Review of Douglas Cole's "The Cabin at the End of the World"

Douglas Cole, The Cabin at the End of the World (Unsolicited Press, 2024) 98 pages, poetry, $16.95 US. Order here.

This reads like a pandemic book. It is full of frenetic energy as if we are inside the head of a shut-in with cabin fever. It starts out as a collection of prose poems rooted in locations. We bounce around the U.S. with a series of snapshot-like moments and roll-call listings of street names. And lines like these:

"I wash my face. I make food. I look out a window. Time is very slow. Winter extends itself. I lift weights, think or read. Spring is under glass. And if you read much further, you become part of the fable." - "Distances"

As the book evolves, however, the energy calms, the poems change form, and you are introduced to the title cabin and the (increasingly more content) human who inhabits it. Therefore, this book represents a journey. At first, it seems quite external perhaps. But it becomes clear that the journey is an internal one of someone learning to enjoy a measure of solitude in a "cabin at the end of the world".

Lines that stood out:

"he has to say stone and stone again" - "Drive Through"

"Darkness swallows the city down to its diamond feet and snakeskin streets" - "Infinite Gaze"

"a drone-dead sky blasted open with no parachute to cling to" - "Notes for The Grey Man"

"Like an abandoned theatre, as I wander through the empty rooms because there's no one else here. Time is happening without me." - "Caught in a Dream"

"water can tell how it took down mountains to liberate you" - "West Cove"

Disclosure: I did receive a free review ebook copy to read in order to write this review, as is industry standard. 

Review of Kai Coggin's "Mining for Stardust"

 Kai Coggin, Mining for Stardust (FlowerSong Press, 2021) 99 pages, poetry, $18.00. At FlowerSong Press.

Kai Coggin's latest collection is modern confessional poetry. Here you will find no symbolism or imagery for its own sake. Every poem is straightforward, literal, and usually long. It leaves nothing to the imagination. These are COVID pandemic poems, a nearly chronological journal of the poet's experience of 2020. Some are optimism in extremis, others are angry, others almost despairing. All of them are starkly honest.

The best poems are introverted rather than extroverted, self-reflecting rather than social and political. These poems tend to be a little shorter and leave the reader with more breathing room for interaction by filling the little blanks that are less literal and more suggestive within them. As in "When the Stars Fall":

the rain falls 

hard heavy

on the white petals

of jasmine

that have entwined

their soft bodies to the steel 

that holds our house 

to the earth

swirling galaxy of stars

that affixes 

us to the ground

and to the heavens combined

in the morning

a universe is scattered

under our bare feet

Some of these poems are too much of their moment to remain relevant 10 or 20 years from now. Some are truly sublime. In that sense, it's a potluck seeking to be comfort food. Its strongest argument for itself is that it will continue to be an honest, individual chronicle of a year which will surely be of interest to history. 

In January 2020, I was completing an audiobook of Daniel Defoe's "A Journal of Plague Year", which - although being fiction - is the nearest thing we have today to an actual journal of an individual living during the last substantial outbreak of bubonic plague in London just a year before the Great London Fire. I did not then know, of course, that I would immediately begin to live through a modern plague of different cause. I have often had occasion to think back on that book in the 2 years since listening to it and make comparisons and to be grateful for the differences that modernism makes in how humanity weathers such an event. (How fortunate we are to have refrigerators so that we do not have to go to market literally everyday for food! How wonderful is having the internet so as to stay in touch!) I imagine books like "Mining for Stardust" will serve a similar purpose for future generations in helping them to understand the human stories of this time.

Is(sue) 10 is live, Youtube Channel, and Special Pandemic Is(sue)

 

Dear Kinfolk,

 

Lots to talk about at AvantAppal(achia):

 

First off we wish to express our sorrow on hearing of the death of bell hooks. That is a blow, not only to Appalachia, but to the world.

 

Secondly, Is(sue) 10 went live yesterday! We have some potent work from 3 countries and 14 states. The word is getting out and the quality of the work and the volume of submissions continues to grow. We are thrilled about that! Go check it out at www.avantappalachia.com.

 

We now have a Youtube channel which will be used to host videos from our submissions where the artists do not have channels of their own from which to host videos. The videos will remain hosted there until the Is(sue) in which they appear is taken down. At that point, it is up to you as the copyright holder whether we continue to host them in perpetuity on Youtube or not. Just let us know. So if you don’t have Youtube yourself, send us the vid anyway and we’ll handle the rest.

 

Announcing “The Modern Plague Years” Special Is(sue): this is(sue)’s deadline is March 31, 2022 and it will go live under Special Is(sues) in the menu on April 10, 2022 where it will remain as long as the website does. Please refrain from arguing the politics of the pandemic or of vaccines. We are interested in your individual pandemic experiences. See the home page and Sub(missions) for more information. And please remember to put “Plague Years” in your email subject line to differentiate it from regular is(sue) subs.

 

Is(sue) 11 – the next regular is(sue) – has a deadline of May 31, 2022 and should go live on June 15, 2022.

 

Don’t forget that you can donate towards keeping AvantAppal(achia) online by going to Donat(ions) in the menu. Thank you so much, Kinfolk, for everything you do! You make this unique, fun space everything that it is!

 

Sincerely,

 

Sabne Raznik

Poetry/Art Ed(itor)