Dec 10

Review by E. Lynn Alexander: They Said I Wasn’t College Material by Scot Young

“They Said I Wasn’t College Material by Scot Young is a collection that spans time and circumstances, by a poet willing to resurrect the sting of assumptions and expectations to turn the lens in the other direction. He challenges social gatekeeping, and the classist label culture that nurtures the privileged and pushes the rest of us toward their service. He understands what feeds self doubt and steers destiny away from us, and he goes after the source.

His poems celebrate the capacity to experience and feel honestly, when that is often suppressed: “when young boys cried/wiped tears before dads could see.” These poems convey love, nostalgia, hope, fear, anxiety, and more in connection with identity in a body of work that speaks to peeling back those expectations. Authenticity and humility draw people to connect with his poetry, and this is what he is after: “I only strive/to put one word in front of the other/ and hold it there long enough/ for it to matter/ to somebody.” It matters to us, for sure.

Young knows that crushing aspiration and potential crushes people, particularly at times when we have every right to see a future that is ours to shape. For those of us lucky to know Scot Young, we know that this is his cause- to remind us all of that most fundamental right. He shares what he has learned about the breakers and the broken, and he rejects the perpetuation of that power. Besides, there is dignity in choosing our own damage: “even bluebirds/ that are set free/ fly into windows.”

This is not the same as holding up the glass.”

—E. Lynn Alexander, Co-Founder and editor of Collapse Press

 

Reserve your SIGNED copy at https://www.magicaljeep.com/product/college/154

Oct 20

Local author Dan Denton chronicles blue collar living in new novel


BY JASON WEBBER/THE BLADE

Dan Denton does not imbibe alcohol.

Seated at a table in The Attic, Denton, sips Red Bull and cranberry juice, a far cry from the beer swilling protagonist of his new novel The Dead and the Desperate, which was just published by local imprint Roadside Press.

On Saturday at 2:30 p.m., Denton will give a reading from The Dead and the Desperate and be interviewed by Professor Kathe Devault of Ohio Northern University at Gathering Volumes, 196 E South Boundary St. in Perrysburg.

At 45, Denton has lived a life of great highs and crushing lows… READ THE FULL ARTICLE AT THE BLADE https://www.toledoblade.com/a-e/culture/2023/10/20/local-author-dan-denton-chronicles-blue-collar-living-in-new-novel/stories/20231020006

Oct 17

Review by David Alec Knight: The Dead and the Desperate by Dan Denton

If you have liked Dan Denton’s poetry, or if you liked his first novel, you know what you’re in for. And guess what? There’s even more now: he has grown much as a writer since, and this novel is even more important.

You might think, as you begin to read Dan Denton’s THE DEAD AND THE DESPERATE, that it’s going to be some blend of Charles Bukowski’s WOMEN and POST OFFICE, just set in a factory, and if so, you would be wrong — stick with it: he has his own voice and it asserts itself more and more as you read. Fans of such novels of Bukowski will find much to like here, sure, but there’s not much more of a Bukowski influence really than on any other American indie / small press novelist writing for, and of, the working-class, the middle-class, the blue-collar, the bottom classes, the backbone of the real America.

Denton’s writing is honest, raw, unfiltered — it’s an authentic voice, much like a documentary before it’s cut down to an 80-90 minute run-time so theaters can show the maximum number of showings per evening for maximizing their profits. There’s nothing on the cutting room floor here, so to speak. There is nothing that Denton leaves out in the depiction of his main character’s life — the drug addictions, alcoholism, the aimlessness, mental health struggles, a humor prone to ill timed sarcasm, and the sincere but hindered idealism.

He is honest with himself, and knows what he is, and what he could be. But this is far from a trauma dump: this character knows what has caused his life to be what it is. He knows what he has done to make it this way. And he is well aware of what others have done to make his life as it is, and the lives of his co-workers, and his blue collar brethren and sistren across America — it’s those powers who were, and those in power now, perpetuating a cold opportunistic machine that has been woven into the fabric of his nation.

He is aware of his place in the Machiavellian and Malthusian manipulations in the decades that preceded him, and the long half-life of Reaganomics. And equally aware of the falsity of the wars against alcohol and drugs, and in that the warring on marginalized peoples, and ‘bottom’ classes to do so, all while labyrinthine corporate institutions have been treating generations of workers so harshly no one can function for long without some kind of self-medication — ‘mother’s little helper’, soft drugs, hard drugs, alcohol, gambling, religion as opiate, whatever it takes to keep their cog turning in the machinations of the machine.

One of the strongest and most important exploration’s in Denton’s story is how the dehumanizing nature of the only work he feels suited for, in turn affects the worker when he gets home. Work directly affects home life and relationships more than anything else he’s dealing with (or not dealing with).

An unexpected pregnancy leads to an attempt to create a relationship with no real foundation, and a marriage with a lot going against it only weeks in. He does the things he feels he has to, and work as hard as he may, they always seem to be weeks behind the bills. He has mental health issues and addictions, and there are many interesting characters around him that feed into his addictive nature, because of course they have people in their lives that do same. Oppressive economic and social factors play their part too. Trips to a used bookstore provide a reprieve from a lot that goes wrong.

While his character isn’t in the best state to be in a relationship, what with addictions and mental health issues, and a marriage that neither he nor his wife were really ready for, Denton’s story very clearly shows how there are many negative external forces that come to bear on relationships. Dehumanizing work makes for dehumanized workers. Denton’s character knows this in his heart and mind and struggles to fight it on both fronts. Others around him fight it too, but many don’t. His in-laws seem to have bought into it and want him to sell his soul to it and be a good boy.

His is a life that many live, and is rarely represented, never made into made for-TV movies of the week back in the day, and never likely to be made into a reality show now, and rarely a docu-series. An entire class of people actively struggle day in day out, without their everyday reality known. Well, Denton’s book is part of that much needed reality check. And everybody deserves to know. Everybody needs a voice and THE DEAD AND THE DESPERATE is a part of that which gives voice.

Dan Denton’s THE DEAD AND THE DESPERATE could well do for factory work what Upton Sinclair’s THE JUNGLE did for the meat industry. If people read the book they will wake up. If they wake up they have the opportunity to do something. THE DEAD AND THE DESPERATE presents harsh truths that should not and can not be ignored. Changes can be made with enough will. We have to ask ourselves if we want to live, or to merely exist.

David Alec Knight is the author of Leper Mosh (Cajun Mutt Press)

Oct 10

Review by Westley Heine: The Dead and the Desperate by Dan Denton

The Beats and later Charles Bukoswki cleared the way for the working class poet, the outlaw writer, and the mental outsider to enter literature. After Buk died in 1994 no one has really replaced his mantle. In the vacuum has swelled a generation of writers who seem to think if they get drunk and write about pussy they are following the tradition. They are wrong. They are missing the point. Dan Denton may be one of the only novelists and poets out there today who can legitimately claim to be a 21rst Century Bukowski, but one with a political consciousness and a more enlightened understanding of the battle of the sexes. Some may say his never explicitly naming using his baby-mamma throughout his new novel is cold, referring to her as “My pregnant girlfriend” etc, but I would argue he is dutifully protecting her anonymity. On the flip side he doesn’t shield himself at all, but exposes himself to the light without wearing protection. He shares the truth. He shares the needle. He writes from the frontlines. He writes from factories, dive bars, cheap housing, the opioid epidemic, from Midwestern places where right-wing values and union concerns are purposely pitted against each other. It’s a lonely thing to be both streetwise and an intellectual in America. But we are less lonely with Mr. Denton. It begs the question: What are people afraid of? The truth?

Unlike others influenced by the gritty realism of Bukowski or the Beats, Dan knows when writing a good story it’s all about dynamics. A tender little voice for 400 hundred pages doesn’t mean much. A tough guy voice for 400 pages doesn’t mean a damn thing. But when a tough voice pauses, breaks down, and suddenly opens up now you know you are hearing the real deal. It’s like a Humprey Bogart film when he goes from “I stick my neck out for nobody” to doing the right thing at the end. It’s like Lou Reed singing “Heroin” and then suddenly hitting you with “Pale Blue Eyes.” We’re all complicated. We all have both sides. Dan Denton understands the meaning of Bukowski’s “Blue Bird.” The drama lies in first describing your mental armor, and only then cracking it open and letting the world see the light inside. The factory workers, the immigrants, the gay kids trapped in small minded towns, the prostitutes molested as children, from those clinging to religious values desperately to make sense of the world or to those hopelessly clinging to drugs to keep going… I know these characters. Perhaps Dan has gotten to know them more intimately. When one of the characters, Joe, a father who just lost his little girl to cancer, turns to the needle for salvation we don’t judge him. In fact, we understand. Yes Buk, it’s the information age. How can one help but be more and more empathetic? We can all hope our hearts will continue to bloom wide as history cascades forward. Congratulations Dan, you’re leading the picket line.

Oct 05

Review by Susan Ward Mickelberry: Nothing and Too Much to Talk About by Nancy Patrice Davenport

I read this poem “After a Miracle” and a few others this week at Poetry Jam at the Civic Media Center from Nothing And Too Much To Talk About by Nancy Patrice Davenport, published by Roadside Press / Michele McDannold

As I began to read the poems I was initially delighted, then excited. I really related to this poet, as often happens I believe when you are reading something really honest, refreshing, intelligent, and good. Most of the poems are about loss, love, and the poet’s own struggle to survive and thrive all treated as the “extraordinary ordinary.” And they vibrate with presence, quietude, and long reflection. Also, powerful, beautiful images. And words so spare that hold so much. How spare can you get? All poems written from an author with a pleasing combination of elegant mindfulness, Virgo groundedness, and scholarly underpinnings. A perfect combination for some really great poetry.

AFTER A MIRACLE

the ordinary is too
beautiful to bear

honeysuckle, blades of grass                     that thrive
in pavement cracks

the dead begin to rise

a while after the miracle
things begin

to seem ordinary
all over again

but satisfaction, a job well done                     things

the dead are laid to rest
years after the miracle

some attempts are made           to fall again
merely so

the ordinary seems
less so

gratitude           faith           say goodbye

and the ghosts rise
as life changes

forever while we
sit down for

dinner

purchase NOTHING AND TOO MUCH TO TALK ABOUT here>> https://www.amazon.com/Nothing-Too-Much-Talk-About/dp/B0C7JJB6H2

Sep 25

Review by Independent Book Review: The Dead and the Desperate by Dan Denton

The Dead and the Desperate
By Dan Denton
Genre: Literary Fiction
Reviewed by Maxwell Gillmer, Independent Book Review

Beautifully written and utterly raw—a
harrowing look at the life of an American
factory worker

There is no title more fitting for Dan Denton’s third book than The Dead and the Desperate. The story is borne of these two elements: those dead of this world, (one figure) and those desperate who are stuck living (the other). However, these two paradigmatic figures are by no means a simplistic demonstration of a forthcoming plot; they rather incite an explosion of realism and humanity that examines the struggles that come with American late-stage capitalism. These figures operate much like shepherds, always a step ahead of the sentence, casting a shadow over the world of the narrative.

The Dead and the Desperate calls into question the function of the novel’s title and how it, in an abrupt vision, can initiate a story, much like a portal into another space and time coerced by capitalism and plagued with struggling. Though, what summary is there to give for a story in which a person struggles in their entirety? What plot is there of a beginning, a middle, and an end when the story existed before the first page
and continues beyond the last? What Denton offers is the life of the novel’s unnamed narrator—a factory worker. It doesn’t matter what kind of worker, it doesn’t matter what kind of factory; in this universe, reflective of our own, people appear trapped.

The story begins with Ohio, a place to which the narrator said he would never move again after leaving behind lives of divorce, rehab, jail, and homelessness, and yet somehow, he finds himself sucked back after getting a woman pregnant. He does what he is told is right: marry her, get a job at a local factory, support the kid, have another. But for the narrator, living day to day by way of onerous “factory math” where a 12-
hour shift feels like 18 hours of labor, what is deemed “right” never seems to pay off. The narrator falls back into a cycle of misery. This marriage looks like it’s headed toward divorce; those misdemeanor charges are piling up; he can’t pay his utility bills and his rent is coming up next, and on top of all of this, he has to work another 12-hour shift at the factory. No matter what he does, he can’t seem to escape. As a result,
he’s drained of life itself. He seems stuck on a track ending at the bar after his shift ends, throwing back dollar beers and two-dollar shots that feed a fire in his body. He returns home drunken and enflamed and fights with his wife. Slowly the narrator finds his life unwoven, thread by thread.

The Dead and the Desperate is a heartbreaking story of the tragedies of life defined by late-stage capitalism filled with potent imagery and written with tear-jerkingly beautiful prose. The narrator admits he is the ideal American factory worker, saying “I’m a college dropout with a high school diploma. I don’t have any skilled trades licenses, or technical training. I’m smart, and don’t mind working hard hours and long hours. I’ve worked in almost all the kinds of plants and factories you’ll find in the Midwest, and I’ve ran almost all the kinds of machines they have in those factories.” He can do anything, and he will do anything because he has to. Under American capitalism, it doesn’t matter who you are or where you are; all that matters is what you are. And he is defined.

But what the book’s specters, the dead and the desperate, see, the narrator cannot. He grasps for rationales to understand why his life and the lives around him are crumbling under the weight of long hours, heavy machinery, drugs, and alcohol. He intermittently traces American histories of mental health care, wage gaps, divorce rates, and alcoholism and drug use in search of an explanation. The book is a flurry of topical substance that the narrator uses as tools to analyze how and why life around him could be so agonizing, but The Dead and the Desperate is not a polemic in its form.

Susan Sontag offers a distinction of narrative argument as either proof or analysis in her essay “Godard’s Vivre Sa Vie.” Sontag defines proof as a narrative in which something happens in its entirety—a demonstration of events as a result of given precipitants—while analysis is a narrative that seeks “further angles of understanding, new realms of causality,” and is, as a result, “always incomplete” to explain how and
why. Sontag argues that art trends toward proof rather than analysis, but Denton’s The Dead and the Desperate reflects the existence of both within a story of an individual and one’s tendency to seek a greater truth.

The novel as an argumentative tool of analysis, especially when dealing with an intimate relationship of a first-person narrator, runs the risk of pathologizing inexcusable behavior (racism, homophobia, sexism, etc.). When behaviors are depicted as pathologies, the perpetrators of these behaviors may place the onus of
their actions onto the source of the affliction rather than themselves. What makes The Dead and the Desperate powerful is that its offered analysis extends beyond the system that governs the individual and includes the individual within self-governance.

The book does not seek to absolve him of his sins and neither does he. People throughout the novel call the narrator a scum bag, and he never denies it. But the entire scope of the characters and the universe in which they operate must be known in its entirety to demonstrate a story beyond one single character and offer humanity to those who even do him harm just as he does harm to others.

This process of broken analysis is constant throughout the book. Just as the narrator is about to complete a singular path of analysis that would remove his culpability and place blame on the system of capitalism, the narrator steps back. In one instance, he admits, “I have done things in life that have hurt others, and I have had hurts done to me. None of that serves as an excuse.” Rather than an excuse, the narrator implicates himself, demonstrating that he can simultaneously be a person with an unchecked bipolar diagnosis and an addiction to drugs and alcohol with no support system, while also including him as a part of this world that oppresses other people, namely women in this story.

The Dead and the Desperate is a challenge—it is a hypermasculine narrative looking intimately into the psyche of a character who abuses women both emotionally and physically. However, in its refusal to take the final step in pathologizing the narrator’s behavior as something outside of his control, it shifts to a narrative of proof that stands on its own. There is no justification in this shift because justification would be beside the point. It offers a look into the mind of someone who has been scarred—someone who does scar.

Denton tempers the urge to fall too far into portraying his characters as strictly victims by redirecting the narrator’s voice away from melodrama, saving the narrative from becoming self-pitying in its depiction of hardships, and replaces it with a detached narrative style. The style permits the reader to see but never truly hear what is going on, such as when fighting with his wife. In these instances, spoken words are given
with little direction on how the reader should feel. But is this formal distance a prescription of impersonality or a degree of intimacy? It is a trick that encourages empathy—the reader is only given so much, and not because the narrator is withholding, but because the narrator is unable to give. The reader must cast aside any predilections and instead observe the situation as an invited participant.

The reader doesn’t have to know entirely why the narrator acts in the way that he does because the narrator cannot. Denton arranges an observation of what the narrator, much like the other characters in the book, is left with: moments of pain and moments at which the pain can be assuaged. The narrative is a reflection of this human tendency to reach for analysis, though ultimately being left in a position of observance. The novel is humble in this sense that it does not try to complete the interminable search however interminable in its struggle.

But there is a profound exhaustion that courses throughout this book at the expense of this search and struggle. The mind can just barely comprehend the suffering it endures, and when faced with the need to escape, the people of the story turn to the carnal: sex and drugs. On a sex- and drug-fueled bender, the narrator writes, “It felt good to not feel anything. To not feel the factory aches in my knees and shoulders
and hands. To not think about dead kids and kids you haven’t seen. To not think about how you’re gonna make the rent next week, or whether you were gonna go to jail at next month’s court date.” The narrator in searching high and low for moments of feeling tries his hand at different approaches to finding peace in his life, however fleeting, as if life, itself, is a partner whom he must understand.

The Dead and The Desperate in this sense is something like a Danse Macabre, twofold in its imagery. The first being that image of the title—the specters of the dead and the desperate moving together—and the second being the narrator and his life.

When one seeks to dance with a partner, one must know that partner’s footing. The specters of the dead and the desperate dance with each other just steps before the narrator. The desperate appears to struggle with its partner, death, and the narrator observes. He watches what the others do, attempting to trace why—what of this cruel world allows children to die and leaves so many others in agony—but while turned, he finds himself placed in the throes of his own missteps in the dance with his life.

The title, in this sense, does not just offer elements that act as the catalyst, but instead, it pulls the characters through in a duality of being: death and life; struggling and surviving. Only when the narrator can turn back and face his life as it stands before him can he find his footing.

The Dead and the Desperate is a massive undertaking of American life and struggle. Denton doesn’t bite off more than he can chew. He nibbles. He gives just as little as the narrator is given. Life, after all, is not all-encompassing, and only a small few are given it in its entirety. The Dead and the Desperate is one in one thousand. It observes the destruction of the American Dream and the American Life, and it offers a look into
an individual’s tendency to make sense of it all.

 

The Dead and the Desperate is available for pre-order at magicaljeep.com and will soon be available online wherever books are sold.

Sep 11

Review by Scot D. Young: Born on Good Friday by Nathan Graziano

In Nathan Graziano’s latest book, Born on Good Friday from Roadside Press, the poet tells the story of a good Catholic boy’s coming of age that develops into a 40 year story that most of us can relate to. He checks all the boxes growing up and eventually leaves the confessional behind. Graziano’s book reads like a good novel enticing the reader to keep turning the page. It is a poetic memoir from childhood through middle age. Toward the end of the book in the poem “The Old Zip” when he and his friend are playing catch in the backyard and he decides to throw some heat, he realizes he still has it and although drinking wine their wives decide they still love them. I typically don’t do reviews as it isn’t my strong suit but I can recommend this one as a must have even if you don’t like poetry.—Scot D. Young, author of All Around Cowboy and editor at the Rusty Truck

 

 

BORN ON GOOD FRIDAY is available at the Magical Jeep https://www.magicaljeep.com/product/friday/146 or at online retailers everywhere.

Aug 13

Review by Adrian Lime: Unknowable Things by Kerry Trautman


Kerry Trautman has a gift for shimmying away the veneer of seemingly simple moments to expose the depth and beauty of what lies beneath, the complexities and hidden passions. Unknowable Things celebrates the common and the spectacular on equal terms.

“And so the poem starts as many others—
at the kitchen sink, as peaches drip down
elbow to drain…”

Trautman’s poems are at once grand and intimate, unfolding in the mind like a nagging idea that has finally come clear. Some are lilting and playful, others heavy with a stark sobriety— all reveal themselves gracefully, confidently, without apprehension. To be honest, it’s what I’ve come to expect from Kerry Trautman’s poetry, but still she continues to surprise. What a lovely book this is.

—Adrian Lime, poet and maker of magical jeeps

Aug 02

Review by Dan Denton: Clown Gravy by Misti Rainwater-Lites

Misti Rainwater-Lites is one of the best writers alive, and in Clown Gravy, she out greats many of the great indie underground writers that so many of us hold in reverence, like Bukowski. Like Buk, Misti writes about the sweat, bruises and loneliness that living a misunderstood misfit life brings, but unlike Buk, she does it kamikaze style, never afraid to crash her characters in a pursuit of the truth that’s brave, but somehow never reckless.

Clown Gravy is written in short story and flash fiction style, but reads like punk jazz poetry that was written at a Texas bus stop on a too hot summer day, when your life starts to scroll by in the steam-mirage that rises from oil-slick asphalt, and your off brand can of cola is slowly collapsing and suddenly warm and flat like the worn out pick up lines being lobbed from every direction, and from every leering, jeering too big dick, hairy or not.

The book has 13 stories, all of them so goddamned good you feel like you found your new favorite record that plays on repeat. Some of them are fables, full of anecdotes for the struggling outcast. One is a post apocalyptic tarot card prophesy that’s so fucking perfect that I read it four times in a row. A truly great American short story. Throughout, no American taboo is safe, as Rainwater-Lites stares down most every sickness and malady known to modern man, including the ones most never talk about and pretend don’t exist, but she writes about them so well that you’ll read this book again and again, and hug it forever in your hangdog heart.

Dan Denton
Author

Jul 27

Review by Westley Heine: A Room Above a Convenience Store by William Taylor Jr.

Somewhere in the light filled mist of San Francisco teetering at the edge of the world wandering through the ghostly landscape of the pandemic drinking in parks and peeking out cheap chipped windows are the fiery eyes of William Taylor Jr. This candid glimpse into a poet’s life is where, “the universe is dumb and vast with our failures and the loneliness of it is the only perfect thing,” and “the gossip parlors of the void” ring in the ears after midnight. I too “like books and poems, films and paintings that tell stories of sad lovers in old rooms existing as if in some abandoned dream.” I too live that way. Meanwhile, the rest of the world is “full of tourists ordering complicated drinks.”

Somehow a poet is more sensitive to the apocalyptic Zeitgeist, but more prepared for it. The poet has long since lived with that hellish hue on his shoulder pressed against the perspective of cosmic time. Eternity at once burns us like an insect under an unseeing magnifying glass as well as sets us free. It’s an answer echoing from the abyss, it’s “listening to the broken music at the heart of the world,” it’s “our lives just an awkward silence beneath a temporary sun, stillborn moments caught in the air like mist,” it’s everyday life, it’s a likely story you can’t believe, it’s A Room Above A Convenience Store.

—Westley Heine, author of Street Corner Spirits and Busking Blues: Recollections of a Chicago Street Musician and Squatter