The Czar - Mary Biddinger & Jay Robinson (Black Lawrence Press)

Today's book of poetry:
The Czar.  Mary Biddinger & Jay Robinson.  Black Lawrence Press.  Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.  2016.

The Czar is an elegantly seamless patchwork quilt, an on-going riff trilling electric about the fate of the modern world and all of us peasants bouncing around in it.

Who is this Czar?  Mary Biddinger and Jay Robinson never say for sure but Today's book of poetry thinks it's a metaphor.  

Today's book of poetry would be very curious to know the process used by Biddinger and Robinson, how to meld two poets into one, because The Czar speaks with one clear voice.

The Czar, the character, not the title, is a mitigating dictator.  The Czar is looking over your shoulder as you read this.

The Czar

To those who can afford underpinnings of quality.

To those who dine on other people's roof-straw.

To those directly responsible for increased surveillance.

To those owls who know but don't consent or tell.

To those whose voting stickers never adhere.

To those princes you dealt with accordingly.

To those who doubt the true innuendos of torture.

To those directly responsible for Miley Cyrus.

To those pollsters you later seduced with mints.

To those who insist every vote should count twice.

To those who dine on salami every day for lunch.

To those faxes we sullied with biological materials.

To those who grow a beard when they shouldn't.

To those undergraduates who dine on each other.

To those walls you climbed -- naked and drunk on icing.

To those who secured the borders of my pants.

To those workers who bodyguard the potholes.

To those who cannot afford free health care.

To those directly responsible for bathing the Czar.

To those directly responsible for the Virgin Afterbirth.

To those peaches, actual peaches, not innuendos.

To those miniskirts I refused to wear in the elevator.

To those owls who occupied Wall Street.

To those directly responsible for your orgasm.

...

It has been quite some time since Today's book of poetry has come across a book so ripe with list poems and we are delighted to include this one.  The Czar is peppered with them.  Nicely spiced.

Biddinger and Robinson start this Czarfest off with a quote from old Nicholas II, and frankly, he was last real authority on the matter before Biddinger and Robinson.

     "I am not yet ready to be Tsar.  I know nothing of the business of ruling."

                                                                             -- Nicolas II

True to form, our Czar is flawed, often unprepared.  But in a world of dictators both large and small, real and imagined, it is reassuring to find a fallible fob fop Czar.

The Czar

Ironically, the Czar was a terrible student of foreign languages.

His parents complained to the principal. He called his OEUVRE

his OUVRIR. He'd spend the rest of his life attempting to open

someone or another. The Czar thought a body of work was for sex

(emphasis mine). His biggest challenge was the pluperfect. One

day he was taking a piss at work and terrified himself with the

prospect of pissing in the same pissoire for the next thirty years.

Not to mention...

The Czar recalled the word for rabbit in French, but asked for a

fish at the small game restaurant. We will not speak of the brief

tutorial regarding Belgian engineering. In Mexico, the Czar

announced himself as an organ thief, and then placed his request

for The Entertainer. He claimed Sister Carrie to be his favorite

Russian novel, the best cure for hangover to be another trip to Las

Vegas. What happens in the Czar's fancy room never stays in the 

Czar's fancy room...

Once, as a sophomore in college, the Czar drove to Canada. He

took a wrong turn, ended up in Montreal instead of Windsor. Every

map looks like it's written in the Cyrillic alphabet, he said to his

roommate. But he had a bottle of Wild Irish Rose in a thermos and

one foot out the window. Both of them drunk on freedom for the

better part of a dozen hours. The Czar thought the Cyrillic alpha-

bet a soup he hadn't been served as a boy. His roommate laughed,

got left beside a sagging barn outside Ottawa...

But the Czar can roll a joint in any language. As a Czar, he could

make a priest confess. We will not speak of this, the Czar mumbles

to an otherwise preoccupied prostitute in German. We will not

speak of this...

...

The Czar gets around.  This morning's read of The Czar in our office was a rollicking tic-tac-toe affair. Milo was in top form, he is our head tech.  Kathryn, our Jr. Editor was equally splendid and in fine Czarina form.  The big surprise was Max, our Sr. Editor and former Bolshevik.  He burst out of his office all hammer and sickle eyed and ready to read.  It's always a treat when Max reads, he gets his voice into every corner of the room.

The poems in The Czar have a cumulative affect on the reader and when Max started bouncing them around everything else stopped.  These are wicked smart whippet poems, bounding by with such ease and handsome energy that you hardly notice the power.  Biddinger and Robinson have ample reserves, their Czar has moxie.

The Czar

wonders if his mistress is taking things

seriously. A little less time as Bjork

the swan, a little more Lady Gaga

in her meat frock. Somewhere the spin

cycle stops spinning. Somebody's ears

pop. But it's another day in this empire.

Cold feet, Advil, layers. V-neck sweaters

in the top secret paper shredder. The

Czar plans a trip to Paris but forgets

to pack the trip. His mistress suggests

what she calls the Carbonite Method.

It's a fancy name for the Czar's favorite

number, the one only he was allowed

to screen print onto his baseball jersey.

Well, he's the Czar, one parent said. We

never give up, his mistress observed,

but we might go down. She was 12, and he

was a spring training enthusiast. Now

he's a baseball card of bloated stats.

His mother never realized that Duffy's

Tee House was actually a head shop.
She inquired the price of a brilliant red

hookah, wondered where the flowers
were supposed to go, while the Czar

selected a Van Halen iron-on for front,
fuzzy Courier letters to spell out CZAR

on back (ringer tee, of course, striped
sleeves). Sometimes his mistress still

wears this shirt. It used to be her sole
garment at bedtime. Now she wears it

beneath the first of two lumberjack
flannels, practically undetectable,

much like her attachment to the Czar,
which is all undershirt, zero bra.

...

The Czar is a modern construct and an intriguing everyman/everywoman, The Czar is a marvelous book.  Mary Biddinger and Jay Robinson have created a thoroughly modern character to live among us.

"Somebody gets the last laugh. Somebody gets crumbs."
                                                      - The Czar

Mary Biddinger

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Mary Biddinger is the author of the poetry collections Prairie Fever (Steel Toe Books, 2007), Saint Monica(Black Lawrence Press, 2011), O Holy Insurgency (Black Lawrence Press, 2013), A Sunny Place with Adequate Water (Black Lawrence Press, 2014) and Small Enterprise (Black Lawrence Press, forthcoming 2015). She is also co-editor of The Monkey and the Wrench: Essays into Contemporary Poetics (U Akron Press, 2011). Her work has recently appeared or is forthcoming in Denver Quarterly, Green Mountains Review, jubilat, The Laurel Review, and Pleiades, among others. She edits the Akron Series in Poetry at the University of Akron, where she is a Professor of English. Biddinger is the recipient of a 2015 NEA creative writing fellowship in poetry.

Jay Robinson

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Jay Robinson is the co-author of The Czar. He teaches at Ashland University and The University of Akron. He’s also the Co-Editor-in-Chief/Reviews Editor for Barn Owl Review and helps edit The Akron Series in Contemporary Poetics. Poetry and prose has appeared in 32 Poems, The Laurel Review, Poetry, Whiskey Island, among others. The Czar, forthcoming in August 2016, is his first book.

BLURBS

As a child, my mother taught me to zigzag Z to avoid getting eaten by an alligator. Mary Biddinger and Jay Robinson employ this technique here: in the clever curve of C around the subject, in the sharp switchback tack of Z for zealous. They commit to wordplay revolution, erasing origins, replacing narrative with wit, sound, and imagery so surprising it feels, by poem’s end, perfectly natural: the thing that waited, haunting, in the swamp. I don’t know how else to explain The Czar, whose unexpected becomes so expectant with meaning. This is a brilliant collection/collaboration. 

     - Carol Guess, author of Doll Studies: Forensics

This exquisite, feature-length project is the comic jam. But it's no joke. You can thank Mary Biddinger and Jay Robinson later. For now, arm yourself with a few questions: What rules does this Czar follow? Which ones does he break? And just how many ways can you fold a Czar in the first place? Are you ready? The Czar demands your participation. Enter the parlor!
     - Matthew Guenette, author of American Busboy

This book is not a book, it’s treatise on empire, a manifest destiny, a pack of wild peasants outside the gate, a mesmerizing tour d’effluvia in its Czar not Czar, throne not throne, overthrown mistresses, Lady Czar is no Czarina, cappuccino foam isn’t foam, revolution was a hoax, naming and renaming, unlearned cursive, unheard flute solo, empire under construction, not New York, not Sacramento, non-tabloids, non-violent non-women. Biddinger and Robinson rebuild our world and take it away piece by piece to show the conviviality of our destruction.
     - Elizabeth J. Colen, author of What Weaponry

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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.

What To Do If You're Buried Alive - Michael Meyerhofer (Split Lip Press)

Today's book of poetry:
What To Do If You're Buried Alive. 
Michael Meyerhofer.  Split Lip Press.  Richmond, Virginia.  2015.

Michael Meyerhofer's What To Do If You're Buried Alive is the work of a seasoned pro.  These poems are solid like that friend who would cut off their own hand before they let you down. Meyerhofer would be typing with one hand before he'd leave a reader stranded on the page.

Today's book of poetry doesn't want to speak for a man we don't know but I'm willing to bet Meyerhofer is from the "try, try, try again -- but don't be a damned fool about it" school of hard knocks.

Returning The Lesson

Three days after my mother's heart
kicked up grave-sod like an errant mule,
my dad's alcoholic father came by,
carting along his oxygen tank,
its little red wheels squeaking down
a sidewalk of women in black dresses.
This man who drank straight gin
and didn't even know for years
how many children or rottweilers he had--
still decades before DHS--
sardined up in that country shack
I only saw once, as a yellow bulldozer
took ten years off my father's eyes.

They kept him away, so I grew up
picturing him as a rural Hitler
who dreamt of twisting out cigarettes
on the scrotum of the baby Jesus.
But there he was--that old grandfather
I'd never seen, frail as a psalm
with plastic tubing stuck up his nose.
This day will pass, he swore,
squeezing my hard shoulder. Meaning
of course my mother in her casket,
her hair all wrong, just a dash
between her first and last breath.

I nodded along, but wondered how
this sentence fragment of a man
ever managed to lock my father in closets
without food--my father,
who can do push-ups until sunrise,
who has three college degrees,
who could have busted him like kindling
but instead, took him inside
with one open fist on his shoulder.
I am tired of the alchemizing the indivisible,
so here is the lesson I want to forget:
after every waste, the heart
like a dog betrays us but we,
when we must, call this forgiveness.

...

These hearty, salt-of-the-earth poems all sound like hard won wisdom.  The first thing Today's book of poetry noticed about What To Do If You're Buried Alive was that almost every single poem in this collection was solid as a rock.

[I've mentioned it to our writers here at TBOP, about their overuse of platitudes and cliche, their insistence of flattery.  I am currently tied to a small chair in the closet of my office.  When you are finished reading this please send someone by to get me out.  I'll discipline my staff at the appropriate time in response to this insurrection.  And they, the writers, pretty much assured me that it would be business as usual, threatened actually.]

What I meant to say is that there are hills and valleys in every book, not so much here, Meyerhofer and his editors are metronome solid, tick, tick, tick.

Like most of us, it sounds like Meyerhofer has had to weather some considerable ups and downs -- but as Rocky Balboa intoned, and I will have to paraphrase, "It's not how many times they knock you down that matters - it's how many times you can get up!"

My Mother Sent Me

a text message
from her coffin.
It said Glad
you're not here.
She's always doing
stuff like that. She says
it's to help me
savor my remaining
days. But I know
it's because I'm
the only one left
who hasn't changed
his number.

...

Michael Meyerhofer's style could be romantic-realism but I doubt it is a label he would embrace.  I heard these poems like music when I was reading them.  They read like a delicious cocktail of Willie Nelson, Tom Waits, a reasonable Charles B. and a tick of Saint Raymond of Carver.  Those are all heroes of mine but I realize it is a little like using spices to describe a stew.  It's all in the way of compliment.  Meyerhofer's camera is both subtle and technicolour and it is on all the time.

Cowboy Buddha

The guy across from me is wearing spurs.
Indiana summer. As far as I can tell,
he got here in a pickup. But there he is, leaning
with a sweating bottle in his fist,
smiling with saffron teeth at the bartender,
big metal sundials trailing his boot-heels
like he meant to saddle up and ride
for the saloon the remembered we have
internal combustion engines now,
plus palominos tend to drip even more
than your average oil gasket. But why the spurs?
Imagine them snagging the floor mats
as he tries to shift gears, driving his knees
into the steering column. Still, there's music
in that steely thump as he strolls
from barstool to pool table, knuckles rapping
the pasture-green felt, a reliable jingle
following him the way they say flowers sprang
from the footprints of the Buddha.
I doubt that lasted, though. So hard
to push through ignorance toward something
called enlightenment when everywhere
we go: blossoms, blossoms, blossoms.

...

What To Do If You're Buried Alive comes from that noble and strong school of narrative poetry, Meyerhofer is driven to tell us his stories.  Some of these we will recognize as ghostly parallels to versions of the stories we all know, our own narratives, other poems will act as maps for the trips we will eventually all be forced to take.

Most importantly we recognize that Meyerhofer's certainty in What To Do If You're Buried Alive casts a strong light to help navigate whatever challenges lay ahead.

Michael Meyerhofer

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Michael Meyerhofer is the author of four poetry books and a forthcoming fantasy trilogy. He has won the James Wright Poetry Award, the Liam Rector First Book Prize, the Whirling Prize, five chapbook prizes, and other honors. He earned his B.A. from the University of Iowa and his M.F.A. from Southern Illinois University Carbondale. He grew up in Iowa where he learned the value of reading novels, lifting weights, and not getting his hopes up. He currently serves as the Poetry Editor of Atticus Review and lives in Fresno, California.

BLURBS

"Set against a backdrop of brilliantly rusty artifacts, and infused with personal history, this book showcases Meyerhofer's skill at advocating for overlooked people and the places they inhabit. With a compassionate eye, and his trademark sense of humor that hooks readers from the very first page, Meyerhofer sends us back to our earliest memories, and shows us a world of heartbreak and wonder."

     -  Mary Biddinger, author of A Sunny Place with Adequate Water

"Listen to this little sample of Michael Meyerhofer's music as he recalls working in an Iowa warehouse, avoiding 'forklifts / steered by broken / marriages / and thermoses full of Jim Beam,' or remember his mother's failing heart 'kicked up grave-sod like an errant mule.' Whether he's describing the brutal machismo of Iowa high school wrestlers or the tenderness of his father nursing his childhood wounds, Meyerhofer sings in a pure American tenor, his voice haunted by late night diners, small town heartbreak, and somehow, out there in the desolate vastness of the heartland, a flash of humor and a sweet glimmer of hope."

     - George Bilgere, author of Imperial

"Between the marks the world leaves upon us, the designs we choose to mark ourselves and our worlds with--these scars and tattoos are the territory Michael Meyerhofer explores in What To Do If You're Buried Alive. Through pain and loss, Meyerhofer's poems are harrowing prayers searching for 'the charms of language' that might lead to forgiveness, to redemption, to love. While never flinching from confronting the irredeemable damage we do to one another, these urgent and necessary poems remind us 'that if you focus on what hurts, / face it wholly, it dissolves / like a light from a burnt-out bulb, / a curtain gone up in flames.'"

      - John Tribble, author of Natural State

Michael Meyerhofer

STEM reads Interviews

video: STEM Outreach NIU

(In this video Meyerhofer talks about both his work as a fantasy writer and as a poet)

splitlippress.com

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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.