Cole Bisson reviews Nathanael O’Reilly's BLUE (2020) in Broken Pencil

Cole Bisson was good enough to provide the first review of Nathanael O’Reilly's BLUE (2020) over at Broken Pencil. Thanks so much! You can see the original review here.

Litzine, by Nathanael O’Reilly, 40 pgs, above/ground press, abovegroundpress.blogspot.com, $5

Ever wonder what the working-class white guy around the corner is thinking? You know, the one who has bumper stickers of Nirvana, screams that Trump is an idiot, and has teeth stained yellow from cigarettes? Surprisingly, he’s got an in-depth mental life, and he’s writing a book about it. Or perhaps that’s not a surprise.

Blue by Nathaniel O’Reilly is a tender song for male alienation and longing. O’Reilly has a vulnerable touch that fully flushes out the themes in each poem. He grapples with losing friends as he ages, the fear of becoming a father, and childhood memories that teach him something new every day.

The main drawback is that, for all of it’s loneliness, O’Reilly’s work sounds like many others, and comes off as wannabe edgy. Juvenile warbles like “I lay on the floor / listening to Nirvana / writing my first letter / to her” give the vibe of someone trying desperately to stand out from the crowd, and that inevitably falls flat. O’Reilly isn’t saying anything new or adding a different voice, and thus drowns himself out in a saturated market.

Granted, there are certain poems where he tackles issues with tenderness and altruism. In an ode to who I imagine is his child, he asks “Will you love learning / like your parents, will you / be athletic, artistic, scientific?” When ruminating about who his child might grow up to be, O’Reilly touches on real parental anxieties and demonstrates them. He presents wishful thinking and imagines himself walking hand-in-hand with his child for as long as possible.

It’s these touching moments that give Blue a sense of urgency. Contrasted with lines like “The orangutan reaches the peak of his climb, / surveys the scene where he defecated,” the vulnerability of a man comes off as authentic. You just wish there wasn’t a warped edge to this sensibility.

new from above/ground press: how to count to ten, by Kevin Varrone

how to count to ten
Kevin Varrone
$5

the important thing about one :
it stands alone––
        
like a song
bird––its sound––

alone––can, sometimes, maybe-
almost, be enough––

causal yet caused by something, un-
moved & moving, one
is something beautifully done
whose doing
cannot ever be known.

there is nothing in the universe
more tenuous
than beautiful
more beautiful
than one
& the important thing
is that it stands tall, stands all
tender flag half-
blown
stoic
waiting
alone

published in Ottawa by above/ground press
November 2021
a/g subscribers receive a complimentary copy

Kevin Varrone is the author of three full-length collections of poetry and numerous chapbooks. He lives outside Philadelphia and teaches at Temple University.

To order, send cheques (add $1 for postage; in US, add $2; outside North America, add $5) to: rob mclennan, 2423 Alta Vista Drive, Ottawa ON K1H 7M9. E-transfer or PayPal at rob_mclennan (at) hotmail.com or the PayPal button at www.robmclennan.blogspot.com

some author activity: hanna, Tracy, Niespodziany, Betts, Beaulieu, Siklosi, Spinosa, Mavreas, Flemmer, Archer + Barwin,

natalie hanna has some new work up at where is the river; Dale Tracy participates in the Spotlight series; Benjamin Niespodziany has a new poem up at The Indianapolis Review; and Gregory Betts and Derek Beaulieu have co-edited a new short visual poetry anthology available as a free pdf, 14 Ways of Being Kinder to the Earth, with poems by fourteen visual poets, including Kate Siklosi, Dani Spinosa, Billy Mavreas, Kyle Flemmer, Sacha Archer and Gary Barwin.

new from above/ground press: Whatever Feels Like Home, by Susan Rukeyser

Whatever Feels Like Home
Susan Rukeyser
$5

Yes, You Can Eat Your Goldfish

 

            Yes, you can eat your darling goldfish. He is most likely a form of ornamental carp, and he will taste as you expect: muddy and full of bones.

            You can eat all your darlings, once you kill them. Although why you killed Prince Harry the goldfish I cannot understand. Was it all the staring, his bulging eyes? Was it his flashy orange scales, so out of place in your dark, dusty cabin full of your ancestors’ ghosts? Or was it that his beauty faded by the day, in your care, and you could not bear to watch it — how his scales grew dull and his swimming listless, until he mostly stayed put in the middle of the small, round, glass bowl that was his world since you brought him home from that Memorial Day carnival? His translucent fins fanned like the scarves of an old burlesque dancer still going through the motions.

            You sure looked like you wanted him when you paid $3.00, six times in a row, tossing rings onto a pole. Prince Harry watched you from the table of glass goldfish bowls and saw how you labored for him, how you fought against your own shortcomings to win him as a prize. But now it’s August, and you should have set him up with a proper tank by now, some plastic plants and aquarium gravel, at least.

            Prince Harry was an $18.00 goldfish, which makes him as expensive as any other freshwater fish on the menu at an upscale seafood place. But you should know that the diet you fed him of dehydrated fish flakes won’t please your palate nor your conscience. (Maybe you could have treated him better?)

            What’s done is done, I get it. I just hope you killed him with kindness.

            Because, you know, Prince Harry the goldfish was miserable in that little glass bowl. He was never going to become the best fish he could be, trapped in there. In the wild — if you had released him, an invasive species — he could have grown beyond your expectations. (Seriously, he could’ve grown to be a foot long!) But at what cost to the other fish in that lake that butts up to your cabin? Prince Harry would crowd out the ones that belong there.

            Your darlings can be eaten, and they should be, if they fail to thrive. If you fail them.           

            But Prince Harry the goldfish will leave a bad taste in your mouth. He watched you toss all those rings at the carnival. For him. He thought you loved him. He thought he was home.

published in Ottawa by above/ground press
as the thirteenth title in above/ground’s prose/naut imprint
November 2021
a/g subscribers receive a complimentary copy

Susan Rukeyser no longer believes in polite silence. Her debut novel, Not On Fire, Only Dying (Twisted Road Publications), was an SPD Fiction Bestseller. She just completed a new novel. Her short fiction, creative nonfiction, and multimedia work appear in numerous places, online and in print. Susan founded World Split Open Press to publish select titles including Feckless Cunt: A Feminist Anthology. She hosts the feminist, queer, and otherwise radical Desert Split Open Mic. In 2017, she moved home to Joshua Tree, California, although she hails from Connecticut. susanrukeyser.com   

To order, send cheques (add $1 for postage; in US, add $2; outside North America, add $5) to: rob mclennan, 2423 Alta Vista Drive, Ottawa ON K1H 7M9. E-transfer or PayPal at rob_mclennan (at) hotmail.com or the PayPal button at www.robmclennan.blogspot.com

Zane Koss' The Odes (Incomplete) (2020) shortlisted for The Nelson Ball Prize!

Yesterday, Stuart Ross announced the shortlist for The Nelson Ball Prize, which includes The Odes (Incomplete) (2020) by Zane Koss! Hooray! The shortlist also includes titles by patrick friesen, Julie Joosten, Chantal Neveu (translated by Erín Moure) and Matthew James Weigel. Congratulations to all the shortlisted authors, translator, publishers and titles! For further information, check out the link here.

new from above/ground press: G o n e S o u t h, by Barry McKinnon

G o n e S o u t h
Barry McKinnon
$5

in Arizona
the desert – weather within

weather, no discernible season, sense of its ancient

growth – the Sequoia? tree, names I don’t know – the desert sans name / or taxonomy/  but for this little burst, minute, pink to cactus red buds  to take as measure.  (what was or is it in a temporality /does not need us nor, without a mind, need itself.  thus,  ... it’s worse than the puzzle it appears.   

the desert

/no matter the temperature / cold sun stings.  this/no meaning as is with any sensation being only itself in the same condition.

the desert

looking at an interior, not yrself exactly, - but a vast expanse that if you entered wld you be you?  this was its fear, yr fear, all fear  in whatever risk one or it takes.
("in Arizona")

published in Ottawa by above/ground press
November 2021
a/g subscribers receive a complimentary copy

Barry McKinnon was born in 1944 in Calgary Alberta, where he grew up.  In 1965, after two years at Mount Royal College, he went to Sir George Williams University in Montreal and took poetry courses with Irving Layton.  He graduated in 1967 with a B.A. degree.  In 1969, he graduated with an M.A. from the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, and was hired that same year to teach English at the College of New Caledonia in Prince George where he has lived and worked ever since.

Barry McKinnon’s The the was nominated for the Governor General’s Award for poetry in 1080.  Pulp Log was the winner of the Dorothy Livesay Poetry Award for the B.C. Book Prizes in 1991 and Arrhythmia was the winner of the bp Nichol Chapbook Award for the best chapbook published in Canada in English in 1994. His chapbook Surety Disappears was the runner-up for the bp Nichol Award in 2008.

This is McKinnon’s second above/ground press chapbook, after Into the Blind World (2012).

To order, send cheques (add $1 for postage; in US, add $2; outside North America, add $5) to: rob mclennan, 2423 Alta Vista Drive, Ottawa ON K1H 7M9. E-transfer or PayPal at rob_mclennan (at) hotmail.com or the PayPal button at www.robmclennan.blogspot.com

some author activity: Naughton, Tierney, Brockwell, Johnson + Flowers,

Katie Naughton has some new work up at Tagvverk, as does Orchid Tierney; Stephen Brockwell has a new poem up at The Typescript; Chris Johnson has four new poems in the October issue of deathcap; and Neil Flowers is being interviewed over at poetry mini interviews.