Bad Animals — Tom Cull (Insomniac Press)

Today's book of poetry:
Bad Animals.  Tom Cull.  Insomniac Press.  London, Ontario.  2018.

Every single poem Tom Cull writes is a different type of gold.  Bad Animals had Today's book of poetry going in poetry circles.  This cat can burn.

Today's book of poetry is going to start today's festivities with one of the finer list poems we've encountered in a long while.  It seems Cull can whip these wild musings into movies that attack the inner cortex of your brain from all sides with skill approaching magic.

Preparing for Apocalypse: 13 Survival Tips

1.  No one will survive the apocalypse.

2.  In addition to anything starring Will Smith, consult the 

following movies: Deep Impact, Melancholia, Armageddon,

Waterworld, WALL-E, 28 Days Later, and Eat

Pray Love.

3.  Add the following titles to your self-help library: anything

by Anne Coulter, Blood Meridian, Roughing It in the Bush, Not

Wanted on the Voyage, and Les Revenentes.

4.  Replace GPS with GSP.

5.  Audition for the following reality television shows:

Survivor, The Biggest Loser, Hell's Kitchen, Naked and Afraid,

Polyamory, Married & Dating, Real World, Deadliest Catch,

Full House.

6.  Compress your vocabulary—remove words such as

ambivalent, ecopoetics, neo-liberal, and crepe.

     i(a). idiom. Literalize your metaphors (open a can of worms,

     eat slow food, put a ring on it, issue trigger warnings, make a

     killing, beg to differ, cross that bridge, etc.).

     i(b). diction. Prepare for shifts in word definitions: glacial,

     for example, will mean "very fast." Koodo, Google, Hulu, and

     Snapchat will become onomatopoeia.

7.  Know when to follow; know when to retweet.

8.  Trade in Apple, BlackBerry, Tinder, and Kindle for apple,

blackberry, tinder, and kindle.

9.  Loot anthropology museums for supplies. (Didactic panels

may also prove helpful.)

10.  Refrain from correcting improper usage of personal

pronouns I and me.

11.  Stay limber; work on your cardio. When shit gets real,

remember tip #1 and/or Will Smith in Bad Boys II.

12.  Get comfortable with killing. Start small—a worm, maybe a

mayfly—then move up to vertebrates. Don't always choose ugly

things. You will get the hang of it.

13.  Make a list dividing the people you know into columns A and 

B. When the time comes, you'll know what it's for.

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Tom Cull is a new age poetry Tom Robbins, Kurt Vonnegut, long winded but smarter Richard Brautigan and that crazy old insurance company's wild life documentary narrator.  All in one, and more.  What Today's book of poetry is so clumsily trying to say is that  Mr. Cull hits every poetry nerve receptor we have and calls out a few we didn't know we had.

It's as simple as this — Tom Cull's poems explode off of the page propelled by intelligent wit and a fantastically agile and humane closet of frailties.

Mr. Cull, who is apparently also an ornithologist/zoologist of the highest order, is also unhinged in the best possible way.  Tom Cull is not wired like the rest of us.  As a result he is perfectly placed to objectively cut through our human nonsense, all our bullshit.

Show and Tell

Dead man in a box

inside a larger box.

With us.

Moving down a mile-long line

of pylons on the 401,

a hawk folds and dives behind

a row of cedars.

A stack of sandwiches,

devilled eggs,

tarts, and coffee.

"I'm a man of few words."

The dead man replied, "Yes but you use them

all the time."

The season is fall.

He leaves. For days

he leaves. Moaning and terrified.

The hospice nurse asked, "Have you

been able to return to

any of your normal activities—

light housework, cooking,

laundry?" His reply: "I have a wife."

The child in the spotted dress

hides behind the coffin, and the bruises

fade yellow.

💫💫💫

Those of you Today's book of poetry fans with long memories will remember that Today's book of poetry wrote about Tom Cull's beautiful Baseline Press chapbook What the Badger Said back in June of 2014.  You can see that here:

http://michaeldennispoet.blogspot.com/2014/06/what-badger-said-tom-cull-baseline-press.html

Today's book of poetry had nothing but admiration for Mr. Cull's Badger.  Bad Animals is a step into the big league and Cull has made it a head-turning giant step.

Our morning read was held out on the porch for the first time this year, all bright sunshine and promise.  Today's book of poetry asked the crew to dedicate today's reading to Toronto playwright and most excellent man, Andrew Batten (1963-2019).  Andy loved poetry.

The Today's book of poetry staff responded with gusto.  Our morning read of Tom Cull's Bad Animals was the best we've had around here since we blasted through David Lee's last book.

Today we're going to finish the proceedings with another smashing "list" poem.  Thank you Tom Cull.

Invasive Species

European green crab

Purple loosestrife

Zebra mussel

Sea lamprey

Emerald ash borer

Didymo

Gypsy moth

Sub-Saharan Zeus moss

Asian long-horned beetle

Phragmites

Karaoke

Giant hogweed

Asiatic carpe diem

Common buckthorn

Northern snakehead

Killer shrimp

Rusty crayfish

Brown spruce longhorn beetle

Mountain pine beetle

Sirex woodwasp

Dutch oven

Butternut canker

Common crested Brohammer

Japanese knotweed

Garlic mustard

Dog-strangling vine

Alfalfa blotch leafminer

Stuffed crust pizza

Prussian drone operator

Eurasian witch lemming

Holy Roman trebuchet

Oriental weather loach

Asian swamp eel

African clawed frog

Spanish slug

European yellow-tailed scorpion

Red-card slider

Water hyacinth

Gangis Kanye

Jayden

Eurasian wild boar

Burmese python

Tyrannosaurus rex

Giant African land snail

Three-sceptred monarch

Herb-crusted salmon

Panko-crusted tilapia

Open-concept kitchen

Spotted eastern gulch

Barrel-chested man-child

Three steepled tree weevil

Right said Fred

💫💫💫

Bad Animals is some of the best damned cooking Today's book of poetry has tasted, flat out.  Today's book of poetry loved these poems and assures you that given the chance you will love them too.  

They are that good.

Tom Cull

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Tom Cull grew up in Huron County and now resides in London, Ontario, where he teaches writing and serves as the city's current Poet Laureate. His chapbook, What the Badger Said, was published in 2013. Since 2012, Tom has been the director of Thames River Rally, a grass roots environmental group he co-founded with his partner Miriam Love, and their son Emmett.

BLURBS

"Like his black bears that have drifted too far south, Tom Cull's poems wander through a suburban wilderness, out of place, unpredictable, full of purpose, nosing among the wasting, surreal artifacts of human life, looking for sustenance."

     —Jeffery Donaldson, author of Missing Link

"Bad Animals sings a natural world rendered absurd by human hands. In the same line, the same breath, the reader can find grief and calm, folly and beauty, spectacle and longing, yet Tom Cull's poems always circle back to joy."

     —Laurie Graham, author of Settler Education

Tom Cull (8th Poet) | Open Mic Poetry May 3, 2017

Video: London Open Mic Poetry

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DISCLAIMERS

Poems cited here are assumed to be under copyright by the poet and/or publisher.  They are shown here for publicity and review purposes.  For any other kind of re-use of these poems, please contact the listed publishers for permission.

We here at TBOP are technically deficient and rely on our bashful Milo to fix everything.  We received notice from Google that we were using "cookies"

and that for our readers in Europe there had to be notification of the use of those "cookies.  Please be aware that TBOP may employ the use of some "cookies" (whatever they are) and you should take that into consideration.

Tiny, Frantic, Stronger - Jeff Latosik (Insomniac Press)

Today's book of poetry:
Tiny, Frantic, Stronger.  Jeff Latosik.  Insomniac Press.  London, Ontario.  2010.

Winner: 2007 P.K. Page Founders' Award
Winner: 2008 Great Canadian Literary Hunt
Winner: 2011 Trillium Award

Today's book of poetry has been the humble recipient of many, many volumes of poetry since we opened our door.  Most of our books, almost all, come from publishers.  And bless their cotton socks, each and every one of them.  Today's book of poetry is always on the hunt for new (to us) poetry titles.  Next week we are meeting up with an American friend who is bringing us three boxes of new poetry from Vermont.  Recently, in Montreal, Today's book of poetry stopped at our favourite bookstore, The Word, near McGill, and picked up five or six poetry titles.  A new (to us) Sharon Olds.  That could read "Her Supreme Poetryness Sharon Olds".  A first edition A.M. Klein, Hitleriad,  and another David Mamet poetry title.  Sometimes individuals, poets, send us their books and on occasion there are a number of poetry friends who have been kind enough to leave piles of poetry on our step.  Today's Jeff Latosik came to us in just such a fashion.

One morning, not too long ago, our side door step was pyramided with poetry, a gift from an old friend.  There was a small herd of Charles Tomlinson, a fabulous book by K.I. Press called Pale Red Footprints.  It didn't stop there, but low and behold, in walked Jeff Latosik and kicked me in the knee.  Not a bad kick, but an "I'm here, let's get started" kick.  Latosik damn near knocked us off of our poetry feet.

Jeff Latosik is, apparently, some kind of poetry monster.  He is a brilliant Dr. Frankenstein and Tiny, Frantic, Stronger is his beautiful monster, built to run roughshod on our little poetry village.  THIS is a book that Today's book of poetry wants you to track down.  Tiny, Frantic, Stronger is exactly the type of book Today's book of poetry was started for.  

Eight Kinds of Knots

A streetcar stalled on Howard Park

and Roncesvalles Ave. Passengers cleared,

they fume in sunlight, waiting for a newer version

of the part that held their afternoon together.

It's heading towards them at half the speed

of a newly launched home run in the park,

and the crowd can make a dome of their cheering.

Close by, a first-grade field trip watches,

teachers blossoming consent forms. Lined up

crooked, two by two, these kids are living long division.

Arguing over who will be an astronaut first, one flips a coin,

another waits, while the traffic starts backing up,

the banks get full and a man walks around with a hammer

unsure of what to do with it. In his pocket he motions

another figure eight: that's a hard one to pull apart,

but he does. The rolling hitch—slip the frayed end under the slack,

tighten, slack, tighten, slack,

until the Scotch tape on our LOST CAT sign peels

back, until a glass bottle falls from a ledge, it gets dark,

and every lit up window is a difficult board game.

Later, a raccoon scattering newspaper

over the road, the headlights that scare him under a deck,

the fold-out chairs that won't fold back.

If you listen you can hear someone talking about the last time

she climbed a fence and in how many places her wrist broke.

And the planes seem closer, the stars, countable.

💫💫💫

Today's book of poetry's copy of Tiny, Frantic, Stronger came to us in near-perfect condition.  Not so much now.  You may have noticed a wee break in our scheduled programing.  Today's book of poetry has been sidetracked with other business for a bit.  During that time we were carrying old Latosik around with us.  We spilled water on Tiny, we spilled wine on Frantic, and Stronger got push pulled into folded pages somewhere in the luggage between Peterborough and Montreal.

It doesn't matter a bean.  Today's book of poetry is back in the saddle, sorry for the break, we missed you all.

Latosik clearly has a good grasp of the big picture, as you are reading Tiny, Frantic, Stronger your confidence grows with every page.  You become willing to follow Latosik wherever his amusement takes him.  And, Latosik can be as hilarious as he wants as he slides in there dark and ominous.  Today's book of poetry likes a little tension in our humour.

An Unauthorized Account of the Downtime of the Lovely Couple

Night pushed their windows closer.

They slouched more. It felt good to give up posture.

They sat for hours, immersed in a game

that involved a series of miniature doors.

The problem was figuring out who was winning

or when the game might come to an end.

I imagined my life differently, she said.

No matter, he said, when I drink

I am the tallest man in Toronto.

There was the ritual of high-fiving

until something delicate fell from a table.

There was inhaling the price tags from beautiful clothes.

You have too many tiny apartments, she said.

And he sat on the chair he'd made for her

from balsa wood, remembered how it all came

in dusty panels with uneven edges,

how he'd told her that was the measure of awe,

cutting panels from larger panels

as if somewhere at the start of it

there was something huge and complete.

💫💫💫

After our long break there were some poetry hounds around the office this morning chomping at the bit for a howling, a reading, and Tiny, Frantic, Stronger was the tonic needed to get every engine running.  Our morning read was a delight, the enthusiasm around the room was contagious.  This eight year-old book is as good as we have seen in a while, and it was new to us.

Latosik connects you to his work by taking you with him as he hop-scotches his way through these intimate moments, these carnival laughs.  These poems will remind you why you like poetry.  Tiny, Frantic, Stronger is a stunner.

On Appreciating Space Exploration

Press your hands against the ceiling.

Notice how hot they become there on the border

of home and a sky that rolls like water

pushing its way through a hairline crack.

Step down slowly. Break a window.

Or, unravel a roll of film

then try to stuff it all back in the roll. Develop.

Spend a moment pondering this statement:

that the road should be built in this direction

or that direction is an equally preposterous notion.

Marry young. Acquire an appreciation of orbit

by making the same mistake over again

until it feels new, like an old shirt whose sleeves you roll up.

Try to wear that shirt around your legs. Try to fit

your arms around a full-grown oak.

Throw a fistful of marbles across a field.

Try to get inside a shoebox.

Fall off something.

💫💫💫

During our brief hiatus Today's book of poetry had an opportunity to mull over the whole thing, poetry, the world, our place in it.  Books like Tiny, Frantic, Stronger help so much.  Books like these pull you out of your own little world, even if it is for the briefest of moments.  Thank you Jeff Latosik.  It was a bit like discovering Fred Neil, who knew that was out there?

Today's book of poetry wants to take this opportunity for a few shout-outs.  Christopher McPherson, Stuart Ross, David Clewell, Ward Maxwell, Dag Straumsvag, David Whyte, Pearl Pirie, Alexander Monker, Alexander Michaud, Pistol, Otis and of course the ever sweet K.  Today's book of poetry would also like to send a shout out to Rob McLennan, ever industrious and generous.

Over and out.

Jeff Latosik

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

Jeff Latosik’s third book of poetry, Dreampad, will be released in 2018 from McClelland & Stewart. He lives in Toronto.

BLURBS:

Jeff Latosik's Tiny, Frantic, Stronger is infested with cockroaches, silverfish, with and sharp turns. Watch where you're going: some of his line broaden into fields; others are trap doors.

     —Sarah Lindsay, author of Mount Clutter and Twigs & Knucklebones

These poems are chock-full of playful, irreverent humour, but beneath that humour is an insistent search for understanding. As strange and delightfully surprising as these poems often are, they are also intimate and vulnerable — a rare achievement in a debut collection.  Jeff Latosik's is a fresh new voice.

     —Adam Sol, author of Crowd of Sounds and Jeremiah, Ohio

Jeff Latosik

reading from 

Tiny, Frantic, Stronger

Video: Insomniacpress1

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Poems cited here are assumed to be under copyright by the poet and/or publisher.  They are shown here for publicity and review purposes.  For any other kind of re-use of these poems, please contact the listed publishers for permission.

We here at TBOP are technically deficient and rely on our bashful Milo to fix everything.  We received notice from Google that we were using "cookies"

and that for our readers in Europe there had to be notification of the use of those "cookies.  Please be aware that TBOP may employ the use of some "cookies" (whatever they are) and you should take that into consideration.

Blind Items - Dina Del Bucchia (Insomniac Press)

Today's book of poetry:
Blind Items.  Dina Del Bucchia.  Insomniac Press.  London, Ontario.  2014

These wildly funny poems will alter the way you look at celebrity for ever.  Dina Del Bucchia is a carnival freak amalgam of Anias Nin, Erica Jong and Dorothy Parker.

These poems are witty, highly sexualized and just a little bit bitchy.  I could listen to Bucchia talk all day long.

Lindsay Lohan

I am fucking Lindsay Lohan in the back of a pickup
truck, on an old sleeping bag printed with bass jumping
out of the water, hooks in their mouths. She is so
Hollywood she doesn’t even understand how real this
is, wants me to use my wrong hand, keeps telling me to
move my arm into the light, wants the shot to be perfect
on the first take. But it’s 2 a.m. behind the Walmart,
and I don’t know where my bra is. All we’ve managed
to do today is make out, shed our clothes, and split a
microwave burrito. She keeps giving me advice on how
to best show off her crotch in the scene, that a movie
crotch shot is so very different from a paparazzi up-skirt.
Both are choreographed but have different techniques.
She moves like a new kitten, brushes against my breasts.
I can’t ignore her. She whispers in my ear that cocaine
is almost always free, that mustard brings out her
freckles, that touching another person is like stepping
on a scale, that if you smell cinnamon, there is probably
a baby being born. I’m taken in. Between the folds of a
sleeping bag older than she is, she’s chosen me. When I
go to put my mouth around her nipple, she stops me;
my shoulder will be in the way of the shot. We glow in
the heavy lights of the parking lot

...

Imagination is a wonderful thing.  From now on I'm going to imagine that the wickedly hilarious and darkly comic Del Bucchia is my buddy.  Why?  This woman got game.

I passed this book around the office and everyone laughed, snickered, bickered, and now they are taking turns reading them, the poems, out loud.

Jack Nicholson

Jack Nicholson isolates stakes, produces, is adept
at turning words into phrases that turn women
into moulds of other women.

I don't want to become anyone else. Well, maybe
Anjelica Houston, just for a few months in the '70s.
To wear my hair like a shield

against regret, the quiet torture of never being
on top. To hear his secrets before he became
a voice to imitate. A woman's sadness makes him run.

When we meet, we kiss, share a few hours of afternoon
sun on our skin. I keep my hair up, keep him up
with small licks and slaps,

crease my body into his, so I feel
small, supermodel tiny. Afterwards, I weep, spray tears,
use his Lakers jacket as a tissue. A good fake cry.

Flustered and pink with stress, he flees.
If I kept a scorecard,
I'd check a box beside"Legend".

...

Dina Del Bucchia makes her dreams read like photo-op poems, sparkling, witty and immediate.

But let us not forget that these are all smart "hypermodern" confessional poems of the first flight.

Reading these poems there is so much amusement in play you don't realize how heavy fame can be. How dark those corners of the mind can get.  Good thing we have Bucchia for illumination.

Kate Moss

Kate Moss wants me to understand her. Some call her
reptilian. The description misses the point of her sharp-
ness, edge of nose, creases that spank her eyes. She isn't
glossy, likes to be rubbed raw. Together, lounging in the
sway of the sea, perched on sailboat corners, we are
lizards, we are flamingos, we are Bengals. Our hands
touch and slip away, mouths form silent words only
when they meet. We read lips through lips. We lay each
other to waste in our sunlight flashbulb lust. Makeup
smeared against our navels, thighs, under sides of arms, our
bodies mutated in colour. Breasts greet and swing away.
Below our bodies, the wooden deck is streaked with
pinks, blues, greens, pools of colour made of cosmetics
and ocean spray. I want to shrink to the size of the bright
mole near her nipple. She wants me to pull love out of
her, for us to wear each other, skin for skin.

...

Everyone in our office is now in love with Dina Del Bucchia.  Literary lust at least.

These poems are just like Rice Krispies, they snap, crackle and pop.

Dina Del Bucchia

(photo:  Ruth Skinner)

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Dina Del Bucchia writes, and does many other things, in Vancouver. Her short story “Under the ‘I’” was a finalist for the 2012 RBC Bronwen Wallace Award for Emerging Writers. She holds an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of British Columbia. Her previous poetry collection is Coping with Emotions and Otters (Talonbooks, 2013). 

BLURBS

"In Blind Items, Dina Del Bucchia reverse-engineers the public persona of celebrities to reveal the mouth like ‘hospital Jell-O, perfect in a place full of despair.’ [...] These poems will pick you up on Page Six and leave you gasping at the side of the highway, filthy, sweaty, and breathless."

     — Nikki Reimer, author of DOWNVERSE and [sic]

     

"Del Bucchia deftly dodges revealing her sources and leaves the reader in the morning groping after whatever it is that poems should do in the wake of such humorous, intimate, and intelligent company. Blind Items is a must-read for understanding the impact of celebrity culture on how we relate to each of our others (or otters)."

     — Jason Christie, author of Unknown Actor and i-ROBOT

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