In his career as a writer spanning fifty years this is John Yamrus’ 27th book of poetry. In the opening poem ‘approaching 70’, which his publisher Heath Brougher insisted to be the first in the collection, the speaker Yamrus remarks: “i get the feeling/ that i ain’t done yet.// not by a long shot.” And as he cheekily surmises in ‘the neighbor’s dog’, that unlike the sleepy, deaf & incontinent mutt- there’s more life, more work for him to do:
i’m
not deaf yet,
and
it’s been weeks
since
i even
came close
to
peeing
on the rug.
There are 51 poems in the collection and many have previously been published in dozens of small press publications such as Chiron Review, Daily Dope Fiend, Heroin Love Songs and Lummox Journal.
Stylistically, Yamrus continues to use clean, minimalistic lines, starkly and increasingly devoid of figurative language. The lower case, free verse poems continue to loiter on the left-hand margins of his pages, with each of his conventionally derelict lines, rarely exceeding more than three or four words.
Asked about how he came up with the title a spritely Yamrus says, “The title was always there, right in front of me...while i was pulling it together, the working title...the intended title, at least in my mind...was PEOPLE...and i knew that wasn't gonna do it, but that's what i had in mind while i was writing it. and then as i went further along into the writing (which, as is my usual way of working, wasn't really a very long time at all, because i always work fast), it dawned on me that while it IS about people, it's even more about the conversations they have and so SMALL TALK was really a no-brainer.”
In a recent podcast with Marcia Epstein ‘Small Talk With John Yamrus’ he further explains: “As I’ve gotten older with my writing, I have figured out or at least decided that I don’t want to make any big pronouncements or tell any big stories with my work. I want to get more and more to get the reader involved. And Small Talk as it kind of implies, there is a give and take in a conversation- just back and forth and with the book I wanted to present the reader with pictures, ideas where they kind of fill in the blocks.”
Listen to the podcast here: https://talkwithmelawrenceks.podbean.com/e/small-talk-with-john-yamrus-v20210310/?fbclid=IwAR38iDmr76HEnc2JdAodallk3Co0dCzA6Ra_Xj4oUYr30Isdku_9ptm8qp8
As implied by the title, Yamrus likes to involve the reader in “small talk” about ephemeral, everyday events - enjoying the moment, getting shat on by a bird, being hassled by wannabe poets, recalling the unremarkable but quirky lives of his friends and making lean, pithy, philosophical observations about existence.
The front cover of Small Talk derives from a photo by Ashley Cox. The cover appears to feature two people at night time separated by a dense smoke or fog. Yamrus says of the cover, “well, the cover started out as a photo by Ashley, and then got worked and reworked and worked again by the graphic designer Eileen Murphy. i wanted something that had a very noir feel to it as these poems (at least to me) all seemed to take place at 3 in the morning.”
The poems are often highly observational and written in a conversational voice, sometimes directly to his audience. Most of the work is loosely based on anecdotes from Yamrus’ vast & richly textured catalogue of real life experiences.
The poems in Small Talk are written from alternating points of view and embody many shades of thought, imagination and feeling. As Yamrus has mentioned elsewhere, he sees poems “like snapshots taken from a speeding train”. He provides the vehicle, the chassis- but mid-flight, he offers his readers the steering wheel & leaves it to their imaginations to breathe new life into his poems, by allowing them to draw upon their own associations and meanings.
The poems tend to fall into three categories- the micro-poems, the portrait poems of his friends or acquaintances and his poems about his life as an alternative small press poet.
The micro-poems are usually only about twelve words maximum in length. They are pithy kernels of wisdom, much like epigrams or aphorisms.
In about fifteen poems Yamrus carves language to the bone. He comments on relationships, mortality, happiness, his writing- whatever takes his fancy. He can be wry, witty, ironic, scathing- but also sensitive and amusing. Some of the more memorable ones include ‘the’, ‘all’, ‘looking’, ‘if’ and ‘he’, a personal favourite:
he
always
said
he
wanted
nothing
and
that’s
exactly
what
he
got
(all poems posted with the permission of the artist)
The portrait poems are narrative in form and feature a gallery of quirky, marginal characters. The poems ‘puke-green’, ‘Ricky Lee’, ‘Tony The Lip’, ‘the thing’, ‘my friend Stanley hated the sun’, ‘my friend Bill’, ‘reluctantly’, ‘there was this woman in there and she was big, and’, ‘Nelly Big Bang’, ‘one of’, ‘most days’, ‘she used to’ and ‘Peggy’ are all fine examples of Yamrus' minimalistic study of people.
In the poem 'puke-green' Yamrus uses the motif of the colour to wryly and ironically comment on the unnamed individual & his eventual tragic fate:
puke-green
was
his favourite color.
it
was also
his favorite word
(or,
words, if
you wanted to
get technical about it).
anyway,
it was kinda sorta fitting
that he had already turned his
favorite color that Sunday morning
when
they found him
face down
under the Penn Street Bridge.
In his characteristic style, Yamrus uses skimpy but realistic detail to allow the reader to reflect on the odd people in their own lives. Asked why his interest in dysfunctional characters who often end up dead within his poems Yamrus is direct, “we’re ALL dysfunctional, aren’t we? it’s only a matter of degree. and, sooner or later we all end up on the wrong side of the grass.”
As in many of his previous poetry collections, Yamrus includes poems which represent and comment on his life as a poet. He is vilified by critics (‘I’ve been shit on…’), scorns the ‘crap poems’ that people send him in the mail, mocks the questions reporters ask him (‘after the reading’), disdains the praise of a university professor (‘Jesus, it’) hates having to be spruced up for publicity shots (‘think of this’) but at the same time, thoroughly enjoys the attention. Asked to tick-off some of the highlights and failures in his writing life, Yamrus says fox-like, “i guess the answer to that question is in the poems. the highlights, the low lights, the wins and the losses. they're all in the poems. aren't they?"
In the most memorable poem in the collection, ‘Rick’, Yamrus hilariously recounts, simply but compellingly, how he was awarded “the prestigious Wakefield Prize” as a young aspiring writer:
Rick
was
this old
friend of mine
who gave me my first
and only award for poetry.
it was
near 3 in the morning
and we
were drunk
on cheap vodka,
complaining
how we couldn’t
get published anywhere
and never
won any awards for our work
and
we were
standing on this corner
ready
to call it a night
and
he looked up
at the street sign
and saw that it was Wakefield Street
and
he handed me
the bottle and said:
i now award you
the prestigious Wakefield Prize
except
he was drunk
and couldn’t say it very clear.
but,
like they
say in the books,
it’s the thought that counts,
and that
was the first
and only award
i ever got
and Rick
went on to give up writing
and
playing the
piano and guitar.
and
he taught Econ
in a very well-known college
until
one day
he’d had enough
and
stuck his head
in
the oven,
looking, i suppose,
for whatever remained
of his music, his hopes, and his dreams.
Yamrus insists in his Talk With Me podcast the story is accurate, and even shortly afterwards, outrageously included the bogus award in a submission which lead to the acceptance of some of his first poems.
In the end, Yamrus writes poetry essentially because he has fun composing it and because people enjoy reading it. To paraphrase the late great jazz musician Chick Corea in a 2020 podcast, “If you communicate well and engage your audience and it brings them some sort of pleasure or inspiration then you have accomplished the goal of art” (In the Studio, BBC. Chick Corea: Accomplishing the Goal of Art, 17 November 2020).
This is highly accessible poetry from an accomplished artist. The poems are deliberately simple but melded with a wry irony and a mocking defiance of the poetic canon but always attuned to the cadences & rhythms of everyday life:
Buy the book here: https://www.amazon.com/Small-Talk-John-Yamrus/dp/0578844354
John Yamrus reads his poem ‘approaching 70’: https://www.google.com/url?q=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v%3DdxR903lpSzM&source=gmail&ust=1616375357583000&usg=AFQjCNENqEyE-nJgYzZqpycTxpKxf1eY7w
Learn more about John Yamrus here: http://www.johnyamrus.com
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