Poetry review – SELF GEOFFERENTIAL: Charles Rammelkamp takes two-fold pleasure from Geoffrey Gatza’s new collection
Self Geofferential
Geoffrey Gatza
BlazeVOX [books], 2025
ISBN: 978-1-60964-482-6
118 pages $16.00
Come for the poetry, stay for the artwork. Or, come for the artwork and stay for the poetry. Geoffrey Gatza’s gorgeous new collection is self-referential in (most) places and full of an Aesop-like fabulous wisdom in others. His poetry often partakes of dreams. He’s clearly influenced by John Ashbery, whose poems, as George Bilgere once wryly noted, “almost always almost make sense, the same way Mae West almost always almost let you see it all.”
Gatza’s artwork is jaw-droppingly splendid, with a Warhol-like pop-art edge. Indeed, the cover art, Like a Banana, a mixed media collage which also appears between the pages, right after the final poem, “Rainbow Ending,” is reminiscent of Andy Warhol’s iconic 1967 album cover for The Velvet Underground & Nico, a ripening banana, complete with the bruises. (“LIKE A BANANA I KEPT MY MOUTH SHUT” spelled out in multi-colored capitals graces both “Like a Banana” and “Geoff’s work table” at the end of the collection.) Wolves, rabbits, flowers, cats, birds, and a Volkswagen bus appear in the artwork. Self Geofferential includes dozens of reproductions of Gatza’s surreal collages including “Speaking Ear,” “Pornographic Tuxedo,” “Jaguar Crossing,” “Library,” “Woman in Text,” “Smoking Text” (a giant pair of lips with a cigarette, text-laced smoke drifting), “Bluebirds and Cat,” “I Ate Your Strawberry,” “Owls on a Tree Stump,” “Typoglycmia,” “Welcome to Sandusky” – with the aforementioned VW bus – and many others.
The natural world is a source of inspiration for Gatza. “April Snowfall” takes its inspiration from a patch of frozen daffodils, blindsided by a late frost. “Blueberry Blue Clouds” is inspired by a cloud formation in the sky. “Fireworks” takes place at a county fair with alpaca, pigs, rabbits and a cow giving birth to a calf. Several of the longer, more parable-like poems likewise involve wolves and wildlife, flora and fauna. In the poem “Sparks,” which is accompanied by a stunning mixed media collage titled “Butterfly” he confides:
I seek out those tiny sparks of inspiration
That happen everywhere, every moment
Among the day-to-day routine.
Another potent source of inspiration is dreams, and this is where Ashbery’s influence seems particularly present. Indeed, the poem, “Hurricane | September 3, 2017,” which features Hurricane Irma, a category 5 storm, ‘barreling down / On the Leeward Islands,’ is titled after the day Ashbery died. It begins, ‘It is always difficult to start writing a poem,’ and includes the lines:
Turns out
The whole world is a hurricane.
The whole fucking world is a poem
About hurricanes flooding
Our streets with red geraniums.
“Tomato London” is a surreal poem with “soft limes,” “hunting cougars” and “heirloom women” that also invokes Ashbery. Even the lines, ‘John got past her wind, but I was hooked’ (and some others) may refer to Ashbery.
I was at one of these parties when I was a kid.
The music was hot, and the sex was lacerating.
This is when I first met John.
“The Birthday Girl” is another surreal poem, in an English setting, featuring ‘an out-of-place family of kindhearted carrots’ punting on a canal in Oxfordshire or someplace similar.
Up the garden path walks an imaginary flower
Sporting green trousers. She has the face of Jane Seymour.
Her bright pistils are notorious.
Those tight aristocratic petals are iron.
“Soul Kitchen” begins, ‘Last night I had this dream…’ It’s a poem about grief, as are several others, including “Henry Darger Dreams of Emily Dickinson.” ‘This is the grief / Of those left behind,’ the narrator writes. ‘We drive away as if the unknown occurred.’ In his dream, the narrator, Henry Darger, sees Dickinson lying in the road. ‘The dead never come around to say hello,’ he confesses, ‘so we refuse / To open the door.’ Later, he talks about ‘the ticking timeclock of tormented reminiscences,’ clearly tortured by his memories.
Memory comes from the same place as dreams, after all. In the poem “Winter,” the narrator observes, ‘As my memories vanish, I sense / This is life, the end of life.’ “Winter” is a poem written from the perspective of a man lying in a hospital bed. It ends: ‘Today I am in my hospital bed hooked up / To machines reminiscing dangerous situations.’
The truly self-Geofferential poems include the poignant poem “Fry Cakes,” a memory that begins, ‘Mom told me of her cancer over doughnuts and coffee,’ a fatal disease casually mentioned at breakfast, a real gut-punch of an understatement. She puts a brave face on the situation and decides to have a second doughnut. ‘Why the hell not?’ It became a family a story, as Gatza meditates over what constitutes “history.”
But each Christmas I tell that doughnut story,
“Why the hell not?” We all join in and speak
As if, as a family we gather up, together, her courage,
Or false courage as I am certain it must have been
And feel pride that, at the moment our traumatic times
We can wave a middle finger to it all and just eat fry cakes
Until our time runs out.
Several of Gatza’s longer poems read like fables. “The Willow Oak and the Black Tupelo” features anthropomorphized trees. “Subject and Object” is about a couple of people whose Land Rover flips over. Shocked but having escaped the vehicle, they watch it burn.
The driver walks toward the shattered SUV. Flames die down.
The way the driver looks at the vehicle ignites deep feelings
Within the passenger, of family congregating for a funeral.
“All the Story by Heart” is about a grandmother reading a bedtime story to her grandson, “Little Red Riding Hood.” The boy, addressed as “you” by the narrator, seems to perceive his grandma becoming the wolf. And what does this say about him? “The Valley of Wolves” is a sort of parody of the King Arthur legend, and “A Blazing Sun,” about the race between the tortoise and the hare, is especially reminiscent of Aesop, although with a different message:
When everything is possible
And we are living all the time,
It is good to be alive
Browsing through old records,
Your friend fumbling behind you,
Knowing you are going to win
And he will lose.
And life goes on,
Shining out peace
Like a blazing sun.
“The Spider does not Spin its Web for a Single Fly” is yet another poem that feels as though it delivers a mysterious moral.
The words for hyacinth and amethyst are distorted words these days.
The radio waves are soft-spoken, kind and far more accommodating
Than you’d expect from hope-filled lies spun from self-conscious spiders.
So yes, come to Self-Geofferential for the artwork, but please, stay for the poetry.
Jan 6 2025
London Grip Poetry Review – Geoffrey Gatza
Poetry review – SELF GEOFFERENTIAL: Charles Rammelkamp takes two-fold pleasure from Geoffrey Gatza’s new collection
Come for the poetry, stay for the artwork. Or, come for the artwork and stay for the poetry. Geoffrey Gatza’s gorgeous new collection is self-referential in (most) places and full of an Aesop-like fabulous wisdom in others. His poetry often partakes of dreams. He’s clearly influenced by John Ashbery, whose poems, as George Bilgere once wryly noted, “almost always almost make sense, the same way Mae West almost always almost let you see it all.”
Gatza’s artwork is jaw-droppingly splendid, with a Warhol-like pop-art edge. Indeed, the cover art, Like a Banana, a mixed media collage which also appears between the pages, right after the final poem, “Rainbow Ending,” is reminiscent of Andy Warhol’s iconic 1967 album cover for The Velvet Underground & Nico, a ripening banana, complete with the bruises. (“LIKE A BANANA I KEPT MY MOUTH SHUT” spelled out in multi-colored capitals graces both “Like a Banana” and “Geoff’s work table” at the end of the collection.) Wolves, rabbits, flowers, cats, birds, and a Volkswagen bus appear in the artwork. Self Geofferential includes dozens of reproductions of Gatza’s surreal collages including “Speaking Ear,” “Pornographic Tuxedo,” “Jaguar Crossing,” “Library,” “Woman in Text,” “Smoking Text” (a giant pair of lips with a cigarette, text-laced smoke drifting), “Bluebirds and Cat,” “I Ate Your Strawberry,” “Owls on a Tree Stump,” “Typoglycmia,” “Welcome to Sandusky” – with the aforementioned VW bus – and many others.
The natural world is a source of inspiration for Gatza. “April Snowfall” takes its inspiration from a patch of frozen daffodils, blindsided by a late frost. “Blueberry Blue Clouds” is inspired by a cloud formation in the sky. “Fireworks” takes place at a county fair with alpaca, pigs, rabbits and a cow giving birth to a calf. Several of the longer, more parable-like poems likewise involve wolves and wildlife, flora and fauna. In the poem “Sparks,” which is accompanied by a stunning mixed media collage titled “Butterfly” he confides:
I seek out those tiny sparks of inspiration That happen everywhere, every moment Among the day-to-day routine.Another potent source of inspiration is dreams, and this is where Ashbery’s influence seems particularly present. Indeed, the poem, “Hurricane | September 3, 2017,” which features Hurricane Irma, a category 5 storm, ‘barreling down / On the Leeward Islands,’ is titled after the day Ashbery died. It begins, ‘It is always difficult to start writing a poem,’ and includes the lines:
Turns out The whole world is a hurricane. The whole fucking world is a poem About hurricanes flooding Our streets with red geraniums.“Tomato London” is a surreal poem with “soft limes,” “hunting cougars” and “heirloom women” that also invokes Ashbery. Even the lines, ‘John got past her wind, but I was hooked’ (and some others) may refer to Ashbery.
I was at one of these parties when I was a kid. The music was hot, and the sex was lacerating. This is when I first met John.“The Birthday Girl” is another surreal poem, in an English setting, featuring ‘an out-of-place family of kindhearted carrots’ punting on a canal in Oxfordshire or someplace similar.
Up the garden path walks an imaginary flower Sporting green trousers. She has the face of Jane Seymour. Her bright pistils are notorious. Those tight aristocratic petals are iron.“Soul Kitchen” begins, ‘Last night I had this dream…’ It’s a poem about grief, as are several others, including “Henry Darger Dreams of Emily Dickinson.” ‘This is the grief / Of those left behind,’ the narrator writes. ‘We drive away as if the unknown occurred.’ In his dream, the narrator, Henry Darger, sees Dickinson lying in the road. ‘The dead never come around to say hello,’ he confesses, ‘so we refuse / To open the door.’ Later, he talks about ‘the ticking timeclock of tormented reminiscences,’ clearly tortured by his memories.
Memory comes from the same place as dreams, after all. In the poem “Winter,” the narrator observes, ‘As my memories vanish, I sense / This is life, the end of life.’ “Winter” is a poem written from the perspective of a man lying in a hospital bed. It ends: ‘Today I am in my hospital bed hooked up / To machines reminiscing dangerous situations.’
The truly self-Geofferential poems include the poignant poem “Fry Cakes,” a memory that begins, ‘Mom told me of her cancer over doughnuts and coffee,’ a fatal disease casually mentioned at breakfast, a real gut-punch of an understatement. She puts a brave face on the situation and decides to have a second doughnut. ‘Why the hell not?’ It became a family a story, as Gatza meditates over what constitutes “history.”
But each Christmas I tell that doughnut story, “Why the hell not?” We all join in and speak As if, as a family we gather up, together, her courage, Or false courage as I am certain it must have been And feel pride that, at the moment our traumatic times We can wave a middle finger to it all and just eat fry cakes Until our time runs out.Several of Gatza’s longer poems read like fables. “The Willow Oak and the Black Tupelo” features anthropomorphized trees. “Subject and Object” is about a couple of people whose Land Rover flips over. Shocked but having escaped the vehicle, they watch it burn.
The driver walks toward the shattered SUV. Flames die down. The way the driver looks at the vehicle ignites deep feelings Within the passenger, of family congregating for a funeral.“All the Story by Heart” is about a grandmother reading a bedtime story to her grandson, “Little Red Riding Hood.” The boy, addressed as “you” by the narrator, seems to perceive his grandma becoming the wolf. And what does this say about him? “The Valley of Wolves” is a sort of parody of the King Arthur legend, and “A Blazing Sun,” about the race between the tortoise and the hare, is especially reminiscent of Aesop, although with a different message:
When everything is possible And we are living all the time, It is good to be alive Browsing through old records, Your friend fumbling behind you, Knowing you are going to win And he will lose. And life goes on, Shining out peace Like a blazing sun.“The Spider does not Spin its Web for a Single Fly” is yet another poem that feels as though it delivers a mysterious moral.
The words for hyacinth and amethyst are distorted words these days. The radio waves are soft-spoken, kind and far more accommodating Than you’d expect from hope-filled lies spun from self-conscious spiders.So yes, come to Self-Geofferential for the artwork, but please, stay for the poetry.