Bend to it by Kevin Simmonds; Salmon Poetry, $15; A History of the Unmarried by Stephen S. Mills; The God of Longing by Brent Calderwood; both Sibling Rivalry Press, $14.95
While the big-brass publishers unleash their epic fall fiction offerings from powerhouse authors like Anne Rice and Stephen King, there is much joy to be had in reading newly minted, just-released poetry books from the smaller presses. Here are a few standout selections.
From County Clare, Ireland publisher Salmon Poetry comes a new collection by Edward Stanley Award-winning San Francisco poet and composer Kevin Simmonds, Bend to it, which follows his impressive 2013 debut, Mad for Meat. Dedicating the book to "momma and the soothing ruckus of New Orleans," Simmonds produces a generous collection of minimalist, raw poems rife with themes of violation, murder, pleasure, desire, and sensation.
Crisp observations from an altar boy's memories fill three pages with words bound together by truth and experience, as does a visit to the San Francisco Opera for a Sunday matinee. The son in "Lie" would give up "the soft ambulance of a man's body" if only his father would notice him. Whether taking Celexa for depression, recounting the murderous spree of Andrew Cunanan, or imagining the terrors of being a Native American victim of sex trafficking, the heady subjects in Simmonds' poetry are matched by his nuances of language and economic use of words and page-spacing.
Manhattan-based poet and Lambda Award winner (for his 2012 poetry book He Do the Gay Man in Different Voices) Stephen S. Mills channels the thought process of those who are jubilantly single or appreciatively divorced from crash-and-burn relationships. His new collection A History of the Unmarried sparkles with the electricity found in intersections: bodies, minds, hearts, eyes, all delivered in clipped passages written with emotion, a flowing cadence and storytelling power.
A boyfriend whose partner is away on business halfheartedly attempts to hook up, lamenting that "it's hard being an adventurous sex maniac on the prowl at 3 a.m., our bed empty, the dog licking his ass." Another piece is written from the perspective of a gay man considering the sex appeal of movie stars and the dire condition of patients in his care. Mills also addresses what the "domestic" in domestic partners really means, and presents a delightfully spot-on rumination on turning 30. All of these fun, insightful poems are fortified with pages of "Housewife Etiquette" rules, hilarious stand-alone declarations on how to "please your husband" with robotic 1950s-era instructions on minimizing noise, looking pretty, speaking softly, and having sex ("Don't seem overly excited. Make sure to turn off the lights.")
San Francisco poet and A&U magazine editor Brent Calderwood's latest, The God of Longing, includes 31 affecting poems that entertain with wit and perceptive candor, and scorch with bold-faced honesty. Dedicated to his brother, "Elegy" memorializes a beloved family member taken too soon. "Disclosure" traces a boy's knack for remedying accidents right up to his adulthood. The 10-part poem "Evolution" flows across Radical Faerie parties in San Francisco to the boyfriends of fuckbuddies to the idea of an open relationship when all the writer wants to do is "stay home with the cats."
Then there's the priceless poem about anal bleaching and keeping our priorities in check, or not: "But don't fret about raising the minimum wage or bringing our troops home �" just primp and preen."
Following along the same theme is the collection's closing piece, a somewhat scathing reflection on the nature of the increasingly detached, "faceless," superficial contemporary gay community. Admittedly true, we are a collective that worships the gym, a place where "we could be beautiful, built to please," yet "we're online till god-knows-when for a knight with a horse in his BVDs." But the men online, on our cell phones, and often those right in front of us are quite often "headless men." The truth hurts, and Calderwood isn't afraid to tell it like it is.