The small press is full of pretty good poets. Most fit into some category, offer up some persona– some image of toughness, craziness, some sort of dysfunctional characteristic. Today it is easier to do that with the internet. In my search, I run across a lot of good poetry, but a lot of the time the voice could belong to anyone and despite wanting the coveted image to come through, a fakeness prevails. Perhaps one of today’s best small press poets, William Taylor Jr. pointed me in the direction of Hosho McCreesh, and listed him as one of his favorites. I picked up his seventh book, For All These Wretched, Beautiful, & Insignificant Things So Uselessly & Carelessly Destroyed sat down on my front porch Adirondack poured a glass of cheap wine and took a look at life through Hosho’s eyes. It was like seeing fine art for the first time. Not throwing out a line of kiss ass here– just fact. The voice comes out of this book as fresh but one you identify with. It is like McCreesh says,
a secret truth only our
drunken gods can
know or keep
It is seldom that a book of poetry or a writer comes around that offers to change the way we view the world. This is a writer who is not trying to be somebody else. Picking up a copy of this book just might make a difference.…
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