Rain Mountain Press – July 2016
2nd Edition
.
Review by g emil reutter
.
Rob Cook lives in a world entirely his own. It is a world of light and dark, of sadness and humor but isn’t that the way it is for all people? Unlike others Cook travels to the edges of life and dips his toe if not his entire foot into the other side.
.
There are letters in this collection like the poets James Wright and Richard Hugo included in some of their collections only in Cook’s collection the letters are written from Tadpole to himself, after all it is a diary… of sorts. The poems are harsh realism at its best but surprisingly in the midst of it all, a gentle sweetness and outstanding images brim forth.
.
In the poem, Football Field Jan, about a chat line hook up that goes badly when of course the woman does not have the features she told him on the telephone that he documents in great detail comes this line. … her body seemed like the outcome of four decades/ of weeping and not throwing away the tears. The poem, The Night that Almost Lost its Eyes of another encounter he did not follow through on he gives us, We don’t believe in lights, she said. Everything is so much more honest in the dark.
.
From the poem Ed Glory:
.
Last night I tried to correct
Myself in the mirror
I’m looking more like a spoon every day.
.
I have stones falling through me
until they feel like gowns
easing from my bones.
.
From the poem In the In Wasted North of Twenty One:
.
I want this thing
.
to disappear, she said, and added
talking to you I feel like
.
I’ve already disappeared
I didn’t know if we were
.
making a family
to hide, but while
.
the clock held us together
with its claws
.
and giant stones and glaciers
moved
.
across the sky toward
Pennsylvania.
.
In Diary of Tadpole the Dirtbag, Rob Cooks once again reveals a voice that is uniquely his own.
.
You can find the book here: http://www.spdbooks.org/Products/9780980221121/diary-of-tadpole-the-dirtbag-second-edition.aspx
.
g emil reutter is a writer of poems and stories. You can find him here: https://gereutter.wordpress.com/about/
North of Oxford 