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It ain't like I hate poetry compilations...it's just like I've had some excruciatingly bad experiences with them.
It all started during my high school years when the English department would put out the yearly literary magazine called AQUILA. Boy did Mom want me to get something published in it, as if it would've really been a feather in my quite unfeathered cap and of course each year I would submit something definitely of a non literary, or non cohesive nature thinking that it was the most hotsy totsy thing that mankind coulda cooked up brainwise. And naturally year after year my submissions got the big reject stamp which was really something hard for a guy like me who hated rejection yet had to experience it day after day to take. Naturally I cried me a rive and maybe a few reservoirs in the process.
Well, mother naturally was disappointed that my material (which wasn't "Milk, Milk, Lemonade" but almost as simplistic) wasn't used, but boy did she blow her stack when one poem that DID make the grade, submitted by the son of a prominent local doctor at that, was an outright cop of some rather popular rhyme that the guy obviously lifted outta some handy book of poesy. Naturally the thief got off scot free which burned up a fellow like myself who used to get punished for transgressions both real and imagined and here I am, scorned by my own mother because none of my scribblings were worthy of the school mag and they go and print some plagiarizer undoubtedly knowing that his efforts were bogus beyond belief. Of course it wasn't until years later that I figured these sorta entries into the world of high school stature were nothing bur popularity contests run by the snootier kids that had free reign to get away with bolstering their own (and their pals') stature in the ranks of schoolkid hierarchies, and what was I but a mere doormat for alla 'em to wipe their feet on.
So yeah, poetry collections really do not cozy up to my own sense of what I should or should not settle down with when it's snuggle up time --- sheesh, sad to say but I've even had problems with some of those chapbooks that Bill Shute used to send me which is obviously one good reason why he quit doing so! But maybe there are other somewhat extraneous reason for me to ENJOY a poetry collection and this particular effort has quite a few.
And CLEVELAND : GOING HOME (HOT FUCK) is one collection that has its benefits outweighing the bad doodie at a pretty good ration. Not just the dirty title, but the attitude (seventies decadent nihilists putting this 'un together 'stead of scions of rich kids headed for the ivy league and probably four divorces each) and selection of entries sure does its fair share of making this something that is certainly worthy of my time. (Dunno about you, but then again you're probably a jerk who also copped famous poetry outta books and passed them off as new.) The contributors here could also read like a partial who's who of the Cle punk underground (Laughner, Pressler, Bernie from the Invisibles, Carol Furpahs of IUDecoys...) and the layout's rather spiffy for such an endeavor what with two collage splurges (Heath Bar wrapper, loose change...) and silkscreen illios, not forgetting that crucial attitude that seemed to get washed down the drain once the down and dirty seventies got scrubbed beyond belief once the next decade rolled in. And although this definitely ain't a music rag the function of sound during the mag's assembly during the horrid winter of '77 cannot be denied : playlist to the cut and past was the following --- BLOOD ON THE TRACKS, "Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo", Bowie's LOW, Patti Smith's "Piss Factory" and "My Generation" b-side, the English version of ELECTRIC LADYLAND and Derek and the Dominos' LAYLA AND OTHER ASSORTED LOVE SONGS. 'cept for the last two quite impressive and even with Hendrix and Derek somewhat interesting even if I always thought the last two were "older kid music". Well, Laughner was always an eclectic sort and I'm sure he would have approved.
I found the entries actually downright stimulating (a surprise given my inherent illiteracy) and there is just too much to mention and detail in one sitting since I'm already getting long windier than usual. Bernie Joelson's "Light" was quite inspirational, almost like a heartfelt prayer that even I feel like I should recite every night. It begins "Light, Oh light, come down on me so as to purge me of my natural inclination to be nasty to everyone I meet". Still, I gotta laugh at that one because when I called the man up one Sunday afternoon in the mid-eighties he was snotty and abusive the whole time! Must have been a bad day without any light to purge him. Tim Joyce's "Crime Report" had a human interest angle as he denotes the various incidents both funny and tragic that have passed him, or some cop for that matter, by. And James Taranto's "In America" lays down the big late-seventies miasma Jimmy Carter (who just entered into the White House) would warn us all abut after he read E.F. Schumacher and boosted that guy's stock somewhat.
Best entry's hands down Peter Laughner's own ".38 Special" Dedicated to Billy Hains, owner of this dive called the Bottleworks located directly across the street from the Plaza Apartments where the haute de la Cleveland arts under-the-underground community (including Laughner) resided. Hains was of the old school of clench-fist workers uniting and all that back when the rabble claimed to support everyday working men as much as they did their other pets...folksinger Frank Thedford used to play "Deportees" for him and besides him Laughner would take the stage there both as a solo singer or with Peter and the Wolves doing the kind of material that just didn't fit in with the Pere Ubu setlist. Haims was murdered on Saint Patrick's Night '76 during an argument over the price of a beer, and with his passing also came the passing of the Bottleworks and Peter and the Wolves.
Laughner's farewell is somewhat deep, even heartbreaking in the way he reminisces about the free food and clientele, ending his piece with the line "when i get down there to join you, save a seat and a glass for me" which, given Laughner's own demise a short time after the publication of this 'un, does have a certain poignancy that does kinda get hard to shake off.
There's plenty more too from poets both known and not...sheesh even d.a. levy pops up and he's been dead for years already! We even get a sealed manilla envelope that undoubtedly sports some surprises inside. But what can those mysterious items be? Random religious pamphlets or race track stubs? A million dollar bill that I most certainly can use? Do you think I'm going to bust the seal to find out what goodies both licit or not have been placed inside the not-quite hermetically sealed pouch? Are you kiddin'...
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