BOOK REVIEW/ INTERVIEW: John Yamrus BARK. Epic Rites Press, Sherwood Park, Alberta, 2013 (53 pages).

In John Yamrus’s twentieth book BARK, he collects twenty-three of his dog related poems. The poems are characteristically written in Yamrus’s pared down, first person/ conversational, free verse style. The poems are often sparked by an ordinary event- a visit to the vet, watching his dog sleep on the couch next to him or attending a dog obedience class. The book is dedicated to ‘all the great dogs’ he has known and loved over the years, including four of his own, Abby, Mika, Phoebe and Ito. In the interview with Yamrus which follows, he says that the book has exposed his writing to a ‘whole bunch of new readers...people who might not normally read poetry.  especially the type of half-ass'd poetry that i write’. 

The front cover features a water colour of a dog by the Swedish painter and poet Henry Denander. The dog is alert and inquisitive and watchful of its master. The title BARK is a reference to the opening poem ‘my dogs’ who bark at everyone and everything and ‘when they’re not barking,/ they’re sitting there/ waiting for something/ to bark at’.

Yamrus is protective of and shows great affection for his dogs. In ‘okay, Mr Death, you win…’ the very presence of his dog brings contentment and a feeling of completeness to him. In ‘she said…’ he sees his bond with his animal as an undefineable pleasure ‘sometimes,/ without it/ even being/ said’. In ‘it’s always something…’ he saves his dog Abbey in his underwear after she falls ‘screaming’ in the swimming pool. He concludes he ‘owed her one’ ‘because that dog/ with her great, grey eyes/ and her absolutely/ crazy way// manages to/ save my/ life//every/ single//day.’ In ‘perfect’ he reads Doctor Zhivago in his sun room and later closes the novel and sees his reflection and that of his dog in the glass. He sums up the image, ‘perfect’. 

Yamrus loves his dogs and says bluntly in the accompanying interview, ‘i think i like dogs more than i like people. there's no bullshit about them. no pretense. 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’. In ‘my dog doesn’t care much’ he likes how his dog has no worldly concerns and does not ask for much: ‘all she wants/ is to have/ her bowl/ filled// her/ head/ scratched// and/ to be/ let out/ when it’s/ time to/ shit.’ In ‘it’s raining now…’ he returns from the groomer’s and is impressed how ‘she knows/ exactly/ how to shake off// what’s bothering her.’ In ‘i just now’ Yamrus tersely tells an interviewer that he writes a lot about dogs because they teach him ‘joy,/ perseverance/ and acceptance,’ ‘total concentration/ on a single task’ and ‘the great secret’ of life that ‘there isn’t any.’

Yamrus is careful not to sketch overly sentimental portraits of dogs or to treat them like pseudo children or to anthropomorphise them.  Yet he provides his dogs with just enough credible, original detail to create unique, sympathetic personalities. In ‘my old dog’s gone deaf’ he writes that he sometimes forgets that his dog can’t hear him, but humorously quips, ‘actually,/ she never really/ listened to me, anyway.’ ‘In dog obedience class…’ his dog Abbey finally ‘paid attention/ and sat and stayed’ like the other dogs, and the rebellious streak in Yamrus raucously concludes, ‘I hated that’. 

There are flashes of sentiment in the book but it is a raw, real emotion and never overplayed. In ‘I was just now’ Yamrus finds one of his deceased dog’s balls and as he threw it ‘watching that ball/ come to a stop/ nearly broke/ my heart’. Similarly, in ‘silly me’ his heart sinks when he spots a vet appointment card ‘from a dog/ that died/ two years ago.’

The writing is sparklingly clear and the book can be leisurely read a couple of times within an hour. As I read through the book I thought about the important dogs in my own life- Waldo, Leo, Maggie, Terra and Sugar. The walks, the bike rides, the sagging bags of dog turds and their poignant individual deaths. This collection will stroke the hearts of dog-lovers every where and provoke readers to recall their own companion dog narratives.

INTERVIEW WITH JOHN YAMRUS 18 April 2013

You sometimes use the metaphor that life is a card game. What sort of hand have you been dealt thus far?

Three jacks backed with a bottle of tequila.  i guess i've been lucky so far.  i'm 62, but still waiting to see what happens with the draw.

Your latest book BARK collects twenty-three of your dog related poems. Can you explain what happened behind the scenes that lead to the publication of the book through Epic Rites Press? Who initiated the idea for the book? etc

Well, my readers, (all 9 of them) have been asking me to put out a book of my best poems about dogs for years.  Until now, i never had a publisher who was warm to the idea.  i'm really happy with this book, as it's exposed my writing to a whole new audience...a whole bunch of new readers...people who might not normally read poetry.  especially the type of half-ass'd poetry that i write. 

The cover water colour illustration is by Henry Denander and I notice on your website that he has drawn some postcards as well: http://www.johnyamrus.com/ What sort of brief, if any, did you give Denander for BARK?

Denander's one of the greatest artists around.  i wouldn't presume to give someone like him instructions or directions.  i'm just happy and proud to be able to call him my friend.  he included me in his book POETRAITS, which is a collection of his paintings of the faces of modern poetry.  i'm still trying to figure out why he included me.

As you imply in your poem ‘i just now’ the obvious question is: why do you write a lot about dogs?

i think i like dogs more than i like people.  there's no bullshit about them.  no pretense.  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.

 Moving on to your writing style, you mention that your writing has gotten simpler the older you get. How do you go about saying more with less? That is, can you briefly outline the mechanics of your writing? Do you have a set routine? Where do the poems come from? Do you do much editing? When do you know when you have cut to the bone?

i try and write every day, but it doesn't always happen, and the poems come from what's happening around me.  i don't make stuff up.  i'm not that smart.  i see things...i write them down...and move on.  i'm not one of those guys who thinks that being a writer is a big deal.  the guy who installed my new generator last week is a big deal.  he gets stuff done.  all i do is hold up a mirror and hope.

In stripping back a poem to its bare essentials did you ever fear that you were dumbing down the language and robbing it of its beauty and complexity of meaning? 

not in the least.  what i'm doing...what i'm trying to do...is give the poem back to the reader.  i want to get THEM involved in the process.  like i said...i'm not very smart.  i want their input, so i leave holes in my poems...holes that they can fill with their own ideas.

You refer to Bukowski often in your writing. What do you admire about his writing? 

Charles Bukowski is personally liable for pretty much all that's good and all that's bad about "modern" poetry.  people read him and think "i can do that"...not understanding the talent and technique that's behind what he does.  it's very very hard to make it look easy.  Jack Kerouac once said "walking on water wasn't built in a day".

Your poems often depict flawed people trying to understand the complexities and ambiguities of life. They discover a few clues to some possible answers- but ultimately, they don’t seem to get it in the end. What have you ‘got’ as a writer and man that you have passed on to your readers?

when i figure that out, you'll be the first to know.

Do you have other books in the loop for future publication? If so, what are you working on?

i've got a children's book (a first for me) and a book of new poems in the pipe. i'm really a lucky guy.  i've got a great wife...enough money to buy a good bottle of tequila every now and then...and the time and the inclination to write.  it doesn't get any better than that.

Thanks John

thanks!  i appreciate the help and support.

BOOK REVIEW: John Steinbeck TRAVELS WITH CHARLEY. Pan Books, London, 1965 (first published 1962) 238 pages.

This travelogue is a lesser known work of Steinbeck’s and documents his three month trip across America in the autumn of 1960 when he was fifty-eight years old. His intention is ‘to find the truth about my country’ because ‘I had not felt it for twenty-five years.’ He decides to travel incognito with his poodle Charley as his sole companion to allow him an anonymous free-rein. He fits-out a sturdy three-quarter ton truck with a camper top which he calls Rocinante after Don Quixote’s horse.

This is a free-wheeling ‘wandering narrative’ which is told with great warmth and humanity. In many ways it is an anti-travel story. Steinbeck expresses initial concerns that he doesn’t really want to go on this journey- for health and lifestyle reasons, while on the road he often gets lost, and in summing up, he questions what he has learnt, if anything. Despite Steinbeck's insistence that ‘there is no moral in his observations, nor any warning’, he does cast a caustic eye on the direction American has taken since his childhood.

In the opening pages of the book he comments on the improvisational nature of the journey, ‘Once a journey is designed, equipped, and put in process, a new factor enters and takes over… The certain way to be wrong is to think you control it.’ Although his plan of discovery is ‘clear, concise and reasonable’ what really enthralls Steinbeck is the unknown, how chance, luck or evolving circumstances, both good or bad, contribute to the overall experience of being on the road. He is certainly surprised, and sometimes, deeply startled by what he witnesses, but he never appears to have a master plan or ideological prism from which to judge what he sees.

Steinbeck’s ten year old dog Charley serves many important functions in advancing the reception of the travelogue. He is an ‘ambassador’ who enables the writer to easily establish contact with strangers, he often acts as a sounding board for Steinbeck’s ideas and Charley’s joyful, intuitive behavior is often contrasted with the nasty and brutal behavior of humanity. After he witnesses the racial taunts of a young black girl by white  segregationists Steinbeck concludes, ‘But Charley doesn’t have our problems. He doesn’t belong to a species clever enough to split the atom but not clever enough to live in peace with itself. He doesn’t even know about race…He loved deeply and tried dogfully. It would be difficult to explain to a dog the good and moral purpose of a thousand humans gathered to curse one tiny human. I’ve seen a look in dogs’ eyes, a quickly vanishing look of amazed contempt, and I am convinced that basically dogs think humans are nuts.’

Steinbeck has always admired writers who can descend on a town, ask key questions and then ‘write an orderly report very like a roadmap.’ However, he distrusts this vision as a mirror of reality: ‘I feel that there are too many realities. What I set down here is true until someone else passes that way and rearranges the world in his own style.’ In concluding his discussion of the Deep South, for example, Steinbeck admits that he has not presented a cross-section of the region: ‘I’ve only told what a few people said to me and what I saw. I don’t know whether any conclusion can be drawn. But I do know it is a troubled place and a people caught in a jam.’

Steinbeck prefers to take small back roads which ‘are not conducive to speed.’ He finds it wonderful to pull up next to a clear lake on a quiet country road ‘and see overhead the arrows of southing ducks and geese’.  He marvels at the vastness and beauty of Wyoming and feels silence and awe amongst the giant redwood trees in Oregon. In contrast, he describes how he gets stuck in a mesh of traffic and by-passes the ‘noble twin cities of St Paul and Minneapolis’: ‘The traffic struck me like a tidal wave and carried me along, a bit of shiny flotsam bounded in front by a gasoline truck half a block long. Behind me was an enormous cement mixer on wheels, its big howitzer revolving as it proceeded. On my right was what I judged to be an atomic cannon. As usual I panicked and got lost.’ The superhighways of the time are ‘wonderful for moving goods but not for inspection of a countryside.’ He predicts that in the future these throughways will dissect the nation and ‘it will be possible to drive from New York to California without seeing a single thing.’

Early in his journey he pokes fun at how the emphasis on cleanliness in roadside restaurants has resulted in bland, but safe experiences. He is astounded: ‘In the bathroom two water tumblers were sealed in cellophane sacks with the words: ‘These glasses are sterilized for your protection.’ Everyone was protecting me and it was horrible. I tore the glasses from their covers. I violated the toilet seat with my foot.’ The equally bland waitress gets to him: ‘I felt so blue and miserable I wanted to crawl into a plastic cover and die. What a date she must be, what a lover! I tried to imagine that last and couldn’t. For a moment I considered giving her a five-dollar tip, but I knew what would happen. She wouldn’t be glad. She’d just think I was crazy.’

Steinbeck’s  social observations on the American way of life during the Cold War are often highly amusing but are tinged with his scathing satirical eye. While camping in Maine he is horrified and frightened by the influx of amateur hunters into the area. He understands that the hunting frenzy is somehow connected to testosterone but he finds the activity ludicrous and difficult to rationalise: ‘It isn’t hunger that drives millions of armed American males to forests and hills every autumn, as the high incidence of heart failure among the hunters will prove. Somehow the hunting process has to do with masculinity, but I don’t quite know how. I know there are any number of good and efficient hunters who know what they are doing; but many more are overweight gentlemen, primed with whiskey and armed with high-powered rifles. They shoot at anything that moves or looks as though it might, and their success in killing one another may well prevent a population explosion.’

During his journey, Steinbeck attends church every Sunday as part of his investigations into America. One service which particularly stands out to him takes place in Vermont. The minister was ‘a man of iron with tool-steel eyes and a delivery like a pneumatic drill, opened with prayer and reassured us that we were a pretty sorry lot.’ The minister’s speech on hell evokes ‘a lovely sense of evil-doing in Steinbeck: ‘He spoke of hell as an expert, not the mush-mush hell of these soft days, but a well-stoked, white-hot hell served by technicians of the first order. This reverend brought it to a point where we could understand it, a good hard coal fire, plenty of draught, and a squad of open-hearth devils who put their hearts into their work, and their work was me. I began to feel good all over.’

Steinbeck  is astounded and dismayed with the speed with which America is changing. The corner store cannot compete with the supermarket chains and regretfully is ‘rapidly disappearing.’ ‘The new America’, he says, ‘finds his challenge and his love in traffic-choked streets, skies nested in smog, choking with the acids of industry, the screech of rubber and houses leashed in against one another, while the townlets wither a time and die.’ He fears local accents will also disappear ‘and in their place will be a national speech, wrapped and packaged, standard and tasteless’ much like the fast food and motel industry he sees emerging.

When he revisits Seattle it bears no resemblance to the town he remembered as a young man: ‘Everywhere frantic growth, a carcinomatous growth. Bulldozers rolled up the green forests and heaped the resulting trash for burning. The torn white lumber from concrete forms was piled beside grey walls. I wonder why progress looks so much like destruction.’ While visiting Salinas, the town of his birth in northern California, Steinbeck comments that he has never been opposed to change, nor does he bemoan the past, yet he feels ‘resentment towards the strangers swamping what I thought of as my country with noise and clutter and the inevitable rings of junk.' He feels like a ghost in his own town as he finds  nothing but strangers. He is deeply concerned ‘that there must be a saturation point and the progress may be a progression towards strangulation.’ The very survival of the planet is at stake: ‘We have in the past been forced into reluctant change by weather, calamity, and plague. Now the pressure comes from our biological success as a species. We have overcome all enemies but ourselves.’ And now he ‘can eliminate not only itself but all other life.’

Steinbeck likens the United States as one large garbage dump which functions on the principle of ‘planned obsolescence’ and questions whether this wastefulness is sustainable: ‘American cities are like badger holes, ringed with trash- all of them- surrounded by piles of wrecked and rusting automobiles, and almost smothered with rubbish… I do wonder whether there will come a time when we can no longer afford our wastefulness- chemical wastes in the rivers, metal wastes everywhere, and atomic wastes buried deep in the earth or sunk in the sea.’

After talking to a farm owner about Khrushchev’s UN shoe thumping incident and the great uncertainty of the times, Steinbeck expresses the fear that ‘parasitic man’ has had insufficient time to understand the terrible power of the atomic bomb: ‘Humans had perhaps a million years to get used to fire as a thing and as an idea…and now a force was in hand how much more strong, and we hadn’t had time to develop the means to think’ in these ‘exploding times.’

In North Dakota he realizes that the Russians have become a punching bag for American’s daily grips. A storekeeper says to him, ‘Those Russians got quite a load to carry. Man has a fight with his wife, he belts the Russians.’ Steinbeck asks him the pertinent question, ‘Anybody know any Russians around here?’

‘Course not. That’s why they’re valuable. Nobody can find fault with you if you take out after the Russians.’

The most harrowing accounts in the travelogue takes place in New Orleans in late 1960. A young Afro-American girl emerges from a recently desegregated elementary school and is meet by the vicious jeers of the Cheerleaders, a group of racist middle-aged white women. Steinbeck is shocked and sickened by the abuse: ‘On television the sound track was made to blur or had crowd noises cut in to cover. But now I heard the words, bestial and filthy and degenerate…Theirs was the demented cruelty of egocentric children, and somehow this made their insensate beastliness much more heartbreaking. These were not mothers, not even women. They were crazy actors playing to a crazy audience.’

Steinbeck remarks near the end of his book that ‘it would be pleasant to be able to say of his travels with Charley, ‘I went out to find the truth about my country and I found it.’ Instead he has found a ‘barrel of worms.’ He comments that he is fooling himself if he thinks he has anything ‘important or even instructive’ to say about America. As the more he inspects the American image ‘the less sure he became of what it is.’ He has seen so little of the whole that his answer to the question ‘What are Americans like today? is problematic and can only be answered in fragments. These are shrewd, qualifying metaphysical statements directly addressed at the reader to discover their own reality.  

Steinbeck’s observational skills are exceptional. Even the  mundane  shaped by the mind of Steinbeck is sculpted into delicate shades of feeling . His meditations on America as an armpit of rot and ugliness are particularly inspiring fifty years on. I wonder what the great man would make of America today- childhood obesity, Hummers, the Tea Party, climate change denial, WallMart, Birthers. Yeah, I concur with Charley- Americans, humans are nuts!

BOOK REVIEW- John Yamrus- doing cartwheels on doomsday afternoon

BOOK REVIEW- John Yamrus- doing cartwheels on doomsday afternoon. Epic Rites Press. Sherwood Park, Alberta, 2010.

This is Yamrus’ seventeenth book of poetry he has published since 1970. The poetry is extremely lean free verse and characteristically hugs the left margin of the page, with each line usually two to four words. There is no pretension in Yamrus' work- just clean, simple lines easy to snort into your consciousness. The poems are often observational from the poet’s point of view about everyday events- his dog taking a shit, almost getting run over in a liquor store car park, his hatred of academic verse, the zapping pain associated with growing old & the like. The main purpose of this review is to highlight some of the central motifs Yamrus explores in this book: his thoughts on writing poetry, Bukowski, life, death & dogs.

On Writing

Dozens of the poems in this collection are about writing which reflects Yamrus' day to day concerns as an established American poet. Some poems are a response to comments made by casual but ignorant readers of his poetry. Such criticisms are often hurled at free verse underground writers and Yamrus allows them to speak for themselves to ironically reveal their short comings for the benefit of his more knowledgeable readers. In ‘Dear John Yamrus’ the speaker of the  letter poem  accuses Yamrus of not writing poetry but rather vivisected 'flash fiction.' In ‘they tell me’ he is criticised for writing ‘too much about writing’ and is called a fraud because he doesn’t write poems ‘just diary entries.’ 

In some poems Yamrus compiles answers to typical questions his readers have asked him over the years. In ‘the next question’ he is asked who has had the most influence on his poetry. His answer is irreverent and anti-establishment as he points to some of his popular culture idols: 'Hank Williams, / Groucho Marx/ And Willie Mays.'

In ‘a word to the wise’ he strongly argues for writers to maintain their sense of independence and to be prepared to take risks out of their comfort zones. He offers the blunt advice, ‘never/ be afraid/ to/ piss off/ your readers. In the companion poem ‘giving’ he suggests that giving readers what they want diminishes the poetic soul.

In ‘if’ he warns poets that if they ask for his opinion of their work he will be honest and direct. He will not try to mislead them as to the quality of their poetry but he simply asks they 'don't/ get pissed with his assessment.

Yamrus also uses his work to foster his own criticism of the language, subject matter, techniques and forms of other poets. In ‘she cursed like a’ he expresses a dislike for a female poet who uses profanity as a ‘crutch/ that colored/ everything/ she/ did.’ In ‘the failed poet’ he is contemptuous of an unreflective idealistic poet who chooses only to write about positive things to uplift people. He expresses his preference for poems of 'grit and guts' and mockingly concludes, ‘calling yourself/ a /poet/ won’t/ necessarily/ make you one.’ 

Yamrus has done the hard yards as a poet over many grueling decades and his poetry reflects his ongoing struggle in his development as an original artist. His poetry depicts flawed people trying to understand the complexities and ambiguities of daily existence. They discover some possible answers of what it is all about through their experiences, but ultimately, they don't quite get it in the end. Yamrus resents inflexible and narrowly focused writers who think they have something important to say. This bitter tone is reflected in ‘contrary’ where he lashes out at imitative internet poets who have 'ruined poetry' by pursuing the publication of inferior poetry on a mass scale.

Yamrus also expresses a special hatred for the falseness and pretension of academic poetry. In ‘they’re winning, you know...’ he concedes that academic poetry is winning out over gritty anecdotal poetry like his own, 'not because it's better' but 'because/ it's safe.'

More interesting is Yamrus' assessment of his own poetry. He is a self assured, but paradoxically, a self effacive critic of his own poetry. In 'dunno' the speaker claims not to have the answers to anything, that all i got is me.' In 'please' he furthers his confession: 'don't/ ask/ me/ to// explain. He claims he knows nothing. Has no answers. He just writes the stuff without expecting to change the world. Or to accept any responsibility.

In ‘Bukowski started his novel’ Yamrus acknowledges there are limitations in his poetry, 'that 'most of it's/ not very good'  but the important thing is to continue writing, ‘to hold onto the fire’, to continue the slog like Buk did:

In the end, Yamrus writes poetry essentially because he has fun composing it and because people enjoy reading it. As a poet he writes what he wants to and then returns to his other daily routines, including his day job which pays the bills.

On Charles Bukowski

Bukowski is one of Yamrus' heroes, and even above Locklin, his main literary influence. He appears obsessed by the spirit of  Bukowski and although he died sixteen years ago, he makes a number of explicit references to the Buk in the collection. In ‘we’ he claims that we are 'the literary fallout/ from/ Charles/ Bukowski's ass.' In 'why i'm not buk' he reckons Buk 'had it figured out and expresses his admiration for his writing despite his ugly appearance:

he managed to

write like

a slumming angel,

while

looking

like

hell.

Similar to Bukowski, Yamrus writes in highly accessible free verse style and like Buk, he writes a lot about writing poetry. Yamrus' voice and subject matter is not distinctly working class but more from the point of view of a professional poet.

In many ways, and self admitedly, Yamrus' poetry is a thin imitation of Bukowski's. As Yamrus points out in ‘why i’m not buk’ his poetry is like Buk’s but without the talent, without the whores, without the brawling, without his pock-marked face and without his love for classical music. In comparison to Bukowski's coarse, rebellious verse, Yamrus's poetry is swear-free which readers of all ages can enjoy and not feel too threatened by.

On Life

Apart from a few incidental references to the outside world, Yamrus' world is self contained and primarily focussed on his role as a public poet. Yamrus is a self assured poet with a secure handle on what he is intending to achieve through his writing. Sometimes he expresses his sense of doubt of ever knowing anything, but many of his poems are simple tales which work towards revealing an universal truth, expressed in a street wise aphorism. He often uses the metaphor that life is a card game- that you need to stoically 'play the hand/ you're dealt' as a necessary acceptance of the randomness of fate as he expresses in the poem ‘he’s in his 60s’ in which a wife has to care for her wheelchair bound husband.

In 'New York, just' after the poet visits the city he recalls 'the soft grays and warm brows' of the New York in his childhood. He poignantly remarks that life is transient, the only constant in 'that old girl,/ sorrow.'

In the short poem 'if' he suggests that we make our own luck because ultimately we are responsible for the pulse and direction of our lives.

As he ages, Yamrus is increasingly concerned with documenting his various ailments,and through juxtaposition, he recalls the vigour of his youth, 'the one who/ climbed ladders/and/ jumped fences.../ who could/ get out of bed/ without a sigh'. In "i never thought i'd" he expresses surprise that 'he'd'end/ this way/ chronic pain/ 24/7' but he is accepting of his situation, partially because he believes that has achieved what he has set out to do, that:

i still am

that

guy

i wanted to become.

In 'they sent me for' he visits a  clinic to determine the cause of his back pain. He concludes that life is full of little ironies in that 'by the time/ you figure it out' nurses are attending to your physical decline.

On Death

To Yamrus, death is seen as random and inevitable. In ‘Tommy was a duker...’ the speaker of the poem hears that an old acquaintance has died of cancer. He recalls Tommy bashing up three guys in high school and says tersely, ‘you just/ can’t/ win ‘em/all.’ Yamrus is suggesting that life is a game which we will all eventually lose. In the third person narrated poem 'it was taking' while playing cards, Lawson shoots and kills an unnamed assailant who was taking too long to die. He turns to Moore and tells him to quit grinning, 'your time/ will come too.'

In the short poem ‘this morning’ death is seen as a matter of running out of luck. Yamrus expresses a black sense of humour in imagining 'how perfectly fitting' his own death would have been had he been killed by a speeding car in a parking lot outside the liquor store.

In ‘my car battery died and’ the speaker waits for his car to be repaired and uses the opportunity to comment on how death will unexpectedly, but inevitably strike us: 'you do your/ thing,// then/ sit around/

waiting/ for the truck/ to take you/ away. This theme is furthered in the short poem ‘the’ where the honking of the geese symbolises the heralding of the poet’s uncertain sense of his impending death.

On Dogs

Dogs provide Yamrus with another means in which to make allegorical comments about humanity in general. The first poem in the collection ‘Eddie’ is about a man’s relationship to his battered dog Bastard. The third person narrative poem expresses a stoical attitude towards fate and the need to appreciate the moment, including our relationships. ‘in dog obedience class...’ Yamrus hated how his little Abby now paid attention and ‘did everything right’ ‘just like/ all the other dogs.’ He identifies with the dog and is annoyed that in the process of conforming her she has lost her playful, improvisational spirit.

In ‘i just now’ Yamrus makes explicit his love of dogs and why he has included them in many of his poems:

they teach me

joy,

perseverance

and

acceptance.

He concludes tersely that dogs teach him the truth that ‘there isn’t any.’

What Yamrus likes best about his dog is that she has no cares or responsibilities. In ‘my dog doesn’t care much’ unlike the poet she doesn’t care about literature or whether books are sold, all she wants is to 'have her bowl filled' and 'her head scratched' or to let out 'when it's time to shit.'

Similarly, in 'it's raining now...' he admires how his dog is able 'to shake off/ what's/ bothering/ her' unlike us humans who often clutter our minds with petty anxieties and psychological baggage.

Conclusion

This is highly accessible poetry from a mature, self aware writer. The poems are deliberately anti-intellectual and in some respects anti-rational which should please many readers sick of overly formal verse. Yamrus' poetry gets simpler the older he gets, but still packs a punch. Like the resilient nose hair in ‘i’ve got’ which keeps rejuvenating, Yamrus surprisingly keeps extending his shelf life in books.

Buy Yamrus' book at Epic Rites press here:

http://www.epicrites.org/john-yamrus.html

Sources:

Poetry Circle: An Interview with John Yamrus
 http://www.poetrycircle.com/index.php/topic,2535.0.html

Suite 101.com interview with Wolfgang Carstens 
http://suite101.com/article/interview-with-john-yamrus-a322150

Update- 3 January 2012

John Yamrus was interviewed by Ron Schira for the BCTV program New Arts Alive on 7 December 2011. In a wide ranging and revealing discussion, Yamrus comments on his intentions, his writing process and use of style.

Yamrus started out writing making ‘grand statements’ but now he finds pleasure in writing about simple things. ‘You’ve got to write a lot of crap before you get to the good stuff,’ he quips. He doesn’t take many notes and his poetry usually is written without much redrafting, ‘I find if I tinker with something, I tinker the life out of it.’ On his pared down style, he says, ‘The hardest part is working out what not to write.’ Rather than to include every detail, he allows the readers to fill in their own gaps: ‘I don’t feel like hitting the reader over the head.’

Yamrus reads twenty poems from his three most recent books of poetry New and Selected Poems (Lummox Press, 2008), doing cartwheels on doomsday afternoon (Epic Rites Press, 2010) and can’t stop now (Epic Rites Press, 2011). A highlight of the program is when Yamrus reads his poetry as it scrolls down the screen.  The program moderator, Ron Schira appears disorganized at times, and often struggles to find words, but Yamrus remains unruffled and expresses a shining passion for his craft. He is also very encouraging of young writers who he says should ‘apply their butts to the seat of their computers’ and not fear rejection. ‘If I can succeed in writing poetry, anyone can,’ he explains without a hint of irony.

 Find the BCTV program New Arts Alive here: http://www.bctv.org/special_reports/arts/new-arts-alive/vmix_f6540ffa-21ba-11e1-a895-001871e3ce6c.html?success=1