scenes occurs when he interviews for a job as a bank teller. During the interview, the manager comments, “For a lot of people, that poetry stuff is going to be a head scratcher,” before adding, “It doesn’t even sound like a real degree.”

The manager’s comments follow an even more awkward moment when the protagonist explains to the employer how he took a course in scansion and then bumbles through an explanation of the term. Even Denver’s father, a former plant worker who knows a thing or two about hard work, once asked his son, “Poetry? What the hell kind of job you going to be able to get with a degree like that?” The father’s comments will hit home for any poet with an indifferent family, and they remind me of comments my own mother made when I told her I planned to obtain an M.F.A. in poetry. She immediately asked if there was any money in that.

Another humorous scene describes an open mic night gone wrong. Eager to build a stronger poetry scene in his community, Denver launches an open mic series. Set in a local coffee shop, the reading includes all types of characters, including a writer who insists on going by the name Coyote and howling after every poem. At one point, Denver comments, “The whole place was becoming a wildlife preserve before my eyes.”The writers also have to compete with noisy coffee machines in the background, and Denver’s time as an open mic host comes to an abrupt end after he scolds the coffee shop’s manager for using the espresso machine as a shy writer named Heywood takes the stage and attempts to share his poem.

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Sweet Nothing by Nate Pritts (A Review by Brian Fanelli)

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Lowbrow Press

107 pages, $13

 American poet and critic Ezra Pound once described a poetic image as something that should capture an emotional and intellectual complex in an instant of time. Nate Pritts’ latest collection of poems, Sweet Nothing, is filled with images that do just that, while also capturing the beauty of the everyday, including the feel of the sun in one’s hair or its reflection on a lover’s shoulders. His latest work is also a celebration of language itself and trying to find the right words to capture wonderful, but often fleeting moments.

Pritts’ collection covers a sweeping range of emotions, including longing, love, and even frustration, but as a whole, the poems remind the reader to appreciate the everyday and the small moments that we sometimes take for granted. In the poem “What it Means to be in Transit,” he writes, “I see the street from bird level because I like to feel/the sun in my hair/because this is temporary this moment/this is my time & now/it is gone already.”

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