John Yamrus - The Doomsday Minimalist

my car battery died

i was
waiting for
Tripl e A.

i thought
i’d kill some time
by writing a bit.

nothing came
so, i
gave it up,
did the dishes,
played with
the dog and
waited,

thinking
it’s just like life,
isn’t it?

you do your
thing,

then
sit around
waiting
for the truck

to take you
away.

This is the kind of poem Yamrus is best known for.  Day to day ennui.  The typical angst that we all are so very well acquainted with.  His car doesn’t work, the poem he’s trying to write isn’t coming, and he’s just sitting there thinking about how this is the way it is.  Sitting around waiting for the truck to take you away.  Yamrus goes from the particular to the dreaded general idea of waiting to die.  He follows the advice of William Carlos Williams and does it in just twenty four matter of fact, stripped dow! n lines.  The poem is not apocalyptic except that it is apocalyptic in spades.  This is what we all do while waiting for the truck to take us away.  Cavafy’s Romans were waiting for the barbarians.  Yamrus is just simply waiting for his car to be towed away.  Yet, in the process he achieves so much more. 

A poem like “my car battery died,” reveal John Yamrus’ talent for working the minimalist line.  His poems don’t have an extra ounce of fat on them.  And, they sound remarkably like the kind of story you might hear in a barber shop, a bar, on a bus, in a laundromat, at the filling station.  You can open a collection of Yamrus’ poems anywhere and find him talking.  And, if you shut your eyes you can almost hear his laconic voice going.  He might be telling you about the way his dog shakes the rain off its fur, he might be talking about the weather, he might be mentioni! ng his publisher.  But, whatever he is talking about he is always intimately talking about himself.  And, on the surface the talk usually seems to be about everyday things, but if you read him for very long, you realize that these everyday things are Yamrus’ code for revealing certain private things about himself.

this morning

i was
nearly killed

by a
car

speeding through
the parking lot
at the
liquor store.

how

perfectly

fitting.

If my guess is right, John Yamrus talks the way he writes.  Because these are talk poems.  Because they really are the poems of a master storyteller.  Imagine that you are standing in the line at the supermarket and the guy ahead of you is telling the check out clerk how he nearly got run over in a liquor store parking lot.  This poem is all too likely the way someone would tell about this kind of incident.  And! , notice how the poem begins.  “this morning.”  It’s just as simple as that.  And, those are all the words needed to suck you right into the narrative.

Then, Yamrus really hooks you with “i was/nearly killed.”  Wham, you are in his world now and he holds you there by saying, “by a/car.”  Suddenly, Yamrus is everyman because unless having been living in a closet all of your life, you also have been nearly hit by a car somewhere.  The action of the poem only takes four lines.

speeding through
the parking lot
at the
liquor store.

Now Yamrus needs a finish.  Most poets would have the narrator flip off the guy in the car.  But, not Yamrus.  Instead, he lets the poem end with a kind of stoic resignation laced with some irony.

how

perfectly

fitting.

I could easily quote more poems from DOING CARTWHEELS ON! DOOMSDAY AFTERNOON but it really isn’t necessary.  Yamrus is a master of the minimalist poem and the understated wise crack.   His line which is also his sentence is pared to the bone.  And, the timing and the voice are absolutely natural and perfect.  Nobody does it better.

About the Author

Wolfgang Carstens lives in Alberta, Canada with his wife, five children, two cats and a dog. His poetry and prose are printed upon the backs of unpaid bills.

http://www.epicrites.org