Upon Reading "Doing Cartwheels On Doomsday Afternoon" - A Review Of John Yamrus
by Diana Rose
From the Introduction of John Yamrus' book " New and Selected Poems" by Lummox Press; written by the late Todd Moore: "John Yamrus gambles with an all or nothing gesture to make the poem and the language bis own. Yamrus has somehow invented a stripped bare language ."
Bukowski's property
this poem
isn't mine these
thoughts aren't
mine these
sentences aren't
mine these
cadences
aren't
mine these
lines aren't
mine.
nothing
i do
or think
or write
is mine.
it's all filtered down
though you
Mr. Bukowski...
and i wish
you'd
come here
and
take it back.
In the Introduction to : " Doing Cartwheels on Doomsday Afternoon" the intro by Rob Plath says: "john Yamrus , as a poet, is like a skeet shooter that hits the clay pigeon no matter what the speed, angle or trajectory; in poem after poem, his sharp mind nails its target every time".
the failed poet
talks
a good game.
she says
her poems
are only about
positive things
encouraging people
uplifting them.
she says
anything else
is a waste
of god's
gift
personally,
i like my poems
with a bit more grit
and guts.
i tend to
see the dirt
before the sky.
To me these are John's finest pieces of poetry from these volumes. He is simple; yet in this simplicity the reader finds a brevity of wit that smacks you between the eyes and feels free enough to keep on walking. When I opened Doing Cartwheels on Doomsday Afternoon , I read to the end in one sitting, then began rereading. His words get in your head..you cant stop with one poem that simply won't do. Iit is like a bag of your favorite flavor of potato chips or that first beer on Friday night after a damn hard week. You sink in to this book and devour it, you savor it. You sit back and wonder... why haven't I written that before? Much like John ponders inBukowski's Property I wish he'd take back these words.. which isn't possible. John has published 20 books to date, been published in several languages including Romanian, and had thousands of pieces published in Reviews and Journals world wide.
Who would have thought that having the title the first line in the poem? It is a simple thing, but how does he do it?
they're winning you know...
their forced
fake
academic poetry
is slowly winning the day...
not because it;s better...
because
its safe.
it gives them a formula
to work with...
a rack
to hang their
thoughtless
thoughts on.
~~~~~
contrary
to
popular opinion
the
internet
has ruined
poetry
for
the world.
it has
fooled
too many
people
into
thinking
they
can do
this.
Take these thoughts and freeze frame them in your brain, Now turn around, look in your notebooks, your yellow legal pad, your computer backed up files of all your poetry you have written in the last twenty years. Look at the poetry you thought was meaningful and took forty stanzas of rhyme to get to the point. Whitman , Keats , Yeats all had their day, T. S Elliot may have had that Nobel Prize winning Wasteland, but he had his friend Ezra Pound to edit and make sense of it all, John is a man's man poet, one who you can see sitting every day with his dog as he writes poem after poem that resonates and stays with you long after you have closed the book and turned off the light for the night., He doesn't have to be told to " GET TO WORK" by publishers, and if you are interviewing him and you bothered to read his books you would know he is waiting for the person to ask why he writes about dogs so much. You would hear the comments from his readers .. on how he vivisects ( really was that a word) flash fiction.
You would hear about his trip to Mexico, and meeting blonds that look like the moll from Scarface. All in a poem.. all in less than a page, but you feel that you have read a book the length of the Grapes of Wrath, and there was more that needed to be read.
so, here i sit
going through my stack of poems,
trying to come up with
22 minutes of magic.
~~~~~
Well Mr Yamrus,
It is safe to say
your poetry
if stacked side by side
page by page
might make it to the moon.
We could take a
rocket
read them page
by page
line by line
about Phoebe
the Bastard
and Sam McGee
who was the favorite of
your 82 year old friend and me
we could have a beer
together
at the north face
laugh and wonder
what the fools
back on Earth were doing
listen to Patsy Cline
and call it
Desperado
ask Plath and Carstens
and Metro of course
to join us
and
wish Bukowski were there
to start a brawl
with
just for kicks.
Mr Yamrus ..
thank you
for changing the way
I look at poetry
forever.
You are
the grit
the dirt..
that has
touched the sky.
(c) 2010 Diana Rose
In closing, the measure of a poet is the quality of his work. Does the message ring true and stand in the sun unfettered by poetic metaphor? Does it ring bells, bang drums, charge the light brigade to the horizon and bare the soul to the bone? Does it speak quietly into the night sky about hearth, home and those four walls that make it whole before dropping six feet under back into the ashes whence it came? Does the poet break down barriers between society at large and the man in the mirror who sings alone when no one is listening? Does he take a simple act , an unremarkable moment in time and make it magnanimous? Then and only then .. will you be a poet like John Yamrus.
Bukowski's property
this poem
isn't mine these
thoughts aren't
mine these
sentences aren't
mine these
cadences
aren't
mine these
lines aren't
mine.
nothing
i do
or think
or write
is mine.
it's all filtered down
though you
Mr. Bukowski...
and i wish
you'd
come here
and
take it back.
In the Introduction to : " Doing Cartwheels on Doomsday Afternoon" the intro by Rob Plath says: "john Yamrus , as a poet, is like a skeet shooter that hits the clay pigeon no matter what the speed, angle or trajectory; in poem after poem, his sharp mind nails its target every time".
the failed poet
talks
a good game.
she says
her poems
are only about
positive things
encouraging people
uplifting them.
she says
anything else
is a waste
of god's
gift
personally,
i like my poems
with a bit more grit
and guts.
i tend to
see the dirt
before the sky.
To me these are John's finest pieces of poetry from these volumes. He is simple; yet in this simplicity the reader finds a brevity of wit that smacks you between the eyes and feels free enough to keep on walking. When I opened Doing Cartwheels on Doomsday Afternoon , I read to the end in one sitting, then began rereading. His words get in your head..you cant stop with one poem that simply won't do. Iit is like a bag of your favorite flavor of potato chips or that first beer on Friday night after a damn hard week. You sink in to this book and devour it, you savor it. You sit back and wonder... why haven't I written that before? Much like John ponders inBukowski's Property I wish he'd take back these words.. which isn't possible. John has published 20 books to date, been published in several languages including Romanian, and had thousands of pieces published in Reviews and Journals world wide.
Who would have thought that having the title the first line in the poem? It is a simple thing, but how does he do it?
they're winning you know...
their forced
fake
academic poetry
is slowly winning the day...
not because it;s better...
because
its safe.
it gives them a formula
to work with...
a rack
to hang their
thoughtless
thoughts on.
~~~~~
contrary
to
popular opinion
the
internet
has ruined
poetry
for
the world.
it has
fooled
too many
people
into
thinking
they
can do
this.
Take these thoughts and freeze frame them in your brain, Now turn around, look in your notebooks, your yellow legal pad, your computer backed up files of all your poetry you have written in the last twenty years. Look at the poetry you thought was meaningful and took forty stanzas of rhyme to get to the point. Whitman , Keats , Yeats all had their day, T. S Elliot may have had that Nobel Prize winning Wasteland, but he had his friend Ezra Pound to edit and make sense of it all, John is a man's man poet, one who you can see sitting every day with his dog as he writes poem after poem that resonates and stays with you long after you have closed the book and turned off the light for the night., He doesn't have to be told to " GET TO WORK" by publishers, and if you are interviewing him and you bothered to read his books you would know he is waiting for the person to ask why he writes about dogs so much. You would hear the comments from his readers .. on how he vivisects ( really was that a word) flash fiction.
You would hear about his trip to Mexico, and meeting blonds that look like the moll from Scarface. All in a poem.. all in less than a page, but you feel that you have read a book the length of the Grapes of Wrath, and there was more that needed to be read.
so, here i sit
going through my stack of poems,
trying to come up with
22 minutes of magic.
~~~~~
Well Mr Yamrus,
It is safe to say
your poetry
if stacked side by side
page by page
might make it to the moon.
We could take a
rocket
read them page
by page
line by line
about Phoebe
the Bastard
and Sam McGee
who was the favorite of
your 82 year old friend and me
we could have a beer
together
at the north face
laugh and wonder
what the fools
back on Earth were doing
listen to Patsy Cline
and call it
Desperado
ask Plath and Carstens
and Metro of course
to join us
and
wish Bukowski were there
to start a brawl
with
just for kicks.
Mr Yamrus ..
thank you
for changing the way
I look at poetry
forever.
You are
the grit
the dirt..
that has
touched the sky.
(c) 2010 Diana Rose
In closing, the measure of a poet is the quality of his work. Does the message ring true and stand in the sun unfettered by poetic metaphor? Does it ring bells, bang drums, charge the light brigade to the horizon and bare the soul to the bone? Does it speak quietly into the night sky about hearth, home and those four walls that make it whole before dropping six feet under back into the ashes whence it came? Does the poet break down barriers between society at large and the man in the mirror who sings alone when no one is listening? Does he take a simple act , an unremarkable moment in time and make it magnanimous? Then and only then .. will you be a poet like John Yamrus.
