Black Sabbatical: Poems (Linda Bruckheimer Series in Kentucky Literature)
Southern gothic meets alt-country twang, and rural hardship meets terse postpunk sophistication in this lively debut. Ralph's troubled characters and dissonant outbursts evoke a self-destructive youth: It's like somebody choking on a car horn, one poem ends, or something metal being born. Ralph's rough free verse—what he calls Impossible Blues—recall the deep Ozark surrealism of Frank Stanford and the early poems of Denis Johnson, though neither precursor takes on quite the same blend of upper South present and past—the bedroom of a punk rock girl called Spooky, a riot/ of tattered magazines and rusted drums, but also the coal beds and tornup slopes where Egypt Mines had an operation/ once. Ralph, who still lives and teaches in Kentucky, plays in alt-country bands now and grew up in Louisville's influential 1980s alternative rock scene, known for such acts as Squirrel Bait, Slint and Rodan: alert readers might compare their sounds to his poems. Less evident in tone and manner—though quoted in epigraphs and cited by name—is Ralph's declared commitment to Buddhism. Detractors may ask if Ralph paints with too broad a brush, if his lines seem too clear or too raw: defenders will say, rightly, that they depict something real.(July)Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.