I'm hitting all the poetry highs in the last weeks of the year. Lucky me. I love this whimsical collection of witty wordplay; chock full of puns and neologisms that run the gamut from hilarious to poignant. Another reminder of what cannot be found in the money-world of pop culture nor even in the anointed avant garde venues and enclaves. Too bad this book is probably no longer available for purchase other than directly from its author (try contacting Iota Press in Sebastopol, CA http://www.iotapress.com/).

Try these on for size:

"a tremor/ a tinctile rumor/ of whew"
"jointed uffoon"
"a curled new eyebrow sortie"
"a little star ignosis"
"we spoke of lobitany,/ we catered the stroom./ predict me a star!/ i'll swim.
"the underware of stories."
"tiara boomdelay"
& to end "i'm Donne/ i'm dun/ i'm done."

For all its playfulness, there is plenty of sense sprinkled amongst the non-sense in Buffalo Rome:
To wit:
"don't try nothin sunny,/ just turn around/ real slow like/ in a dark sky"
"sitting in your breakfast/ of glimpses & melancholy"
"i know/ i'll never leave/ this page."
"get ready for the big/ disappointment./ hardly wait./ the so-many-words/ ode."
"i think you iridesque,/ think you are what i mean."
"that screaming pronoun./ that me."
"they've got something on you,/ like your dad."
"the page hurts"
"i want to die raw,/ dissolved in my time;/ yet i don't leave my room."
"i'm still not the best/ at what i do./ but nobody else/ is doing it."

Eric Johnson may not be the only one doing it, but he does what he does very well. I quoted at length since Buffalo Rome is nigh onto unavailable to the general poetry reading public (such as it is).


oh yeah, there's no pagination, which makes citation dicey.
oh yeah yeah, I forgot to mention Johnson's drawings, which are as delightful as his poems. They are sprinkled throughout.


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