SODOMY is a CITY in NEW JERSEY by John Dorsey
96 pages, perfect bound paperback, published by
American Mettle Books/Grievous Jones Press
Review by Jack T. Marlowe
It’s not easy to describe the essence of John Dorsey’s poetry.
You could call it a rough-edged, new Americana. Or you could
say that it’s a dark and fragmented nostalgia, held together with
an unassuming but undeniable bit of optimism.
Dorsey, admittedly, has been influenced by the Beats. Unlike
the myriad wannabes, however, his work never seems forced
or pretentious. And his writing is powerful, without beating the
reader over the head.
In his latest book, the poet approaches a wide range of subjects.
And his very scenic route takes the reader all over the map, from
Sandusky, Ohio to Hollywood, Florida; from rural Pennsylvania
to Fort Collins, Colorado; and from Las Vegas to Lawton, Okla-
homa: a patchwork panorama of an American experience.
Sodomy, however, is no travelogue. In “ct pool hall sidewalk poem,”
Dorsey says: where we are has / very little to do with geography.
In “doctor bukowski’s monster,” he speaks not only about where
we are, but why:
we came here to watch the words burn
golden like shelley’s sperm
like cassius clay’s draft card
like the embers of johnny cash’s
last folsom cigarette.
Of course, Shelley was a British poet, but scores of his literary
decendents have been Americans–the majority vastly different
in style from Shelley, but very much inheritors of the ‘poet’ title.
Dorsey pays tribute to quite a few of them in this book. In his
“poem for a toothless lion” (written for Gregory Corso), John
writes:
i camped out there
looking for words
with a flashlight and
an open heart
remembering what you always said
dream like you have a gun to your head.
And in “you brought the fireworks,” he says of Ted Berrigan’s
words:
they would burn my fingers
like the tip of
an unfiltered Chesterfield.
On the other hand, Dorsey reminds us that poets aren’t perfect:
i think people tend
to forget that poets
can be assholes
and again:
people tend to think
that if it rained
pennies from heaven
that i wouldn’t steal
them from jerry’s kids
and go straight to
a coinstar machine in
the middle of the
night and trade them
for more angry passionate
words but i would
(from “reborn on the 4th of july”).
But imperfect people in an imperfect world can still find
something good in it:
if you look for
the worst in angels
then miracles are all
around you
and this:
like the devil i too
dream of ponies eating
sunflowers in the fields
of hell
(from “in heaven even death smells like sex”).
John Dorsey’s poems are sunflowers. So, pony up and
enjoy the buffet!
To order: www.grievousjonespress.com
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