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A Poet to Watch: John Struloeff
and
The Man I Was Supposed To Be
Review by John R. Guthrie
Quite by accident
some months ago I ran into a poem online with the curious but appealing title,
“The Man I Was Supposed to Be.” I read the poem
through and found its directness and verity to be exceptionally appealing. You
may have had a similar experience; that of occasionally reading a poem so
compelling and thought-provoking that you felt it could have been written for
you personally. The titular poem from Poet John Struloeff’s
new book, “The Man I Was Supposed to Be” is reproduced
in its entirety below.
The man I was supposed to be works
in a small cedar mill in
The heel of his left boot is worn smooth
by the way the engage lever makes him stand,
the shift he has to make, grinding his heel,
a slow turn as the log carriage feeds the wood
that will shriek against the rolling blade.
He watches the blade eight hours a day,
and when he goes home to sleep,
he sees the blade rolling in the dark.
The man I was supposed to be has two sons,
and when his youngest is loud he twists his ear,
watching for the boy’s eyes to well with tears.
Knock off the racket, he says. The TV’s on.
If the boy does it again, he grabs him by his hair,
drags him to his room, then watches TV in silence,
the way it is supposed to be.
The man I was supposed to be buys beer in a case
and drives around at night, looking for a friend
to drink it with. He drinks until his face is numb
and awakens on the cement floor of his garage,
lying flat on his back, his arms spread.
Both of his hands are bleeding.
The man I was supposed to be tracks deer
on the leaf-covered trails behind his house.
There is a doe ahead of him somewhere,
and he kneels to place his fingertips on its tracks.
That night he will smell the rawness of warm bone
and blood. It will hang in his garage seven days
until he begins to separate the loosened joints
and carefully strip the flesh. He will do it alone,
at night, his forearms and hands coated in blood.
Like the stink of beer-sweat and fresh cedar dust,
this odor will stay in his skin for days.
I searched for and
readily found other examples of John Stuloeff’s work.
His poetry is as vigorous and muscular as the lumberjacks and salmon fishermen
he often writes of in his new collection. He views them with a rare
perceptiveness, never sentimentalizing his subjects, though his work
demonstrates respect and affection.
Loggers
They fly down from the mountains
in their high-rise trucks with half-mufflers
rumbling and rattling, burnt diesel
trailing, scenting the air until long after
they’ve passed. It is Friday,
and shortly after you sit at the bar,
numb and sore from flipping sticks
at the mill, their trucks will roar
into the gravel lot, and they will park
at the far edge and slam their doors.
They talk and laugh loud
like veterans of an artillery unit,
and when they push through the door,
they’re all you hear.
They smell like overheated engines
and moss, and wherever they stand or sit
they shed wood chips and fine dust,
order mugs of watered sap,
tell stories metered in board-feet.
Mondays, after they’ve returned from hidden
lives in houses far in the trees,
they chew their sandwiches in the Mini-Mart,
looking out at their trucks beneath the cloudy skies.
They are trying to remember the trees
yet to be faced, sawed, and felled.
They are still feeling the jump
and kick and hum of the saws
in their hands. Too soon, the crew chief
starts his truck, and as it idles—
the knock-knock of diesel—the others
rise and ease their way outside,
nodding at the young woman cashier.
Their trucks clatter to life,
and they all back away and bump
onto the road, snarling and rasping
back up into the trees
Perfect metaphors
such as “stories metered in board-feet” above are a recurrent factor in Struloeff’s poetry. Also, on a personal note, the two
lines, “They talk and laugh loud/like veterans of an artillery unit” constitute
a perceptive gem for this reviewer. As an adolescent Marine, I helped crew a
twin five-inch naval artillery turret. The Veterans Administration now provides
my hearing aids.
Struloeff’s poem “Knee Deep In The Pacific” is a remarkably poignant take on an aging
parent:
Knee-Deep in the Pacific
Twenty years ago
my father described a picture
he’d taken in
the crackling of gunfire
like branches popping in the wind.
He did not want to forget
the day so many friends had died.
But he had forgotten
the film, left it to burn
in the pocket of his uniform
in a fire meant to kill lice and disease.
Now he sees things he can’t describe,
no picture to show, or explain.
Thirty years after
he liked to split wood for days alone,
and he would try to answer
questions of a ten year-old son, wanting to give
something I could hold onto when he was gone.
Now I return this Christmas
from years away,
and he is old
and thinks he will take me clamming once,
one thing he has never shown me.
He describes clams as big as my forearm
as we drive onto the sand
and as we wade out into the ocean.
But my father has forgotten the lantern,
and the sun has just set, the roiling water
calm for a moment, the sand
darkening like a blackened highway.
Our jackets flap in the wind,
our knees bend against the drawing surf.
He purses his lips and shakes his head,
saying without words for the hundredth time:
he has forgotten.
So when we can no longer see our truck
or our feet beneath us,
we still stand in the ocean.
A city of lights scatters along the surf-break,
men, families, all waiting
for the surf to recede
so they can begin searching this darkness
for life.
Struloeff is known
for his fiction and creative nonfiction as well as poetry. Struloeff’s
short fiction collection, Animals was a semifinalist for the prestigious
Iowa Short Fiction Award.
Dr. Struloeff is the director of the creative writing program
at
John Struloeff.
The Man I Was Supposed
to Be.
Loom Press:
ISBN 978 0 931507 21 2.
Soft Cover, 53 Pages.
$15.00.
The above poems are
reprinted here with the gracious permission of Poet John Struloeff.
This review is reproduced here with appreciation to first publisher The
§
In Praise of the
A Journal of Progressive Working
Class Literature
When we began this
project, it was top fill a void…to demonstrate the possibilities of
strong working class literature to show ‘how it’s done.’ Our
hope continues to be that
this journal would be a shining example that would inspire
other journals as well as
our fellow workers and the poets among us; that it would
spark a rebirth of this powerful
reality-based genre setting ablaze the larger culture with
our vision.
No small order this. How well has Editor Markowitz succeeded in his quest?
Let’s consider some examples.
From the Winter
2004-2005 Issue
McElroy provides a thoroughly abstract poem yet
one that is quite accessible for the thoughtful reader. This dreamlike poem
also has some with some exquisite similes and fresh and incisive word choices.
Woman Reading, Dreaming
On
Doctors spin in ditches and we’re on our own.
The book is blue and bendy, best kind,
and the lady in the spine
is having a baby.
Our Dear Reader, Leilani,
let’s say, skims pages,
ignores the chicken in the
ginger patch
clucking to the mauve dawn.
It say here feedlot
sheep in slush are ecru,
and the gates of life don’t
dilate.
At twenty thousand feet our love interest flies
home in trouble. The
weather’s baroque, engine’s out,
and his captain is chic but
dull and good, best kind.
the North Pacific is
explained since God,
but on the panel the
damned gages beguile.
Double space.
The uterus clamps its bag of muscle.
We’re born like toothpaste in a storm. We can’t
go back Our home,
viviparous; the plot, breach.
What’s her name dreams she’s reading on a red
bed.
Trade winds enter the screen, wander room
room to room. Like in-laws
looking
for good books. Next door
in air rich
with chickens nothing’s
louder than Bach,
darkly perky. Engaged, head
down,
ideas kick black water hard
while sunroom
curtains puff chintz in a cool
chartreuse.
What child comes
riding? What dream?
What barging through business pidgin to the
depot
on the beach of a bed?
Don’t argue
with a woman in transition.
Sing.
Sing plywood, rebar, Portland cement and
thyroid.
Sing sternum, fingers and toes, bills of lading
from the continent. Now
push, push for the lady
alone in the snow and her
sister, the doctor in the ditch.
Push the airplane home on procedure
where the pros shake hands.
Push corny
for the future: plumeria sweet forever in regular
weather, sheep ever steady in a
windy
pastoral, and grow children you
want despise
in fading days. Bring ladders,
bring hammers, music
and milk, box of blue
vowels, pails of green fern.
Bring crocus and thrush. Bring soap. Kiss
your language in and nail
the daylight down.
--McElroy
From the Winter
2007-2008 Issue
Will Inman’s terse, in-your-face “I Didn’t Know”
is grimly, sadly, ironically funny. For the optimists among us, it provides
hope that things do change, that justice will arrive, if only by the
millimeters.
I Didn’t Know
early 1950’s
head of naacp
in
phoned an order for diaper
service
for his and his wife’s
first born.
laundry serviceman stands on
one foot.
and then the other
sorry, he said, but we
don’t do colored babies’
laundry.
well, I knew
you segregated school and
churches,
medical facilities, hospitals
and dentists.
i knew you even
segregated god
but I didn’t know you
segregated shit.
--Will
Inman
From the Summer
2005 Issue
“The Tree Climber’s Husband” is one of this
writer’s favorites from this journal. It has a gritty reality to it,
well-earned eroticism and vivid imagery that summons the reader as witness to
the tree climber and her husband’s intimate greeting.
The Tree Climber’s Husband
after Dorianne
Laux
Dusk brims over the side of the horizon
during her long drive home.
Spurs and lanyards clang like giant keys
when she drops her gear at
the door.
He waits until her boots are off before opening
Carefully they only let lips touch:
Her clothes are thick with poison
oak oil; he helps her out
of them.
Fir and fern wash over like a breeze.
Her socks, still wet
from sweat.
He slides her pants from her legs
Her arms spread like branches as he lifts her
shirt
and reveals her breasts
hidden
like nests where voles and
owls live.
She wraps her limbs around him
and guides him through her understory.
The forest floor under he
fingernails,
her hair smells of dried
twigs,
Her ankles lock as she readies
for the long drive home and
dusk
brimming over.
--Eric
Wayne Dickey
So there you have it; three examples of poems
from the
Subscriptions are available, $15 for one year,
$25 for two years.
Check or money order to:
Partisan Press
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