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I
wondered as I read Joseph Farley’s spare, plain spoken poems that
have a haiku-feel to them, if environment dictated his migration
toward poetry which his friend, mentor and well known small
press poet Louis McKee characterized as,” tight, disciplined lines,
conversation, colloquial diction, and soft touch.” I
wondered if the challenges of being both a publisher and a
writer doesn’t force one to compress language mirroring the
compressed time one has to write. Farley’s skill at writing so
sparingly is seen in nearly every poem of this collection, such as
“Circles”: “I never could stand / for hours / watching a toy
train / run in circles / the way my father could. / I always needed /
a destination, couldn’t sit / a lifetime / in one place / calmly
laying track.” I
asked Louis McKee about the dilemma his friend faced being both a
writer and a publisher and he told me, “Joe is one of those people
with a busy life, and the addition of publisher makes his schedule all
the more hectic. The result is that Joe has too little time, and
gives too little attention, to his own writing. Had he dedicated
every moment to getting his own poetry out there, instead of fostering
the work of so many others, me included, his selfishness would have
been understood, and his mark greater and more greatly appreciated”. Farley
is the editor of Cynic Press which publishes Axe Factory Review, Low
Budget Science Fiction, Low Budget Adventure Stories, Cynic Book
Review, Vomit, and Holy Rollers as well as books by poets such as
Louis McKee, Xu Juan, Joseph Banford, and others. I wondered what
drove Farley’s style and he told me, “I am fascinated by
traditional Asian forms. English language imitations often miss the
complicated metrical and rhyme patterns in Asian poems, especially in
Chinese poems where tones are supposed to match or repeat in a certain
manner. As a non-tonal language, the best I've been able to come up
with in English is striving for repetition, when possible of a
consonant pattern with near matches permissible and occasional rhymes,
off rhymes, and near rhymes thrown in, but I never let ideas of form
get in the way of what needs to be said. I'll sacrifice the
anticipated pattern for an emotional, comic or philosophical riff. I'm
attracted to form, but don't want to become trapped in it. I also
think about the visual sense of a poem, how it looks on a page. Prayer
and chanting fascinated me as a child. Some of this incantation
quality rubs off on my writing. Cummings, Bukowski, Lowell, Roethke,
Etheridge Knight, Verlaine, Mallarme, O'Hara, Williams, and Levertov
have all been liberating influences in one way or another. Louis Mckee
is responsible for holding my feet to the fire, and forcing myself to
ask the question, Is this good
enough yet?" McKee,
who met Farley as a student in his high school, also got Farley
started as a publisher. Their first collaboration was Axe Factory.
Farley says, “I was sort of conned into doing Axe Factory by Louis
McKee when I was an impressionable youth. He bailed out after three
issues. Being a creature of habit, I continued. McKee was a teacher at
my high school and gave me the poetry and editing bug. Before I met
him, my main interest/desire was to write science fiction, fantasy and
possibly pornography. He thought I had more talent as a poet, so I
blame him for corrupting me.” And
here is what McKee says of his friend’s work, “What I like about
Joe Farley's poetry is how disarming it is. It is smart, but at
first taste you might not think so. He will write directly (or
so it seems) about the commonplace, the everyday. He'll do it
casually, and in a colloquial voice. And then your eye trips
over a word or phrase, or you see something from the corner of your
eye, and suddenly the poem seems not so casual, so ordinary.
Farley is concise, and precise, and clear. And clever, fun to
read. His best poems are those which deal with the personal --
often sad and uncomfortable moments brought into another light, one
that can glimpse the world in a grain of sand (if you excuse the
stolen image). His social and political poems come with a
healthy cynicism, and that same wry humor that strips the discomfort
off the personal. It is, I guess, this "voice" that I
think makes Farley's poems such a pleasure to read.” Here
is another example of Farley’s precise writing, “Supplicant”:
“the emperor / walks / in the surf, / pant legs / rolled-up / toes
digging / in the sand // a small crab dances sideways / away from a
wave // the emperor / wipes / his glasses / stares / at tiny / legs /
on the empty / bench.” Many of his poems leave, and are
intended to leave, the reader suspended in image – a weightless
feeling that is numinous. He has taken narrative poetry, stripped it
down, kept its story line, and filled it with white space. These are
effortless and relaxing poems to read. Again, in “Portrait”:
“When the time came / to paint her portrait, / we opted for a nude.
/ The artist started with her ass / and spent a year there, / then six
months / on each leg./ The breasts took a decade. / And the face? / He
says he’s / coming to that / real soon.” Farley
again and again, shows masterful restraint. One can follow the theme,
find its center and softly land with the aid of only a few words. As
in “Suckers”: “catfish fed / under the waterfall / glued to the
green / stone dam // how many years / since I’ve seen anyone / catch
a fish here? // the rapids froth / with detergent; / the factories
upstream / look the other way” And again in his wonderful poem
“Pussy”: “An iris / in full blossom, / a split peach, / a
pomegranate / eaten from / the center out. // Few things taste / as
sweet on the tongue, / few words sound / as fluid. // She followed me
home. Can I keep her?” Just a great, great piece of writing. I
admired the spare, quiet insight I found in Suckers and the
remarkable skill that it took for Farley to whittle these poems down
to nothing but their soul. ___________________________ Charles
P. Ries lives in
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