By James H Duncan
My life has been chaotic lately, so when I picked up a copy
of Lantern Lit, Vol. 2 from Dog On A Chain Press, I was stressin’ pretty hard.
Thankfully Michael Haeflinger’s opening section begins with a near zen-like
look at the power of a community garden, and how seeing the world from your
knees in the dirt can change everything, although there’s he confesses that the
relief is temporary when he ends the piece with, “my knees ache and everything
/ flowers too soon these days.”
Yes, time does fly by, but Haeflinger’s poems focus on
themes of community, reflection, and making the best of what we have while we
have it as he wanders through flea markets and evening scenes, listening to
dogs bark at midnight . He has a nice
balance of straightforward emotion, honest grit, and imaginative wordplay throughout
his stanzas, with the pieces grounded in a place or a character working better
for me, although “Here Sits The Devil” was an amusing and interesting piece of
rhyming poetry that is well worth a look.
Frank Reardon is a favorite, and while reading his section I
was reminded how easy it might be to pigeonhole his work as neo-Bukowski, but
Frank’s poetry has depth and a genuine earnestness to it that sets it apart
from the reams of Buk imitators out there. His work points out the almost
surreal madness of the everyday, that it can feel like it’s all for shit in
this life, but he continues to seek out the true, the simple, the peaceful
moments between bouts of drunkenness, hopelessness, the shit jobs, and the
crazy people working shit jobs. I like his shorter works here better here, the
ones where he cuts out an image or two from the page of last night and splashes
it with whiskey and then he dances away to the next poem just as you’re getting
into it. I liked those shorter ones best, but then again I rarely finish
anyone’s poems that run more than two pages, so I’m lazily biased!
The final section featuring Mike Meraz was a little more
simplistic, going right at you with stanzas that wade through a beer buzz to
show you a heart in pain, a lot of “boy falls for girl, girl falls for totally
different boy” anxiety, underdog poems written from the point of view of a shop
clerk who writes on the side. A few worked for me, a few didn’t. I wouldn’t say
they felt as layered as the other works in this volume, but I really liked
“Rainbows, Come Back,” in which Meraz admits his jaded outlook isn’t getting
him anywhere and he yearns to see the world through eyes that aren’t
beleaguered by “dull mist / this bedroom of horrors.” There’s a hint there that
all this wheel-spinning has an awareness to it, which makes it all a bit more
painful in a sense.
Overall, a solid release in the Lantern Lit series. I know
more works in the series are on their way, and I’m excited to see where Dog On
A Chain Press goes in the future.
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