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
words and photo copyright 2012 marie lecrivain
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