Completed in 2005, BARFODDER: POETRY WRITTEN IN DARK BARS AND QUESTIONABLE CAFES — the second volume of poetry by horror writer Rain Graves — is now available to a wider audience, courtesy of the good folks at Cemetery Dance. But be forewarned: This is not a collection of horror narrative poems, as the cover illustration by Daniele Serra and the Cemetery Dance backlist might lead you to believe. Then again, don’t be put off, either.
What we have here is a varied gathering of more than 100 poetic observations, memories, regrets and lots of other things, by an impressive, and often delightfully twisted, author. And, as the title indicates, they were written in bars and cafes in her hometown of San Francisco, as well as some in Los Angeles, New York, Buenos Aires and a few other locales — all dutifully noted on the acknowledgments page.
And while there are no contemporary retellings of Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Raven” here, there are several horrific images to be found throughout this collection. Like “Heart Wolf Hunter”:
he waded through her flesh
as a butterfly spread its wings
looking for something lost
looking for something in it
it was scarred, he said
but still beating;
he could hear it in his sleep.
And, reminding us that horror fiction is her other specialty, Graves works H.P. Lovecraft’s Cthulhu into — of all unexpected things — a haiku, and includes a brief but effective ode to Clark Ashton Smith.
But then Graves can be gentle and playful, as when she describes fellow writer Neil Gaiman in “A Snake, A Snail, A Puppy Dog Tale”:
only the young ever see him clearly
with magical ears and dancing eyes:
I’ve got a story for you, he says
and he writes them all down
he is the great pumpkin, charlie brown
the one they believed in and wrote about
Graves is equally varied in her forms as she is in her imagery. Several poems run only a few lines, while others, like the recurring and disturbing “Angel of Wrong Things,” go for several pages. At times she is point-blank direct, reminiscent of the late Charles Bukowski (who also spent more than a few hours in bars). But more often, she lets fly with a barrage of imaginative metaphors and references.
Her topics range from her fellow barflies and the cocktails in front of them, to dancing the tango, city and skid-row scenes, lovers remembered fondly and less-than-fondly, and even visiting a friend immediately following a traffic accident in “October 14”:
Even morphine
cannot cure your strength
and
it never occurred to you
(to die)
just never occurred.
But the mere fact that this is a book of poetry is enough to put many readers off completely, no matter how much praise and recommendation from this end. So look at it like this: You might already know Graves from some of her stories or readings at horror conventions. And you know she’s, well, one of us. So you know you’re in good company.
Now dismiss the painful memories of those boring poems you were forced to memorize in middle school. Relax. Down a glass or three. And take the plunge into BARFODDER. After a while, you might find yourself wrapped up in the magic and power that the unexpected combination of words and images creates. That’s poetry, and it can sometimes be fun. —Alan Cranis
Buy it at Amazon or Cemetery Dance.
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- Written in Bone
- The Unicorn Man
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- Slivers of Bone
