Do Not Go Gentle; The Poetry of Rob Plath
by John Yamrus
You know how that old saying goes…don’t believe everything you see…and only half of what you hear? I’ve seen it written and heard it said that Rob Plath’s poems are wild, undisciplined things. I’ve heard people comment on how untamed his poems are, almost like they’re somehow akin to that guy who jumps off the top of a tall building, screaming YAHOOOOOOO all the way down, blissfully unaware of the abrupt stop waiting for him at the end of the ride. Well, between you, me and the lamp-post, that’s a load of crap. Rob Plath knows exactly what he’s doing. Lacking discipline, anyone can get lucky in poetry (or, life, for that matter) once or twice, but never in a million years can you do it day in and day out with Plath’s inordinately high level of consistency.
Normally, articles like this will quote heavily from the works of the writer being discussed, but that won’t work for a discussion of Plath, because he’s just too darned big for it. His work is just so varied that if I gave you two or three examples of his poetry, you’d say to yourself “so, he’s a good conversationalist, with wit and a knack for handling a smooth line.” Believe me, I thought long and hard about whether or not to give you some examples of his poetry, and in my going back and forth with myself over the idea, what it boiled down to was this: If I quoted two or three poems, no matter what I gave you, no matter how varied the poems, I’d give you the wrong impression of the guy. And all it would do for me (in the context of this article) is waste valuable space and fill up the page. No, what I want to do is talk. I want to tell you that I’ve been around this poetry scene for more than 40 years now, and I like to think that I’m well-informed, well-read and aware of who all the major players are. That condition remained true from 1970 until late 2008 or early 2009. Certainly no more than two years ago. That was when Wolfgang Carstens sent me a copy of a massive 300 page book of poetry, Plath’s A BELLYFUL OF ANARCHY. Like I said, I’ve been around a long time, and I’m not easily impressed. I get sent a lot of books…a ton of books, and for the most part, they stink. They’re usually written by wanna-be’s who make the mistake of assuming that modern poetry is just everyday speech broken up interestingly (or not) into stanzas. Most writers of modern poetry are just way too dumb to know that for a poem to succeed…to REALLY succeed…it has to work on a number of levels.
Well, when Carstens sent me that book – when I started reading the poems (by a guy named Rob Plath, who I’d never heard of before!) – it was like so many explosions going off in my head. I was stunned. In a review of ANARCHY that I published not long afterward, I wrote: “If Charles Bukowski had a wired, weird, bastard child, Rob Plath would be it.” More importantly, the late Todd Moore, in HIS review of that book, wrote: “There is no doubt that this book is a phenomenon.”
That being said, on my first reading of A BELLYFUL OF ANARCHY, I shut down completely. I couldn’t write. Talk about blocked! That book had me constipated for two full weeks. Every time I sat down to write, there it was, on my desk…staring at me. Daring me to try and come up with something even half as good. I couldn’t even bring myself to TOUCH the book. It literally took me two weeks to screw up the courage to pick it up and put it on my shelf.
It seems I’d better make more room over there on that shelf. I just finished reading the proofs of Plath’s new book…THERE’S A FIST DUNKED IN BLOOD BEATING IN MY CHEST. Once again, it’s a monster. Nearly two hundred pages of electricity. Nearly two hundred pages of emotional crash and burn. I tell ya, this book takes no prisoners. In the war over the heart and soul of modern poetry, Rob Plath will be the last man standing.
John Yamrus
by John Yamrus
You know how that old saying goes…don’t believe everything you see…and only half of what you hear? I’ve seen it written and heard it said that Rob Plath’s poems are wild, undisciplined things. I’ve heard people comment on how untamed his poems are, almost like they’re somehow akin to that guy who jumps off the top of a tall building, screaming YAHOOOOOOO all the way down, blissfully unaware of the abrupt stop waiting for him at the end of the ride. Well, between you, me and the lamp-post, that’s a load of crap. Rob Plath knows exactly what he’s doing. Lacking discipline, anyone can get lucky in poetry (or, life, for that matter) once or twice, but never in a million years can you do it day in and day out with Plath’s inordinately high level of consistency.
Normally, articles like this will quote heavily from the works of the writer being discussed, but that won’t work for a discussion of Plath, because he’s just too darned big for it. His work is just so varied that if I gave you two or three examples of his poetry, you’d say to yourself “so, he’s a good conversationalist, with wit and a knack for handling a smooth line.” Believe me, I thought long and hard about whether or not to give you some examples of his poetry, and in my going back and forth with myself over the idea, what it boiled down to was this: If I quoted two or three poems, no matter what I gave you, no matter how varied the poems, I’d give you the wrong impression of the guy. And all it would do for me (in the context of this article) is waste valuable space and fill up the page. No, what I want to do is talk. I want to tell you that I’ve been around this poetry scene for more than 40 years now, and I like to think that I’m well-informed, well-read and aware of who all the major players are. That condition remained true from 1970 until late 2008 or early 2009. Certainly no more than two years ago. That was when Wolfgang Carstens sent me a copy of a massive 300 page book of poetry, Plath’s A BELLYFUL OF ANARCHY. Like I said, I’ve been around a long time, and I’m not easily impressed. I get sent a lot of books…a ton of books, and for the most part, they stink. They’re usually written by wanna-be’s who make the mistake of assuming that modern poetry is just everyday speech broken up interestingly (or not) into stanzas. Most writers of modern poetry are just way too dumb to know that for a poem to succeed…to REALLY succeed…it has to work on a number of levels.
Well, when Carstens sent me that book – when I started reading the poems (by a guy named Rob Plath, who I’d never heard of before!) – it was like so many explosions going off in my head. I was stunned. In a review of ANARCHY that I published not long afterward, I wrote: “If Charles Bukowski had a wired, weird, bastard child, Rob Plath would be it.” More importantly, the late Todd Moore, in HIS review of that book, wrote: “There is no doubt that this book is a phenomenon.”
That being said, on my first reading of A BELLYFUL OF ANARCHY, I shut down completely. I couldn’t write. Talk about blocked! That book had me constipated for two full weeks. Every time I sat down to write, there it was, on my desk…staring at me. Daring me to try and come up with something even half as good. I couldn’t even bring myself to TOUCH the book. It literally took me two weeks to screw up the courage to pick it up and put it on my shelf.
It seems I’d better make more room over there on that shelf. I just finished reading the proofs of Plath’s new book…THERE’S A FIST DUNKED IN BLOOD BEATING IN MY CHEST. Once again, it’s a monster. Nearly two hundred pages of electricity. Nearly two hundred pages of emotional crash and burn. I tell ya, this book takes no prisoners. In the war over the heart and soul of modern poetry, Rob Plath will be the last man standing.
John Yamrus
