Poems which sometimes evoke Charles Bukowski find their way into the poet’s own voice in recollecting times spent with his grandfather and father. The first poem in this collection (untitled) clues the reader to what the poet already knows: poetry, his redeemer, is found in “the …conversation/ of day laborers/ & furniture/ movers,” ordinary life around him, not by invoking magic, with that “new… very old typer” he buys to make him feel like Bukowski in 1958, and get editors to take note of “a real writer.”  He is that writer in “Five Fingered Mary,” a poem about his grandfather, “the neighborhood crazy man,” who told him that it’s alright to “skip a day” from school, whose hard-living drinking life evokes Bukowski; the same with “Three on the Tree,” in which he describes driving through the fire trails with his father, a man often institutionalized and imprisoned from time to time. The redemption the poet seeks from that kind life to the life of an artist is achieved in these poems, & others, by letting his own voice guide him, not by pulling elusive rabbits out of hats.

A collection strongly recommended.