John Yamrus’s first book of poetry ‘i love’ appeared 51 years ago. All up he has now published more than 2,500 poems, 28 books of poetry, two novels, three memoirs and an illustrated children’s book. His latest book Selected Poems collects in one volume his best poetry. The book is almost 400 pages in length and includes a mammoth 222 poems, most of which have been published or republished in the last ten years. In a recent BMR interview with John Yamrus, which appears in full at the end of this review, he explains the huge task of selecting and arranging his work over 50 years in one definitive volume of verse:
“What we did (me and Mish) was look thru each of the books and make lists of the poems that we felt should make it into the book. When we were done, we compared the lists and any poems that were on both lists were automatically in. We called those our 'A list'.
“That’s where we started. And any poems that were on one list but not the other, got put into a 'B list' and set aside for discussion and we each talked and argued about why or why not something on the list should be added or cut.
“As for the arrangement of the poems, i DID NOT want to do it thematically or chronologically...neither idea felt right to me and I dumped the whole problem into Murphy's lap and she came up with the idea of separating the poems into sections, with each section (like a book) having its own ebb and flow. In my opinion she did a remarkable job.”
I have reviewed every book of poetry John Yamrus has published on Bold Monkey Review since doing cartwheels on doomsday afternoon (Epic Rites Press, 2010). In rereading several of his previous books for this review, sure there are some personal favourites I would have liked to have been included (or excluded) in Selected Poems, but overall the book is an outstanding overview of the original and highly readable poet. It is certainly now the go-to-book if you want a substantial feast of Yamrus!
Despite its imposing length, this monster of a book can be comfortably read in less than two hours. If you are unfamiliar with Yamrus’s poetry, it represents language stripped back to its bare minimum. Apart from real names, capital letters are abandoned, titles of his poems are usually embedded in the main text & figurative language, the cornerstone of poetry- metaphors, alliteration, symbols- are typically eschewed in order to distil a literature which is fresh and unencumbered.
Selected Poems is divided into five sections. The first four sections consist of an average of about 85 poems each and shuffle like a deck of cards "the ebb and flow" of Yamrus’s remarkably diverse work as a poet. Editor Eileen Murphy distils seamlessly the motifs which appear in his writing- the dog poems, the tributes to his wife Kathy, the health issues, his thoughts on death, Bukowski, dysfunctional characters & relationships, and of course, his life as a public poet.
The fifth section comprises solely of Yamrus’s famous one word poem ‘endure’ and an accompanying poster of the poem featured below by Murphy which she has appropriated in her book cover.
Yamrus is a self taught poet and his work is evoked from the blood of his lived experiences. He told me in an earlier interview, “The poems come from what’s happening around me. i don’t make stuff up. I see things and write them down.”
This is captured in this iconic ironic poem in Selected Poems:
i am not a writer…
writers
make things up.
they
massage the truth.
they take great pains
to give you
their version
of reality.
no,
i assure you,
i am not a
writer.
(all poems in this review are posted with the permission of the poet)
Yamrus realised as a young man what the focus of his writing should be, “I recognized really early that I didn’t have to be trying to make the big poem or the big statement. I wanted my literary house and legacy to be made one brick at a time...one poem at a time. I always felt it would be stronger that way.”
Yamrus finds inspiration for his poetry from everyday events, from anywhere- a trip to his dentist, taking his dog for a crap, staring at his face in the mirror, or coming across an unusual license plate in the car in front of him- everything, including the most mundane, becomes a source for his Art.
Poem by poem. Brick by brick Yamrus constructs his world. It is a simple self-contained, bubble of a world, often expressed in a nostalgic longing for the past- old movies, old books, old radio shows & a deep abiding love for his wife Kathy, his dogs and his books.
Many poems, such as ‘picture this’, ‘the knees’, ‘give me’ and ‘okay, Mr. Death, you win’ highlight his emotional and moral contentment. ‘i’m a sucker for’ is highly representative :
i’m a sucker for
black and white
movies.
and salads made with
oil and vinegar.
and real crunchy
garlic bread.
i have a high tolerance for pain,
except for needles
and hangnails.
i love dogs,
hate cats,
and slam the door
on Jehovah’s Witnesses.
i like
W.C. Fields,
Groucho Marx,
fart jokes
and anything
that has to do
with World War II.
i’ve had
five great
loves in my life.
four were
dogs.
the fifth
is upstairs,
laying on the couch,
half
asleep,
watching Dateline.
The language & tone of much of Yamrus’s writing is laid back, whimsical and feel-good. He creates an unusual sense of familiarity with his readers through his intimate conversational voice and by occasionally directly addressing them. He cleverly leaves many gaps, ambiguities or silences in his writing which enables his readers to form their own associations and meanings based on their own real life experiences.
The primary focus in Yamrus’s collection is his role as a public poet. There are many dozens of poems in the book which reference the writing of his poetry in some way. Yamrus loves to lay the boot into his critics, the literary establishment, shit-house poets & posthumous Bukowski publications.
Yamrus also describes the agony & wonder of his literary life- the readings, the interviews & his many encounters with his readers. He also defines for us what a poem is and how we can create an immortal one and offers his hard-earned views about his concept of Art.
The best amongst these poems include ‘for years now’, ‘Jesus Christ!’, ‘sometimes’, ‘i never played’, and the following personal favourite:
give me poetry
that’s
new.
that fails.
that
makes mistakes.
give me poetry
that you don’t know
what in the world you need to name it.
give me poetry
that bleeds from the eyes
and
shouts at the world.
give me poetry
that stands naked and beaten,
with its back against the wall,
still screaming
I AM NOW!
In the amusing poem ‘Dear John:’ Yamrus directly addresses the charge that too many of his poems are about poetry. He cheekily responds to a request made by an editor who has asked him to send him some new work, “that isn’t about other people’s poetry-/ or, better yet,/ a poem that doesn’t even mention poetry?”
The speaker- Yamrus, is defiant: “i’m afraid i AM a writer,/ and the only subject matter i have/ is me.”
He goes on to satirically comment:
you can also
be happy in knowing
that of those 26 poems,
there’s not one mention of writing…
there are also:
zero unicorns
zero faeries
zero dappled daisies
zero mentions of cutting my wrists
zero use of the words “life sucks”
and zero poems entitled:
“Life, Love or Death.”
you can also
feel confident of
finding poems that talk about
picking my nose,
going to the fridge for a beer
and watching my dog take a dump.
Yamrus’s cheeky, upbeat humour is often tempered by his frequent references to death in his poems which is just around the corner and "is only/ a matter of time” ('if [being/ dead is']).
The best amongst Yamrus’s philosophical takes on death include, ‘okay, Mr. Death, you win...', 'after work', ‘the [thing]’, ‘most days’, ‘first’, ‘bullets’, ‘tonight’, and ‘my car battery died and’. The tone is wry and matter-of-fact rather than morose.
In ‘driving toward Lancaster,’ he brilliantly juxtaposes the image of listening to the soul artist James Brown in his car with the carcass of a dead cow he sees out his window to great effect:
driving toward Lancaster,
mid-afternoon,
route 222,
listening to James Brown.
James Brown,
who at times could care less for lyrics…
James, who once said:
“if you ain’t got
enuf soul,
let me know,
cuz I got soul to burn”.
James, sweating, singing,
dropping to the floor…
and i look out the window
to my right
and see two farmers
standing
hands on hips,
next to a dark blue pick-up,
staring down at a cow
that’s wedged
up against a fence.
dead.
like it backed up
in the face of death
until it
couldn’t back up
any more.
and the farmers
are probably wondering
how in hell
they’re gonna get that thing
in the truck
before it rains.
and James Brown
screams:
“GOOD GOD!
HIT ME!
HIT ME!
HIT ME ONE MORE TIME!”
Several other poems focus on the impending doom or death of several of the speaker’s friends and acquaintances. Typically, they don’t see their own deaths coming. They are too self-absorbed to realise their fate- be it through misadventure, accident, risky lifestyle choices, murder or suicide.
The poems ‘puke-green’, 'I really don’t drink much', 'expect much', ‘Tony wasn’t very’, ‘my friend Bill’, ‘Ricky Lee’, ‘Hardy’, ‘my friend Stanley hated the sun’ and ‘the neighbour died today’ reveal the fickle and unpredictable nature of death as viewed by Yamrus.
The highly memorable poem ‘he died’ starkly ends: "one scrawny foot// stuck out/ from under the covers.// it was/ raining outside,// and/ his nails/ needed a trim.”
Asked whether the death of his father at an early age had contributed to his preoccupation with death, Yamrus says:
“I’d be pretty damn stupid if I didn’t see death as inevitable. And my father was 44 or 45 when he died. He was a coal miner and Black Lung got him. His father was a coal miner, too, and he lived into his 80s. I can still see their hands...my father and his father...and they both had hands that had bits of coal just under the skin, and my father used to be able to snort and hack up a load of spit and the spit was filled with black specks of dust...coal...and he’d think it was funny...so funny that it eventually killed him...and if that’s not poetic as hell I don’t know what is.”
Also interesting in the collection are the dozen or so meta-poems which are useful in revealing to us Yamrus's creative processes. Poems sometimes randomly pop into his head which he creates on the spot. The best of these include ‘a pretty good poem’, ‘they tell me’, ‘contrary’, ‘the [sad}’, ‘there’s a poem’ and a personal favourite:
A hurt that scars the landscape of the
soul…
that line
flashed in my mind
a minute ago…
but i didn’t know
what to do with it,
so, i let it go.
i got in the car
and drove
toward the market
thinking to myself
that some things just are…
that’s all.
like
the memory
of three white roses
in a short blue vase
on a winter afternoon.
Yamrus is also revered for his micro-poems: short, witty & aphoristic in content. The form helps him to condense complex, sometimes deeply emotional subjects into a few simple but powerful lines. They are often quirky and open-ended to allow the reader to evoke images in their heads. There are a couple dozen in the collection, including this crafty one:
no,
i
do
not
know
who
did
this
to
me.
John Yamrus is perhaps best known for his dog themed book BARK in which he collects 23 of his poems (Epic Rites Press, 2013). As Yamrus told me for a review at the time, "i think i like dogs more than i like people. there's no bullshit about them. no pretence. they are what they are, and you don't have to waste your time trying to figure them out. beyond that they shit in your yard, not in your soul."
Yamrus is shrewd enough not to sketch overly sentimental portraits of his dogs or to treat them like pseudo-children or to anthropomorphise them. He provides his dogs with just enough credible, realistic detail to give them unique, sympathetic personalities. High on my list include 'silly me', 'my dogs', 'this', 'i was just now' and 'a really bad poem about a real good dog...'
The following poem remains my favourite dog poem:
my dog doesn’t care much
for
literature.
she doesn’t care
that the editors write
asking questions,
demanding
answers.
she doesn’t
care
that
there’s
books to be sold,
poems
to be written,
and
hands
to shake.
all she wants
is to have
her bowl
filled
her
head
scratched
and
to be
let out
when
it’s time to
shit.
Much as Yamrus doesn't like to be placed in a literary box, the best way to make sense of his work is to draw parallels in his writing as I have done here- to examine his point of view, style, form, subject matter and common themes.
As he quips in the interview, "Maybe one day, to make it easier for people they’ll do to me what they did to Bukowski...gather all the poems by subject matter and type...I mean, we already have a book of my dog poems, so why not eventually do one on all the different things I like writing about."
Let me say in conclusion, Yamrus is the king of minimalism in poetry in America. His poetry is insightful, funny and highly entertaining. Despite this collection having been written over five decades there is a remarkable consistency in the work.
The collection is largely devoid of politics, socio-cultural & environmental references- although sex makes it in there discretely. There is a nostalgic, wholesome decency to the book, but there also resides within it, the contrary, but realistic imposing thoughts about death & how the beauty of our lives will one day be tragically cut short.
Buy the book here: https://www.amazon.com/Selected-Poems-John-Yamrus/dp/1736893513
INTERVIEW WITH JOHN YAMRUS 6 October 2021
As editor Mish Murphy writes in her Introduction to Selected Poems, you have published more than 2500 poems in 28 books of poetry over 51 years. How did you and your editors go about the monumental task of selecting and arranging your best work?
JY: It took months. What we did (me and Mish) was look thru each of the books and make lists of the poems that we felt should make it into the book. When we were done, we compared the lists and any poems that were on both lists were automatically in. We called those our “A list”. That’s where we started. And any poems that were on one list but not the other, got put into a B list and set aside for discussion and we each talked and argued about why or why not something on the list should be added or cut. As for the arrangement of the poems, i DID NOT want to do it thematically or chronologically...neither idea felt right to me and I dumped the whole problem into Murphy's lap and she came up with the idea of separating the poems into sections, with each section (like a book) having its own ebb and flow. In my opinion she did a remarkable job.
Despite the poems in the collection being written over many decades there is a remarkable consistency in your work. When did you first develop your signature minimalistic style and who were your early literary influences?
JY: You and I have talked about this a ton of times...most of my real influences aren’t strictly literary, even though there’s a ton of writers i admire, like Proust and Stephen King and Zola and Steinbeck and individual books that i love like WAR AND PEACE and THE MAN IN THE GREY FLANNEL SUIT and DRACULA (yes, I love Bram Stoker’s DRACULA...shoot me if you want)...but for the most part, the people who have really influenced my writing haven’t been book writers, but musicians and artists and comics. I’ve always said that I’ve learned more about writing and my approach to the page (the entire page, white spaces and all) from Miles Davis. Listening to him taught me that there’s more to be said with silence than sound and that taught me that I can sometimes say more by leaving something out than by putting something in. Actually, learning that little bit was big for me. It taught me a lot.
What are the key ingredients which have contributed to your longevity as a poet?
JY: I could be glib and try and be funny and give you an answer that says “stupidity and the inability to know when to give it up”, but the real answer is that I always intended to be in it for the long haul...I recognized really early that I didn’t have to (and didn’t want to) be trying to make the big poem or the big statement. I wanted my literary house and legacy to be made one brick at a time...one poem at a time. I always felt it would be stronger that way.
You refer to Charles Bukowski in half a dozen or so poems in the collection. In what ways is your writing “the literary fallout from Charles Bukowski’s ass”?
JY: You know as well as I do that Bukowski is pretty much solely responsible for everything that’s good and bad about so-called “modern” poetry. People read him and see his apparently simple lines and think they can do it, too. They think all they got to do is talk like they’re bad-ass and lived the hard life and they got it made. Well, Bukowski’s more than that...sure, he was a smart guy who knew where his market was and where the money was to be made and he played up to that, but I think it obscures the real heart and intelligence that’s under the surface of every one of his poems. That jumped out at me. I could care less (to a certain extent) about what he was writing about...what mattered just as much to me was how he was going about it. That’s the part that interested me.
What influence has Groucho Marx had on your poetry?
JY: For me, Groucho was and is the ultimate wit and funny guy. I used to watch those old movies over and over again and Groucho was so sly...he could say more with an eyebrow than most comedians could with a room full of lines. It was subtle...I mean, a lot of their humour was over the top and very visual, for sure, but with Groucho there was always this underlying wit and intelligence. He seemed well-read without shoving it in your face. He had the ability to make you feel like he was sharing a secret. I liked that. As a writer, that appealed to me. A lot.
What do the dogs you write about have over the failed human beings and relationships you often portray?
JY: There’s no real correlation between the two. The dog poems are the dog poems and I never met a bad dog in my entire life. It’s different with people. With dogs, everything’s out on the table. There’s no lying or subtext. It is what it is.
You seem to enjoy heaping scorn on critics who hate your work and poets who write crappy poems. Besides bagging people, what other pleasures do you get out of writing poetry?
JY: I’ve been publishing a long time. My first book came out more than 50 years ago and that’s a lot of poems and I find it really interesting that some readers seem to focus on the poems that reflect back at them. In a way, it’s kinda like a literary Rorschach test, isn’t it? Maybe one day, to make it easier for people they’ll do to me what they did to Bukowski...gather all the poems by subject matter and type...I mean, we already have a book of my dog poems, so why not eventually do one on all the different things I like writing about. At some point, that’d probably be a good idea. Not right now, though...right now I’m having too much fun and have too many other things to say.
Like many of us, you see death as only a matter of time. How did the death of your father at a young age contribute to your future poetic reflections on death?
JY: I’d be pretty damn stupid if I didn’t see death as inevitable. And my father was 44 or 45 when he died. He was a coal miner and Black Lung got him. His father was a coal miner, too, and he lived into his 80s. I can still see their hands...my father and his father...and they both had hands that had bits of coal just under the skin, and my father used to be able to snort and hack up a load of spit and the spit was filled with black specks of dust...coal...and he’d think it was funny...so funny that it eventually killed him...and if that’s not poetic as hell I don’t know what is.
The closest political statement you make in the collection is ‘don’t//let//the bastards//fool you. Why the deliberate focus on everyday tragedies rather than grand statements?
JY: I don’t really see that as political, really...there’s bastards out there making the rules everywhere you look. Wasn’t it Jack Kerouac who famously said “the woods are filled with wardens”.
In your poem ‘don’t put me’ you write “i/ don’t /want to/ win anything” and in ‘my’ you say that “they/ are written// to/ help me// make it/ thru the night.” Does your work have an overarching intent?
Jy: Yeah...look at what you just said...that right there is the intent...putting one foot in front of the other...adding more and more bricks to the wall until the day they drive up in a car and take me away.
The publication of Selected Poems must be the pinnacle of your achievements as a writer. Are you now going to retire and fade into the sunset?
JY: I’m really proud of this book. For anyone who’s just coming to my writing, it’s a really good place for them to start. There’s a lot of good stuff in it. There’s also a lot of good stuff we left out...because I was afraid to make it as big as the publisher originally wanted. He was pushing me to go as big as 550 pages and I couldn’t see subjecting anyone to that kind of torture, so we kept it to 384 pages or whatever the number is. Maybe some day down the road they’ll bring out an expanded edition that includes a lot of the stuff I felt compelled to leave out. And as for retiring into the sunset...I always saw sunsets as being just the promise of another day. Besides, like I said...why quit now, I’m having too much fun!
Thanks John.
Thanking you again...and again. You're priceless. Some day you should actually publish a book of the best of your reviews, like Leonard Maltin did with his movie reviews.
