T. Anders Carson: A Different Shred of Skin (2002)

Jack Ross, ed.: Spin 42 (March 2002)

T. Anders Carson, A Different Shred of Skin. Detroit, Michigan: Undead Poets Press, 2000. 120pp. RRP $US14.95. ISBN 1-930769-00-8.

T. Anders Carson: A Different Shred of Skin (2000)

T. Anders Carson is a very different case. First of all, turn to page 16 of this journal and read his poem “The dark.” That’s very much the landscape of these poems: drunks, junkies, whores – a series of mean streets down which the poet as Private Eye must pass. This self-proclaimed “drive-in poet” has collaborated with the Swiss photographer Michael B. to make a rather Bukowskian, but certainly very readable collection of verse monologues. His similes can seem a little farfetched: “convoluted like / some lousy $2 dildo,” but they’re none the worse for that. Some of the poems would be better if they ended sooner, I think. The psychological moment passes, and a tendency to excess chokes the original strong point Carson was making. Michael B’s photographs, by contrast, are disciplined and precise and never stray off the point. The two complement each other well.

(9-10/3/02)

Spin 42 (2002): 61.

[166 wds]

Spin 42 (2002)


•