2024, book review, poetry

Reviews of GROWL & MUD

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I like to imagine Mick Parsons as the poet wearing a backpack and well-worn boots, looking up at the moon before finding a solitary park bench on which to write. From the moment I met him, he’s been an honest and unpretentious poet, unafraid of what that means in today’s literary landscape. Much of Parson’s latest collection, Growl & Mud, Collected Poems 2021-2023 (Basement Books, 2023) is poetry that has been
previously published under his pen-moniker, dirtysacred. Parsons says in the book’s introduction, “I like dirtysacred as a name as much the name my parents gave me… A name, an identity, has become almost as important to poetry… as the work itself. And I simply don’t care about any of that…I just want the work to stand or fall, regardless of who I am.” Parson’s work, whether it’s the individual poems or the collective whole, reflects precisely what he sees. It is clear that the author would like nothing more than to vanish into the background as the reader enters, and let the work speak for itself.

Beginning in 2023, Growl and Mud walks backward into 2021, with a world recovering from a pandemic, and its people in disarray. Parsons uses free verse as often as he uses form in the structures found in Growl and Mud, expansive and diverse as his subjects. Even his own body is not safe from his high-powered lens: “…body / as a broken tea cup / maybe / no one will notice the crack / track progression by how / the scar looks.” The movement in the lines are careful, matching the speaker’s body, healing from surgery. Whether interior or exterior, Parson’s lens is clear and unflinching. Often composing outside, often in his beloved Ohio River Valley, he witnesses nature and human nature erupting in full view. “A Monday night on the wharf” is an example of this, as vivid as film, its subject, a street woman battling mental illness: “afraid of the dark and sometimes / brandishing a knife she begs the night / lights for cigarettes…” The picture of her, taken without prejudice, includes the ghost of our collective failure to care for one another–the last character standing.

Parsons includes a series of days near the beginning of the book, each one corresponding to a day in the life of 2023. “Day 3” comes right out of the gate, swinging: “These poems are not proclamations. / They are questions.” The speaker returns at the end: “These poems explain nothing. / They admit everything.” Throughout the book, Parsons’ poetry is an admission of life. His weapons of beauty are thrift, simplicity, and compassion, making sure the reader is coming along for the ride.

Janet Rodriguez, author of
Making an American Family : A Recipe in Five Generations ]

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2024, Ohio River Valley Literature, poetry, the no-scape, Working Class Literature

one more self-actualization test run

this; a composite collection
sub-atomized particulates
coffee grounds, tobacco ash
diesel, grease
a transubstantiation of water
go / breathe
go / breathe
go / [ ]





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2024, essay, Ohio River Valley Literature, spring, the no-scape, Working Class Literature

An Essay on jaywalking possum

Almost got into a car accident on the way home from work. Rolling down 3rd Street, just outside the Watterson, a critter was crossing the street in front of me. A possum.

The car behind me had been aggressive since 4th and Winkler. Kept trying to pass on a two lane street. Shined their brights. That odd angry swerving people sometimes do, some kind of intimidation dance for automobiles that always amuses me. When I slowed down for the possum they laid on the horn. I responded with a finger. When I turned down Wampum and into the neighborhood, they followed me. Part of me wanted them to keep following me. They stayed behind me a block, went on straight when I turned again.

Sometimes even when the cruise is good, I end up cranky. It starts out as a role I play; the cranky boilerman. One of many faces, one of many masks. I try to find ways to be kind. But something about me just scares some people, especially a couple of the kids who work concessions. The cranky old boilerman. The fire troll.

And though I could work harder at being nicer, it would be disingenuous. I leave crumbs and clues to my humanity. Little jokes. Poetic quipts. But when people are determined to not like me, I lean into it. Hard.

The car behind me would have hit the possum without a thought. I like possums. They look mean but are mostly benign in the world. They’re like me. I look mean. But I’m mostly benign.

Since COVID and the Breonna Taylor Protests, what was left of the thin veneer of civility in this dirty old town has worn away. An underlying kindness has washed away like the mud left on the wharf after high water. Washed back into the river. We’re becoming a tourist destination. Polite, but not kind. Under the mud that washed away, there’s an aggression. It comes out in people’s driving.

These faces we wear. I read recently on someone’s Facebook status update: THE REAL YOU IS WHO YOU ARE IN PRIVATE. It’s a nice thought. Comforting. But really, there is no real anybody. We are composites of experience and biology. I’m many things to many people. They all think they know the real me.

There is no real me.

The me that stopped for a jaywalking possum is the same one that half-hoped the aggressive tailgater would follow me home.

Time on the river is washing away the layers of mud. Former composites. The cranky boilerman waiting on word from the blue heron, the watchman expecting messages from the wharf possum… faces I wear when needed.

But when I cross the street, I hope someone finds the civility to not run me over.

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