Review: `Most of  this book is about risk, dealing with faith in that risk, and the risk in taking credit on your own heart...'
Rating: 5 out of 5
Date: 03 24, 2014
Jason Akley. We know too little about him. He is the son of a colonel in the United States Air Force, and has traveled extensively across America and Europe following his father's military assignments. He currently resides in Illinois. He started writing stories at the age of eight, and has had his poetry published in two books. He is the author of children's books (Sweet Pea and the Bumble Bee and The Candlestick) the hefty tome `Lazarus', `Salted with Salt and The Altar of Silence: Two Novellas, Rick's Place, and The Psalmist. Akley has a BS degree from Tulane University in physics and mathematical economics. But to discover what the man is truly about it is necessary to read his books. He has the gift that imbues Bukowski's writings, the poetic balance of such poets as John Berryman, Allen Ginsberg, and Hart Crane, and the imagination and flights of fantasy that circle reality like few others writing today. Think Foer, Burroughs, etc.In this collection of short stories, poems, musings and essays he focuses on pot addiction - and they are all over the place, locale wise and topic wise. If you love stream of conscience you will fall in line with some of these stories, or if poking a hole in somewhere you shouldn't appeals, that is here, too. There is tenderness, death, murder, road stories and some very fine poetry. Example:`The following poems where written soon after I attempted suicide twice in the span of a week.  My second and third attempt since my medical discharge from the Air Force in 1998.  They were written in the early fall of 2005, and I wrote them just after the hurricane hit New Orleans, after work, after midnight, after driving to the apartment where I last tried to kill myself, the apartment of the woman I proposed to in bed, sitting in the dark there drinking beer, by the kitchen window that looked down into the street...A FAMILYMy sister fell and hurtHer knee and neededSurgery.  My motherStayed with her in theHospital, along with myBrother-in-law, and made sureShe had plenty of bottled sodaTo drink after the drugsWore off.  I stopped inBefore work to see her.But I got lost and it wasA long walk to the room.When I arrivedThe nurses were helping herBack into bed after using theTeddy Bear waiting thereFrom the boys.  Angel and IWill give them a gift certificateFor a dinner out and an IOUOn keeping the boys for a nightAs a Christmas present.  They areNo longer little, but I still love toWrestle with them.  And I'm happyMy sister is doing well...  ButI'm late for work, so my motherWalked me out, and we talkedOur plans along the way."We're not buyinga lot of junk this year.We're getting married and then thecruise.  We'd rather spend ourmoney on that...""I wish you were coming overfor Christmas.  You could callonce in a while...  It's beenfour years now.  Four years sinceyour father passed...""I know, Mother..."We stood at the exit doorsTalking this wayAbout our plans,And I hugged her and saidI loved her.  And she waited at theDoor as I left...The people I grew up with areComfortable strangers now.I will see them againBefore New Year's.Before I marry.And I don't know if somethingHas ended and something elseHas begun, but what has been lostHas become something else now.And sometimes I think about this.If people say Jason Akley Is an acquired taste, then this reader is addicted. This book contains some very fine writing. Grady Harp, March 14