BOOKS by GLENN INGERSOLL and DAYNE PERRY

JIM McCRARY reviews

fact by Glenn Ingersoll

(Avantacular press, Orange City, FL, 2012)

and

Drinking With Boileryard Clarke – Dayn Perry Celebrates Baseball & Himself  by Dayn Perry

(Mitzvah Chaps, Milwaukee, WI, 2013)

Fact is a little book, maybe 2x3 inches.  Nicely printed and folded and stapled. Glenn Ingersoll is a big poet.  It is always good to see what he has to say.  Here as it is written, he speaks the poem.  As in:

The poem is listening

and, at the same

time talking—perfectly

capable of this triumphal

feat.

That is what he has done in this collected book, small as it is.

Or this:

Someone who comes

upon this poem

is going to despise it.

Not all the poems in the book are short and some are.  They twist through a process that Ingersoll may or may not consider a ‘voice’.  Not for me to decide at this time.  But I am sure happy to share in the process.  He is a good guy.

He lives in Berkeley.  As Paul Blackburn once said:  "Poor fellow, he writes poems.” Rave on.  I wish I could write more about Glenn’s poems but I will just get all weepy and stupid.  You should look for this book or others by him.

Drinking with Boileryard Clarke is one of the most beautiful books I have come across in quite a while.   The author Dayn Perry and the publisher Robert Bauhmann (Mitzvah Chaps) and the cover art by Daniel Rolf are exceptional.

Good job.  The printing is sharp and the color illustrations are too.  And then the text.  Same…sharp, exceptional.  I mean what can you say about a book with an opening line like:  “Let us throw up at a ballgame, you and I.”  If the text that follows seems like something out of a previous century or time…perhaps tis.  Who knows what is meant by such lingo.  Maybe conceptual meant.  Perhaps.  But truth be told if you love baseball it is here described in a nuance not seen often.  And if not a fan…well here is all the fun of a sport without having to put up with noxious fans, stinky ballparks, smart alec roommates who know this stuff and al that.  Really this book is so well made, well written and well intended that I cannot describe it only highly recommend that you find and read it.  Really.

Here it is,

Drinking with Boileryard Clarke

Boileryard, you’ve risen above things.

But you’ll never be above

Slipping into the accent of

A tenement Catholic

Who brawls over gruel.

Who wanders over a brick-strewn lot

Where the tobacconist’s burned down.

Where the indigent defeated now

Fuck like choleric bears.

A name like that means

You weren’t fated to greatness

But to rankest survival.

By dint of knuckled guts.

But enough of that

Shall we alight from safe places,

Have too much absinthe

And insult a colonel?

Who needs a heart

When you’ve got a spleen

With a vena cava?

We’ll promise to bury you

At Druid Ridge, but only if you promise

Not to outlive that snarl.

For your pecker is a grinder’s wheel.

For your balls are a civil war.

But this, boileryard,

This is a hymn.

*****

This is Jim McCrary with his cat Abby preparing for “a long winter’s nap”: