Complete Poems: 1965–2020 by Michael Butterworth
(Space Cowboy Books, 2023). 212 pp. $26.03 hardcover, $18.59 paperback. spacecowboybooks.com/michael-butterworths-complete-poems-1965-2020-out-now/

This whopper retrospective contains 187 pages of poetry. As Butterworth comments in the introduction, there is a clear autobiographical arc to the work, which is the overriding theme throughout the book, punctuated by speculative elements:

… The universe
weeps
for its beautiful wife
and pours
avenues
of cold
stars
hatefully
over its son’s head … (“Until Now”)

Butterworth often spins the ordinary, as in “hoover & writer,” twisting reality a little to the left, generating an awkward blob of silence while his reader ponders:

it spits out the rubbish
and takes up the words
and then it
clatters away
down the stairs

leaving an awkward
blob
of silence

Many of the early poems address war and the post-atomic age. “Sergeant Pepper’s Postatomic Skull” pulls the reader into a tortuous ride, where the poet asks “what use are words but the niceties of a race best left out of this place… there is no advert to fill the vacuum… there is no recollection…” existential questions that already hint at the Twitter age.

“… i can speak but i can speak to no body… there is no mind to speak to… there is no machine to sate the vacuum of desire left in my skull for a mechanical aid… any mechanical aid no matter how simple in structure or in ease of appliance would suffice… there is no advert to fill the vacuum… there is no recollection but what i can recall is confused and garbled like the effects of a hallucinogen
how it all started… how did it all start… why write anything…why bother… once a man has had his skull cracked and brutally soddened with a heavy kick he is not there… his mind… his body… has gone… the universe revolves ceaselessly… the drug is on the table where the man left it… the ant crawls… the advert flickers…
this must be a rooming house in Manchester where i had an affair with a girl who turned into a rocking horse…”

While many of the earlier poems are not speculative, poems like “The Astronaut,” reach for familiar speculative themes and images, “His suit protects him from the real cold and the real vacuum. But his confused mind (accustomed to a keen perception of space/time) flips,” also working as a metaphor for our own challenges between physical and mental realities.

The section from 1975 to 1979 marks a distinct shift into more speculative realms. The historical and autobiographical aspects of the Butterworth’s early works form an engaging backdrop, but this is where I found the collection strongest - which may also just expose my bias toward the speculative aspects of his work, as in “The Chemical Genesis of the Known Universe”:

“On the first day
The cyclohexylaminic dawn
Broke over the chloral anhydrones
Of the dipentane landscapes
In the ionones
And the upper ketones…

… On the seventh
There was industrial unrest among the technical staff”

The forms of the poems vary from the longer prosey lines to short poems, short lines, rhyme, and more experimental use of the page. (Compare the earlier selections with “Bus Stop”: “Standing in line / To the call of Time.”) Butterworth’s voice is clear throughout, with a raw energy that shouts from the page. Even the later Buddhism-inspired poems pack a punch from their short lines full of hard consonants, though they’re softened in tone and content.

Overall, this collection makes for a fine retrospective and an intriguing mirror to Butterworth’s full and eventful life. The brushes with historical events and the speculative themes sing the loudest for me, but others might find the personal undertones more enticing.

—John Reinhart

Messengers of the Macabre: Halloween Poems by LindaAnn LoSchiavo & David Davies
(Audience Askew, 2023). 36 pp. $9.99 paperback, currently $0.00 Kindle.
amazon.com/Messengers-Macabre-Halloween-Audience-Chapbooks/dp/B0BJ7WX5PG

These are well labeled as Halloween Poems. Some have fun with familiar tropes and some mine new territory. For example “A Sleepy Hollow Hallowe’en” is based on “The Legend of Sleepy Hallow”, and “Rebecca, Manderley, Murder by the Sea” is based on Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier, and “Night on Bald Mountain, All Hallows’ Eve” based on the story “Night on Bald Mountain” by Gogol.

Other poems explore more obscure but also strong source material such as “Elizabeth Siddal Rossetti, Cemetery Superstar” about a woman from history who was a dramatic creator and artists’ model who may have been cursed. From that poem:

Rossetti’s poems sweetened maggots’ meals.
Worm-eaten scraps had crowned my coffined head,

There are Macbeth references in “Secrets of the Spell”:

Distrust of women’s power led to laws.
In 1542, King Henry VIII
Signed Britain’s first Witchcraft Act. Hundreds died,
Even if those accused denied the charge.

An example of work not using familiar tropes is:

“How to Curse”

It starts below the lungs, where the bile runs thick,
where things suppressed rot and rage
and rise bitter at the back of the mouth.

While much of the verse is open-form, some is formal. The book is broken into six sections, and the entire section ‘Day of the Dead’ is composed of modern haibun. Haibun appear elsewhere, as does occasional rhythm and rhyme. While the book has dark moments, at other times it’s playful such as the sonnet “Emily Post’s Etiquette Book for Ghosts” which is high concept. The whole is generated from the title. It opens:

Emily Post’s Etiquette Book for Ghosts
Is a must since spirits are unruly,
Annoying, crass, and insistent—truly.
Tactless phantoms offended? Just quote Post!

The Post poem is in the final section named “A Lighter Shade” which concludes with the particularly playful “‘To Die’ in French” which takes the mundane topic of learning foreign languages is school and makes them important by applying them to dying in a foreign place. It is smattered with French, so if that’s not in your toolkit, be prepared to use a translator. Though most of it is apparent from context, such as:

I’d hoped some British visitors might ask for a séance,
and I could have a tête-à-tête in English just for once.
I follow every tour I can, and shout “Je suis ici!”
The fact they never hear my words is painful irony.

Overall, the collection is so diverse, that it may seem uneven. But gems come in many colors and varied values. Some might be mined here.

—Herb Kauderer