After Words - Stan Rogal (Guernica Editions)

Today's book of poetry:
After Words.  Stan Rogal.  Guernica Editions.  Essential Poet Series 213.  Toronto-Buffalo-Lancaster (U.K.).  2014.

The Outsider

          after Merle Haggard

          "I turned twenty-one in prison

          doin' life without parole"

Strange. Stranger. Not Camus, though parallel

Arrested action. In any case, a bust with convention

Which ends

                         a head on the block.

Nothing the French invented.

Workin' man blues, & so on. On the prowl.

Nose for news, & so on. Also on the prowl.

All so loosely translated, begins:

                         In the beginning was the word

Defines:

     "...actual linguistic behaviour or performance of individuals

     in contrast to the linguistic system of a community..."

Outlaw existential

Ism

Momma barely dead & buried

Sparks a reefer, drinks a cafe au lait, goes for a swim

Fondles the butt'ry thighs of a moist young gal in the back row

     of a darkened movie theatre

Fails to unriddle

The comedy of a crucifix hung like a dagger in the flick'ry light

& what was it someone said? Reading a translation

Is like fucking a bride through a horse blanket?

Nay, too rude a remark for Pablo who rarely (if ever) kissed

Down between the stems on paper or any otherwise public

Prison.

Then?

Heaven knows momma tried, momma tried.

Now left to the blear and roar of ocean. Knows (as well)

The world is inarticulate, friend, & a recurrent car wreck.

Who learned to drink bourbon neat, tap ashes in the beer for

strength

Can only reconfigure

If a single bullet does the trick

What boots this desire to plug further, except,

No desire?

Funereal meats coldly furnish forth the execution.

Man in black sing:

                Shot a man in Reno, just to watch him die

Time being out of joint axes it.

Crucifix hung like a dagger in the flick'ry light.

...

Any book of poetry with a poem dedicated to & written in the style of Merle Haggard is going to make some points here with Today's book of poetry.

The conceit that Rogal is playing with here in After Words is entirely complimentary.  Stan Rogal mimics, in the most flattering way, the voices of a number of his heroes.  After Words is a very enticing and elegant thank you of sorts.  It also allows the Sybil in Rogal to come out.

Today's book of poetry has read earlier Stan Rogal titles such as Search of the Emerald City and The Imaginary Museum.  We even have a copy of an issue of Stanzas #44 - mostly free/free life that features Rogal.  After reading After Words TBOP will be on the hunt for other Rogal titles, as far as we can tell he has published at least twelve books of poetry.

warm exes

          after Charles Bukowski

          "how many dead beasts float and walk from Wales to 

          Los Angeles?"

there are those horses, those ones that boast a lineage,

that post as favourites, but finish dead last

no one questions

that stagger & drop at the wire in photo-ops of 

delirious tremors

& shit ampoules of PCP out the ass of their dying

while we murdered tear up our ticket stubs

no one is surprised

we check our programs, ask about the wife, the kids,

ogle the tarted-up bleached blonde

with the duck lips & silicone tits

pressed tight to a player wearing a wedding ring

& two fingers jammed up her quim

lucky bastard

we scratch our bellies

& light our cigarettes for the next big fix

even as the twitching carcasses are dragged

to the local glue factory

no one is bothered

later, these brutes return to haunt

the glass of our beer mugs

they peer at us through eyes of warm exes

their noses daubed with angel dust

their horsey ears pricked with foam

their long faces bright with visions of

Eliot with his trousers rolled

Schopenhauer with his sufficient reason to exist

(beyond evil & loneliness, one guesses)

& what does it matter in the final dissolution?

snow fills the TV screens of America

& those horses, those ones with neither

a penny to spare nor a pot to piss in

kick up their ragged heels & shuffle off to Buffalo

we order more beer

no one gives a good flying fuck

cold in the knowledge

          we recognize those faces

          we know those glue factories

          we are those horses

...

And Rogal is Bukowski.  And apparently anyone else he sets his telepathic sights on.  It pleases Today's book of poetry that Stan Rogal shares some of our same heroes/muses.

After Words and Rogal give us a brief introductory passage for each poem with biographical/bibliographical information along with why Rogal admires the subject.

Finding a Bukowski nod comes as no surprise - in my world everyone would give Buk a nod. Finding Judith Fitzgerald, a personal heroine here at Today's book of poetry, and local poetry hero rob mclennan (Ottawa poet and patron - no one has done more for poetry in Canada's capital), comes as a lovely literary surprise as they appear alongside Buk, T.S. Eliot, William Carlos Williams and so on.

Today's book of poetry is tickled to have Stan Rogal/Merle Haggarded you, absolutely delighted to have Stan Rogal/Charles Bukowskitized you all, and now you will be Stan Rogal/Raymond Carvered.

Head Above Water (Barely)

           after Raymond Carver

          "So much water so close to home"

What greater confluence

that creates

not so much the undertow

as the sheer dead weight

life being (they say) too

long for poetry, too short

for prose, suffers it:

the mixed blessing of children

(necessarily)

the piss-ass dog as well

that chews the crotches

out of the family clothes &

refuses to remain lost forever

the model wife unafraid to

bare a little tit now-&-again

or hike a skirt for sake of a 

storied argument, the long

distant girlfriend whose creamy

thighs pine clamorous as the

Yellowstone

swelled (as ever)

to fuck the socks off

O Paradise, O Eureka

O hungered bite of the big apple

that proves less than other worldly

the Karmic backwash of stiffing

hired help at the Howard Johnson's

the bankrupt mortgage

the job that promises three squares

a day but starves the soul

the beat Nash Rambler

with its rear wheels stuck spinning

deeper into the river's bed

the tipped kayak, the string of

empty booze cans & bottles

the butt ends of cigarettes

the general all 'round poor white

attitude amid the swirl

the entire kit & kaboodle an anchor

tangled in fishing line, string out

& knotted around kicked ankles

that bleed from the yank

mudsharks nosing his balls

rapids circling his neck

still alive (just) still breathing (barely)

the one who often mistook

diamonds for hearts & would

sudden drop tools, grab a bottle

drive 1200 drunken miles

Cupertino to Missoula

for a shot of real or imagined

strange piece of tail

no longer the Romantic notion

river rising, body sinking even as

the shadowy shape of some

prehistoric raptor long roosted

in the lungs is roused by the muddy

roil of tobacco smoke & gin

(go figure)

the aw shucks philosophic of it

mumbling: "Hey, gal!"

to the slipt ground that renders

situationlessness

a mean fact

madly paddling the churn above

while below, the eternal drag

nets little else save the invisible

                            human all too human

stings & terrors of egregious

misfortune

...

Today's book of poetry loved the brilliant play of a card-shark-philosopher getting into the heads of all these cultural icons, and others.  Rogal respectfully does them all proud.

Stan Rogal

photo:  Jacquie Jacobs

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Stan Rogal was born in Vancouver and has resided in Toronto for 25 years. His work has appeared in numerous magazines and anthologies in Canada, the US and Europe, some in translation. He has published 19 books, including four novels, four story and 11 poetry collections. He is also a produced playwright and the artistic director of Bulletproof Theatre.

BLURBS

If it’s words you’re after, you'll find plenty of fine ones in Stan Rogal’s after words. But be warned: they’re not all pretty and the way they’re put together could be overpowering to the unprepared. I’m reminded of Lautréamont’s caveat in Maldoror, that the reader must become as fierce as what he’s reading or risk being annihilated by it: literature as obliterature. Not to suggest after words isn’t a nuanced work vibrant with wordplay, humour, musicality, atmosphere, and style. It’s that and more, but what impresses most is the vivid carnality of Rogal’s writing. Visceral, muscular, fleshly, and very much alive, this may be the strongest offering yet from the regal rogue of CanLit, the only poet who would unapologetically pay homage to Sylvia Plath and Humphrey Bogart in the same volume, and Albert Camus and Merle Haggard in the same poem.

      -  Steve Venright

Stan Rogal’s latest collection, after words, offers a series of scintillating poetic responses to authors and artists from the recent and distant past. Rogal’s sophisticated awareness of poetic possibilities gestures to what happens outside the conventions of language, tilting beyond words, while pursuing after words. Throughout these meta-poetic portrayals, Rogal’s autobiographical narrator inhabits the realms of literary and artistic precursors including Artaud, Atwood, Bogart, Burroughs, Calvino, Cohen, Eliot, Nin, and Shakespeare. A series of brilliant tours-de-force while providing an inspirational tour of the art of words.
     -  Karl Jirgens, Editor Rampike

Stan Rogal

Poet to Poet

A few minutes with Stan Rogal

video: Guernica Editions

guernicaeditions.com

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