International Harvesters, a Chaplinized shuffle, irresponsible use of sucralose - reading Illinois, My Apologies

The fifteen poems in Illinois, My Apologies do not tell a story, not exactly, but they suggest one.  The speaker is from Illinois and has a bookish temperament.  His father, “a massive hulk \ of hardened laborer,” has a decidedly different personality.  The mother is gone – the father is now “The Electric Widower”:

In the weeks after
my mother passes on
the old man contracts
a scorching case
of the lonesome
electric jitters
and takes to pacing head floorward
feet all atwitter in
a Chaplinized shuffle

That’s probably my favorite image in a book that has plenty of good ones.

A new baby– no other kind, I suppose – makes an appearance, as does the poet's mother, or a mother, in the energized, roaring “The Autobiography, Nearly,” right at the end.  She has her own movement, she:

sometimes oracled
and danced the Quixote wild
or sucralosed without regard
for independent testing

As I look at that fragment, the joke about “independent testing” feels hilariously un-roaring, but that, of course, is the son talking.

Perhaps those are different fathers in different poems, someone else’s mother at the end.  On the page, they are characters, fictions, good ones, composed, since this is poetry, of almost nothing.  What do we know about the grandfather, an old farmer, in “The Last Year on the Farm”?  He has glasses,* he will eventually suffer from dementia, but in the poem we, with the poet, mostly watch him watch

     an ancient International Harvester
rusted beyond orange, a fragile,
     a fossil-like thing half-swallowed
by the unruly bluestem and Indian grass
     bearding the rough face of the prairie.

Hamm tells us more about the old combine than about the grandfather, but of course it is all about the grandfather.

How much am I allowed to quote in a proper review?  I never get this right.  Just one more.  Voice, this time, not character, the beginning of “Show Me Forlorn”:

Welcome to
the great state
of Missouri.

I haven’t listened to the Hamm’s own reading of the poem, but I think you really want to emphasize those line breaks.  “Welcome to” (depressed sigh) “the great state” (forlorn silence) etc.  International visitors to Wuthering Expectations might want to know that Missouri calls itself, irritatingly, The Show Me State – they’re a bunch of empiricists, unlike those gullible theorists in Illinois, why those rubes’ll believe anything you tell ‘em – and that Hamm, I fear, plagiarized all three lines from a highway sign.  The outstanding line breaks are his own.

Hamm begins his book with this kind of clipped line, sometimes just two or three words, and then relaxes the line as he progresses, lengthening it, packing in more words, slimming down again at the end.  Illinois, My Apologies has a thick midsection, just like the state.

Eh, reviews.  I just like messing around with the bits I like.  Illinois, My Apologies has a lot of those bits.

That’s a crummy blurb.  Justin, if you sees a better one here, if I wrote one by accident, let me know.  The part where I accuse you of plagiarism would make a good anti-blurb, a kind of punk poet gesture.  Probably not what you’re going for.  Be sure to let me know about the next book.

* Uh, glasses, right, Justin? Where is grandpa sitting?

Weeping sheep and the consolations of philosophy - an introduction to the poetry of Justin Hamm, reformed classics blogger

from Illinois, My Apologies

At thirteen fourteen and fifteen
I was an alien among
the Rockwellian agricreatures
of my home galaxy

I’m turning from Martian invaders to Martian poetry, the American Midwestern version.  Those lines begin Justin Hamm’s poem “Illinois, My Apologies,” and his new book of the same title.  “Rockwellian agricreatures” gives a pretty good sense of Hamm’s strengths.  Tableflat, tarbrained, flannelclad, sheepshapes, fleshyfat, holyspeak – chewy words with a solid mouthfeel.

Once upon a time, perhaps as long as three years ago, Hamm had a book blog called What Do I Know, a so-called classics blog.  In real life he, like Tony Curtis in Spartacus, “taught the classics to the children.”  At some point he mentioned that he had a poem in something called Renaissance Magazine, which was fortunately on the newstand at Borders.  The feature article was all about Renaissaince Faire wedding dresses, oh, so hideous, so hideous, but the poem was – well, it was a real poem.  “To the Venerable Bede,” it was called.  Hamm posted or linked to another couple of poems, and after reading them I thought to myself, this book blog sure as heck won’t be around much longer.  This fellas got bigger fish to fry.

from At Sixteen

but the black sheep
reads Boethius to the spiders
by flashlight
beneath the stairs
weeps for everything
worth weeping for

If you detect a note of adolescent self-pity, that’s the subject of the poem, a subject of the book, even.  I do believe Hamm is mostly sincere about the title of his book.

Illinois, My Apologies is Hamm's first book, a fifteen poem chapbook tied up with string that binds in a poster and a CD of Hamm reading his work.  The poet, who I only know as a blogger, asked me if I wanted a review copy.  A prig about free books, I said, no, of course not, how dare you, and bought my own.  The madmen* who operate Rocksaw Press will send you a copy, too, for $12.

from Goodbye, Sancho Panza

I meet
a Slim Jim munching
Sancho Panza
goateed now
all leathered out
and in close contact
with his inner beast

Now that’s a good hook, and the rest of the poem lives up to the promise.  I suppose I should try to give the book something like a proper review.  Not my strength, but tomorrow, I’ll try.  What’s a good reviewer's cliché – a promising debut!  Quite a bit better than that, really.

* “Madmen,” defn.: anyone who runs a small poetry press, God love ‘em.