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Author’s Thoughts

It’s Saturday here in Sinking Spring, and I’ve got yet another book coming out. I’ve been on a bit of a roll lately, with this being my 6^th new book in the last 2 years and my (good God, I can’t believe it) 46^th since the first one came out in 1970, which seems like a million years ago. And I think one of the most common things interviewers and readers ask me when I come out with a new book is, “Why this one, and what makes it special?”

The answer (at least for this one and maybe for all my books) is I wrote this book because writing is the only thing I can do. I was gonna say it’s the only thing I’m good at, but I think the jury’s still out on that, and probably will be until I find myself on the wrong side of the grass.

Anyway, I actually DO think this one is special because the poems are starting to take me in a new direction. I’m not one of those writers who starts anything with a plan or an outline or a goal. I just get up every morning and start pounding away at the keys. It’s curiosity as much as anything else. I write because I want to see where my time at my desk is gonna take me.

These poems (for the most part) are short and fast, and the only point they make (at least for me) is they’re snapshots of people, places, and things that mean a lot to me…even the ones that are totally made up and 100% lies.

Don’t let any writer tell you that everything they write is 100% true, because the truth is always colored by who and what we are and how we look at the world.

Anyway (I know, I already said “anyway” just a few sentences ago), I’m not really as much of a writer as I am a guy who does what I do, and loves what I do so much that there’s really no way for me to ever stop until my body or the world or both tell me not to do it anymore.

So, here it is…the book’s called “it’s not what you think,” which is maybe yet another lie because the poems only have an existence in the world after you or anyone else picks them up and reads them. So, it pretty much IS what you think, and I hope you think you like them.

What Readers Are Saying

John Yamrus has been described as a minimalist poet, and I think that’s an accurate way to look at his method. He always says less than he could in a poem. Doesn’t fill in a lot of details. Keeps it simple. Doesn’t attempt to impress the reader with clever turns of phrase and vivid descriptions. He uses one or two words where the average poet would use five or ten. If he says something is red, he leaves it at that, not cluttering up the poem with vivid details about the exact shade of crimson. When he tells a story, he often leaves out the beginning and even the end. He shares some of the middle of the story, the part he thinks is most necessary.

Yamrus writes in the tradition of the Beats (Kerouac, Ginsberg, Corso et al) as well as the Postmoderns, such as Charles Bukowski, although Bukowski often strives to astound the reader with cunning turns of phrase and shocking imagery, while Yamrus never works that hard at wowing the reader. Yamrus keeps it simple and quiet: notes about life scratched on the back of an envelope.

A reader who didn’t know better might mistake a Yamrus book for a series of notes about poems that are yet to be written. I don’t know of any other poet who writes such stripped-down, modest poetry. He’s unique in this, and has made minimalism his own private turf. In the week or so that I’ve had an advance copy of the text, I’ve read this book four times. It holds up very well each time, doing what he set it up to do. No more, no less. It works. Buy this book and see for yourself.
– David Barker, author of several books of Lovecraftian fiction and a widely published poet

Sample Poems

the place looked

like
a museum

or
a dump

or a
museum’s
idea of a dump,

with
the shade
on the big yellow lamp

tilted
just enough
to show the hole in the couch

and
the stains
from the beer
and the wine and
the blood and the tears.

yeah,

it
was more
than enough for Gary,

with
plenty of room
for him to kick back and relax

and
think about Billie
and her great big beautiful crying heart.

~~

the little shit

looked
everywhere,

but
at me.

he
wouldn’t
look me in the eye.

he
looked
at the floor
and the walls

and
my hands,
but he wouldn’t
look me in the eye

and
that’s what
made him a little shit.

that,
and the fact
that he thought
his poems were good
and not the work of a man
who wouldn’t look you right in the eye.

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