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Book Review : ELVIS IN BLACK LEATHER by Alexis Rotella

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ELVIS IN BLACK LEATHER
by Alexis Rotella

Modern English Tanka Press, 2009
ISBN 978-193539809 -7

One of the great tragedies of my life is that I was born thirty years too late. I’m sure this was some kind of mistake. Since my birth in 1981 it has become dazzlingly clear that I should, in fact, have been born in time to gain first-hand experience of pink Cadillacs, Buddy Holly, James Dean, Abstract Expressionism, Kerouac, Bebop and the DA haircut. Due to what I can only imagine was an unfortunate clerical error, the stork not only made the mistake of delivering me to the wrong year, but also to the wrong country. Instead of taking my first confident steps in 1950s America, I toddled aimlessly into Thatcher’s Britain. And every now and again I glance longingly over my shoulder at an era to which I’ll never, sadly, belong.

Fortunately, for those of us who never shared the planet with such icons as Monroe, Holly and Dean, there are a handful of consolations. One of them is a small diner, not far from my home, called Mojo’s – a retro hangout that looks like a set from American Graffiti. As well as the red-leather booths, jukeboxes and flashing Coke signs, it’s also home to my favourite item of kitsch paraphernalia – an Elvis clock, complete with swinging hips in place of a pendulum. Oft have I ordered my glass of strawberry shake and watched as those immortal legs danced the hours away above the door to the gents’ toilet. There he is – the King of Rock ‘n Roll – still rockin’.

Although my decade of birth deemed it necessary to modify a DeLorean car in order to travel back in time to the fifties, I have found a much less complex alternative, and perhaps a far more enjoyable one. Alexis Rotella’s Elvis in Black Leather provides almost thirty ways to experience the fifties. Amongst its pages you’ll find a strikingly vivid collection of tanka inspired by the King himself:

Love Me Tender
my wanna-be boyfriend sings,
but he’s not Elvis
and he’ll never
be King.

Alexis Rotella’s micropoems, like movies in glorious technicolor, have always succeeded in presenting widescreen panoramas. Like an atomic bomb, they mushroom in one’s mind, taking everything in their wake:

I run home
fast as I can–
snowflakes
falling
on my blue suede shoes.

It’s clear, after only a few pages, that this is not simply a collection of tanka prompted by that great, leather-clad symbol of freedom in fifties America – it’s also a scrapbook of a young girl growing up at a time when growing up was the most exciting thing one could do. It’s the diary of a young girl in love. It’s the photograph album of a young girl with a head full of images. And whilst the image of Elvis swinging his hips has often been lost to the suburbs of taste, ending up above a gents’ toilet in a mock-fifties diner, this pocket-size collection of tanka reminds us why Elvis will always be on our mind. And thanks to Alexis Rotella’s exquisite poetry we, too, can’t help falling in love.

Liam Wilkinson

Book Review

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Mirrormoon by Helen Buckingham
Original Plus, 2010
ISBN 978-0-9562433-8-6

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: what I love most about Helen Buckingham’s poems is their immediacy. It takes years of study, buckets of patience and a very keen eye to write a good haiku, but to make the haiku appear effortless and spontaneous takes some kind of wizardry. There aren’t many writers out there who have this talent, so when a new collection by Helen Buckingham is published you know you’re in for a rare treat.

Mirrormoon is the follow-up to Helen’s Water on the Moon – a collection that prompted writer and artist Pamela A. Babusci to remark on the poet’s knack of making us want to revisit the poems again and again. With Mirrormoon, Helen has prompted this reviewer to re-emphasise Pamela’s comments. These are haiku and senryu that, like the moon itself, inspire us to go on looking and looking:

day moon
balanced
over a revving crane

Having grown up in a house that backed onto a scrap metal yard, I know all too well the sound of that crane. And despite the ‘love at first sight’ that existed between the poem and I, I have found myself returning over and over to this tiny, enormous image. The same has happened with most of the senryu, too:

blue moon
scissors paper
phone

full moon
his glass
all head

Helen’s often minimalistic style lends great strength to her senryu. What is often seen as a flippant, off-the-cuff brand of poetry is only reinforced by the brevity that Helen has mastered. And then there are those senryu that place Helen’s poetry firmly in the present:

full moon:
the last mini mars bar
docks with my stomach

Helen isn’t a poet who’s afraid to look for haiku and senryu in the stuff of modern living. Whilst every one of the poems in Mirrormoon includes a reference to our oldest of friends, the moon, there’s also the mention of Pringles and Mars Bars and allusions to goth teens, cash points and cellulite!

Finally, if one is pushed to find a flaw in this delightful collection from one of Britain’s best writers of micropoetry, it is that the poems stop at page 24. I only hope, as the moon shrinks in the window of our rocket, that Helen is cooking up plans for another lunar mission in the near future.

Liam Wilkinson, October 2010