A Man About Town by Robert J. Baumann
(Hey Tiger, a division of Mitzvah Chaps, Lawrence, Ks., 2009)
Baumann has done it again and again. Published another chapbook from his local press, Mitzvah Chaps, here in Kansas. This time he breaks ground by printing more blurbal text on back cover than poetic text within. Huzza's and what else there is to RB!! Breaking the publishing rules is as easy for RB as breaking wind in bed. Trust me.
Of course the blurbs are fake and egoistic and not nearly as dirty or funny as the poems..uh...lettres inside. This time the trick is him, RB, writing to various persons some famous, some local, some not real, some culled from TMZ.com and in his dreams for most part. That is his talent...not all of it...but a lot of it and here it is evident.
The letter....ah the letters....that we could all write such. Here, for example, one such to Ms. Jennifer L. Knox, well known poeta and bon vivant (?)
"Dear Jennifer L. Knox,
When I asked you to have sex with me in the
liquor store I meant steal that sign at the
register that says PENS which you did so I got
off. Was it good for you?"
Or a letter to Milwaukee:
"Dear Milwaukee,
Here's another something for you to wrap in
baconl. It's my love life? It's my comb-over?
It's my Member"s Only man bag full of crevice
oils? Ben Gay and lamb fat are pretty much
my mantra now that I'm bald."
And believe me, the responses from the above our others are in no way, well maybe...forget that.
Baumann is one of the things that makes being an old, geezer poet an okay thing. To know that coming up are younger, brighter, nastyer, drunker persons who will bury your poetic ass and a lot of your peers along with you. And that is pretty much what it is all about, no? Come on RB!
You need, and I am not trying to be all uppity about it...I mean you need to find this book (hint: google Baumann and find Mitzvah Chaps) and read his letters. They are new, fresh, not from a schoolbut they are full of potty mouth and hipster twang...what used to be street wise and is now, oh I dont know, some sort of postconceptpopo or something. Robert Baumann is real. This is the proof. Praise him. Good on him. Pee on him. Poo on him. Come on (to) him too. You do that now. All of you. You do that now.
*****
Jim McCrary blogs at http://wwwresistingpoetry.blogspot.com/.
Thanks for this, Jim. Just wanted to clarify that Hey Tiger is not really a division of Mitzvah Chaps, and although I wrote these vile letters, I did not "put this out" (though I did/do put out), and actually, the "fake" responses were written by actual people that are not me.
ReplyDeleteBut this flatters, thanks so much for you constant support. My dick goes out to you.
wow. i want a copy of this for the Racine Public Library. This is one of the weirdest, dirtiest reviews I've ever read, I think. Dirtier than John Wilmott reviews.
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