Rusty Barnes on "Beneath the Chickenshit Mormon Sun" by Bruce Embree

For Day 1 of the Cruelest Poetry Month, Five-Two alum Rusty Barnes offers commentary on "Beneath the Chickenshit Morning Sun" by Bruce Embree. Read the poem first at Rusty's site, Live Nude Poems, then his commentary below. —Gerald So


The thing I notice immediately about this poem is its absolute trust of the reader. Embree is among the best small press poets because of this. His poems lack any pretension whatsoever, and he expects as a result that anyone will be able to follow along with his narrative jumps and quirky phrasing.

From the first, we know it--the fight? another unspecified event?-- was worse than the poet thought. The narrator and his grandmother are watching the champion defend his title when, in a curious turn, Eldridge Cleaver declares his allegiance to the Church of Latter Day Saints and "Grandma and I damn near fell out of our chairs."

Now comes the first shift in the poem, wherein the poet gets drunk, cruises Mainstreet and calls the 'you' of the poem long-distance. With little punctuation and no stanza breaks, we're simply meant to follow the illogical twists of the poem without the usual signposts. It's refreshing, even now, and the poem was written sometime in the early 80s. This reader trust just doesn't happen much in my experience of the small press. You either get something close to word salad which substitutes for experiment which the reader nods at and pretends to get, or you get straight narrative pieces which lead you by the nose, usually to conclusions reached by better poets years earlier.

So far, this could be any third rate Bukowski wannabe, of which there are legions, some of them your friends (you should tell them to get a grip) but the poem shifts wonderfully again. "This is my last wish and love poem". Here the poet gets to the heart of what makes verse poetry. The poet lays out what he expects of his funeral and wake, and what he expects of the so far little-known "you" of the poem:"ghost music...drowning all sound"; "fucking me to dust beneath the chickenshit Mormon sun." Its crassness still makes one think of Bukowski, but in my opinion only the early Bukowski ever rises to the level of poetry, and then not often. Embree shifts us into an almost apocalyptic state of mind, and the reader is left wondering what to make of the man and his desires. One wonders how the "you" of the poem reacted in that long-distance call before the poem turns.

Embree is an uneven poet, to say the least--what is up with those line indentations?--but when he's on, as in this poem, there's no one I'd rather read, and it's a crime he's not better known. All of his poems circulated in and around Pocatello Idaho in hand-bound personalized tiny editions, and I thank the gods for the small press wonders like Limberlost Press, who gathered two hand-sewn chapbooks together from his work, and Blue Scarab Press, who collected 146 of the poems into the edition I'm referencing, ALL MINE: New and Selected Poems. It's long out of print, but you can track down copies on rare book sites. I trawl through them every six months or so and if reasonably priced, buy up all the ones I can find to give away as gifts.

And s my parting gift to you, I implore you. Find an out-of-print poet you love and buy up all their books you can find to give away as gifts. The conversations you will start and the relationships you will form as a result will be worth more to your poetic soul than praying or constantly chasing after the next big thing. Poetry exists best in pods, but too many of them are self-sufficient and often resistant to outsiders interloping. Use your love for an OOP poet and share with your pod and people outside your pod the forgotten stuff. Thus endeth the lecture. —Rusty Barnes