Lives of the Saints

by Alan Franklin

105 pages, Paperback

Published January 1, 2022

Reviews

[Tom Schulte · Rating 4 out of 5]

I am real leery of reading poetry or creative writing.... I find for me the best is the greatest but it is the tip of an iceberg of forgettable efforts. I was really pleased to find this is the top-shelf writing I so rarely come across. It is also at time very dark. Here is an excerpt from "Reprobate"

... It may happen that a man wakes up one day and the rest is history. In a nutshell. The horror, on the other hand, is gone, and in its place, a yawn. After which he dresses, somberly, neglecting, again, to bathe, and descends the staircase to the dining room below. Outside, the rain is unremitting, his temples throb, Atlantis. Oh, for a life on the open road - I could be a yobbo, brandish a stick, kill dogs, frighten small children. I dreamt I was the corner of a building in a neglected part of the city, after which I was apprehended again and again, though always by unknown assailants whose desire, they claimed, was only to "know me better." I cursed them under my breath. They forced me to wear women's clothing. The fools! Nothing could have pleased me more. As a woman I could be trained in the pneumatic and hydraulic arts, I could make a killing in the stock markets. Once I could even strangle small mammals with my bare hands, but that was before. It's all behind me now. All the little pleasures seem somehow to have lost their sting - have you noticed that? Or is it just me?

There is a fair amount of taking on these voices of some really twisted souls. I watched Doctor Sleep recently and some of this made me think of a Jack Torrance interior monologue of self-reflection. What is really is is Alan Franklin of The Layabouts, an Anti-authoritarian social/political band from Detroit. From my time in Michigan I was aware of the group, but never acquired the album
No Masters! and no I intend to correct that.

A lot here are searching essays of prose poems that are evocative and thought-provoking; content worth returning to. Interspersed are the author's own images which are generally peaceful even serene and work as a counterpoint to some of the coarse word-pictures.

[Martin Holsinger · Rating 5 out of 5]

This slim volume is a remarkable collection of prose poems in the spirit of Kafka, Borges, Jarry, Artaud, and RImbaud. They are edgy, and frequently humorous, but never bawdy.