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Angel Uriel Perales's The Curmudgeon and the Debutante |
On encountering Angel Uriel Perales's poetry, one will feel an acute sense of discomfiture and fascination. I know, because I have repeatedly seen this reaction, along with the envious scowls and head scratching, from audience members and fellow poets at various L.A. open mics over the past eight years. Perales's poems, when orated, as well as read off the page, are delivered with the masterful stroke of a swordsman, or in this case, a wordsmith ninja.
Perales's continues his poetic swashbuckling with his latest chapbook The Curmudgeon and the Debutante (copyright 2009, Off-World Publications), a collection of poetry and lyrical prose. Perales revisits events/people/places in his life with a combination of intense scrutiny, classical idioms and rapier wit. He interrogates each of his poetic subjects with the same determination and boldness of a poetic veteran, sparing neither his reader, nor himself in the process, as in the poem “Curmudgeon 4,” an amusing and painful account of a mostly one-sided romance:
Unrepentant rain in L.A.
Dampens my evil desires
The velvet green dress
hugged her svelte waist
and I clung to that veneer
hunter's verdigris like
a mute and sweat drenched
Svengali;
verbum sapped until
I rose up for air in the
steam filled bathtub
wearing a rented tuxedo
venally stained and drunk.
She looked at me mortified
as if she forgot her surgical
gloves and I thought
“girl,
you should have applied
water resistant mascara.”
Slowly she composed herself
back again into a bronze statue.
I turned off the shower
and shrugged out dripping
into the winter storm.
Curmudgeon is not an exercise in self-flagellation. Modern poets excel at this (witness the birth of confessional poetry – most of it poorly written, and almost never interesting), but Perales escapes castigation with moments of true bravery, as in the poem, “Short Conversation with my Father,” where he strikes a blow for artists everywhere in just a few short stanzas:
Poet, he says,
Poet, says I,
and how long, he says,
have you been in this game?
How much money have you made?
I have not made any money in this,
in fact, in this I have spent most of my
money.
So, a hobby, he says, a hobby,
No, something I must do, says I,
a passion.
Truly great poetry is often ignored and under-appreciated. Perales, whose work can be found in a handful of online and print journals, is the best kind of poet – the kind who writes because he CAN, and in the end, for no other reason, which is why, with The Curmudgeon and the Debutante, he will continue to challenge, irritate, as well as inspire his poetic peers.
The Curmudgeon and the Debutante, copyright 2009 Angel Uriel Perales, Off-World Publications, 52 pages, $5. Available through the author, who can be contacted at cinearte@aol.com, or facebook.com/Angel.Uriel.Perales .
copyright 2010
Marie
Lecrivain |
