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The short-story writer and poet Raymond Carver said get black on white. John Yamrus lives that adage. He doesn’t think about doing it, he does it. An original, reluctant to call himself a poet, his poems have the intuitiveness of Emily Dickinson, the grit of Todd Moore, the street-smarts of Charles Bukowski, the minimalism of Gerald Locklin, and the directness of Jeff Weddle. Like his friend, the poet Jeff Weddle, John Yamrus doesn’t mince words; he gets right down to it. Like Weddle, he doesn’t shy from directly engaging his readers. Knowing that the one way—the only way—to learn to write is to read, he often alludes to reading, readers, poetry readings, and audiences where, even if only one person pays attention, that person is the most important one in the room; that’s what it feels like, what a reader gets from the page of a writer who says you either get it or you don’t. His main topic people—human nature—transience pervades his poems. As with Dickinson, there is no one truth in life but many. Yamrus’s gift lies in his ability to bring them to light. 

No other writer lives the truth that reading and writing go hand-in-hand better than John Yamrus. He’s a great reader of Proust, and has a poem titled «Reading Proust,” and another about the joys of discovering Dickens late in life, and yet another about Norman Mailer, alluding to the best of Mailer, which Yamrus knows because he has read Mailer in depth, similar to his reading of Dickens, and, especially, Proust. He has cited passages in Proust that are pure poetry. It’s a safe bet to say many contemporary poets do not know Todd Moore’s The Dillinger Poems. John Yamrus does. He knows the best of Charles Bukowski’s poems and the best of Gerald Locklin—and that the only way to learn to write is to read. The reciprocal relationship between reader and writer is exemplified in a passage from the article «Blind Genius and Wild Luck: The Poetry of John Yamrus” by Todd Moore. Here is Yamrus’s poem, followed by Moore’s commentary. 

Bukowski’s property

this poem

isn’t mine these

thoughts aren’t 

mine these

sentences aren’t 

mine these 

cadences

aren’t 

mine these

lines aren’t 

mine.

nothing 

i do

or think

or write 

is mine.

it’s all filtered down

through you 

Mr. Bukowski…

and i wish 

you’d 

come here

and

take it back.

‘»Bukowski’s property”…somehow transcends the whole idea of being enslaved to Bukowski’s language. In fact, what Yamrus does in this one simple poem which could almost be spoken in a kind of shaking whisper is that somehow he invented a stripped bare language which is all his own. At the end of «Bukowski’s property,” Yamrus writes, “it’s all filtered down/ through you/ Mr. Bukowski… / and i wish/ you’d/ come here/ and/ take it back.” By denying his own language, by asking Bukowski to appear and take it all back, Yamrus gambles with an all or nothing gesture to make the poem and the language all his own.’

Note what the poem would be missing had Yamrus not included the word “here.” That word lends an emphatic tone to «Bukowski’s property; the poem would be lesser indeed without it. 

Just as Yamrus’s reading is important, so are his readers. Very important. What comes to mind is the familiar saying “without you there would be no me.” Yamrus writes to be read. 

if

the 

books

don’t

get sold,

the 

poems

don’t 

get read.

«if” connotes the importance of publishers. Yamrus realizes his obligation to the people who spend money to publish his books, the people who make him available to his readers. Yamrus has said his poems don’t have titles. Often the title serves as a poem’s first line. 

pass

the 

lightning,

please

While “pass” is intuitive, like Dickinson, and minimal, like Locklin, the poem’s most significant word, its understood subject, “you,” directly engages the reader, and «please” evokes a table for the poet and the reader to be together. His inclusion of the reader at the end of «a pretty good poem” suggests the prominent role readers play in all his poems.

a pretty good poem

popped 

into my head.

i

was 

our back

in the hot tub.

it was

near midnight

and 

i just 

poured a

glass of wine.

i 

wasn’t 

about to get out,

so i

repeated it 

over and over 

in my head, until

i 

had it

memorized.

and 

i hope

you

like it.

Yamrus has said they won’t come to you, you have to go to them—the readers, also the audiences at readings. While it’s great to have a big turn out, quality over quantity is emphasized in the following poem:

her mouth

was a

ruined white flower.

she 

had to 

be 80 or more,

but

she stood there,

in the back of the room,

while i

read my poems 

to a couple of dozen students

who only 

looked tired and bored.

i wasn’t into it 

and neither were they,

and all i could see was this mop

of 

stringy 

grey hair

and 

a face that 

kept urging me on. 

Tender at the beginning, poignant at the end, and not a word out of place, this poem resonates with Keats’ «truth is beauty.” To add more would obscure the truth. «Endure” is a word that figures into this poem about a different reading. 

it was

over 

50 years ago, 

and i was doing an open mic

with the local literary group,

and 

they were all

very artsy and serious

and their poems

were precious and hammered at

and careful

as were 

their clothes and 

the way they walked and talked,

and as 

far as i can tell 

it was the same sad crowd, 

week

after week,

reading the same sad poems 

over and over again, 

when 

in walks me

with my long-hair’d,

beautiful future wife and a guitar player.

it felt like 

everyone turned around

to see who this new guy was,

and the guy

up on the stage

stopped what he was doing,

and with a

pretty good ad lib, 

he looked at us and looked 

at his partisan crowd and said:

look who 

just walked in…

Peter, Paul and Mary!

that 

was funny…

but, 

it stung

and it stuck

and it taught me 

something that i learned 

right then and there and never forgot.

that was 

more than 50 years ago,

and 

as far

as i can tell, 

i’m still the only 

one still on the scene,

still doing the deed.

and to 

quote Terry Malloy 

in ON THE WATERFRONT,

all

they ever got was

«a one way ticket to Palookaville.”

This anecdotal, effusive poem holds back nothing. Consider what it would be if the line “it felt like” were not in it. Its humanity evokes momentary embarrassment, and lasting distain for a sort of poetic window dressing a person encounters at readings and in journals: poems that in their preciousness circle around the truth of the poet’s feelings and life itself.

Life is happy, life is sad, life is serous, and life is funny. There’s no lack of humor in the poems of John Yamrus. He can be and is very funny. There is the writer, the reader, the publisher, and the editor. Yamrus’s repetition, in response to an editor in whose journal those precious poems likely appear, is witty, and, especially to readers familiar with writer-and-editor correspondence, hilariously funny.

“Dear John Yamrus;

I’m 

sending you this 

to say that 

i read your

latest poem,

and I’ve got to say

that even poems 

about Death

are vital —

but, surely 

not this!

Did you 

just take 

a flash fiction paragraph 

& vivisect it? 

Please! 

Tell me

this is not poetry!”

“dear sir;

this 

is

not

poetry.”

John Yamrus’s poems about people are epiphanies. He discovers as he writes. What Yamrus writes and how he writes gets readers to know and thus care about his people, people alone and with others. As in life, anything can happen. 

«write a poem about THAT,”

she 

said,

sitting 

on the edge 

of the

bed,

smiling.

As in “pass” the understood you in this poem constitutes a couple. “smiling” resonates with «THAT.” “she” might as well have said to write a poem about life, not as you want it to be, but as it is, and people as they are. Here’s a more effusive “that” poem about a couple:

that was when she went

absolutely

bat-shit crazy on him,

throwing things, 

kicking the walls,

sometimes even 

setting his clothes

on fire.

she didn’t do it

very often,

but,

when 

she did,

it 

sure was 

something.

for seventeen years

he kept his

mouth

shut,

and

put up 

with it.

if you

asked him

he’d say

he always will.

besides, 

it could have been worse

she could have

married

someone 

else. 

The ironic twist that constitutes the wit in the poet’s commentary begins with the fact that «she,” not he, “could have/ married/ someone/ else.” That comment connotes imperfect love. It evokes a slice of life sans the poetic window dressing. Here’s a poem told in a matter-of-fact voice that resonates with empathy and compassion for the sufferings of others. Less being more, the poem is powerful not only for what it says and shows but also for what it holds back.

my friend Bill 

played guitar.

this was back in ’72. 

or, 

maybe ’73.

or,

maybe

before that,

because i don’t really 

remember and it doesn’t really matter.

my 

friend Bill

was maybe 23,

with long straight hair.

he

was skinny 

and had spent time in Vietnam.

when 

i first met him

he just got back from New York.

he

thought 

he was a folk singer,

but, wasn’t very good and 

all he played were Dylan songs

and when he laughed, he kinda cackled. 

Bill 

would sit 

in my kitchen 

playing his beat up

old guitar and every now 

and then he’d go out to his car

and

smoke

a joint because 

my mother was in the 

house and he didn’t want her to know.

Bill sang thru his nose and

slammed the guitar so

hard he was always 

breaking strings.

he was a good guy.

i knew him for

a year or two and then

we

lost touch.

somebody said

he spent time in the psych ward

at the VA hospital, and when he got out

he went straight to his car,

drove out to the woods

and hung himself.

Bill never 

made it

big.

they found his guitar

propped against 

the tree…

damn,

if it didn’t 

have a broken string.

The guitar with its «broken string” is a metonymy for the broken life. And the speaker’s saying, early in the poem, «it doesn’t really matter” is verbal irony to the hilt. Just as Bill matters, so does every syllable in this tour-de-force poem about a musician who «never/ made it/ big.” 

Life is change. The people in Yamrus’s poems act, sometimes impulsively, other times deliberately. In keeping with the poet’s minimalism, they are often rendered in pronouns; therefore, when a name appears, it’s for a reason. The person in this poem changes both her life and her name.

she cut her hair, 

bought

all new clothes

and 

changed her 

name to Tawny O’Dell.

the way 

she looked at it, 

it was a good first step

away from Whitaker…that son of a bitch.

he

never

in a million years

should have done what he did.

What did he do? asks the reader, who imagines something horrible. This poem is a fine example of the poet’s holding back and letting the reader come in. A different kind of minimalism is at work in “the only thing.” Again, the title functions as a first line. 

the only thing

a

writer 

really has

is

a usable past

and 

the time 

to put it to use.

Note how the poem would be changed, diminished, if the emphatic word «really” were not in it. The repetition with variation of «use” resonates with this writer’s utilitarian work ethic; it is not going to happen by wishful thinking; the writer either makes it happen or ends up staring at a blank page. The past is well used in “Gedda’s was,” a nostalgic poem about family and community.

Gedda’s was

this little 

shot and beer joint 

our parents used to take us to

when 

we were kids, 

me and my sister.

i was 

maybe 5 and 

we’d sit with them 

at the end of the bar and

Mrs. G would give us nickels

that we’d 

put in the machine 

to get those red pistachios

and 

my father 

showed us how 

to tip the machine

and turn the crank real slow 

to get the most out of it

and 

they’d sit

and talk and drink

and 

i know 

it had to be 

the afternoon

because i remember

the light coming in from the street

and

it was red

because of the glass

and 

so were 

our hands

from the nuts

and 

they were

probably drunk

when

we left,

because it was 1956

and that was what you did

when 

you had a

couple of bucks

and

a day off

and 

no one there

to watch the kids.

This poem of the working class exemplifies Yamrus’s use of repetition with variation. His use of the word “and” as an introduction allows his images to breathe, gives each image room on the page, so the effect is like a series of haiku poems unfolding on a scroll. This repetition also makes the poem flow; it’s all one memory here in the poet’s present, regardless of how many times he and his family were in this bar, which likely had sawdust on the floor, a detail suggested but not included in the poet’s pictorial memory. He tells and shows all that his readers need to hear and see, to be there. In regard to “and,” note where it appears not at the beginning of a stanza but at the end: «me and my sister,” «and turn the crank real slow” “and talk and drink,” and lastly in the line “and that is what you did.” These lines, respectively, reference children, time, parents, and the reader. «you” is a pun on all the people in the bar, and all the readers in the poem; the poet holds the door open for his readers to come into his childhood, his past, and it’s a gesture nothing short of brilliant, and his manipulation of “and” acts as a figurative key unlocking a figurative door. “Gedda’s was” conveys a tough tenderness, and «in a room,” a tenderness that is effusive. While the latter is similar to yet very different from the former, in both poems less is more.

in a room

full of 

other people

we

receive 

from the woman we love

the answer.

This poem is at once personal and impersonal, subjective and objective, and undeniably intimate. The poet captures a moment, like a cube of truth he holds to light, for anyone who happens to be with him (here on the page) to see.

John Yamrus has a proclivity to irony; it’s part of his nature, part of who he is as a writer. In Yamrus, readers expect the unexpected. 

Ricky Lee 

was 

fast…

so fast

he sometimes

didn’t even leave 

a

shadow.

not 

that it 

mattered much,

because 

the things

Ricky Lee could 

run from

were 

never on his tail.

they were waiting for him…

right there…

patient.

at

the end

of Ricky Lee’s

race.

Of course, the suggestion is he couldn’t run away from himself, but the way irony plays out in this poem conjures a sort of nocturnal street scene, without mentioning the streets. The turn in the poem is «not/ that it/ mattered much.” But it does matter, it all matters, a lot. Cosmic irony plays out in original Yamrus fashion this poem: 

talking about God

wasn’t 

one of the 

things on Ernie’s list.

i mean,

i want to believe,

i really do, but what’s the point, right?

and 

he’d stand there,

on the beach, arms crossed,

looking at us,

waiting 

for someone 

to come along,

take his picture and 

declare that everything 

everywhere was all right,

and was never gonna change 

for now and for ever and ever, amen.

All he needs is that one word, “beach” to complete the scene, take the poem into a new dimension, as the reader pictures a body of water that was, is, and will be for a long, long time to come, a sort of infinity of the possible. Irony entertains in that it gives readers the opposite of what they expect. In the follow poem, with humorous results:

in dog obedience class…

for once, 

my little Abby

did everything right.

for 

once,

she didn’t

bite, jump or pull.

this time 

she paid attention 

and sat

and stayed

and came

and listened…

just like all the other dogs.

i can’t tell you how much

i hated

that.

An irony of tone, a reversal of expectations, makes for a happy ending in this very recent poem: 

most days,

all

it took 

was 2 cigarettes, 

and a couple glasses of

Two Buck Chuck, and Karl 

was ready to face the world, but 

today 

was different. 

today he was gonna 

meet the mistake

that was supposed to be his kid, 

and 

nothing 

he could ever do 

would,

get him ready

for a thing like that.

i mean, 

what if she was nice?

what 

if that skank 

of a bitch mother of hers

was right 

and 

he ended up 

loving the kid?

nothing 

he could think or do or say

would ever 

get him ready 

for a hell of a thing 

as god damn good as that.

This change in Karl, his voice, his attitude, his way of being, and seeing the world, is most welcoming. As Karl goes from feeling bad to good, this poem that starts nasty ends up nice.

Transience is the fact that nothing happens exactly the same way twice, that what happens never happens again, and John Yamrus is very aware of it, aware that the clock is ticking, that it ticks for all.

even 

before 

the hour sounds

we 

are already 

sitting 

with the dead.

He has been there, is there still. Though he’s never morbid, and never dwells on the fact of transience, he is always aware of it, because he lives in the real world. And not alone. 

walking hand in hand

thru New Hope,

we went into nearly every shop.

you bought a ring (the 

guy who made it 

said that

elephants were good luck)

and i bought a book of poetry,

a couple of cd’s

and several bars

of handmade soap.

we watched the people

walking up and down the street.

we’re no longer the 

young ones.

the young ones

are Goths,

bikers,

kids with bright orange hair.

we held hands all day.

after all these years

we still 

hold hands.

more importantly,

more enduringly,

you and i 

still 

hold each other

by the heart.

a firmer grasp

there never was.

That grasp is one way of not going “gentle into that good night,” to quote Dylan Thomas; one answer—the only answer—to the fact that one day one of us won’t be here. Sure, there is loss, but there is also life, and we are here, says the poet who is reluctant to call himself a poet.

i was just now

out in the yard,

cleaning up 

and 

i found 

one of Abby’s balls.

i picked it up.

and

as soon as 

i threw it, i knew,

watching that ball 

come to a stop

nearly broke

my heart.

Yamrus says the only mystery is there isn’t any. No argument there, but this poem that captures a moment, evokes the mystery of life. 

Transience encompasses love and loss. People live in an imperfect, impermanent world. Another answer to the fact of mortality is honesty. To thine own self, etcetera. 

when i was a kid

this dog showed up

on our porch.

my parents weren’t 

dog people,

so my father 

chased it.

it was lost,

and cold, 

and wet,

and my father

chased it 

away.

it kept coming back

and would sit

there,

looking up at

the door,

waiting.

my sister and i 

wanted to

pet it,

but my father said

«no, let it

go.”

finally,

it left,

and we

looked out the 

window, watching it 

go down the street

and out of 

our lives

forever.

that 

was my memory. 

it was raining 

then.

it’s raining

now.

“it’s raining / now.” Honesty. That’s not to say Yamrus never lies in his poems. But he knows the least important thing is a fact, and the most important thing is the truth.

what 

makes it

so special, he said,

is knowing it’s all gotta end.

everything.

you, me…

he 

wore 

a tee shirt 

printed with a 

picture of Bukowski on it,

and

under it 

were the words:

«write on.”

the shirt had a hole at the belly.

for once,

he felt

he

had nothing more to say.

Bukowski is the poet Charles Bukowski. The final answer to mortality is art: literature, painting, music, creations that will be here long after those who admire them are gone, the permanence of art countering the impermanence of the lives of human beings. The power of beauty is evoked in this poem: 

did you ever

hear 

of Son House?

who? 

Son House…

he played the blues, man!

the 

blues? 

what sort of

weak-ass shit is that?

Son House 

played guitar

like he had ten hands

and 

when he sang,

the walls would shake.

weak-ass.

maybe,

but did you

ever hear of Son House?

For art to be, there must be a perceiver.

after 

the 

rain,

reading Kerouac,

listening 

to Cole Porter

playing quiet in the room,

there’s

even birds

singing outside the window.

the

only thing

missing here

is 

you.

Lastly, there is this poem in which less is more, a lot more:

like a bible,

he

kept 

a copy of

Truman Capote’s

IN COLD BLOOD

on the table next to his bed.

he 

hadn’t 

read it in years.

that 

story of

the senseless murder

of 4 people on a hot Kansas night 

on

nights

when he

thought of it,

he’d touch the cover 

with his fingers, and think.

In those last two lines, Yamrus literally makes the connection between life and art. «with his fingers” is just the right touch.

He has said you either get it or you don’t. Good writing necessitates close reading. Through years of getting black on white, John Yamrus has developed a style: the lower case, all caps for emphasis, the emphatic tone, the one-word line are four traits of a style that is nuanced, intuitive, and intimate. His subjects are: the working class; poetry readings, poets, and poetry editors; the writing life, dogs, marriage, family, music, literature, mystery, the seemingly mundane, beauty, being here, success and failure; loyalty, and endurance. Write a poem about THAT! THAT is his subject, Life with a capital L.

he was

drawn

to this bit

of graffiti he saw

written in white paint

on the side of a building.

it was

in an alley,

and it read: 

«fuck the world —

and fuck you if you don’t love it.”

later that week,

looking to get the words just right,

he 

went back,

and 

when he

got there, it was gone —

not

just the words

and 

the wall,

but 

the whole 

damn building.

torn down.

gone.

and, fuck you if you don’t love that.

by Peter Mladinic