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I just finished reading Pete Mladinic’s newest book The Whitestone Bridge, and I don’t know what to say. I mean, I do, but I really feel that whatever comes out of my head and onto this paper won’t be enough and won’t be right. With that being said, I’m just gonna throw caution to the wind and start talking, and whatever comes out, comes out, and you can figure it out from there.

First off, the main impression is that here is a poet writing at the top of his game. I’ve got a lot of Mladinic’s books and love every single one of them. Let me back up here and say that ever since I was a kid, I made it a point to support small press publishers and small press writers by buying at least one small press book a week. I’m 74 now, so you can do the math, but the bottom line is I’ve bought a lot of books between then and now. A real shitload. And what I’ve learned is that, while I’m supporting a lot of small press authors and publishers, I’m also buying a lot of crap, and I end up throwing away a lot more books than I keep.

This one’s a keeper. If it’s any kind of a badge of honor, this book is gonna make the cut and end up stacked on my shelves, along with all of Pete Mladinic’s other books, all of which have made the cut.

The second thing that comes to mind is how much this book makes me think of Gregory Corso. You know Corso, don’t you? In many minds, he’ll always be thought of as part of the Fab Five of the Beats…along with Kerouac and Ginsberg and Ferlinghetti and Burroughs. I guess when it comes down to it, Ferlinghetti really wasn’t a Beat, but he picked up that guilt by association, and he was just such a damn good writer, and he did run City Lights Books, and for years and years championed and published pretty much anybody who was anybody in the lit world, including Henry Miller and Pablo Neruda. City Lights was the IT publisher until Black Sparrow came along, and brought with it Bukowski and Fante, and a whole new generation of writers.

But, I’m getting off the track here, and what I wanted to say was just how much Mladinic reminds me now of Corso because of the real courage and honesty and just plain everyday realness of his poems.

Does that make sense to you? Do you know what I mean?

Take these lines from his poem “Taxidermy sister and brother”…the line reads:

          The mounted moose head in the lobby
          of Dave’s Eternity had dust on its antlers.

What? What do you make of that? What does it mean, and why in god’s name is he even pointing that out to us? But that’s real. That’s every day. That’s Life, with a capital L, and that’s what makes up the kind of poetry that catches my attention. That’s what Mladinic does. He makes the mundane feel interesting and important…because it IS.

Here’s another line from the book…from a poem called Vagabond:

          In another life he grows roses.

Damn, that’s a good line, isn’t it? Even by itself, it paints a whole picture and tells a whole story. Not many writers can do that. But then, not many writers have the talent and vision of Pete Mladinic.

So, do yourself a favor…the next time you got 16 bucks that are burning a hole in your pocket and you don’t know what to do with them, go to Amazon and pick up a copy of “The Whitestone Bridge” by Peter Mladinic, and when the package comes, pour yourself a great big drink, settle down in your favorite chair, and let Pete Mladinic open up a window on a world that just might look very much the same as yours. And that, my friend, is the whole damn point.

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