The Best of Impetus: The First Ten Years. Ed. Cheryl A. Townsend.

Implosion Press, 4975

Commanche Trail, Stow, OH 44224. 1996; 175 pp.; $10. Order direct from publisher.

by Tim W. Brown

This anthology contains work from the first decade of Impetus, a poetry zine published by Akron-
based poet and bookstore proprietor Cheryl A. Townsend. It is an extremely valuable book,
because it documents an important movement in contemporary poetry which runs counter to the
poetry mainstream seated primarily in universities. In “Naked Poetry in the 1990’s,” a prose poem
manifesto that captures the spirit of this movement, Ron Androla says, “i am not graced by a
college salary, as so many poets in america today.... who cares. we know college poetry is
generally ridiculous.” (p. 11)

Known as the “underground poetry press,” this movement relies mainly on the immediate and
visceral rather than the polished and cerebral. Many of this movement’s mainstays are represented
in the anthology. Some contributors have become well-known, such as Charles Bukowski,
Sherman Alexie, and Lyn Lifshin. Others are familiar only to members of the underground poetry
scene. Several poets are lit mag editors in their own right, like Dan Sicoli (Slipstream) and
Michael Hathaway (Chiron Review). For his role in liberating verse from the academy, the beer-
swilling, bar-fighting Bukowski is clearly the model for many poets in the book. The ubiquitous
Lifshin is godmother to the rest.

Although a few of the book’s poets are employed by universities, most are engaged in “real-
world” employment. (The editor, for example, was employed as a department store security guard
for a number of years.) As a result, the poetry itself possesses a grass-roots sensibility that
academic poetry usually lacks. The multifarious subject matter ranges from sex to violence and
from social concern to fierce individualism. “Slow Dancing” by Hal Sirowitz offers a sweetly
erotic, self-deprecating look at romance:

My glasses sliding off

my nose, falling
into her hair. My feet
stepping on her toes.
I was making a mess of it, but what was important was
I kept pressing my body
into hers & she kept pressing back.(p. 144)

At the opposite end of the love/hate spectrum is a stinging poem about divorce and child custody
by Star Bowers:

gift bringer w/strings

I puke in yr hungry mouth
father of nothing
sans a 2-wk-a-yr visiting son (“To Disneyland Dad from Everyday Mother,” pp. 23-24)

Several poems concern the pain wrought by family dysfunction. In “My Father is a Lesbian,” Pat
McKinnon shares these terse words about his male forbears:

1
 grandpa was
a raving drunk who beat people
& couldn’t hold a steady job
& lives forever on the wall of my father’s brain
like his license to be an asshole. (p. 91)

A sense of humor, sorely missing from serious, politically correct academic poetry, rises often in
the anthology. It is difficult to imagine American Poetry Review or Ploughshares containing a
poem with the title “Fuck-Ups,” yet this book features one, by Bart Solarczyk, whose poem
strings together three-line stanzas that read like demented haiku:

Christmas morning
a B.B. gun
his baby brother’s eye
***
Embarrassed again
you slipped
& said nigger
***
Three mornings later
it burns
when you piss. (p. 146)

In keeping with the raw aesthetics of the contributors, the book sports a brown kraft paper cover
with a simple line drawing by Walt Phillips. Given that the underground press considers bar
coding tantamount to selling out, there is no bar coding nor is there an ISBN number present. The
underground press not only eschews establishment notions of poetry, it also rejects the trappings
of commercial book selling. Mainly, it traffics by mail--via small subscription bases, mail orders,
and trades. This makes obtaining underground poetry somewhat difficult, but in the case of
publications like The Best of Impetus worth the hunt. One establishment trapping this book could
have used is the original publication date for each poem. Some of the best underground poetry
published from 1984 to 1994 crops up here; readers and researchers will miss knowing where a
given poem fits into that era.