Tonight (Thursday, January 15) at Rust Belt Books

Robin F. Brox and Chris Sylvester will give the first performance of the 2009 Small Press Poetry calendar, an ongoing series sponsored by Just Buffalo Literary Center. With a name like Small Press Poetry you may ask “Why small press poetry?” and “What about large press, what’s wrong with that?” or “Is there even a large press poetry?” And you would have a point. Very simply put, “small press” is just a term to denote the size and economy of a DIY community which has been present in Buffalo for several generations. The poetry series aims to highlight Buffalo poets and poets from everywhere else.

Robin F. Brox recently published a chapbook, ’s words, under the Saucebox imprint, a small press collective she was instrumental in founding. The book is a tight and dense collection of 15-line poems (sonnet + one), much of which borrows material from 15 different poetic sources including Robert Duncan, Tony Perez, Jayne Cortez, Robert Creeley etc. The result seems above all else a sober and twisting meditation on love:

coiled like a serpent that is deadly sleep

we are (not) permitted to succumb to. Waking late,

I and the glass might know what a warmer heart did

not. A failure to note the obvious

we cannot take from them what they have not got

nor mask with painted face this true crime,

this as a wine heady with astonishment:

we are not over when we think we are (see also,

prior daily occurrences, foolishness). Through the suburbs

sleepless people stagger, as though just delivered

(postage due) from a shipwreck of hearts,

but dream-slurred eyes missing

the flood’s origin, red droplets gathering from every chest.

—robin f. brox

Chris Sylvester is a tremendously engaging builder of philosophical narrative in his poems. He experiments with pleasure and his tricks are played with an open hand, to bring everyone in on the secrets. I find they are effective self-motivational tools, fit to try mouthing in a mirror:

4

this coast a series of mouths mouthing mouths

oystermounds

cloister wilderness

we so big we are so small swallow us whole

many ways in no way get spat out

mouths mouthing swallow mouths swallowing mouths sounds skirling swallow skirling sounds

9

when Moss men late in their arriving moss beards itching so me saplings some weeds flattened dirt abandoned dreamed of rhubarb tree roaches and two reeds bare above barely breaching rive wake waking captain scratcher save savage baptism and their live living grecian lungs pump pump

10

I (m founded in these founding

plicated also wanting founders mutilated angles

but mouth so dry impossible speech thru un

no song owns croaking angling after distant mouthings

sounds skirling swallow skirling sounds

—chris sylvester