MONKEY SCREAMS​

Poetry by Robert Joe Stout

http://www.amazon.com/Monkey-Screams-Robert-Joe-Stout/dp/193885375X/ref
http://www.futurecycle.org/index.php/en/catalog/by-title/item/333-monkey-screams

s         Monkey Screams thrusts the horrors, the idiosyncrasies, the fallacies of the War in Vietnam into the vividly personal reactions of participants whose fears, accomplishments and shame burst forth in descriptions that surpass journalism or propaganda. They are both confessions and recriminations, yearnings for home and struggles to make sense out of the senseless. In similar fashion the second section of these poetical narratives reflects the anxieties, conflicts, resolutions of the succeeding generation: life as it is contrasted with what life could or should be. Telephone linemen, football coaches, foreign-born account clerks wrestle limitations imposed by laws and society, proud of their achievements yet poignantly aware of what is missing in their lives.

         The third and final section pushes into the present through the eyes, thoughts and imaginings of a journalist nearing the end of his career. Poems of acceptance, of remembrance, little details of life that never important before become planks between acceptance and eternity. Facts give way to dreams and dreams to definition of what his life has been and why. The factual world—lentil soup, the cat asleep—offsets perceptions of monstrous fish, a boyhood unicorn that only he could see as he experiences existence beyond that apparent to routines of daily life.
         In Vietnam, the silence that followed battle was eerie, frightening, until the sounds of the jungle resumed—the monkey screams as one G.I. describes it. But the normal to which it returned was itself surreal, something to be apprehended intuitively, not understood by superficial observation. Throughout this book the intuitive pierces the commonplace, transforming the ordinary into something feared, loved, shared. 

ReviewS

Poems to make you think
By Auntie Annie VINE VOICE

This, Stout’s second full-length poetry volume, is divided into three main sections each containing a set of revelations but all concerning in greater or lesser degree the ways in which our government supports or fails to support its citizens and disillusion at the core of our society. Through a series of vivid images and forceful dialog, Stout serves up late 20th century America for us to chew and digest.

The book’s first section deals with Stout’s time in Viet Nam. He sets up his premise in the first poem, “Hero,” in which a soldier about to receive a Purple Heart reflects upon what he will tell his parents of the ceremony, and events leading up to it, that will spare them the horrors of war. He also considers the major, standing among legless Marines, who has puffed out his chest to receive a medal for wounds received “when rocks—not shrapnel—bruised his legs and shin.” This is Viet Nam from a soldier’s point of view—not only the constant sweltering, constant fear, body count, but also the screw ups in supply lines, lack of intelligence (in both senses), selective news coverage, profiteering, and profound lack of humanity and respect for indigenous people. In the background, always, monkeys scream from the trees. Very visceral.

In the second section, Stout relates lives of American citizens, personal narratives of people like the man next door, an old classmate, someone you run into repeatedly at the neighborhood grocery. They are teachers, nurses, telephone installers. Each relates a bit about himself, how life is going, and how his dreams have moved out of reach. Again, it demonstrates weaknesses in our government and in our society.

In the final section, Stout becomes meditative. He reflects on his past as a husband and a writer, discusses the present—living alone in Mexico in a small apartment. He looks back on successes and failures, making an uneasy truce with the present and contemplating the future, always writing and rewriting. This book is a fascinating trip through late 20th century America designed to make the reader think, and rethink, his complacency.

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Best Poems I've Read
By David WillsonThe VVA VETERAN                


Monkey Screams (FutureCycle Press, 90 pp., $15.95) starts with a twenty-page section of poetry called “Testimonies from Vietnam.” It contains fifteen of the best poems I’ve read dealing with the Vietnam War: “Hero,” “Messenger,” “Good Reports,” “Propaganda Photos,” “In Command,” “God’s Grandeur,” “Yankee Know How,” “Purple Heart,” “Signals,” “Supply Clerk,” “Second Lieutenant,” “Ambush,” “Night Patrol,” “Why?” and “Day After Cease-Fire.”
The rest of the poems in this book are all worthy, but it’s the Vietnam War poetry that make this book. The very first poem, “Hero,” has a line about “four Marines with blankets where their legs had been, sit waiting for decorations just like mine.” Hard stuff to read, but necessary reading for everyone.
Most people don’t read a lot of poetry, but this is a good place to start. The poems are written to be accessible, and the book is very beautiful. The non-Vietnam War poems are about everyday things that we can all identify with, and I did.
I’d like to know more about Bob Stout, but I’ll settle for this.

Who reads poetry?
         Mostly other poets.
         Some years ago a writer who’s published frequently in poetry and literary magazines nodded affirmatively and countered, “Well, I never read engineering magazines.”
         Poets read poetry publications, engineers read engineering publications. The same holds true for politicians, horse breeders, gourmet cooks and hair stylists, each of whom read publications focused on their specialties. Many of each also read novels and a certain amount of nonfiction, particularly self-help and how-to. A few perhaps also read poetry and of those few even fewer contemporary poetry. Which brings us back to poets reading other poets.
         It’s not a small readership. And there’s plenty out there to read. Among newpages, Poets & Writers and Duotrope listings for over a thousand poetry publications exist, most of them online. Practically every university, college and junior college in the United States now publishes a literary or poetry journal, most of them edited by their English and/or creative writing departments. If each online or print journal publishes ten poems annually—most publish more—that means that at least 10,000 new poems appear each year, many more than most poets are able to read.
         So whose poems do poets read? Those of friends one presumes, associates, poets published in the same journals in which one is published. If it’s a print journal there’s a high probability that the published poet will read the other poems in the journal. If it’s an online journal the probability is less. One can keep a print journal beside one’s desk or easy chair, on a bedside stand, in a backpack, browse through it over a period of time. The same is not true for online publications. It’s not easy to read poetry on a mobile device and many writers having spent hours on a computer shy away from reading non-work online. On the other hand, few print journals issue more than 500 copies, a real limitation to readership that online journals don’t have.
         So who reads poetry? A poet I know who’s been teaching creative writing for over thirty years punned, “Why, creative writing students, of course!” There are thousands of them, he added, in the hundreds of college and universities that have creative writing programs.
         And who reads engineering journals?
         The written word is a strange and wondrous thing.

Excerpt from "Section II: An Enemy To Blame

Disability Pensioner
 
We bought our "little farm" to have some elbow room.
I worked part-time; my husband left high-tech
to take a teaching job. We gave our daughter
and our son books and laptops, CDs, city trips,
sent them off to college. Insurance covered
all my husband's bills when he got sick
and paid for mine after my accident.
I could live on what I have if I could sell part
of the ten acres but it's not, they say,
`zoned' that way. I have to sell it all
or stay in this huge house and let
the fruit trees bramble into unpicked declarations
of a crippled widow's fight with rules
that serve, amorphously, some `greater good.'
 
8 p.m.  Lake view through clubhouse windows:
     attentive waiters, long-time friends,
     lawyers explaining legal problems,
     compliments on newest dress.
 
11:30 p.m. Electric fans modulating
     medicated darkness; tomcat kneading
     new position on a corner of the bed.
 
1 p.m.  Orchard alive with children
     running back and forth with limbs
     their whistling gardener father's pruned.
 
We've built society with rules instead of kindness.
Partitioned people into little boxes
we call laws and truth. Why not let every house,
like every student, be itself--grow from within.
let those who can't acquire mathematics
put together poems, repair cars
--do what they most want to do--
and let houses, homes and orchards
shrink into a size that fits their owners
when they're old and barren, then grow
with vigorous new buyers into something
eloquent and grand--condominiums
if need be, TV towers, hospitals. Or nurseries
where orchids, roses, pretty bougainvillea bloom.