Jefferson Carter
dedicated minor poet
This review of my new poetry collection was just published in Broadkill Review and The Poetry Cafe:
AUGUST 30, 2020
Birkenstock Blues by Jefferson Carter
In 2019 Presa Press (Rockford, MI) published Jefferson Carter’s
eleventh book of poetry entitled Birkenstock Blues. I don’t know the
background and why he did it, but Carter was moved to buy back his
rights and self-publish the volume this year with a different cover and
with three additional poems. It just goes to show you that sometimes,
indeed, if you want something done right, you have to do it yourself!
Up front, I must disclose I know Carter. He was a regular in my
Sunday Mindfulness Yoga class and I – and some of my teachings –
have been alluded to in several poems found in his previous volumes,
Get Serious: New & Selected Poems (Chax Press, 2013) and in
Diphtheria Festival (Main Street Rag Publishing Company, 2016),
which has a cover blurb from me: “The poet Carter reminds me of is
Billy Collins, but a mordant, twisted, even punk Collins.” And the
poems found in Birkenstock Blues certainly bear that out. Tucson,
Arizona’s previous mayor, Jonathan Rothschild, says “[Carter] has
long captured life’s subtleties with humor, irony, and a touch of
charming cynicism that brings home truths we recognize with a
knowing wink.” Anyone who has known a cynic – or harbors an inner
cynic – knows that within the heart of any cynic abides a romantic
nursing their wounds – or a cocktail. Or both.
Case in point: the opening three poems all paint a picture of his
marriage, the deep love and respect hiding in plain sight behind the
dry and — there’s that word again — mordant wit. In “Life Partner,”
Carter tells us how, “for convenience” he and “the woman formerly
known as” his wife have numbered their arguments. Anyone who has
been in a long-term relationship understands how couples recycle the
same arguments again and again. And as all good art does, the
universal is made explicit through the personal: “Number 5, you left /
hair in the sink again.” “Number 13, you don’t listen to me.” Carter’s
honest riposte to that one is “But I do. I just don’t agree.” How can
you read this and not find the affectionate warmth of the familiar? The
conclusion to this poem – as in many of his others – ends with a jolt
that evokes the mic drop of a punch line or a slap across the face. It’s
in this way that Carter reveals the subtleties and truths of the
mundanity of daily life.
Carter also writes honestly and revealingly about aging, which is
refreshing in our youth-obsessed culture. In “Fugly,” the poem that
refers to the Birkenstocks of the book’s title, he shares the time-
honored ritual of a man used to being dressed by his wife, only here
it’s the costume of an “old hipster doll” with:
Straw fedora, brand-name t-shirts
from the thrift store, Bermuda shorts,
black dress socks & scuffed wingtips.
I read that description and almost spilled my bourbon, laughing at the
image provoked in my mind’s eye. Then he drops the lines:
I don’t mind, playing child to your adult,
finally getting why old men sometimes
call their wives Mother.
Those lines evoke earlier eras fraught with the mashup of the
tenderness and creepiness of that dynamic.
Another thing I appreciate about Carter’s poetry is how quick and
penetrating he is to see and hear possibilities in places of mis-cue,
mis-hearing and misunderstanding. The title of his chapbook,
Diphtheria Festival, was the result of his googling Dipthera festiva, a
black and white moth. Google responded, “Did you mean Diphtheria
Festival?” Just now, writing that, I laughed yet again! But Carter uses
something like that to create a truly wonderful poem, making art from
happenstance. And he does it again in Birkenstock Blues in the poem
“Advocate” which begins:
I’ve misread her job title:
conservation advocate, not
conversation advocate. How we talk!
And so opens a meditation on the environment, a major concern for
Carter as he has long advocated and volunteered for Sky Island
Alliance, a locally based environmental organization here in Tucson,
Arizona. This concern is also front and center in Carter’s poem, “The
Book Of Extinctions,” (inspired by Extinct Species of the World, Jean
Christophe Balouet, New Holland Publishers Ltd., 1990) which
includes this quote from that book,
more than 100 species
a day will have disappeared
by the end of the century.
I don’t want to spoil it, but I’ll say that for a short poem of only 15
lines, the ending once again draws a breath and creates a pang in the
heart with an image that has deep resonance. I love it!
I could go on but I won’t, other than to say that Jefferson Carter
mines a special kind of art in his poetry. There’s nothing pretentious
about his work. And neither is there anything trite. He writes a kind of
poetry that captures real moments of life, snapshots of small
particularities that shed light on the human condition. He’s a yogi and
a bad seed curmudgeon, and in that mix is a small, not grandiose,
creative treasure I value very much.
Title: Birkenstock Blues
Author: Jefferson Carter
Publisher: Presa Press, 2019
(https://www.jeffersoncarterverse.com)
Jefferson Carter has poems in such journals as Barrow Street,
Cream City Review, and Rattle. Chax Press published Get Serious:
New and Selected Poems, chosen as a Southwest Best Book of 2013
by the Tucson/Pima County Public Library. He lives in Tucson,
Arizona, with his wife Connie. He’s a passionate supporter of Sky
Island Alliance, a regionally-based environmental organization.
Frank Jude Boccio, author of Mindfulness Yoga, is an ordained zen
Buddhist dharma teacher and creator of an approach to yoga
postural practice based upon the Buddha’s teachings on
mindfulness. His writing has appeared in many yoga and Buddhist
journals and anthologies. This is his first poetry review to be
published outside of Goodreads!
(http://www.mindfulnessyoga.net)
AUGUST 30, 2020
Birkenstock Blues by Jefferson Carter
In 2019 Presa Press (Rockford, MI) published Jefferson Carter’s
eleventh book of poetry entitled Birkenstock Blues. I don’t know the
background and why he did it, but Carter was moved to buy back his
rights and self-publish the volume this year with a different cover and
with three additional poems. It just goes to show you that sometimes,
indeed, if you want something done right, you have to do it yourself!
Up front, I must disclose I know Carter. He was a regular in my
Sunday Mindfulness Yoga class and I – and some of my teachings –
have been alluded to in several poems found in his previous volumes,
Get Serious: New & Selected Poems (Chax Press, 2013) and in
Diphtheria Festival (Main Street Rag Publishing Company, 2016),
which has a cover blurb from me: “The poet Carter reminds me of is
Billy Collins, but a mordant, twisted, even punk Collins.” And the
poems found in Birkenstock Blues certainly bear that out. Tucson,
Arizona’s previous mayor, Jonathan Rothschild, says “[Carter] has
long captured life’s subtleties with humor, irony, and a touch of
charming cynicism that brings home truths we recognize with a
knowing wink.” Anyone who has known a cynic – or harbors an inner
cynic – knows that within the heart of any cynic abides a romantic
nursing their wounds – or a cocktail. Or both.
Case in point: the opening three poems all paint a picture of his
marriage, the deep love and respect hiding in plain sight behind the
dry and — there’s that word again — mordant wit. In “Life Partner,”
Carter tells us how, “for convenience” he and “the woman formerly
known as” his wife have numbered their arguments. Anyone who has
been in a long-term relationship understands how couples recycle the
same arguments again and again. And as all good art does, the
universal is made explicit through the personal: “Number 5, you left /
hair in the sink again.” “Number 13, you don’t listen to me.” Carter’s
honest riposte to that one is “But I do. I just don’t agree.” How can
you read this and not find the affectionate warmth of the familiar? The
conclusion to this poem – as in many of his others – ends with a jolt
that evokes the mic drop of a punch line or a slap across the face. It’s
in this way that Carter reveals the subtleties and truths of the
mundanity of daily life.
Carter also writes honestly and revealingly about aging, which is
refreshing in our youth-obsessed culture. In “Fugly,” the poem that
refers to the Birkenstocks of the book’s title, he shares the time-
honored ritual of a man used to being dressed by his wife, only here
it’s the costume of an “old hipster doll” with:
Straw fedora, brand-name t-shirts
from the thrift store, Bermuda shorts,
black dress socks & scuffed wingtips.
I read that description and almost spilled my bourbon, laughing at the
image provoked in my mind’s eye. Then he drops the lines:
I don’t mind, playing child to your adult,
finally getting why old men sometimes
call their wives Mother.
Those lines evoke earlier eras fraught with the mashup of the
tenderness and creepiness of that dynamic.
Another thing I appreciate about Carter’s poetry is how quick and
penetrating he is to see and hear possibilities in places of mis-cue,
mis-hearing and misunderstanding. The title of his chapbook,
Diphtheria Festival, was the result of his googling Dipthera festiva, a
black and white moth. Google responded, “Did you mean Diphtheria
Festival?” Just now, writing that, I laughed yet again! But Carter uses
something like that to create a truly wonderful poem, making art from
happenstance. And he does it again in Birkenstock Blues in the poem
“Advocate” which begins:
I’ve misread her job title:
conservation advocate, not
conversation advocate. How we talk!
And so opens a meditation on the environment, a major concern for
Carter as he has long advocated and volunteered for Sky Island
Alliance, a locally based environmental organization here in Tucson,
Arizona. This concern is also front and center in Carter’s poem, “The
Book Of Extinctions,” (inspired by Extinct Species of the World, Jean
Christophe Balouet, New Holland Publishers Ltd., 1990) which
includes this quote from that book,
more than 100 species
a day will have disappeared
by the end of the century.
I don’t want to spoil it, but I’ll say that for a short poem of only 15
lines, the ending once again draws a breath and creates a pang in the
heart with an image that has deep resonance. I love it!
I could go on but I won’t, other than to say that Jefferson Carter
mines a special kind of art in his poetry. There’s nothing pretentious
about his work. And neither is there anything trite. He writes a kind of
poetry that captures real moments of life, snapshots of small
particularities that shed light on the human condition. He’s a yogi and
a bad seed curmudgeon, and in that mix is a small, not grandiose,
creative treasure I value very much.
Title: Birkenstock Blues
Author: Jefferson Carter
Publisher: Presa Press, 2019
(https://www.jeffersoncarterverse.com)
Jefferson Carter has poems in such journals as Barrow Street,
Cream City Review, and Rattle. Chax Press published Get Serious:
New and Selected Poems, chosen as a Southwest Best Book of 2013
by the Tucson/Pima County Public Library. He lives in Tucson,
Arizona, with his wife Connie. He’s a passionate supporter of Sky
Island Alliance, a regionally-based environmental organization.
Frank Jude Boccio, author of Mindfulness Yoga, is an ordained zen
Buddhist dharma teacher and creator of an approach to yoga
postural practice based upon the Buddha’s teachings on
mindfulness. His writing has appeared in many yoga and Buddhist
journals and anthologies. This is his first poetry review to be
published outside of Goodreads!
(http://www.mindfulnessyoga.net)
