Monday, November 24, 2008

MEN IN SUITS by Alan Catlin

(Alan Catlin)

MEN IN SUITS
Alan Catlin
Madmanink Press
ISBN 0-943755-77-X
9.00

“little pink house” and the poem “two rooms” in fact every poem in this collection creates a pause, questions the reader. “do I want to live in this uncaring world?” it might be better for me to use one of those graphic nooses on each page to hang my review.

the writing in Men in Suits, is tight, thoughtful and well crafted.
it is the subject matter, the constant battering:

oppenheimer’s garden

“like oppies’s yard decimated, all
life removed, ruined by what fission
has wrought, what science has
inflicted upon the unnaturally
tinted skies and by what he is
bringing back, laying waste”

because the writing is so good I was able to read the entire collection
of insightful gloomy poems:

“skins removed releasing precious fluids,
juices seeping through the flaws;
the tender and the unripe, what is
real and what is not, equally stained”

the poems are reminiscent of Gothic images, Brueghel and Bosch. this
is one hell of a book. Catlin opens that bottle on the cover, that
comes ashore. its message is dire yet after reading these small poems
I am left with resolve. I’ll never date a man who wears a suit

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