David McIntire's No One Will Believe You: Songs of the Aftermath

“Poets are, in fact, the only real  time travelers that our culture has ever managed to produce.” - David McIntire/No One Will Believe You: Songs of the Aftermath

I’m sure the above quote has been written/will be a thousand different ways by poets past/present/future, but there is truth in these words, just as there is truth in all good writing - it takes the Reader (universal) into a place and time where they’ve not previously occupied. Poetry brings the reader into the truth of the moment, sometimes euphemistically, other times approximately, but the poems in McIntire’s new chapbook, No One WIll Believe You: Songs of the Aftermath (copyright 2016 International Word Bank Press), put the reader square into the savage, instant, raw pain of death and loss.

According to McIntire, No One is centered around two simultaneous incidents: the death of his marriage, and the death of his ex-wife, poet, Cat Angelique McIntire. McIntire states that these poems do not need to be read in a linear fashion, and he’s correct, as death and loss are not a linear experience. Open any page in No One, and the theme of death and loss, the grief that binds them together, is also the fuel that powers McIntire’s passionate poems. This is not an easy chapbook to sink into, and it’s not supposed to be, but the strong and unvarnished tone of McIntire’s words makes it an unforgettable experience, as in the poem “Dark Wind,” which expresses loss that is happening in the moment, and the loss that is yet to come:

the loosened threads should not be pulled

and yet

we pull

we think we know better this time

we do not know better this time

the tatters we call memory

are cruel and sharp

the dregs we call love

are bitter

we simply do not know any better

than the last time we stood

on the edge of this strange darkness

this mourning that ruffles our hair

and loosened threads

and the tatters…

and we pull

and watch as our world flutters to the ground

wet with our regrets

No One is not just about death and loss, but it also answers the question, at least for McIntire, and more likely, for the reader, how/ what the person becomes as grief shapes them into something, or someone else. In a sense, the poems in No One document the rebirth of McIntire as a poet, as he, and the reader, rediscover that part of us which cannot be overcome - our humanity - which, in the end, is all that’s really needed to keep moving forward in life, as in the poem “Death Poem #9”:

i have been instructed

to weep

to wail

to tear the skies

from the broken willows

upon which they drape so sadly

so darkly

i have been instructed

to lean into the grief

to roll the confusion into balls

and learn to juggle

meanwhile

i smile at strangers

and talk to seagulls

this is how I know I am still alive

No One Will Believe You: Songs of the Aftermath, leaves me with only one question. Who will McIntire become, ultimately, as a poet, and as a human being, a question that we all must ask ourselves, if we are to become better than what we are, at any given moment. I look forward to reading more of McIntire’s work in the future.   

No One Will Believe You: Songs of the Aftermath, © 2016 David McIntire, Baxter Daniels Ink Press International Word Bank,www.internationalwordbank.com, ISBN 9781537236490, 99 pages, $10.00    

© 2016 marie c lecrivain

Welcome to the Dollhouse: the Poetry and OCD of Cat Angelique McIntire

    There are poetry chapbooks hastily thrown together, due to desperation/laziness, and chapbooks edited within a hair’s breadth of perfection. Then, there are chapbooks that capture the essence of the poet in the “decisive moment” (ala Henri Cartier Bresson), which is exactly the category Welcome to the Dollhouse: the Poems and OCD of Cat Angelique McIntire, © 2016 Baxter Daniels Press/International Word Bank, falls.

    McIntire, poet, and co-host of Poetry Stew, a vibrant reading that showcased some of L.A.’s best emerging and established poets, sadly, passed away in early 2016. As stated by both David McIntire, who curated his wife’s debut chapbook, and Brendan Constantine, who wrote the moving introduction, McIntire tended not to think of herself as a poet (truth: many of us never do, which a universal trait of a poet, imo), but Welcome disproves that assertion in spades.

    Welcome introduces the reader to McIntire's creative process, which, in part, feels like reading directly from the pages of her journal, minus the tears and edit marks. McIntire’s poems appear raw,full-blown, and almost promethean, on each page. Welcome is an intensely private experience, and there’s a a variety of poems to savor: love poems (“they were the oddest 5 seconds of my life”, “keys”); poems written in praise of her favorite inspirations (“wondering about wanda”, “letter to a shipwreck”);  poems written in the final days of her battle with cancer (“cancer ward #1”, “cancer ward #2”), and real life hardship moments filled with humor and self-realization, as in the poem “pawnshop blues”:

I was in my go-to pawnshop yesterday

tryin’ to scrape together some survival funds -

and the was this ol’ hefty black man sittin’

in the corner,

pickin’ and strummin’ blues riffs on a beater

guitar

his face was a heavily lined roadmap, and

his porkpie hat looked like it’d traveled

every mile with him.

I said “can you play me the I just pawned my

wedding rings to buy milk and butt wipe

blues?”

his large laughter filled the small room.

“baby girl,” he said

“I’m an old blues man who’s gotta tuck tail

in hear to play his own damn guitar - it

don’t get no bluer than that.”

and the battle of the blues began -

‘we just went broke on our dog’s back

surgery. we can’t pay rent and just found

out she won’t walk again anyway. THAT’S

bluer.”

I grinned a challenge.

“I lost my job of 42 years to a skeevy little

brown-noser greener than a new frog’s ass n

they took my pension to boot.”

he played an underlying progression.

“BLUER.”

“I got two different organs fighting over

which one’s going to kill me first.”

I assume a confident hand on hip stance.

“BLUER.”

he leans back, hands sure in their stillness on

his axe and delivers the kill shot:

“kids ‘r dead. wife’s dead” (blues

progression). “dog died too.”

I shook my head n grinned, a beaten baby

girl.

Never try to out-blue a blues man.

    My personal takeaway, after reading Welcome, is mixed. I’ve always respected the poet who doesn’t sacrifice honesty in the name of mainstream appeal. McIntire instinctively followed this rule, which, in the longer view of poetic history, places her in the poetic pantheon of Bukowski, who achieved poetic acclaim (mostly) after his demise. However, in the interest of honesty, I wish this collection had included more of her work. The length and breadth of McIntire the poet is partially conveyed in Welcome. What I hope will happen - eventually - is that a new edition will be expanded/edited into a more comprehensive and complete collection. For a poet of McIntire’s caliber, that is my wish. In the meantime, I thoroughly recommend purchasing a copy of Welcome to the Dollhouse, and enjoy it like an awesome first date - with the promise of more amazing times to come.

Welcome to the Dollhouse: the Poems and OCD of Cat Angelique McIntire, edited by Dave McIntire, introduction by Brendan Constantine, © 2016 , Baxter Daniels Ink Press/International Word Bank (www.internationalwordbank.com), ISBN 9780996393792, 70 pages, $10.

review content © 2016 marie c lecrivain

“pawnshop blues” © 2016 estate of cat angelique mcintire

Review of David McIntire's "Exit Wounds"

     There are academic poets, slam poets, and everyone in between. In my opinion, poets should not be categorized, but, unfortunately, the human mind needs to assign names to everything and everyone. There are poets who defy being pigeon-holed, and David McIntire is, as some would say, “Such a One.”

     His newest chapbook, Exit Wounds (copyright 2012 IBW Press), is an intense collection of poems that reiterate, passionately, and unforgettably, his views on love (“Whiff”), pain (“Unlimited”), death ((“September 17, 1988 (The Child Who Never Was”) and “Not Enough”), and the censure of art and civil liberties (“Fuck the Poets,” and “Occupy This Poem”). There's a lot of angst in McIntire's work, but it's intelligent, in repeated memorable phrases, and, in swift, though, sometimes sloppy flowing lines. The poems themselves come off like a series of punk-rock boleros, each one rising higher and higher until the reader is in synch with the rhythm, in the heart of the idea channeled straight into the mind, as in the poem “Pain Takes”:

the pain takes her away from me

in drabs and bits

in pieces and bits

in tongues that slip

on words of frustration tumbling from lips

the pain slices our days

into bloody bite sized pieces

some of which get lost in the haze

of the means and ways

of excruciating creases

that folds our time

in half again

and again in half

the pain diminishes our vocabulary

sometimes to grunts

and prescriptions

and brutal descriptions

to half-spoken understandings

and daily reminiscences

“like the last time

yes, just like it... only different”

the pain takes her away from me

but never all the time

the pain takes her away

but I won't let

the pain takes her away

but only until I take her back

     David McIntire writes from the heart, without apologies, without the dross that makes most confessional poetry so dismal to read. David McIntire is a poet. What “kind” of poet he is doesn't really matter. He's a genuine pleasure to read.

Exit Wounds, copyright 2012 David McIntire, IWB Press, internationalwordbank.org, 52 pgs, $5

http://poeticdiversity.org/main/poets2.php?nameCode=DavidMcIntire

words and photo copyright 2012 marie lecrivain