Steve Roggenbuck arrived

A few weeks ago Steve Roggenbuck friended me on facebook, presumably because he liked this blog and was looking for places that might help him spread the word (re: the title of this post). Well I like Lake Michigan, and I like Steve (I think). His new chapbook “i am like october when i am dead” is about to go global. I think the preview on the chapbook’s promotion page (below) is a pretty good indication of what you might expect from the poetry.

At first, it seems ironic in an “I don’t mean what I’m saying, I mean the opposite” boring sort of internal haha way. I think this comes from the contrast between the epic music and the—initially— "one-liner" quality of the first poem. Then, and this is kind of sweet, the emotional resonance of the music bleeds in. ¼ of the bleeding comes from the serious-goodness of the second two poems previewed, and  ¾ is the pan through the envelopes... The bit of “fuck you” I feel at that moment... yea. I think most of us trying to “make it” feel that. Maybe Steve feels it a little toward all the people who don’t send their chapbooks out to ≈ 10 States + other countries, but he seems too nice a guy for that. The spare video quality (out a shitty window, a stagnant object, rough cuts) is also working on this magical level, seems kind of amateurish but, then, there’s power and sweetness in its simplicity. In that respect, I think the video is a “frame poem” for the other poems in the chapbook.

i drink ten gallons of rice milk and pull the headlights out of my car hood

now they are way gone 

These poems are sparse, and don't make many obvious interpretive gestures. When I say "interpretive gestures" I mean the "way gone" in the poem above (as opposed to just saying "gone"). When the poems do make those gestures, and because they make them rarely and subtly, it gives the poems an added dimension. Like, woah, where the hell is that coming from?  I would say these "little guys"—the technical term I use for minimal poems of 1-5 lines in a Japanese-type style—imply a lot when they're well done, and Steve's are well done. We infer an approachable, intelligent person behind them. That illusion gives the poems a shitload of latent energy. I think "approachable" is the important word. In these poems, Steve doesn't do anything that says "I'm smarter than you" (even though he probably is), and that makes the poems accessible.

Poems like "i drink ten gallons of rice milk..." and

if you call me, i wont answer

i am sitting under the moon inside of a wheelbarrow 

have enough weight in themselves that they add another, serious layer to the "joke" poems like

i dont care about reading a poem 

who do you think i am, robert frost? 

i have never been in the woods and i hate walking 

and

you are gone 

for lunch i had peanuts 

It makes a lot of sense that Steve's read and reviewed Beckman's Your Time Has Come. (He's probably read WCW and plenty of Japanese poems in translation too.) But as far as the contemporary "little guy" tradition is concerned, I would say that many of Steve's poems in "i am like october..." are more interesting than Beckman's in YTHC. But I hate to bring too much interpretation to them 1) because they do their work invisibly and what I'm doing is sloppy in comparison, especially when 2) there just aren't enough poems/enough evidence to work with. I hope after "i am like october when i am dead" Steve gives us a book of 120+ of them.

i rented a movie and recorded over it with two hours of myself

on the video i am shouting compliments at my family

i burn my car on purpose

it is january

i greet myself at the beginning of a great career