Re-Write Men - Softcover

Gaspeny, Michael

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1635343550 ISBN 13: 9781635343557

Publisher: Finishing Line Press, 2017

Synopsis

Re-Write Men is packed with story-oriented, character-centered poems inspired by omens, haunted neighborhoods, and hospice patients reviewing their lives and seeing into the next world as they confront fate. Most of these slices of life crackle with drama in which opponents struggle toward revelation and characters deal with antagonistic dimensions of themselves. Other poems provide diversion from the gravity, focusing on music and the loving spirit of Black Labrador Retrievers. The collection traces a journey from corrosive doubt to limited grace. It begins with a narrator declaring “I don’t need the Bible to show me Hell/It’s right here in my hands.” It visits a nursing home where a patient pleads, “Make us love ourselves and one another.” The quest for cleansing concludes with a guilt-wracked loner proclaiming, “The sea-winds tore off/the festering lapels of my self-pity.” The pleas and plights of men yearning to redeem loss-ridden lives will capture your ear and enter your heart.

About this title

Review:

"In these poems, we encounter characters as down-and-out, as demented, and as holy as Hazel Motes in Flannery O'Connor's Wise Blood Preacher Cruckshank, Stub, Mojo, Skeletal Stanley, Flipper. The persona is sometimes a neighbor on Redbud Lane, sometimes an animal advocate, often a hospice volunteer calling in on a hospital or 'firetrap hotel' to watch 'Bonanza' or bring a last meal of cornbread and beans. In this world, so masterfully crafted with pain and compassion, it's hard to tell the caregiver from the taker, the dying from the dead. Characters 'crush cigarillos out on their palms, ' live with their 'eyes tuned inside' and climb into the attic to check the 'rafters for something dangling.' Yet, because near-death awareness may inform their outbursts--'I'll be back, but I ain't Christ' or 'Watch the horses! The real show's inside'--they offer revelations we may not yet know we need."

--JANICE MOORE FULLER, author of Sex Education and On the Bevel

"There is a lovely, tough-but-tender-hearted mood to these gritty, noirish poems. If 'the devil is in the details, ' then Gaspeny's poems are indeed devilish, but the better angels are dancing there, too, and profligately. Strong sentiment held in check by formal clarity is so often the secret of memorable poems, and Gaspeny has learned that arduous lesson by heart. Strongly narrative and chock full of vivid characters and voices--Stub, Preacher Cruckshanks, Sister Rosetta, Flipper--Re-Write Men is a fond and fearful mash-up of Weegee and Philip Levine."

--JIM CLARK, author of Dancing on Canaan's Ruins and Handiwork

About the Author:

As a poet, short story writer, and reporter, Michael Gaspeny has published widely. For nearly four decades, he taught English and Journalism, mainly at Bennett College and High Point University, where he received the distinguished teaching award. While gaining an M.F.A. in creative writing at the University of Arkansas, he worked as a sportswriter covering the Razorbacks and as a general assignments reporter. His features on Bill Clinton's first campaign for national office have been frequently quoted in biographies of the former president. Gaspeny holds an M.A. from the University of Richmond and an undergraduate degree from Randolph-Macon College. He lives in Greensboro, North Carolina with his wife Lee Zacharias, the novelist and essayist. They have two sons.

About this edition

• Publisher: Finishing Line Press
• Publication date: 2017
• ISBN 10: 1635343550
• ISBN 13: 9781635343557
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 40