Dear John,
I never said your poems were depressing;
I said I thought you might have invented
a new literary sub-genre: Midwestern Gothic
Horror Poetry – what one might imagine some
academic type describing as grim and gritty
little vignettes and harlequinades of the day
to day horror that lives in the corners of our
eyes and right under our noses and almost never
makes the front page or local television news,
wherein few of the characters make it out
of the poem completely whole or unmaimed
in some fundamental way and yet the reader
is still finding within themselves faint traces
of nervous laughter that would otherwise be
situationally inappropriate. But then again,
who amongst us hasn’t blundered up a harmless
little chuckle, now and then, at the thought of
an old man slamming his thumb with a hammer,
or a young girl falling down an open manhole
from which she will most likely walk with a
slight limp for the rest of her days.
I never said your poems were depressing;
I said I thought you might have invented
a new literary sub-genre: Midwestern Gothic
Horror Poetry – what one might imagine some
academic type describing as grim and gritty
little vignettes and harlequinades of the day
to day horror that lives in the corners of our
eyes and right under our noses and almost never
makes the front page or local television news,
wherein few of the characters make it out
of the poem completely whole or unmaimed
in some fundamental way and yet the reader
is still finding within themselves faint traces
of nervous laughter that would otherwise be
situationally inappropriate. But then again,
who amongst us hasn’t blundered up a harmless
little chuckle, now and then, at the thought of
an old man slamming his thumb with a hammer,
or a young girl falling down an open manhole
from which she will most likely walk with a
slight limp for the rest of her days.
Jason Ryberg is currently an artist-in-residence at both The Prospero Institute of Disquieted P/o/e/t/i/c/s and the Osage Arts Community, and is an editor and designer at Spartan Books. His latest collection of poems is Are You Sure Kerouac Done It This Way!? (co-authored with John Dorsey and Victor Clevenger, OAC Books, 2021). He lives part-time in Kansas City, MO with a rooster named Little Red and a billygoat named Giuseppe and part-time somewhere in the Ozarks, near the Gasconade River, where there are also many strange and wonderful woodland critters.
Jason...he is always good news. Love his work.
ReplyDeleteI'll repeat what Margret Thatcher said to me in 1997 after she finished her Taco Bell grilled stuffed burrito, "Damn, that was good!" (we were high). Thanks Jason, always love your stuff.
ReplyDelete