(pb; 2015: limited-release poetry chapbook with CD)
Overall review:
All the works in this thirteen-poem chapbook are worth reading -- and publishing. All of them have at least one line that impressed or interested me, though a few stood out (see below). Its accompanying CD, with selective readings by the book authors, further bring these poems to aural, emotion-imbued life: worth purchasing, this. You can buy it here.
Standout poems:
1.) "Sometimes I breathe" (particularly the first/page two version of it) - Martindale and McGinn: Intense, not-quite-a-call-and-response recurrent/evolving work whose stifling desperation alternates with different-trip realities and sensibilities. This poem is effective in its display of relational futility, deafness and blindness.
2.) "Let Us Rebel Against the Inevitable" - Martindale: Multi-sensory vivid, feel-like-you're-there work.
3.) "Every Time It Rains" - McGinn: Soothing, interesting rebuttal to the image-intensive "Rewrite My Sorrow" (written by Martindale).
4.) "I Pull You With the Weeds" - Martindale: Sharp, era-specific, sad and darkly funny versework. This, as of this writing, is my favorite poem in this chapbook.
J.L. Martindale, whose In Sepia graced the Microstory A Week site in December 2010, has been published numerous times since then. These works include:
Two poems in the verse collection A Poet is a Poet No Matter How Tall: Poems by Poets of All Shapes and Sizes.
Waiting on Winter, an image-vivid, autumn-stark relationship poem, published on the Cadence Collective: Long Beach Poets site on December 1, 2013.
Simple Harmonic Motion, a music-and-sensuality piece, published on the Cadence Collective site on January 25, 2014.
Spliced, an emotionally-harsh versework highlighting booze and bitterness. The Cadence Collective site published this on February 24, 2014.
Beautiful, an aggressive-in-spirit take on notions of attractiveness, dark music and romance. The Cadence Collective site published this on March 12, 2014.
Cons in Prose: A How-to Guide, a clever, funny poem about reading at open mics. The Cadence Collective site published this on April 16, 2014.
Last Line Epiphanies, about being an aging, socially "respectable" punk, and the doubts that entails. The Cadence Collective site published this on May 23, 2014.
I Lie When We Lay, an emotionally-wracked piece about troubling, complicated bonds of intimacy. The Cadence Collective site published this on June 18, 2014.
No Afterlife for Garbage, with its straight take on our material objects. The Cadence Collective site published this on January 28, 2015.
Lovers like us and ghost towns, about the past and symbolic archeology. The Cadence Collective site published this on February 4, 2015.
Martindale co-authored a verseworks anthology (The Bottle & the Boot) with Daniel McGinn. This limited-release chapbook comes with a CD of selected readings from the book. You can purchase it here.
Three of her poems -- Afterbirth; Deliverance (Birth is a Violent Lover) and I Pull You with the Weeds -- was included in the jazz-enhanced spoken-word reading CD/download Prose, Rhythm and Noise: Muliebrity, Vol. 1, released in May 2015. (One of Martindale's works, I Pull You with the Weeds, also appears in the aforementioned The Bottle & the Boot.)
One of her poems, Like a Dog, was included in the jazz-enhanced spoken-word reading CD/download, Prose, Rhythm and Noise: Muliebrity, Vol. 2, also released in May 2015.
