Warren Dean Fulton reviews 70 Kippers

West Coast poet Warren Dean Fulton just posted a wonderful review of 70 Kippers on Facebook. I wish Michael could have seen it. Michael did get to see rob mclennan's fine review, which I'll link here and repost later. Warren kicks off an exquisite corpse reference, followed by the book's back-cover copy, and then gets into his review.

70 Kippers: The Dagmar Poems

Michael Dennis & Stuart Ross

(Proper Tales Press, 2020)

Reviewed by Warren Dean Fulton

"Le cadavre exquis boira le vin nouveau."

("The exquisite corpse shall drink the new wine.")

70 Kippers

Two pals.

Two very different poets.

One kitchen table.

Several bottles of wine.

6 writing marathons over 3 years.

122 collaborative poems.

70 kippers.

A book of poetry.

An act of love.

Stuart Ross and his long time friend of 4 decades Michael Dennis, collectively composed the poems within this marvellous little book. A melding of minds, a vitamix fusion blender of whimsy, a swirling virtuoso circle of hybridization, resulting in this fishy gestalt creation, high in nourishing omega 3 fats.

Mayakovsky, Popeye, Raymond Carver, Bill Murray, Johnny Cash, Bukowski, Annette Funicello, Heidegger, Bobby the squirrel, Ginsberg & the gang from Riverdale, all make guest star appearances in these poems.

A revolving door into halls of mirrors.

But wait! There's more!

You’ll also have a sprinkling of some past presidents of the United States, Mickey Mouse, Frida Kahlo, Trotsky’s trousers, Red Skelton, Jerry Lee Lewis, Jackson Pollock, Elvis, William S Burroughs, Wayne Newton, Dick Cheney, and such brilliant quotations as "I’ll have a mani-pedi and a Mork & Mindy”.

The collaborative process of these two very different writers spawned some weird and wonderfully diverse juxtapositions. Their camaraderie shines throughout the poems, and reading these aloud adds an even fuller appreciation of their affection for poetry and one another. Playful back & forth, thrusts of images, words, phrases, duelling spent Christmas wrapping-paper tubes playing Luke Skywalker & d’Artagnan. Some of these pieces swing seamlessly, an Abbott & Costello comedy routine of Dada poesy, presented to psychiatrist, others like elementary school one upmanship or double dares. 

9/

A cloud resembling Yo-Yo Ma

got its trousers from Mayakovsky

It craved an audience, but

the Politburo said nyet to stifled boos.

“I eat my good armchair,” it howled,

chocking on fabric, spitting out nails.

A river resembling the cloud

flowed through the veins of his uncle

Tom’s cabin, nestled beneath a cliff.

Not the Cliff of despair, but the other one,

the happy cliff! Soon the samizdat

told us the news. Free balloons were coming

to free the balloons that were trapped.

We were all very happy about that.

Our country was shaped like a tutu. 

18/

It was time for the rain to stop

and for day to switch places with night.

They’d done it before.

The arsonist loves the flame,

the olive loves the martini

but ends up swallow just the same.

Back in the caveman days

when the bats left their caves

the cavemen looked for the bats’ diaries.

Cavemen hated when bats hid

their innermost thoughts,

dreamed sonar futures

and invented the wheel.

My webbed fingers ached in the rain. 

I’ve read through the book cover to cover once already, laughing here, groaning at times, doing a silent uh huh when a line really rang true, also some moments of grief as Michael Dennis has just passed away December 31, 2020, and within are some clues to thoughts of mortality.

Some of these poems, to me, read like Buddhist koans, challenging me to meditate, to think upon them, unravel hidden truths tied up like knotted shoelaces.  

38/

In another country no one would complain

about the conditions under which dogs

dreamed like cats, saved like squirrels,

barked like llamas, under the billowing

animal cracker cloud sky.

Things couldn’t be better

or worse, he complained. 

62/

he wanted truth and hope

this is how delusional he was

he still believed he had a chance

he built a ladder so tall

the last person he sent up hadn’t come down

and when the drapes fluttered open

a red cardinal smashed into the glass

the sky went black 

I highly recommend this book. 

I also advise one to conduct a collaborative poetic experience over a bottle or two of red wine with a close friend.

If I were to give it a Siskel and Ebert rating, it would be

Over and out. 

New Year's Poem

Each year, I write a poem on New Year's Day. I've been doing this a long time. For five years now, Conan Tobias of Taddle Creek has asked me to record the poem on January 1 so he can post it on the mag's website. That was a link just now, a link to me reading the poem below.

Although the poem was written on New Year's Day, I'm a little late in posting it. Everything has moved for me like molasses since Michael Dennis's death on the afternoon of December 31. This poem isn't for him, and it isn't about him, but I know that he is in it, because my beautiful friend has occupied my brain and heart this past fall. I hope you'll read his poems and carry them with you.

When I sat down to write on January 1, all I could think of was air.

Wishing you all a better year, good health, the warmth of friends, even if distant.

THE AIR, THE SKY

 

There are creatures in the walls.

We hear them scurry and scratch,

gnaw on the insulation

and maybe the electrical wiring.

At night they write poems

on tiny typewriters

about how they hear creatures

outside the walls. They

hear us using our blenders

and pencil sharpeners and various

other contraptions whose purpose

they could never conceive of

and neither could we if no one

had invented them. Another

 

thing there is is air. There’s so much

of it. You find it between the leaves

of poplars and in the tunnels of ant hills

and bobbing on top of lakes and rivers.

Let’s go breathe some air. Let’s paint

a picture of it. If you don’t get the angles

just right, it doesn’t judge you. The creatures

in the walls mistake the word “poplar”

for “popular” but the “u” doesn’t judge them.

Everything makes mistakes. I have made

twenty or twenty-one of them. Tom Clark

wrote a book called Air. Page 20 has

“A small / black worker ant / moving

 

diagonally” and Page 21’s got

“A moon in the blue morning.”

The moon is surrounded by 

infinite sky, which we’re

connected to by dollops of air.

Perhaps if I wrote a book called Sky

I’d become more poplar.

Stuart Ross
1 January 2021

Cobourg

Over and out. 

Michael Dennis: 1956 – the last day of 2020

Michael Dennis, a very dear friend and a swashbuckler of a poet, has died in Ottawa, on the afternoon of December 31, 2020. Michael was the author of several dozen books and chapbooks. He was a great supporter of visual artists. The best doodler who ever walked this earth. A deeply loyal and honest friend. And, beneath a gruff exterior, a sweet, sweet man.

Deepest condolences to his love of nearly 30 years, Kirsty Jackson.

Photo by Bruce McEwen

Over and out.