Book Review: John Dorsey, The Afterlife of the Party

John Dorsey The Afterlife of the Party: New & Selected Poems 2016-2018
Ragged Lion Press
United Kingdom January 2019
£8.00 Reviewed by Rusty Barnes
John Dorsey's latest book is a collection of some of the chapbooks he published from 2016-2018 (Analog Submission Press, CWP Collective Press, Indigent Press, NightBallet Press, Red Flag Poetry, Spartan Press, Tangerine Press) plus new poems and an introduction by Mike James. One of the things you can take from this is that 2018 was a pretty fair year for Dorsey publication-wise. He's quite prolific and quite good, and this collection is a solid continuation of the roll he's been on since Appalachian Frankenstein, the book with which I really familiarized myself as regards the Dorsey small press phenomenon.

People are at the center of Dorsey's poems. They're not elegies, really, though some are elegiac, and they're not really portraits either. They are simple sketches of ordinary people in extraordinary moments when the world's focus holds for just a moment, then goes blurry again. Poems are dedicated to people, mostly other poets it seems, both well-known and not. One of my favorites, a short one I'll quote here in its entirety, sums up Dorsey's attitude toward his people, his primary subject matter.


Poem for Felino

I wonder who found your body
who tapped the last bit of jazz
out of your ears

trapped in there like a hornet
like a ghost born again

building castles out of bone.


You don't have to know Felino the subject--I don't, though I suspect it's Felino Soriano, who I might have met once when he read at Tim Gager's Dire Reader series in Cambridge MA over fifteen years ago--to recognize and cherish the moment in which Dorsey finds someone tapping the jazz from Felino's already unhearing ears or to appreciate the two tight similes that form the poem's core. It's enough to let the poem rise on those similes and energize itself, only to have the poem resolve into another arresting, if puzzling image. I'm not sure how you build castles from bone, nor am I entirely settled as to who's building them, the hornet, the ghost or the body-finder, as there's no punctuation to help me, but I'm willing to ride along on this short poem's momentum.

In "Poem for My Aunt on Her Birthday," the refrain "you were young once" is elegiac and oratorical at once. I imagine this poem might do well at readings, these repetitions interposed as they are between snapshots of the narrator's aunt's life "before diabetes & mental Illness/before time became just another broken heart."

In a poem not expressly about a person, again Dorsey makes use of subtle repetition, In "Another Reason Why I Love This Town" where variations on the phrase "you might" play off each other to great effect and the poem resolves wonderfully in a gout of dog urine: "her dog pissing out what looks like/a whole pitcher of flat budweiser." Anything can happen in a John Dorsey poem.

Another short poem I found myself returning to is dedicated to a specific person, in this case Christina.


Y2K: A Love Story

looking for a small red haired girl
in times square
i remember thinking
there are worse ways
for the world to end.


Not with a bang, not with a whimper, but looking for a girl. Anyone who's spent time looking for a significant other or anyone to cling to in this mad old bad world can relate. Also common in a John Dorsey poem, speakers and narrators who search for something in myriad places, due no doubt to Dorsey's often-punishing reading schedule, which once approached a hundred dates a year. All that travel makes its way into the poetry.

On facing pages late in the book, "Round Corner Tavern Poem (for mikey west"' and "The Ghost of Sacramento Past (for gene bloom)" illustrate well the kinds of poems you find in this book that are not about people but instead types or characters. "Round Corner. . ." begins "Every night they mop/ the blood of hipsters/off the floor" and ends "the sadness of last call/is still more useful/than your average poem." There's some existential ennui for you at the end of this collection, which continues in 'The Ghost of. . ." dedicated to Gene Bloom, where the speaker of the poem observes Gene ". . .up half the night/rolling joints in orderly piles/the way they did it in sing sing/the night we put a man/on the moon." This poem neatly orders the complex ghosts of the title into images everyone can feel, particularly in the locative "in sing sing" and the dative "the night we put a man on the moon." What was a poem about some old guy becomes specific and magical, and a nice place to end a review.

Dorsey's skill is two-toned. There's the surface shine of these poems, the insights and the back and forth of people in the rigors of their lives, which is the great and necessary accomplishment of the work. Then there's the craft beneath, the revealed glow, and I'm not sure sometimes which is the stronger element, or if I'm even meant to have to choose. Sometimes the poems risk being surfacey, but then the images stick with me: bones; ghosts popping out when you least expect them like in some video game; hipster blood on a sawdust floor; Gene calmly ordering a pile of joints on the table. I realize then that's the shine, that's what I'm meant to take from these poems. It all comes from the skill and hard work and the risk to lay it all out there. Which is to say, a John Dorsey poem looks easy, till you try one yourself.

June Poem Reviews

I've had fiction and non-fiction reviews published in quite a few journals and have been a member of the National Book Critics Circle, when I could afford it. Therefore, I feel quasi-professional in those arenas. I don't necessarily feel that way about my poetry reviews. I have opinions, though, and in the interest of keeping my poetry-mind occupied during an otherwise stressful time in my life, I'd like to make you, the poetry world, an offer. If you mail me your chapbook or book--at least 24 pages but no more than 100 pages, self-published or traditional--I will post a review of between 150 and 300 words about it, as professionally as I can, in the following months. Promise. Mail me your book, get a review. Easy. If I get a huge response, I'll declare a cap and communicate it here. I would prefer to work from print copies. I hate reading poetry in PDF or MOBI--my preferred methods for prose--because the lines never break correctly and I find myself critiquing lineation that doesn't exist in the original.

Sound good? Email me for the mailing address, livenudepoems AT gmail DOT com. Ask questions in the comments. Offer good until postmark date 7/1 or I cry uncle.

John Dorsey

In Kansas Thinking of You

for cherie

ted berrigan would never text

with his fingers

along your skin

he would call you

to borrow some money or pills

he would give you some story

about how the moon looks beautiful

while sipping a pepsi

he would use strong words

& dance nude with donna dennis

on your parents front lawn

they, your parents, would offer him

iced tea & cucumber sandwiches

while talking about the moon landing

about how it seemed like a lot of work

you would sit there in flower patterned pajamas

while he told you that you deserve to have words

wrapped around you like oak trees

& all i have to offer you is the kansas wind

something of the earth

my own thoughts on love

which i know isn’t much.

The Goats in December

the goats across the way are crying

sunlight is not the same thing as empathy

or brown grass in the middle of winter

the river has a lovely singing voice

when you place your hand

over its mouth.

John Dorsey lived for several years in Toledo, Ohio. He is the author of several collections of poetry, including Teaching the Dead to Sing: The Outlaw's Prayer (Rose of Sharon Press, 2006), Sodomy is a City in New Jersey (American Mettle Books, 2010), Tombstone Factory, (Epic Rites Press, 2013), Appalachian Frankenstein (GTK Press, 2015) Being the Fire (Tangerine Press, 2016), Shoot the Messenger (Red Flag Press, 2017) and Your Daughter's Country (Blue Horse Press, 2019). He is the Poet Laureate of Belle, MO. His work has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize. He may be reached at archerevans@yahoo.com.

Chad Parenteau

Work-Through-Lunch Poem

O'Hara never had bad dreams

of days like this.

Sustenance substituted

for vending machine run,

not enough time to hold

a haiku with your candy bar.

Another day, another dead lady

trending on Twitter,

sad emojis beating

your best words-per-minute.

Crying kidneys bring you

to the bathroom break

as you sound out the only poem

your colleagues may ever hear.

Chad Parenteau is the author of Patron Emeritus, released in 2013 by FootHills Publishing. His work has appeared in Tell-Tale Inklings, What Rough Beast, The Skinny Poetry Journal, Ibbetson Street and Wilderness House Literary Review. He serves as Associate Editor of the online journal Oddball Magazine. His second full-length collection, The Collapsed Bookshelf, is forthcoming.

Heidi Blakeslee

Woman of the Stars

bits of astrofluff

lightly

fall down from her

strings of star hair

mother galaxy

absorbs the bad energy

and replenishes

us with virtue

so that every human on the planet

can look up at her

every once in a while

and feel like a speck

of meteor

or

as big as the

sun

Heidi Blakeslee lives near Pittsburgh, Pa with James and her cats.  She has written the novels, “Strange Man,” and “The House,” two poetry books, “The Empress of Hours,” and “Should the Need Arise.”  She also wrote “The White Cat: A Paranormal Memoir.” 

Timothy Gager

This Poem is Like a Bruise

This poem is like a bruise

A deep black Lake Superior knocking

over the white caps rolling into last breaths

An angry purple from the rage of red

until the flattening of color blends

into a subdued yellow of surrender

If you’re weak of heart

this poem is not a holiday,

It does not twinkle, nor

Are its words, lights from a city

observed upon the descent

each, a pushpin of hope

If you wait, there is just a tiny ripple

when a coin is flipped into a well

hallow, the eye-socket, black, and empty

Timothy Gager is the author of fourteen books of short fiction and poetry. Every Day There Is Something About Elephants, a book of 108 flash fictions, selected by over fifty-five editors, was released by Big Table Publishing in 2018. He's the former host of the successful Dire Literary Series in Cambridge, Massachusetts. He has had over 500 works of fiction and poetry published and of which thirteen have been nominated for the Pushcart Prize. His work has been read on National Public Radio. 

Rebecca Schumejda

onefiftythreeam

When your house is framed with bones

and the walls sheet rocked with flesh

there is no room for full-length mirrors

or empty apologizes, what I am trying

to say is our oldest child can’t sleep

she wakes up hourly to tell me

she’s afraid and there is nothing

I can do to make her fears go away

except stay up until she falls back

to sleep. This structure is crumbing

what I am trying to say is that I am

tired of the way the past creaks in the

night like a floor when you are trying

to sneak back into your own space

the way a shadow becomes a river

the hum of the heater and then

the silence after it shuts off. Remember

nothing lasts forever except the memory

of who you were until you weren’t any longer.

The Cost of Common Household Items

While my first home is being raized

I watch The Price Is Right
in the hospital waiting room
and consider the elusiveness of time
how organs can be squeezed out
through small incisions made with robotic arms
how my own daughters’ first home
is close to uninhabitable
how this daytime game show
is still thriving after decades
how my mother used to say,
Boy that Bob Barker, he’s a looker.

Right after the surgeon calls me
into a small side room
to update me, Drew Carey yells,
Come on Down!
When the door closes
behind us, I can still hear the music,
the audience applause and my mother
saying he just doesn’t age.
Before I can sit down, the surgeon says,
I don’t think the cancer spread
outside of the uterus
and I start tearing up
close my eyes
picture that giant wheel slowing down—

maybe just maybe
I can be the daughter I want
rather than the daughter I’ve been.

Rebecca Schumejda is the author of several full-length collections including Falling Forward (sunnyoutside press), Cadillac Men (NYQ Books), Waiting at the Dead End Diner (Bottom Dog Press) and most recently Our One-Way Street (NYQ Books). She is currently working on a book forthcoming from Spartan Press. She is the co-editor at Trailer Park Quarterly. She received her MA in Poetics from San Francisco State University and her BA from SUNY New Paltz. She lives in New York’s Hudson Valley with her family.