Tuesday, January 27, 2015

Contumacy by Paul Hawkins




From time to time, I may publish reviews of poets' chapbooks.  Here is the first!



Contumacy by Paul Hawkins published by Erbacce Press

Put Arthur Rimbaud, Charles Dickens, Keith Richards, John Mayall, and Sir Francis Drake into a blender, make a smoothie called the Golden Hind and put on your hat for an adventure. Gandhi, Thoreau, and Mandela refused to knuckle under or bend and so does Mr. Paul Hawkins in Contumacy. Poems float down like sweet snowflakes while bricks amass in walls. Paul boogies to the dry-fly while Troy scalds his balls. A nine stone William S. Burroughs break dances in a bed of dead batteries and bullet rain. Sounds, thoughts, images, and secret Oulipo dust are all sprinkled through this master opus of words. Edgar A. Poe and Dylan Thomas arm wrestle. Pink Floyd and Led Zeppelin play Scrabble. I thought of when Cheech and Chong got pulled over by the cops. The cop says, “Your eyes are red, have you been smoking dope?” Cheech replies, “Your eyes are glazed, have you been eating doughnuts?” Catch Contumacy from Erbacce Press and Pawl Hawkins, a great English writer, before he turns into Houdini and blows your socks off while your shoes are still on.

Catfish McDaris   1-23-2015  Mcdar3@aol.com

Paul Hawkins is also the co-editor of Boscombe Revolution.

To listen to Paul Hawkins' poetry, you may start here with "The Curl": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z0F7m64tWik

This poem "Tell Me" is from Contumacy: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AuZsBJ9v8jg

"Drifting" will take you to Hawkins' own website: http://hesterglock.com/2014/11/13/drifting/



Here is some Jack Walrath for you:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wNSYjpfHIds

I can't find videos of the Jack Walrath songs that my husband plays, so here is some Charles Mingus for you: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xN_ecx46c24

On Thursday I will be posting an interview with Charles Clifford Brown III, so the blog-zine is truly branching out.

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