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A Poetry Review
By Siobhan Mildred Watters
Posted November 27th, 2007
Sunnyoutside aptly calls itself an 'independent publisher.' A small business coming from humble beginnings as on online literary journal, Sunnyoutside was founded by Dave McNamara. McNamara got back to basics, establishing himself as a print publisher in 2005. The Somerville, Massachusetts-born, Buffalo-based company boasts of not one, but two, printing presses.
Sunnyoutside recently released two collections of poetry, The Sea Never Drowns by Jason Heroux and Diminishing Returns by Karl Koweski, each under 50 pages. McNamara designed the books and gives us a brief description of his font choices in the colophon at the conclusion of each text. A colophon is featured in most books, true, but one gets the feeling that McNamara is passionate about his design.
The Sea That Never Drowns
by Jason Heroux
Sunnyoutside, $10
Kingston, Ontario civil servant/poet Heroux brings us morose, city-worn poetry in his most recent release, The Sea Never Drowns. Upon my first reading of Heroux's verse, I was struck by his reliance on simile to convey meaning. Taking the work in holistically—I am under the impression that these poems are collected under one name for a reason—the poems are structurally repetitive. However, when reading each poem as alien to another, I found myself able to bench my previous criticism, even saying Oh yeah, rain puddles do look "like expired mirrors/slowly lowered down/into their little graves" (from "Rue de la Quarantine"). Jason Heroux has a unique way of looking at the world, marked by sensory imagery and bittersweet—maybe just bitter—observations. Anyone leading the ordinary, workaday life, possessing the ability to look at things objectively, will see truth and familiarity in Heroux's weary world. Comes with a beautiful cardstock cover featuring a watercolour illustration by artist Doni Connor.
Diminishing Returns
by Karl Koweski
Sunnyoutside, $8
With Koweski's Diminishing Returns, the reader is quickly associated with the poet, almost certainly the "I" narrator of each poem. The poet's self-expression is even made visual in the cover photograph—a black and white of a trailer, door open—credited to Koweski. Considering Koweski's style, I immediately suspected that the poet has an interest in the late Charles Bukowski. Horse and whore references aside, my suspicions were confirmed in "My Literary Domestication"—a great poem that describes Koweski's lost connection to literary heroes like Bukowski and Kerouac as he settled into married life. Koweski's brutally honest take on life, wife, sex, debauchery, and children (naturally) is smart and witty. Whether the poetic tales are fact or fable, one never questions the existence of that person or moment somewhere in this world or somewhere in time. Notable in the collection is the title poem, "Diminishing Returns", which describes the juxtaposition of the past and present of a Wild West theme town, and of a boy's naiveté and man's cynicism. The poem, harsh to begin, ends with a tender note rare amongst Koweski's other work.