Tag: New Releases

Richard Martin Review of “Gold Vein Lightning: New & Selected Poems,” by William Kemmett

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Review by Richard Martin

Gold Vein Lightning
New & Selected Poems
William Kemmett
Igneus Press (2020)

www.igneuspress.com

98 pages $15.00

Recently, I decided to shut off and block all sources of corporate media lashing my mind by way of 24-hour news cycles. The information and disinformation simply overloaded the circuits of my mind, body and soul. I began to feel encased in the lead of what was wrong with everything. It wasn’t I was in denial of disasters and the Armageddon of the next moment, and thus, should accept a lead suit without complaint. And I was fully aware of the ironic nightmare possessing America, i.e., everything from rigged political campaigns to the initiation of the Sixth Extinction were said to be hoaxes by the Master of the Hoax, the President of the United States. But like Joyce attempting to wake up from the nightmare of history, I wanted to awaken from the present instalment of it. I hoped for a phenomenal epiphany.

As fortune dictated, I began reading William Kemmett’s latest book, Gold Vein Lightning – New and Selected Poems (Igneus Press, 2020). Kemmett wasted no time in melting my lead attire with his electric poems. In the first and title poem of the collection, “Gold Vein Lightning,” he writes:

It’s a fraction
        longer than a crack
                across the sky –
a bolt split a rock
      on the side of the
              hill and turned
lead into gold.
       There are things
               you just know.

Kemmett is a reservoir of knowing things. Like an alchemist who roasted lead with gold to produce spirit and understood “unus mundus” to be the non-differentiated unity of being, Kemmett offers this to brew in Behold Every Creature:

                 The gift of day; 
                  a field of crickets
                 orchestrates one string
                 of many notes.

                Distance punches holes where
                         there are no holes and map
                the sky for Lesser Beings  
                         like myself who can’t sing
                praises to the stars.

From the very first poems in the book, Kemmett’s verbal lightning struck deeply in me. Large sheaths of lead crashed to the floor. As I lugged them to the trash, they were heavy, bulky and awkward. A neighbor, blasting leaves into a purposeless dance with a leaf blower, calmed his machine to ask about the pile of lead in my arms, and had I lost a few pounds. Maybe, the Keto or South Beach Diet had paid the advertised results. I could only respond: “my nation is hungry/for green emeralds and mystical/sapphires, Li Po’s river/of stars.” (“The People’s Poem,” p.17). He shook his head and said: “Now ain’t that the truth.”

Lightning across the sky assumes many shapes and forms, and Kemmett’s poems were no different in terms of presentation on the page. The august beauty of his language and choice of words glowed in appropriate forms to their phrasing. As my body continued to exfoliate my leaden condition, I enjoyed his poems centered on family and humorous insights gleaned from imagination and experience or encounters with others: a lonely woman with a pet spider buys a deluxe model of the bible in the “The Bible Salesman”; a bather’s hasty escort from an ocean beach after offering a young sun worshipper a sardine: “Sardines! I shout back/through a hail of rocks and beer bottles.” (“Sardines,” p.31); and a trip to Home Depot in “Imagining the Worse”:

                 So, it’s come to this –
                 not until the light
                 through the garden section
                 at Home Depot do I notice
                 I’m wearing mismatched sandals.

                                  Am I fugitive
                                  from one of the nursing homes
                                  in Florida?

Throughout the collection, I was engrossed by the way Kemmett’s poems were stewards of the earth with their close observation, grace, magic, mysticism and wisdom as in “Citrix X Paradisi”:

                      I’m in a state of grace:
                               the lime tree I planted has
                      decided to root and defy
                               the citrus canker that preys
                      on bad grafting.

The gold vein lightning of William Kemmett’s poetry demolished my encasement in lead and suspended the “canker” of the present moment in history. This is an outstanding achievement, and especially relevant for anyone who happens to be a man or woman in a grey, lead suit within a grey, leaden culture. Kemmett sings through his poetry the world is immediately and always before our senses and intellect. It is there as pulse, energy and uncompromising openness. It is forever new and mysterious and cannot be reduced to sound bits and pointless partisanship. The transcendent world – in being there – inhibits us, waiting for us to witness it. Gold Vein Lighting – New and Selected Poems offers a way.

Please note: I would be remiss in not applauding the clean and refreshing design of Igneus Press books under the guidance of publisher, Peter Kidd, a lightning force in his own right. Graphic Details of Portsmouth, New Hampshire and S. Stephanie designed Gold Vein Lighting – New and Selected Poems for Igneus Press. Their design reflects the authenticity of William Kemmett’s poetry. The maroon cover with gold lettering is elegant and foreshadows the lightning strikes to come.

Richard Martin writes poetry and fiction. His forthcoming book, Ceremony of the Unknown (Spuyten Duyvil, 2020) will be available in the spring. His latest chapbook from Igneus Press is Cosmic Sandbox.

THE SLEEP OF REASON, A COLLECTION OF POEMS Edwina Pendarvis, P. J. Laska, Peter Kidd: Review by Phyllis Wilson Moore

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Words as Art in the Absence of Reason

A Review by: Phyllis Wilson Moore

In a rather Kafkaesque collection entitled The Sleep of Reason: A Collection of Poems by Edwina Pendarvis, P. J. Laska, and Peter Kidd, three seasoned activists, steeped in art, philosophy, history, and literature, provide an incisive glimpse at the state of the world and the political brouhaha and chaos we inflict upon ourselves.

The collection’s cover art, The Sleep of Reason Produces Monstrosities, by Francisco Goya, published in 1799, sets the stage for the words and images in the three sections of the chapbook. The title and the art serve to remind readers to consider world history.

Why Goya? Goya lived and painted during the last years of the Spanish Inquisition, a tumultuous period of war and corruption. He attempted to show the horrors of the day through art. Goya was labeled demented by Adolf Hitler.

Pendarvis builds on the Goya image by opening the chapbook with “Green Dreams”, a poem harking back to the Inquisition and the screams of martyrs, bloodied and broken on the rack, all in the name of religion.

Throughout, Pendarvis uses images of fire, bones, blood, cruelty, war, martyrdom, religiosity, and pollution, setting poems in the past and present. Her short poem, “Creche”, reminds readers of the January 17,1991, bombing of Baghdad. Aptly, Pendarvis compares the lighted sky above the city to a Christmas tree and the resulting death and destruction as the “gift” given the children of Baghdad.

She brings the sleep of reason closer home in “Farmer Brown Ascends the Gallows” as she reminds us of our nation’s history of slavery, the hanging of John Brown in Harpers Ferry, (now) West Virginia, and the subsequent Civil War. She calls Brown a planter of seeds and tells us his plants blossomed fire. The reason he was hanged? Treason. Many consider him a hero and martyr.

Pendarvis’s eight poems are followed by seven from P. J. Laska His first,“The Fall of America,” is a tribute to the work of the late poet Allen Ginsberg and Ginsberg’s collection, The Fall of America: Poems of these States 1965-1971, which shared the National Book Award for 1973. Like Ginsberg, Laska rails against the obvious destruction and contamination of the environment. He bemoans mountaintop removal in his native West Virginia, the waste clogged oceans, the struggling small towns.

He follows “The Fall of America” with a list poem,“The Greats”, a strong indictment of those using power for personal gain. Laska’s list includes “greats” readers will recognize from the daily news. Some of the greats may even produce a wry smile, perhaps “The Great Tweet” and the “Not-So-Great Offspring”. If reason sleeps, what is deemed great?

In his poem “Imagine Klee” Laska looks at Nazi Germany and Hitler’s confiscation and display of the paintings of artist he personally deemed mentally deficient or mentally ill. The crazed Hitler’s list included Klee, Picasso, and many others. Laska does not name Goya, but his work was included.

Peter Kidd’s section opens with the poem “2035”, a time when all water must be purified and the world we know no longer exists: shore lines are eroded, the climate is fierce, plants and trees are sparse. It reads like scary science fiction.

In his poems, Kidd details the impact of civilization’s “progress” and cites such particulars as the harm to dolphins off the coast of Hong Kong, the deforestation of the land, climate change, and the pollution of the ocean. He imagines the world his grandchildren will inherit.

Kidd adds some humor with “Autumn Afternoon Reflections”. He reflects on aloneness and aging: …”and now here I am/family grown and left/the dog has died/my mojo circle has shrunk/to my living room.” Despite the shrinking of his circle, his oneness with nature is illustrated in amusing conceits: damsel flies land on me/ the deer wink as they eat my grapes/ and the skunk waddles into my woodshed when I open the door.”

Kidd closes the collection with “Faults Shifted”, a poem with an optimistic core. His message: reason can be awakened and concepts can “get flipped” when reason is evoked.

The SLEEP OF REASON is word-art by three master poets. I feel sure Hitler would label them demented. I encourage you to consider their words.

The Sleep of Reason: A Collection of Poems by Edwina Pendarvis, P. J. Laska, and Peter Kidd, Igneus Press, 2019, $5