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Review of The Comic Flaw by Aiden McCallum

The older I get the more it pleases me to see reviews of my work written as a class assignments by undergraduates. It feel good that my poems can still make a connection with someone who has an honest-to-God pulse. Recently, Ken Hada asked one of his students to send an excellent review he had written for a class this summer. I really enjoyed it and asked Aiden if I could share it, and it is with his permission that this post is made. For you who don’t know, my good friend Ken Hada teaches at East Central University in Ada, Oklahoma.

Aidan McCallum
HUM 2413
Dr. Hada
7/15/25
The Comic Flaw: On What Was, of What Can Be
	
Alan Berecka’s first published book of poetry, The Comic Flaw, brings readers through a linguistically beautiful, narratively poignant, yet consistently comedic collection of poems, organized loosely sequentially but chronologically. We watch from the spectator’s booth as Berecka treads a path of reflection starting from his very roots, crossing through the valley of his childhood, and concluding by catching up to himself. The Comic Flaw is a story of facing the past, both its beauty and its terror, as it was, as it is, as it always will be, embracing it, and continuing forward.
	
The collection is organized so that the reader follows Berecka as he reflects on parts of his life. I previously described this organization as loosely sequential but chronological. I say loosely sequential because, while each poem seems to come after the one before, there are little, if any, direct links between events in one poem and events in another. Each poem is a complete piece that can stand on its own. However, chronologically, the overarching narrative follows Berecka’s life through time. There are a few exceptions throughout, where a poem moves farther back in time than the one that precedes it. These are not misplacements or holes in the chronology, as these exceptions are poems with thematic relevance to those surrounding it. There is no clean way to split this work into parts. The progression is too smooth, too fluid to neatly splice and compartmentalize. This serves to elevate how real The Comic Flaw feels: life isn’t set along a track with specified stops, it simply happens. Berecka is honest about that. 

Berecka confronts himself and the world with honesty; he paints the scenes of his life as the truth that it is to him. There is no doubt that the past Berecka depicts is one filled with pain and distress and despair, but it is also a past of joy and fond experience—it is real. And, so, unashamedly, Berecka depicts it as such. There are poems about his father’s alcoholism, about how he and his family react to it and live around it, its constancy in his life. There are poems about grief after loss, grief that changes a person, grief that lays below the surface, simmering, waiting. But in those pictures of the vulgar alcoholic are moments of joy, moments that aren’t all bad, moments that remind you that this is a person who wants, who dreams, who feels. Following after those pits brought upon by grief are glimmers of hope, picked up from the fragments, moments of realization that urge you onward, that lead you to be a better you. Throughout it all, between the highs and lows, are intermissions of everyday activity: family gatherings, moments of observation, focused on your father or sister or mother’s action of the week, discoveries intrinsic to that of the growing youth, questions of religion, of authority, snapshots of discomfort on a hot, crowded bus or in a stifling, all-too-noisy library. Through Berecka’s work we see that in life there is the good; in life there is the bad. But oftentimes, in life, there just is.

A signature characteristic of Berecka and his work is his pervasive sense of humor. Throughout the entire work, weaved throughout and between both the highs and lows of life, Berecka tackles his experience with comedy. Oftentimes he frames his dances with pain in a humorous light, with perfect setups and punchlines to soften the harsh blows that come with confronting reality. He laughs at death. He laughs at life. He laughs at abuse and discomfort and joy and pain—many topics generally handles as serious, those which are taboo to poke fun at—all things core to his life’s experience. This is the comic flaw. If life isn’t funny, if he can’t find humor at his family’s eccentric quirks, if Berecka’s own lived memories can only be regarded with utmost solemnity, in Berecka’s own words: “ …now/that I can’t laugh at my childhood,/what am I supposed to do with it? (53, lines 47-49)” How am I meant to confront myself, let alone reconcile with myself, if I’m not allowed to laugh? This is the question Berecka poses to his critics. This is how he must grapple with these experiences. There is no other way. He is asking this question to himself as well. If I can’t laugh, how else can I cope? Is there another way? How can I find the strength to face it head on, without easing the pain with humor? It’s a beautiful, difficult question: one left unanswered by the collection’s titular poem, one that I have asked myself, one that I haven’t found an answer to.

Though I earlier described the experience as “watching from the spectator’s booth,” while reading The Comic Flaw I could feel myself step forward and tread a similar, faintly mirrored path alongside Berecka’s own. There are many aspects of his life outlined in The Comic Flaw that I find myself resonating with: the well-meaning, vulgar, blue-collared alcoholic of a father, the religious mother and her stifling dogma, the joy of stumbling through a new job, just as you feel you’ve figured it out, a great loss, felt just at the threshold between man and boy, a faith questioned, a faith lost. I felt a connection to the words I read. I felt seen. However, it is only to that point of the tale that I can relate. I have yet to complete my education. I am far from becoming a parent, if at all. I am not at a point where I can look back on my life as he has. My path stopped short, held back by the natural order of time. From where I stand, I must continue paving my path. Far ahead, he is doing the same. Time will tell how much more our paths might converge—with eerily similar scenes lining the scenery—or diverge—as many walks of life tend to do—or simply run parallel to each other—grazing edges just enough that a cursory glance might perceive them as one. But no matter what shape my path may take, I am very glad to have experienced The Comic Flaw, and I am grateful for the moments of reflection it has provided.
 
References
Berecka, Alan. The Comic Flaw. Neonuma Arts. 53, lines 47-49.
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Ken Hada Gives The Comic Flaw aShout Out in Word Literature Today

Books I Return To …


Especially in winter, but in all seasons, a handful of poetry collections, within arms-length, reach out to me. I find myself returning to these more frequently than others, for some reason I cannot name. They are favorites, to be sure, but they are not my only favorites. I have many more. The books contain excellent poetry, but there are so many others that are equally profound in style and structure. Some of these are written by friends, but I have left off this list the names of so many poetry-writing friends. The books in this list are authored by poets with varying levels of prestige – but in my mind, even the so-called "minor poets" – to borrow Simic's phrase – are very often profound, culturally essential, and moving. 

I'm not able to definitively say why the books I have listed here are listed here. After all, I tend to view poetry, both new and old, major and minor, the way Bubba, in Forest Gump, appreciates shrimp in his comical, but very meaningful articulation, of all the possible shrimp recipes he recites. My list is a matter of taste. It is subjective, to say the least, and I invite readers to share their own recipes, make their own lists. Keep close those that lift you.

At my own public poetry readings, I am frequently asked to name my "favorite" poet – an impossible request! I usually answer that I don't have a favorite poet, which I think is true. I have many influences, but most honest poets are favorites. I have never been able to single one or two out exclusively. As I have prepared this list, it is apparent to me, as it will be to many readers, the tremendous authors I have not included for the reader's consideration. For example, I have not listed the wonderfully evocative Larry D. Thomas, whose works Amazing Grace and Where Skulls Speak Wind, helped me find my own voice. I have not chosen the skilled, lyrical Oklahoma poets: Paul Bowers, Paul Austin, Ron Wallace, Paul Juhasz, Ben Myers, Jim Barnes, and so many others who make regional writing in the Oklahoma context a particular, poignant force – a force underappreciated outside of Oklahoma, but each voice quite capable of standing tall on any stage anywhere. I have not chosen Anna Akhmatova, whose later work, especially, cuts my heart. I have not included Seamus Heaney, whose family sagas in Irish peat, depicted in Opened Ground, always speak to me. Nor did I include Yevgeny Yevtushenko's magnificent Collected Poems, 1952 – 1990. In fact, I have included only one international poet, though I enjoy reading all kinds of poetry from across the globe. I could also speak of Gary Worth Moody's collections, for their visceral power embedded in historical calamity. I greatly benefit from reading Major Jackson, Tracy K. Smith, Naomi Shihab Nye and Lucille Clifton, but I did not list them. Nor did I list my sister Kai Coggin, whose identity poetry is so eloquently combined with social justice and the natural realm; nor did I list my brother Quraysh Ali Lansana, who is a master of blending the historical event within a contemporary persona, rediscovering, revealing such necessary truth. I have not chosen Simon J. Ortiz, whose themes of identity within the natural context are exquisite. I have listed only one Native American poet, though I admire Phillip Carol Morgan's The Fork-in-the-Road Indian Poetry Store, even as I find the overlooked histories of Native Americans reconstructed into contemporary poetry, most satisfying.

But I have narrowed my list to nine books to which I often return. They speak to me. They inform my interior life. In my teaching, I am constantly telling students to read everyone and everything, but not to emulate. Be impressed, be informed and thereby formed, but allow what you read to shape you toward your own voice. Perhaps what links my chosen works listed here is that they continue to do that for me. On the surface at least, in my own poetry, I don't sound much like any of the poets I am listing. But each of them has helped me be a better writer, and a better human. Maybe it's the difference between menu and meal – what one tastes, what one digests, enters the blood and contributes to the health, even the personality of the consumer. Perhaps what binds these together on my list is that they are comfortable, stable companions to which I would offer to you in conversation were you to visit me. 

First on my list is Alan Berecka's The Comic Flaw. Author of six books, Alan is wonderful presenter in public, always an audience favorite, yet a seriously underrated poet who should immediately be named poet laureate of the state of Texas. Berecka is a master of the narrative poem. With expert control, his stories do not digress into unnecessary prose; they are focused and moving, even as they develop the seeker within the scene. His poems, are all the more impressive for his gift of humor that lighten his contemplative, searching voice while retelling vignettes of family pain, or confusing religious emphases (having once been an altar boy himself). My favorite poem of his many excellent offerings is found in his first book, The Comic Flaw. The poem "Leveling" is a father and son encounter (always a favorite theme of mine). In "Leveling" the son is helping his father tend the grave of his mother. The son wants his dad "to think [he] / had become a man." His father "who cared / little for words, spoke / what I have come / to believe was his / greatest compliment: // Hey kid, / don't forget / how to do this." 

Second, I refer to Jonas Zdanys and The Kingfisher's Reign. Proud of his Lithuanian heritage, Zdanys has written and translated more than 50 books in his esteemed career. His Thin Light of Winter and Red Stones demonstrate his skill with various poetic styles, especially enviable is his control of line, moving toward what he calls the "epiphanic moment" in the poem. The Kingfisher's Reign is a collection of prose poetry. Whatever prose poetry is, no one writes them better than Jonas. Consider the opening from "The Revenant": "There are days when the windows and doors of the whole world gradually open, when daylight whistles in with the thaws from the wide mouth of the river, when the margins of the sky shift with the changes of the season and we labor together for revival." Zdanys ends the poem: "I lift my arms in greeting like heavy wings. I tremble in the gathering light."

Third, I offer Natasha Tretheway's Pulitzer Prize winning collection Native Guard. The moment I encountered this work, I was moved by the skillful interplay between personal identity  encountering racial history. The book offers a moving tribute to the Louisiana Native Guards, one of the Union's first official black units. Skillful in traditional as well as experimental poetic utterance, her "Pastoral" suggests the complex ironies of being a daughter of the racially unjust American South: 

In the dream I am with the Fugitive
Poets. We're gathered for a photograph.
Behind us, the skyline of Atlanta
hidden by the photographer's backdrop –
a lush pasture, green, full of soft-eyed cows
lowing, a chant that sounds like no, no. Yes,
I say to the glass of bourbon I'm offered.
….

Say "race," the photographer croons. I'm in
blackface again when the flash freezes us.
My father's white, I tell them, and rural.
You don't hate the South? They ask. You don't hate it?  

Next, I turn to Ofelia Zepeda's Where Clouds are Formed. In her famous novella The House on Mango Street, Sandra Cisneros writes "You can never have too much sky … Here there is too much sadness and not enough sky." Those lines remind me of Zepeda's collection. Zepeda's sky covers the Sonoran Desert in south central Arizona, home to her people, the Tohono O'odham.

In her work, she reminds us of an ancient civilization surviving in her lyrical lines that transcend the limitations of appropriated culture. She presents not only a historical/cultural perspective, but also points us to the ecocritical issues we face today. In "Lost Prayers" she writes: "Passing below the sacred peak, / here prayers signified by rosary beads are futile. / Calling on the Virgin Mary is useless. // Instead, one must know the language of the land. / One must know the balance of the desert. / One must know how to pray / so that all elements of nature will fall into rhythm. In "Proclamation" she writes: "The true story of this place / recalls people walking / deserts all their lives and / continuing today, if only / in their dreams." Zepeda inspires me to keep walking and to keep looking skyward.

Lorna Dee Cervantes' first book, Emplumada, is especially magnificent given the young age of the poet when many of its poems were written. This collection moves me to consider the universal plight of seeking freedom while retaining cultural identity. Like Zepeda, her works transcend the immediate cultural considerations and speak to anyone trying to make peace with her heritage. She writes in "Freeway 280": "Once I wanted out," wanted a place "without sun," some place beyond the confines "of tomatoes burning / on swing shift in the greasy summer air." Yet the seeker returns to perhaps "find it, that part of me / mown under / like a corpse / or a loose seed." In "Oaxaca, 1974" the speaker is looking for her true heritage, despite the conflict of being given "a name / that fights me." I teach these two poems quite often in my various classes, as much as one can teach poetry. It is a joyful challenge to read them. The concluding lines of these poems are two of the finest ending phrases of any poetry.

My sixth selection is James Wright's The Branch Will Not Break. For all the pain surrounding his personal life, something tender, almost timid, seeps from the underside of his work. It's almost as if his writing saves him, perhaps prevented him from doing something really stupid in life. His blue-collar heritage, with its rough exterior, is somehow tumbling towards greatness, unadorned, unashamed and in certain ways, unmatched in quality. His humbly-stated phrasing, from the famous Ohio poems to his quasi-erotic "A Blessing" are profound for what is unsaid, as much as what they claim. In his poem "Depressed by a Book of Bad Poetry …" Wright invites insects to join him. Referring to the "old grasshoppers," he "want[s] to hear them, they have clear sounds to make. / Then lovely, far off, a dark cricket begins / In the maple trees." Wright's themes of alienation, loneliness, overcoming fear, within himself and the troubling effects on society at large, are routinely countered by appeals to beauty and natural order. I have found in him a brother poet, whose personal tragedies mitigated by his poetic style motivate me to write for all I am worth, seeking the beautiful while distrusting anyone who fails to understand a dark cricket.

Seventh, I adore Tomas Tranströmer's The Half-Finished Heaven. In this book, the 2011 Nobel Prize winner offers an inspiring collection of unsurpassed excellence. In "A Winter Night" he opens with the evocative phrase: "The storm puts its lips to the house / and blows to make a sound." He ends that poem by returning to the storm image which "will blow everything inside us away." In the poem titled "The Half-Finished Heaven" he presents a series of magnificent images, seemingly disconnected, only held together by the incompleteness of bliss. His last three images are: "The endless field under us. / Water glitters between the trees. / The lake is a window into the earth." Though my favorite poem of his, "Sketch in October" is not reprinted in this collection, his adherence to the influence of seasons on human behavior frequently occurs. For any of us moved by seasonal change, this acclaimed poet is a champion.

Eighth is Arthur Sze's 2021 collection The Glass Constellation, a tour de force, representing a long poetic life filled with astonishing poems marked by acute observation and insightful inference. Sze offers a stellar collection of lyrical poems that captivate the heart of reader, even as the personae involved in the individual works also seems effected, sometimes dramatically, sometimes more subtly, but always moved. These poems are full of energy, sometimes boiling below surface, or recoiling in a desert sunset, but always linking heart and mind with sensation and intellect. His poems simply will not allow a reader to be complacent.

Finally, I offer Jane Kenyon's Otherwise, a book marked by death with dignity. The poet affords a stubborn will to keep in rhythm with the cycles of the seasons, though her own death is impending. Perhaps the most well-known poem of the collection, "Let Evening Come" settles on me like an Old Testament Psalm, riveting and ritualistic, holy in its ability to take us beyond, a sacrament for what it does not say, and how its silence makes us bow in reverence. She ends the poem with humble triumph: "Let it come, as it will, and don't / be afraid. God does not leave us / comfortless, so let evening come." Her fierce determination to hold onto life despite living with a terminal illness artistically reminds us of probably the oldest conflict humans endure – the fact of our mortality, and our response in that shared struggle.


Ken Hada


Ken Hada, professor and poet at East Central University in Ada, Oklahoma, is the author of twelve collections of poetry, including Come Before Winter and Contour Feathers (Turning Plow Press, 2023 and 2021). His twelfth book, Visions for the Night was released in April at the annual Scissortail Creative Writing Festival on the campus of ECU.



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An Article from Professor Mack

As anyone who knows me well will tell you, I am not an organized person. When I taught Freshman Comp, I lived in constant fear of misplacing a student’s paper. Last November I had the amazing experience of being the Waldo Distinguished Author at the University of South Carolina-Aiken. Many thanks to Andrew Geyer for the invite. In an attempt to drum up an audience Tom Mack wrote an article about my work for the local paper. This week while going through some book bags in attempt to inventory my author copies of books, I ran across the copy of the article Tom had gifted me. I hope my tardiness in posting it doesn’t reflect my appreciation for his efforts. So here it is.

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Review of A Living is not a Life

Getting a book review is always scary. To me it’s like getting a paper back. Since I couldn’t spell or punctuate for most of my academic career, and because I had the poor timing to be born before word processors and AI, it was never a pleasant experience.

Recently, the journal Presence and editor Mary Ann Miller sent my book out for review. I’ve pasted in scans of below. I guess I got a solid B+ or so, and I’m grateful for exposure, especially since books by like of Gioia and Mariani are reviewed in the same journal. High cotton for this poet.

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Sergei Eisenstein and Narrative Poetry

Last Saturday, I led a class for the Corpus Christi Writers Studio, with my good friend Stephen Jay Schwartz which focused on the similarities of film and poetry. I always thought the two were very closely related, but it wasn’t until someone like Stephen who made a living in the film industry for many years validated the ideas that I had any confidence in my observations. What follow is a recap of my contributions to the class. I hope they are of interest.

Before we tackle why I believe narrative poetry and film are closely related. I’d like to a few minutes to talk about narrative poetry general. I’d like to point out that 40 years ago narrative poetry was totally out of favor and on life support along with rhyming poetry. When the New Formalists released their first anthology Rebel Angels, they included formal and narrative poetry. As formalist like R.S. Gwynn received praise from critics for innovative rhyme schemes, the poetry of BH Fairchild was being called gateway poetry. You know the soft stuff that gets you hooked before you move on the real poetry. When I started writing narrative poems, it was not unusual to get rejection notes from editors that claimed there was no such thing as narrative poetry, or that my poems were only failed short stories. Begrudgingly the genre has gained a bit of respectability and a good deal of life in that last 30 years. I think mainly because it remains popular with the public who enjoy a good story and were happy to see it again.

Personally, mainly because I have a brain that turns everything into a story, I believe there are only narrative poems. Even the most lyrical of lyric poems I believe to be stories mainly because the readers of the poems work their way across each line and then down the page, and in doing so they move through time and space, which is the essence of any story, but I digress.

I also believe the quip about failed short stories shows a real misunderstanding of the nature of narrative poetry. A narrative poem boils a story down to its essence. The narrative poet attempts to make the story immediate. It distinguishes itself from long form fiction through the dependence on images and concision and distinguishes itself from flash fiction through the use of segmentation: line and stanza breaks to further the reader’s understanding. It is the application of images and the use of segmentation where narrative share the same techniques of film. When I was taking my first graduate level creative writing class, I happened to be auditing an introduction to film class. When I read of the theories of early Russian film makers like Kuleshov and Eisenstein, I suddenly had a scale-from-the-eyes moment. The Russian film industry didn’t have the money for stunt doubles and special effects, so they learned to tells stories by juxtaposing images. The example of narrative through image that I first saw was Eisenstein’s formula shot A plus shot B equals shot C. The example I learned was a shot of a man reading a paper crossing a street; shot b, a different man behind a steering wheel suddenly gets a look of horror on his face and jerks the wheel, shot c man lies in the middle of a street as a newspaper flutters away. The viewer puts the three images together and interprets the story to conclude a distracted man got run over in a street. Kuleshov also postulated that one could take a series of shots change the order and tell a whole different story. Here’s a clip of Alfred Hitchcock explaining the theory. Hitchcock clip . Another Clip from a 100 Years of Film on Eisenstein.

The first poem I wrote after being exposed to this theory is in the handout of my poems. It’s Remission. I consider it the first real poem I ever wrote. It changed my life. Early drafts of the poem won the UNT writing award that year, and I was recruited to do a creative thesis. A later draft of the poem was published in American Literary Review. Probably, the highest cotton I’ve ever romped in. In graduate school, people also started referring to me as a poet, and that’s how I was introduced to Alice (nee Adams) Berecka, who told me the introduction perked her interest.

Remission

While shooting hoops
practicing for teams
I wouldn’t make,
I pivoted, faked,
shot, followed through
and wished
she would die.
Follow your shot,
my instincts coached,
urged my frozen legs.
Still, I watched
the ball fall
free from the net.
Bounce, bounce
and roll away.

As a boy,
I was often ill.
Drowsy with fever,
my beaded head
would rest
in my mother’s lap.
I remember
when the medicine
came, how she
raised my head
and pressed it gently
to her breast
which pulsed
and soothed
my ailing
chest and head.

Bed-bound
head shaven,
shriveled she lies.
Her pain
her drugs
I don’t understand,
only her half-formed
words: Jesus take me.
Gaudy jewelry
Rosaries, medals,
brown scapulars
adorn but do not comfort
her foreign shape.
Nor do I,
I only hide
my father’s
razor blades.

Today, the basketball,
flat, covered by dust
lies hidden on some
garage shelf. She,
healed, but scarred
more than most,
finds some comfort
in knowing life
is the only sense
found in pain.
She sits quietly.
My nephew rests,
nesting by her side.
Her paled hair and face,
the child’s easy blond pose
confuse my senses,
and for one moment
I stare at my mother’s
apparition nursing
my childlike ghost.

What did the theory do for me:

I learned the importance of an image (or object) to carry the emotional weight of a poem. In Remission, the basketball becomes associated with the wish that the mother would die and the guilt associated with that thought. Other images carry the weight of religiosity, etc. But I was learning a more indirect but powerful means to write poetry. As a narrative poet, even if I have a good story, I know I need to find an image before I can write a poem. In Of Suffering and Idiots, the thin veneer of the tabletop allowed to get an implied definition of “paper asshole.”

Of Suffering and Idiots
All for one and one for all… Alexandre Dumas

As a kid I could never understand why
my father went ballistic when my Uncle Ben
said something stupid. Everyone knew Ben
was an idiot, a good man of sorts, but limited
at best. In his clumsy attempts to impress,
Ben flashed his profound ignorance. The fact
that he dropped out in the third grade never
kept him from claiming that he had aced
calculus. Once when Ben overheard my aunt
and mother commiserating about that time
of month, he bragged as a kid on the farm
he had ridden his menstrual cycle
without training wheels before he had turned
six. Everyone laughed, but my father fumed.
He screamed, Ben, you talk like a guy
with a paper asshole! My wounded uncle
wept, my mother screamed, Albert!
and the rest of us sat there laughing,
wondering, What the hell is a paper asshole?

Today in a meeting, a Psych professor
who is long on ego and short on brains
was holding our pointless committee hostage
yet again with his mindless prattling,
but when he said, …and I for one,
the inane phrase sparked a rage
so hot in my core that it fried the filter
that normally sits between my mouth
and brain, and I found myself barking,
And I for one! What are you, some kind
of schizophrenic musketeer? The virgin silence
slowly filled with the titters of a few committee
members, while others stared at our tabletop,
as if they hoped the etiquette for exiting
the awkward situation I had caused
could be found in its fake veneer.

The prattling pedant blushed and hushed,
then he gave me that hurt—You’re a real
asshole kind of look. And I thought, Touché,
d’Artagnan, but at least I’m not a paper one!

I learned transitions between stanza were not necessary. The end of a stanza is the end of the scene, the fade to black. You can write, meanwhile back at the ranch, but your reader doesn’t really need it ; they will figure it out.

I began writing a lot of comparison and contrast poems letting the juxtaposition of two stories create a meaning for the whole poem. Both the Capra Conundrum and Of Suffering.., fall into this category. In one the story of the father illuminates the story of the son. In the other the idea every time a bell rings an angel gets their wings is taken to the extreme when an immortal monkey trying to type out the works of Shakespeare can’t find the carriage return. The Capra poem was my first Pushcart nominated poem. It was sent up by Michelle Hartman at The Red River Review

The Capra Conundrum

In one corner of the universe
a monkey keeps hitting the I key
of an old typewriter, expecting
the banana that won’t come.

In another corner of the universe,
the angel in charge of making wings
is being overwhelmed with orders
and running out of possible takers.

And in another corner of the universe
preachers and sinners begin to sense
a new hope as the eye of the needle
stretches into a camel-sized hula hoop.

One other thing, although I always look to find an image that can give me a way into writing a poem, I never worry if the image will translate to the reader. Recently, I received my third Pushcart nomination for a poem call The Builder of Bigger Angel Dance Floors. In it I’m really hoping the reader is familiar with the old thought problem, “How many angels can dance on the head of a pin.” The poem will have another layer of meaning if they do. But the image that came to me was the barstool and how the seat in of a barstool resembles the head of a pin. With that thought, the three union members became angels themselves, like Humphrey Bogart in the old movie We’re no Angels. In my actual memory a man named Dean Gribnaugh told me about my dad when we had a moment alone at the Moose Club in Maynard, New York. But the idea of the barstool led to We’re No Angels which in turn led to memories of three guys my dad worked with. Lumpy, I believe was his foreman. My family is big on not trusting authority, so Lumpy was rarely spoke warmly of. Goo Goo was perhaps the handsomest man I knew as a kid. He was a union brother of my dad, a Lithuanian American whose last name was something like Gugalauskus, hence Goo-Goo. Crazy Joe was I guy my dad hung out with after he retired. He knew him from the union also, and Joe introduced my father to his second wife. Anyway, with the barstool image, I had a good story, but the image lead to a much better one. Here’s the poem.

The Builder of Bigger Angel Dance Floors

Home from college, one summer weekend
with not much to do, I went to a local bar
with my dad. When he left his stool to piss,
Goo Goo, Crazy Joe, and Lumpy, his co-workers
and union brothers, sidled over to educate me.
“Sport, your old man would kill us if he knew
we told you this, but you should know.
Your father is the best damn welder in the local.
They say Al Berecka could weld the heads
of two pins together.” They all shook their heads
in agreement and skedaddled back to their stools
once the men’s room door swung open.
As he reclaimed his seat my dad asked,
“What was that about?” “Ah, nothing,”
I said as the other men nodded knowingly,
and I tried to hide any hint of admiration.
Just as someone asked, “So who’s buying
the next round?” and the bar settled back
to its proper business—washing down pride.

Well, that’s all the random thoughts I have for now, on how Eisenstein’s theory influences my writing to this day. I hope you found this of interest.

ab

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The Builder of Better Angel Dance Floors

I got word yesterday that the poem of the title above had gotten nominated for a Pushcart by the Concho River Review. I hold that journal and its editor in special esteem, so to be nominated by them is a great nod. Many thanks to Mark Jackson and Jerry Bradley.

The poem itself came about when a student at DMC got miffed at me when I rebuffed a compliment about my poetry. He asked, “Why do you always do that? “The poem is attempt to answer. The man who actually told me how good a welder my father was known to be was a man name Dean Gribnaugh, and he waited for my father to step away . I’m sure that’s not how his name was spelt. It happen in the Moose club in Maynard New York, or at least that’s my recollection. My father did have co workers with the names I used in the poem though. Here it is. Hope you enjoy.

The Builder of Better Angel Dance Floors

Home from college, one summer weekend
with not much to do, I went to a local bar
with my dad. When he left his stool to piss,
Goo Goo, Crazy Joe, and Lumpy, his co-workers
and union brothers, sidled over to educate me.
“Sport, your old man would kill us if he knew
we told you this, but you should know,
your father is the best damn welder in the local.
They say Al Berecka could weld the heads
of two pins together.” They all shook their heads
in agreement and skedaddled back to their stools
once the men’s room door swung open.
As he reclaimed his seat my dad asked,
“What was that about?” “Ah, nothing,”
I said as the other men nodded knowingly,
and I tried to hide any hint of admiration.
Just as someone asked, “So who’s buying
the next round?” and the bar settled back
to its proper business—washing down pride.

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Petty Expectations

My new boss, the same guy who says he fears
ending up in a poem someday, as if
that could ever happen, sits waiting
earnestly for my reply to his question,
but his query does not compute,
so I squirm in my seat and sweat.

I reconsider the question,
“What can we do to make you love
your job?” An extended paid leave
keeps bolting from my brain,
but I grind my teeth shut,
not wanting the truth to escape
because there’s the mortgage,
car payments, and my extravagant
lifestyle that being a librarian
at a community college affords me,
so I nix going all in with honesty

and remain stumped. I mean ever since I signed
my first deal with Mammon one summer
to bale hay for a crazed dairy farmer
and moved on to engagements as garbageman,
turd herder, weed wacker, mailroom geek,
parking lot attendant, telephone operator,
freshman comp teaching fellow, newspaper
delivery man, microfiche filer and then finally
falling into this gig as a librarian, I have never
asked for more than a decent wage and a sane boss
from any job, while my wife, our kids, our friends,
my family, faith, and art have provided me
with more meaning, joy, and love than any man
has a right to expect,

but my boss is still waiting
on an answer. I decide to aim low and ask
to be taken off nights. He shakes his head slowly,
breaks eye contact and begins to explain
that because of budget cuts and hiring restrictions,
I will remain as enamored of my job as ever.

From Alan Berecka’s A Living is not a Life: A Working Title; Order at Amazon

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Introduction to A Living is not a Life: A Working Title

I have worked since the summer I turned 18. This summer, I’ll turn 62. If I’m honest, I doubt I ever looked forward to going to work. I guess I never stumbled into the job that was meant for me. I’ve always been ok with that circumstance. Work paid the bills, and if I was lucky, it didn’t get in the way of life. I know plenty of people who feel the same way. I also know people who enjoy their jobs. They say crazy things like. “If I won the lottery, I wouldn’t quit my job.” Leaving those in my tribe of the discontented to wonder why someone would pony up the money for a lottery ticket, if they were just going to keep working? We have never understood the need to work beyond the financial.

There are also a tribe of workers who believe one should be happy in their job. To be discontented at work is a sign of a lack of moral fortitude. As the folks in my tribe see a job as a way to get by, these folks see a divine calling. Their often-spouted mantra is— “If you love your job, you’ll never work a day in your life.” These folks are often self-employed, or near the top of org charts. People who believe they make a difference in the lives of others can end up here as well: doctors, lawyers, teachers of all kinds, and preachers to name a few. Among these folks are those that believe no one can do the job as well as them. I have often differed with their opinion. Teachers seem susceptible of this trait, but I once had a friend point out to me, that if you spend years having large groups of people write don’t everything you say, you’d feel important too. When I look back at the five years I taught as teaching fellow, all I remember is the fear, and a fervent hope that I wasn’t wasting the time of those assembled in front of me. I tried to discourage them from writing down what I said, while hoping somehow their writing could improve. After she graduated and student from my first class dropped by my office to thank me, saying it was the best one she had taken. I thanked her, but apologized on the behalf of the University, for this truly should not have been the case.

This difference between my friend’s observation about the job of teaching and my actual experience of teaching, illustrates the one the great truth of work which I believe I have uncovered, everyone thinks everyone else’s job is easy, normally until they try it. And all though different jobs may require different amounts of effort, I really doubt there are any easy jobs. It’s been my experiences employers are never too happy to just fork over money for no reason.

In poems that follow, I try to remember the vast majority of the jobs I’ve held, try to take a look at the concept of work and try to have some fun while doing so. To the few who will read this book, many thanks for your time and support.

Should you be interested in obtaining, a copy email me at aberecka@yahoo.com or purchase from these on-line stores.

Order at B & N

Order at Amazon

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Poetry of Light

I was recently contacted by Kerry Keys, a friend I met when I went to Lithuania to take part in a poetry festival a few years. Kerry asked me if I would review the collected works of Jonas Zdanys for the Vilnius Review’s English version. I was honored to have the chance to write the review, but also scared because the book covered 50 years of the work of an important poet, whose work is known well in both Lithuania and in the US. This link will take you to the final product. http://vilniusreview.com/reviews/432-light-of-poetry

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Poet Laureate of Corpus Christi?

Yes it’s true. As of February 23, 2017, I am, by proclamation of the City Council of Corpus Christi, the poet laureate of Corpus Christi. Ever since that night, I get asked a  few of questions fairly often.

The first question is how did that happen? Basically, there is a group of poets in the Corpus area who got to know each through an open mic series that has been held at Del Mar College. This group of poets banded together and decided to host a poetry festival in Corpus. The poetry festival was going to have a big kick off night, and someone thought since we didn’t have enough money for a keynote reading that if we had a poet laureate maybe it would add interest to the event. I’m not really sure because I missed that meeting. My fellow Corpus poets assure me that my missing the meeting isn’t the only reason I became the first poet of Corpus Christi, but it didn’t hurt. I have to say the group of poets included Juan Perez, Tom Murphy, Javier Villarreal, Robin Carstensen, Odilia Rodriguez, Malia Perez, Lou Ella Hickman, Stefan Sencerz, and I’m not sure who else might have been there that night. The thing is anyone of these fine writers could have been worthy of being honored, so no matter how much I try to poo-poo the nod, because the honor comes from such talented writers and good friends, the title has meant quite a bit to me.

Don’t you live in Sinton? Yeah, I do, but Sinton is a much harder poetry market to crack. Even though I say this in a tongue-in-cheek manner check out the Dictionary of Literary Biography someday, and you’ll find a long article on the poet Ronnie Burke who was actually born and raised in Sinton. Not that many people in town seem to remember him. Burke wrote mainly in Spanish and his poetry was surrealistic and he may be more famous as an AIDS activist, but he’s in the DLB and that’s high cotton. Anyway, I digress. All the poetry events I have hosted over the years have been in Corpus at Del Mar College where I have worked as a librarian for the past 20 years. In the proclamation it says I initiated the idea for having a poetry festival in Corpus. If saying, maybe we should start a poetry festival in Corpus someday counts then this is true, but so many people worked to get the festival off the ground, I feel a little swarthy taking credit for that.

So what does a poet Laureate do? Great question. I’m not sure I’ve figured that one out. Even before I was poet laureate, I was asked fairly often by local teachers to go to area classrooms and share poetry. I often ask these teachers if they have seen my poetry? My stuff isn’t exactly G rated.  But we normally find a poem or two we can use for a short talk. But really I have no idea what the duties are which is probably a very good thing.

How much does a poet laureate get paid? Guy Clarke said it best, “There ain’t no money in poetry, and that’s what keeps the poet (laureate) free…”

When will there be a second poet laureate of Corpus Christi?It seems attendance at our festival meetings has really picked up, but someday someone is going to absent. Until then I’m happy and honored to play along.