Ryan Eckes, Wrong Heaven Again

 

injury music

here i am documenting nothing
inside the defiance of brick
everyone cheats like a train
broken into photographs
rowhomes are a belief
sighed into knees
a bottle in front of me
is finally you as you
i’m afraid of
an empty baseball field
where i grew up
wanting to hit
tell me you’re sorry
and i’ll move on
like a moth
in the stands
the infinite line of trees
makes one fan
pull me out
of the car

The latest from Philadelphia poet Ryan Eckes, author of the full-length collections Old News (Furniture Press 2011), Valu-Plus (Furniture Press, 2014) [see my review of such here] and General Motors (Split Lip Press, 2018) [see my review of such here], as well as several chapbooks, is Wrong Heaven Again (Raleigh NC: Birds, LLC, 2024), a collection self-described as “songs of solidarity and struggle for and about workers and the working class—defiant and hopeful, absurd and alive.” “the dean showed us a picture of his grandchildren right before the labor- / management committee meeting on job security,” he writes, as part of the opening poem, “under the table,” “most people have a name and address, it’s true // you can buy lottery tickets for everyone in your family // you can read the sunday paper to your dog [.]” Divided by images, and as suggested through the table of contents, the collection is organized with opening and closing poems—“under the table” and “deep cuts,” respectively—and four untitled cluster-sections into an accumulated book-length suite. Also, at the rough mid-point, the collection opens to two lines in larger font, that spread across both pages:

“revolution begins with change in the individual,” said the
english department as it disappeared

Eckes’ work over the years has become thicker, heftier, more nuanced; there’s an increased weight to the poems in Wrong Heaven Again, one that clearly showcases a writer becoming more capable with his tools. “the choir got bored enough the windbags collapsed into soft balloons / found years later in a drawer,” he writes, to open the poem”wrong heaven,” “wrong heaven again, said the rabbit, returning to the dance floor // i accepted a position over there, on the dance floor, which is a field // a ranger leers at me // only i could prevent forest fires [.]” His blend of surreal humour and straightforward narratives allow for a kind of collage-collection, each poem another small piece of the larger book-length construction. As part of his 2018 interview over at Touch the Donkey, referencing the beginnings of what would become this collection, he writes:

After finishing General Motors, I started writing poems called “injury music” and “for what we will,” not entirely sure where I’m going. I’m thinking about pain, trauma and more questions around work. “For what we will” comes from the old labor union slogan, “8 hours for work, 8 hours for sleep, 8 hours for what we will.” It’s sad that 8 hours of work/40 hours a week is still considered normal, considered actually natural by many people, a century after it was established as a *protection*. Why aren’t we at 4 hours by now? Why is the minimum wage still so low? Why do Americans worship the rich? I could go on. But these are the kinds of questions that I let propel my writing at the same time that I am trying to understand myself as a living thing made of relations.

I find it interesting that I can’t think of too many poets approaching working class poetics so directly, offering shades of the late Vancouver poet Peter Culley (1958-2015) and other elements of The Kootenay School of Writing. There are poets engaged in elements of working class poetics, certainly, whether Vancouver writer Michael Turner, Philadelphia poet Gina Myers or Chicago poet Andrew Cantrell, among others, but Eckes seems one of the more overt, swirling between straight commentary and language flourish, and even offering an echo of the classic poetry title on cross-cultural poetics by Toronto poet Stephen Cain, American Standard/Canada Dry (Toronto ON: Coach House Books, 2005), as Eckes’ poem “independence day” begins: “who made you einstein, monday-face // american standard is a brand of toilet // so i just start walking on water // out of respect for pangea // trash gets picked up // i mean if you’re gonna be a nobody // have some class about it [.]” Eckes works his working-class politics from the ground level, from the foundation of language itself, allowing the paired foundation of working-class ethos and fluid language to mix together into something uniquely his own, while informed by a wealth of poets, observations and social politics.

HOV

i keep getting ads to be an uber driver, which reminds me of a term i learned in chile for adjunct processors—los processors taxis—and a poem by russell edson in which a taxi driver turs into canaries as his car flies thru a wall and back out again. that’s where i’m at, jobwise, a cluster of canaries flying toward you. in chile, students started evading subway fares and it turned into a rebellion. now their government has to re-write the constitution. in the u.s., fascists are wearing t-shirts that way “pinochet did nothing wrong.” republicans and democrats have long agreed. so has the ny times: capitalism is the only way, they say, and some apples are bad. so the government keeps killing black people and jailing those who fight back. every employer encourages you to vote. Your employer is running against your employer. they’ll never pay enough. how are you getting home tonight?

ongoing notes: Jo Ianni, Leslie Joy Ahenda + Ryan Eckes,

[Cameron Anstee/Apt 9 Press]

We made it through another ottawa small press book fair! Can you believe it? The event was grand, by the way, and a packed house (with a few dearly missed friends/exhibitors, but we shall see them soon enough). And Pearl Pirie even posted a report on such, which was nice. Might the world be opening up again, slowly? Be aware as well that we’re returning to our holiday parties via The Peter F Yacht Club; mark your calendars for December 27^th, everyone.

Toronto/Ottawa ON: From Cameron Anstee’s Apt. 9 Press comes inside inside inside (2022) by Jo Ianni, a Toronto-based performer, poet and organizer. Given Ianni’s work as a performer, I’m finding the visual elements of his poems absolutely fascinating, and would be interested to hear how a performer would perform such works that exude such visual properties, stack and staccatoed and staggered:

flick
absence
reappears in a
     special
         little
           lick
     cur from
  all that noise
     turned
        round
            click

There’s such a propulsion to these fragments, one that exists simultaneously with the fine precision of small, deliberate points, one word set carefully against another, a structure that sits closer to the aesthetic of the works of poets such as Nelson Ball, Michael e. Casteels and Anstee himself.

The sun welds me to
this here place
A shattered pair of glasses
in the gutter
Walking into sunrise ( everywhere )
big cabbage leafs
grow  make their shapes making
their shapes touch
and a bird shits good luck on my shoulder
Tries to

Toronto ON/Calgary AB: I’m intrigued by the twists and turns of Toronto/Tkaronto poet Leslie Joy Ahenda’s chapbook-length sequence The Republic of Home (2022), as published by Kyle Flemmer’s The Blasted Tree. Self-described on the title page as a poem “after / Inventory by Dionne Brand,” Ahenda’s meditative sequence, composed across November 2021, provides an increasing tally of dead across a temporal expanse. “twenty-four thousand two hundred and sixty-one,” she writes, to open the fifth section, “the children, the children, / two hundred and fifteen children, / then more, and more, and more // what else could possibly matter?” There’s a mutability to this poem, a shifting, almost a shimmering, to her structure that is intriguing, one that moves in and out of focus, allowing for a shift in states that is just enough to keep a reader slightly off-balance, including the shifts between numbering, moving from standard numbering to Roman numerals and back again. “then men here declare themselves / innocent of all events,” the fifth poem continues, “those that have happened / and those to come /// twenty-five thousand five hundred and forty-seven [.]” Ahenda incorporates Brand’s lines into her poem, weaving them into a lyric of mourning, of loss, one that can’t be fathomed but needs to be accounted, documented. “the dead, at least,” she writes, as part of “VII,” insist / on remaining countable / at least this [.]” Composed during the Covid era, she speaks of numbers but only hints at specifics, offering “when a woman mustn’t have that child,” as she writes in part eleven, “when, again, the men here say / she will and she’ll enjoy it? // when, again, a young man injures one, / murders two—let’s call it by its name, / no sense beating around these men— / without consequence?” One can only hope she is working on a full-length manuscript; I am very interested in seeing more work from her.

II

twenty thousand one hundred and thirty-two

 

let’s forget all this then

we instead pass our time
decanting each other’s bodies
as if aged, precisely, in oak, as
if precious, as if necessary

we forget every corpse along
the wind-stormed commute
to our bed where the sun casts,
for a moment, a paisley glow

on the wood-panelled floor,
the honeyed walls, the creeping ivy,
until, oh, those corpses spill in
through the window, so quiet

we didn’t, at first, take note—
at last, briefly, occupied

 

twenty-two thousand and one

Philadelphia PA: I’ve been taken with Philadelphia poet Ryan Eckes’ work for some time [see my review of a prior chapbook here], continuing his anti-capitalist lyric in the chapbook Old Light (Radiator Press, 2022). The poems assembled in this chapbook are each constructed through a kind of collage of direct statements that offer shapes not shown on the page, writing lines around a silence, an unspoken something, enough to provide it not only shape but voice. “most people have a name an address,” he writes, as part of the opening poem, “under the table,” “it’s true // you can buy lottery tickets for everyone in your family // you can read the sunday paper to your dog [.]” He writes of labour, economy and capitalism, articulating a working class lyric set in the shadow of language poetry and the prose poem. Isn’t Eckes due for another trade collection soon? I would certainly hope so.

HOV

i keep getting ads to be an uber driver, which reminds me of a term i learned in chile for adjunct professors—los profesores taxis—and a poem by russell edson in which a taxi driver turns into canaries as his car flies thru a wall and back out again. that’s where i’m at, jobwise. a cluster of canaries flying toward you. in chile, students started evading subway fares and it turned into a rebellion. now their government has to re-write the constitution. in the u.s., fascists are wearing t-shirts that way “pinochet did nothing wrong.” republicans and democrats have long agreed, so has the ny times: capitalism is the only way, they say, and some apples are bad. so the government keeps killing black people and jailing those who fight back. every employer encourages you to vote. your employer is running against your employer. they’ll never pay enough. how are you getting home tonight?

Gina Myers, Some of the Times

 

New city same shit
Moving through
the streets
pre-fall golden
in late afternoon
sunlight / bright red
crumbling brick
& shoddy griffiti
asks freedom?
Each year I fight
& each year
the things that hold
me back feel stronger
Shirking the day’s
responsibilities
to sit by the river
this afternoon
I wouldn’t give this
up but no it’s not
freedom. (“PHILADELPHIA”)

From Philadelphia poet Gina Myers comes her third full-length collection, Some of the Times (Baltimore MD: Barrelhouse Books, 2020), following A Model Year (Coconut Books, 2009) and Hold It Down (Coconut Books, 2013), two books I now regret having missed. Some of the Times is a collection of first-person lyrics that explore her lived experience and geography, that being the city of Philadelphia, a city that to her was fairly new at the moment of composition. Most of the poems are shorter, almost clipped, but provide the sense of being very much part of a larger structure, suggesting the collection less an assemblage than a suite of contained lyrics. Myers writes on paying rent, police brutality, tenuous employment, chronic illness, labour camps in Cuba, baseball games and thunderstorms. Her poems occupy the ground level of a city in ruin amid dangerous heat. There is a particular flavour of working class ethos that permeates the culture, and the poetry, of Philadelphia that is reminiscent (positively, of course) of work I’ve seen over the years out of Hamilton, Ontario, or even the border city of Windsor. Myers aesthetic, of course, is very much that, but blended with an influence from the lyric of the New York School of Poets, something she wrote about in her short 2016 piece “Is there room in the room that you room in?” for the ottawa poetry newsletter:

In an interview, Eileen Myles defines what it means to be a New York School poet: “As an aesthetic it means putting yourself in the middle of a place and being excited and stunned by it, and trying to make sense of it in your work.” This, putting one’s self somewhere and being excited to be there despite all that being there involves--the joyful as well as the heartbreaking and ugly--and trying to make sense of it, is what poetry is for me. And I am happy to be here. And I’m happy you’re here too.

The poem “PHILADELPHIA,” a longer sequence near the beginning of the collection, sits as a poem of arrival and of placement, rife with self-dismissal and regret: “How much of / an asshole am I / that I live / somewhere / for a month / & think I can / tell its story / Every day there / is news of / a new police / brutality / What use / is love / right now?” According to the notes at the back of the collection, the poem was composed from August to October, 2014 (which is, curiously, exactly during the time I was in Philadelphia, and was first able to meet Myers). In a conversation with Krystal Languell, posted at Entropy on September 26, 2017, Myers discusses the poem, which had appeared earlier that same year as a chapbook with Barrelhouse:

Philadelphia was written within the first two months of my move to Philadelphia, which was a time of great uncertainty and instability for me personally. The book wrestles with that instability along with wrestling with larger social and political issues. The world outside of me has remained to be uncertain and unstable, certainly hostile and perhaps increasingly so under the current government–or at least whatever veil of “democracy” and “justice” there was has been lifted. In that sense, not much has changed from the time of writing the book. However, personally, I am feeling more settled in, more at home here in Philly, though I’m reaching my three year mark, which is when my wanderlust usually comes on strong.

There are elements of influence in her first-person explorations of self and the crumbling infrastructures of city and culture, from Eileen Myles to fellow Philadelphia poet ryan eckes; structural echoes to her poems that run similarly down the page and through the excess of sirens, unkempt streets and the ravaged potential of human accomplishment. This is her restlessness, her “wanderlust,” as she calls it, alongside a hardscrabble lyric, one pulled together from lyric scraps, struggle and observation. “I don’t need your theories,” she writes, to close out the poem “4.18.14,” “to understand my lived / experience. There is / an anger I carry / inside I will never / let go of. Something basic / to hold onto while everything / else disappears.”

 

radical paper press: ryan eckes + Joseph Rathgeber

wet money

to be rehired every other breath

as if you were never there

nothing ever happened

you never worked here

we never knew each other

the waves crash the shore

you were never here (ryan eckes)

I recently received copies of the two latest chapbooks from Philadelphia chapbook publisher radical paper press: Joseph Rathgeber’s Gangsta Lien (2020) and ryan eckes’ WET MONEY (2020). Producing works as copyright-free (each chapbook includes the back-cover tag-line “copyright is for cops”), I like very much the anti-capitalist aesthetic that radical paper press is establishing, something that comes through how they produce and distribute works, as well as through the works they choose to publish. As their Duotrope listing reads: “We are anti-profit. We are anti-work, so lower your expectations. We run on appropriated paper. We are handmade. We are saddle-stitched, or stapled, or stab bound, or coptic stitched, or folded, or glued. We are printed in manifold ways. We are broke. We rely mostly on stolen materials.”

The author of a handful of full-length poetry titles, ryan eckes’ latest is the chapbook WET MONEY, a title that continues his exploration via language and the lyric through issues of economic class and the working poor. He opens the chapbook with this short, untitled lyric: “the pure products of the liberal imagination / do not exist // the sky is cash only // you drive the car / to work // for an earth of / its excrement // some hard pressed / house in the suburbs— // some bill— [.]” Whether he is aware of the work or not, there are echoes here from some of the Kootenay School of Writing poets that emerged in the 1990s, echoes of language and patterns of Jeff Derksen and Colin Smith, among others, as he opens the extended, three page poem “a book of stamps,” writing:

to be on a stamp, you have to be dead ten years. if you were president, only five years.

you learn the rules standing in line at the post office.

in a  book called Standing in Line for Death, CAConrad wrote, “let us write the news on your newborn’s face.”

the news today is one capitalist clapped for another but didn’t really mean it.

one forever stamp costs 55 cents.

the stamp is self-adhesive. you don’t need to lick it.

In comparison, Joseph Rathgeber’s Gangsta Lien leans less away from the fragment of ryan eckes, and into more narrative decaratives and essay-poems. Paired, these titles appear two sides of a similar perspective, writing out declarative explorations into class struggle, as the poem “3000 MILES” opens with “This is no time to be economical: it’s not / a numbers game.” Further on, as he writes: “They’ll revoke your privileges, // void your fellowships, quash your residences. / Bar you and ban you from grants, philanthropic // gestures, the UPC codes, the ISBNs, the Library / of Congress CIP data. If you mention the word // capitalism they will call you dogmatic, demagogic, / didactic, and tell you: die, poet, die. There is // too much beauty in the world to bear.”

FAIR USE

This poem won’t be in syndication: it is summer air blown back in my face, stealing the moisture from my eyeballs—this is speaking into an oscillating fan. It’s in the ether. Either embrace the poem as a Today Only deal or retweet and reblog at your own risk: I will personally scourge a consumer’s back, a customer’s hindquarters, with a switch of ethernet cable coiled around my knuckles. CURB ALERT: this one’s on its way out. It’s the Last Fair Deal Gone Down. The blues were never meant to be recorded—Black men’s souls were stolen. By Plato’s count, the 78 RPM is mimesis twice removed: a cheap imitation, a copycat, a Kinko’s part-timer on a wildcat strike. Who’s pocketing the profits? This poem sunbathes in the public domain. It’s a syndicalist with a black armband, picketing with the chant: The money won’t mine.