No Way Out But In, Don Winter, 2008, 25p. Working Stiff Press, P.O. Box 1274, Niles, Michigan 49120, $10,
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. Reviewed by: Todd Moore (First published by St. Vitus Press and Poetry Review (www.stvituspress.com). Several of Todd's own books have been reviewed on this site & he's arguably the best American 'outlaw' poet. If you are not familiar with his work, go to his & son Theron's St. Vitus site, where there is plenty o' good stuff from many talented writers with sharp edges to their teeth. While you're at it, you could also go to your local bookstore, or Amazon, and ask for poems about John Dillinger. And for Don's book. C'mon, you know you can do it!)
Some books appear like comets. They get the newspaper spread, the National Public Radio talk show buzz. It’s red carpet all the way, the Billy Collins treatment on Garrison Keillor, the Barnes and Noble book signings. Some books make less auspicious appearances, like a grenade with the pin pulled rolling out on the sidewalk or a Molotov cocktail with the fuse lit, all ready to throw. These are the kinds of books I like because they are all about content and have no hint of glitz or hype whatsoever.
Son Winter’s No Way Out But In is this kind of book. Published by Working Stiff Press and selling for ten bucks, this book is a steal. This book contains some of the best poetry I’ve seen in a while. These poems remind me of the best work of Phillip Levine. And, here’s another guess. Maybe Winter knows the work of Raymond Carver as well. One of the blurbs on the back of No Way Out mentions Hemingway and Bukowski, and while these writers are almost everyone’s influences, I think Winter’s poetry has an originality and power that is uniquely his own. As Gary Goude states in his masterly introduction, Don Winter is a working class poet, whose poetry comes out of the Midwest rust belt. Detroit, working class bars and diners, factories, the street wise, and the street poor. Some of these poems have layers of angst so thick you need a broken bottle to cut into and then through them. 2 a.m. The moon rises above Birmingham Steel. At 20th and Tuscaloosa men keep warm by a fire made from fence posts and garage doors…. (from “Unions”) Winter’s poetry takes place in a visceral world where French fries and broken glass are frozen to the pavement, where “faces float/ like torn pages/ across the diner windows.” The best thing about Don Winter’s poetry is that there is no whining. Instead what you find is a kind of tough guy stoicism. The poet narrator is going through a bad divorce. His world is sliding sideways away from him but somehow he manages to keep going, even though that going is taking him nowhere: Two hundred for the night, two bones from her dealer later, we jumped into a Checker cab. Back in my room, the dope dropped my head like a tulip. She cleaned me out. (from “Lonesome Town”) There are resonances in Winter’s poetry which echo and remind me of something out of Raymond Chandler’s Red Wind, Charles Bukowski’s Burning in Water, Drowning in Flame, Jim Thompson’s The Killer Inside Me, or maybe something out of one of my books. Maybe Point Blank or Burn Like a Shadow. In my opinion, Don Winter’s poetry has all the right stuff. It’s hard, it’s edgy, it makes no excuses, and it knows where it lives. The next best thing to breaking out of a dead end life is to live in it with enormous honesty and intensity. The note at the end of “Late Shift Waitress at Wanda’s Grill” reads “this found poem cost me blood.” What Winter seems to have learned is that all poems cost you blood. Blood mixed with nightmare chills and fever dreams.
Last update : 28-07-2008 19:43
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By: Debbie Kirk (Guest) on 10-08-2008 12:30